You may recall that I was working through the world of International Relations theories. This process is currently in hiatus, but eventually I hope to discuss what post-modernists have to say on the subject. Jean Baudrillard was one of the leading figures in this area, and you may have noticed that he died recently. Or maybe, he has not died but ascended into a realm of pure representation, like that Barry O'Blivion guy in Cronenburg's Videodrome (I am surely not the first person to make the comparison).
Momus comments on the difference between English and French language obituaries of Baudrillard, with the francophone world engaging with his ideas and anglophone obituaries focussing on his largely misunderstood claim that the first Gulf War had not taken place and on his apparently being the inspiration for well-known film The Matrix. The latter point is particularly comedic, suggesting that Baudrillard ran around in leather coats wearing wrap around shades and forgetting the obvious point, made by Baudrillard himself, that the film is a rather facile distillation and adaptation of his views. This is life.
On the first point, about the Gulf War not happening: my recollection is that Baudrillard, like many post-modernists, reckoned that in our hypermediated age events are less significant than their representation. Therefore, the endless rolling news reportage of the war becomes what counts, not the war itself. While I see what he is getting at here, I do not quite remember what he means by saying that the War did not happen (as opposed to it being of less significance than its media portrayal). Maybe the point is intended rhetorically. It does though call to mind a very real problem with the writings of Baudrillard (and of post-modernists generally): they are by and large written in a largely impenetrable manner. Baudrillard does at least have the excuse of foreignness - he cannot answer for the opacity of his translations. Having read other English-language post-modernist writers, however, it does appear that there is a post-modern writing style, one that Baudrillard's translators have captured well.
To see what I mean, check out Baudrillard's 'The Mask Of War', a nice short piece that appeared in some book called 1000 Days of Theory. It is a while since I read it closely, but my recollection is that there is an interesting point in there somewhere, but I cannot see it now.
Showing posts with label International Relations Theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Relations Theory. Show all posts
19 March, 2007
16 July, 2006
Theorising International Relations: Marxism
Some time ago I said that I would take you all on a journey through the world of International Relations theory. Sadly, the train had barely left the station when it faced a long delay in its second stop, but now let’s get things moving again. And look, we are pulling in at the third stop, which is called Marxism. This is the third of International Relations’ big three theories, though it is very much the poor relation of Liberalism and Realism.
In broad outline you probably know what Marxism is all about. In some ways it is reducible to a string of buzzwords - class struggle, dialectics, historical materialism, modes of production, relations of production, alienation, base & superstructure, surplus value, and so on. The interesting question is how applicable all this is to world politics. In his own writings, Karl Marx largely confined himself to analysing power structures within countries, saying very little about how the workings of capitalism work internationally.
Still, Marx says more than nothing about the world as a whole - there is a fascinating passage in The Communist Manifesto of 1848 where he talk presciently of globalisation, and of capitalism’s insatiable urge to spread itself throughout the world, transforming all traditional societies it touches through the introduction of the cash nexus and capitalist relations of production. Nevertheless, the argument is somewhat unsophisticated in the light of later developments - capitalism is seen as turning the whole world into a simulacrum of the advanced industrial societies. The division of the world into a developed core and a (seemingly) permanently underdeveloped periphery does not look like something he envisaged.
After Marx’s death, others tried to develop his ideas and more complex Marxist ideas of relevance to International Relations
began to develop. V.I. Lenin, in works such as Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism, talked about how through colonialism and overseas investment capitalism had become transnational, that in a sense entire countries had become bourgeois or proletarian. Lenin’s grasp of economics was much weaker than Marx’s, and his belief that colonialism was driving the world into world war seems a bit simplistic when you look at how the First World War actually started. Nevertheless, Lenin was in retrospect correct in identifying Russia as capitalism’s weakest link, in so far as it was both an imperial state and (through extensive inward investment) a de facto colony, thus making it the place where world revolution was most likely to begin.
Lenin’s legacy for Marxism was ultimately malign - by achieving his revolution and identifying Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) as the state ideology, Marxism was tied to the USSR’s fortunes and forced through conceptual hoops to support whatever twist in policy the country’s leadership felt like espousing. The USSR’s quarter century rule by a psychopath also did not help. That end of Marxism gradually lost any intellectual credibility, and I doubt anyone in the world now seriously reads Marxist scholarship originating in the USSR.
