After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)Construction of World Politics (Criticalrealism: Interventions)

After International Relations

After International Relations articulates a systematic critical realist response to a quest for more emancipatory methodologies in international relations. Heikki Patomäki here establishes a way out of the international relations problematic that has puzzled so many great thinkers and scholars for the last two hundred years. After International Relations shows how and why theories based on the international problematic have failed; expresses an alternative, critical realist research programme; and illustrates how this research programme can be put to work to enable better research and ethico-political practices. Developing a critical realist methodology for international relations, peace research and global political economy, this book resolves many of the theoretical aporias of international relations. It explains in detail the way research should be conducted in open systems and pluralistic contexts. It refines the logic of explanatory emancipation beyond the confines of nation states, and responds to the problem of violence. It goes further than any existing text in developing critical theoretical methodologies in international relations, and showing how they can be applied in research and acted upon in ethico-political practice. The book begins with a critical genealogy of the emergence of the international relations problematic—the irrealist foundations of which were laid down by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. After spelling out the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the critical realist alternative, it explores the future role of critical realism in the construction of non-violent and democratic world politics, which overcomes the Kantian antimonies and dilemmas of the international problematic. It will be of great interest to all those involved in international relations, peace research and international political economy Heikki Patomäki is Professor of World Politics and Economy at Nottingham Trent University, and also the Research Director of the Network Institute for Global Democratisation. His most recent books include Democratising Globalisation: The Leverage of the Tobin Tax and The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union (with P.Minkkinen).

Critical realism: interventions Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie

Critical realism is one of the most influential new developments in the philosophy of science and in the social sciences, providing a powerful alternative to positivism and post-modernism. This series will explore the critical realist position in philosophy and across the social sciences. Critical Realism Essential readings Edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie The Possibility of Naturalism, 3rd edition A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences Roy Bhaskar Being & Worth Andrew Collier Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics Christopher Norris From East to West Odyssey of a Soul Roy Bhaskar Realism and Racism Concepts of Race in Sociological Research Bob Carter Rational Choice Theory Resisting Colonisation Edited by Margaret Archer and Jonathan Q.Tritter Explaining Society Critical Realism in the Social Sciences Berth Danermark, Mats Ekström, Jan Ch Karlsson and Liselotte Jakobsen Critical Realism and Marxism Edited by Andrew Brown, Steve Fleetwood and John Michael Roberts Critical Realism in Economics Edited by Steve Fleetwood Realist Perspectives on Management and Organisations Edited by Stephen Ackroyd and Steve Fleetwood

Also published by Routledge

Routledge studies in critical realism Edited by Margaret Archer, Roy Bhaskar, Andrew Collier, Tony Lawson and Alan Norrie

1. Marxism and Realism A Materialistic Application of Realism in the Social Science Sean Creaven 2. Beyond Relativism Raymond Boudon, Cognitive Rationality and Critical Realism Cynthia Lins Hamlin

After International Relations Critical realism and the (re)construction of world politics

Heikki Patomäki

London and New York

First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2002 Heikki Patomäki All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Patomäki, Heikki. After international relations: critical realism and the (re)construction of world politics/Heikki Patomäki. p. cm.—(Critical realism—interventions) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. International relations—Social aspects. 2. International relations—Methodology. 3. Critical realism. 4. World politics. I. Title. II. Series. JZ1249.P38 2002 327.1'01–dc21 2001048310 ISBN 0-203-11903-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-16339-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-25659-3 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-25660-7 (pbk)

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements

ix xi

Introduction

1

PART I

Overcoming international relations

19

1 How it all started? Can it end? A genealogy of the international problematic

21

2 Learning from Alker: From quantitative peace research to emancipatory humanism

43

3 How to tell better stories about world politics

70

PART II

Explicating a critical realist methodology 4 Critical realist social ontology

97 99

5 Double hermeneutics of iconic modelling

123

6 The normative logic of emancipation

143

PART III

Visions of world politics

165

7 Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode

167

8 A global security community

193 vii

viii

Contents

9 From security to emancipatory world politics: Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ Epilogue Bibliography Index

210 237 239 257

Illustrations

Tables 1.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 8.1 9.1 9.2 9.3

The repetitious cognitive structure of international relations The first seven moves of the Melian dialogue The first seven moves quasi-formalised Relevant causal components of the Melos episode Amalgamation and integration The Cold War interpretation of Norden A political-economy interpretation of the Swedish model Central government budget, total expenditure, as percentage of the GDP

38 175 176 181 195 212 216 223

Figures 1.1 1.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1 9.1

The solution set of the international problematic Three Humes and two Kants An example of a dialectical contradiction The ampliative approach The reductive approach A taxonomy of iconic models Stratification of agency and action The strategic decision-making tree of Melos and Athens A graphical presentation of the rest of the Melian dialogue Generation of a security community Structuration of the conditions of the decline of the Swedish model 1976–89, in the context of stagflation and indebtment

ix

37 38 107 124 125 127 152 171 177 204 219

Acknowledgements

During the good ten years that this book has been in the making, I have accumulated debt to many persons. Any reader will soon notice the central role of Hayward R.Alker. He has not only inspired me, but also commented on most parts of this book, on various occasions. Special thanks are also due to Tuomas Forsberg and Colin Wight, with whom I have worked closely together, and who are doing critical realism in their own ways. Collaboration with them has sparked many stimulating discussions and debates. Also the following colleagues have provided useful comments and irreplaceable support (I apologise for any possible mistaken omissions): Jason Abbott, Osmo Apunen, Chris Brown, Walter Carlsnaes, Stephen Chan, Mick Dillon, Chris Farrands, A.J.R.Groom, Stefano Guzzini, Henrikki Heikka, Mark Hoffman, Jef Huysmans, Pertti Joenniemi, Eerik Lagerspetz, Robert Latham, Richard Little, Iver B.Neumann, Hannu Nurmi, Lloyd Pettiford, Juha Räikkä, Magnus Ryner, Hidemi Suganami, Teivo Teivainen, Teija Tiilikainen, Ole Wæver, Rob Walker (who has also instigated the title of this book), Keith Webb, Alexander Wendt, Matti Wiberg and Andy Williams. In some cases, the most valuable comments have come from the persons most critical of my project! Chapter 2 was previously published as ‘Hayward Alker: An exemplary voyage from quantitative peace research to humanistic, late-modern globalism’, in I. Neumann and O.Wæver (eds) (1997) The Future of International Relations. Masters in the Making?, London: Routledge, pp. 205–35. Chapter 3 was previously published as ‘How to tell better stories about world politics’, European Journal of International Relations 2(1):105–33, reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd (© Sage Publications Ltd and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on International Relations 1996). Chapter 4 was published previously as ‘Concepts of “action”, “structure” and “power”’ in “critical social realism”: A positive and reconstructive critique’, in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (1991) 21(2):221–250, reprinted with permission. Chapter 6 was published previously as ‘Scientific realism, human emancipation and non-violent political action’, Gandhi Marg (1992) 14(1):30–51, reprinted with permission. Chapter 7 was first published in Finnish as ‘Mitä Thukydideen Melos-dialogi voi kertoa?’ [What Can Thucydides’ Melos-Dialogue Reveal?], Rauhantutkimus (1990), 20(4):26–63; used here with permission. Finally, Chapter xi

xii

Acknowledgements

9 was published as ‘Beyond Nordic nostalgia: Envisaging a social/democratic system of global governance’, Cooperation & Conflict (2000) 35(2):115–54, reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd (© 2000 NISA). All chapters have been, however, rewritten for the purpose of this book. New sections have replaced many previous ones, and, particularly, the shape of the pre-1997 papers has been completely refashioned. Pauline Eadie has helped to put this book together in a clean-cut Routledge format. Many thanks for your persistence! Katarina has encouraged me greatly and helped to simplify and clarify some parts of the text. Most importantly, she has remained patient during the intensive months of rewriting the chapters and editing the manuscript—despite the demands of our two small daughters, Anna and Oona. I dedicate this book to Katarina and her remarkable recovery from a very serious illness. Heikki Patomäki Nottingham 21 May 2001

Introduction

What are international relations? This book argues that all social relations are changeable. They are dependent on transient concepts, practices and processes. What has once emerged can change and even become absent. So it is also with international relations. There is no closed list of transformative possibilities. After International Relations claims that critical realist (CR) social sciences can help determine some of them. Social sciences should proceed in three successive stages. First, in order to explain, researchers have to engage with social meanings and assume a dialogical relationship with relevant actors or traces and evidence of history, including texts and quantified observations. Only with dialogically understood data can social episodes, practices, relations and processes be studied adequately and in sufficient detail. Mere understanding is not enough. Causally explanatory models can and should rely also on holistic metaphors, historical and other analogies, and various social scientific theories. The best available explanatory model is often different from prevalent understandings. Consequently, in the second stage, explanatory models may not only turn out to be critical of the understandings of the lay actors but also take steps towards explaining them. The critical moment evokes a need for social scientific re-signification of practices, including edification by means of better causal stories and proposals for concrete alternatives. If a change is argued for, as it often is, realist strategies for transformation have to be spelled out as well. Constant openness to critique and further studies is a condition of validity. In the third, and practical moment, CR explanations should translate into practical action—often transformative. Also, practical-political action should be a learning process, in turn enriching theoretical discourses. CR has emerged in a particular world historical context. As some constructivists and post-structuralists argue, there are signs of far-reaching transformations of international relations into something more akin to world politics (cf. Ruggie 1998:174–75, 195–97; and, more explicitly, Walker 1993:183). After International Relations makes a case for CR social sciences which are not content with describing transformations but try to understand, explain and critically assess contemporary practices, relations and processes, and, thereby, contribute to making them more emancipatory and empowering. 1

2

Introduction

International relations International relations emerged step by step, element by element, in Europe by the early nineteenth century. Christianity was divided; rationalism emerged and capitalism and sovereign states developed side by side. In the context of the expansion of Europe and capitalist world economy, the international institutions and problematic surfaced gradually. Some components of the inter-state order were codified in the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, some others in the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. The term ‘inter-national’ first appeared in 1789 in two important texts. The French Revolution Declaration of the Rights of Man pronounced that ‘the source of all sovereignty is located in essence in the nation’ (Beik 1970:95). This manifesto was certainly more visible than Jeremy Bentham’s footnote in Principles of Morals and Legislation, and it signalled the end of the inter-dynastic and the beginning of international relations. What is important here, however, is that Bentham’s discussion of ‘international’ in a footnote can be seen as evidence that the notion had started to gain ground already before the events of 1789 (DerDerian 1989:3). I argue in Chapter 1 that, although Immanuel Kant did not yet use the term ‘international’, the international problematic was articulated systematically by him in the 1780s and 1790s.1 Kant’s metaphysical or political writings would not have been possible without David Hume. With his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, from Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to René Descartes and George Berkeley, Hume laid down the basis for this problem field in the mideighteenth century. A few decades later, Kant, a central Enlightenment philosopher, together with his immediate predecessor Jean Jacques Rousseau, articulated these conceptions into an acute social problem of war and peace. Kant thought this problem can and should be overcome by an arrangement of ‘league of nations’, free trade, rule of law and republicanism. My emphasis on Hume and Kant does not mean that I believe in the great men theory of history of thought. Both Hume and Kant should be understood as participants among many in intellectual debates of their time. Sociologically, they can be seen as intellectuals of emerging social forces. In this sense, Kant is the beginning of a familiar story. Since the mid-nineteenth century, political realists have criticised Kantian ‘idealists’ or liberalists for advocating dangerous actions based on Utopianism. The nature of human beings or the world will make all international reforms futile, perverse or even dangerous (of the ‘rhetoric of reaction’, see Hirschman 1991). Politics is plagued with unintended consequences; life is often tragic. Wise statesmen know how futile or perverse reforms tend to be and, more critically, how dangerous the world so often is. Hence, the real statesmen, with ‘politics as their vocation’, assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions within the given order of things (Weber 1985 [1919]; see also Smith 1986:15–53). Morgenthau (1946:199) blamed Kant for the general decay in the political thinking of the Western world, and, in effect, for the catastrophes of the twentieth century. He argued that the best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war; balance powers by

Introduction

3

making good alliances; and cultivate diplomacy (Morgenthau 1946: Chapters VII and VIII). Order and stability are the core realist values for prudent foreign policy. When some time had passed since the dark days of the world wars, and the twenty years of crises between them, political realists began to recognise that international economic co-operation is possible, but usually only if it accords with the interests of the great powers. A new factor may nonetheless have surfaced. International regimes can be seen as ‘intervening variables’ between structure and great power interests (Krasner 1982). Liberals argue, however, that on the basis of late twentieth-century experiences, there is in fact much more room for ideas, reforms and peaceful change than political realists think. The United Nations can—and sometimes does—play an important role in facilitating agreements and co-operation, and managing conflicts (Haas 1986; Rochester 1995). Although built by two great powers, the USA and Britain, ideas and transnational coalitions have shaped the Bretton Woods institutions (Ikenberry 1992). Although it was the dissident movements that eventually broke communist rule in Eastern Europe, the driving force behind the end of the Cold War was the learning process of Mikhail Gorbachov and his inner circle, and, consequendy, the new Soviet foreign policy (Risse-Kappen 1994; Evangelista 1995, 1999). New kinds of important actors have emerged everywhere, from NGOs to multinational corporations. Liberal-minded reformers argue, also, that it is possible to further strengthen international norms, rules and principles, at least under the management of relevant great powers. Many mainstream liberals maintain, however, that the real hope for a more peaceful world lies in the fact that liberal democracies (or liberal states) do not fight each other. This is the almost only significant empirical invariance that has been, allegedly, found thus far, and it seems to confirm the Kantian theory of peace. The advocates of democratic peace theory (Doyle 1995) maintain that since liberal democratic states do not fight each other, a zone of peace has emerged. This would seem to give a recipe for a peaceful world. The zone of democratic peace can be extended. Political realism is applicable only to the relations between the liberal democratic states and the others. In the future, by making all states liberal democratic, preferably prudently, a perpetual peace may well emerge. What unites Hume, Kant and most contributors to debates within the international problematic is their commitment to positivism. By positivism I mean the set of abstract and closely inter-related ideas that causality is about constant conjunctions (‘whenever A, B follows’); that the properties of entities are independent; that their relations are external or non-necessary; that the basic things of the world are therefore atomist, or at least constant in their inner structure; and that being can be defined in terms of our perceptions or knowledge of it. The main discussions in international relations have presupposed the international problematic in the orthodox positivist fashion. Since the 1960s, positivism has assumed the form of ‘neo-utilitarianism’ in the USA-centric discipline of international relations (Ruggie 1998:9). Neo-litarians represent economics as the exemplary social science and believe in the claim of Gary

4

Introduction

Becker (1976) that the rational-choice approach is applicable to all human behaviours (for a systematic CR criticism, see Archer and Tritter 2000). Neorealists may disagree with the idea of free traders, that there is a natural harmony in the capitalist world economy, but like mainstream economists they believe in positivism and the self-interested instrumental rationality of the states. However, some regime theorists have tried to show that regimes of co-operation can be more just than ‘intermediate variables’; also, intellectual and entrepreneurial leadership seem to have a role in establishing new forms of economic or environmental co-operation (Young 1989, 1991) For more than a decade now, the positivist orthodoxy has been under a sustained challenge from critical theories, feminism and post-modernism. Often, all parties in this debate are ill-defined and misrepresented by the others. Indeed, mis-characterisation would often seem to be the essence of debate. For many post-positivists, positivism is not only epistemologically and ontologically flawed, it is also co-responsible for many of the social ills and political catastrophes of the modern world. Yet, for many positivists (empiricists, scientists, believers in the possibility of applying the rigorous standards of natural sciences also in social sciences) the post-positivist assault amounts to advocating subjectivism, irresponsible relativism and lack of standards, which work against conducting proper research and the effort to make human conditions better. Post-positivism presupposes positivism—and many of its assumptions. For example, post-positivists think that Hume and his followers have been right about natural sciences and their objects. They mistake mechanics for natural sciences and constant conjunctions for causality. Whereas positivists have tried to reduce being to perceptions and logical sense-relations in language, postpositivists are susceptible to linguistic fallacy, according to which it is ‘our language’ that constructs being. The linguistic fallacy gives rise to manifold confusions between subject and object. Moreover, the more radical post-positivists have tended to be as sceptical about values as Hume. Only recently have the post-structuralists come up with any ethical notions (Campbell and Shapiro 1999). The more moderate constructivists share the reformism of the Kantian liberals (Ruggie 1998; Wendt 1999). Many of these more radical Kantians maintain, however, that we should continue to imagine and construct more farreaching institutional alternatives for the future (Falk 1975; Galtung 1996; Held 1995; Holden 2000). However, the clear majority of scholars seem to feel that these ideals and blueprints appear detached from realities (if worth discussing at all). As ever, Kantian moral reason seems cut off from the world of causes and effects.2 Since the international problematic is based on irrealist and false understandings, illusions and mystifications, CR can help to overcome the international problematic. However, although it is a central idea of CR that theoretical discourses are located in the world of causes and effects, and are potentially efficacious, the practical effects of CR must be seen as contingent. Asymmetric power relations play a crucial role in sustaining a structure of (contradictory) meanings and related problematic. There is no automatic

Introduction

5

correspondence between any particular theoretical discourse and the social worlds they refer to and purport to understand, explain and, sometimes, change. Nonetheless, since actions and practices are dependent on and informed by concepts, theoretical innovations are potentially efficacious in changing realities. Practices can be constituted or guided by misleading or partially false or contradictory understandings. More adequate concepts—if given a chance—should therefore enable and also encourage changes of practices, institutions and deepseated social relations. It is certainly true that achieving well-founded conceptual changes require no less hard work than practical political activities. Critical realism Developments Critical realism was preceded by realist developments in the philosophy of science in the 1960s and early 1970s (Bunge 1959, 1963; Harré 1961; Harré and Madden 1975; Hesse 1966; Bhaskar 1978 [1975]). In the 1970s, realist ideas were brought also into social sciences; in many cases this was also the original motivation to re-think natural sciences. Harré and Secord published their groundbreaking The Explanation of Social Behaviour in 1972. Although this book is sceptical of large-scale sociological theory,3 it laid the ground for Russell Keat and John Urry’s Social Theory as Science (1975) and for some of the basic ideas of Anthony Giddens’s New Rules of Sociological Method (1976) and Central Problems of Social Theory (1979). These works developed a realist alternative to both positivism and post-positivism. Although it is true that lay meanings are constitutive of social worlds, realist social sciences do not have to give up the inter-related notions of causality, relations and structures. Roy Bhaskar’s seminal The Possibility of Naturalism (1979) built up on the themes of Keat and Urry, and developed an original account of agency and structure on a par with, but also in contrast to, Giddens’s (1976, 1979, 1981) theory of structuration. The term ‘critical realism’ was coined in the late 1980s (Sylvan and Glassner 1985; Bhaskar 1989:180–92; Isaac 1990; Fay 1990). Why was this movement, which also emerged in the late 1980s, associated so strongly with the works of Roy Bhaskar? Under the influence of Harré, Bhaskar’s early books were well written and made their case powerfully. Other early contributors denied the possibility of large-scale social theory, political science or political economy (Harré), or tended to leave realist themes aside in their later works (Keat and Urry) or never articulated any form of realism in full (Giddens). Whereas Keat (1981), for instance, turned to Habermas to find conceptual grounds for social and political critique, Bhaskar outlined an original realist theory of emancipation in The Possibility of Naturalism (1979:76–91), and developed this theory further in Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation (1986:180–223). Bhaskar also represented CR as the missing methodology of Karl Marx. For many this made Bhaskar suspicious. In the 1980s, the bulk of social theorists

6

Introduction

were following Giddens, who was writing a multi-volume critique of ‘contemporary historical materialism’ (see Giddens 1981, 1985). In some circles of British Marxism, however, Bhaskar became a guru to be followed. In contrast to Bhaskar (1979:83–91), I do not think it is plausible to read either the early or later Marx as a critical realist. However realist Marx may have appeared to be about structures, relations and laws, many of the conditions for CR did not exist in the nineteenth century (about these conditions, see Bhaskar 1991:139–41). The non-realist conceptual resources on which he drew substantially mis-represented Marx.4 Moreover, according to Manicas’s (1987) realist re-interpretation of the history of social sciences, Marx not only lacked an adequate theory of science; he also lacked a theory of state.5 Certainly, there were very few—if any—signs of epistemological relativism in Marx’s often polemical texts. More than Marx himself, it seems that the early Frankfurt School anticipated CR. For instance, Max Horkheimer’s (1989 [1937]) classical essay on ‘traditional and critical theory’ criticised orthodox Marxism alongside Western positivism and capitalism; revived Kantian critical questions about the presuppositions of our knowledge; made a rudimentary use of reformulated Kantian transcendental arguments and a realist notion of causality; and envisaged a democratic theory of emancipation.6 These are also central themes of CR. Indeed, Bhaskar (1993:352) himself points out that his favourite twentieth-century Marxist is Theodor Adorno, Horkheimer’s long-standing colleague and occasional coauthor. Alas, since the mid-1980s, Bhaskar’s so-called Marxism notwithstanding, and in some circles because of it, CR has been associated particularly strongly with his works. Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation was followed by an introductory collection of Bhaskar’s papers (Reclaiming Reality, 1989) and an attempt to make an intervention in contemporary philosophical debates in the form of a booklength critique of Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom, 1991). Neither book developed CR much further. Rather, they aimed at making CR better heard and more influential. Bhaskar’s dialectical (Bhaskar 1993; 1994) and transcendental turns (Bhaskar 2000) may have had the contrary effect. Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (1993) and its somewhat more accessible accompaniment, Plato etc.: Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (1994) are complex, difficult and, at times, esoteric or pompous works. Bhaskar’s philosophical discourse is tacitly assuming new responsibilities and powers in ‘dialectical CR’. Whereas the earlier form of CR was a philosophy for and of science, Dialectic is not only about enabling and transforming (critical social) sciences, but also about ‘a general theory of dialectic’. Dialectic is brilliant in its analysis of Aristotle, G.W.F.Hegel and Marx, among others, yet it seems that it also attempts to develop a general theory of everything, particularly world history, freedom and good society, but also of the constitution of the universe. In another reading, however, one might find that Dialectic is a result of a systematic de- and reconstruction of Western metaphysics, which naturally leads to ‘an extreme complication, multiplication, explication of “precise and rigorous distinctions”’ (Derrida 1988:128).

Introduction

7

Plato etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution (1994) is represented as an attempt to popularise Dialectic, although it has a slightly different focus and somewhat less speculative appearance. Like Dialectic, it has fascinating and very useful discussions on causality, time, space and causality/freedom, taking the notions developed in earlier works further. The emphasis is on a totalising critique of Western philosophy. Not unlike Derrida’s criticism of Western logo-centrism, Bhaskar claims that, since Plato, the ontological monovalence7—including the absence of notions such as ‘absence’, depth and change—have generated a philosophical problematic that, from a consistent CR point of view, is nonsensical. Yet this philosophical problematic— also through the structures of positivism, which are causally efficacious in many modern practices—has had far-reaching consequences in the structuration of societies. Bhaskar asserts that ‘the net project of Dialectic and Plato etc. is to attempt an antiParmidean revolution, reversing 2500 years of philosophical thought, in which negativity (absence and change), ontology, structure, diversity and agency come to the fore’.8 Perhaps quite logically then, Plato etc. was followed by Bhaskar’s post-colonial turn to the East and, as it seems, partial retreat to mystical thinking. From East to West, published in 2000, ‘aspires to begin to construct a dialogue, bridge and synthesis’ between traditions of both radical libertarian Western thought and mystical Eastern thought. Many fellow critical realists have found the outcome to be a philosophically and historically weak attempt to bring in popular New Age ‘philosophies’ (e.g. Hostettler and Norrie 2000). Despite the importance of the project, it also seems to contradict many CR theses, including the idea that philosophy must be broadly consistent with the substantive contents and methodologies of the sciences (see Patomäki 2001c, for a discussion of, and comparison to, the somewhat similar attempts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida and Johan Galtung to appropriate notions from Buddhism and develop dialogical notions of global philosophies). While Bhaskar has been either adding new layers and aspects to CR, or testing and exceeding its limits (depending on one’s view on his later works), scientific realism has gained ground in analytical philosophy (e.g. Margolis 1986; Searle 1996). CR itself has been cultivated among a group of social, political, legal and economic theorists. These theorists include Margaret Archer (1988, 1995, 2000), Andrew Collier (1994, 1999), Tony Lawson (1997), Alan Norrie (1991, 1993, 2000) and Andrew Sayer (1992, 1995, 2000). Besides introductions to CR, and applications of CR to the problem fields of various disciplines, many of these works have developed original positions on a number of central philosophical and social theoretical issues. It is also significant that there are parallels to CR developments in continental Europe, in particular in France. At times, Derrida (cf. 1998 [1967]:50; 1988:114–54) and Paul Ricoeur (1981:274– 96; 1984:78; 1992:300), for instance, seem to have been approaching a position close to CR. However, it is Pierre Bourdieu (e.g. 1977; 1998:1–13), in particular, who has been working, since the 1970s, on a social theory very similar to CR. This compatibility has been increasingly acknowledged by people working on CR social theory (see, for example, May 2000).

8

Introduction

Philosophical theses In this book, I identify CR with three philosophical theses and a related theory of emancipation. The three philosophical theses concern (1) ontological realism, (2) epistemological relativism and (3) judgemental rationalism. Ontological realism means that the world is real and—except for a very small part—independent of the researcher’s (my or our) knowledge of it. Bhaskar (1986:7) argues that ‘every philosophy, inasmuch as it takes science for its topic, is essentially a realism, or at least has realism for its principle, the pertinent questions being on how far and in what form this principle is actually implemented’. CR claims to have taken the principle of realism further than any Western philosophical system thus far. The claim is that the world is not only real but it must also be differentiated, structured, layered and possess causal powers, otherwise our knowledge of it—or our being—would not be possible. Natural science is a matter of the conceptual and practical work of scientists, who create artificial closures in laboratories in order to understand and explain mechanisms, which can be causally efficacious across different factual contexts. With few exceptions, there are no closed systems in nature or society. Therefore, a realist conception of causality does not equate causality with constant conjunctions but with structured powers capable of producing particular, characteristic effects if triggered. In this regard, natural and social sciences are similar. There are real causal powers both in natural and social systems, whether actualised or not. CR encourages research to focus on identifying and analysing the structures of beings and mechanisms (or complexes), which are causally efficacious. Moreover, it is also a condition of science that scientists and other social actors themselves possess causal powers. A corollary is that, although not all reasons are causally efficacious, and actors can themselves be mistaken about the effective reasons for their actions and practices, some reasons must be efficacious in generating actions. The idea that reality is layered, and that different, emergent layers (such as biological, human and social) are ontologically irreducible and causally efficacious implies a further ontological notion. Absence and emergence must also be real. Not everything that is has always existed. Whatever exists can become absent—and already is absent in relation to most fields and spaces most of the time anyway. A parallel of the notions of absence and emergence is that change is not only possible but also ubiquitous. This is one of the senses in which CR is a dialectical system of thought and action. CR has thus cultivated ontological realism. The second main feature of CR is its epistemological relativism. Epistemological relativism connotes that all beliefs and knowledge claims are socially produced, contextual and fallible. CR knowledge is structured and layered. There are strongly universalising philosophical claims such as those for ontological realism and epistemological relativism; there are rather stable scientific theories; and there are reflective interpretations of social meanings and episodes. However, even the deepest and most universal philosophical theses must be, in principle, open to criticism and change. Openness and transfer inability are essential to any research. The work of scientists is based

Introduction

9

on the pre-existing means of production, including both the available material facilities and technologies as well as the antecedently established facts and theories, models and paradigms. Models and paradigms must rely on analogies and metaphors. Therefore, a rationally developing science uses both historically transient conceptual resources and imagination in a systematic and controlled fashion. However, in the social sciences, laboratory experiments and precise quantitative measurements are impossible. Social sciences are conditioned by the fact that they have to gather all their empirical evidence from open, historical systems. Moreover, social sciences also involve attempts to understand lay meanings. Thus, social scientific models and theories must be more reflectively interpretative undertakings than natural sciences. Epistemological relativism is consistent with the idea of rational judgements. Judgemental rationalism means that, in spite of interpretative pluralism, it is possible to build well-grounded models and make plausible judgements about their truth. CR gives, in fact, the best available account of the grounds for scientific activities. It explains the nature of the objects we study. It explains what we as researchers do and why—and also why we should aim at amending and revising our theories and models. It is easy to see, for instance, that ontological realism and epistemological relativism are conditions for rational truth-judgements. On the one hand, without independent reality, truth-claims would be meaningless. Truth-claims have to be about something. On the other hand, with our theories already mirroring reality, no further research or truth-judgements would be needed. Besides making sense of the rationale for research, CR enables us to acknowledge that claims to truth have both antecedent conditions and consequent effects. Some of these effects can be seen, in a Foucauldian manner, albeit in realist terms, as effects of power. A theory of emancipation is also an essential component of CR. The core of this theory is the idea that lay meanings are both necessary for social practices and relations, and can be criticised. This pertains to why this particular form of scientific realism is called ‘critical’.

In what sense critical? In what sense is CR ‘critical’? Kant’s philosophy was called critical, because Kant problematised and analysed the presuppositions of our knowledge. Bhaskar (1986:22) mentions that CR is post-critical in its form. That is, CR relies upon transcendental arguments, yet it analyses historical practices and not universal categories of human mind. CR is critical, first, in this post-Kantian sense. It asks Kantian questions and deploys transcendental arguments. However, in contrast to Kant, CR uses these arguments to establish a realist ontology. Further, in contrast to naïve realism, CR sees beings as relational and changing, and, also, argues that there is no unmediated access to these beings. The second sense in which CR is ‘critical’ is related to the distinction between ontology and epistemology. No knowledge simply reproduces reality or ‘mirrors’ it. Correspondence in this sense would not make any sense (Sayer 2000:42). Any

10

Introduction

attempt to describe and explain involves complex mediations; that is, interpretation. CR is a form of reflective philosophy, self-consciously interpretative and relativist. The starting point for Kant’s epistemological reflections was an abstract bourgeois individual, an allegedly representative example of the human species, a universal, disembodied mind. For a critical realist, the point of departure is man as an embodied historical being, the existence of which is made possible by antecedent conditions and structures, both natural and social. Men and women have causal powers to change some of these conditions and structures, but, as Marx (1968 [1852]:96) said, ‘not just as they please, not under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’.9 Adequate theory of knowledge is thus not possible without adequate social ontology. Also in this sense ontology is primary. Ultimately, CR contends that interpretative reflectivism must be grounded on ontological considerations. Third, CR includes a theory of emancipation; it is also ethico-politically critical. The original version of the CR theory of emancipation was based on the notion of truth. Theories or discourses that are in some important regards false can, nonetheless, be necessary for the reproduction of practices and relations. False understandings and related structures are unduly limiting human possibilities. The basic idea is that we can derive ethico-political judgements from truth-judgements. Hence, as virtuous scholars, we may have a moral obligation to change those practices and relations, which presuppose false theories and discourses. Although truth-judgements are necessary for an emancipatory argument, they are not sufficient. A generalised conception of emancipation strives for human flourishing, and also takes into account other values such as pluralism, justice, democracy, good, virtue, economic efficiency, ecological care and the like.

After international relations This book is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the international problematic and some attempts to overcome it. It explain why theories based on this problematic have failed, and concludes with CR suggestions about how to tell better stories about world politics. The second part deepens these suggestions and develops them in detail into a CR account of social sciences. It is also my contribution to CR social and political theory. The last section applies CR methodology to the study of world politics. The different applications aim not only at making the methodological discussions more concrete, but suggest—by way of explanatory criticism and concrete Utopias—transformations from international relations towards world politics.

Part I: overcoming international relations In the first chapter ‘How it all started? Can it end? A genealogy of the international problematic’, the conventional problematic of international relations (IR) is explicated. I argue that the IR problematic has usually been

Introduction

11

mis-identified. Those within the theory/problem-field solution set have since Hume and Kant reified the inside/outside—domestic order/inter national anarchy—problematic as natural and unchanging, although it is based on very specific geo-historical practices and related metaphors. It took centuries to establish the practices of capitalism and modern states, and it was only in the nineteenth century that we can really talk about ‘international’ relations with highly regulated diplomatic practices. The bourgeois conception of man, Hume’s positivism, the problem of order and Kant’s dichotomies between the Humean world and moral reasons are at the heart of the international problematic that surfaced with the new realities. The post-structuralists have brilliantly exposed the specific and problematical presuppositions of this discourse, yet they have also mis-identified some of the underlying premises and failed to recognise others. What typically goes unnoticed is the role played by irrealism in structuring these debates, often stemming from reactions to Kant and, later, Hegel, Nietzsche and Max Weber. In many respects, the post-structuralist critique is in fact embedded within the same background discourse and is derived from a long philosophical tradition of anti-realism/scepticism. The first chapter thus provides a dialectical comment on the international problematic by situating it in a more adequate way, and by uncovering its presuppositions in a more adequate way. It also suggests, albeit only tentatively, possible historical and theoretical ways to overcome this specific historical problematic. However, before further steps can be taken, the CR alternative has to be articulated. The discipline of IR was formally founded (at least in the Anglo-American world) during the aftermath of the First World War, in 1918. The idea was to study scientifically the conditions of peace and war, to overcome the problem of war. After the Second World War, with the ascendance of Political Realism in the USA—which also became the centre of research on international politics—the emancipatory task was mostly taken over by Peace Research, which was prominent also in the Nordic countries, Germany, the smaller English-speaking countries such as Australia and Canada, as well as in India and other Third World countries. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular, the project of Peace Research was based on the positivist belief in a science-induced progress; in the USA even more than anywhere else. Since the 1960s, Hayward R.Alker Jnr has been a key figure in the movement from positivism to more critical and reflectivist approaches both in IR and Peace Research. Alker started as a pluralist, who attempted to develop cuttingedge mathematical and statistical techniques in modelling international political interactions. The second chapter ‘Learning from Alker: From quantitative Peace Research to emancipatory humanism’ discusses Alker’s development in terms of four lessons drawn from his intellectual development. The first lesson about ‘how to collect and analyse “data”’ marks not only a movement from quantitative to qualitative but also an ontological shift in understanding what data is: Alker started to argue that ultimately our understanding of the nature of data depends on our social ontology. According to the ontology of inter-subjectively constituted social entities we have to have multi-perspective

12

Introduction

descriptions of social events and characteristics. The second lesson concerns how to analyse and help to solve collective dilemmas. The Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) is a game-theoretical model in which individual utility maximisation appears to be self-defeating, or at least contradictory to some kind of social or collective rationality. Not only systems of subordination have been analysed in terms of this model, but also the ‘tragedy of global commons’ as well as inter-state insecurity, arms races and crisis bargaining. After a long road towards more conversational and dramaturgical models, Alker eventually came to the conclusion that there are close connections between the world understandings of different research paradigms—with their parallels in the actors’ world understandings—and of actors’ abilities to resolve PDs (acknowledging that any way of defining the problem and its ‘solutions’ is based on the adoption of a perspective). Lesson three is about ‘how to broaden and deepen scientifically relevant modelling approaches’. The starting point is that ‘we must broaden and deepen the universe of scientifically relevant modelling approaches appropriate for the formal analysis of interpretative and theoretical world histories’ (Alker 1996:271). Alker makes a strong plea for more reflective approaches: ‘conflict and crisis, as well as the steady state in which violence remains latent, can be partially explicated in terms of dynamics which are approximated by the interactions of artificial systems equipped with the story-building and storyappraising characteristics’ (Alker 1996:270). Hence, an adequate analysis of world histories must in fact incorporate the (perhaps ideological?) role of narratives and their interplay. The argument can be summarised in a question: Is there some improvement possible in the way scientific historical accounts approach value questions, structural constraints and human choice possibilities that seem to give all great world histories the reflective character and dramatic force of a tragic morality play or the ironic happiness of a Russian fairy tale?’ (Alker 1996:270) Indeed, the fourth lesson is about ‘how to theorise history?’ Alker concludes that world history should be analysed (interpretatively) as an open process, in which choices of actors do make a difference, sometimes also to the intended direction. After having analysed the interplay of power-balancing, collective security and the international socialist transformation through people’s wars, he demands more contextually sensitive and historically reflective doctrines of collective security, some less total, more realistic alternatives. Unlike many post-positivists, including most post-structuralists, Alker has continued to develop more adequate and emancipatory methodologies for the study of peace, conflict and international relations. However, his post-modernist excursions and exercises in ‘computational hermeneutics’ etc. have led to the criticism that he is ultimately an ontological idealist. There are many passages and claims that would point towards a more realist position, some of them made in explicit reference to CR. However, it is true that the question of realism is left largely unthematised in

Introduction

13

Alker’s texts, and there are also some noteworthy ambiguities. In conclusion, I maintain that, although Alker’s methodological lessons are mostly valid and his attempts to develop better methodologies highly valuable, there is a need to articulate a consistently realist ontology and epistemology The third chapter ‘How to tell better stories about world polities’ discusses some key meta-theoretical problems of IR. The levels-of-analysis problem emerged in the early 1960s as part of the positivist project to categorise the explanations of peace, war, co-operation and conflict in terms of locating the main explanatory ‘factors’ into separate ‘levels’: individual or sub-state group or bureaucracy; state; and interstate system. In the 1980s, Richard Ashley and Alexander Wendt brought the agency-structure problem into IR, following Giddens’s and Bhaskar’s earlier contributions to social theory. In the debates of the 1990s, the levels-of-analysis and agent-structure problems have often—and misleadingly—been conflated. By analysing a well-known debate between Wendt vs. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, I make a case for a CR approach to grasp levels and depth, and to resolve— at least tentatively—the agent-structure problem. In particular, I maintain that the levels-of-analysis problem is nothing but an implicit verticalisation of the horizontal inside/outside problem, the essential component of the international problematic. I propose, first, that layers and depth should be analysed more realistically in terms of deep assumptions of background discourses, historical sedimentation of social structures and emergent power of various overlapping (or intra-relational) social systems. Second, that a more adequate account of global spatiality would also enable us to see non-territorially organised practices, including—despite their territorialist pre-conceptions—many of the traditional international institutions, such as diplomacy, international law, balance of power and collective security. Third, that the agent-structure problem can be unpacked by means of analysing the elements of causal complexes responsible for the effects we are interested to explain. And fourth, that social scientific explanation is a form of understanding, based on a doublehermeneutic process. Moreover, I conclude the third chapter by arguing that any explanation includes a genuinely critical moment, with real emancipatory potential.

Part II: explicating a critical realist methodology In the previous part, the quest for a CR ontology and epistemology was brought up. In response, the second part explicates the basic elements of a CR methodology for the study of social relations and politics from a globalist perspective. Since the subject matter determines its cognitive possibilities, the fourth chapter ‘Critical realist social ontology’ starts this part by developing a social ontology by a conceptual analysis of ‘action’, ‘structure’ and ‘power’. I scrutinise critically the conceptions of Giddens and Bhaskar, and thereby pursue further the fundamental categories of social scientific ontology. Accordingly, I also spell out in detail the notions of causal complex and iconic model, which form the core of the argument of the rest of the book.

14

Introduction

The fifth chapter ‘Double hermeneutics of iconic modelling’ elucidates in detail the methodology of iconic modelling of causal complexes. By utilising ideas of Rom Harré, Nicholas Reseller, Paul Ricoeur and Andrew Sayer, I explicate a CR methodology for the study of social worlds. The systematic use of imagination— metaphors and analogies—plays an essential role in constructing an adequate iconic model. Instead of deriving propositions from ‘a secure starter set’, social scientific research should start with a wide, pluralist set of interesting candidates and, step by step, eliminate and refine them until only a contracted range of fully endorsed iconic models is left. This is the reductive approach to model building. Iconic models are projective and make references to the real world. I also argue that, instead of armchair philosophising, research is about encountering, collecting and analysing empirical evidence. Although quantitative data is indispensable and sometimes useful, qualitative evidence is ontologically primary. The process of collecting and analysing evidence is double hermeneutics. Both the accounts of the lay actors and the iconic models of the researcher are situated not only in space but also in time and have a structure of a narrative. In anticipation of the more general emancipatory argument of Chapter 6, I argue, following Ricoeur, that the third moment of mimesis in social scientific research resignifies the human practices when the new narrative of the researcher is restored back to the time of action and practices. The sixth chapter ‘The normative logic of explanatory emancipation’ discusses, first, the nature of truth. It makes an argument for a metaphorical correspondence theory, which is consistent with ontological realism and epistemological relativism, and criticises Bhaskar for not being sufficiently explicit in his refutation of the metaphysical correspondence theory. Following Harré, but developing his notion further, I argue that truth is a regulative metaphor, which has normative force. Truth is a human judgement, which is based on a metaphor of correspondence to the way the world really is. It suggests a resemblance between theory-dependent statements, on the one hand, and the essential relations of the area of reality under study, on the other. This conception enables me to both justify and re-fashion Bhaskar’s logic of explanatory emancipation. If some of the central beliefs of an ideology are false, and if one possesses an explanation of the reproduction of this ideology, the quest to absent or transform the corresponding practices follows. Resisting the tendency to reify this logic as ‘naturalist’, I argue that its force is based on the normative force of the notion of truth. Any truth-judgement must be subject to the limitations and constraints of the condition of epistemological relativism. This is particularly important in contexts in which the transformation of politics into violence is more than a mere abstract and remote possibility. A consistently relativist CR must attempt to avoid reproducing—or, for that matter, building— structures of cultural violence. Any critical theory must be willing to analyse the violence inherent in its own categories. When critical explanatory arguments are turned into political praxis, first preference should be given to reciprocal communicative action. Moreover, strategic political action has to be non-violent and remain open to critical communication. I conclude this chapter by making a

Introduction

15

case for explicitly normative visions. Positive arguments about concrete Utopias should complement explanatory criticism, and guide transformative actions.

Part III: visions of world politics After having explicated the fundaments of a CR methodology, in the last section of the book I turn to demonstrating how these ideas can be put to work. Simultaneously, I try to locate the position and task of critical theories in the context of global politics of the turn of the twenty-first century. Thucydides’ History is one of the constitutive texts of Political Realism. In this sense, Thucydides is still very much a part of the existing power-political reality. The basic aim of Chapter 7 ‘Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode’ is to try out different possibilities for the iconic modelling of the Melos episode and thereby to illuminate the CR methodology of iconic modelling, suggested and developed in the previous chapters. However, the analysis of the Melos episode allows me to show that, with the help of CR methodology, better, less reificatory, more historical and more systematically evidence-based readings of Thucydides are possible. This example allows me to take part in the theoretical attempts to deconstitute political realism as a discursive, intertextual practice, possibly also to interfere in the ongoing constitution of the powerpolitical reality—without denouncing the perhaps lasting value of Thucydides’ story. Chapter 8 ‘A global security community’ takes up the IR problematic again for a new, reconstructive discussion, in light of the ideas developed in previous chapters. The international problematic is constituted by a simple argument, according to which the lack of a world state implies that international relations are ‘anarchic’. The Kantians think that the solution to this problematic is to establish a supra-national law and order. The CR notion of causality supports Karl Deutsch’s historical and empirical claim that the existence of the state is not a necessary or a sufficient condition for peace, nor is the non-existence of the state a necessary or a sufficient condition for the prevalence of the acute threat of political violence. Deutsch has also argued, on the basis of suggestions of a study of a number of historical cases, that the imposition of a unified system of enforcement of norms may well decrease rather than increase the chances of peace. A pluralist security community is one in which there is a real assurance that the members of that community will not fight each other, but will settle their conflicts in some peaceful way, by means of peaceful changes. This helps to reveal the reifications of the IR problematic, create the basis for a more fruitful problematic and develop a vision for the role of emancipatory research of world politics. History is always open. Past struggles can always be re-opened in new present contexts that may be more favourable to the possibilities which were previously suppressed; new combinations of the existing elements of social contexts can be invented and innovated; new social forces can emerge; and also genuinely novel elements may be innovated and fed into the processes of present and nearfuture political struggles. The social forces constituted by the IR problematic oppose the emergence of global public political spaces or are tempted to impose

16

Introduction

unilaterally the norms of the dominant states. It is argued that the project of CR—and related forms of other critical theories—is to work for enhancing the self-transformative capability of contexts, and thereby for creating the conditions for global integration and opening up and sustaining public spaces for world politics (in the wide sense of the term). The last chapter ‘From security to emancipatory world politics: beyond “Nordic nostalgia”’ is both an example of explanatory criticism of a contemporary process of change and also indicates the urgency to conceive ethico-political projects in globalist terms. Of the Social Democratic regimes of the Bretton Woods era, the Swedish model was perhaps the most radical and universalist. This model has been shared in most respects by all Nordic countries, which together form a highly integrated pluralist security community, Norden. The Swedish model was economically successful and sustained highly egalitarian economic policies for more than forty years, and translated those aspirations into a progressivist foreign policy of active neutrality of the Third Way. Ole Wæver’s 1992 article ‘Nordic nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War’ seemed to articulate the widespread feeling of the end of Norden. However, this argument is flawed and mistaken. Logically and conceptually it is confusing and tendential, and the evidence to back the empirical claims is casual. This explanation is contrasted to an alternative, more systematic iconic model of the same process. The alternative explanation in terms of political economy starts from the observation that it was not the end of the Cold War but rather the end of the Bretton Woods system that gave rise to the re-defmition of the Third Way already in the early 1980s, well before the end of the Cold War. The problems of the Nordic model stemmed from insurrections against local relations of domination at the workplace; transformations of the occupational structures and class relations; the crisis of the Bretton Woods system of regulating the global economy; and the liberalisation of the exit options of capital, among other processes. Together with the end of the Cold War, this interplay has also reinforced irrealist and economistic discourses, which had replaced the earlier rather Marxist concepts of the theorists of the Social Democratic Party. The various irrealist and economistic discourses generated accounts about the requirements of ‘new times’ and gradual changes in the meaning of the notion of Third Way. They also constituted neo-liberal framing of new social problems. Starting with the CR idea that emancipation is ‘characteristically the transition from an unwanted, unnecessary and oppressive situation to a wanted and/or needed and empowering or more flourishing situation’ (Bhaskar 1993:397), it is my argument that emancipatory, globally oriented political action is a condition for the Nordic ideals to be realised and developed further under new conditions. Tackling the real conditions of the decline of the Norden demands a new orientation in time and space. The nation-state cannot provide a sufficient framework for progressive political action any more, and the socially flavoured Wilsonian ‘idealism’ appears also to be a somewhat anachronistic basis for ‘progressive internationalism’. Claims about democracy and social justice have to be re-articulated.

Introduction

17

This is not to argue that politics now occur only outside sovereign states. Rather, local and national struggles are essentially connected to regional and global struggles, and therefore they cannot be taken as separate spheres (‘first progressivism at home, and then exportation of these universalist ideals to the rest of the world’). Along these lines, I discuss two programmatic visions that should take the Nordics beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’, and provide inspiration and hope for others. The Europeanist strategy is based on a new positive understanding of the ‘logic of stateness vis-à-vis the free play of market forces’ (Hettne 1993), this time articulated as the ‘pursuit of regionness’. Yet, this strategy can at best be complementary to a more globalist strategy of carrying out global democratic and social reforms.10 The currency transaction tax is a particularly promising idea, given that it would tackle a key issue of globalisation, namely the power of global financial markets; enable the collection of substantial resources for global purposes (including Keynesian demand-inducements and re-distribution); and constitute a leverage for other democratic reforms. To really tackle the conditions of the decline and the partial neo-liberal transformation of Norden, many further programmatic ideas would be needed as well. However, particularly assuming some success in empowerment and increased autonomy, these programmatic ideas may also concern the organisation of very immediate local sites and related national and regional developmental strategies, in the spirit of democratic experimentalism. Indeed, the argument is that a re-construction of world politics seems to be a condition for successful emancipatory politics anywhere.

Notes 1 British and US editions have often translated Staat into ‘nation’ in Kant’s political writings, but this is misleading (I am thankful for Stefano Guzzini and Ollie Kessler for checking the original text). Kant was discussing a society formed by bourgeois citizens, and he sometimes gave anthropomorphic characteristics to the resulting entity, but in no way did he, unlike Hegel soon after him, consider nations as carriers of moral conviction and historical progress. It is of course also true that, even for Kant, the theme of war and peace was not the first and foremost concern. Manicas (1987:32) argues that ‘after Machiavelli, no theorist in the “liberal” tradition put war at the center of his analysis’. Kant is but a partial exception. Nonetheless, in his political writings—which may appear marginal to his main output—he clearly argued that the problem of war and peace is absolutely decisive to the future of mankind. Therefore, he also put some effort into articulating the problematic systematically and also to developing original solutions to the problem of peace and war. For comments on why liberal political theorists have not been concerned with international relations, see Wight 1966 and, for a very different account, Ashley 1988. More recently, since the 1980s, due to the prevalence of globalisation discourse, the situation has been rapidly changing. 2 Paradoxically, however, Morgenthau’s accusation that Kantians are to blame for the catastrophes of the twentieth century seems to affirm the causal efficiency of ideas. 3 This scepticism is more fully articulated in Harré 1979.

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Introduction

4 A few remarks on Marx’s understanding of ‘laws’. Although this is not the place to develop the argument further, I believe that, in his understanding of ‘laws’, Marx in fact conflated at least three very different meanings: (i)

Laws in the sense of ‘natural laws’ of classical political theory, concerning particularly the labour theory of value (which was also the normative basis of his immanent critique of capitalism). (ii) Laws in the sense of Hegelian laws of ‘logic’, explaining for example the ‘transition’ from (i) to (iii), and also forming the basis of his critique of ‘alienation’ and, simultaneously, the assumption of ‘laws of history’. (iii) Empirical realist laws a la Newton and Mill, who also both allowed for scientific realist questions and inferences. These conflations have been an endless source of confusions and debates within Marxism (cf. the problem of getting from labour value to relative prices in the market, i.e. the ‘transformation problem’), and a reason for many to reject the Marxist doctrine. An attempt to rescue this doctrine by re-reading Marx as a critical realist is thus likely to mystify more than clarify. 5 Isaac (1987) has argued, however, that it is possible, to an extent, to make sense and develop further some Marxist conceptions of power in realist terms. Marxism has manifold gaps and lacunae and is not the correct theory of the world, but ‘deserves to be examined and criticized on its own merits as a theory, and not simply discarded on strictly formal (and specious) grounds because it fails to conform to the canons of empiricist philosophy’ (Isaac 1987:10). This and other similar works give a more interesting and plausible account of the relationship between CR and post-Marxist theories of power, for instance. 6 Bhaskar (1989:141), however, criticises Horkheimer for introducing a contrast between emancipatory and technical reason, which opened up the possibility, which Herbert Marcuse and Habermas so vehemently exploited, of turning critical theory against the ‘system’ (world). For Marcuse and Habermas, the ‘system’ (world) is based on technical reason and science. Whereas Marcuse attempted a totalising critique of the ‘system’, Habermas in fact accepted the inevitability of this ‘system’, thus criticising only its tendency to ‘colonialise’ the life-world. In this form, critical theory is derived from (1) a misunderstanding of science and (2) reification of the ‘system’ (world). Bhaskar’s criticism of these misunderstandings and reifications is correct. However, these confusions hardly played any important role in Horkheimer’s original text. 7 Ontological monovalence is defined as a purely positive account of reality. If there is no absence, there can be no emergence either. Without absence/emergence, there can be no change. ‘It acts ideologically to screen the epistemological and ontological contingency of being and to sequester existential questions generally, as ontological actualism sequesters “essential” ones. The result is the doubly dogmatically reinforced positivization of knowledge, and eternalization of the status quo’ (Bhaskar 1994:254–6). 8 In the first chapter, I apply a rather similar type of analysis to IR theory. However, I try to eschew a totalising critique. Rather, I want to participate in the debates and open up new possibilities for better debates and research on world politics/global political economy, as well as better and more emancipatory practices. These would not be possible without a dialogical attitude with others here and now, however constituted. 9 These circumstances are not only external to human beings. In one of his more thrilling metaphoric statements, Marx (1968 [1852]:96) argued further that ‘the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’. 10 Or one could well also talk about socialist reforms in a sense of questioning regulating or transforming private property rights in democratic and pluralist terms.

Part I

Overcoming international relations

1

How it all started? Can it end? A genealogy of the international problematic

Every problem, whether practical-political or more theoretical, has a set of presuppositions. Put together—to the extent that there is some consistency— these presuppositions form a theory and give rise to a characteristic set of problems and plausible answers to them. Mainstream debates in international relations stem from a particular theory/problem-field solution set, or, in short, a problematic. 1 The presuppositions of the international problematic include: (1) a positivist interpretation of the new natural sciences, in particular Newton’s mechanics, and the related idea that it would also be possible to find similar simple formulas to describe the laws of human nature, as invariant operations of human understanding, or invariant behaviour, perhaps expressible in terms of differential calculus or other mathematical formula; (2) conceptions, opportunities and problems associated with the rise and expansion of capitalism; (3) the practical and theoretical problems stemming from the emergence and consolidation of the modern state; and (4) the problem of order, which emerged with (1)–(3) and the erosion of the authority of the Christian Church. As will be seen, these components are very closely related. In this chapter, I discuss the emergence of the international problematic by focusing on two thinkers—David Hume and Immanuel Kant—and the lineage that can be traced back to them. Hume was responsible for the positivist interpretation of Newtonian mechanics. Hume was also among the first to theorise balance of power, which is one of the mechanistic solutions to the problem of order. It was also Hume who woke Kant up from his ‘illusionary dreams’. In contrast to Hume, however, Kant defended the realm of autonomous and critical reason. Reason says that war is detrimental to morality and progress. Kant maintained that, in the long run, all human development, indeed human survival, is dependent upon solutions to the problem of peace and war. By applying Hobbes’s notion of state of nature to the sphere of relations between nations and states, he argued for an international social contract. He proposed that the problem of war could be overcome by an arrangement of rule of law, republicanism, free trade and ‘league of nations’. This is the beginning of the international problematic. 21

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Overcoming international relations

First component: Humean positivism2 Many predecessors of Hume—such as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and George Berkeley—made arguments for abstract rationalism and empiricism, and re-introduced the ancient doctrine of atomism. Often, these bachelors and pensioners of wealthy households, or solitary aristocrats, had to stay in exile for years in the troubled days of the seventeenth century. Besides these traumatic political experiences, they were influenced by the breakthroughs of Bruno, Copernicus and Galileo—so much so that Hobbes wanted to explain man and society in terms of simple motions of bodies. These philosophers were grounding their political theories on abstract individualism. It was Hume, however, who gave an influential empiricist re-interpretation to Newton’s mechanics. It was also Hume who developed more thoroughly the sceptical and also political implications of this metaphysics, and explicitly theorised capitalist market society and balance of power. Isaac Newton made his revolutionary discoveries—theory of gravitation and calculus—within eighteen months from 1665 to 1667, still in his early twenties. At the time, he had been forced to flee to the countryside because of the outbreak of plague in the city of Cambridge. Nothing was heard of these theories for nearly twenty years. Newton’s theory of gravitation had been based on an inaccurate measurement of the earth’s radius, and he realised the differences between the theory and the facts. In 1684, Edmond Halley, an English astronomer, persuaded Newton to publish his findings. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica came out in 1687. By then, Newton had learnt the true value of the earth’s size. Principia was the first book to contain a unified system of a few scientific principles explaining what happens on earth and in the heavens. It deployed calculus to present and explain these principles. The result was a revolution of thought. It appeared that Newton showed a way from philosophical speculation to experimental science. Yet Newton’s experiments were usually mere observations and not always particularly systematic. Like Galileo a few decades earlier, Newton tended to reduce scientific problems to very simple terms on the basis of everyday experience, coupled with some methodical observations, and commonsense logic. Then he analysed and resolved the problems according to novel mathematical descriptions. Newton’s revolution invited numerous commentaries. Hume’s reinterpretation was perhaps the most far-reaching of them. Hume was publishing his thoughts in 1739–57, some fifty years after the publication of Newton’s Principia. Hume, soon to be followed by Adam Smith and others, gave an empiricist reading to Newton’s mechanics and also applied the consequent ideas to social and political theory. Whereas Newton himself had allowed for scientific realist questions and inferences, Hume reduced all knowledge to senseperceptions and a few simple operations of mind (Manicas 1987:10–23). Hume’s starting point was not only Newton, however, but Descartes’s method of systematic doubt and the empiricism of Bacon, Locke and Berkeley. Hume’s devastating critique of ontology was based on a few very simple sceptical

Genealogy of the international problematic

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arguments. Hume (1975 [1777]:§116) explored ‘how far it is possible to push these philosophical principles of doubt and uncertainty’. In the end, Hume’s own scepticism turned out to be moderate, ‘a country gentleman’s scepticism’. He assumed that we can put some trust on sense-perceptions, although we sometimes ‘must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations’ (Hume 1975 [1777]:§117). The role of scepticism was to purge philosophy and science from metaphysics and ontology, and leave it only with empirical perceptions and a few simple operations of mind. This was in fact not commonsensical in the eighteenth century—no more than it is today. Hume notes that almost everybody in their everyday practices assumes that there is a reality, which exists quite independently of them, or us, or, ultimately, me. They are wrong: But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: but the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: it was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason…. (Hume 1975 [1777]:§118) Everything—God and angels, beings and their causal powers, society and morality—have to be, therefore, reduced to a few general principles governing our (or rather my own) sense-perceptions and how the human mind in general understands them. Hume argued, for instance, that causation is a mere operation of mind, ultimately based on regular sense-impressions of contiguity and succession between A and B. These give rise to a habit of thinking, an association, that A and B are always connected. Causation is therefore not real, but a mere property—or rather a universal habit—of human understanding. Causation is just one of the three ‘bonds that unite our thoughts together’ (Hume 1975 [1777]:§41). Also, Hume’s re-interpretation of Newton’s mechanics is based on this radical empiricist theory of knowledge and causation. Hume’s scepticism also gave rise to the famous problem of induction, later declared to be the ‘scandal of philosophy’. The problem of induction is:how can we know that B will also follow A in the future? Do we really know that the sun will also rise tomorrow morning? (See Hume 1975 [1777]:§29). Hume did not succeed in purging ontology from philosophy and science. Rather, he posited a particular, narrow ontology as absolute, as the only ontology that is beyond doubt. Hume persevered tacitly to realism of senses, perceptions and mind, but denied reality otherwise. If we assume that only sense-perceptions and mind are real, what will be the resulting social ontology? Society is reduced to individuals (recipients of sense-perceptions and recorders of constant

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conjunctions), and these individuals become atom-like, constant in their inner structure (there are a few universal principles governing the operations of human mind). The other side of this ontological coin is, paradoxically, voluntarism. Since there are social arrangements and institutions, such as private property and sovereign state, they must be explained as outcomes of voluntary actions of individuals (cf. Bhaskar 1978 [1975]:16, 57; Bhaskar 1986:250–59, 287–308) In his moral philosophy, which he also called ‘the science of human nature’ (Hume 1975 [1777]:§1), Hume was looking for a Newtonian formula of human nature, a few simple principles from which human behaviour, tempers and sentiments, morality and political institutions can be deduced. Although Hume (1975 [1777]:§163) believed that he was following ‘Newton’s chief rule of philosophizing’, his project was Newtonian more in its aims than its means. To use the terms of the ‘great’ 1960s methodological debate in IR (see Hoffman, S. 1959; Bull 1969; Kaplan 1969), Hume was a traditionalist engaging in armchair speculation; he did not envisage a systematic experimental political science. Newton’s example was not yet fully followed. The time for empirically controlled, quantitative political science was to come later, in the 1930s.

Second component: capitalist conception of man Modern capitalist enterprises emerged in Renaissance Italy. Soon the innovation spread elsewhere in Western Europe. New practices and a new man were born. Although book-keeping is as old as the art of writing, the modern practices of double book-keeping and capital accounting were developed side by side with the new legal forms of enterprise, property rights and contract (Weber 1978 [1956]:375–80). In accounting, ‘“capital” is the money value of the means of profit-making available to the enterprise at the balancing of books; “profit” and correspondingly “loss”, the difference between the initial balance and that drawn at the conclusion of the period’ (Weber 1978 [1956]:91). For example, Hobbes, who was equally fascinated by geometry and advances in natural sciences, seemed to pose book-keeping as the model for rationality in general: In summe, in what matter soever there is place for addition and substraction, there is also place for Reason; and where these have no place, there Reason has nothing at all to do…. As when a master of a family, in taking an account, eastern up the sum of all bills of expence, into one sum; and not regarding how each bill is summed up, by those that give them in account; nor what it is he payes for; he advantages himself no more, than if he allowed the account in grosse, trusting to every of the accountants skill and honesty: so also in Reasoning of all other things, he takes up conclusions on the trust of Authors, and doth not fetch them from the first items in every Reckoning. Loses his labour; and does not know any thing; but only beleeveth. (Hobbes 1986 [1651]:111–12)

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Rational man is possessive and calculative (as well as patriarchal), constantly keeping books about his revenues and expenditure, or his capital account—or, equally well, of his own appetites and aversions, or, as Hume phrased the idea, calculative gains defined in terms of his passions. This conception of man was the outcome of the development of a society dominated by market relations, new division of labour and new technologies. As Marx quite sarcastically put it, these thinkers from Hobbes to Hume and Bentham were taking ‘the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man’ (in Capital vol. 1, cited in Keat and Urry 1975:98). The sceptics and empiricists, impatient with impractical metaphysical speculations, provided, paradoxically, the metaphysics of this new man. The bottom line of this conception is social atomism, the idea that individual men are already essentially excluded from each other and owe themselves and their work etc. only to themselves. For instance, according to Hume, human beings are selfish and have a love of gain, and although humans are also benevolent, that benevolence is limited. This benevolence or, more generally, sympathy, is in need of explanation, not selfishness and gain-seeking. Hume’s problem of sympathy was: given individualism and the fact we can know only our own feelings, how can we feel sympathy towards other people? Although the radical implication of Hume’s empiricist epistemology—that we can only know empirical regularities and should not draw normative conclusions from them—was later canonised as ‘Hume’s guillotine’, Hume’s own moral and political philosophy does by no means avoid making normative claims. Like Hobbes, Grotius and Locke, Hume also outlined normative rules and principles as ‘natural laws’. One of his central notions was justice. For Hume, justice has to do with private property and ownership. A just individual abides by the legal rules governing private property and ownership in his society. The three fundamental rules of justice, namely, stability of possession, transfer by consent and keeping of promises, are laws of nature. There is a very close link between the atomist social ontology and the justification of private property and the related ‘fundamental rules of justice’. The essence of private property is an individual (or corporate) right to exclude others from the use or benefit of something (MacPherson 1973:122). This right was usually also presented as absolute, permanent and therefore inalienable, but freely alienable by consent (by contract). Hume, for example, justified his conception of justice in terms of a hypothetical history. Assume, with Hume, that people are atomist and mostly selfish, that resources are scarce and that these individuals have a limited amount of beneficial possessions. Imagine how they would behave in a society without the enforced institution of private property. They can easily resort to violence to get what they want. Life would be, to use Hobbes’s (1986 [1651]:186) famous phrase, ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’. Slowly and painfully, people would have to learn and, eventually, will learn. Thence the institution of private property—and the related principles of justice and contract enforcement—will be created by a spontaneous act of rational individuals.

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Positivism and capitalist conceptions of man are essentially connected. Both emerged with the development of a fully autonomous capitalist market society in Western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The sceptical method, the abstract arguments and the hypothetical, counterfactual histories made the novel practices and institutions appear both self-evident and universally valid, despite the complicated struggles, (civil) wars, revolutions and mass dislocations of people in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western Europe— and also the colonised Americas.3 These struggles and transformations were soon to spread to Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey and elsewhere. In fact, it was easier for the supporters of the new bourgeois philosophy to establish the institutions of autonomous civil society, such as private property and liberal state, than to create rational man. Although the ‘English shopkeepers’ and capitalist landlords and entrepreneurs provided the model, in most contexts the stable, calculable, cautious, reliable self-interested rational individual had to be gradually fabricated by means ranging from civilising education to violent enforcement (Connolly 1993:27). Positivism and the new conception of man justified far-reaching transformations, yet, simultaneously, these theories pushed the real historical struggles and transformations out of sight. As Bhaskar (1986:307–08) has pertinently summarised: ‘Positivism at once naturalises and normalises things and reflects in an endless hall of mirrors the self-image of Bourgeois Man. It is, one might say, the house-philosophy of the bourgeoisie.’

Third component: problems of the modern state The spatial imagery of a strict inside/outside dichotomy rose gradually with the new cartography of the Renaissance, bursting into blossom by the time of the Enlightenment (Harvey 1990:240–59; Walker 1993:125–40). Originally, modern cartography was also developed to help establish property rights over land and to serve commerce, particularly colonial commerce. It soon became connected to statist and, later, nationalist myths. Private property provided the model. In an important paper published in the early 1980s, Ruggie (1983:276–9) noted that modern sovereign states have been constituted as analogous to possessive individuals (see also MacPherson 1964). In the case of an increasing number of states and treaties, external sovereignty was constituted as analogous to private property rights in the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Western and Northern Europe. This gave the sovereign body an absolute and exclusive control or ownership over all things ‘inside’. The idea of nation as an exclusive community rose much later, at the time of or after the French Revolution. Nationalist ideas were subsequently cultivated with great fervour and also used to oppose the rule of empires and great powers, and unequal exchange in the capitalist world economy (cf. Linklater 1990:55–75; Linklater 1998:145–78). In essence, however, the notion of exclusive national community is a metaphorical extension of the capitalist conception of man, who owes nothing to society to which he belongs, and whose possessions exclude the others.

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It took centuries before sovereign statehood was established and consolidated in the exclusive territorial sense. Property in the Middle Ages was simultaneously conditional and not easily alienable (paradigmatically, a right to a stream of revenues from inherited land, which was also controlled by lower vassals). Similarly, membership in the European medieval diplomatic community was also both conditional and informal, and assumed therefore a wide variety of forms. Membership in the diplomatic community was conditional because it carried with it explicit social obligations, for instance towards the Church and papacy. Due to the lack of formal rules, cities, associations of trades, universities, commercial leagues, empires and papacy all were considered legitimate actors and could be granted, for instance, the right of diplomatic representation and, later, embassy. Well into the eighteenth century, there were complicated transEuropean relations between ‘overlapping authorities and multiple loyalties’ (Bull 1977:254), instead of exclusive territorial spheres of centralised states. Some of the modern state concepts and practices emerged in Rennaissance Italy. After the widespread disappointment with the ancient republican ideals, a new Tacitus-inspired reading of Machiavelli and other humanist authors gained strength. ‘A term that Guicciardini first used became in time a watchword for this new movement: it was ragion di stato, “reason of state”, which appears in the titles of books and pamphlets all over Europe from about 1590 onwards’ (Tuck 1992:121). Perhaps encouraged by the increasingly rational ordering of space in Renaissance maps, the theatre of state appeared to these thinkers as an increasingly distinct sphere, with a logic of its own. At this time, state-structures were developed in Spain and Portugal to also govern colonies in America and, soon, in England, France, Sweden and elsewhere. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended the Thirty Years War in Europe is often cited as the beginning of modern inter-state relations. It introduced or consolidated a number of new notions from freedom of religion to state sovereignty and great powerness. Yet, Westphalia was only a phase in a long and complicated process. For instance, England became an exclusive and unified territorial state, gradually, only after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The struggles between Protestants and Catholics, King and Parliament, old privileged and the rising bourgeois classes and the capitalist landlords and the traditional peasant communities took place in a trans-European setting of inter-dynastic rivalries. King James II, a Roman Catholic, favoured Catholics and attempted to restore monarchical autocracy. The Protestant majority of England disliked his policies. In 1688, leading politicians invited William of Orange, who was the husband of James’s Protestant daughter Mary, and also the ruler of the Netherlands, to invade England with Dutch forces. William met little resistance, except in Scotland and Ireland. William and Mary were crowned co-rulers of England. The Revolution established Parliament’s right to control succession to the throne and to limit the monarch’s power. In 1689, Parliament passed the Bill of Rights, which banned Roman Catholics from the throne and made it illegal for a monarch to suspend laws, keep an army in peacetime or levy taxes without Parliament’s consent.

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In the course of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the capabilities of (particularly Western) European states were greatly strengthened due to a number of administrative and financial innovations. These innovations enabled an increased mastery over activities on states’ ‘own’ territory and also management of their overseas colonies. Colonialism in fact precipitated the universalisation of European property rights and, also, legal regulation of the ‘high seas’. But for the emergence of the international problematic, the development of state capabilities at ‘home’, as it were, was decisive. Seventeenthcentury France was a forerunner of many bureaucratic practices. External borders were clarified—in 1718 a line was drawn on a map for the first time in a treaty— and states assumed administrative control over the units inside the borders (see Giddens 1985:84–102). Socio-economic developments came to be carefully monitored by means of state reports and memoranda. Gradually, the financial ties to the feudal system were cut off. The new sources of state revenue included customs on economic flows, taxes on transactions, establishment of trade companies and involvement in economic developments. Moreover, states began to use lotteries—early form of bonds—as a means of raising funds for wars or colonial projects, and they also established central banks (Goede 1999). Diplomatic representation became both more permanent and professional. By the eighteenth century, most European states had large corps of diplomatic staff, at home and abroad. However, it was not until 1796 that the terms ‘diplomacy’ or ‘diplomatic’ were used in English to apply to the conduct and management of international relations, and not to the study of archives. It was after 1815 that the status and rules of this profession were established by an international agreement (Nicolson 1939:26–8). The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liberal philosophers dealt with the problems of the modern European state. They justified the authority of the sovereign state but also carefully circumscribed its rights and sphere. Internally, the authority of the state was strictly limited both by the autonomous sphere of civil society and by natural and positive laws. The rule of law was thus established. Externally, the state emerged as analogous to private property. Hume, for instance, lived in mid-eighteenth century Britain, in which the bourgeois revolution had been completed and which was, evidently, a growing power and empire. The relations between European states, or European powers and the rest of the world, were not his first preoccupations. However, after having completed his voluminous History of England in the early 1760s, Hume worked at the British Embassy in Paris. In 1767–8, he was in London as Under-Secretary of State, Northern Department. Also, in his essays, mostly drafted before his practical-political experiences, Hume reflected upon the rise of England. He argued for instance that Great Britain’s growing power was due to the prevalence of ‘commerce and industry’ in Britain (Hume 1994 [1777]:219–30). Hume (1994 [1777]:135–42) also devoted one of his essays to the idea of the balance of power. Like the diplomats and princes, who had written the principle down in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Hume saw balance of power as the solution to the problem of European inter-state order.

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Fourth component: the problem of order According to Toulmin (1992:17–44), the first modernity of Renaissance humanism was boosted economically by the rise of new capitalist market practices in the Northern Italian city-states and the colonial expansion of Spain and Portugal. This period of growth was followed by a worsening climate (‘Little Ice Age’), economic depression, a sequence of violent outbreaks of plague, and religious strife and wars in the seventeenth century. Violence, destruction and brutality went so far that, at times, groups of cannibals were roaming in parts of Central Europe. Deep uncertainty, fear and anxiety made the new philosophers of the ‘second modernity’ turn to those few things they thought would be beyond any doubt: their own immediate sense-perceptions; geometry and mathematics, and the new astronomy; calculative reason; and atom-like individuals and their contractual relations. It was the religious and inter-dynastic strife and violence that encouraged them to search for universally valid arguments for political order. They also wanted to safeguard the peaceful everyday practices of the rising bourgeoisie. Albert Hirschman (1977) has shown, however, that in an important sense there was continuity from the Middle Ages through Renaissance humanism to the ‘second modernity’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The notion of fallen man was transformed first into the sceptical and relativist but potentially virtuous and glorious man of humanism, and then into the passion- and interestdriven rational, calculative man of Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Smith. A kernel of the Christian conception of human nature was preserved through these transformations. Humanists, including Machiavelli, denounced Christian morality, and accepted St Augustine’s ‘three sins of fallen man’—lust for money and possessions, lust for power and sexual lust—as objective descriptions of the human condition, ‘how man really is’. With ancient republicanism, however, the humanists stressed political power, glory and aristocratic virtues as more important than the drive for money and possessions. The later philosophers, many of whom indeed modelled man on the ‘English shopkeeper’, reversed this hierarchy of importance. By the time of Hume, they could argue confidently that commercial activities, even banking and financial money-making pursuits, were not only beneficial and honourable, but also that the glory of the state was dependent on them. St Augustine, like other medieval Fathers of the Church, was wrestling with the problem of moral and political order. Man is free and responsible for the evil in the world God created, yet God is also inside every person. It was the task of the authority of religion and Church to convince people to side with God against evil in them. The first answer to the problem of moral and political order was thus religious command. However, St Augustine did not trust man. He entrusted to the secular authorities ‘the task of holding back, by force if necessary, the worst manifestations and the most dangerous consequences of the passions’ (Hirschman 1977:15). The religious command lost its plausibility

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by the time of the religious wars. ‘A feeling arose in the Renaissance and became firm conviction during the seventeenth century that moralizing philosophy and religious precept could no longer be trusted with restraining the destructive passions of men’ (Hirschman: 14–15). How is it possible to have an organised and relatively peaceful society in the absence of God and His commands? This is the modern problem of order. Hobbes made a novel, apparently secular argument for a solution, which appeared at least somewhat similar to that of St Augustine. The Hobbesian solution to the problem of order was coercion and repression, combined with the idea of rationalising education, to replace religious command. However, there was a flaw in Hobbes’s argument. Why should we assume the sovereign to be different from other humans? Either the Hobbesian order would end up in a full-fledged tyranny, or Hobbes would have to make the sovereign accountable to God. In the first case, the whole argument would turn out to be futile; in the latter, the system would have to rely, ultimately, on God’s commands, i.e. religious belief. The great innovation of the eighteenth century was to direct human passions to the service of generally beneficial order. Hints at this solution can be found in earlier texts, but it seems that the idea was articulated, first sporadically and then more systematically, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Already Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning (1605) mentions the practical-political idea of countervailing passions within and between states. Later, for instance, Spinoza’s Ethics (c. 1680), Mandeville’s The Fable of Fees or Private Vices, Public Benefits (subsequent versions 1705, 1714 and 1729), Vico’s The New Science (1725) and Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), rewritten as Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals (1748 and 1751), discuss the idea of setting one passion against another. Thus, Hume argued that in many cases private passions, including the ‘passion of interest’, can best be controlled by means of countervailing passions. Love of leisure can be countered with the lust for gain. One (faction of) state can counter another (faction of) state, both driven by passion for power and glory. It is therefore possible to engineer social progress by setting up one passion to fight another. Hume was ambivalent about the notions of interest and passion. Increasingly since the early seventeenth century, prevalent discourses had contrasted ‘interest’, which tended to acquire an economic meaning, against ‘passion’. Whereas the aggressive pursuit of possessions by means of violence and power seemed a source of misery and evil, the rational money-making of the bourgeoisie in a stable and just setting, based on producing and exchanging goods, services and assets, appeared beneficial to many. Thus rose the great civilisational quest to fabricate the calculative self-interested man. In a particular social setting, characterised by Hume’s three fundamental rules of justice—stability of possession, transfer by consent and keeping of promises—calculative money-making appeared to benefit everybody (i.e. property-owning men). In 1776, Adam Smith, who had pleased Hume by summarising his Treatise so insightfully as a young student, invented the metaphor of the ‘invisible hand’. Smith’s metaphor describes how

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individual self-interested actions can lead to order and progress. In order to make money, people produce things that other people are willing to buy. Buyers spend money for those things that they need or want most. When buyers and sellers meet in the market, a pattern of production develops, which results in harmony. Smith said that all this would happen without any conscious control or direction, ‘as if by an invisible hand’. There was also a demand to treat the problem of order more and more scientifically, in terms of constancy and predictability of behavioural patterns. It is striking that the problem of order, thus conceived, is in fact a homeomorph to the Humean problem of induction (Bhaskar 1994:31). It is similar to, and can be modelled in terms of, the problem of induction. If society can be known only in its instances—individuals and their externally observable behaviours— the problem of order is acute at all times: how is it possible that an organised society could come about, knowing how chaotic, how much in conflict the instances of society can be? The answer of a Humean sceptic is that indeed there is no guarantee. However, by using the state to safeguard the institutional underpinnings of justice and order, and by carefully engineering passions or interests to counter each other or to yield unintended yet socially beneficial results, we can achieve constancy, predictability and relatively stable social order. In the course of the eighteenth century, three social ‘mechanisms’—besides state coercion—were developed: the invisible hand; checks and balances within a state; and balance of power between states. The problem of order in relations between European states was usually discussed only in passing. However, by the time of Hume, many of the basic assumptions of the international problematic had surfaced. The first is the existence of a society of states, with states analogous to persons, and persons conceived as possessive individuals. The second presupposition is the problem of order. The third is the idea that it is possible to achieve order by careful social engineering of human passions and interests. The fourth assumption is the implicit social ontology of atom-like individuals, which are constant in their structure (‘English shopkeepers’ as the standard), and which are simultaneously subject to determinist regularities and, quite amazingly, capable of creating the social order spontaneously. Given these assumptions, it is thereby no surprise that in his study on balance of power, Hume concludes: In short the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so much on common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it could altogether have escaped antiquity, where we find, in other particulars, so many marks of deep penetration and discernment. If it was not so generally known and acknowledged as at present, it had at least an influence on all the wiser and more experienced princes and politicians. And indeed, even at present, however generally known and acknowledged among speculative reasoners, it has not, in practices, an authority much more extensive among those who govern the world. (Hume 1994 [1777]:139)

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Hume claims that there have always been balance of power policies.4 This rational policy is relentlessly threatened by human passions. An eternal sceptic, Hume did not quite share the increasingly common sentiment that reason could tame passions and transform them into socially beneficial interests. He is famous for his phrase ‘reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions’. It is also telling how Hume complains that the balance of power does not have a practical effect to the extent it should. In Hume’s view, statesmen are driven by their passions, not by rational considerations. This condition does not change. Here we have the elementary formulation of the to-be Kantian distinction between causal phenomena and the impotent world of moral reason. What is most noteworthy in this passage is that Hume is repeating his metaphysical conviction that there can be no real changes. If society consists of atom-like individuals, constant in their inner structure; and if, despite the ubiquity of ephemeral changes, there are invariant regularities between relevant As and Bs in society; it is hard to see what could, really, ever change. Everywhere people must be the same as in eighteenth century England and France. If not, they must be becoming the same, if they are rational.