In the west, however, a separate Marxist tradition developed in academia, divorced from the rough and tumble of actual politics. Marx himself would probably have been appalled by this development, given that he devoted as much effort to organising socialist movements as he did to research and writing, but the ivory tower academics have kept his ideas alive. Unfortunately for the International Relations student, the ideas of these intellectual Marxists have gone in many different directions. Some of these roads have produced lines of thought relevant to our discipline, such as Dependency Theory or various strands of Critical Theory. However, these have either evolved so far from original Marxist orthodoxy as to be essentially post-Marxist, or they have been almost completely discredited by the passage of time (or both). I would therefore question whether one could still talk of a "pure" Marxism as having any great relevance to International Relations.
Nevertheless, Marxism has one major contribution to our subject. When you look at writings in the Realist or Liberal tradition, the focus is all on diplomacy, states, armies, treaties, statesmen, and high politics. When you look at what Marxist writers talk about, you see stuff about economics, companies, exploitation, class, and so on. In some ways that makes Marxism look like it is from a completely different discipline to "true" International Relations. However, the question can be turned on its head by asking whether it is actually the old-school theories that are missing the point and ignoring what is actually relevant to the way the world works. Marxism is also important in that it explodes the idea that states are unitary actors working for the good of all their citizens - rather we see conflict within states which in turn is bound to affect how they operate internationally.
In the end, Marxism is probably more relevant to International Relations because of the questions it asks rather than the answers it provides. Others have taken those questions and answered them in ways that go beyond anything Marx would have envisaged.
In broad outline you probably know what Marxism is all about. In some ways it is reducible to a string of buzzwords - class struggle, dialectics, historical materialism, modes of production, relations of production, alienation, base & superstructure, surplus value, and so on. The interesting question is how applicable all this is to world politics. In his own writings, Karl Marx largely confined himself to analysing power structures within countries, saying very little about how the workings of capitalism work internationally.
Still, Marx says more than nothing about the world as a whole - there is a fascinating passage in The Communist Manifesto of 1848 where he talk presciently of globalisation, and of capitalism’s insatiable urge to spread itself throughout the world, transforming all traditional societies it touches through the introduction of the cash nexus and capitalist relations of production. Nevertheless, the argument is somewhat unsophisticated in the light of later developments - capitalism is seen as turning the whole world into a simulacrum of the advanced industrial societies. The division of the world into a developed core and a (seemingly) permanently underdeveloped periphery does not look like something he envisaged.
After Marx’s death, others tried to develop his ideas and more complex Marxist ideas of relevance to International Relations
began to develop. V.I. Lenin, in works such as Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism, talked about how through colonialism and overseas investment capitalism had become transnational, that in a sense entire countries had become bourgeois or proletarian. Lenin’s grasp of economics was much weaker than Marx’s, and his belief that colonialism was driving the world into world war seems a bit simplistic when you look at how the First World War actually started. Nevertheless, Lenin was in retrospect correct in identifying Russia as capitalism’s weakest link, in so far as it was both an imperial state and (through extensive inward investment) a de facto colony, thus making it the place where world revolution was most likely to begin. Lenin’s legacy for Marxism was ultimately malign - by achieving his revolution and identifying Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) as the state ideology, Marxism was tied to the USSR’s fortunes and forced through conceptual hoops to support whatever twist in policy the country’s leadership felt like espousing. The USSR’s quarter century rule by a psychopath also did not help. That end of Marxism gradually lost any intellectual credibility, and I doubt anyone in the world now seriously reads Marxist scholarship originating in the USSR.
In the west, however, a separate Marxist tradition developed in academia, divorced from the rough and tumble of actual politics. Marx himself would probably have been appalled by this development, given that he devoted as much effort to organising socialist movements as he did to research and writing, but the ivory tower academics have kept his ideas alive. Unfortunately for the International Relations student, the ideas of these intellectual Marxists have gone in many different directions. Some of these roads have produced lines of thought relevant to our discipline, such as Dependency Theory or various strands of Critical Theory. However, these have either evolved so far from original Marxist orthodoxy as to be essentially post-Marxist, or they have been almost completely discredited by the passage of time (or both). I would therefore question whether one could still talk of a "pure" Marxism as having any great relevance to International Relations.