Kant’s articulation of the international problematic It was Hume who interrupted Kant’s ‘dogmatic slumber’. However, it was Kant who finally, at the time of the French Revolution, put all the pieces together and gave a familiar shape to the international problematic. Kant argued that neither natural law nor the balance of power provides a basis for peaceful order in Europe. Natural law theorists are mere ‘cold comforters’ (for a legal positivist, natural law is just wishful thinking), and in fact they often provide justifications for wars (Kant 1983 [1795]:116). Balance of power is like ‘Swift’s house, whose architect built it so perfectly in accord with all the laws of equilibrium that as soon as a sparrow lit on it, it fell in’ (Kant 1983 [1793]:89). Domesticating the radical tenets of Rousseau, who had died a few years before Kant wrote his political texts, Kant presumed that the external relations among nations form a state of nature in the sense of Hobbes. In his famous 1795 essay ‘The perpetual peace. A philosophical sketch’, Kant saw this as a normative problem to be overcome. Since international war and violence occur repetitively, there is a reason to find a way out from this situation, to make an international social contract to avoid ‘perpetual peace to occur only in the vast graveyard of humanity as a whole’ (Kant 1983 [1795]:110). Kant continues: Just as we view with deep disdain the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom…and consider it barbarous, rude and brutishly degrading of humanity, so also we should think that civilized peoples (each one united into a nation) would hasten as quickly as possible to escape so similar a state of abandonment. (Kant 1983 [1795]:115)

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As long as there are no external laws, states are living in a state of nature. Thus, Kant advocates the rule of law and elementary principles of citizenship also in the international realm. Kant introduced a far-reaching dualism to Western political philosophy, that of phenomena/noumena. At the level of phenomena, Kant’s world is ultimately Humean. Kant was plainer than Hume himself; for Kant, international relations are in a state of nature. This is, indeed, the origin of what Ashley (1988) calls the anarchy problematic. As a transcendental idealist, Kant also introduced the noumenal world, the site of reason and morality. However, this world was cut off from the world of causal phenomena. To demonstrate that his theory was also practically useful, Kant was at pains to introduce all kinds of ‘secret mechanisms’ that would eventually establish and then maintain the legal order of perpetual peace. These ‘mechanisms’ resonated with the ideas of the late eighteenth century, and they included: the ‘invisible hand’ of free trade and the civilising effect of commerce; the republican constitution of states, guaranteeing freedom and peacefulness; and attempts to curb the capabilities of states to finance and wage wars. Already ten years before his famous ‘Perpetual peace’, Kant tried to explain why history should develop into a cosmopolitan and peaceful direction by introducing the notion that nature, too, is teleological and that ‘all of a creature’s natural capacities are destined to develop completely and in conformity with their end’ and that ‘man’s natural capacities are directed toward the use of his reason’ (Kant 1983 [1784]:30). The main argument is that there must be a simple and crude but, from a rational perspective, necessary learning process. The impetus for learning comes from the experience of pain and the high costs of the ever more destructive wars. A lengthy quotation from Kant illustrates the logic of the argument: In the end, even war gradually becomes not only a very artificial undertaking, so uncertain for both sides in its outcome, but also a very dubious one, given the aftermath that the nation suffers by way of an evergrowing burden of debt (a new invention) whose repayment becomes inconceivable. At the same time, the effect that any national upheaval has on all the other nations of our continent, where they are all so closely linked by trade, it is so noticeable that these other nations feel compelled, though without legal authority to do so, to offer themselves as arbiters, and thus they indirectly prepare the way for the great body politic of the future, a body politic for which antiquity provides no example. Although this body politic presently exists only in very rough outline, a feeling seems nonetheless to be already stirring among all its members who have an interest in the preservation of the whole, and this gives rise to hope that, finally, nature’s supreme objective—a universal cosmopolitan state, the womb in which all of the human species’ original capacities will be developed—will at last come to be realized. (Kant 1983 [1784]:37–8)

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Since Kant’s world is dualistic, the moral reasons (noumena) can do very little to change determinist chains of constant conjunctions (phenomena). The learning process, republicanism and the civilising effect of commerce gave him some hope. Ultimately, Kant had to rely on anachronistic teleological/Aristotelian assumptions about the God-given telos of humanity. Often, he phrased this idea in terms of the late eighteenth-century notion of Providence. Kant thought that there was a guarantee for morality only in the Kingdom of Angels (absolutely disembodied rational beings), that is, in Heaven (see Kant 1956 [1788], 121–4). Repeating the dilemmas of St Augustine, Kant was doubtful about the prospects of human progress on Earth. No wonder Kant’s theory appeared for later German thinkers to be not particularly ‘realistic’.

The nineteenth-and twentieth-century set of solutions Since Kant and the wars of Napoleon, different solutions to the international problematic have been discussed, some of them in some regards original. For Hegel, of course, Kant’s consciousness was unhappy. It was unhappy because, ultimately, it had to turn to other-worldly solutions in its search for morality and rationality. So Hegel wanted to show that the existing world is already rational. At one and the same time, as a kind of a by-product, Hegel also invented the post-Enlightenment solution to the problem of universalism vs particularism: universal progress is carried out by particular nations, which often fight against each other. The winner carries history forward. Later, the Hegelian idea of Cunning of Reason assumed the form of social Darwinism. It was in this intellectual context that the term realpolitik was coined in Germany after the unsuccessful liberal revolutionary year of 1848. The disillusioned liberals drew the conclusion that liberal thinkers should denounce their ambitious programmes of change. Some of them developed the fundaments of realpolitik (Palonen 1987:99–102).5 The contrasting Other of the realpolitik theorists and practitioners was Kant and the ‘rationalist’ Enlightenment thinking. They also read romantic, conservative and other anti-Enlightenment texts, as well as Thucydides or Machiavelli and, later, Charles Darwin or Friedrich Nietzsche— and used these texts to articulate their differences from liberalism and Enlightenment ‘rationalism’. However, in fact their scepticism and Machtpolitikrationalisations never questioned Hume’s and Kant’s account of the phenomenal world, only the Kantian possibility of overcoming it. In fact, this impossibility was implicit in both Hume and Kant. Hume believed that ‘nothing can change’. Kant thought that inter-state relations were in a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ and that moral reason was outside the phenomenal world and therefore causally impotent. The ‘realism vs idealism’ debate thus started well before the formal AngloAmerican academic discipline of international relations was established in the aftermath of the First World War. Although the native American Reinhold Niebuhr came quite independently to similar kinds of conclusions in the 1930s and 1940s, he was much better known as a theologian. Outstandingly, it was

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Hans Morgenthau who brought the German realpolitik discourse to the USA in the late 1930s. Just listen to him in his most Nietzschean moment, contrasting idealisations of ‘scientific man’ to the brute ‘realities of power polities’, when he refers to Hume and, simultaneously, echoes Kant’s problem of the relationship between phenomena and noumena: Aristotle anticipated this modern problem, as so many others, when he remarked in the Nicomachean Ethics: ‘Intellect itself, however, moves nothing’. When rationalism was reaping its philosophic triumph, Hume could say: ‘Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them’. (Morgenthau 1946:154) The nihilism and will-to-power metaphysics of Nietzsche was in fact already built in Hume’s scepticism and notion of passion. In the twentieth-century political realism, the standard reference point has been the synthesis of Max Weber (see Smith 1986). Weber combined ideas from Kant, Hegel, romantic and hermeneutic thinkers such as Schleiermacher, nineteenth-century positivists such as Kelsen and Comte, realpolitik, Nietzsche and the turn of the century positivism. Implicitly he adopted the Humean account of phenomena and causality. In domestic politics, Weber was a liberal, a sceptical and sometimes critical believer in modernisation as progress. In international relations he articulated a version of political realism that denied any progress and emancipation. Weber thought that outside of modern nations there are no shared values. The result is a quasi-Nietzschean struggle of wills-to-power of different national leaders. Thereby, Weber justified international ‘power polities’, that is, the unilateral use of military force to achieve aims and to establish relations of domination. Besides this Nietzschean, anti-Enlightenment strand, Weber’s positivism also opened up the possibility of ‘scientific’ political realism. We can name some of the twentieth-century solutions in terms of attitudes towards relations of domination. These attitudes were originally identified by Hegel, but have been further elaborated by Bhaskar (1993:2–4, 330–5; 1994:107– 8, 208–9). Whereas the stoic tries to be indifferent and neutral to the reality of the world, the sceptic attempts to deny the world. The Beautiful Soul thinks it is enough to pretend that Heaven is already on Earth, and act accordingly. The Unhappy Consciousness seeks refuge in other-worldly asceticism or solace in the projective duplication of another world, and after-life or beyond, where for instance happiness will be in accord with virtue (as Kant believed). The existing relations of domination are the problem. It is because of the lack of any notion of emancipatory transformation in this world that they opt for the stoic, sceptical or other-wordly solutions, to accommodate themselves with the world. A twentieth-century stoic tended to adopt an attitude of quasi-scientific neutrality. Here we have the later Morgenthau, who claimed that political realism is the scientific theory of international politics, and the neo-realists, who have become faithful followers of a modern, scientist Hume by borrowing their methodological

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ideas from positivist economics. However, the Morgenthau of Scientific Man versus Power Politics was extremely sceptical about finding any scientific knowledge about the world, because, ultimately, the world is romantically tragic and Nietzschean. Nietzsche relied upon the Humean account of the phenomenal world. He believed that Hume’s ‘English petit bourgeois’ scepticism could be re-written, more boldly, in terms of the metaphysical voluntarism of ‘will-to-power’. Some post-modernists are very close to repeating this pattern (for a close link between the Humean notion of causality, scepticism, Nietzsche and forms of deconstruction, see Culler 1983:86–7). Finally, the Christian realists such as Niebuhr, and early Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, seem to verge on an Unhappy Consciousness. To justify their traditionalist Humean theories and deep pessimism, and their retreat from the world of emancipatory politics, they have returned to medieval metaphysics, to the ideas of St Augustine. The Christian realists see the origin of tragedies of wars to lie in the original sin of humankind, in the nature of the fallen man. Salvation must therefore be otherworldly. Thus, the fault line of the international theory problem-field solution set starts with Hume and Kant, as shown in Figure 1.1, and continues via Hegel, realpolitik, Nietzsche and Weber to the twentieth-century self-declared realists. However, as we now know, their ‘realism’ was in fact based on the Humean rejection of realist ontology and the social metaphysics this denial served to justify and naturalise. Moreover, Hume’s conception of human nature originates in Christian theology. Most twentieth-century forms of political realism and Kantian ‘idealism’ merely reproduce this theory/problem-field solution set.

The ‘great debates’ of international relations According to conventional wisdom, there have been four ‘great debates’ in the twentieth-century academic discipline of international relations. The inter-war debate between Kantian ‘idealism’ and political realism led to the dominance of the latter after the Second World War. The second, methodological debate between traditionalists and positivists took place in the 1950s and 1960s. Positivism won this debate, at least in the USA and Northern Europe. In the 1970s, liberals took up the notion of interdependence and attacked the assumptions of political realism. In the 1980s, various forms of post-positivism have risen to dispute the basic tenets of positivism. Most aspects of these ‘great debates’ can be summarised in terms of a relatively simply and highly repetitious cognitive structure depicted above and in Figures 1.2 and Table 1.1. To clarify the possibilities, it is useful to distinguish between three Humes and two Kants. Hume believed in Newtonian science, but was in his own political analysis a classical political theorist. Hume2 demands the application of the experimental methods of Newtonian science to political science and international relations, whereas the Nietzschean Hume3 radicalises Hume’s scepticism and notion of passion. Similarly, there are also two Kants (a Nietzschean Kant would be a contradiction in terms). Like Hume, Kant was a

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Figure 1.1 The solution set of the international problematic

classical political theorist. However, many scholars studying democratic peace theory or, say, the effects of interdependence follow positivist research methods. They want to find out whether the Kantian hypotheses hold. Table 1.1 summarises the ‘great debates’ of international relations in these simple terms. Obviously, there are other aspects to these debates. The point is not to claim that this summary is exhaustive, merely that it captures surprisingly well the essence of the ‘great’ debates of International Relations. Most of sovereign nation-states have come into being after Hume and Kant, a few in the 19th century, and many more in the 20th century. World War I triggered a series of catastrophes, in the context of an unprecedented increase in productive and

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Figure 1.2 Three Humes and two Kants

destructive powers of modern organisations. Since the 1950s, these developments threatened to make Kant’s gloomy prophecy true: ‘Perpetual peace will occur only in the vast graveyard of humanity as a whole’. The centre of international relations as a discipline has been in the ‘Lockean heartland’ of globalising capitalism. The repetitious cognitive structure of the international problematic has been maintained by a background theory, itself essentially connected to a set of everyday practices. Particularly in the Lockean heartland, it has been easy to conceive the calculative ‘English shopkeeper’ as the normal man. Evoked by wars and violence, this bourgeois conception of man has been surrounded by dismal discussions about original sin and irrational passions. Until recently, the success of science and technology has been envisaged from a Newtonian-Humean vantage point. Last but not least, the implicit social ontology has tended to be atomist, with consequent strict inside/outside dichotomies and the exclusion of outside beings as the norm.

Table 1.1 The repetitious cognitive structure of international relations

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When the Woodrow Wilson Chair was founded in 1918 in Aberystwyth, Wales, the idea was to promote peace by means of research. The methods of the inter-war era were classical, the approach legalist and the focus on the League of Nations. Alfred Zimmern, G.Lowes Dickinson and James Shotwell were replicating Kant’s arguments—and, implicitly, his antinomies—in a new world historical context (Kant1). The story goes that in the 1930s, classical political realists, such as Niebuhr and Morgenthau, challenged this orthodoxy (Hume1 and Hume3). Powerfully boosted by the US financiers of the Cold War, classical political realism began to dominate the study of international relations. Kenneth Waltz (1959) and others, already in the 1950s, transformed it into scientific neorealism (Hume2). It was in this context that peace research came into the limelight. The ‘idealists’ were pushed to the margins in international relations, but peace research continued the research agenda of the 1920s and 1930s by new scientific means (Kant2). Disciples of classical political theory, such as Hedley Bull—whose 1977 The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, also followed the substance of Humean political theory—accused positivists of untenable methods and irrelevance. Morton A.Kaplan (1969), J.David Singer (1969) and Oran Young (1969) responded by maintaining that the traditionalists are in fact making grand claims about empirical regularities but are unwilling or unable to test them scientifically. Many positivists also found the retreat to metaphysical speculation about human nature unacceptable. While traditionalism prevailed, for example in Britain and France, positivism became the orthodoxy in the USA, Germany and the Nordic countries. The interdependence school rose in the USA in the late 1960s and early 1970s to challenge political realism. In essence, the globalists were arguing that the Kantian belief in the positive effects of free trade and spirit of commerce was well founded. Others took up the idea that republicanism or liberal democracy may make states peaceful, at least in their mutual relations (Kant2). The debate between positivism and post-positivism is more difficult to summarise in terms of this cognitive structure. Notions of critical theory, poststructuralism and, in particular, critical realism take issue with the presuppositions of the Hume—Kant theory problem-field solution set. By shifting the grounds of the background theory, they also enable new ways of posing the central problems and open up a new set of possible solutions. Nonetheless, many aspects of the post-positivist challenge can be read back to the international problematic. Not only may Nietzschean post-structuralism be easily married with classical political realism (Wæver 1989) but radical postmodernism is often a mirror image of positivism, presuming that nothing has any stable identity, including the senseperceptions and operations of mind, and therefore nothing can really be known and very little, if anything, should be said (Dillon 1999, 2000). Moreover, many less radical—or more commonsensical—Wittgensteinians, discourse analysts and constructivists take for granted Kant’s dichotomy between noumena (reason) and phenomena (world of causes and effects). They assume that social sciences concern only reasons, which are embedded in language. Often this ontological position is taken to support the claim that ideas matter (Kant1). Finally,

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post-positivism can also be a way of arguing for a return to classical normative theorising (Hume1 and Kant1).

Conclusion: can it be overcome? This chapter is not just a historical genealogy of the international problematic. It is also a dialectical comment on it. I have written this genealogy from a perspective that presupposes depth, differentiation and structuration, as well as absence and emergence, of social realities. In effect, these are denied by the international problematic. Every student of international relations may know what the Peace of Westphalia (1648) symbolises. The modern ‘international system’ was born. Yet they fail to acknowledge the gradual and complicated geo-historical processes that took centuries to assume a form and shape of ‘international relations’. They also fail to acknowledge the very specific ontological, epistemological and moral assumptions that constitute the underpinnings of the international problematic. Perhaps only a post-structuralist, such as Walker (1993:137–8), can appreciate Kant’s—the arch-idealist’s—important role in putting together the components of the international problematic. Moreover, once we have recognised the highly repetitious nature of the resulting cognitive structure, stories about ‘great debates’ in international relations should appear in a very different light. A dialectical comment can bring into light a general lack or invalidity of a theory, or a theory/practice inconsistency. Both are abundant in the studies based on the international problematic. Admiration of the Newtonian revolution notwithstanding, most international theorists have eschewed systematic experimental or empirical research. It is easier to make grand generalisations, based on a very limiting set of ontological assumptions, in an armchair. It was only in the 1950s and 1960s that a systematic scientific study of international relations became reality. However, Bull (1969:26) was right to argue that ‘the scientific approach has contributed and is likely to contribute very little to the theory of international relations’. This is because the positivist conception of science is false and its tacit ontology (atomism and its metaphorical and metonymical extensions to collective entities) seriously misleading. Both are rendered plausible by a geo-historical context dominated by commodification and practices of capitalist market society. A dialectical comment can also assume a Derridean, Foucauldian or Habermasian form (Bhaskar 1994:214–18). Along Derridean lines, I have already showed (1) how it was the arch-idealist Kant who played a crucial role in articulating the problematic, later reformulated as the opposition between ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’; and (2) that this ‘realism’ is in fact based on irrealism, secreting an implicit realism of perceptions or ‘will-to-power’ or something equivalent, depending on the particular manifestation of this discourse. A further Derridean move could, for instance, focus on how and why reasons are presented as a mere supplement to the causal phenomena. Why is there this binary opposition that also forms a violent hierarchy, in which positive value is always accorded to the way ‘things and people really are’ instead of reasons, although ultimately

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‘reality’ in this theory is mostly empty of content and structure? It is this order of things that my dialectical comment aims to disturb. As Derrida puts it: Deconstruction must, through a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is on that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticizes and which is also a field of non-discursive forces…. Deconstruction does not consist in passing from one concept to another, but in overturning and displacing a conceptual order, as well as the nonconceptual order with which it is articulated. (Derrida 1982:329) Derrida (1982:329–30) argues further that there are always concepts and meanings that are irreducible ‘to the dominant forces’ behind the international problematic, and which have resisted that conceptual and/or non-conceptual order. This is in fact the Foucauldian moment, entailing resistance to every repression. Classics, such as Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars, can be re-read to demonstrate how they are irreducible to the dominant understandings. Karl Deutsch’s notion of pluralist security community, or Hayward Alker’s learning and manifold methodological innovations, are examples of concepts and resources that can be used for effective interventions in this theory/problemfield. Derrida does not go far enough, however. There is also a quest for new conceptual resources. Reality should be reclaimed, also by introducing negativity, absence and emergence, and thereby real change. By positing reasons as causes, we locate meaningful human activities in the differentiated, stratified and structured world. Moreover, the intransitive and transitive dimension of research should be distinguished. Thereby much confusion about the relationship between subject and object of research can be clarified. By being able to identify the internal and external relations between social/political theories and social realities, without conflating the two, critical realism promises a new emancipatory conception of social scientific research. Finally, but crucially, the Habermasian aspect of a dialectical comment entails a willingness to communicate with and listen to all. A comment would not be dialectical if it did not engage with, and learn from, the others in the field. Notes 1 About the concept of theory problem-field solution set, see Bhaskar 1994:10, 215–16 and 224. 2 Strictly speaking, the term ‘positivism’ is historically misleading, as it was invented by Saint-Simon and Comte in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, Hume was quite rightly conceived of as an empiricist. With Bhaskar (1986:226), however, I concede that ‘most of positivism is already contained [and] elegantly expounded in the writings of Hume’, and that it is best to see positivism as a causally efficacious movement of thought and cognitive structure, with a number of possible variations

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Overcoming international relations and permutations within it. Thus, in the twentieth-century economics (the positivist social science par excellence), for instance, there has been a long-standing debate between the rationalists, who have substituted empirical regularities with the illusionary certainty of hypothetical mathematical-deductive connections, and empiricists, who are typically involved in the much more messy and tricky business of statistical analysis (econometrics). Two seminal accounts of these transformations are Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1957 [1944]:33–102) and Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1969:3–39). England was a pioneering country, with the first phase of transformations taking place in the seventeenth century and the second accompanying the Industrial Revolution. According to Moore (1969:24–7), the consolidation of capitalist property rights of the landlords and bourgeoisie went hand in hand with the destruction of the medieval rights to land of the small peasantry. Polanyi (1957 [1944]:77) summarises the extent of transformations, enforced often by what he calls ‘inhuman methods’: ‘Eighteenth century society unconsciously resisted any attempt at making it a mere appendage of the market. No market economy was conceivable that did not include a market for labor; but to establish such a market, especially in England’s rural civilization, implied no less than the wholesale destruction of the traditional fabric of society.’ Polanyi (1957 [1944]:259–62) argues that England conducted something close to powerbalancing policies against the potential preponderance of any particular Continental state, already 200 years before balance of power was established as a principle and system in eighteenth-century Europe, and before Hume theorised it as a historical law or invariance. Polanyi may, however, be a victim of the confusion of Hume. Hume’s claim about balance of power as invariant conjunction confuses the practice of making allies (common for instance in Ancient Greece, cultivated by modern England in the fear of the Continental powers) and the empiricist understanding of the mechanical or Newtonian ‘law’ of balance of power. The idea of ‘balance’ is mechanical and presupposes familiarity with the science of Galileo or Newton. Moreover, the term ‘states system’ occurred only sporadically if at all before the Napoleonic period (Bull 1977:12), and the balance of power system was not formalised before the Concert of Vienna in the nineteenth century. Contrary to his own understanding, Hume was thus, in fact, a conceptual innovator, and certainly not a mere passive observant of a universal ‘law’. Although this is slightly out of the reach of my story, it is certainly not insignificant that there were also quite different (pathological) reactions to these same developments. By the time he had already renounced his academic ambitions as politically impossible, in 1843, Karl Marx, in the face of censorship, had to move to Paris in order to continue his journalistic activities. This was the turning point. Marx started to see radical revolution as a necessary condition for any change in Germany. In 1845, he was banished from Paris as a dangerous revolutionary. On the outbreak of the Revolution of February 1848 he was banished from Belgium, and, in 1849, again from Germany, and, in June 1849, again from Paris. After these traumatic events in his formative years—he was thirty in 1848—he finally settled in London, where he wrote the bulk of texts associated with ‘Marxism’. As a kind of mirror image of the conservative realpolitik thinkers, Marx adopted the assumption that no peaceful changes are possible, only a one-shot revolution. In 1895, V.I.Lenin (1968 [1895]:21) praised Engels by arguing that ‘hatred for political despotism was exceedingly strong in’ Marx and Engels, ‘combined with a profound theoretical understanding of the connection between political despotism and economic oppression’. Lenin, who was facing even more fierce political oppression in Tsarist Russia (e.g. the killing of his brother), contended that Marx and Engels ‘became socialists after being democrats’. However, it should be noted that at this point Lenin, too, seemed to be also in favour of political liberties. See Chapter 4 for remarks on the further developments, and Chapters 5 and 8 about the political significance and far-reaching consequences of this multi-stage, pathological learning process.

2

Learning from Alker From quantitative peace research to emancipatory humanism

Simple learning is goal-seeking feedback, as in a homing torpedo. It consists in adjusting responses, so as to reach a goal situation of a type that is given once and for all by certain internal arrangements of the [neural] net; these arrangements remain fixed throughout its life. A more complex type of learning is the selfmodifying or goal-changing feedback. It allows for feedback readjustments of those internal arrangements that implied its original goal, so that the net will change its goal, or set for itself new goals…. (Deutsch 1963:92)

After the catastrophe of the Second World War, Kantian themes re-emerged, in a positivist guise, within peace and conflict studies. Kenneth Boulding, Karl Deutsch, Johan Galtung and many others hoped that positivist social sciences would help us to overcome the international problems posed by the threat of violence and war. Although the mainstream in the USA—powerfully boosted by the US financiers of the cold war—believed in the eternal wisdom of political realism, peace researchers thought that scientific research could demonstrate that political realists were wrong. Even better, they envisaged a more peacefully organised world based on scientific knowledge. Like modern medicine, peace and conflict studies can help save lives. Given the spectre of thermonuclear war, this task assumed the urgency of saving the whole of human civilisation. In the early 1960s, while international relations (IR) as a discipline was dominated by the classical political realism of George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger, the behaviouralist movement was reaching its climax in the social sciences (particularly in the USA and Northern Europe). Hayward Alker shared the belief of positivist peace researchers that it was possible to improve political conditions by means of knowledge produced by scientific method. He also attacked the loose journalism of foreign policy analysis, as well as the classical speculative style of writing IR, both of which were common in the early 1960s. Despite the tenets he shared with the mainstream of peace research, Alker has been exceptional in one crucial respect: he learned from his trials and errors and, step by step, changed his direction.1 By showing how one can learn, indeed develop, radically new approaches, Alker makes us see the false necessity of the rigidities of a given academic 43

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character and goal. Even more importantly, Alker provides critical resources for overcoming the international problematic. Alker’s numerous writings—some of which were collected together and published in 1996 as Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies2–in fact come very close to critical realism (CR), and in part are explicitly inspired by CR. At the end of this chapter, I shall discuss some ambiguities concerning ontological idealism/realism, and point towards possible further steps in this learning process.

Alker’s four phases Alker’s scientific career began with measuring politics and analysing the United Nations (UN). The angry idealism of Alker’s first phase had three major pillars: the advocacy of modern, rigorous social sciences; a pluralist theory of conflicts, according to which there are always many different actors and at least some of the conflicts are based on misperceptions; and the belief in the potentialities of the U N. Alker’s advocacy of rigorous, Newtonian social sciences notwithstanding, even during this phase he always tried to take seriously the claims of those who did not share his fundamental assumptions and concerns. Alker saw open, critical discussions among representatives of different approaches as a prerequisite for scientific progress. Reliance on a given scientific method— whatever it may be assumed to be—was not enough for him. The second pillar was his theory of conflicts—and particularly the cold war conflict—that relied partially on the notion of misperception and partially on his pluralistic account of social reality. Alker, together with Bruce Russett, asserted for instance that ‘numerous uncertainties and misperceptions continue regarding the nature of the distinct issues before the UN’. There are many different political opinions, but they are often misperceived and their nature misunderstood. Alker and Russett went on to ask whether ‘we can we find a way of naturally and objectively summarising the issues before the General Assembly without losing their specific content?’ (Alker and Russett 1965:9). It is noteworthy that they indicated that the moral-political aim of their study was the reduction of international tension.3 In arguing for this possibility, they built on an underlying Grotian—although positivist and utilitarian—account of the nature of international society, according to which rules and institutions matter: Rules of order are often followed, in both local and international society, because of various kinds of expected gains or losses. A reputation for morality and law-abidingness can be useful, and the contrary reputation damaging. (Alker and Russett 1965:146) The third pillar of Alker’s first phase is related to the UN. The direct (even if qualified) analogy between domestic party politics and world politics in the General Assembly gives support to his trust in the positive potentialities of

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the UN. ‘The world could be thought of as a political system in which the major blocs are analoguous to two parties that compete for the favor of the uncommitted voters’ (Alker and Russett 1965:147). Further, Alker claims, with Russett (1965:148), that ‘by providing a forum where the parties must participate in a continuing electoral competition for the allegiance of the neutrals, the United Nations performs a major function in preserving the system’s stability’. To summarise, the moral-political idea behind Alker’s behaviouralist phase was to try to overcome—or at least ease—the tension between the blocs of the cold war with the help of a more adequately functioning UN and by utilising the increased scientific understanding provided by empirically oriented modern social sciences. The problems of the post-colonial world come more deeply into this picture only gradually. It was while teaching methodology as a visiting professor in Santiago, Chile, in the early 1970s that Alker most fully opened his mind to radically different epistemological perspectives, which he found to cut across different geo-historical locations. In Salvador Allende’s Chile, Alker had many discussions on the techno-rational domination aspects of rigorous and expensive standards of scientific practice. Eventually, he made the observation ‘that mathematical social science…distorts social relations to the extent that it participates in and mirrors our alienation under “capitalism”’(Alker 1996:186). At least in his later rationalisation, Alker refers to his lengthy 1974 article Are there structural models of voluntaristic structural action?’ as summarising a major turning point (but see also Alker and Christensen 1972). Nonetheless, he, like Herbert Simon, still used, even if not exclusively, the criteria of validity of the statistical tradition. That 1974 article ‘evoked considerable resistance’ among the causal modelling logical empiricists of the time and did not find a publisher in the USA (it was published in the European journal Quality and Quantity in September 1974). Alker argued that humanistic scholars are often right (sometimes for the wrong reasons) in objecting to statistical models of complex social behavior; but [I claim] also that a faith in positivist approaches to explaining voluntaristic social action is sustainable if an appropriate transformation of those approaches takes place. (Alker 1974:199–200) In other words, he argued that the faith in positivist social sciences has to be reconciled with the social theories of more ‘humanistic, voluntaristic social action’ scholars, otherwise the faith in positivism is not justified. In his second phase, culminating in the Chile years and lasting till 1976, Alker was gradually moving towards thoroughly informational—and also hermeneutico-dialectical—ontologies as well as towards his new, more late-modern (or post-modern) mode of globalism. All the time, he was trying to account carefully for all of his epistemological, methodological and substantial moves. In methodology, he was mostly interested in artificial intelligence, qualitative-mathematical analysis

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of Prisoner’s Dilemma game play and global socio-economic and ecological modelling. After having taken one more step towards a full-scale critical reflectivism, he explained his position—in 1977, in the context of discussing quantitative dependencia theories—of the mid-1970s as follows: I usually argued that quantitative Marxian mathematical political economy and qualitative, nonanalytic computer simulations like those by Abelson, Boudon, and Brunner struck me as avoiding at least some of these problems [of positivism]. (Alker 1996:187, n. 4) When doing more concrete research, he still wrote about the evolutionary possibilities of the UN’s conflict management system, but was also increasingly concerned about ecological problems and large-scale violent conflicts such as the War of the Pacific. By 1977, he had developed the basics of a new dialectical approach to the study of world politics, an approach that was not only reflective but also very original, even idiosyncratic. An outstanding paper from 1977, in which he outlined many of his new ideas, was called ‘Can the end of “power politics” be part of the concepts with which its story is told?’ Even though it was merely an unpublished APSA paper,4 it was the first time he made public the most radical results of his long rethinking process. Alker’s third phase can be termed as ‘emancipatory humanism’ He summarises his position by asking whether we can combine ‘the evident ability of the greatest historical writers to catch our moral and political imaginations, and comment profoundly on the choices before us’, with the ‘hard won professional commitment to falsifiable scientific theorizing’ (Alker 1996:270). Indeed, this is what he is now doing, trying to combine historybased, moral-political visions with falsifiable scientific theorising. In explicating his innovative position further, he also comments on Immanuel Wallerstein’s challenging point that the heavily narrative accounts of most historical research seems not to lend itself to quantification: I do not think quitting is the right response to Wallerstein’s challenge…. Nor do I think that ‘quantification’ is the only mode of formalization necessary or appropriate for the logical and empirical rigor and tractability that mathematical representations have given to so many of the natural and social sciences. We must broaden and deepen the universe of scientifically relevant modelling approaches appropriate for the formal analysis of interpretative and theoretical world histories. Historical evidence, much of it textual, should not a priori be reduced to quantitative time series, or otherwise ignored. (Alker 1996:271) This passage should give a good starting point for analysing Alker’s humanistic, emancipatory approach to the study of world politics. In the following, I shall

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discuss Alker’s approach by suggesting lessons from his development. This indicates two things. First, it reveals that, at the general level, I sympathise with many of the ideas of the third-phase Alker. Moreover, I think that what Alker has written—even if my interpretation of his ideas and development is a fusion of horizons in a Gadamerian sense5—is a very important intervention in the international theory/problem-field and its characteristic solutions. There will be four lessons, and after them a more critical section on the limitations and problems of Alker’s approach. The four lessons are not easily expressible in one short sentence, and thus I have simply categorised them in accordance with their topics. These topics are: 1 2 3 4

how to collect and analyse data; how to analyse and help to solve collective dilemmas; how to broaden, pluralise and deepen scientifically relevant epistemologies and their corresponding modelling approaches; and how to theorise history.

These lessons can and should be read both as intepretative guidelines to Alker’s works and as methodological and theoretical arguments that are based on Alker’s works.

The first lesson: how to collect and analyse data As Alker began his career as a mainstream empiricist it is appropriate to begin from what is often assumed to be the basic operation of social sciences: empirical data collection and analysis. It was Alker’s conviction in the 1960s that ‘statistics in particular is an appropriate, reality-oriented, quantitative discipline for dealing with many of the key international relations theory-building problems’ (Alker 1966:655). Many considered Alker’s early studies to be among the most rigorous exemplars of the scientific approach to the study of IR. Thus, the research designs of those early studies of Alker were often also replicated. A few years later, this ‘self-critical methodologist interested in what was “really” going on’ (see Alker 1976:46) found himself dissatisfied with the practice of being replicated. Why? The replicators seemed to lack any awareness of the vulnerability of simplistic data-theoretic or modelling assumptions. ‘The more I have learned about the limitations of my early work, the more attracted others became to it’, Alker (1976:50) commented ironically. Should this kind of development be called scientific progress?6 What was wrong with his early work? In his Ph.D. thesis dealing with voting behaviour in the General Assembly, Alker used multiple regression analysis and factor analysis. Soon this approach turned out to be flawed, for it could not answer such simple questions as ‘Did aid buy votes?’ or ‘Was aid a result of a favourable voting behaviour?’ Furthermore, Alker realised that ‘separate regression equations might not add up causally’. His first response was to develop more complex ways of analysing data, the core of which was

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constructed simply from the roll call votes of countries in the General Assembly and from the (subjectively interpreted) situational characteristics of these countries. As Alker learned that factor analysis, too, can have a causal interpretation, he worked for a while on the assumption that empirical phenomena are structured by some underlying causal models. Yet there seemed to be something wrong with this approach, too, for the world political reality was, at least apparently, able to transcend all attempts to specify a definite causal model, with unchanging, lawlike co-efficients, of its causal interrelations. This was the case despite the fact that the studies focused intensively on only one functional area, collective security practices. Perhaps there was something wrong with the most fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality and data? Indeed, in Alker’s tenacious, self-critical attempts to improve upon his past modelling exercises, there finally occurred an explicit ontological shift from mechanical, Humean causality, first towards an ontology of information-processing, characteristic of cybernetics and artificial intelligence, and then, eventually, towards an ontology of conversational or discourse analysis (see Alker 1986:2). Most clearly, the ontological shift was evident in Alker’s new modes of understanding what data are. For one thing, he began to rely on precedent logics ‘that are used like psychologies to interpret historical successes and failures’ (1976:51). The testing of hypotheses about precedent logics—what are the relevant precedent cases and how do actors learn from them?—required a new kind of data, namely verbal data. As a consequence of this and other similar methodological shiftings, data was not seen any more merely in terms of behaviour and (subjectively interpreted) situational characteristics. Eventually, Alker generalised from his experiences—which made it rational for him to broaden and deepen the notion of ‘data’—and concluded that ultimately our understanding of the nature of data depends on our social ontology. According to the ontology of inter subjectively constituted social entities, we have to have multi-perspective descriptions of social events and characteristics: Whether an act should be described as a threatening, promising, or mocking action is determined by the perceptions, interpretations, judgments, commitments and shared meaning conventions of the parties involved. The correct description of a social action is thus more than a reliable convergence of coder and/or diplomatic judgments; its meaning and identity is constituted by the multiple interpretative perspectives of the principal actors in such events. Such interpretative complexities, I believe, are an appropriate emphasis for an increasingly historical, practical, institutionally-aware and internationally constituted political science. (Alker 1991:5–6) A related ontological and data-theoretical point is expressed in Alker’s (1996:186) complaint that ‘mathematical social science…distorts social relations to the extent that it participates in and mirrors our alienation under “capitalism”’. Alker

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refers here to the fact that the standard North American statistical practices were—and still are—much too individualistic and mechanistic to account for internal relations between entities. As Ollman puts it, positivist practices presuppose that any social factor is always: logically independent of other social factors to which it is related. The ties between them are contingent, rather than necessary; they could be something very different without affecting the vital character of the factors involved, a character which adheres to that part which is thought to be independent of the rest. [However,] in Marx’s view, such relations are internal to each factor (they are ontological relations), so that when an important one alters, the factor itself alters; it becomes something else. (Ollman 1971:15) Alker himself is not arguing that there are merely internal relations (as some Hegelians—and even Ollman—might do). Rather, his point is that the identities of social entities, such as rules, actors, institutions, are relational, that social entities are interconnected at the ontological level. For one thing, this view makes it possible to claim, as Bhaskar (1986:307–8) does, that ‘positivism at once naturalises and normalises things and reflects in an endless hall of mirrors the [individualistic and atemporal] self-image of Bourgeois Man’. Methodologically, the dialectical view evokes the claims that quantitative, compositional statistical knowledge is no more objective than the essentially qualitative, relational knowledge and that, rather, one should accept that the standard statistical knowledge is conceptually and ontologically secondary to the much richer relational knowledge (see also Chapters 4 and 5). However, let us hear how Alker himself explains and clarifies his position: When both internal and external relations affect case relationships, casematching or ‘precedent-seeking’ efforts become more complicated and historically more interesting. Similarity matching and dissimilarity contrasting of procedurally specified data stories are ‘external’ comparisons unless the attributes used in such efforts are in some sense essential, characteristic, and case-identifying ones. Obviously one wants to relate essential characteristics. The analytical problem, for which statistics can only be moderately helpful, is to develop ontologically cogent distinctions between essential and inessential properties of the case descriptions. (Alker 1996:352) The second major change in Alker’s understanding of the nature of adequate data was more epistemological than ontological. Alker began to emphasise that data—collected in accordance with a particular procedure—are always interpreted by somebody from some particular perspective, and that typically the perspectives of scholars are analogical with the perspectives of the involved political actors

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(with whom they more or less share some but not all formative perspectives). Quite obviously, with the adoption of this kind of understanding, data lose their seemingly innocent and neutral status. Consequently, one should get rid of the reifying effects of the positivist social scientific practices. In line with Alker’s new epistemological perspectivism and his lasting aim at constructing falsifiable scientific theories, Alker advised, in 1977, scholars to follow the rule that the findings of scientific experts with different doctrinal/value emphases must be examined, checked, and compared at least to the extent likely regime participants differ in their environmental assessments. (Alker 1977:48) Later on, he generalised and radicalised his position, without ever advocating incommensurabilism or an absolutely relativistic ‘anything goes’ attitude. All of us who are advocating modest relativism know that the incommensurability thesis, for instance, is vulnerable to the problems of self-reference.7 Alker’s point has always been to enable better scientific practices. In 1988, he stated his own ‘first lesson’ for empiricists as follows: Data-coding procedures should be considered key dependent variables in an emancipatory peace research because they often (sometimes unconsiously) reflect just those social and political forces affecting war and peace that are supposed to be the objectives of investigation. (Alker 1996:339) He illustrates this thesis with a ‘true story’. In a pioneering North American study on the quantification of levels of co-operation and conflicts in international events data, out of the five student coders, one was a citizen of a Third World country and a woman (the others were white men from the USA). Her codings did not ‘reliably’ agree with those of the others and were discarded for most purposes. She then went on to co-found a new important paradigm of conflict research, lateral pressure theorising. The name of this woman is, of course, Nazli Choucri (cf. Choucri and North 1975). This example illustrates how apparently ‘unreliable’ ways of seeing may simply stem from different interpretative perspectives that, moreover, typically correspond to the perspectives of particular actors (and thus reflect different social forces). Moreover, to the extent that the ‘unreliable’ ways of seeing are novel, they can also become scientifically significant. Thus, lateral pressure theory, which was co-developed by Choucri, ‘redefined the meaning and significance of imperialism as it had been experienced by domestic populations within great powers, their unequal allies, and Third World countries’ (Alker 1996:339). According to Alker’s third-phase theory of data, relatively objective data collection is possible if, and only if, the collectors are explicit and reflective

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about the case inclusion and exclusion rules for a data set. They should also be explicit about the normative bases, procedural preferences and political allegiances that inform coding practices. To emphasise: this kind of normative and methodological explicitness is a prerequisite for adequate data construction. An ontological parallel is that in the construction of a data set, one should include the reasons actors give for the actions they take (or avoid) and the precedents they cite (or avoid) for justifying their (in)actions. Moreover, one should also include different narrative accounts of the relevant episodes, as presented by the actors. The hermeneutically, by searching for a justified, sense-making account of the whole, reasons, precedents, and narratives of actors can then be analysed both and critically, by assessing the validity claims of the actors. Finally, there is the question of deviant cases. Galtung (1977:72–95) has argued that the study of the deviant cases should teach us the crucial variables of an invariance and thereby help to break that invariance. Trying to go beyond this formulation, Alker also demands that one should take the best and the worst cases and use them to uncover the practical ‘grammars’ of action and habit that make such outcomes possible. These ‘grammars’ should then be seen as in part changeable, that is, as both potentially negotiable or debatable and therefore political.

The second lesson: how to analyse and help to solve collective dilemmas The Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) is a game-theoretical model in which individual utility maximisation appears to be self-defeating, or at least contradictory to, or in conflict with, overall or longer-term public or collective rationality8. Many major problems of political science have been scrutinised in terms of this model. These include market ‘imperfections’, the ‘tragedy of global commons’, interstate insecurity, arms races, crisis bargaining and also systems of subordination, which can be seen as artificial and consciously structured systems of PD of the subordinates. Alker, who entitled his 1976 autobiographical essay ‘Individual achievements rarely sum to collective progress’, analysed the PD model for the first time in his ground-breaking 1974 essay ‘Are there structural models of voluntaristic social action?’ In this ‘Structural models’ essay, Alker tried to find less reductionistic models than the linear or non-linear behaviouristic models, i.e. he tried to find ‘multilevel models of voluntaristic social action systems’ that could nevertheless be interpreted to be causally or ‘structurally’ deterministic. The PD is so well known, at least in the context of mainstream political science and IR, that there should be no reason to (re)present its general twoperson or no-person game matrices, game-trees or mathematical formulas. The basic idea is that individual and collective rationality differ. In his 1974 article, Alker’s main point was that it is possible to develop and partially to corroborate more empirically adequate models of voluntaristic social action, in line with the ‘nearly pervasive concern of leading non-Marxian Anglo-American social science theorists and philosophers’, but very much ‘unlike most social scientific statistical

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work that has emphasised simple specifications and often interpreted them positivistically or behavioristically’ (1974:236). He argued, however, that these ‘empirically more adequate’ models of iterated or repeated games are necessarily more complex than their predecessors. For instance, the artificial intelligencelooking Emshoff model—in which a game has both a history and a future, and in which actors are learning from the outcomes of their previous choices in a probabilistic manner, according to a certain algorithm—is empirically more adequate and a possible solution to the problematic of infinite reflective regress back to mutual calculations. It is also a very different and much more complex solution than the standard—but in most cases misleading—simple prescription of minimax (guaranteed loss minimising) and maximin (secure-gain maximising) strategies. In many real-world cases of collective goods, the assumption that PD games have a history and a future, too, is adequate, but not in all cases. If the stakes in a ‘game’ are extremely high, such as the loss of one’s job, years in prison, death of a subordinate by the masters (perhaps in a concentration camp) or a nuclear war [sic!], would not a single-choice ‘game’ be a more adequate model than an iterated one? In his 1975 analysis of the descriptive foundations of polimetrics, Alker turned, following Baumgartner and Burns, and Burns and Buckley, to developing a new PD model by redefining it as a three-actor domination system and not viewing it as an iterated game. In this way he was able to analyse the logic as well as moral and causal limitations of ‘divide and conquer’ or ‘divide and rule’ strategies of various rulers/masters of world history, including those of the modern totalitarian nation-states.9 In contrast to the standard practice of presenting the PD in an abstract form, Alker (1975:180–8) developed a three-party model in the context of the narrative; it was probably developed after the original model with its numerical payoffs. In a typical variant of the PD narrative, the position and power of the District Attorney (DA) is not taken into account at all, although (s)he has the capability to get the prisoners to do something they would not otherwise do. This capability is based on the DA’s position in the system of legal and penalty practices, which enables him or her to control communication. That control is crucial in this context in at least two respects. First, the DA can use it (plus the absence of counsel) to decrease the trust that Prisoner A has in Prisoner B. Second, he or she can use it to paint an unconnected and rather black picture of Prisoner B, thus causing Prisoner A to feel less loyalty to (which pre-exists contingently), solidarity with and sympathy for his or her partner (see Alker 1975:180–8). The loyalty of prisoners might be, for instance, due to the fact that they belong to the same community, movement or organisation, which has particular normatively binding regulative rules of its own. Seen in this way, the modality or technique of power on which the PD is based is panopticism, described, modelled and explained by Michel Foucault: Each individual, in his place, is securely confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions. He is seen, but he does not see; he

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is the object of information, never a subject of communication. The arrangement of his room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells imply a lateral invisibility And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. (Foucault 1979:200) This socially produced invisibility of individual actors is also the crucial facility for the power of the DA. This asymmetrical power would be diminished if there were regulative rules such as ‘prisoners should be allowed to talk with their attorney before interrogation’, or if the prisoners nevertheless considered each other as loyal partners instead of strategic calculators. Indeed, even the associated PD narrative is an extremely abstract interpretation, for it abstracts this ‘game’ from the more contextual rules as well as from the questions such as: Are the prisoner’s really guilty? Why are they committed to egoist meansends rationality? Why are they not allowed to talk to their lawyers before interrogation (a talk with an attorney would provide the possibility of indirect communication)? Consequently, can it be said that the legal system in question is democratic or authoritarian, just or unjust? On the basis of these considerations, Alker developed a complex model for estimating the power of the DA and the factors giving rise to that power. Alker did not stop developing his approach to resolving PDs to this still somewhat positivist model of three-party system of domination (his criticisms of positivism notwithstanding, he was still looking for a model of ‘rational’ incentives and, indirectly, for mathematically definable and analysable structural invariances of social action). In Alker and Hurwitz’s 1980 ‘student manual’ called Resolving Prisoner’s Dilemmas, there is an explication of some of the substantial and edificatory (cf. Rorty 1979:359) reasons for moving towards thoroughly conversational and dramaturgical social ontologies. It is not only that empirical and theoretical reasons seemed to be pointing towards more complex models of intentional and voluntaristic—although in a sense also structurally determined— social action. It is also the case that there are close connections between the world understandings of different research paradigms—with their parallels in the actors’ world understandings—and of actors’ abilities to resolve PDs. These connections include the following (Alker and Hurwitz 1980:80–82): 1 Communication of co-operative intention increases an actor’s commitment to it in ambiguous circumstances. 2 Players develop co-operative goals in the iterated PD as a result of a recognition of each other’s behaviour as communication of motives, intention and expectations. 3 PDs are more often resolved when the game is redefined as a problem for moral discourse, and even more in the line of Habermas: ‘PD becomes problematic due to distorted, constrained, or suppressed communication.’ As these observations indicate, by making it clear that there is a form of consciousness that is beyond ‘strategic rationality’, the reasons for moving

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towards more humanistic and late-modern, interpretative social ontologies can also be explicated in terms of Hegelian dialectical development of consciousness. The basic idea has been formulated by Frederick Olafson in one of Alker’s favourite references: The difficulty which mankind experiences and which it is able to solve only very gradually and very slowly is one of achieving a conceptualisation of the self that will permit that reciprocity to emerge as something more than a kind of appendage to an already fully constituted self. The crucial insight on which Hegel’s position rests has to do with interdependence of our concept of the self and our concept of the other and it involves the claim that these conceptions move forward pari passu until they reach a point at which an underlying identity of the one with the other is grasped. (Olafson 1979:241) Olafson is very careful in pointing out that the underlying identity is not the Hegelian absolute one, nor should it be seen as a deterministic outcome of an evolutionary history. Rather it involves the constitutive reciprocity and potentialities of change inherent in the Habermasian undistorted and unconstrained communicative interaction.10 With these points as a background, one should be able to understand Alker and Hurwitz’s concluding lines in 1980 on PDs: As a formal noncooperative game or psychological experiment, the Prisoner’s Dilemma was misdefined and/or underspecified. Surely this thesis follows from our own view of PD experiments as moral dramas on scientific stages…. It [also] accepts at least one implication of Plon’s critique as well: that formal PD games underspecify or mispresent socially relevant class/domination relations. PD avoidance and promotion are part of liberal capitalism’s self-justificatory efforts, but they also transcend the politics of the contemporary era. One should really study the interaction of rules of play, rules of the game and rules of the different social orders in which the game is embedded. Our dramaturgical perspective accepts the view that real life PD dilemmas need actively to be recreated. Essentially they involve three or more unequally powerful actors following incomplete scripts about their own moral choices, scripts whose lines are at least partially revisable in the actual context of their recurrence. (Alker and Hurwitz 1980:118) In his 1980 article with James Bennett and Dwain Mefford (1980), which fuses Alker’s interests in the UN’s collective security system and PD modelling, he goes on to analyse security as a contradiction between individually reasonable security-seeking practices and collective security. That is, Alker scrutinises problems of traditional state security in terms of a PD situation. By building upon an organisational model based on the Emshoff model, in which actors are

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learning from their previous choices, and by ending up with something that is quite reminiscent of Deutsch’s well-known cybernetic model of foreign policy making,11 Alker, Bennett and Mefford try to analyse not only the practical intentionality of means-ends calculation but also the processes that define and re-define political goals themselves. By focusing their analysis on the cognitive processing within organisations, Alker, Bennett and Mefford emphasise the importance of studying how precedents or lessons from the past are initially acquired, and then subsequently applied, in the practical activity of problem solving during the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy. Their point is that an individual actor’s course of action is principally determined by the prior construction of the set of possible initiatives and consequences attributable to the parties involved. This is a cognitive process that involves defining new situations on the basis of comparison with previously experienced situations which exist as richly described incidents in individual and collective memory. These incidents are typically structured as sequences of action, as narratives, the elements of which are selected and linked together by causal and intentional connectives to yield a plausible ordering or configuring. From this perspective, there can be argued to be two ‘orders of constraint’ that shape and select policy: 1

2

The first comprises factors that set a bound on the scope and diversity of the narratives (or scenarios) the policy-making apparatus is capable of generating. In the Foucauldian terminology, discourses are bound by the way they characterise the field of possible objects, establish the way language functions with respect to objects and position the speaking and acting subject. They are also bound by the available set of narrative structures. The second involves the mechanisms of choice that select and amalgamate the narratives under consideration. In the Foucauldian terminology, this is a matter of the form and way of localisation and circulation of discourse(s) within the foreignpolicy-making organisations. Power, also in the more traditional Weberian sense—as the capacity of an actor positioned within a social relationship to carry out his or her own will despite resistance—and organisational structures come into the picture here.

Even though the original point of departure had been, a decade earlier, the rather positivist study of collective security practices and iterated PDs, Alker is here taking on board Foucauldian (Foucault 1991a:56–7; Foucault 1991b) and Ricoeurian (Ricoeur 1984 and 1988) ideas in explaining changes and continuity of foreign policy. Also of great interest for an IR theorist is the result of Alker’s more recent game-theoretical study entitled as ‘Fairy tales can come true: Narrative constructions of prisoner’s dilemma game play’ (originally with Karen Rothkin and Roger Hurwitz). The main claim is that the mechanisms generating reciprocity are not the simplistic ‘tit-for-tat’ strategies discussed by Anatol Rapoport and A.Chammah (1965) and, in an evolutionary fashion, by Robert Axelrod (1984).

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Rather, despite the physical communication barrier, the players attempt practically to reason together. They reflectively explore their historically developing situations, and frequently (re)construct their social relationships and (eventually multi-move) strategies as the game proceeds, until a stable pattern of play, based on mutually supporting interpretations, has developed. (Alker 1996:320) On the basis of Alker’s lessons, how should we analyse and help to solve collective dilemmas? Acknowledging that there are many very different situations of collective dilemmas, Alker’s methodological point is twofold. First, we should really study the relation between the rules of play and the game, and the rules and the often asymmetrical resources of different social contexts in which the PD game is embedded, rather than abstract and reductionistic models of PD. Second, the focus should be on studying the (logics of the) scripts about actors’ moral choices. The precedential, narrative-embedded and dramaturgical lines of these scripts are up to an extent revisable in the actual context of their recurrence—and thus potentially political.

The third lesson: how to broaden and deepen scientifically relevant modelling approaches Recall now the response of Alker to Immanuel Wallerstein’s challenge, to the claim that the heavily narrative accounts of most historical research do not seem to lend to quantification. Alker argued, in accordance with the main results of his studies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, that ‘we must broaden and deepen the universe of scientifically relevant modelling approaches appropriate for the formal analysis of interpretative and theoretical world histories’ (Alker 1996:271). From the early 1980s onwards, Alker has followed his own suggestions and instructions rigorously. For many in the mainstream of political science, IR and peace research, Alker’s two hermeneutical-structuralist studies of this period may appear utterly incomprehensible, or at least irrelevant to the concerns of ‘serious’ political science.12 In contrast to this view, I would like to argue that these studies by Alker are among the most innovative published IR works of the 1980s. In the ‘Two reinterpretations of Toynbee’s Jesus’, Alker (originally with Lehnert and Schneider) poses the basic research questions as follows: In the light of both traditional and more recent scholarly approaches, what are the appropriate, scientific ways to ascertain the meanings we and others see and feel within the Jesus story? What motivating power or charisma does this story, or ‘myth’, contain? What basic structure or structures, what infectious, self-replicating, ‘viral’ qualities account for this power? Can we replicably discover and empirically test some of the ways in which its deepest structure has been rewritten into different ‘surface’ texts? Or do the ‘rewrites’

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that are discussed by many traditional scholars themselves differ in their fundamentals? Which versions of the Jesus story, thought of as an imitable hero story, have had more or less appeal in which personal, cultural, economic, or political contexts, thought of in contemporary or historical terms? (Alker 1996:105) Alker, Lehnert and Schneider are looking for ‘analytically reproducible, motivationally suggestive plot structures implicit in story texts’, with the help of computer-assisted hermeneutical analysis. In other words, Alker, Lehnert and Schneider ask: What are the cultural and/or universal factors that limit the scope and diversity of the narratives that actors are capable of generating? The fundamental aim is thus to find general, widely spread, emotion-generating ‘logics’ of narrative construction, or ‘scripts’, which are implicit in the way in which elements of narratives are selected and linked together by causal and intentional connectives to yield a plausible ordering or configuring, a story. How should, and could, one answer the questions posed by Alker and his colleagues? Assuming that motivationally productive, mimetic, plot-like structures help to give meaning to children’s stories and religious and political myths alike—and that they also structure the precedents constitutive of the problem solving of the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy—the first scientific goal must be an adequate and operational identification of these structures. Once identified, their connections to the reflective monitoring of conduct and, more deeply, to the lives of actors must be investigated. We need systematic coding procedures for the identification of elements of narratives and their structures in texts. Alker, Lehnert and Schneider state in the ‘Two reinterpretations of Toynbee’s Jesus’ paper that ‘reasonably explicit and reliable heuristic and grammatical coding rules exist for most of this process, but no completely programmed and validated coding algorithms are available’ (Alker 1996:118). Although Alker, Lehnert and Schneider use computers both in their coding and analysis of the textual material, they make it clear that ‘computers can help focus, clarify, criticize, explicate; they do not supplant the human interpreter’ (Alker 1996:137). Model building in computational hermeneutics can become quite complicated. Lehnert found 199 molecule-like structures, Alker and Schneider many more, of which a computer search algorithm further identified about half as undominated, ‘top-level units’. Most of these were found to be connected with each other. Next, central and transitional undominated plot units were organised as episodical clusterings of the Jesus narrative. From the consequent clusterings schema, Alker, Lehnert and Schneider formulated generalisations about narrative structures. They also put forward some suggestions about how these—presumably universal—structures are connected to the reflective monitoring of conduct and to the lives of different actors. As fascinating as these suggestions and tentative generalisations may be, there are only a few concrete, precise statements that an IR scholar or a peace researcher could easily utilise. The 1985 essay on ‘Toynbee’s Jesus’ is best seen as another innovative analysis of the research possibilities open to a post-positivist.

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However, for a peace researcher or an IR scholar, ‘Fairy tales, tragedies and world histories’ is more concretely suggestive. This 1987 article—the idea goes back to the mid-1970s—begins with the observation that, despite their obvious differences, very similar configurative elements connect fictional stories and traditional histories. Now, remember the claims (1) that ‘conflict and crisis, as well as the steady state in which violence remains latent, can be partially explicated in terms of dynamics which are approximated by the interactions of artificial systems equipped with the story-building and story-appraising characteristics’ (Alker, Bennett and Mefford 1980:195), and (2) that the stories constituting foreign policies—as well the actions of political movements—are often world histories. From this perspective, the importance of Alker’s attempt to analyse and explain the appeal of great world histories should be obvious. To delimitate his area of study, Alker chose three schools of writing world histories (and futures) as his object of analysis. The first one is the global modelling studies evoked by the Club of Rome’s amplification of debates occasioned by Jay Forrester’s World Dynamics. The second one is the Annales studies of modern world systems stimulated by Ferdinand Braudel’s exemplary writings. Finally, he also analyses Marxist analysis of the long waves of capitalist development, as exemplified by Ernest Mandel’s theories. Alker is not treating these studies merely as—potentially policy-constituting—fairy tales, but, rather, he is trying to leave space for finding out the relative sense-making and truthfulness of these three different styles of history writing. Perhaps this also explains the choice of the textual objects of his study, and the fact that he did not take up the neo-realist world historical fairy tale of ‘hegemonic cycles’ for a textual analysis?13 At least he writes that: I take it to be one of the reasons for the relative ‘success’ of such studies is the extent to which the authors or their fellow workers have combined dramalike readability with an impression of historical and/or scientific trustworthiness and the quasi-metaphysical, almost inevitable grandeur to which seekers after total truths (including myself) are especially susceptible. (Alker 1996:268) Alker is also perfectly aware that the determinism—and, yes, positivism—of the studies of Jay Forrester, Ferdinand Braudel, and Ernest Mandel does not ‘leave much room for individual or group responses to the enormous moral, economic and political issues raised by their accounts’ (Alker 1996:269): Life is not a myth or a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending; neither is it an inevitable tragedy, one that encompasses all of Western civilization or the human species. Nor are most political or cultural leaders successfully heroic. Should one then refrain from attempting to give meaningful interpretations to world history? Or should one try to refrain from being ‘ideological’ in making such efforts, if it is indeed possible to do so? Can we

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indeed refrain from mythical, poetic or moralistic and ideological elements in writing scientific histories of the challenges, the limits and the potentialities of our times?… If [some such argument] is accepted, then we may ask these questions in another way: Is there some improvement possible in the way historical accounts can be made testable as they approach value questions, structural constraints and human choice possibilities? Is there a way of making world historical accounts empirically revisable while at the same time allowing them to have the reflective character and dramatic force of a tragic morality play or the ironic happiness of a Russian fairy tale? (Alker 1996:269–70) The bulk of the paper is devoted to the analysis of narrative structures. The point of departure is the way Vladimir Propp, in his analysis of Russian fairy tales, reduces all of his analysed tales to a single structure, or schema, with two variations of the middle-of-the-stories events. First, the setting, or the preparatory aspect of a story, is defined. Then, the story develops because of villainy or because of some kind of lack; through the completion of some difficult tasks, either the villain must be overcome or the lack must be resolved, or both. In the middle of the story, there are two possibilities: either (1) a ‘struggle, then victory’ sequence of episodes, with the branding of the hero, a struggle between hero and villain, the defeat of the villain (this is the peak of the narrative, perhaps with some initial misfortune), the pursuit of the hero, as well as unfounded claims by false heroes; or (2) a ‘solution to a difficult task’ sequence of episodes, with unfounded claims by false heroes (the hero still at home), a difficult task, the branding of the hero (by a princess, often in and/or before a battle), with a preliminary or almost final solution possibly occurring (this is the peak of the narrative, perhaps with some initial misfortune) and the pursuit of the hero—with the hero being rescued from pursuit. Finally, the hero is recognised, he is given a new appearance or new possessions, and false heroes, as well as any still unpunished villains, are dealt with. The end scene is that the hero is married (to the princess) and/or ascends to the throne, etc. This narrative structure can be generalised as a set of rewrite rules for a simple story grammar, in terms of STATES and EVENTS, and THEN connectives, and CAUSE connective. This more abstract and formal way of expressing the generative structure of narratives is argued to be better at conveying text composition syntax than the semantic and pragmatic dependencies among story elements that are still present in Propp’s formalisation. Nonetheless, Alker sticks to the formal rewrite rules when he illustratively analyses the structure of Mandel’s Long Waves of Capitalist Development. The point of this illustration is that we should measure ‘actual historical sequences’ and ‘think of possible world historical developments in terms of alternative story grammars’ because this kind of thinking and analysis ‘can enlighten and orient us toward a better future of constrained, but multiple possibilities’ (Alker 1996:302). In other words, the analysis of narrative structures should be brought back to the analysis of world historical episodes, tendencies

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and structures, in order to make models of these better, to make them more imaginary and more sensitive to different world historical possibilities. What else has Alker to say about how to broaden and deepen scientifically relevant modelling approaches in the post-positivist era? In a paper from 1981, when commenting more generally on the global modelling studies evoked by the Club of Rome’s amplification of debates occasioned by Jay Forrester’s World Dynamics, Alker (1981b:353) says that ‘too many people identify political/ administrative cybernetics with Forrester-Meadows world modelling’. They may also identify it with sophisticated econometric modelling that includes, for example, error feedbacks, or with the more complicated models of systems theories. However, this perspective on global modelling is very narrow and problematic for a number of reasons: I want to correct such false impressions. Relevant contributions include communications-oriented redefinitions of the essence of politics; the reintroduction into logico-empirical inquiry of teleological ontology and epistemology; emancipatory cybernetic hierarchies of knowledge; linguistic understanding and action; scientific modeling of systemic reproductive and selfproductive processes, as well as pathological and healthy, even innovative and creative transformations therein; and a non-economic vocabulary for evaluating political successes and failures. (Alker 1981b:353) Alker not only points to the relevant social theoretical contributions for enriching the potentialities of global modelling, and admitting that the relevant literature is often ‘heavily historical and not easily formalizable’ (Alker 1981b:370), but also outlines a new set of problems for those global modellers whose background is in the cybernetic tradition. He terms this the dialectics of state formation in centre-periphery systems. It is dialectical because the works within this problematic should also deal with identity-involving or constitutive relations between centres and peripheries, and between national parts and systemic wholes. The emphasis on state formation comes already from Deutsch’s cybernetic- and communication-centred studies on nation building. The idea that all this occurs in larger centre—periphery structures came, naturally, from the Dependencia school and World System Analysis, and it was supported by the (still popular in 1981) studies of dependency relations and autocentric strategies for their reversal. However, Alker wanted to include other themes as well, and to show how all these could be systematically modelled: Bruno Fritsch’s concern with the increased capital formation requirements of modernizing nation-states exploitatively interdependent with their environments adds an important ecological moment to state formation problematique as previously formulated…. The inner-relations of imperialistic powers and their self-reconstituting, power-balancing systems also seem a particularly recalcitrant

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problem for the would-be narratively oriented global modeler…. If nations, classes, or global systems can be identified in terms of their innermost, constitutive production modes or organising principles, a fair approximation to such identities can be obtained using incompletely prespecified metaprograms, frames, demons, scripts, or production systems, as these procedural entities are currently conceived in artificial intelligence research. (Alker 1981a:372–3) Despite his inspiring suggestions, Alker has never systematically shown, by doing an exemplary study, how one could and should conduct more appropriate global modelling. Perhaps Ashley’s 1980 book The Political Economy of War and Peace, which is a brilliant work in the lateral pressure paradigm, comes closest to what Alker has in mind.14 Nevertheless, his methodological works from 1977 onwards offer many valuable hints, concrete suggestions and even detailed, although only partial, modelling exercises for anyone interested in improving the past global modelling approaches. In addition to the models of narrative structures, one can find among his works a refined, artificialintelligence-based analysis of the inner relations of imperialistic powers and their selfreconstituting, power-balancing systems (Alker 1996:184–206); a case for a ‘neoclassical polimetrics’, which is grounded in political argumentation about practical choices in particular contexts, argued itself in the context of analysing and quasiformal modelling of the ‘dialectical logic of Thucydides’ Melian dialogue’ (Alker 1996:23–63; see also 1984); and exercises in linguistic, computer-assisted political discourse analysis (for instance, Alker et al. 1991a; Alker et al. 1991b). These and other related works may not amount to an articulation of a full-scale approach to rigorous post-positivist global modelling, but they are important arguments about how to broaden and deepen scientifically relevant modelling approaches.

The fourth lesson: how to theorise history s Many of the points made in the previous three lessons are immediately relevant from the point of view of the question ‘How do you theorise history?’ Next I will now finally scrutinise Alker’s approach to theorising world history by exposing the ‘Dialectics of World Order’ project, initiated by Alker and developed in transnational co-operation with Tahir Amin, Thomas Biersteker and Takashi Inoguchi.15 The ‘Dialectics of World Order’ project is an attempt to theorise recent world history and possible futures in the dialectical and post-positivist terms of Alker’s third phase. The first outcome of this project was the publication of the article called ‘Dialectical foundations of global disparities’ (Alker 1981a). In that article, four contending, inter-penetrating systems of global order are proposed as appropriate units for an inquiry: capitalist power balancing, Soviet socialism, corporatist authoritarianism and collective self-reliance. The fact that one can no longer be content with some of Alker’s hypotheses does not invalidate his approach. On the contrary, the far-reaching and unexpected transformations of the 1980s and

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early 1990s seem to confirm his fundamental—and well-grounded—assumption that world history should be analysed (interpretatively) as an open process, in which choices of actors do make a difference, sometimes also to the intended direction. Furthermore, even though one should try to re-identify the relevant world orders, many of Alker’s ‘hypotheses’ are still fruitful in investigating their inter-relations. These include the following: 1 2

Every region of the world unequally reflects the mutually inter-penetrating and (sometimes) opposed world orders. Besides revolutionary class conflicts, two major determinants of the birth of newer state types have been the world wars (the cold war included) and the intense pressures for modernisation associated with relatively late development in a world of more technically advanced, predatory and powerful actors.

‘From imperial power balancing to people’s wars: Searching for order in the twentieth century’, a 1989 article written by Alker, Thomas Biersteker, and Takashi Inoguchi, continues Alker’s interest in collective security practices, and applies the same kind of thinking to analysing the development and relative (in)validity of different modern models of peace and order. Alker, Biersteker and Inoguchi (1989:135) limit themselves to an emphasis on three ‘partially implemented, globally oriented security-seeking programs of the past century: the Eurocentric balance of power, Wilsonian collective security, and international socialist transformation through people’s wars’. The difference between the analysis of ‘world orders’ and this analysis is that, while the former was also concerned with the production modes that are also constitutive, in the latter case only the organising principles are analysed. The Eurocentric power-balancing system, which emerged in the eighteenth century, became formalised in the nineteenth century and, in a modified form, also constituted many cold war practices (cf. Patomäki 1992a:212– 14). The organisational principles of this model include the idea that states are considered and treated as unitary actors, reciprocally recognising, interacting with and differentiating among themselves. The system has maintained itself by a mixture of force, the threat of the use of force, dynastysupporting marriages, alliances and diplomatic means. Further, unrestrained power was seen as a threat to all other system members, hence the prescriptive principles of action that collective power, through the use of alliances, should be used against any state or bloc that became inordinately powerful (‘balancing’ policies, in accordance with the central principle of astronomy, mechanics and economics of the time). Both hegemonical aspirants and their equilibrating antagonists were expected to stop fighting rather than eliminate a core-state actor. Alker, Biersteker and Inoguchi (1989) treat collective security simply as a power-balancing alternative. They argue, quite provocatively, that ‘Wilsonian collective security was not diametrically opposed to power-balancing, but rather redefined and globalized an older Eurocentric power-balancing system’ (Alker

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et al. 1989:145). The only difference was/is that any threat to peace was/is assumed to be of basic concern to all members of the international society. Consequently, aggression was/is outlawed by a ‘balance’ of ‘all against one’. However, Wilson [also] called for a world of nationally homogeneous, self-determining, market-oriented, trade-fostering, democratic states whose public opinion would support the condemnation of future aggressors. This liberal image of a cooperative world of rational, predictable people and states represents a major change from the balance-of-power era. (Alker et al. 1989:146) However, this call for making the world homogeneous meant, in practice, that war-avoiding doctrines and theories of collective security became coupled to warfighting practices and doctrines such as Wilson’s total war designed to end all wars. Further, Wilson was not the only one who offered progressive, total alternatives to traditional diplomatic practices; the proletarian internationalism of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and other Marxists was at that time Wilson’s major world political rival. While for Wilson ‘peace’ meant also the continuation of the status quo, Lenin was advocating a major, world-wide socioeconomic change. Consequently, Leninism formed the background for those from Mao and Lin Biao in China in the 1930s to the Sandinistas of the 1980s, who have developed and propagated the conception of ‘people’s wars’. This conception usually includes the belief that a future classless society will eventually guarantee an eternal peace. Mobilising societal cross-class support to a—violent, if necessary—revolutionary struggle for socialism would/should thus create the basis for a lasting peace and order. The analysis of Alker, Biersteker and Inoguchi has practical-political implications. They demand more contextually sensitive and historically reflective doctrines of collective security, ‘some less total, more realistic alternatives’ (Alker et al. 1989:159). I would like to go further and suggest that we should also seek alternatives that do not define or presuppose an eternal order that would amount, in particular circumstances, to function as the status quo. Any status quo that would be preserved with the help of Wilsonian ‘all against one’ powerbalancing policies— even though this is perhaps possible only as long as somebody is able to orchestrate and legitimate the actions of ‘all’—will eventually work against the basic underlying principle, that is, peace. As will be argued in Chapter 8, contextual peaceful changes should be made an institutionally guaranteed, always open possibility. In any case, to the extent that one is willing to accept at least some of the methodological notions that Alker has developed during his third phase, the summary of these studies should illustrate how to theorise history in an interpretative and heuristic manner. This concludes the fourth and final lesson from Alker’s development. It is finally time to consider some limitations and problems of Alker’s approach.

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Some problems and limitations of Alker’s approach Up to this point, my story about Alker could have been read as a simple fairy tale. However, as Alker has argued, life is not a myth or a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending, nor is it an inevitable tragedy. We need more complex, more interesting stories. On the one hand, Alker has already been recognised, even if his arguments have been rarely followed; he was the President of the ISA in 1992–3. On the other hand, although it certainly may still be plausible to envisage Alker as a lonely, courageous and insightful figure, heroic in his attempts to re-think the methodological foundations of IR and peace research, his constructive solutions to the lack of convincing scientific, moral and political results are by no means sufficient. Also, Alker’s stand on ontological realism/idealism is ambiguous. An obvious limitation of Alker’s approach is the fact that he has been, after all, mostly concerned with the problems of peace, war and (in)security, the only major exception being ecological concerns (see Alker and Haas 1993). Those doing international/global political economy or normative political theory may not be able to find as many interesting things in Alker’s texts. Furthermore, in his third phase Alker has also strongly emphasised communication, discourses and narratives, which for some may indicate that Alker is not able to analyse hard, ‘material facts’ of life. This emphasis of Alker’s—and some contradictory evidence16—notwithstanding, I think it is misleading to presume that Alker has taken the side of the idealists in the debate between ‘idealists’ and ‘materialists’. Yet, this is precisely the interpretation of Christopher Chase-Dunn (1989:31). Chase-Dunn claims that Alker has ‘a cybernetic conception of systemic structure in which social information becomes coded in cultural and symbolic systems’. This, he claims, presupposes that Alker has adopted an idealist philosophy. The accusation is that Alker may have ignored the role of work as material activity, and also the role of material destructive powers of military systems. Alker qualifies his metaphor or analogy in a manner that should make it clear that he is not an ontological reductionist (‘idealist’): ‘Moments’ of social totalities might be thought of as aspects of societal lifeworlds that are unified or ‘reciprocically’ and ‘internally’ related in historical life-contexts by their essential (capitalistic?) generative modes of work, speech, and control. These are not the ‘repetitive’or non-reflecting, lifeless systems for which cogent empirical science is possible. (Alker 1982:83, referring to the ideas of Habermas) Despite the absence of political economy in Alker’s writings, I think it is fairer to side him with the ‘critical scientific realists’ such as Rom Harré and Roy Bhaskar than with ‘idealists’. Attempts to overcome the dualism between agents and structures, ideas and matter, and superstructure and base structure, are at the core of the CR social ontology. Consider, for instance, the following quotation from Alker, which is an explicit commitment to this kind of thinking:

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One can take from Roy Bhaskar’s brilliant book, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation, a very clear statement of the guiding motivation of such a newer conception [of the reality of things]: emancipatory peace research epistemologically directs its ‘learning from the data’ toward the emancipatory ‘uncoupling (of) the present from the causality of the past’, replacing ‘depotentialising (disempowering, oppressive)’ psychological, social, and ecological structures by ‘potentialising (empowering, enhancing)’ ones. Conceiving of emancipation as a ‘special qualitative kind of becoming free’ that consists in the self-directed ‘transformation…from an unwanted and unneeded to a wanted and needed source of determination’, Bhaskar argues that it ‘is both causally presaged and logically entailed by explanatory theory, but that it can only be effected in practice’. (Alker 1996:354) In a recent paper on ‘sequential prisoner’s dilemmas’, Alker sides explicitly with realist philosophies of social enquiry (Alker and Hurwitz 2001). If Alker cannot be adequately criticised because of his alleged ontological idealism (there will always be determination and structures), one could certainly criticise Alker for having never really gone through all the implications of his different methodological propositions and game openings. Alker has worked like Foucault, who has happily admitted: ‘My books aren’t treatises in philosophy or studies of history: at most, they are philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems’ (Foucault 1991b:74). Alker’s papers and articles, too, are philosophical fragments put to work in a historical field of problems. Although there is clearly a family resemblance between all of his post-1977 papers, articles, essays and books, nevertheless there may be too much room for ambivalences, ambiguities and contradictory interpretations. Of course, those comprehensive views that are able to admit that there are holes, silences, contingent incommensurabilities, ambivalences and ambiguities are more open to change and learning than those that resist admitting this much (cf. Bhaskar 1989:155). The point is only to say that there is a need to work out the ontological, epistemological and normative underpinning more systematically. From a wider perspective, perhaps the main problem with Alker’s approach is that he has tied himself to such an extent to developing formalisable ways of modelling social worlds. One may interpret this as a lasting trace of his early belief in modern science, or one may see it as a fruitful commitment to thorough and systematic analysis. In either case, the problem remains: as Alker (1981b: 370) himself admits, the relevant literature on world politics and history is often ‘heavily historical and not easily formalizable’. However, Alker is sensitive to this problem. In one place he (1996:198) even defines himself as a ‘radical traditionalist’ to indicate that he attempts a synthesis between the ‘traditional’, epistemologically sceptical, and progressive, epistemologically optimistic (liberal or Marxist), approaches. In addition to the ‘Dialectics of World Orders’ papers, he has also written a non-formalistic, sympathetic paper on Hedley Bull’s world

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society problematic—a nice contrast to his 1966 article on the non-additivity problem—arguing that Bull’s criticism of quantitative ‘cooperation under anarchy’ problematique has considerable force (Alker 1996:359). In his 1992 Presidential Address called ‘The Humanistic moment in international relations: Reflections on Machiavelli and Las Casas’, Alker (1992:347) also advocates recovering ‘the humanist ideals and approaches which sometimes get lost in our modern strivings for scientific rigor’. What does Alker mean by ‘humanist ideals and approaches’? He (1992:347) characterises them as the ‘critical, interpretative, lesson-drawing disciplines centered around grammar, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy’. Furthermore, he connects the recovery of these ideals and approaches to the beginning of the end of modernity and is willing to anticipate subsequent eras of history. He should thus be seen as a late-modern humanist who is nevertheless interested in developing rigorous methods. However, the problem remains: there is a gap between what one can analyse with the help of computer-assisted methods, (quasi-) formalities and rigorous models, however humanistic these methods, formalities and models might be, and what is ‘heavily historical and not easily formalizable’. Alker’s partial answer to this problem is his ‘Dialectics of World Order’ project, which shows a possible way of theorising history in an interpretative and heuristic manner. In my view, this is not enough. One should be able to go beyond this, to be able to find more general but pluralistic, diversity-encouraging research methodologies for historical social sciences (as Wallerstein or Giddens would call it). There are many hints at this kind of methodology, like the following: augmented by Rescher’s conception of dialectical reason: ‘Reasoning can proceed not just inferentially’ (ampliatively from axioms) ‘but also dialectically’ (reductively, argumentatively) from a complex, contradictory set of plausible initial positions. ‘There are two different sorts of cognitive disciplines—the hard (e.g. physics), for which the mathematical (ampliative model [of reasoning]) is doubtless optimal, and the soft (e.g. history), for which the dialectical/reductive model is optimal’. (Alker 1996:209, n. 3) This might open a path towards a general methodology of iconic modelling. Iconic models are based on the dialectical/reductive way of reasoning; concerned with the explicit reflection on the metaphors and analogies used in formal and nonformal social scientific explanations alike; able to incorporate the temporal, narratively structured dimension of social worlds in them; and leave room for both explanatory emancipation and imaginary edification. Although all evidencebased interpretations of texts and explanations of social reality, when understood in terms of iconic modelling, can only be trans-subjective and periodic, they must also put forward much more general truth-claims, to be truly open to critical dialogues with others. These ideas will be explicated in Chapter 6.