Nevertheless, Marxism has one major contribution to our subject. When you look at writings in the Realist or Liberal tradition, the focus is all on diplomacy, states, armies, treaties, statesmen, and high politics. When you look at what Marxist writers talk about, you see stuff about economics, companies, exploitation, class, and so on. In some ways that makes Marxism look like it is from a completely different discipline to "true" International Relations. However, the question can be turned on its head by asking whether it is actually the old-school theories that are missing the point and ignoring what is actually relevant to the way the world works. Marxism is also important in that it explodes the idea that states are unitary actors working for the good of all their citizens - rather we see conflict within states which in turn is bound to affect how they operate internationally.
In the end, Marxism is probably more relevant to International Relations because of the questions it asks rather than the answers it provides. Others have taken those questions and answered them in ways that go beyond anything Marx would have envisaged.
04 March, 2006
Theorising International Relations: Liberalism (part two)
Could you handle the wait? When last I wrote, we were languishing in the 19th century, an era of free trade halls and the march of reason. Now fast forward to the 20th century.
Liberalism took a bit of a battering with the outbreak of the Second World War... maybe international disputes were not so peaceably resolvable after all. Paradoxically, the Cold War was good for Liberalism... if the other side had some big ideology they could wave in our faces then didn't we need something too? Realism and its pure power politics is too depressing as a basis for organising, and anyway leads to the worrying conclusion that we are no better than they, so Liberalism, or a somewhat weird version thereof, became the ideology of the West.
Still, in academia, things are maybe a bit more subtle. There are a couple of things you can see as at the heart of Liberal thought. Market economics as a good thing remains central. Democracy is also usually seen as a good thing. Like the Realists, Liberals see the state as the primary actor in international politics, and like them they also see states as having interests which may conflict with each other. However, Liberals see this conflict as being potentially manageable. Crucially, the world is not set up in a zero-sum manner, and it is possible for states to cooperate in such a manner that everyone benefits. International institutions come into being as ways of promoting particular types of inter-state cooperation while regulating state conflict. In certain circumstances international organisations can gain a life of their own, and become themselves serious players on the world stage.
The early 1990s saw Liberalism reach its high tide mark, with all that end of history stuff about how Liberalism had won and how there would henceforth be no serious challenge to its conceptual hegemony. More recent events have suggested that to the extent that Liberalism is identical to the West (whatever that is), there are many people in the world who want nothing to do with it. It is maybe also interesting that the intellectual cheerleaders for Bush's war on terror and the invasion of Iraq are essentially purveyors of Liberalism, albeit of a muscular and combative sort. Although classic Liberals would see democracy as being a fundamentally good thing for people to have, they may well not have thought that bringing it to them at good point was particularly likely to be successful, but this is life.
One final fascinating Liberalism fact arises out of something Kant predicted. I mentioned how he thought that republican regimes would eschew war. This has not obviously come to pass - many of the world's great warmongers are blessed with representative government. However, one thing is very striking, and demonstrable by empirical research - in general, representative democracies do not fight wars against each other. This contrasts with other systems of government, where there is no obvious sign of intra-system war avoidance.
Liberalism took a bit of a battering with the outbreak of the Second World War... maybe international disputes were not so peaceably resolvable after all. Paradoxically, the Cold War was good for Liberalism... if the other side had some big ideology they could wave in our faces then didn't we need something too? Realism and its pure power politics is too depressing as a basis for organising, and anyway leads to the worrying conclusion that we are no better than they, so Liberalism, or a somewhat weird version thereof, became the ideology of the West.
Still, in academia, things are maybe a bit more subtle. There are a couple of things you can see as at the heart of Liberal thought. Market economics as a good thing remains central. Democracy is also usually seen as a good thing. Like the Realists, Liberals see the state as the primary actor in international politics, and like them they also see states as having interests which may conflict with each other. However, Liberals see this conflict as being potentially manageable. Crucially, the world is not set up in a zero-sum manner, and it is possible for states to cooperate in such a manner that everyone benefits. International institutions come into being as ways of promoting particular types of inter-state cooperation while regulating state conflict. In certain circumstances international organisations can gain a life of their own, and become themselves serious players on the world stage.