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Concluding remarks As Alker’s development has been an intertextual journey through different empirical research projects and theoretical texts, so we all are in the midst of such a journey. Yet far too many seem to be afraid or incapable of travelling very far. ‘It is safer to stay at home and in the neighbourhood’. It is thus not an overstatement to call Alker’s voyage ‘exemplary’. Alker’s development may be divided into three different phases. The ‘behaviouralist idealism’ of the first phase had three pillars: belief in science; a particular theory of conflicts; and cautious belief in the potentialities of the UN. Even at the risk of a teleological reading, Alker’s second phase is largely understood here as a transitional one. Of course, at that time, Alker could not foresee his future development. Yet he argued that the faith in positivist social sciences had to be reconciled with the social theories of more ‘humanistic’ scholars, otherwise the faith in positivism was not justified. Finally, Alker’s third phase may be called ‘emancipatory humanism’. Alker’s long voyage shows how one can learn and develop new approaches. Scholars should not see themselves as condemned to stick to doing research within the approach they have once learned—often occupying a narrow position in the highly repetitious international theory/problem-field solution set. There is no reason to think that we are forced to stay where we already are, without movement, without direction and occasional revisions of direction, without turns and re-turns. Indeed, the story of Alker’s voyage should be able to reveal the false necessity of building an academic home and then staying in the neighbourhood for ever. Thereby this developmental story could even contribute to inducing emancipatory changes in the field, to help to empower others to start their own voyages, perhaps from where Alker has guided us. In trying to build a sense-making narrative out of Alker’s writings, I classified them in four groupings, each dealing with a question: (1) How to collect and analyse data?; (2) How to analyse and help to solve collective dilemmas?; (3) How to broaden and deepen scientifically relevant modelling approaches?; and (4) How to theorise history? After having shown the way Alker developed, step by step, new, humanistic, late-modern research methods and modelling possibilities, I also discussed some of the weaknesses and limitations of Alker’s approach. Even though it is of course true that Alker has not been able to resolve the methodological problems of historical social sciences, he has been in the avantgarde of IR and peace research. As argued in this chapter, the next task would be to articulate a consistently realist ontology and epistemology, and a related methodology.

Notes 1 However, Galtung too has revised his ontological and epistemological assumptions; see Galtung 1977 and 1996. For a critical realist attempt to develop these ideas further, see Patomäki 2001a.

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2 Whenever possible, I refer to this book instead of the original papers, since many of Alker’s papers were either circulated as unpublished mimeos or have been published in places that are not easily accessible. 3 Alker wrote (1976:45): ‘My first “way of seeing” the UN political process was heavily influenced by Dahl-Lipset-Haas type pluralism. And it was grounded in my personal commitments. World cleavages might not be so cumulatively destructive if they did not reinforce each other.’ 4 Journal of Peace Research rejected it when Alker submitted it there! Eventually it ended up in Alker 1996, as Chapter 5. 5 In the words of Gadamer (1977:94), the truth of hermeneutics is that it ‘allows what is foreign and what is one’s own to merge in a new form by defending the point of the other even if it be opposed to one’s own point of view’. It should be noted that in the case of me interpreting Alker there are no really opposing viewpoints, rather just differences of opinion and emphasis within a rather broadly defined perspective. 6 In a later paper, Alker (1984:165) even points out that the technical advance in the statistical programs of computers has been a disservice to the scientific development: ‘…it has left many with the false impression that experimentally oriented analyses of variance, sample-based cross-tabulations, and regression analyses of non-experimental data are—or should be—the analytical logics at the core of “polimetrics”’. 7 Neufeld (1993a:69) is thus simply wrong in his claim that Alker and Biersteker (1984) ‘accept that contending paradigms in International Relations are incommensurable’. 8 In the more technical terminology of the game theory, one says that in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game the outcome of the individually rational choices is Pareto inferior (or is not Pareto optimal). This means that there is an outcome in which both (or all) players simultaneously could do better (for, moving towards a Pareto optimal state, it would be enough for there to be one player who could do better while all others would do so as well). 9 Note that, for Alker, totalitarianism is not a unique feature of Soviet or Chinese socialism or of the Nazisms and Fascisms of Continental Europe (or of Latin America, Africa and Asia, for that matter). Rather, Alker (1981a:91) is very explicit in saying that ‘more or less recessive variants of totalitarianism can be found in the state forms of contemporary China, the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, and the United States’. 10 Furthermore, the contextual Lebenswelt is in any communication situation as the everpresent and taken-for-granted background that is ‘always already’ there when we act; hence the attributes ‘undistorted’ and ‘unconstrained’ should be viewed to be hermeneutically relative ideals, not absolute principles. 11 The ‘crude’—although rather complex—model of information flows in the foreignpolicy decision making can be found in the Appendix of the Nerves of Government (Deutsch 1963:258–61); the basic assumptions of this model are discussed sympatethically but reconstructively (from a more reflectivist position) in Alker 1981b. 12 Perhaps the bottom line for those not understanding Alker’s methodological, political and moral development would be the following: ‘Our research activity has also been, in a way, a Faustian romance: our entertaining commitment has been to unify a Promethean science (Artificial Intelligence or computational text analysis) and the ineffabilities of self-serving and self-transcending love’ (Alker 1996:141). For an articulation of a similar, (late-) modernist moral vision that recasts the relation between our ultimate ideals of love and empowerment, see Unger 1984. 13 Fortunately, this has been done by Grunberg (1990). She argues, after having tried to show that ‘the theory of hegemonic stability fails to meet reasonable criteria of empirical accuracy and analytic consistency’, that there are ‘mechanisms of mythic interference with theory-building’ and that this interference can explain the rhetorical appeal of the neo-realist hegemonic stability theory (Grunberg 1990:433–4).

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14 On the cover of the 1980 Ashley book, there is a brief introductory and evaluative note by Alker: ‘If Choucri and North’s Nations in Conflict was arguably the best book in the 1970’s produced by what Zinnes calls the Scientific Study of International Politics (SSIP), Ashley’s major work may well secure that position in the 1980’s. At the same time that it fulfills the promise of that school, it transcends its unreflective epistemological narrowness, confronting and redefining the major political issues of the day. Thus it confirms the frightening prospect that Choucri and North’s lateral pressure perspective, developed in their analysis of the roots of World War I, also applies to the current USA-USSR-PRC superpower competition. Changing modes of powerbalancing are accounted for at the same time that Soviet “social imperialism” is shown to be both imitative of earlier Western expansionism and contagiously infecting the Chinese. Ecologically sensitive redefinitions of demographic-technologicalbureaucratic “growth”, not just clever power balancing realignments, are shown to be prerequisities for a peaceful future.’ 15 This is the name of the planned book or ‘an advanced text on theories of international relations’, which, however, will probably never come out. Be that as it may, most of the intended chapters have been published somewhere. In addition to Alker (1981a), Alker and Biersteker (1984) and Alker, Biersteker and Inoguchi (1989), one should mention at least Amin (1985). 16 In Alker (1986:2) it is stated that he shares ‘the ontological commitments of both Plato and Leibniz’. There, Alker also talks about the ‘ideal reality of linguistic and conceptual transformations and the ideal-material reality of social talk’. Talk is real also in the critical realist understanding, as are linguistic and conceptual transformations, but the ontological commitments of Plato and Leibniz are much less easily reconcilable with realism.

3

How to tell better stories about world politics

In the 1980s, there was nearly a consensus on at least one point, namely that international relations (IR) contained three basic perspectives: (1) political realism; (2) liberalism (seen also with varying emphasis as idealism, or pluralism or economic liberalism); and (3) marxism (seen also, again with varying emphasis, as structuralism or as a socialist model). Each of these holds a characteristic view of international politics. In spite of a century of sustained effort, it is not unfair to say that these perspectives continue to exist only in a rather speculative outline. Also, as far as (1) and (2) are concerned, they mostly repeat the cognitive structure of international problematic that was articulated by Hume and Kant, and established in the nineteenth century. Should we be happy with this ‘pluralism’ and continue the ‘great debates’ in the field? Or is it possible to imagine the prospect that one of these rather sketchy perspectives will eventually emerge as the accepted truth in this area of analysis? In recent years there have been a decreasing number of self-proclaimed Marxist scholars around, with the notable exception of the field of international or global political economy.1 In the 1990s, after the short visit of Marxism in the mainstream of IR, there has been, perhaps more than ever, a tendency to reduce all problems of IR to an almost eternal dispute between political realism and liberalism. Many aim at a synthesis of these two perspectives, a new mixed perspective that could transcend some of the ‘great debates’ and contribute to intellectual progress in the field.2 Postmodernists’ protests aside (cf. Ashley and Walker 1990; George 1989), should we, as IR scholars, have this kind of consensus as the ultimate telos of our research? It is true, as Rob Walker (1987, 1989) has argued, that the IR perspectives are also historical sites for a number of theoretical and metaphysical disputes. These (meta)theoretical debates have, among other things, been about the relationships between history and theory or history and structure (Buzan and Little 1994; Schroeder 1994). IR scholars have discussed, for instance, whether we should prefer the classical approach, emphasising history and conceptual analysis, or the more strictly scientific approach, seeking to find behavioural invariances by strictly controlled deductive or statistical means. Despite the apparent depth of some of these conversations, mostly they have contributed merely to the reproduction of the international problematic. 70

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In the 1980s, however, the critical realist agency/structure debate was introduced to IR. Ahead of its time, Richard Ashley’s celebrated essay ‘Poverty of Neorealism’ (1984) discussed agency and structural determination in some detail (cf. Patomäki 1989). Alexander Wendt’s article in International Organization (1987) remains, for good reasons, one of the most often cited contributions. A few years after this article, Wendt (1991) reviewed Martin Hollis and Steve Smith’s book Explaining and Understanding International Relations (1990). The review led to a debate between Wendt and Hollis and Smith.3 I use this debate as a starting point for answering the question: Could these metatheoretical debates open up new and more fruitful horizons for writing research-based, rational and falsifiable, yet reflective stories about world politics (cf. Alker 1996:270)? In other words, is it possible to tell better stories about world politics? How? The debate of Wendt (1991, 1992b) vs. Hollis and Smith (1991, 1992), continued later for instance by Smith (1994), Walter Carlsnaes (1994), and Viviennejabri and Stephen Chan (1996), is an excellent case for my purposes. It summarises the main points about agency and structure, and, also, the more positivist levels-of-analysis problem. At the same time, it raises important questions concerning the explanation vs. understanding controversy. There is also the dialectical hope that contradictory claims in a critical dialogue could be genuinely constructive. The result of a dialectical exchange does not consist of purely negative or contradictory countermoves; it advances the discussion and shifts the issue onto more sophisticated ground (see Rescher 1977:66–8). Up to a certain, if limited, extent, this has also happened in the Wendt vs. Hollis and Smith debate; at least it is recognised as a norm in it. Two basic issues are raised in this debate. First, it is asked whether there are two stories to be told in the study of IR, the one causal and the other interpretative, or just one, a combination of these two. The second disagreement is about the relationship between ontological assumptions and the basic concepts of causal explanation, conceived in terms of the levels-of-analysis problematic. In the course of the debate, Wendt states that he has become quite persuaded by Hollis and Smith that there often are two stories to be told. However, he maintains that the levels-of-analysis problematic is meaningful only as far as one is willing to take actors as constant in their inner structure or as ‘exogenously given’ (Wendt 1992b:182). He argues that: we can best avoid confusion if we reserve levels of analysis talk for questions about what drives the behaviour of exogenously given actors, and agentstructure talk for questions about what constitutes the properties of those actors in the first place. (Wendt 1992b:185) Wendt claims that to construct system-level theories, one must take into account how actors constitute themselves in interaction (cf. also Wendt 1992a). Thus, Wendt wants to restrict the applicability of ‘levels of analysis talk’. Wendt assumes that the actors in the international system are sovereign states. For Hollis and

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Smith, however, both system and state ‘levels involve questions about the nature of agency’ (Hollis and Smith 1992:188). Indeed, at any given level of analysis, the question of ‘what it means to be an actor’ emerges. On these grounds, they argue that Wendt’s distinction between explaining the behaviour of the units, on the one hand, and what, on the other, constitutes their properties, is essentially empty. They use these points first and foremost to defend the general applicability of the traditional levels-of-analysis thinking in IR. After these two rounds, Carlsnaes and Smith (1994) continued the debate. Whereas Smith (1994) tends to repeat his (and Hollis’s) earlier claims, Carlsnaes (1994:277–87) defends Wendt’s original contention that we need to take into account both inside (‘understanding’) and outside (‘explanation’) factors in our analyses. Carlsnaes attacks the either/or character of the two-stories view by distinguishing between philosophical theories of the relative weight of agential and structural factors and empirical studies of the linkage between the two. He combines these points in his call to the discipline ‘to integrate the explanatory and understanding traditions within social science as well as to resolve the agencystructure problem tout court’ (Carlsnaes 1994:282). Carlsnaes’s own contribution to this goal is found in his argument that we should distinguish between three explanatory levels: accounts of the ‘in order to’ intentions of foreign-policy actions; explanations of why actors have these particular purposes (in terms of ‘becauseof accounts of the dispositions of actors); and explanations of how the structural environment of actors (both domestic and international) affects the two levels. He argues that if we view intentions, dispositions and external structures as a reciprocal process of agency-structure interaction over time, we should be able to build more adequate models for the analysis of foreign-policy behaviour (he has explicated his own suggestions in Carlsnaes 1992 and 1993). In what follows I shall continue and re-direct this debate. First, in line with what Hollis and Smith as well as Wendt have indicated, I maintain that questions concerning the existence of social entities and causal explanation are, indeed, very closely related. However, I will go on to argue that it follows from the critical realist notions of causality and social ontology, which I discuss tentatively in this chapter, that the levels-of-analysis problematic cannot be plausibly defended. It obscures more than it clarifies. Even though it is natural for a critical scientific realist to think about levels in ontological terms, I contend that ‘international’, ‘inside-of-a-nation-state’ and ‘individuals’ are not levels in any of the usual senses. Rather, we should talk about different kinds of interpenetrated, relational contexts and look for depth in other directions. Second, although Wendt states in his reply that he is now persuaded by Hollis and Smith about the relationship between causal and interpretative analysis, I shall defend and radicalise Wendt’s original position; understanding and explanation are complementary and interdependent modes of analysis. In fact, it is quite easy to show how explanation and understanding are inter-related. Hermeneutic understanding is necessary for causal analysis, because reasons are causes, yet that kind of analysis is not in itself enough. Explanation presupposes holistic depth analysis of causes, including structural

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causes. Yet, explanation is a mode of interpretation, and also aims at (better) understanding. This chapter suggests that the agency-structure debate can be a way out of the increasingly outmoded ‘great debates’. Indeed, it is possible to envisage novel interpretative possibilities by re-defining, ontologically, the way that IR discourses characterise the field of possible objects, establish the way language functions with respect to objects and position the speaking and acting subject.

Against the levels-of-analysis problematic In his review essay, Wendt (1991:387) criticises Hollis and Smith for ‘conflating two distinct problems: the levels of analysis problem and the agent-structure problem’. Wendt goes on to claim that the levels-of-analysis problem ‘is a problem of explanation: of assessing the relative importance of causal factors at different levels of aggregation in explaining the behaviour of a given unit of analysis’ (Wendt 1991:387). Both in David Singer’s original formulation (1961) and in Wendt’s reformulation of it, the given unit of analysis, as well as the ‘dependent variable’, is the behaviour of the nation state—in particular its foreign policy. The explanatory variables can be located at the level of ‘system’, ‘states’ or ‘individuals’, or viewed as a combination of them. Wendt (1991:388) claims that Hollis and Smith have changed the issue by taking the phenomenon to be explained to be either the behaviour of the state actors or the behaviour of the international system, or even the system or units themselves. By stipulating that the international system is real and perhaps also able to behave, Hollis and Smith are effecting a shift from the original behaviouralist research focus towards an ontology, towards the problem of emergent collective properties and their explanation. Hollis and Smith reply as follows: Briefly an explanation of state behaviour may or may not explain the state away, depending on where one locates its sources—a theoretical as well as empirical question involving ontology. But a general ontology is never handed to the theorist on a plate, so to speak, and its justification is connected, although indirectly, to explanatory merits. The level-of-analysis problem in international relations cannot be tackled in isolation from the view taken of what is meant by international system, and that is an ontological question. (Hollis and Smith 1991:395) What Hollis and Smith seem to be arguing here is that any attempt to explain something in sworld politics necessarily implicates hypotheses concerning the existence and nature of certain social entities, particularly the international system and different ‘units’ (states, bureaucracies, individuals, etc.). Hollis and Smith are not claiming that one cannot make different ontological assumptions in constructing explanations at a given level-of-analysis, only that all explanations involve some existential (or ontological) assumptions. This is a very important point.

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What then is Wendt’s complaint? For one, Wendt may think that Hollis and Smith are in fact making unacceptable ontological or existential assumptions. Does the international system behave? If it does not, perhaps it then has characteristics that can be explained? But can we explain these properties of the international system merely in systemic terms? Although a Waltzian would maintain a clear separation between theories, respectively, of international politics and foreign policy, the ‘dependent variables’, such as stability and coalition formations, seem to be outcomes of foreign-policy making. As Wendt (1999:12) later explained, it ‘is impossible for structures to have effects apart from the attributes and interactions of agents’. For instance, ‘stability’ is often conceived as the opposite of violent conflicts and war. Even in a step-by-step escalatory process, some foreign-policy actors must decide and wage war. To avoid this conclusion, Waltz (1979:161–2) later qualified his views by arguing that international stability means only two things, namely that ‘anarchy’ (=non-hierarchy) prevails and that the number of principal parties that constitute the ‘system’ remains unchanged. This move makes the Waltzian ‘theory of international polities’ either trivial or absurd. Besides coalitions, Waltz’s main explanandum is stability. Waltz’s theory tries to predict the number of great powers by referring, tautologically, to the number of poles in a system of power balancing. I consider this to be the reductio ad absurdum of Waltz’s neo-realism. It also constitutes a prima-facie case for Wendt’s contention that we should focus on foreign-policy actions and their (perhaps constantly reproduced) outcomes, including war, peace, state relations and regimes of co-operation. For Wendt, then, what IR perspectives typically try to explain are the foreign policies of states and their consequences. This is the case even though he takes a ‘systemic view’, that is, he treats the identities and interests of states as analogical to those of unitary, yet socially constructed, individuals who are continuously reconstructing each other in the course of their systematically structured interaction (Wendt 1992a; cf. Wendt 1994). Hence, given Wendt’s anti-Waltzian ontological presuppositions and his ‘systemic’ theoretical aims, his complaint might be simply that Singer’s original formulation of the levels-of-analysis problem is superior to that of Hollis and Smith. This is due to the more plausible existential hypotheses and a more clearly formulated research problem. Yet there is something more to Wendt’s criticism, even though he does not go very far in articulating it. Wendt (1991:388) might well be saying that he prefers the agency-structure problematic to that of the level-of-analysis problematic. If so, he should develop his case further. In particular, it is my claim that, as a critical realist,4 Wendt should suspect that there is something wrong with the whole levels-of-analysis problematic, since it is based on a positivist (or empirical realist)5 account of science. It is not surprising that Hollis and Smith adopt the standard positivist account of explanation and causality.6 The ‘outside’ way of accounting for behaviour is modelled on the methods of natural science and is usually described as a search for causes. To explain an event or state of affairs is to find another which caused it. This bold

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statement conceals much dispute about the exact relation between a cause and its effect, about the right way to define ‘cause’, and about the nature of causality, both as a concept and in the world. So what follows is very preliminary. But the broad idea is that events are governed by laws of nature which apply whenever similar events occur in similar conditions. Science progresses by learning which similarities are the key to which sequences. (Hollis and Smith 1991:3) In other words, Hollis and Smith agree with Singer that explanation is about finding law-like regularities at work, and hence that explanation follows the socalled deductive-nomological model of causal explanation.7 Hollis and Smith are also of the opinion that explanatory theories should, above all, be parsimonious. They criticise David Dessler for claiming that ‘the richer and more comprehensive the underlying ontology, the better the theory’ (Dessler 1989:446). In this they follow positivism, which has always emphasised simplicity. As Singer puts it: Our model must have such analytical capabilities as to treat the causal relationships in a fashion which is not only valid and thorough, but parsimonious; this latter requirement is often overlooked, yet its implications for research strategy are not inconsequential. It should be asserted here that the primary purpose of theory is to explain, and when descriptive and explanatory requirements are in conflict, the latter ought to be given priority, even at the cost of some representational inaccuracy. (Singer 1961:79) These presuppositions explain why Hollis and Smith are willing to define the field of IR in terms of the levels-of-analysis problematic. As far as the outsider’s story is concerned, they think—with Singer—that the primary purpose of theory is to explain phenomena in accordance with the deductive-nomological model, and in as simple a manner as possible. They also seem to contend that this kind of explanation amounts to assessing the relative causal importance of different levels of analysis. Hollis and Smith do not question that empirical invariances are necessary for causality. They should. Like in other social sciences, there are very few, if any, uncontested invariances in IR.8 The fact that mainstream scholars go about their business as if this were the case is no argument. As Friedrich Kratochwil (1993:68) has pointed out, ‘activities in the profession are more often driven by methodological fads and clientalism than by problems and sustained attention to a research programme’. Moreover, these fads tend to remain within the highly repetitious cognitive structure of the international problematic. The absence of universal regularities does not, however, mean that there is no causality. Perhaps there is something wrong with the prevalent notion of causality? Perhaps we should qualify the Humean causality by making it more complex and contextual. Instead of simple universal regularities, perhaps we should be searching for more conditional regularities?

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In response to this [absence of universal empirical regularities], positivists tend to argue that the social world is much more complex than the natural world (‘interactionism’, already prefigured by Mill) or that the regularities that govern it can only be identified at a more basic level (‘reductionism’, prefigured by Comte), and that, in any event, concepts (or meanings), to the extent that they are explanatorily relevant at all, can only be identified, or hypotheses about them tested, empirically (that is, behaviourally). Neither party doubts for a moment that empirical invariances are necessary for laws, or that the conceptual and the empirical jointly exhaust the real. (Bhaskar 1979:22) Even after the end of the Cold War, some neo-realists have opted for the stubborn Humean simplicity (cf. Mearsheimer 1990; for the criticism that neo-realism cannot explain or even describe the end of the Cold War, see Gaddis 1992; Patomäki 1992a). However, we know that neither the Millian (‘interactionism’) nor the Comtean (‘reductionism’) strategy has been very successful during the past century and a half. To import complexity and contextuality into IR is certainly a better solution than sticking to the simplicities of failed Humean theories of the past. On the other hand, after all these years of unsuccessful attempts of finding invariances, perhaps there is room for more radical solutions? Perhaps empirical invariances and causality are two totally distinct phenomena? Even more importantly, perhaps there are conceptions of causality that explain this absence of universal empirical regularities? It can be easily shown that the idea that causality involves empirical invariances presupposes closed systems. Constant conjunctions of events obtain only in the absence of outside intervention and qualitative variation (see Bhaskar 1979:160). Where a genuine, non-changing causal mechanism has been isolated, can we say that ‘every time {A, B, C…} occurs, X follows’. However, entities do change and systems are more or less open except when carefully set up experimental conditions obtain. In fact, ‘if we retain a Humean definition of causation as regular succession, we will discover no causal laws outside astronomy, where the incapacity of other mechanisms to deflect heavenly bodies from their courses approximates to a natural closure’ (Collier 1994:34). In open systems, probabilistic empirical invariances that seem to connect phenomena are often causally unrelated. This is the well-known post hoc ergo propter hoc—fallacy. A non-Humean, critical realist conception of causality would take as its point of departure the idea that real causal mechanisms and complexes produce effects in open systems. From this perspective, it is wrong to assume that causality can be analysed in terms of simply necessary or sufficient conditions, yet this is presupposed if one talks about empirical invariances. Causality should be understood not only in terms of complexes, but also in terms of the subject matter in question. The modified definition of cause as a so-called INUScondition (see Bhaskar 1979:165, 207 n. 23; Mackie 1976) is a leap forward According to this definition, cause is an Insufficient but Non-redundant element of a complex that is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient for the production

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of a result. Consider the example J.L.Mackie (1976:308–9) discusses. Experts investigate the cause of a fire that has partially destroyed a house. They conclude that it was caused by an electrical short circuit within the house. What do they mean? Clearly the experts are not saying that the short-circuit was a necessary condition for this house’s catching fire at this time; they know perfectly well that a short-circuit somewhere else, or the overturning of a lighted oil stove, or any number of other things might, if it had occurred, have set the house on fire. Equally, they are not saying that the short-circuit was a sufficient condition for this house’s catching fire; for if the short-circuit had occurred, but there had been no inflammable material nearby, the fire would not have broken out, and even given both the short-circuit and the inflammable material, the fire would not have occurred if, say, there had been an efficient automatic sprinkler at just the right spot. (Mackie 1976:308) In other words, they are saying that there were a number of conditions that were themselves unnecessary but sufficient for the short circuit to produce the fire, given certain natural mechanisms and their causal powers. I suggest that causality always works like this. However, we should also make specifications in terms of the subject matter in question. We need social ontology to specify the major features of being we are interested in. Social ontology is an abstract model—or articulation— of social being, not a metaphysical point of departure. Any social ontology is itself a horizon, a hermeneutic standpoint that enables and limits the possibilities of interpretation, and should thus itself be open to change. Richard Rorty (1991:38) has rightly criticised the ‘metaphysical thinker’ who ‘thinks that if you can get the right understanding of Being—the one that gets Being right—then you are home’. In contrast to the claims of traditional metaphysicians, there is no safe ‘permanent home’, just home-like stopping points. Social ontology can be criticised both on the grounds of philosophical arguments showing the conditions for the possibility of X and/or in terms of explanatory and other (dis)merits of different ontological assumptions and existential hypotheses. Critical realism is based on a combination of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgemental rationalism. In the critical realist view, social relations located in time and space form the relatively intransitive dimension of the social sciences that, even in the case of research on the contemporary era, to a large extent exist independently of the particular knowledge that particular researchers may have of them. Discovery and cognitive or discursive development, which include ontological theories and hypotheses, belong to the epistemological dimension, which is relativistic and transitive. Finally, the idea of judgemental rationality implies that it is possible to give good, even if contextsensitive, temporal and contestable, reasons for their validity of a judgement about truth (and truthfulness, rightfulness, good, etc.).

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From a critical realist perspective, many IR ‘paradigms’ and theories are problematic in that they tend to define their ontology in terms of atomist states as unproblematic individuals, which can then form ‘systems’; or in terms of individual statesmen, that lead these unproblematic individual states in an international society based on exclusive possessions (sovereignty). The world becomes fixed, with the implicit assumptions of closed systems and Humean causality, resulting in the reification of the hypothesised entities. A corollary of these mistakes is to think that there are different ‘levels-of-analysis’ in the study of IR. Social being is reduced to statistically measurable ‘factors’, with the implicit assumption that the world is not real, nor differentiated, layered and structured. There are only levels of analysis and hence perceptions or observations that can be measured, counted and analysed. Are there any schools of thought within IR that are based on more acceptable social ontologies? In addition to the many strands of critical theory and poststructuralism, the one that comes closest to satisfying the criteria of social ontology advocated here is British Institutionalism. In brief outline, it is based on the view that there are historical institutions such as great powerness, balance of power, international law and diplomacy, which are based on the long-standing rules, conventions and practices of modern, Western international society. These institutions, as any other social institutions, can be studied by uncovering the shared assumptions of those who act in the name of states, that is, the ‘how things are to be done’ assumptions of statesmen and foreign-policy decision makers (see Bull 1977; Suganami 1983). However, British Institutionalism lacks an explicit notion of causality. To generalise some of their ideas, and to remedy this lack of conception of causality, we need first the idea that reasons are causes. Reasons are non-redundant elements in any causal complex. However, the social complexes capable of producing outcomes contain other components as well. It can thus be argued that there are five necessary elements of social being in any relational causal complex (K) capable of producing events, episodes and tendencies (and the like), namely: historically constructed and socially positioned corporeal actors (AR); meaningful, historically structured action (AN); regulative and constitutive rules implicated in every action and constitution of actors (RU); resources as competencies and facilities (RE); and relational and positioned practices (PRA). Together these form the sufficient but unnecessary complex for the production of a result. Hence, there is never a single cause but always a causal complex K= {AR, RU, RE, PRA, AN}. A result X may be produced both by K1 and K(i>1), i.e. there may be many different sufficient complexes capable of (co-)producing the same (kind of) result. A methodological implication is that the description of a model of historical causal complexes must be accurate and based on as open a process of empirical evidence gathering as possible (for details see Chapters 4 and 5). The aim is to build an explanatory model. Since this process also relies on methodical use of analogies and metaphors, it can be adequately described as ‘iconic modelling’ (Harré 1970:33–62). An iconic model is a descriptive picture—which can and should also be conceived of as an interpretation—of a possible world, a possible causal

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complex, which is presumed to be responsible for producing the phenomena we are interested in explaining. Iconic models are based on idealisations and abstractions, and they always involve metaphors, metonyms and analogies. Although they are interpretative and based on implicit and explicit conventions of language, these conventions are also projective: the model describes and posits existential hypotheses about entities and their relations. If we view causality and explanation in these critical realist terms, the levelsof-analysis problematic loses most of its edge. There is no longer room for the three substantial ‘levels of analysis’; in their stead we are faced with qualitatively different kinds of contexts of social action. Indeed, I agree with Walker’s (1991:461, n. 9) suggestion that the levels-of-analysis distinction is nothing more, nor less, than vertical articulation of a modern European view of horizontal spatiality (state-territoriality). First, there is the immediate nexus, often of a face-to-face kind, of interaction, experienced by all actors, including those acting on behalf of the state, i.e. statesmen. This is the experience corresponding to the ‘individual’ level. Second, there is the institution of the modern nation-state that demarcates and governs an exclusive territory. In abstract, however, this imaginative preconception of many legal and other practices says little about any particular context of action or concrete social relations. Finally, there is the world presumed to exist ‘beyond the borders’ with distinctive institutions of its own such as diplomacy, alliances, international law and world markets. These institutions do not exist ‘above’ nation-states and certainly not ‘beyond’ their borders, however, but are rather (re)produced in a manner similar to any other social institution, in various spatial settings.9 There are also internal relations between institutions. For instance, the institution of state sovereignty is internally— albeit in a contradictory manner—related to the institutions of international society. A sovereign state would not be what it is without being defined in international law and in terms of such practices as power-balancing, collective security, diplomacy or the multilateral governance of the world economy. In this sense, ‘sovereignty’ enables and constrains social action and constitutes certain kinds of actors, such as statesmen and diplomats. In an analogous fashion, many international and global institutions allow for, constitute and/or generate local (and perhaps simultaneously transnational) processes, thus connecting global governance to local developments. For instance, the organised practices of governance—or ‘regimes’—of the capitalist world economy can constitute and generate, in certain kinds of contexts, tendencies such as the internationalisation of the state, the globalisation of consuming preferences and practices, and the unification of political discourses via interpretations of selected events disseminated by the few big multinational media companies. These are part and parcel of hegemonic struggles in world politics. All of this suggests that we should not use the modern commonsense notion of spatiality, reified in the ‘levels-of-analysis’ problematic, as the basis for constructing parsimonious and deductive-nomological explanations of world politics. Rather, we should focus on the relational causal complexes that are capable of producing potential and actual effects—whatever the spatial settings.

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So far, so good. Nonetheless, a major question remains unanswered. Have I not committed ignoratio elenchi, that is, put forward a line of argumentation that does not refer to the standpoint under discussion? If we are interested in understanding and/or explaining the foreign policies of nation-states, is not the levels-of-analysis problematic relevant at least to this goal? It may be objected that, although there are also social relations (which have been made possible by emergent spatio-temporalities that connect local and global phenomena10), and, although sovereignty is a constituted and relational social entity, this does not mean that the levels-of-analysis problematic is not a useful analytical tool in the study of foreign policies. This is a germane question, in so far as the institution of the modern nationstate governs exclusive territories and hence demarcates the boundaries between the inside and the outside of a political community. If the levels-of-analysis distinction is nothing more than a vertical articulation of horizontal spatiality in modern Western thinking (which may well be changed), then commonsense must tell us that it is easy to distinguish between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ social forces. Perhaps this is particularly so for those actors, constituted by the rules of the discursive practices of modern states and international institutions (see Ashley 1987; Bull 1977; Der Derian 1987, 1992), who reflectively monitor the foreignpolicy actions of such states. For these actors, the inside/outside distinction is a question of two contexts of action that may, of course, be related in many ways. On the one hand, these are the contexts of ‘domestic’ politics, state-civil society relations, and of state bureaucracies. On the other, there is the ‘external’ world of diplomatic and intelligence relations, multilateral negotiations, world markets and world history. It may no doubt be sensible to ask—particularly if one is willing to take for granted the understanding of these actors—whether the ‘internal’ or the ‘external’ is responsible for a particular outcome of a particular process, and whether it is possible to generalise on the basis of these experiences. Even in this case, however, the most reasonable way of proceeding is to create a plausible iconic model out of a wide variety of different kinds of hypotheses, and hence to construct (without reifying relational social existence) an evidencebacked picture of a possible causal complex that is responsible for producing the phenomena we are interested in explaining. This is in fact an argument for something that is different from IR but includes it. I shall call it the study of world politics. In the levels-of-analysis problematic, there is agreement that there are always at least two levels, that of the unit and that of the system. ‘Beyond this there is no consensus’, Onuf writes laconically (1995:37). This is a telling agreement. It tells us why the exclusion of non-state relations and social/political spaces is constitutive of IR as a discipline. It is for this reason, I think, that International or Global Political Economy (IPE) should not be viewed merely as a subfield within IR. IPE is founded on a call for a new and more adequate starting point for the field of analysis (see Gills and Palan 1994:3–8; Guzzini 1994:25, 33–4). As a phrase, ‘world polities’ could well capture both these claims: there are states and they have foreign policies and inter-state relations. However, these

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are typically misidentified by the ideologies of the international problematic, and there are also other kinds of relevant relations and spatial settings and organisations. All these can be seen as at least potentially political. By ‘world’ I simply refer to anything that is not merely local or national. Thus the title of this chapter: how to tell better stories about world politics.

Realist conceptions of levels Thus far I have made an argument for a realist conception of science. In such conceptions, the metaphor of ‘level’ is widely used. This might suggest that there is room, after all, for levels in such an approach to IR.11 However, levels in these realist senses cannot be used to defend IR levels of analysis. There are, it is true, emergent levels and society is such an emergent layer. We can also talk about levels and depth within the emergent social layer. However, depth in these senses has little to do with the ‘level-of-analysis’ problematic in IR theory. Real emergent powers and properties do not seem to be pre-organised neatly in accordance with the territorial logic of states. With reference to depth we can, first, talk about temporal depth, in a sense of the emergence and sedimentation of practices and social relations, which, if systematically connected, may give rise to emergent powers and properties. The genealogy of the international problematic, in Chapter 1, is a partial analysis of such emergence, focusing on the preconceptions of practices and the consequent problematic, but also discussing the emergent powers and properties of capitalist market society and modern states. Second, there is the stratification of human agency and action (see Giddens 1979:54; Bhaskar 1986:164). This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6. Suffice it to say here that (unconscious) motivation of, and real reasons for, action may be distorted in self-understanding and public discourses, giving rise to various, sedimented and institutionalised rationalisations. These distortions may be connected to (systematic) unintended consequences of actions and practices. Like motivation and reasons, knowledge in general is stratified. A distinction can here be made between analytically and qualitatively layered depth, defined as follows (see Bunge 1963:39–44). 1

Analytical depth: a piece of knowledge belongs to a degree of analysis An deeper than another, An-1, if this accounts for a larger number of features of the entities presumed to exist in both pieces of knowledge, or if it decomposes its objects more thoroughly than An-1 does, or if it reveals a finer mesh of relations. 2 Qualsitatively layered depth: a piece of knowledge belongs to a degree of layer An deeper than another An-1, if there are novel qualities in An, or if the piece of knowledge explains some properties occurring in An-1, in terms peculiar to An.

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How is it possible to achieve analytical depth? A dialectical synthesis, which develops and qualifies previous positions, is a good example of achievement of depth in this qualitative sense (see Rescher 1977:62–6). Depth is desirable in social sciences also in the analytical senses of dialectical synthesis and accuracy of relations. In Waltz’s neo-realism, there is hardly any depth at all. It is a flat and superficial theory What about qualitatively layered depth? Discourse analysis, for instance, takes a set of surface-level speech or writing acts and tries to explain some of their properties in terms of deeper discursive structures (cf. Alker and Sylvan 1994). Thus, the background discourses of actual communicative exchange belong to the deeper strata of social realities.

Against scientific (re)conceptualisations of IR levels Among possible levels of social realities are layers of practical and discursive knowledge, and the stratification of agency and action. There are also other realist conceptions of levels, some of them verging on positivism. These have been summarised by Mario Bunge (1960; 1963: Ch. 3). Levels can be conceived in terms of degrees, as when one talks about degrees of population density, degrees of integration, adaptation, learning or orientation, or degrees of importance. In this sense, IR levels do not have any meaning, and, in any case, it would here be more appropriate to use the term ‘degree’ rather than ‘level’. Levels can also be conceived with reference to complexity. Prima facie, it is plausible to assume that international or world politics is more complex than national or local politics. However, as the emphasis on the importance of simplicity and parsimoniousness shows, this is not what Waltz or Singer had in mind when they introduced this problematic; Waltz in fact takes the requirement of parsimony and simplicity to its extremes. Thus, although it may be reasonable to talk about degrees of complexity and even call them ‘levels’ (although I prefer not to do so), this is something that goes radically against the underlying tenets of Singer, Waltz and their followers. If it is complexity that is referred to, then the quest for accuracy and depth should imply pursuit for highly complex iconic models of these realities. Levels are often conceived of as layers, i.e. as superposed strata arranged according to the order of their emergence in time, or in terms of their logical precedence. A layer or stratum is a section of reality characterised by emergent qualities. This is the essence of a common realist meaning of level. However, ‘international system’, as distinct from states, is not a layer in this sense. Modern sovereign states and the European institutions of international (or inter-state) society emerged at the same time. “‘International relations” is coeval with the origins of nation-states’ (Giddens 1987b:4). Nation-states and IR are internally— even if ambiguously—related to each other (see Bull 1977:36–7; Camilleri 1990; Giddens 1987:257–8, 281–2; Koskenniemi 1989:55–98, 192–3). Neither would be what it is without standing in relationship to the other. Sovereign states and international relations emerged from the complex re-organisation of political space in Europe. IR did not emerge from a lower ‘stratum’ of pre-existing

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sovereign states but by way of conceptual and practical innovations, and this made it possible to re-organise social relations and practices in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe in terms of sovereign states and diplomatic relations between them. Sovereign states and IR were forged from the pre- and co-existing materials. The conceptual innovations were built on the emergent conception of capitalist man and metaphors drawn from the new sciences. Both the state and IR were conceived in terms of the modern problem of order, which appeared to have been intensified by the emergent powers of modern organisations. It is possible to conceive of levels also as ranks. Ranks belong to asymmetric dependence relations, that is, to hierarchies. Staircase pyramids exemplify such hierarchies. States—even allegedly democratic states—are often conceived in terms of hierarchy. Thus, the head of a state or a foreign minister is ‘above the ordinary citizens or (wo)men on the street’. Consequently, perhaps we could talk about two levels at least in this context (and add some other levels in between as well). However, what about ‘international’? For a Waltzian, at least, this kind of conceptualisation of levels would create a dilemma. It is, after all, the absence of hierarchies that makes the international system anarchic for him. How could anything be in this sense above states? If we, by analogy, extend the notion of ‘rank’ to include causal relations (the higher ‘levels as ranks’ causing the features and actions of the lower ‘levels’), we would, first of all, dilute the meaning of a ‘rank’ considerably, and second, re-open the question as to what it is that produces these causal effects. This question can be phrased in terms of the legitimate realist question about emergent powers and properties of social systems. In the case of an ideal-typical hierarchical organisation, it may seem obvious what or who is responsible for the effects: the top-rank executives, officials or managers. Waltz, for instance, can indeed be read as saying that (the leaders of) great powers are such members of the hierarchy within the international system. However, this would imply the admission that there is a formalised legal hierarchy within the international system and that the international system is hence statelike, not an anarchy. Thus, this understanding of IR levels would contradict the basic thrust of the Waltz-Singer argument. I think, therefore, that any study of world-wide asymmetric power and dependency relations would require an ontology that is drastically different from that of Waltz. Of all realist notions of levels, only two would seem possibly relevant to a reconceptualisation of something akin to IR levels, namely hierarchical power relations and the emergent powers and properties of systems. Social systems have no essences independent of the contexts of action; they change together with those relational contexts. Social systems can, nonetheless, have emergent powers and properties. They must be analysable in terms of actions and positioned practices occurring in concrete spatial settings. For instance, since the seventeenth century, the rules and principles of international society have defined, with increased depth and scope, not only the nature and rights of sovereignty but also enabled capitalist world markets, through universal private property rights and the ‘stability of possessions’ (cf. Bull 1977:5). It included also the creation of labour markets and industrial organisations, at first in

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particular in England. The resulting complex precipitated the Industrial Revolution, which soon led to new powers of modern social organisations, both capitalist companies and sovereign states. In the nineteenth century, after the era of the establishment of bilateral diplomacy and sporadic multilateral conferences, multilateral regimes, such as the Concert of Vienna and the Gold Standard, were created to govern the system of capitalist world economy and states; also trans-European haute finance played a pivotal role in this governance (Polanyi 1957 [1944]:10–15). Capitalist world markets have made a world-wide division of labour possible—although in part the division of labour was systematically organised by the colonial powers. This division of labour has lagged or delayed causal efficacy, which has survived well into the post-colonial age. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the world markets, evolving within a particular changing legal framework, have also empowered multinational corporations and given rise to, say, transnational intra-firm trade. The European nation-states were able to organise larger, more methodical and technologically more advanced armies than any social organisation before them. This led to Kant’s concern over these destructive powers and, eventually, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, to the total wars of the twentieth century. The emergence of air power, missiles and nuclear weapons was the source of John Herz’s (1957; 1968) famous but wavering reflections on the military viability and legitimacy of territorial state. Simultaneously with these developments, Fordist (and Taylorist) organisations came to make possible the mass production of goods, such as cars or Coca Cola cans or tanks or, later, computers. Increased productive powers and consumption have also had farreaching effects on nature, creating—particularly given the characteristic responses of the democratic welfareS states of the 1970s and 1980s—a new problematic of world politics, with various regional and global responses. Moreover, state sovereignty, itself an institution of international society, has made offshore financial centres and tax havens possible, and safeguarded them (particularly in small statelets, many with (post)colonial ties). The offshore centres have generated new exclusive spaces for financial transactions, empowering transnational criminals, international banks and multinational corporations, while disempowering legal and taxation authorities of many, if not most, states. These emergent powers and processes create not only new intra- and interdependencies and relations of domination, they tend to restructure the preexisting structures and systems, give rise to new practices and relations, and invite and encourage the formation of new social and political identities. It is thus important to study the emergent powers and properties of social systems, in contexts in which the past and/or outside may be said to be present, as in: existential constitution; existential pre-existence (structures pre-dating the entrance of any particular actors); co-inclusion (different processes interloping or clashing); or lagged, delayed efficacy (past processes having cumulative effects now) (see Bhaskar 1994:68–9). It is equally essential to avoid ordering these powers and properties—and the consequent processes—in the simplistic and misleading terms of IR levels, which merely reproduce and, ultimately, reify the international

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problematic (cf. Chapter 1). Rather they should be analysed systematically as they are: 1 2

as complex, layered assemblies of social relations between positioned practices, some of which are themselves organised as collective actors or systems; and as relatively integrated wholes (which are connected also through manifold unintended consequences of action), the emergent powers and properties of which may change the relational parts or lead to the emergence of new parts.

The IR levels would preclude open mindedly studying levels in these two possible senses. As will be explained in more theoretical terms in Chapter 4, social contexts and systems are not only open but are also, among other things, overlapping and inter-penetrated in time and space. In parts, they can also be intra-related, i.e. there are essential relations connecting parts of different systems or wholes. Consider, for instance, the example of the Bretton Woods institutions located in Washington DC, next door to the White House, linking, in the early 2000s, the US government and the treasuries and central banks of most states on the planet, also through the discursive practices of orthodox economics. The US government may, in parts, be essentially intra-related to the practices and actors of Wall Street. And so on. Emergent powers and properties should not be organised, in one’s mystifying imagination, to accord with the simple IR levels just to yield the convenient possibility of continuing to reproduce the international problematic. They should be analysed as they really are. In sum, the scientific realist reconstruction of the traditional IR levels seems a non-starter. Even the conventional practices of international society do not follow, in terms of spatial settings of their (re)production, the neat territorial logic of horizontal inside/outside distinction that is so often transformed into, and then reified as, the vertical level-of-analysis problematic. Many, if not most, relevant components of contemporary causal complexes may not be easily locatable in territorial statist terms. The vertical metaphor of ‘above’ hardly adds to the explanatory power of the territorial ‘outside’. More concrete and specific claims have to be made.

Responding to critics My attempt to do away with IR levels has been criticised by Nicholas Onuf. His remark is made at the outset of a long review of IR levels talk: Throwing out the language does not necessarily clear things up. In place of levels, Patomäki would have us ‘talk about different kinds of interpenetrated contexts’. If contexts penetrate each other, it is hard to know what makes them different in kind. To say that ‘we are faced with qualitatively different kinds of contexts of social action’ is hardly a clarification. (Onuf 1998:195)

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Onuf wants to ‘clear things up’. However, why should we restrain ourselves to a mere clarification of the meaning of ‘IR levels’? If these levels are ontologically and explanatorily unsound, should we not criticise the prevailing practices of organising the field in terms of them? Onuf’s argument that it is difficult to identify social contexts is no less shallow Contexts can be identified if social practices and relations can be identified and their relevance for a given social agency and action discerned. I am sure Onuf is not claiming that relations and practices are unidentifiable, or that their relevance to agency and action cannot be determined.12 What is his point then? Revealingly, it seems to be about respect for conventions. Onuf (1998:218) defends IR levels in terms of convenience of ‘treating the primary units [states] as unproblematic’. This verges on the dogmatic. The closure is completed by ‘in our culture, as in the field of International Relations, we would have difficulty getting along without the language of levels’ (Onuf 1998:218). Wendt published his magnum opus Social Theory of International Politics in 1999. Wendt applies scientific realism to defend and articulate a sociological version of state-systems theory. On prudential grounds, Wendt ignores arguments against the levels of analysis and the related dichotomy of inside/outside. Wendt (1999:13) argues that systems theory required that ‘domestic or unit and systemic levels can be separated’. Some might disagree. They might argue that international interdependence is eroding the boundary between state and system, making domestic policy increasingly a matter of foreign policy and vice-versa, or that the boundary between state and the system is a social construction in the first place which needs to be problematized rather than taken as given. For them, ‘levels’ thinking is a problem with IR theory, not a solution. (Wendt 1999:13) Wendt does not deny the force of these arguments. He ignores them. The legal organisation of political authority distinguishes between the domestic and international spheres. This is partly due ‘to the international institution of state sovereignty, in which states recognize each other as having exclusive political authority within separate territories’ (Wendt 1999:13). The inside rules are thus different from the outside rules. Wendt thinks that this opens up the possibility for a states system theory. The purpose of the states system theory is to explain why and how states, conceived as analogical to persons, interact in a systemic setting, and with what outcomes. Although aware of the fact that ‘in not problematizing something we are temporarily naturalizing or reifying it’ (Wendt 1999:89), Wendt nonetheless points out that if we want to find out how the states system works, ‘we will have to take the existence of states as given’ (Wendt 1999:246). This is the crux of the matter. Not unlike Onuf, Wendt appeals to the convenience of taking the states as given, in order to continue with the business of international theorising.

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Wendt’s point is to replace the capitalist conception of man with a socio-psychological conception of man, and leave other components of the international problematic intact. This opens up some new possibilities for studying mutually constitutive interactions of states.13 However, the basic anthropomorphic metaphor, coupled with the exclusion of political economy, leaves a priori out both possible transformations of states as social systems and related emergent structures. It precludes the possibility that even states, their foreign policies and the relevant intra-, trans- and interstate relations are systematically misidentified by theories that reproduce the international problematic. As Wendt points out many times—but ignores because of his desire to build a theory of a closed system of states as ‘persons’—the quest for depth would seem to imply a quest for delving deeper into the (re)production and transformation of (1) states, (2) boundaries between states, (3) boundaries between the separated but related spheres of economy and politics, and (4) intra-and inter-systemic mechanisms of dependence and power structures. A ‘convenient’ theory is detached from both history and systematic empirical study, and refuses to move towards deeper layers of social realities. As will be further elaborated in Chapter 4, it fails to study satisfactorily the dialectics of emergent powers and properties of open historical systems. Instead of investing in this kind of theory of closed history,14 we should develop concepts and metaphors that enable indepth explanations of changing world political realities, based on systematic empirical research. Doing away with IR levels seems to be a necessary step towards that direction.

Going beyond the ‘two stories’ dichotomy Having discussed the levels-of-analysis problematic, let me now turn to the question of whether there are always ‘two stories to tell’—the insider’s account and the outsider’s account.15 More specifically, I want to make two claims here. The first is that reasons can be causal, a notion in line with Carlsnaes’s (1994:277–87) point that we always need to involve both ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’. Second, I want to argue that the understanding of the meaning that actors attribute their actions is always a productive enterprise. This holds despite the transcendental argument for the real existence of social worlds that are, for the most part, existentially and causally independent of any researcher’s particular interpretation of them. In other words, in the process of such understanding, something is always produced, namely a novel or conventional interpretation that has potential to co-cause and/or co-constitute elements of social worlds, and which at least shapes the mode of being and agency of the researcher. Furthermore, I will also argue that a purely descriptive attitude conceived in terms of an outsider’s ‘objective’ focus on such actor meanings is impossible. Rather, as researchers we are necessarily drawn into the process of assessing different validity claims circulated within social practices by virtue and in the course of their (re)production.

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Reasons for a particular action in a given context are the causes of the meaningful activities of the agent in question, leading in turn to various outcomes. Another way of putting this is that the agent’s reasons are a necessary condition for the particular bodily movements—including those needed for speaking and writing—that occur in purposive action, in the straightforward sense that, had the agent not possessed them, these actions would not have occurred in the first place (unless over-determined). According to Harré and Secord (1972:86–7), human powers of this kind include the following: the power to initiate change; the capacity of being aware of things beyond oneself and knowing what they are; and the power of speech. Furthermore, agents must know what they are about to do, what they are doing and what they have done, in the sense of being capable of describing their actions. Without these kinds of causal powers of embodied social actors, there can be no social practices and institutions. This solution seems so obvious that it may well give rise to immediate scepticism. In Finnish, for instance, there is a word (syy) that refers to both causes and reasons without distinguishing between the two. Can a scientific ontology be grounded in such a commonsense notion? Although I cannot enter into a debate on this issue here (but see Bhaskar 1979:102–46; Harré and Secord 1973), let me just very briefly discuss some of the objections usually raised against this claim. In addition to the obsolete behaviouralist insistence on the relevance of the concepts of stimulus and response,16 there are basically two kinds of objections of relevance here, the one philosophical and the other logical. The philosophical objection is that, if we conceive of reasons as causes, we are either postulating temporally later state of affairs X as teleological causes for an earlier Y, or we are committing a vicious regress argument of a sort that ‘the causes for reasons R must be other reasons R1, which in turn are caused by R2 etc., ad infinitum’. However, as Bhaskar has noted, teleological explanations can be ‘most naturally construed as a species of ordinary causal explanation, where the cause is, in the case of reasons, some antecedent state of mind’ (Bhaskar 1979:107). Similarly, the question of whether the reason R was the cause of A does not depend on an account, explication or explanation of the process through which reason R has been (socially) generated and constituted. Bhaskar thus notes the following: possession of a reason should not in general be construed as an action, but rather as a disposition or state. And the possession of a reason for an action can itself be sufficient for that action, when appropriate circumstances materialise. Thus if I am a German social democrat, I do not have to wait upon a further reason to vote SDP on polling day—I just exercise my reason in voting. So at no possible point does a vicious regress in fact arise. (Bhaskar 1979:107) This does not, of course, mean that actors do not have reasons for their political identities—on the contrary. It simply means that a commitment to social democracy (seen as a state or disposition) can, in certain circumstances, in itself

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be a sufficient reason for voting for the SDP. In this example, a causal explanation of a particular voting act is given in terms of this sufficient reason R, that is, in terms of a commitment to social democracy. Naturally, the commitment itself can also be explained, in which case we would have to move from a surface account to a deeper account. Finally, there is the logical connection argument, according to which (1) causes must be logically distinct from effects, yet (2) reasons are logically (conceptually, internally) connected to the actions they explain. Hence, it is claimed, reasons cannot be the causes of actions (see Winch 1971 [1958]; von Wright 1971). Although this tradition of (analytical) hermeneutics is right in emphasising the existence of conceptual and internal relations in social worlds, the problem is its total denial of causality in these worlds. The consequence of this denial is the Kantian dualism between the causally deterministic natural world, conceived in Humean terms, and the world of human (and perhaps superhuman and divine) reason. This dualism makes it impossible, for instance, to grasp the effects of human reason (through technology etc.) on nature or, vice versa, the effects of the bodily mechanisms on human reasons or reasoning. Moreover, logic connects statements, not events, actions and the like. Even if there exists an internal connection between the statements ‘causing x’ and ‘x’, sunburn is not a logical consequence of the sentence ‘prolonged exposure to the sun results in sunburn’ (Bhaskar 1979:109–10). Statements do not cause sunburn. In an analogous manner, neither thinking, talking or writing the statement ‘switching the computer off’, nor the sentence in itself, can switch off the computer. A corporeal and reasoning human being has to do something for this effect to occur. In other words, his or her reasons for doing something must be causally efficient. This is the ground for being able to distinguish between an agent’s knowledge about what he or she is about to do, what he or she is actually doing, and what he or she has done, i.e. distinguishing between an agent’s own understanding and what he or she is actually, in a causally efficacious manner, doing. Let us at this point return to the claim made by Hollis and Smith, namely that the ‘understanding’ and ‘explanation’ cannot be synthesised into one approach, and hence that one must perforce choose between the two. However, reasons are causes, that is, non-redundant and existentially necessary elements of any causal complex. The first stage in any explanation is thus to find these causally efficient reasons. Regardless, what is the relationship between the reasons and intentions of a person and inter-subjective meaning? In trying to give an answer to this query, Habermas’s theory of understanding is, in my view, of great help. In order to understand something, Habermas (1987 [1981]:18–19) writes, one has to make the assumption that there are inter-subjective standards in the light of which human actors can decide whether they are following appropriate discursive or practical rules in their interaction with others. Every (speech) act presupposes a number of rules. Habermas (1984:112–13) notes that the social scientist cannot treat human utterances as mere facts. He or she must be able

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to describe social rules, resources and practices in a language that, in principle, can be used by social actors to reconstruct their linguistic self-understandings. Furthermore, the process of understanding is bound up with a process of bringing something about. An isolated social scientist reading texts in a library and writing a paper only for his or her own amusement may perhaps be producing something purely subjective and private. However, whenever he or she comes out in the public domain—for instance by going out to do first-hand data collection in the field—he or she will become a participant in a process of actual communication. This gives rise to the question of the theory-dependence of ‘data’. The data against which explanatory models are tested cannot be described independently of the theoretical language in use. This is the first level of involvement. Second, the researcher cannot gain access to a symbolically prestructured reality through (outside) observation alone. He or she has to engage in communication. Moreover, understanding meaning cannot be controlled in the same way as can observation in the course of scientific experimentation. Rather, there are two stages in the process. ‘Prior to choosing any theorydependency, the social scientific “observer”, as a participant in the process of reaching understanding, through which alone he can get access to the “data”, has to make use of the language encountered in the object domain’ (Habermas 1984:102–10). In this connection Habermas refers to Giddens’s notion of the ‘double hermeneutics’ of the social sciences: The theory-laden character of observation-statements in natural sciences entails that the meaning of scientific concepts is tied-in to the meaning of other terms in a theoretical network; moving between theories or paradigms involves hermeneutic tasks. The social sciences, however, imply not only this single level of hermeneutic problems, involved in the theoretical metalanguage, but a ‘double-hermeneutic’, because social-scientific theories concern a ‘preinterpreted’ world of lay meanings. (Giddens 1977:12) In other words, language mediates the constitution of social ‘data’ or ‘facts’ in a double way—as the linguistic and theoretical framework of the social scientist, and as the language of acting subject-objects in their constitutive understanding of their institutions and situations (Apel 1984:75–6). There is also interaction between these two spheres, whether weak and indirect or strong and, perhaps, immediate. Thus, meanings cannot be treated as mere facts in the positivist sense of the term, although they are constitutive of the causal complexes capable of producing outcomes. The basic thrust of my argument is, thus, that it is always necessary to understand the meanings that actors attribute to their actions and practices if we are to acquire knowledge of the causal complexes of social worlds. The consequence of this is to undermine the claim that ‘sometimes one type of account makes more sense; sometimes another’. Both are needed, always.

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Conclusion: possibilities beyond the ‘great debates’ In his 1987 article, Wendt (1987:362) states that explanations are basically answers to certain kinds of questions. Hence, the adequacy of an explanation depends on the question posed. Wendt goes on to distinguish between two types of questions: ‘How is action X possible?’ and ‘What made X actual rather than Y?’ For him, structural analysis explains the ‘possible’, while historical analysis explains the ‘actual’. Hollis and Smith are critical of this distinction, using the Gulf War as an example: Suppose one sets about explaining the occurrence of the 1991 Gulf War in this spirit. How was it possible for war to be declared? This question might invite an account of the rules which constitute the conditions needing to be satisfied for it to be true that a state of war exists; or it might invite an account of the recent history of the United Nations and the Middle East— historical conditions which made this war possible; or some mixture of both. These are very different sorts of account, as is clear when we enquire how exactly the mixture is to blend theoretical analysis with historical trends. To be brief, Wendt’s ‘how’? question encapsulates several running disputes about explaining or understanding how a war could happen. (Hollis and Smith 1991:406) This criticism is convincing only in so far as one has accepted the criterion of parsimony and the quest for deductive-nomological explanations. I hope that I have been able to give some idea of the complexities involved in any geohistorical explanation, and thus to give some plausibility to the alternative idea that the richness and depth of an explanation is of higher value than its parsimonious nature. Consequently, it is not a problem to pose different ‘how’ questions in one and the same study. Indeed, we can distinguish between different ‘How is action X possible?’ questions. When we are concerned with the identity of X, we need an account of relevant constitutive rules. This analysis freezes, so to speak, the social world in question. Then we can move towards the world of historical, causally effective interaction and ask: What are the INUS-components which made that action possible? At this level we are analysing processual complexes in open systems, and we cannot find general necessary conditions of X. Instead, we are interested in the actual constellation of conditions that made X contingently possible. Other constellations could have made it contingently possible as well. After this we can ask: What made X actual rather than Y? When posing this question, we are interested in reasons, justifications and the like, organised as discourses, as well as in the interactive actions of various actors. Finally, we can pose this genealogical query: How was X’s identity and the relevant constitutive rules produced in the course of historical interaction? This tentative list of questions is a plea for complexity and nuances, and for patient, reflexively interpretative data-collection and model-building. For some

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it may sound like the more or less well-established practice of historical research. However, it is much more than that. It is a plea for admitting the plurality of possible interpretations and opening up the possibility for a genuine dialogue. This plea is coupled with an appeal for causal in-depth explanations in terms of relational complexes as they really are. It is not enough to stay at the level of prima-facie reasons for actions; we must also analyse the conceptual and causal relations of social action in their inexhaustible complexity, fullness and depth. By systematic and iconic modelling it is possible to form pictures of the wholes in question and to give deeper explanations by answering the questions ‘How possible? and ‘Why actual’? Aspects of models can be generalised, given that certain (deep) structures and relational mechanisms and/or complexes can be found to be causally efficacious across many open-systematic contexts. The prospect of avoiding reification opens up entirely novel possibilities concerning the aims of story-telling about foreign policies and, much more generally, world politics. It makes emancipation and edification possible. Interpretative in-depth explanations try to make phenomena more understandable and intelligible. They have to enter the processes of assessing truth-claims that take place within social practices. By virtue of being holistic and aiming at explanatory power, these interpretations, based also on truth-judgements, can be critical of actors’ understandings. Social relations that are shown to render, in some important senses, anomalistic, false, reificatory, illusory and/ or superficial discursive formations should come to be criticised in being explained. Novel interpretations of the social worlds and their inherent possibilities can contribute to the process of re-signification of practices and thereby make possible better, that is, more empowered, more ethical and more virtuous ways of being and action. To enable this, we have to go beyond the ‘great’ debates of the international problematic. It is time to transcend these limits by getting rid of at least parts of the conceptual and metaphysical ballast weighing down the field. Instead of an eternal debate or attempt at a synthesis between the sketchy perspectives called political realism and idealism—amounting to the mere reproduction of the international problematic—we can enable the possibility of genuinely novel interpretative possibilities. By claiming that reasons are causes, and that, more generally, causality can be understood in terms of INUS-components in open (and intra- and inter-related) social complexes and systems, I have tried to open up a space for the study of world politics in a more emancipatory and edificatory manner. Perhaps it is now possible to overcome some of the limits of the contemporary political imagination, as well as to improve on the way scientific historical accounts approach value questions, structural constraints and human choice possibilities. However, first we have to articulate the CR ontology and research methodology in more detail.

Notes 1 In standard textbooks (e.g. Gill and Law 1988; Gilpin 1987), Marxism is still taken seriously as the third perspective; and (post-)Gramscian historical materialism (e.g. Cox 1987; Gill 1993) is often conceived as the nearly hegemonic movement within IPE.

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2 Wæver (1994a:257) has been careful to acknowledge that the debate has changed: ‘During the 1980’s, realism became neorealism and liberalism became neo-liberal institutionalism. Both underwent a self-limiting redefinition towards an antiphilosophical, theoretical minimalism, and they became thereby increasingly compatible. A dominant neo-neo synthesis became thereby the research programme.’ This interpretation not only confirms my point about the state of the art but also nicely illustrates the phase of Western cultural development within which the adjective new is used rather liberally. As Honnef (1994:14) has pointed out in analysing the trends and fashions of contemporary art, the inflationary use of the term new never actually appears on its own but always as a prefix (neo-) or as an adjective qualifying a trend that already exists. The same goes for the fashions within IR. 3 In addition to the Wendt and Hollis and Smith debate, major IR contributions include Wendt (1987, 1992a, 1994 and 1999), Dessler (1989), Carlsnaes (1992, 1993), Wæver (1994a:260–71), Doty (1997) and Wight (1999, 2001). 4 However, there are different kinds of (critical) scientific realisms. For some, the emphasis is on the word ‘realism’. Thus, Wendt (1991:397) writes, in distinguishing himself from empiricism, that a ‘related dispute concerns the requirements of scientific explanation, where empiricists seek to subsume phenomena under lawlike regularities, whereas realists seek to identify the underlying causal mechanisms that generate the phenomena’. In an e-mail conversation in 1992–3, Wendt often repeated the point that he is a scientific realist precisely and only in this sense. As will emerge later on, in my interpretation critical realist social sciences would sometimes do better without the metaphor of mechanism. More generally, I define critical realism in terms of a well-articulated ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgemental rationalism, and emphasise the role of CR theory of emancipation. 5 Scientific realist interpretation of a Humean phenomenology of constant conjunctions is in no way a step forward from empiricism/positivism. 6 In fairness, it should be noted that in their reply to Wendt, Hollis and Smith (1991:397) admit that there are other conceptions of causality. However, they never discuss or take on board these other conceptions. 7 Even though they later, in Chapter 9, move in different directions, Hollis to a more hermeneutic position and Smith to a scientific realist stand, they never distance themselves from a Humean view of causality. 8 The best candidate would be the democratic peace theory, according to which liberaldemocratic states do not fight each other. As currently formulated, this theory is reliant on the identification of what appears to be a strong and enduring constant conjunction: liberal-democracies do not fight each other. That is, the argument is that X (liberal-democratic regimes) explains the absence of Y (war, organised violence between two states). The assumption must be that Y is a normal thing to occur, and that X is the mechanism or thing that explains why it does not occur in this special situation (or more strongly, prevents it from happening). The existence of a well-functioning, on-switched lamp explains the absence of darkness in a room in the night, but would be quite irrelevant in a bright sunshine. In a situation of constant sunshine, it is darkness that should be explained (if it were to occur). Moreover, as Barkaw and Laffey (1999:414–15) have argued, the correlation is based, in part, on statist categories. Thus, for instance, the US covert actions against democratically elected governments in the Third World resulted in significant violence. However, they are not counted, and thus cannot refute the democratic peace proposition. From a CR perspective, it is also the very idea of a constant conjunction that is problematic. Constant conjunctions only obtain in closed systems. However, the world of international politics has been, and is, anything but closed. This suggests that it cannot simply be factors internal to democratic nation-states that are responsible for this apparent constant conjunction. Even if a mechanism (perhaps of a Kantian form) or, rather, a manifold structured complex were identified,

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9

10

11

12 13

14

Hence, an adequate analysis must also focus on these other relations and processes, forming a picture of the relevant parts of the geo-historical whole in question. Here, the explanans and, up to an extent, also the explanandum of the theory changes. What is the overall and possibly changing causal complex, which has tended to make the twentieth-century relations between capitalist, Western-minded liberal-democracies peaceful? Which of these components are changing in the early twenty-first century? In effect, a CR analysis would suggest that if there is anything to explain, it must be explained in terms of real tendencies and real working of spatio-temporal causal complexes in open and therefore changing systems. See also Patomäki and Wight 2000; and Chapter 8 for an articulation of a rather different (partial) explanation in terms of a pluralist security community. Typically, main activities reproducing these institutions are located in the governmental complexes or diplomatic settings of capital cities of different countries, or in the diplomatic settings of the headquarters of various international organisations. Spatially, these can be either inside or outside of any particular territorial state, but always inside of at least one state (and usually many simultaneously, given the modern communication technologies and the need of diplomats to consult their governments). Changing social practices may give rise to emergent spatio-temporalities. Long-distance calls or computerised systems of information flows have disembedded, relatively speaking, space from time. Immediate contacts have become possible over long distances. A truly global multinational enterprise—which, although rare, can be taken as an ideal case—presupposes the disembedding of space from place and relies in its practices on the capability of disembedding space from time (cf. Bhaskar 1994:70). These emergent spatio-temporalities may also enter into the discursive practices of political identity—and interest—formation. When I asked Bhaskar (personal communication, London, 22 July 1995) about the plausibility of IR levels, his immediate reaction was: ‘Although I do not know the subject matter very well, it seems, at least prima facie, plausible.’ Also Wendt, in his comment on an earlier version of this chapter, asked whether it could be possible to think about IR levels in terms of layered mechanisms. Thus, we could try to explain, at least partially, higher-level laws in terms of layered mechanisms. We could also try to explain, at least partially, higher-level laws in terms of mechanisms of lower levels. For instance, Wæver (1994a:264) interprets IR levels in these terms. The methodology of iconic modelling is devised for the purpose of identifying causal complexes and social contexts; it will be explicated in detail in Chapter 5. These new possibilities include: identity-constituting moves; learning-processes; development of (dis)trust; altercasting; development of a sense of common fate; and the formation of collective identities (see Wendt 1999: Chapters 6 and 7). In some contexts, given particular research problems, Wendt’s ‘social theory of international polities’ can thus provide highly useful and interesting hypotheses for concrete iconic models. Thus, in Wendt’s theory, structures are reduced to the ideas ‘states hold’. There is not an unequivocal ‘logic of anarchy’, as in Waltz’s neo-realism, but three ‘cultures of anarchy’—named after Hobbes, Locke and Kant—and processes of moving from one to the other. This may be a richer and more nuanced or realist theory than that of Waltz’s. It is nonetheless a theory of a closed list of interpretative and transformative possibilities. These possibilities are derived from both philosophical theories and the conventional international problematic rather than from any sustained empirical research of concrete problems. Theory in this sense not only precludes transformative

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possibilities, it also precludes interpretative possibilities, and substitutes iconic modelling with armchair philosophising. 15 Note again the usage of the metaphor of inside/outside, this time in another context. Again, this whole problematic of inside/outside seems to stem from binary thinking (either inside or outside, there is no third alternative), from territorial understanding of spatiality (given territorial demarcations, you can only be inside or outside), as well as from individualism stemming from empiricism (a naïve view of human beings as merely corporeal beings with well-defined and strict spatial borders). 16 Neufeld (1993b) talks about ‘meaning-orientated behaviourism’, which is less hostile to Verstehen approaches and which dominates at least some areas of IR research. However, the notion of causality of these ‘meaning-orientated behaviouralists’ is the Humean one, with the standard (partially implicit) assumptions concerning regular successions, isolated, closed systems and unchanging entities.

Part II

Explicating a critical realist methodology

4

Critical realist social ontology

The nature of objects determines their cognitive possibilities. This critical realist (CR) idea, drawn from Aristotle, has also increasingly gained ground in international relations (IR). Martin Hollis and Steve Smith have argued that any attempt to explain anything in world politics necessarily implies hypotheses about the existence and nature of entities. They contend that the justification of ontology is connected to its explanatory merits. David Dessler (1989:446) maintains that ‘the richer and more comprehensive the underlying ontology, the better the theory’. Alexander Wendt (1999) seems to disagree with this criterion, but has nonetheless written a remarkable book on the ontology of the states system. Open-mindedly, Hayward Alker has learned, through trial and error in his careful empirical studies, that ultimately our understanding of the nature of data depends on our social ontology. Better social ontology is thus the key to constructing more adequate sets of empirical evidence. Individualism claims that ultimately there are only individuals or their minds, preferences and decisions. The roots of individualism are in the capitalist conception of man. This conception has never gone unchallenged. The methodological debates between individualism and structuralism started some time in the nineteenth century. These included the famous Methodenstreit in economics; debates about Marx and Marxism; and manifold debates in sociology, symbolised by the classic works of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, among others. In various guises, structuralism has claimed that there are emergent social wholes that determine individuals and their behaviour or actions. Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration and Roy Bhaskar’s transformational model of social activity (TMSA) are important attempts to transcend this debate in systematic ontological terms. Giddens and Bhaskar have many things in common. Both rely on a form of scientific realism, which has incorporated basic insights of hermeneutics—as represented by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Winch and Hans-Georg Gadamer—and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. There are also differences between these two theories. It has been claimed that Giddens’s theory is ultimately hermeneutic or voluntarist in its implications (see, for example, Gallinicos 1985:133–66; Wendt 1987:335– 70), and that Bhaskar’s conception of social reality is a good example of Marxist and structuralist thought (Shatzki 1988:239–60). 99

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In this chapter, I shall try to show some of the weaknesses and inadequacies of both theories. My aims are, however, reconstructive. I try to clarify the subject matter and elaborate further on the CR concepts of ‘action’, ‘structure’ and ‘power’. A central ontological theme is the nature of, and the relationshiph between, internal and external relations. First, I develop the point that to explain the (re)production of internal relations, we also need a theory of practical and communicative action. Second, I argue that an adequate theory of external relations requires an iconic model of different modes of social action. One of these modes, it is argued, is indeed communicative action. Third, I attempt to detach Giddens’s concept of power—which connects action essentially to power as transformative capacity—from its Weberian undertone and incorporate into it an important insight of Michel Foucault. There is a far-reaching tension between Giddens’s and Bhaskar’s views on the concept of structure. I criticise Bhaskar’s naturalist metaphors and analogies, but, contra Giddens, maintain that a relational conception of structure is ontologically more sound than Giddens’s ‘rules and resources’. As a final point, I elucidate how the dialectics of emergent powers and properties of open historical systems should be conceptualised and studied. Instead of the futile IR levels, I articulate an alternative account of systemic emergence and stratification. In conclusion, I collect the different strands of my argument together with the help of the notion of a layered, relational causal complex. This ontological notion is central to the whole of this book, to my explication of a CR research methodology.

Internal relations and communicative action According to Bhaskar (1979:52), the work of discovering the independently existing and transfactually active ‘machinery of nature’ is not the aim of an independent inquiry of metaphysics, but rather that of the sciences. Sciences are therefore also concerned with existential hypotheses and presumptions. Science employs two basic criteria for the ascription of reality to a posited object: a perceptual criterion and a causal one. The causal criterion turns on the capacity of the entity whose existence is in doubt to bring about changes in material things. (Bhaskar 1979:15–16) The discovery of these entities always includes the formation of an iconic model, which is basically concerned with qualitative analysis and picturesque description of causal mechanisms, which are responsible for the phenomena we observe. The formation of an iconic model must be done under plausibility control (Harré 1970: Ch. 2). On the other hand, philosophical reflection can reveal that reality must be stratified, differentiated and structured if scientific activities are to be intelligible,

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because sciences have a characteristic pattern of description, re-description and explanation of the phenomena identified at any one level of reality with a mechanism consisting of differentiated elements (Harré 1970:16; Bhaskar 1986). In this conception, reality consists of partially interconnected hierarchies of levels, in which any element (e) at a level (L) is in principle subject to the possibilities of causal determination by higher-order, lower-order and extra-order effects, besides those defining it as an element of (L) (including those individuating it as an (e)) (Bhaskar 1986:106). Moreover, the explanatory natural sciences are typically moving towards deeper ontological levels. Bhaskar’s naturalist argument is that ‘there is (or can be) an essential unity of method between the natural and the social sciences’ and that ‘it is possible to give an account of science under which the proper and more-or-less specific methods of both the natural sciences and social sciences can fall’, notwithstanding the ‘significant differences between these methods’ (Bhaskar 1979:3). This argument is based on the conception of ‘society as an articulated ensemble of relatively independent and enduring generative structures’ (Bhaskar 1979:3) and on the analogy between natural and social structures (or mechanisms). However, is the analogy between social and natural structures feasible? Bhaskar (1979:57) uses magnetic fields as an illustrative and picturesque example: social structures are theoretical and necessarily unperceivable in the same sense that a magnetic field is. So, although social structures cannot be identified independently of their effects, they are, in this respect, no different from many objects of natural scientific inquiry. What really distinguishes social structures is that not only are they incapable of being identified independently of their effects, they do not even exist independently of these effects (Bhaskar 1979:57). Nevertheless, Bhaskar thinks that social structures are real and that this can be shown with causal criteria. The use of causal criteria for existence presupposes some notion of causality. Bhaskar (1979:165) accepts in principle J.L.Mackie’s (1976) influential analysis of a cause as an INUS-condition, which is quite well-suited for causal analysis in open systems. The following is a modified definition of a cause as an INUScomponent: Def. 1: Cause is an insufficient but necessary part of a condition that is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the production of a result, i.e. the INUS-condition. This definition implies, among other things, that there may be many different sufficient conditions capable of producing the same result. Theodore Shatzki (1988:24) doubts whether social structures can be treated as causes, because ‘talk of causal efficacy, causal power, and being a generative structure requires that anything that possesses these properties be something that actually brings about changes’. There is some truth in Shatzki’s doubt, as we shall see. Nevertheless, Bhaskar claims only that the dual character of society means that:

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Society is both the ever-present condition (material cause) and the continually reproduced outcome of human agency. And praxis is both work, that is conscious production, and (normally unconscious) reproduction of the condition of the production, that is society. One could refer to the former as the duality of structure, and the latter as the duality of praxis. (Bhaskar 1979:43–4) If social structures are always a necessary condition for any sufficient condition for social action, as the ontological duality of structure implies, then they are also INUS-conditions (def. 1), and hence causes by definition. Thus, social structures are real. On the other hand, the problem with the magnetic-field analogy—and this may have misled Bhaskar in some crucial points—is that it is quite reasonable to say that a magnetic field sometimes produces or brings about changes (alone), whereas social structures are never able to do so (alone), because social structures do not have action-independent causal effects. Or to use Aristotelian terminology, social structures are mere material causes, whereas magnetic fields can also be efficient causes. Are social structures always a necessary condition for action? In the TMSA the ‘point of contact’ between human agency and social structures is the mediating system of positions (places, functions, tasks, duties, commitments, rights, etc.) occupied (filled, assumed, enacted, etc.) by individuals, and of the practices (activities, etc.) in which, by virtue of their occupancy of these positions (and vice versa), they engage. These positions and practices can be individuated only relationally (Bhaskar 1979:51). To this must be added that social structures exist only by virtue of the activities they govern, enable and constrain, and that they are materially present only in persons and the results of their actions (Bhaskar 1986:130–1). In what sense are these kinds of structures always a necessary and preexisting condition for action? A distinction must first be made between internal and external relations. These concern substantial relations of connection and interaction, not formal relations of similarity or dissimilarity.1 Def. 2: A Relation RAB is internal if and only if A would not be what it essentially is unless B is related to it in the way that it is. (Bhaskar 1979:54) Whereas external relations are conceptually contingent, internal relations are conceptually necessary. Both can be found in society When Bhaskar claims that action (in general) requires social structures as a necessary condition, it seems that he has in mind only structures of internal relations. This claim stems from the hermeneutic character of the social world: social world is meaningful; social actors are intentional and intelligible; and their actions are always rule-enabled. To have identity, actors and actions must be constituted by rules. There is a difference between constitutive and regulative rules. The meaning of a particular

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action derives from the relevant constitutive rules, which in turn are related to other constitutive and regulative rules. Social phenomena retain their identity under regulative rule violation, but not under constitutive rule violation. Consider the example of the social practice of trial by jury as presented by John Greenwood (Greenwood 1987:171–204). The constitutive rules of this institution would include something like the following (Greenwood 1987:188): trial=def

‘the examination of evidence by a body of persons comprising the judge, jurors, learned counsel, defendant, and officers of the crown and the court, and the determination by the jury of the guilt or innocence of the defendant accused of some civil or criminal offence’.

juror=def

‘a member of a body of twelve men or women who comprise a jury in a court of law, who take an oath to render a decision on a judicial question’.

judge=def

‘a public officer appointed by the crown to hear and try cases in a court of law’.