The early 1990s saw Liberalism reach its high tide mark, with all that end of history stuff about how Liberalism had won and how there would henceforth be no serious challenge to its conceptual hegemony. More recent events have suggested that to the extent that Liberalism is identical to the West (whatever that is), there are many people in the world who want nothing to do with it. It is maybe also interesting that the intellectual cheerleaders for Bush's war on terror and the invasion of Iraq are essentially purveyors of Liberalism, albeit of a muscular and combative sort. Although classic Liberals would see democracy as being a fundamentally good thing for people to have, they may well not have thought that bringing it to them at good point was particularly likely to be successful, but this is life.
One final fascinating Liberalism fact arises out of something Kant predicted. I mentioned how he thought that republican regimes would eschew war. This has not obviously come to pass - many of the world's great warmongers are blessed with representative government. However, one thing is very striking, and demonstrable by empirical research - in general, representative democracies do not fight wars against each other. This contrasts with other systems of government, where there is no obvious sign of intra-system war avoidance.
22 February, 2006
Theorising International Relations: Liberalism (part one)
Remember my threat to boringly roll through loads of theories of International Relations? Now, finally, I get to part two: LIBERALISM. For reasons of length, this will confusingly be divided into two parts.
First up, beware - Liberalism in this context may not be the same as what you associate with the term in domestic politics.
Liberalism and Realism are the two big theories of International Relations. As a coherent body of thought, Liberalism is much older, and was the dominant set of ideas when the discipline emerged after the First World War. In the aftermath of that catastrophe, the Liberals sought both to explain how the world worked and to increase the chances of such horror being avoided in future. So Liberalism is both descriptive and normative.
The lineage of Liberalism can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and to Immanuel Kant. Kant believed in human progress, and believed that the autocratic governments dominating ancien regime Europe were being swept away by new republican systems of government. Such regimes, he felt, would be far less inclined to go to war, for when the people are in power they will hardly send themselves off to be butchered. Instead, thought Kant, the new republics would come together in a league of nations, and work through their differences in a spirit of rationalism and mutual compromise.
The other plank of liberalism came in the 19th century - an almost utopian belief in the positive transformative power of market economics. 19th century liberals did not just have a functional fondness for free trade between nations - they saw it as a transmitter of kinship and fraternal association between the peoples of the world, almost like we would see the Internet now. This might be a product of the times, when markets were becoming free where previously they had been controlled by states, not for the kind of half-baked ideas the mid 20th century saw but to further state power. The freeing of markets thus could be seen by Liberals as part of the process of eroding the power of the monarchs.
Can you control your excitement? Can you wait until part two, when the story of Liberalism is brought up to date? READER - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!!!
Or you could just click here.
First up, beware - Liberalism in this context may not be the same as what you associate with the term in domestic politics.
Liberalism and Realism are the two big theories of International Relations. As a coherent body of thought, Liberalism is much older, and was the dominant set of ideas when the discipline emerged after the First World War. In the aftermath of that catastrophe, the Liberals sought both to explain how the world worked and to increase the chances of such horror being avoided in future. So Liberalism is both descriptive and normative.
The lineage of Liberalism can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and to Immanuel Kant. Kant believed in human progress, and believed that the autocratic governments dominating ancien regime Europe were being swept away by new republican systems of government. Such regimes, he felt, would be far less inclined to go to war, for when the people are in power they will hardly send themselves off to be butchered. Instead, thought Kant, the new republics would come together in a league of nations, and work through their differences in a spirit of rationalism and mutual compromise.
The other plank of liberalism came in the 19th century - an almost utopian belief in the positive transformative power of market economics. 19th century liberals did not just have a functional fondness for free trade between nations - they saw it as a transmitter of kinship and fraternal association between the peoples of the world, almost like we would see the Internet now. This might be a product of the times, when markets were becoming free where previously they had been controlled by states, not for the kind of half-baked ideas the mid 20th century saw but to further state power. The freeing of markets thus could be seen by Liberals as part of the process of eroding the power of the monarchs.
Can you control your excitement? Can you wait until part two, when the story of Liberalism is brought up to date? READER - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!!!
Or you could just click here.
29 January, 2006
Theorising International Relations: the timeless wisdom of political realism
I love theory. Empirical research is difficult, but theory allows people to spend their time thinking in the abstract, without having to dirty themselves with analysis of the real world. Thus I have greatly enjoyed the course on international Relations theory I did last semester.
Partly because it might be interesting and partly just to fix the ideas in my head, I propose to run through some of the competing International Relations theories with you, in a series of mails. I’ll stop if anyone finds this boring, and I apologise to anyone else who has studied in the field, as I will be retreading very familiar ground.
So first up: Realism. This has dominated the discipline since the Second World War, but has fallen from favour a bit since the end of the Cold War. Realism has different strands, but they share certain things in common. States are the primary units of international relations. World politics is a game in which states compete against each other for power and security. Some states are strong, others are weak. Weak states either get flattened by strong states, or they form alliances with enough other weak states to block the ambitions of the strong.
Why all this conflict? Old-school realists like blame the fallen nature of humanity -- people will forever lust for power and dominion. Neo-Realists cite structural reasons; the international milieu is seen as being like a perfectly competitive market in which states must either compete or go under.
| always imagine Realists as being chubby middle-aged gentlemen in bow-ties with a fondness for port. This comes with their name - it suggests that they are merely stating the obvious facts about the world, saying things that everyone secretly knows to be true. They claim to be imparting timeless wisdom applicable in all international environments. Earlier writers like Thucydides and Machiavelli are drafted in as proto-Realists, to make their views seem less bound to particular contexts; some of these writers would be a bit bemused by this appropriation of their texts.
Realism lost its lustre to some extent when the Cold War ended not in a bang but by one side giving up the struggle. It remains nevertheless one of the two dominant theoretical perspectives in International Relations theory.
Realism comes across as being intrinsically rightwing, but a lot of leftist analyses of world events seems to be informed by its ideas. Only yesterday I read an interview with Chomsky, where he talks about how states always try to maximise their power, a classic realist position. Likewise, there is an element of crypto-Realism to anyone who reckons the USA went into Iraq for entirely selfish reasons, dismissing any talk of building a new liberal middle-east as hogwash.
What do I think: I think Realism is complete rubbish, and it amazes me that a theoretical idea so fatuous could reign over a discipline for so long. I suppose part of its appeal is that it is simplistic, and thus easy to understand.
Partly because it might be interesting and partly just to fix the ideas in my head, I propose to run through some of the competing International Relations theories with you, in a series of mails. I’ll stop if anyone finds this boring, and I apologise to anyone else who has studied in the field, as I will be retreading very familiar ground.
So first up: Realism. This has dominated the discipline since the Second World War, but has fallen from favour a bit since the end of the Cold War. Realism has different strands, but they share certain things in common. States are the primary units of international relations. World politics is a game in which states compete against each other for power and security. Some states are strong, others are weak. Weak states either get flattened by strong states, or they form alliances with enough other weak states to block the ambitions of the strong.
Why all this conflict? Old-school realists like blame the fallen nature of humanity -- people will forever lust for power and dominion. Neo-Realists cite structural reasons; the international milieu is seen as being like a perfectly competitive market in which states must either compete or go under.
| always imagine Realists as being chubby middle-aged gentlemen in bow-ties with a fondness for port. This comes with their name - it suggests that they are merely stating the obvious facts about the world, saying things that everyone secretly knows to be true. They claim to be imparting timeless wisdom applicable in all international environments. Earlier writers like Thucydides and Machiavelli are drafted in as proto-Realists, to make their views seem less bound to particular contexts; some of these writers would be a bit bemused by this appropriation of their texts.
Realism lost its lustre to some extent when the Cold War ended not in a bang but by one side giving up the struggle. It remains nevertheless one of the two dominant theoretical perspectives in International Relations theory.
Realism comes across as being intrinsically rightwing, but a lot of leftist analyses of world events seems to be informed by its ideas. Only yesterday I read an interview with Chomsky, where he talks about how states always try to maximise their power, a classic realist position. Likewise, there is an element of crypto-Realism to anyone who reckons the USA went into Iraq for entirely selfish reasons, dismissing any talk of building a new liberal middle-east as hogwash.
What do I think: I think Realism is complete rubbish, and it amazes me that a theoretical idea so fatuous could reign over a discipline for so long. I suppose part of its appeal is that it is simplistic, and thus easy to understand.
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