Because of these definitions or constitutive rules, the trial, juror and judge are internally related to each other. In this sense social structures are the necessary and ever-present condition of all social action. Only they make meaningful social action possible. It is important to be very careful about differences between ontological and epistemological matters. We—as researchers—may define trial, juror and judge as above, but then we are making existential hypotheses; we can then ask: ‘Is the world really like this?’ (ontology). The attempt to answer this question will involve what Giddens calls the ‘double hermeneutics’ of social sciences (epistemology): a theoretically reflective scientist tries to investigate and interpret a world that is itself meaningful (Giddens 1977:12). Epistemologically, as Sayer (1992:56) notes, the conceptual relations we can plausibly posit between entities are theory-dependent. For example, whether it is conceptually inconsistent to describe an individual actor both as a capitalist and a proletarian depends on what we take to be the possible nature of the person, means of production, etc. It is in fact a theoretical question whether we should accept the categories of capitalist and proletarian at all. Ontologically, the existence of internal relations in the social worlds—outside academia—depends on the explicit or implicit ‘theories’ of relevant lay actors and thus it is not possible to infer them purely theoretically, or objectively. This is probably the reason why John Shotter (1983) characterises social processes as intrinsically vague and incomplete. Bhaskar comments on Shotter’s point only briefly: Vagueness is not the same as ambiguity. Vagueness inhabits the shading, soft-edged, open-textured conceptual world of Wittgenstein and Waismann.

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Ambiguity points towards the conceptual spheres of ambivalence and contradiction plumbed by Freud and Marx. Both seem to me indispensable categories for social analysis, which should always be as precise as in Aristotle’s words, ‘the nature of the subject permits’. (Bhaskar 1983:91) The spheres of ambivalence and contradiction are also real (ontology), not merely indispensable categories for social analysis (epistemology). I do not, however, mean the real and ‘objective’ dialectical contradictions inherent in class relations, as Marx at least sometimes did—although in general the conception of dialectical causality is important (cf. Bunge 1959:160–5)—but rather the dialectical disputations and contradictions in the ‘shading, soft-edged, opentextured conceptual world of Wittgenstein and Waismann’. There is usually no universal and definitive consensus among lay actors about the constitutive rules of institutions, or about the definitions of position-practice systems. Hence the ‘essential internal relations’ (def. 2) in the social world are always both ‘vague and incomplete’. Consider the following quotation from Winch: If social relations between men exist only in and through their ideas, then, since the relations between ideas are internal relations, social relations must be a species of internal relation, too. This brings me into conflict with a widely accepted principle of Hume’s: There is no object, which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves and never look beyond the ideas we form of them. (Winch 1971 [1958]:128) The point of critical realism is, contra Winch, that there are both internal and external relations—and that Hume seriously mis-specified the nature of external relations. However, what exactly is the nature of internal relations? How do internal relations as ‘ideas’ come into being? How can there be shared ‘ideas’ and internal social relations in the first place? The crucial theoretical problem is thus: In what way are the constitutive rules and social meanings of action produced, mediated, reproduced and changed? How is the mutual understanding of social (constitutive) rules historically possible? Giddens sees the first question as being at the core of the problem of order. Innovatively, Giddens defines the problem of order in terms of realist spatiotemporal causality rather than an analogy to the Humean problem of induction. ‘The “problem of order” is the problem of how it comes about that social systems [practices, relations] transcend time and space’ (Giddens 1983:78). In other words, what mechanisms are capable of producing the outcome, namely that the ontologically critical internal relations, practices and systems transcend time, place and, also, the biological existence of human beings? According to Habermas (1984 [1981]:274–5), the actions of several actors are linked to one another by means of the mechanism of reaching understanding. This is the way actions are interlaced in social spaces and historical times.

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However, Habermas still works with the Hobbesian (Humean) problem of order he has inherited from Talcott Parsons. Rather than ‘co-ordination of actions’, the real problem is to explain the endurance and (re)production of ontologically critical internal relations of social practices. However, Habermas (1987:295) speaks also of ‘communicatively structured lifeworlds that reproduce themselves via the palpable medium of action oriented to mutual agreement’, i.e. via communicative action. Reaching understanding seems to be the condition for human powers in general. It is in this sense that we should talk about communicative action as the (re)productive mechanism. The capacity for a reflexive self-monitoring of one’s own causal interventions in the world, to be aware of one’s own states of awareness during one’s activity, is intimately connected with our possession of language, conceived as a system of signs apt for the production and communication of information. (Bhaskar 1979:104) Both human powers and internal social relations are dependent on language and systems of signs. The social being is meaningful, and internal relations of social being must be located at the level of understanding. However, there must also be lower-level mechanisms capable of (re)producing language and ‘ideas’, or systems of signs. These mechanisms include the genetically programmed, bodily powers of human beings to learn practical skills and, thereby, work with and through meanings. Practical bodily skills include walking, or making bodily gestures, or using the human voice to make signs or handling a pen or knife and fork. Possession of language requires practical skills, and practical skills are subject to natural laws and determinations. ‘We never cease, and never can cease, to sustain relations with all three orders of reality—natural, practical and social’ (Archer 2000:9). However, in order to work with meanings one has to learn, via practical skills, to understand meanings and follow social rules, both constitutive and regulative. From the very early infancy onwards, embodied actors have the power to resist, or take exception to, these rules. Later, with maturity, they can reflect upon, criticise and ultimately change these rules. The conception of structures of internal relations thus presupposes a theory— or an iconic model—of both practical and communicative action. Hence, (internal) social relations are intimately connected to action. This indicates that social sciences cannot specialise in studying (internal) relations in isolation of interactions, although Bhaskar (1979:56) seems to claim so. Social sciences have two simultaneous sides: the analysis of action and the analysis of structures. True, actions and structures are different kinds of things, irreducible to each other, although ontologically dependent. They can be separated momentarily for the analytical purpose of studying continuity and change, and the temporal dialectics between agency and structure (cf. Archer 1995:168–70 passim). My

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point is, however, that historical social sciences must explain outcomes, which occur only in shifting and changing open systems. Therefore, any explanatory iconic model of concrete outcomes has to articulate a unified account of the complex of relevant material and efficient causes at work in a well-specified area of time and space.

The vague and ambiguous nature of internal relations Internal social relations are typically both vague and ambiguous. They are vague because lay-actors have partially incoherent and somewhat wavering practical and discursive theories of the social world in question. Internal relations cannot be more exact and clear than the meanings circulated, stored and transformed in the practical social world, in social practices. Internal relations are ambiguous because actors hold conflicting theories about social institutions and practices, and these conflicting views are connected to differentiated horizons and horizon-constituted interests in human societies. In other words, in a complex world, as contrasted to, say, a more homogeneous and unchanging medieval village, there is neither any a priori guarantee of the sameness of the meanings, nor any singular causal mechanism capable of producing the same meanings for all actors (despite the existence, since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of centralised national systems of education devised also for the purpose of homogenising language and meanings). Because there can be no social reality without meanings and internal relations, the thesis concerning ambiguousness can also be read as a thesis about the social ontology of discordance (Connolly 1987:10–16). Because the mechanisms producing meanings are essentially communicative, and because of the ubiquity of ontological discordance, there tend to be constant dialectical disputations and contradictions in the ‘shading, soft-edged, open-textured conceptual world of Wittgenstein and Waismann’. Dialectical contradictions, in the sense specified by Nicholas Rescher (1977:62– 3), do thus exist, and they generate, among other things, open disputations and political argumentations. These conflicts are a central element of the political aspect of the social world (see, for example, Alker 1988:805–20). Consider Figure 4.1. The disputation begins with an assertion of a thesis (P) with one grounding (Q), and a categorical assertion! Q (‘it is the case that Q’). The opponent responds in this case with a provisoed denial ‘if both Q & R then ~P, and I suspect that Q & R’. The first assertion in this kind of debate may, for instance, be that ‘a trial should be defined, as I do, as a public examination of evidence…, because otherwise there would be no guarantee of the fairness of trial’, and the opponent might respond that ‘you may be partially right, but there are also, I suppose, many occasions where publicity would only do harm to fairness, and hence I can see no reason to define the trial in terms of publicity’. In the dialectical logic the denial of ~P is not just to assert P, for there is also refinement (amplification, improvement, introduction of new and deeper grounds) in the transition from Q to (Q & R & S), for instance (Rescher 1977:66).

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Figure 4.1 An example of a dialectical contradiction

There can thus be dialectical disputations and contradictions in the ‘shading, soft-edged, open-textured conceptual world of Wittgenstein and Waismann’. Internal relations tend to be ambiguous, and they can become a matter of explicit disputation and, in this sense, they can become political. Moreover, rhetorical and dialectical disputations can enable and induce transformations of concepts and theories (see Ball 1988). Since concepts and related theories constitute the vague and ambiguous internal relations of historically positioned practices, their transformation may lead to profound institutional changes. Moreover, as Archer (1989:103–42 passim) has stressed, many meanings are related and thereby form structural wholes. There are logical relations between components of meaning structures. Components of meaning structures can also be contradictory. Contradictions may be simply lived by for a long time, but they can also be taken up as a basis of cultural and political criticism. In that moment, it depends on the dialectics of power whether the critics can achieve changes or whether the contradictions are simply suppressed by those who are interested in preserving the status quo.

External relations and modes of action What exactly is the status of external relations in the CR social ontology? I shall use the following rather general definition of external relations: Def. 3: An external relation RAB is a contingent substantial relation between positions of positioned practices or occupied positions of position-practice systems. Consider the previous example of the social practice of trial by jury, which might include regulative rules something like the following (Greenwood 1987:188): 1 2 3

‘Jurors should not let their own prejudices influence their judgement.’ ‘Counsel should not make emotional appeals to the jury.’ ‘Judges should not intimidate witnesses.’

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For example, the second rule regulates the external relation between counsel and jury engaged in the practice of trial by jury. Of course, they may be also internally related. Generally, internal and external relations do not exclude each other. Giddens claims that ‘these two senses of right and wrong always intersect in the actual constitution of social practices’ (Giddens 1979:82). Onuf goes even further and asserts that all rules are both constitutive and regulative: ‘a constructivist always sees this distinction as arbitrary and unhelpful’ (Onuf 1989:85). However, this contention would imply that a violation of a rule such as ‘counsel should not make emotional appeals to the jury’ (2, above) would change the meaning (identity) of trial, counsel, jury or legal argument, which is clearly not normally the case. Hence, the two senses of right and wrong may well intersect in the actual constitution of social practices, and yet the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules is not only important but also ontologically necessary. Suppose that counsels, jurors and judges believe that these (customary, moral or legal) regulative rules exist effectively. This does not imply that they follow these rules. How, then, can structures of external social relations generate action and changes? Let us first examine how Bhaskar conceptualises these kinds of structures. Bhaskar (1979:51) uses the term ‘position’ in connection with the concepts of ‘places’, ‘functions’, ‘rules’, ‘tasks’, ‘duties’, ‘rights’, etc., but he unfortunately does not specify their relationships. ‘Places’ and ‘functions’ seem to be near to the concept of ‘position’, and rules partially constitute positions. These concepts do not, however, illuminate the matter very much. Strikingly, terms like ‘tasks’, ‘duties’ and ‘rights’ seem to point to the Durkheimian direction in social theory. According to Emile Durkheim (1969 [1938]:246–7), ‘social facts’ consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with the power of emotional, moral or legal coercion. This characterisation notwithstanding, Durkheim is not able to show that ‘social facts’ necessarily force individuals to conform to external and/or regulative social rules. This holds true for Bhaskar’s TMSA as well: regulative rules alone cannot produce changes. Nor are they a necessary condition for action in general, for the relation between regulative rules and action is by definition contingent (although, of course, a regulative rule is typically an I NU S-condition for a particular action). Because of this contingency, the analogy to a magnetic field does not hold at all in the case of structures of external social relations, and thus it seems that this analogy carries a misleading picture of social relations. Any theory or analysis of external social relations requires a theory of social action. A theory of social action should include taxonomy of homoeomorphic iconic models of action. A homoeomorphic iconic model is one where the subject of the model is the same as its source of analogy (picture, metaphor). Teleiomorphic models are a sub-category of homoeomorphic models, and they are constructed by means of selective idealisations (some of the properties of the source-subject are made, according to some scale of values, more perfect than the source-subject’s properties) and abstractions (some properties of the

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source-subject are chosen by some relevancy criteria) (see Harré 1970: Ch. 2, esp. pp. 41–2). Weber’s ideal-types (Weber 1969) are a case in point, except that Weber does not distinguish clearly between idealisation and abstraction. According to Weber, an ideal-type: offers us an ideal picture of events,…which brings together certain relationships and events of historical life into a complex, which is conceived as an internally consistent system. Substantively, this construct is itself like a Utopia which has been arrived at by an analytical accentuation of certain elements of reality…. [Hence] we can make the characteristic features of [social] relationship[s] pragmatically more clear and understandable by reference to an ideal-type. (Weber 1969 [1949]:497) The Weberian method can be re-interpreted along CR lines. An iconic model— an ideal picture of events and relationships—includes existential hypotheses concerning, say, the primary orientation of action. Weber did not want to use ideal-types merely in distinguishing between different action-types. Rather, he seems to have seen—at least intuitively—that action and social relations together form a complex, which is responsible for the phenomena to be explained. The problem is that we should not require, contra Weber, that an ideal picture of events and relationships is internally consistent. There are inconsistencies and contradictions in the real world. It is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory—or an iconic model—of an ambiguous (contradictory, vague, indeterminate) phenomenon that it should precisely characterise that phenomenon as ambiguous (contradictory, vague, indeterminate) (see Searle 1983:78). Moreover, the formation of an iconic model must rely on the idea that the adequacy and accuracy of the model must be tested by doublehermeneutic empirical means. The task of social scientists is to find out how the real world works. Ontology in the philosophical sense should be addressed to the most abstract constitutive potentials of social life: the generic human capacities and fundamental conditions through which the course and outcomes of social processes and events are generated and shaped in manifold ways (Cohen 1987:279). There is a strict limit to philosophical ontology. Does this limit contradict the idea that, in order to grasp the nature of external relations and regulative rules, we need a general theory of social action? No—rather it reveals that models of action must be as historical as the modes of social action. In order to grasp thoroughly the relationship between action and structures it is not possible to stay at a meta-level. Social action-types are historically constituted. ‘No general, transhistorical or purely philosophical resolution of these problems is possible’ (Bhaskar 1983:87). Habermas (1984 [1981]:82–101) has developed a theory of social action. It needs to be re-interpreted because it is based on the heritage of German idealism, which insists on the irreducible contribution of an active, world-constituting observer-subject. The idea of a ‘world-constituting observer-subject’ contradicts

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realist ontology. Habermas (1984 [1981]:82–4) ‘would like to replace the ontological concept of “world” with one derived from the phenomenological tradition’. He thinks these ‘phenomenological worlds’ can be differentiated according to distinct validity claims of speech acts.2 A realist should interpret Habermas’s ‘worlds’ as fallible and corrigible iconic models, as teleiomorphs of historical social action. Habermas’s theory has been developed in twentiethcentury Europe, and may be too Eurocentric to be applicable outside the (late) modern West. This cannot be decided a priori. Perhaps this theory is suitable for the analysis of some or many other social formations? It is possibly in need of important corrections, additions or simplifications even in the (late) modern Western contexts. Habermas distinguishes four types or modes of social action. First, in teleological action the actor attains an end or brings about the occurrence of a desired state by choosing (making a decision concerning) the means that offer the promise of being successful in the given situation. If the decision is based on calculations that take into account decisions on the part of at least one additional goal-directed actor, then teleological action is called strategic. This model is usually interpreted in utilitarian and rational choice terms. Second, the model of normatively regulated action refers to members of a social group who orient their action to common values, and the central concept of this model is ‘complying with the norm’, which means fulfilling a generalised expectation of behaviour. Third, the model of dramaturgical action describes a mode of action where participants in interaction constitute a public for one another, before which they present themselves (strategically or sincerely). Fourth, there is the model of communicative action, which is, as was argued above, necessary for the explanation of the (re)production of intersubjective meanings and internal relations. Communicative action refers to the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech/writing and action who establish interpersonal relations, whether by verbal or extra-verbal means, although language is given a prominent place in this model. The central concept of this model is ‘interpretation’, which refers to the process of practical or discursive learning, negotiating, criticising, disputing or debating definitions and conceptions related to the relevant rule-constituted situation.3 This taxonomy of social action can be used to resolve the problem of the ‘generative powers’ of regulation. Why, for instance, would a counsel comply with the norm ‘counsel should not make emotional appeals to the jury’? Supposing that it is a legal norm, there are many possibilities. First, a counsel might make calculations concerning sanctions, the utility of his or her good reputation, etc., and comply with the norm for strategic reasons (and reasons are causes). Second, a counsel may regard the norm as valid, either for traditional or rational reasons, and comply with the norm because he or she is orienting his or her actions to certain common values of his or her group. Third, a counsel may try to present himself or herself as a certain kind of person, and hence comply with the norm as a rule of dramaturgical action. Of course, a counsel may also comply with the norm ‘mechanically’ (which is not the same as ‘for traditional reasons’), as part of routine practice, or refuse to comply with

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it. This illustrates that while positioned practices always contain external relations which are real, their existence and causes of existence are conditional. Their causal effectiveness always depends on other necessary conditions, too (see def. 1), especially on the causally effective reasons and motivation for action. Models of action are essentially models about the prevalent rules and principles of practical reasoning. We are thus back to studying constitutive rules and internal relations of different historical social worlds. Consequently, models of social action must be falsifiable by means of doublehermeneutic empirical research. We may assume that certain modes of action are institutionalised into positioned-practices systems. For example, it is very common to argue—or presuppose—that teleological/strategic action is internally related to the capitalist market economy system. However, this is not automatically or ahistorically so. For instance, the neo-liberalism of Thatcher and Reagan can be seen as a political project, which attempts to make actors comply with the strategic model of action in all of their everyday practices, thus extending and intensifying the transformations already partially accomplished by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economic liberalism. Yet this transformation cannot be completed. The transcendence of social systems in time makes communicative and other non-strategic modes of action necessary. In fact, these modes can be found even in capitalist practices. It is possible to distinguish between different kinds of strategic action: difference maximising, hasty egoism, far-sighted egoism and altruism, depending on how actors understand their (external) relation to other actors (see Taylor 1976; Axelrod 1984; Frochlich and Oppenheimer 1984). These types occur in a capitalist market society. Second, different types of strategic action can be seen as orientations, which are based on deeper grounds, theories and motives (Hollis 1988:140–1). Thus, forms of strategic action may be essentially connected to normative or expressive logic of action. A capitalist market society consists not only of market transactions but also of social relations inside hierarchical organisations, such as multinational corporations, or between, say, privately owned organisations and state compartments. Organisations facilitate co-operation among actors. This facilitation of co-operation is to a varying extent due to the local degree of hierarchical surveillance and control, but also because organisations create enduring contexts for social action. In organisations there can develop a trustful atmosphere where the mode of action changes, to some extent, towards that of normatively regulated action, at least in the ‘high trust positions’ (Giddens 1987a:157–62). Also, communicative action in organisations has better prerequisites for success than in the context of markets (cf. Williamson 1975:37–9; also Perrow 1986). Furthermore, Galbraith (1967) has shown how the actions of the technocratic staff of large firms can also be interpreted in terms of the dramaturgical model. So we should not be blinded by our definitions and analysis of the internal relations between modes of action and position-practice systems, but at least allow sufficient ‘flexibility and a certain amount of cross-checking of observation or reflection under one group of concepts by another’ (Sayer 1984:54). For example,

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Habermas’s theory of the historical development of ‘System’ and ‘Lebenswelt’ is based on a very simplistic assumption about the internal relation between the capitalist market economy system and teleological/strategic action (see, for example, Tuori 1988:114). To emphasise, the analysis of external and internal relations of positioned-practices systems and modes of action must also be empirical and double-hermeneutic. Philosophers and theorists should not think that they can envisage from their armchairs how the world really works.

The relationship between action and power In Giddens’s theory of structuration, there is also an internal relation between action and power. Giddens (1979:55) defines action as follows: Def. 4: First, the notion of action has reference to the activities of an agent. Second, it is a necessary feature of action that, at any point in time, the agent ‘could have done otherwise’. Third, action involves a stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions of corporeal beings in the ongoing process of events-in-the-world, thus producing various outcomes. Intended action is important but nevertheless only one category of an agent’s doing or his refraining; action may be unintended, and outcomes of action may also be routinely unintended, although ‘agents virtually all the time know what their actions are, under some description, and why it is they carry them out’ (Giddens 1987a:3). Giddens (1981:49) goes on to argue that action involves intervention in the world, thus producing definite outcomes. From these notions he concludes that power, in turn, can be defined as transformative capacity that refers to agents’ capabilities (competencies and facilities) of reaching definite outcomes. As can be seen, I preferred in (def. 4) the expression ‘producing various outcomes’ to the Giddensian formulation ‘producing definite outcomes’. Giddens’s own conception of power seems to be meant to resolve the problem of taking into account the reasonable core of both individualistic and collectivist theories of power. However, Giddens’s conceptualisation largely excludes those aspects of power that have been thematised by Michel Foucault, namely the unintended existential consequences of different forms of power. Giddens (981:49) thinks that Foucault has merely developed a modern version of the notion of power, which regards power above all as a property of collectivities. This is a partial misunderstanding, for Foucault writes that: if we speak of the structures or the mechanisms of power, it is only insofar as we suppose that certain persons exercise power over others [in a sense that there is] an ensemble of actions which induce others and follow from one another’. (Foucault 1982:217)

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This is a very structurationist (or even individualist) formulation. What I consider to be original in Foucault’s account of ‘productive power’ is the idea that power also produces elements of the social world, although this often escapes the horizon of actors. When actors utilise, invent or innovate resources—normally to grasp or change the world—in the course of social interaction, they also produce discursive knowledge, techniques, practical knowledge and skills, which constitute internal social relations. Many of the consequent effects may be unintentional. Consider two examples. First, Marxist attempts to grasp the historical meaning of the First World War had effects of power on the subsequent Soviet society. Although the Leninist idea of dictatorship of the Communist Party predates the war, the war was a coincidence that made the Bolshevik Revolution possible.4 In the period 1914–20, Russian Bolsheviks were first trying to comprehend the First World War, and soon their own revolution and the Western intervention into Russia. They, and Lenin in particular, transformed Marxist discourses on the basis of these experiences. These transformed discourses had far-reaching effects of power by constituting and legitimating practices of dictatorship. Although some party members had been warning about the dangers of centralising power within the party, the Bolshevik innovators mostly did not foresee the often very violent and repressive effects of power resulting (also) from these redefinitions (for details of these discursive transformations, see Roig 1982:49–64). Second, when the Finnish political elite learned—a process that included both individual learning and political struggles—from the experiences of the two lost wars with the Soviet Union during the Second World War that they should be political realists instead of ‘idealist nationalists’, they did not merely change their foreign policy. They also constituted and legitimated new practices for governing domestic political sphere, within which the transnational struggles of the Cold War were both taking place and, to the extent possible, suppressed until the time of Gorbachev (see Patomäki 1993). Novel ways of positioning emerged and new rules and principles of governing ‘things political’—and dominating other actors to comply with the wants and understandings of the ruling elites—were adopted. Actors such as J.K.Paasikivi did not foresee many or most of the resulting effects of power. Actors more or less know what they are doing when they do it and can often be quite clear in articulating it. But it does not follow that the broader consequences of these local actions are coordinated, …[for actors] ‘don’t know what they do does’. (Dreyfus andRabinow 1982:187) I think these examples, and the general Foucauldian point, indicate that there are good reasons to widen the definition of power to include the longer-term existential (ontological) effects of power. As will be seen, this wider definition can liberate from the theoretical puzzles that Giddens has been struggling with. Thus the simple def. 5:

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Def. 5: Power is the transformative capacity of agents’ capabilities (=resources as competencies and facilities). Action presupposes transformative capacity, i.e. power. To use power is to act and to act is to use power. There are also many other innovative and interesting features in this definition of power. As action and structures form an ontological duality, so are power and structures also connected. Moreover, this non-zerosum notion of power is not tied conceptually to a conflict of interest; rather, the relationship between power and conflict is contingent. Moreover, if power is not defined in terms of ‘definite outcomes’, as Giddens does, the basic insight of Foucault can be incorporated into this social ontology. Social structure Giddens (1979:64) defines structures as ‘structural properties…[which] can be understood as rules and resources’. He recognises the existence of: 1 2 3

knowledge—as memory traces—of ‘how things are to be done’ on the part of social actors (i.e. actors must be competent); social (and positioned) practices organised through the recursive mobilisation of that knowledge; and the transformative capabilities, i.e. power, that the production of those practices presupposes.

Giddens (1979:66) characterises structure as ‘rules and resources, organised as properties of social systems’ and social system as an entity ‘produced and reproduced in interaction…, via the application of generative rules and resources, and in the context of unintended outcomes’. This raises the question of whether structures as rules and resources do constitute, generate, organise and/or establish social relations (as Giddens at least seems to argue, and as David Sylvan and Barry Glassner (1985:90) claim that both Giddens and Bhaskar do), or whether structures should rather be seen expressly as social relations. Bhaskar’s (1979:51) argument is, however, that positions and practices can be individuated only relationally. What does this then mean? Does it imply that social structures (and ‘mechanisms’) consist of relations? Is it an ontological or an epistemological argument? Bhaskar maintains that: the initial conditions in any concrete social explanation must always include or tacitly presuppose reference to some or other social relation (however the generative structures invoked are themselves best conceived). And it is, I suggest, in the (explanation of the) differentiation and stratification, production and reproduction, mutation and transformation, continual remoulding and incessant shifting, of the relatively enduring relation presupposed by particular social forms and structures that sociology’s distinctive theoretical interest lies. (Bhaskar 1979:51–2)

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This suggests that Bhaskar makes an epistemological case for a special discipline called ‘sociology’. (This argument may include ontological components, inasmuch as it is grounded on the reality of internal relations.) Bhaskar, however, distinguishes between generative structures and social relations, which therefore must be different things. Since he too apparently views generative structures in terms of ‘rules and resources’, then the claim that sociology’s distinctive theoretical interest lies in the sphere of social relations seems to be somewhat undermined. However, consider the following: The social sciences abstract from human agency to study the structure of reproduced outcomes, the enduring practices and their relations; the social psychological sciences abstract from these reproduced outcomes to focus on the rules governing the mobilisation of resources by agents in their interaction with one another and nature. If the sphere of the former is social structure, that of the latter is social (and socio-natural) interaction. They may be linked by the study of society as such, where society is conceived as the system of relations between the positions and practices (or positioned-practices) which agents reproduce or transform…. (Bhaskar 1986:124) After this, Bhaskar refers to Karl Marx, who wrote in the Grundrisse that ‘society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which the individuals stand’. Bhaskar seems to argue that the emergent properties at the level of society are social relations, that these relations form structures, or mechanisms, which generate changes, and that these mechanisms are analogous to natural mechanisms like a magnetic field. Giddens, on the other hand, lays the emphasis on rules and resources, which constitute and/or generate social relations through actions. For Giddens, social relations seem to be by-products of the action, rules and resources nexus. I have already argued that the analogy between a magnetic field and structures of social relations does not hold. First, social rules and resources usually only enable or allow certain possibilities and disable, disallow or exclude certain others (Dessler 1989:453). Moreover, if it is true that rules and resources constitute and/or conjunctively generate social relations, then rules and resources are ontologically prior to external social relations, as Giddens seems to be arguing. Consider two examples. Let RAB be (1) a relation between a wife (A) and a husband (B), and (2) a relation between a modern statesman (e.g. a prime minister, a foreign minister or a president A) and a national electorate (B). Both relations can be analysed in terms of position-practice systems (a marriage; liberal-democratic elections and the imagined community of a ‘nation’ in the nation-state system), rules (constitutive and regulative), resources (connected to powers or transformative capabilities) and related modes of action.

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Without these substantial qualities the relations (1) and (2) are empty, abstract in almost the same way as formal deductive logic is. Moreover, these relations cannot be understood or explained without explaining relevant action, rules and resources, which are necessary for these relations to exist. Finally, as a direct consequence of the dual character of action and structures (which implies the need for a theory of action), there is a necessary—although perhaps loose— connection between individual actors’ reasons and the meaning of social actions and relations, although Bhaskar argues that: the meaning of an action…[or] its correct identification as an act of a particular type in a particular language and culture is always and in principle independent of the intention with which it is on some particular occasion, by some particular agent, performed. (Bhaskar 1979:108) This argument amounts to the same thing as Ferdinand de Saussure’s ‘langue’/ ‘parole’ distinction. Its initial plausibility stems from the particular examples utilised in this context. Saying ‘hello’ is a trivial example of an enduring, repetitious and nearly universal practice. As such it may be a misleading example. Even when saying ‘hello’ is merely a routine act, there must be practical knowledge concerning the meaning of that act. Without that knowledge the act would not have the meaning it has, and it would not be what it is. On the other hand, the meaning of saying ‘hello’ may also, in relevant respects, be dependent on particular reasons and understandings of actors. On some occasions there may be a specific point in saying ‘hello’. In the beginning of a philosophical essay it may convey a particular meaning. Also, in everyday practices, it may assume, say, ironic or sarcastic connotations. In English, it can be pronounced in various ways, to indicate local commonality or cultural distance between actors. Other languages have their own variations and differences. Human beings are not automatons, and cultures differ. It is true that individuals engage in positioned practices that have been defined, created and (re)produced historically before their entry, and which often are reproduced as an unintended consequence of their actions. Yet there is a necessary connection between actors’ knowledge and intentional reasons and the meaning of social actions/practices/relations. In repetitious contexts, however, this necessary connection may be so self-evident that it is easy to forget or, methodologically, bracket. On the basis of this discussion, how should we use the term ‘structure’? Giddens’s definition of structures as rules and resources does not sound plausible because the term ‘structure’ is normally used in connection with compositions and/or relations. Moreover, as Archer (1995:93–101) has argued, Giddens’s idea that structures are rules and resources, which only exist in the moment of interaction, tends, ultimately, to reduce structures to action and reduce reality to actual interaction. Yet structures and action are distinct and therefore analytically

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separable, and real powers and capabilities cannot be reduced to actual instances of interaction. Hence, I would like to propose the following definition: Def. 6: The term ‘social structure’ refers to internal and external relations of a positioned practice; these relations are implicated and/or generated by the components of the relevant causal complex. The internal and external relations are constituted and generated by the relatively enduring nexus of rules, resources and (re)productive actions. Constitutive rules make action possible and also regulate it. Constitutive rules imply internal relations, which form wholes with all kinds of logical relations between the parts. They are also action-dependent in a sense that actors have the power to reflect upon, criticise, deviate from and change the constitutive rules. External relations are the outcome of action generated by (1) rules; (2) resources as embodied capabilities and position-endowed facilities; and (3) intentional reasons for actions. External relations are contingent. They are (re)produced in and through social practices, with the possibility of ‘doing otherwise’ by the actors as ever present. Intentional reasons, even if idiosyncratic, are embedded in the contexts of interaction as well as in the background discourses (and related practical skills and capabilities). Also, the logics of action are constituted by historical rules and principles. In concrete empirical research, to uncover these layers and components requires a lot of painstaking, even meticulous, work. Def. 6 gives, clearly, a relational definition of structure. Is it also possible to define social structure in compositional terms (e.g. ‘age structure’, ‘occupational structure’, ‘structure of industry’)? Although this is certainly possible, and in some contexts also legitimate, two essential things must be kept in mind. First, from the causal analysis point of view it is necessary to examine substantial relations of connection and interaction, but not formal relations of similarity and dissimilarity. Thus, in order to perform causal analysis, compositions either should be interpreted in relational terms, translated into them or explained by means of relational conceptions. Second, all statistical information is the product of a two-stage interpretation process. The first stage is the official process of definition prescribing the criteria for inclusion in the category. The second stage is the registration of instances, which is done by persons of varying competence and variously biased (Maclver 1964:137; see also Alker 1996:332–54). Hence, (1) the relatively quantitative compositional knowledge is no more objective than the essentially qualitative relational knowledge; rather, (2) it is causally and, therefore, ontologically secondary to the conceptually much richer relational knowledge.

Dialectics of open, stratified systems With def. 6, we both can see society as a relational entity (somewhat contra Giddens) and at the same time deny that social structures are ontologically or

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causally analogical to natural structures or mechanisms (contra Bhaskar). What then is a social system? In one place Giddens (1979:66) defines system as ‘reproduced relations between actors or collectivities, organised as regular social practices’. On another occasion, Giddens uses the expression ‘patterns of relationships between actors or collectivities reproduced across time and space’ (Giddens 1981:26). The first definition seems to be derivative from def. 6, but the other seems to carry a somewhat more empiricist picture of the social world. Of course it is true that social activities always occur in time-space, but ‘the timespace settings of interaction’ (Giddens 1987a:144) are organised as relational social practices. Most importantly, the emergent powers and properties of systems cannot be reduced to actual activities and interaction. Thus, ‘system’ should be defined as follows: Def. 7: Social system is composed of time-space-situated relations between positions of individual and collective actors; social system is organised as regular, interconnected positioned-practices of individual and collective actors, but the components of a social system are also connected through manifold unintended consequences of action. Social systems have emergent powers and properties, and these may constitute their raison d’être. This is a relational definition, but one that does not deny that social activities occur only in tim e and space. All collectivities are social systems, but there are other wholes, which can be identified as systems as well, such as international society or capitalist world markets. Social systems have no essences independent of the contexts of action; they change together with those relational contexts. Social systems can, however, have emergent powers and properties. The problem is to avoid reification and mystification of systemic powers and properties. They must be analysable in terms of actions and positioned practices occurring in concrete spatial settings, as already outlined in Chapter 3. The IR levels would preclude studying open-mindedly levels in these two possible senses. Social systems are not only open, they are also overlapping and, in parts, intra-related. States, for instance, are themselves open systems, intra-and inter-related to various other systems consisting of, say, practices of capitalist world economy, international institutions and systems of governance of global political economy. In spatial terms, local developments within states, as well as parts of the state apparatuses themselves, can be causally and existentially both intra- and inter-related to a number of collective actors or systems. Emergent powers and properties, as well as hierarchical power relations, should be studied open-mindedly from this kind of realist perspective. Emergent powers and properties should not be organised, in one’s mystifying imagination, to accord with the simple IR levels just to yield the convenient possibility of continuing to reproduce the international problematic. To repeat once more the argument against armchair philosophising, the dialectics of these layered, relational and open wholes can only be described and explained by means of detailed and systematic empirical studies of concrete practices and relations.

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Causal complexes and the freedom of human action The notions of context and complex form the core of CR methodology. According to def. 1, cause is an insufficient but necessary part of a condition that is itself unnecessary but sufficient for the production of a result, i.e. the INUS-condition. There are five necessary social components in any causal complex (K) capable of producing events, episodes, tendencies and the like, namely: actors (AR); regulative and constitutive rules (RU); resources as competencies and facilities (RE); relational and positioned practices (PRA); and meaningful action (AN). Also, actors and their characteristic logics of action are historically constituted. Together, these related and interdependent components, and the emergent powers and properties of consequent social systems, create the sufficient but unnecessary complex for the production of a result. Hence, there is never a single cause but instead always a causal complex K={AR, RU, RE, PRA, AN}, perhaps including emergent properties and powers. This formulation does not disclose the layers of social beings and systems, or the unintended consequences and the spatiotemporality of (interactions. These have to be studied as well. Nonetheless, the notion of causal complex provides a useful way of systematising the elements that will have to be studied in any given context. A result X may be produced both by K1 and K(i > 1), i.e. there may be many different sufficient conditions capable of producing the same result. On the other hand, action is one of the elements, and actors can do things otherwise. A context of action is relative to particular actor j, AR j and to AR j ’s and other actors’ interpretations. As Giddens (1983:78) puts it, ‘context’ is always the contextuality of action. A context must also be relative to a particular moment in the continuous flow of time. Thus, CONTEXT=Kt _ {AN j t}, i.e. the causal complex at moment t with the meaningful action of AR j at the moment t excluded. This comes close to the difference between material and efficient causes. CONTEXT forms the complex of material causes for AN j t,whereas the real reasons for this action form the efficient causes of the actions of this positioned agent ARj . His or her actions, in turn, are part of the CONTEXT of other actors. Reasons for action are layered and may be circulated in institutionalised practices where they can have a taken-for-granted nature, and where many of the deeper assumptions—and the required practical skills—often go unnoticed. Yet there is always a variety of possible actions in a given context. This is just a consequence of def. 4, according to which it is a necessary feature of action that, at any point in time, the agent ‘could have done otherwise’. Two cases can be distinguished: 1 AN j t is consistent with all the elements of CONTEXT 2 AN j t is inconsistent with one/some of the elements of CONTEXT. Although, because of the typically ambiguous and contradictory nature of social contexts, (1) is never strictly possible, the analytical distinction between (1) and (2) is important. In many respects, (2) is the interesting case here. With what in

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particular can action be inconsistent in a context? Action can break the constitutive or regulative rules of the context. This may be due to a mistake (Winch 1971 [1958]:32), or it may be due to intentional deviance. In both cases, there may also be some innovative implications, intended or unintended, learning-inducing or pathological, leading to a closure. When innovative implications are unintended they will reveal their innovative character only later in the flow of time, though this is often the case for intended innovations as well. In a ny case, a careful examination of the CONTEXT of AN j t and the nature of AN j t will disclose the novelty and originality of that act(ion) (cf. Skinner 1988:79–118). An individual actor can move from one context to another. It is possible that an actor can act simultaneously in two or more different contexts, or at least contexts can penetrate each other. An individual actor exists as a bodily being, with embodied competencies. He or she is capable of remembering his or her own past and reflecting, planning and ‘doing otherwise’. Through his or her memory and embodied practical skills and capabilities, he or she is in fact also a personified and personal ‘intersection’ of different contexts. For instance, an individual actor can bring the generative rules and capabilities he or she has acquired in one context to bear in another context. This may turn out to be, say, inappropriate, curious, amusing, exotic, stubborn, immoral, rebellious or creative. The ‘intersection’ is personified because the actor’s complicated and (also always) ambiguous identity, as well as his or her stock of resources and expectations concerning rule-following, is formed during his or her life path through different relational contexts. Also, the ‘intersection’ is personal because it is a unique composition, and it may include innovative features. Freedom of human action is obviously not limited to the individual freedom to ‘act otherwise’. It is also a matter of changing realities: the constitutive and regulative rules; the social relations; the generative structures and complexes. To effect changes is typically a collective endeavour. The forging of transformative social identity is a complicated and fragile process. If this process is successful, it yields the parties emergent powers and properties—in the context of unintended consequences of action. The realist grounds for transformative actions will be the topic of Chapter 6.

Conclusion The primary purpose of this chapter has been the explication of CR social ontology by discussing the concepts of ‘action’, ‘structure’, ‘power’ and ‘system’. The result is just an open-ended articulation, a flexible starting point for systematic social scientific explanations. It is not a philosophical foundation. Rather, it is—and should remain—open to further argumentation, experience, criticism and change. That what is should be analysed and explained by social scientists and lay actors, not by metaphysicians. The main objects of criticism of this chapter included Bhaskar’s naturalist metaphors and his vacillating notion of social structure. I used a re-interpreted

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version of Habermas’s theory of social action to fill gaps in Bhaskar’s ontology. On the other hand, I argued that Giddens has introduced too narrow a concept of power and an implausible and tendentially reductionistic definition of ‘structure’. These were corrected along relationalist lines. On that basis, I explicated the dialectics of emergent powers and properties of open historical systems. Finally, a sketch of adequate social scientific explanation was developed. In order to explain phenomena, a social scientist should build iconic models of the causally efficient, historically formed complexes that produce the phenomena he or she is interested in explaining. Causal explanation and determination do not, by any means, deny human freedom. Human beings possess real causal powers to reflect, debate and plan. Human beings can choose to prefer the status quo or, alternatively, to resist, to act otherwise, to imagine alternatives and, even, to forge new social identities. As will be soon clarified, more adequate social scientific explanations can in fact increase human freedom.

Notes 1 2

3

See Sayer (1992:82). A ‘good’ example of analysis of internal and external relations without this distinction can be found in Elster (1978:22–5). Habermas has, for sure, attempted to escape from the phenomenological philosophy of subject/consciousness. Habermas (1987:295) speaks of ‘communicatively structured lifeworlds that reproduce themselves via the palpable medium of action oriented to mutual agreement’, i.e. via communicative action. Thus ‘lifeworlds’ are not, in Habermas’s theory, situated in subject/consciousness. However, there are problems in Habermas’s theory. First, he argues that the task of reconstructive and critically Kantian philosophy is to articulate the always already presupposed normative validity claims of speech-acts, and then he differentiates lifeworlds in accordance with these validity claims. Second, Habermas grounds his theory of action on the theory of differentiated lifeworlds. Finally, Habermas bases his theory concerning ‘system’ and ‘lifeworld’ on his theory of social action. The result is a philosophical-ontological theory of modern societies, with mutually exclusive spheres. This theory exceeds the reasonable limits of philosophical ontology. In contrast, an iconic model is proposed in terms of fallible, corrigible and controllable existential hypotheses. Habermas (1984 [1981]:86), speaks of ‘interpretation, which refers to negotiating definitions of the situation which admit of consensus’. My re-formulation of this indicates that I would like to substitute ‘a model of contextually structured and situated communication, which presupposes merely the possibility of consensus together with some normative prerequisites’ for the Habermasian ‘model of unconstrained consensus formation in a communication community standing under cooperative constraints’. The problem with the Habermasian model is that it is partially based on the notion of ideal communication community. Furthermore, it curiously implies that language and communication are used merely for ‘consensus formation’ or ‘negotiations’. However, de facto this is not the case, and it is not the only normative ideal of language use. Habermas (1987:326) seems to be of a different opinion, for he writes: ‘To the extent that the lifeworld fulfills the resource function, it has the character of an intuitive, unshakeably certain, and holistic knowledge, which cannot be made problematic at

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4

will—and in this respect it does not represent “knowledge” in any strict sense of the word. This amalgam of background assumptions, solidarities, and skills bred through socialization constitutes a conservative counterweight against the risk of dissent inherent in processes of reaching understanding that work through validity claims.’ About the first, original nineteenth-century round of the pathological learning process, articulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which eventually led to Communist dictatorship in Russia, see Chapter 1, note 5.

5

Double hermeneutics of iconic modelling

In social sciences, a theoretically reflective scientist tries to investigate and interpret a world, which is itself meaningful. This is what Anthony Giddens (1977:12) calls the double hermeneutics of social sciences. There is, first, the movement between theories and, second, the movement between the researcher, his or her explanatory models and the lay meanings. But how exactly does this double hermeneutics work? The basic idea is simple: understanding, knowledge and social being exist as a part of a relational, geo-historically formed context (even when its identity may endure across a number of particular contexts). Hermeneutics is about uncovering the relevant parts of the relevant context. Hermeneutics encourages reflexivity. Since there cannot be any development of knowledge without foreknowledge, social sciences must explicate the contextual presuppositions of their own understandings and devise new models, theories and stories on a reflective basis. Social sciences must self-consciously be involved in hermeneutic tasks of moving between theories. Hermeneutics is also about explicating the lay meanings in relation to the appropriate context(s). As Richard Bernstein (1983:141–2) puts it, the crucial task of empirical research carried out in the double hermeneutic way is to find resources in our language and experience to enable us to understand initially alien phenomena without imposing blind or distortive prejudices on them. The process of building iconic models of causal complexes is hermeneutic in both senses. An iconic model—a picture of the relational components of a causal complex—includes existential hypotheses, stipulations of internal relations and action-possibilities, descriptive statements and causal hypotheses. The task is to identify these correctly and, consequently, tell well-endorsed explanatory stories about multiple determinations of concrete outcomes. In this chapter, I shall elucidate the methodology of iconic modelling. First, I discuss two different approaches to explanatory modelling, and make a case for the reductive approach. Second, I analyse different types of iconic models and argue that teleiomorphs, based on idealisations and abstractions, should be central to social sciences. Third, I assess briefly the relative roles of quantitative and qualitative evidence, making a case for the primacy of qualitative evidence. 123

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In the last section of this chapter, I shall discuss the role of time and space in explanations. Following Andrew Sayer (2000:106–154), I contend that explication of spatiality is usually relevant, but not always the key issue. However, temporality is fundamental to explanations and actions alike. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narratives, I conclude this chapter by clarifying the double hermeneutic logic of temporality. This argument anticipates the logic of explanatory emancipation.

Ampliative and reductive approaches to explanatory modelling Nicholas Rescher (1987:33–4) distinguishes between two profoundly different approaches to looking for adequate explanations, the ampliative and the reductive. The ampliative strategy has been common in modern Western science and metaphysics. It searches for highly secure propositions that are acceptable as ‘true beyond reasonable doubt’. Given such a carefully circumscribed and tightly controlled starter set of propositions, one proceeds to move outwards by making inferences from this secure starter set. Figure 5.1 illustrates the resulting picture. In the ampliative approach, the basic move is thus outwards from the secure home base of unproblematic core beliefs. In stark contrast, the reductive strategy proceeds in exactly the opposite direction. It begins not in a quest for accepted truths but for well-qualified and interesting candidates or prospects for truths. At the outset, it is enough to have interesting possibilities and somewhat plausible candidates for endorsement. These candidates can also be mutually contradictory. What the researcher has to do next is to impose a de-limiting and consistencyrestoring screening that separates, metaphorically speaking, the sheep from the goats until he or she is left with something that merits endorsement. In the

Figure 5.1 The ampliative approach

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reductive approach, research proceeds by way of diminution and elimination as Figure 5.2. illustrates. The reductive approach proceeds by narrowing down the initial wide range of plausible prospects for endorsement. While the paradigmatic instrument of ampliative reasoning is deductive derivation, the paradigmatic method of contraction is dialectical argumentation. To effect the necessary reduction, researchers do not proceed via a single deductive chain. Instead, they move along complex cycles that criss-cross the same ground from different angles in trying to identify weak points (of view) and to look for the best candidates among competing alternatives. They are seeking for a resolution for which, on balance, the strongest overall case can be made. It is not ‘the uniquely correct answer’ but the strongest and most defensible position that should be sought in dialectics. Moreover, the best available explanatory model, comprising the most defensible components for endorsement, always rests on relatively insecure ground. It is always possible to find a still stronger or more defensible position, that is, a model and story that is truer. For realist social sciences, which are interested in complex, stratified and historical realities of multiple determinations and change, the ampliative approach seems dogmatic. The ampliative approach aims at simplicity and security at the expense of depth, complexity and alteration. In fact, it tends to preclude these a priori, thus causing blindness to contrary evidence. It denies the need for hermeneutics at any level. Paradigmatically, the ampliative approach aims not at understanding initially alien phenomena but denying the unfamiliarity of anything. The main purpose of the ampliative strategy is to reproduce the secure starter set. Hence, its practitioners tend to impose blind and distortive prejudices on the phenomena to be explained. The belief of David Hume, that people are everywhere the same and that there can be no change, exemplifies the consequences of the ampliative approach (although Hume’s belief was also

Figure 5.2 The reductive approach

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ontologically determined). For realist social sciences, the paradigmatic approach must be reductive. The main aim is to maximise openness and learning capacity.

Types of iconic models Both technical symbols and models depend upon a convention or a set of conventions by which they become vehicles for thought about a subject matter. The difference between them is that, while the conventions for a model are projective, the conventions for technical symbols are arbitrary. Models are explicit descriptive and explanatory models of something real, something that exists outside the conventions of the model. Technical symbols can stand for anything, but models cannot. A model can become a technical symbol when its source of projection is lost or forgotten as, for instance, the bull’s head became alpha, but a symbol such as ‘a’ cannot become a model. Projective conventions involve the analogic or metaphoric use of the source of the model, in the act of construction of the model. An iconic model is a descriptive picture of a possible real world. Accordingly, a theory can be thought of as a statement—picture complex, which refers to the world and makes truth-claims. (Harré 1970:36–40) Models are built through complex hermeneutic and practical mediations. Typically, a model tries to propose similarity or likeness to something that we are already familiar with, or to something that has already been established in sciences. Although we were interested in one and the same subject matter—say, the determination of the foreign policy of late twentieth-century nation-states—we could still use models drawn from different sources: laws of physics, evolution, biological organisms, cybernetic machines, artificial intelligence, reading of texts, other familiar bodily or social activities, episodes of Greek history, divine providence and so on (cf. Harré 1970:33–5). In other words, the source of a model is usually a field that is assumed to be better known, or to be more familiar, in the given context, and hence of help in constructing in imagination a possible mechanism or structured complex that can explain the phenomenon in question. In a critical realist (CR) understanding, an iconic model stands in for a real causal complex in the social world, of which social scientists are always at least partially ignorant. The knowledge and competencies of actors are necessary for the (re)production of social relations, practices and systems, yet their knowledge may be partial, biased, short-sighted, reifying and mystifying, that is, partially false. By the process of iconic modelling, both researchers and actors can learn something. That is its function and importance. The iconic model is a picture of a possible causal complex and mechanisms for producing the phenomena we are interested in explaining. There are different kinds of iconic models. Models can be classified into different categories depending on their source and type. Figure 5.3 presents a taxonomy of iconic models. Paramorphic models have a different source and subject. A paramorph is constructed or imagined as operating according to certain principles, often drawn from science and technology, but well-known

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Figure 5.3 A taxonomy of iconic models

genres of drama (tragedy, comedy, fairy tale) can also provide explicit sources (possibly or usually in addition to science and technology). Paramorphs are usually constructed to model processes. Paramorphs have two aspects: relations to source and to subject. The relation of a paramorphic model to its subject may be of three different kinds. In partially analogous models, the initial and final states of a model and subject may be exacdy alike, while the processes by which they were reached may differ. A complete paramorphic analogy models all relevant details of its subject. In a partial paramorphic homologue the model and subject would have an identical manner of working but only analogous inputs and outputs. A singly connected paramorphic model draws on the principles of one source, but a model can also be multiply connected to many different sources (Harré 1970:44–5). Examples of paramorphic models in social sciences include social physics, sociological functionalism, evolutionary models and cybernetics. All of them have been used in international relations (IR). Arms races have been modelled in the Richardson—Rapoport tradition in accordance with the schemes of Newtonian physics.1 World-System Analysis, functionalist theories of co-operation and Waltz’s neo-realism have used sociological functionalism and evolutionary models, albeit in very different ways.2 Traces of cybernetics can be found already in David Mitrany, but it was Karl Deutsch who explicitly brought cybernetic models to the field. It is noteworthy that, of all these schools of thought and thinkers, only Deutsch has been really clear about the fact that he is constructing models whose subject matter and sources differ. When the subject matter and sources differ, models can be constructed only by way of analogy. The field of the subject of the model can also be roughly the same as the source on which the model is based. These models are called homoeomorphs. Homoeomorphs can be divided into three subcategories. Only teleiomorphs are interesting from the point of view of social sciences. The term ‘teleiomorph’ is intended to suggest that teleiomorphs are, in some respect or respects, improvements over their subjects. Two kinds of teleiomorphs can be distinguished, depending on just how they are related to their source-subject (which may be a particular concrete entity, representing the type of all members of some class of entities, or it may be some kind of an average). There are

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idealisations and there are abstractions. A pure idealisation has all the relevant characteristics of its source subject, but at least some of them are, according to some scale of value, more ‘perfect’ than the source-subjects’ properties. Abstraction, in turn, can be analysed as follows. If the source-subject has the relevant properties pl…pn, then an abstraction has the properties pj…pk (1<j
‘Germany is in the centre and Tanzania in the periphery of the world economy.’ ‘There are three great powers in the world.’ ‘The power of the USA was in decline in the 1960s and 1970s.’ ‘Nixon bombed Hanoi.’ ‘Finland felt that she had to be more active with respect to her policy in the United Nations.’ ‘Unilever has raised its prices of washing liquids again.’

By using George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s (1980) elucidation, these statements can be analysed and decomposed in terms of their metaphorical structure. Centre and periphery are metaphors that stem from concrete experience, from the fact that, when we look at some territory (land, floor, space, etc.), our field of vision defines a boundary of the territory, namely the part that we can see. The part we can see well is the centre; other parts of the field belong to the periphery. Given that a bounded physical space is a ‘container’ within which one can be and that our field of vision correlates with that bounded physical space, the metaphorical concept ‘visual fields are containers’ emerges easily. Only by assuming this metaphor, it is possible to use expressions such as ‘Tanzania is in the periphery, Germany in the centre of the world economy’. The second statement is based on the metaphor ‘significant is big’. Great powers are ‘great’ because they are assumed to be significant. The power of the USA can be said to have been ‘in decline’ because ‘having control of force is up; being subject to control or force is down’. This metaphor clearly has a physical, orientational basis: physical size typically correlates with physical strength, and the victor in combat of two bodily persons is typically on top. Consider then the expression ‘Nixon bombed Hanoi”. Although Nixon did not

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personally drop any bombs to Hanoi, this metonymic expression—a metonymy uses one entity to refer to another that is related to it—substitutes controller for controlled (as well as for other controllers). Also, Hanoi can stand in for the whole country. Further on, if Finland is assumed to ‘feel’ something such as being compelled to be more active in the United Nations, one is talking about states as if they were persons. At the same time, and more implicitly, one is using a metonymy that can substitute an institution such as a state—the whole of which is seen as a ‘person’—for the concrete actors responsible for a particular decision (to make Finland more active, or, in the Unilever example, the corporation as a whole is thought to raise prices). I hope these examples show how the language of world politics is thoroughly metaphorical. There is no simple way of ‘accentuating reality’. This is an important reason for talking about iconic models. The term ‘icon’ refers to an image as a symbolic and metaphoric window between two worlds: the world of theories and the real world we are trying to describe and explain, but which must remain always partially alien or uncovered. By building a picture—statements complex along the lines of the reductive approach, the aim is to create a well-endorsed icon, a relatively credible window from the transitive sphere of social scientific models to the intransitive world of a geo-historical causal complex (only the future is open and changeable). Whether the model has been successful in this or not has to be checked by means of ontological and theoretical plausibility control, and, critically, by means of assessing available empirical evidence.

Modelling causal complexes Research starts with a problem, or a question to be answered. There is an X that is for some reason interesting, and seems to be in need of an explanation. How was (is) X possible? Why did (has, could) it become actual? This X can be an outcome of a particular episode, such as the Melos massacre, or a general tendency, such as the tendency to adopt neo-liberal economic policies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. A prevalent phenomenon can also become absent (slavery) or emerge (politically active global civil society). Moreover, a context-specific statistical correlation, or Tony Lawson’s (1997:204– 213) terminology, a contrastive demi-regularity, can also give rise to a research puzzle. Examples of contrastive demi-regularities could include: ‘An increasing portion of the world’s population lives in cities’; ‘Average unemployment rates in Western industrial countries were higher in the 1990s than the 1960s’; ‘The global economic growth has been steadily slowing down since the 1960s’; ‘Since the late nineteenth century, wars between liberal-democratic countries have been much less frequent than inter-state wars between them and others, or inter-state wars between others’; ‘Since the Second World War, wars within states have been much more common than wars between states’; ‘Measured in incomes in constant dollar terms, global disparities have been growing exponentially since the early 1960s’.

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Every research problem presupposes something, and this something belongs to a wider system. For instance, the democratic peace hypothesis assumes statist and legalist categories of significant violence. The first task of a research project is thus to explicate these presuppositions, whether they concern categories of data coding, implicit metaphorical structures, the validity of particular historical descriptions, theoretical assumptions or implicit fairy tale or tragic narratives. For instance, should we also allow for covert military operations or transnationally constituted military force as an indication of non-peaceful relations between liberal-democracies? (cf. Barkawi and Laffey 1999:414–15). If the research problem can, upon close examination, be sustained, perhaps in a qualified form, the next undertaking is to construct an explanation by building an explanatory iconic model of the relevant causal complex. This follows the scheme of scientific explanation in open systems (see Bhaskar 1979:165). The first step is the resolution of a complex outcome into its components; the second, redescription of component causes in terms of abstractions, idealisations and a CR social ontology; the third, an analysis of possible material and efficient causes, some of them perhaps characteristic of a number of geo-historical structures and systems; and, last, empirical assessment of possible causal components, and elimination of the weaker hypotheses. The CR ontology is a hermeneutic standpoint. We cannot identify two components (or complexes) with each other if we have not first identified them as different, separate or specific. Also, we cannot identify something if we have not identified it both as something specific and with other entities that are essentially the same. We always need both operations, identification as…and with…, and both presuppose each other (Israel 1979:103–7). The CR social ontology provides a particular ‘as…’ and ‘with…’ to identify relevant components of causal complexes, and to assess whether they also comprise relatively enduring structures. Moreover, analogies and metaphors are crucial in CR social sciences. Identification is made possible by an understanding of differences and similarities. Analogies and metaphors organise these differences and similarities. An important aspect of the better understanding of something is to explain it in terms of similarities between the alien object and familiar or established meanings. Realist ontological concepts such as ‘powers’, ‘producing’ and ‘mechanisms’ are themselves metaphorical, and should be assessed as such. For instance, the metaphor of ‘mechanism’ is not always plausible in assigning elements of social worlds; thus, the notion of causal complex. There is little that is strictly literal. The ‘literal’ meanings are either routinely reproduced metaphors or are based on immanent bodily and social experience, which ground metaphors. As the notion of double hermeneutics reminds us, an understanding of the meanings circulated within social practices is a prerequisite of adequate modelling. Analogies and metaphors are part of the world itself We take into a model world-constituting metaphors such as ‘visual fields are containers’, ‘significant is big’, ‘having control of force is up; being subject to control or force is down’ or ‘states are persons’. However, when the world in question is modelled, one

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should not use these metaphors in describing the world uncritically, at least not without being as explicit as possible about such a usage. Rather, we should grasp and analyse metaphorically structured constitutive rules and definitions for what they are, as constitutive, meaningful and intentional (even if contested) features of the real world we are studying. Even if constitutive, they may nonetheless be highly misleading as descriptive claims. An iconic model stands in for real causal complexes and mechanisms. Actors must have some familiarity with the social complex and related (or consequent) mechanisms; their competencies and knowledge are the condition for social relations to exist. However, we can assume that they are partially ignorant of at least some layers and aspects of the worlds, in which they exist and act, and they may also have false understandings of some or many of these realities. An iconic model includes the following kinds of hypotheses (modified from Harré 1970:55–6): 1

Existential hypotheses. Existential hypotheses can be of the following kind: ‘There are great powers’; ‘There is a centre and a periphery of a world economy’; ‘There are states that are analogical to persons’. However, more critically, they can also explicate the relevant constitutive rules and metaphors: ‘There are states that are considered by actors to be significant; these states are called “great powers” because actors use the metaphor “significant is big”; the significance of the states is a social construction, that stems from the constitutive rules {x, y,…} and from the certain kind of resources that are constituted to be significant’; A sovereign state has been constituted as a possessive individual in international law and discursive practices’. On the other hand, existential hypotheses can also concern emergent properties and powers arising in social systems. All existential hypotheses, whatever kind they may be, must be subjected to the scrutiny of a plausibility control and empirical evidence. 2 Stipulations of internal relations and action possibilities. We can distinguish between different ‘How is X possible’? questions. When we are concerned with the identity of X (an actor, an action, a practice, a relation), we need an account of relevant constitutive and closely related regulative rules. For instance, how is it possible to ‘declare a war’ or ‘to own and control property located in various nation-states’? In a similar manner, we can also analyse the identities of positioned actors. Any explication of identities and constitutive rules implies a stipulation of internal relations. This kind of analysis freezes, in a sense, the social world in question. Having done it, we can move towards the world of historical, causally effective, dynamic interaction and ask: What are the INUS components that made that action possible? At this level, the analysis is about putting forward causal hypotheses concerning outcomes in the open systems (see 4, below). The point is to grasp the actual constellation of conditions that made X contingently possible. Other constellations could have made it possible as well. Finally, we can ask a possibilistic causal question concerning the existence of the actually existing elements: How did their existence come about? In this manner, we can write genealogies of relevant components of the layered causal complexes in question.

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3

4

Descriptions of the model. Descriptions of a model can be uncritically metaphorical and metonymical: ‘The power of the USA was in decline in the 1960s and 1970s’. They can also be more reflective and contextual: ‘Given the constitutive rules of the international society, the post-cold war hegemony of the Western model of society, the development of the US resources, the world-historical context of the end of the cold war, the dominance of haute finance and the selfunderstandings of the Bill Clinton and George W.Bush regimes, the US hegemonic power can be argued to have been in its second height since the early 1990s, but only in an ambiguous manner.’ Complex statements and assumptions of this kind are, however, in need of further qualifications and support, both from theory and empirical evidence; all its components should be analysed further. Causal hypotheses. These can be stated in such questions as ‘Was the decline of the USA caused by a slow-down in its technical innovativeness, or by a political crisis of legitimation?’, or ‘Will the second phase of the hegemony of the USA, accompanied by its increasing unilateralism and arrogance, lead to the erosion of the major co-operative institutions of the post-Second World War world?’ However, they can be also put forward in a more critical way, by trying to insulate the most relevant INUS components of the causal complexes in question. We could ask, for instance, a counterfactual question such as: ‘Would the decision makers of the other G7 states have any reasons for destroying the USA-led institutional arrangements of the world economy, given the time—space situated CONTEXTI’? Or, to take another example: ‘Can we explain a particular treatment of MNCs in Zambia in terms of a game-like bargaining situation between Unilever and Zambia’?; ‘What are the crucial components of this situation, and how did they come about?’ Causal hypotheses are about insulating the pivotal material and efficient causes of the relevant complex. What parts of the material causes could have been different? Who could have acted differently, and how? What kind of context could have made ‘acting differently in a particular way’ possible, or legitimised, naturalised, encouraged or sanctioned it? Answers require a thorough analysis, i.e. a dialectically developing process of iconic modelling, and an attempt to specify deeper layers and, more thoroughly, the pertinent parts of the complex, which forms a partial and open whole, and is causally responsible for the outcome. A necessary requirement is methodical gathering and analysis of empirical evidence, but counterfactual reasoning is also needed.

This scheme of iconic modelling clarifies the nature of many social scientific practices. Yet it can also critically re-direct them and lead to more systematic and open-minded practices. It can help to overcome many of the standard dichotomies—such as the one between ‘explanation’ and ‘understanding’—which mislead more than enlighten. Richard Rorty has, however, rightly criticised ‘the metaphysical thinker’ who ‘thinks that if you can get the right understanding of Being—the one that gets Being right—then you are home’ (Rorty 1991:38). Thus, we also need constant self-

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reflection, encouraged by concepts such as Martin Heidegger’s thematising.4 Thematising includes not only a positive attitude for truth but also a systematic articulation of the understanding of being, the sketching out of the way of conceiving which is appropriate to such entities and the de-limitation of an area of subject matter. The articulation of the understanding of being means in the context of social sciences that a theory of social ontology should be explicated, the question being: What are the basic elements of the social world, and how are they interrelated? The CR social ontology, discussed in Chapter 4, is such an articulation. It conditions the appropriate ways of understanding and analysing social worlds. To acknowledge this implies a moral requirement of constant openness to ontological criticism and revisions, and a constant need to re-thematise the subject matter.

Empirical evidence Assuming that after a critical scrutiny of its presuppositions, the research problem has been sustained, even if only in a qualified form; and that at least a few interesting candidates for endorsement as components of possible iconic models have been specified; the next job is to assess and refine these candidates. In an open-ended, realist research, empirical evidence must play a critical role in the assessment and refinement of candidates. Although quantitative evidence is indispensable, the reasons of actors and the meanings of actions and practices can only be studied by qualitative means.

Quantitative data Quantitative data-based techniques presuppose that the object can be analysed in terms of magnitudes. Magnitudes can be expressed as integers or ordinal numbers, or ratios. Some things can obviously be counted or measured. Some relatively unproblematic cases would be the number of people, or the amount of gold in a central bank or the number of nuclear warheads possessed by a country. Economists are fond of thinking that all values can be measured in terms of money (or ordinal preferences), since this is what happens in capitalist markets constantly. Magnitude assignments are, in general, monotonic, presupposing a linear continuum. In other words, there should be no contextual, qualitative variations of values. This may look like a serious limitation on the use of quantitative data in social sciences. Advocates of quantitative methods usually appeal to the qualities of statistics and mathematics as a precise and unambiguous language that extends our powers of deductive and analytical reasoning far beyond that of purely verbal methods (Sayer 1992:175). However, ‘quantitative’ does not imply ‘formal’ (and vice versa). Statements linking ‘more’ of something to ‘less’ of something else are quantitative, even when they are expressed verbally in essentially journalistic or traditionalistic texts. Journalistic or traditionalistic studies are not ‘formal’; neither

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are they usually particularly hypothetical, theoretically reflective or systematic. Yet, this does not mean that they are necessarily qualitative. To the extent that they are quantitative by their very logic, the formal methods of empirical studies can make them more methodical and precise. Positivists have always been right about this. Analytical powers, clarity and preciseness are important virtues of scholarly work. Moreover, quantification is part of the object of study. For a long time, many social objects have been systematically quantified, measured, for example, in terms of money, or time or quantified inputs and outputs. Quantified flows and processes play an important role in the governance of modern organisations. (Sayer 1992:178) Capitalism and modern nation-states developed also by cultivating the practices of book-keeping and data collection. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, statistics was explicitly a science of (and for) state (Foucault 1991c:96). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of quantified information has grown ever stronger. However, with internationalised state structures and new forms of governance, quantitative data has also become more global. In the twentieth century, the World Bank, the IMF and various parts of the UN system, for instance, collect, organise and also analyse vast amounts of quantitative data. The hope of positivists has been that one day this quantitative data would reveal, under careful scrutiny, invariant regularities in society, also possibly leading to an optimal theory of moral and political interventions into societal flows and patterns.5 This hope has been, for better or worse, in vain. The fundamental question is: What must the object be like for it to be quantifiable? Only qualitatively invariant objects and processes can be quantified using interval scales. This is also the presupposition of assumptions such as linearity, additivity, etc. Without these assumptions, the variables would not be able to make stable reference and all the analytical tools would be, to a large extent, useless (although in statistics there are some remedies e.g. to the problem of nonadditivity; see Alker 1966). Social relations are, however, dependent on concepts and meanings. As David Sylvan (1991a:268–70), among many others, has pointed out, meanings are contextual. Social structures and relations are thus not easy to quantify, at least not unambiguously. Moreover, as a language, mathematics is acausal and astructural. It lacks the categories of ‘producing’, ‘generating’ or ‘forcing’ that we take to indicate causality. A function y=f(x) says only that quantitative variation iny is formally related in some ways to quantitative variation in x. The sign ‘=’ indicates only that the quantities are equal. There is nothing about substantial causal relations here (Sayer 1992:179). Two major problems of quantitative data are, thus, the bracketing (or suppression) of the contextuality of social being and action, and the lack of realist concepts of power and causality. The suppression of contextuality makes standard sets of quantitative data problematic. As Hayward Alker (1996:339) has argued, ‘data-coding procedures should be considered key dependent variables’. The categories and concepts used in data coding may form deep layers of the causal complex that explains x. Moreover, the lack of realist powers and causality gives rise to a set of characteristic problems. Unlike temporal causal processes,

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processes in mathematical or statistic models can be reversed. For instance, given information on such relatively unproblematic ‘variables’ as birth rates per 1,000 women in each age group, we can attempt to forecast the number of births in future periods. For the purpose of ex post calculations, once the model has been fitted, any variable can be treated as dependent, simply by re-arranging the equation. A related problem is that these mathematical or statistical models aim at prediction with no understanding of the causal relations involved (Sayer 1992:183–4). Once the components of a system have been quantified (more often unreliably than not), it is always possible to fit a mathematical model to the data ex post. However, given the nature of data and the condition of open systems, the model is highly unlikely to be able to predict the future. In open systems, outcomes do not remain stable even when the characteristic powers and structures do. There is also the problem of spurious correlation. This is the well-known post hoc (ergo propter hoc) fallacy: simply because there is positive correlation between A and B, it is thought that A causes B. Indeed, sometimes a correlation can be a reasonable basis for expectation of a causal relationship. However, even when statistics or mathematics are useful for recording some of the effects associated with particular structures or causal powers, more qualitative languages are needed to show why and how objects possess these powers (see Sayer 1992:179–80, 193–9). Some statistical methods use, occasionally, causal language. For instance, many econometricians think they are trying to identify Humean causal relations. Econometrics not only requires that data is unambiguous and monotonic; it also shares the fundamental assumptions of other forms of statistical analysis. Tony Lawson (1997:69–85) has discussed in detail the consequent futility of econometric developments. There is no point in repeating that discussion here. Suffice to say that the underlying flat ontology of mere external relations of association between atomist units seems to be the main obstacle to any significant scientific development. Atoms possess no intrinsic conditions. An atom is distinguishable only with respect to its position (or some higher order derivative of position such as motion, acceleration, etc.) in space at a moment in time’ (Bhaskar 1978 [1975]:83). Methodologically, the plausibility of the assumption of monotonity stems from this (largely implicit or secreted) atomist ontology. Politically, it is in this sense that we should understand Alker’s (1996:186) complaint that ‘mathematical social science…distorts social relations to the extent that it participates in and mirrors our alienation under “capitalism”’. In contrast, adequate social scientific data should not distort but, rather, help to identify correctly the essential relations and structures of the objects we are studying.

Qualitative evidence Quantitative data may be indispensable and can be useful in certain limited ways, particularly in deriving research problems and estimating how common particular structures and tendencies are. Ontologically, however, qualitative

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evidence is primary. Internal social relations exist as shared (even if often vague and ambiguous) concepts. Internal relations are the necessary material causes of social action. They are implicated in the causally efficacious reasons for action, and involved in the outcomes of any generative social complex. Moreover, regulative rules, as well as the external conditions and circumstances of action, have to be given meaning by the actors, otherwise they could not enter into their reasoning processes. Hence, to model a layered causal complex adequately, one has to study the meanings of relevant actions and practices. This is the second level problem of hermeneutics in social sciences, concerning the movement between the researcher, his or her explanatory models and the lay meanings. The mode of access to lay meanings is not external observation but communication (cf. Habermas 1984 [1981]:102–13). If we study past worlds and the relevant people are already dead, communication cannot be mutual. Rather, it is about interpreting texts or text-like traces of the past. These texts might have been constitutive of the meanings under study (first-hand evidence) or they may make references to them (second-hand sources). If we study contemporary worlds, and the relevant people are still mostly alive, mutual communication is possible. Participatory ‘observation’, interviews, discussions and other forms of mutual communication can complement the study of texts and text-like traces. Despite the detachment of the researcher and his or her object of study in terms of time, space and causal responsibility, the subject—object relationship is complicated even when the object of study is historical. There may be (asymmetric) internal relations between the being of the researcher and the constitutive meanings and concepts of past objects. The researcher also has fore-knowledge and anticipations about these meanings and related validity claims. How is it possible, then, to achieve better understandings in a conscious and controlled manner? In Hans Georg Gadamer’s view, it is actually impossible to find a method that would guarantee objectivity in the traditional scientist sense. There is no interpretation totally free of presuppositions and prejudices. While the interpreter may free himself or herself from this or that situation, he or she cannot free himself or herself from his or her own facticity, from the oncological condition of always already having a finite temporal situation as the horizon, as the standpoint from which the presumed possibilities and anticipations stem.6 It is this horizon that should be put systematically at risk when it is confronted by new qualitative evidence or experience (practical or communicative). There are thus two sides to collecting and analysing qualitative evidence. The onto-ethical relation of the researcher towards the unfamiliar or alien meanings, actors and practices, and the methodological problem of classifying types of evidence and analysing them systematically for the purpose of building a well-endorsed iconic model. The onto-ethical relationship must be based on virtues of openness and learning. ‘Historical consciousness is aware of its own otherness’ (Gadamer 1975:306). The process of understanding meanings must follow the logic of hermeneutic circle and occur through constant fusion of horizons (see Gadamer 1975 [1965]:306–7 passim). The available evidence should be classified in terms of what relationship they bear to the actions and contexts

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under study (primary, secondary, etc.). If there are as yet no interesting or initially plausible candidates to assess, the analysis of qualitative evidence must aim at identifying components of causal complexes; if some plausible candidates have been specified, analysis must aim at assessing their empirical merits. Detective work and the process of a trial provide particularly striking metaphors for social sciences. Sometimes we must seek for any clues, even remote and indirect ones, to establish elements of causal complex and to construct a proper story to tell. There may be only a few traces available, perhaps because of spatio-temporal distance, perhaps because of practices of secrecy Sometimes both evidence and interesting candidates for endorsement are abundant, and then a trial seems a more appropriate metaphor. The prosecutor and the counsel for the defence have to be given sufficient time to investigate and bring in all available evidence to make their case. Finally, a time of judgement will come: Is candidate X plausible enough to be endorsed further? After the screening-out of candidates, a consistent—as consistent as the subject matter allows—picture of the causal complex as a whole has to be formed, and an explanatory story told.

Space and time in iconic models Human beings are temporal and spatial beings. We cannot go back in time; whatever we do is an intervention in irreversible causal processes; physically, we cannot be in two places simultaneously; and the specific area of space we fill in—‘this chair’—cannot be occupied by anybody else simultaneously. Bodily action always involves a stream of actual or contemplated causal (and thus material) interventions in the ongoing geo-historical processes, thus producing various outcomes. Causal powers can also be activated or mediated across both spatial and temporal distance, ‘provided that there are intervening media through which they can exert their influence’ (Sayer 2000:112). To what extent is it necessary to spell out the spatial and temporal location (or distance) and organisation of the components of causal complexes, including actors and actions? Interest in studying social space seems to coincide with the crisis of the short-lived twentieth-century claim that territorial nation-states de-limit the space of most social relations and processes. What is crucial is whether spatial constellations and organisations make any difference to how concrete practices, powers and causally efficacious complexes work. It cannot be decided a priori that spatial location, distance and organisation are particularly important aspects of causal complexes. It has to be left to the process of iconic modelling to determine how and why space matters. Temporality seems essential to any social interaction and process. All components of causal complexes are geo-historical, except the natural powers and mechanisms that make society possible (and they are subject to long-term processes of change too). Moreover, actors cannot change the past or intervene in future processes they do not anticipate. In social interaction, the timing of action is often crucial and, in some social contexts, it is also meticulously organised. It is at least as important that in making something actual (present),

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actors unite reasoning about the past and possible futures in terms of narratives. A social scientist, in his or her turn, tells stories and may thereby re-signify practices. Also, the timing and media of his or her intervention makes a difference.

Space In the early twentieth century, the science of geo-politics emerged with the exhaustion of the geographical space for Western colonialists and explorers. It aimed at viewing the planet earth as a whole and stipulating positivist ‘laws’ about the statist or imperial governance of the limited global space (Tuathail 1996). However, geo-politics has been an exception rather than the rule. In the good part of the mainstream of twentieth-century economics, politics and sociology, it has been assumed that economy and society mean or at least correspond to the nation-state. Often, space has been abstracted away with little or no concern about the consequences (Sayer 2000:108–9). Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey and others have complained that the tendency to abstract away from space—or to make simplistic assumptions about it—has kept social scientists ignorant about the deep conditions of the social objects they are studying. This ignorance has also caused blindness about the possibility of (the ongoing) profound changes. For Lefebvre (1991; 1974:11), space has an active operational and instrumental role in the organisation of social systems, including production and exchange. Hegemonic forces or classes also make systematic use of space in their attempt to gain or secure preferred practices and relations. Following Lefebvre, Harvey (1990:201–39) argues that deep cultural conceptions of space and time are necessarily created through material practices and processes of production, which must be organised spatially. Command of time and space are also important resources of power. In turn, practical organisations and cultural conceptions of time and space create senses of belonging and identity, and also render particular cultural and political projects worthwhile. The term ‘geo’ comes from a Greek word for earth. Social processes are geohistorical in the sense that, until very recently, human powers and social actions have always occurred somewhere on the surface of the planet earth. However, actions and their contexts can be independent of particular spatial settings. Embodied competencies, available facilities, rules, actor identities, practices and modes of action can remain unchanged across various locations of actors and their facilities (Harvey 1990:118). Facilities such as long-distance mobile phone calls, the Internet and trans-continental flights have further contributed to the (relative) detachment of action from location or place, at least for those endowed with sufficient resources (cf. Bhaskar 1994:70). Space has no causal powers independent of the objects constituting it. It is one of the problems of theories of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ in the capitalist world economy that they offer a generalised spatial location as the crucial component of explanation of under-development, failing to specify the relevant causal powers (or their absence) and related geo-historical processes adequately

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(Sayer 2000:112–13). Conceptions and metaphors of space are thus not a substitute for explanation in terms of a causal complex K={AR, RU, RE, PRA, AN}. Rather, the problem is how to grasp the spatiality of the relational elements of complexes and the consequent social systems. Place and distance can make a critical difference to the properties and powers of actors, and the spatial organisation of objects can also be relevant in many other ways. Although the spatial setting is not necessarily the key issue, the spatial forms of relevant objects should not be ignored, and it often has to be described in detail. For instance, the ever-increasing space—time distance between causes and effects gives new reasons for systematic studies on the complex spatio-temporal chains of causal dependencies. In the late 1990s, the conditions of peasants in East Timor were linked to the consequences of financial decisions made in London, New York or Washington. Often, it is equally important to specify the relations between power and space/mobility, occurring in the context of areal differentiation in the cities, between regions or globally. To take another example, new military developments may also necessitate the study of, say, outer space systems. In the US Space Command Vision 2020, the medium of space is envisaged as the key to ‘full spectrum military dominance’ to secure US interests and investments globally. By combining ‘global surveillance with the potential for a space-based global precision strike capability’, challenges stemming from the globalising ‘world economy with a widening gap between “haves” and “have-nots”’ can be countered militarily, if needed (US Space Command 2001). The point is that the spatial forms of relevant objects cannot be theorised in abstract. They have to be studied empirically by using all available evidence.

Time All social phenomena, all social interaction, anything that exists in society, is temporal. Time is not a simple succession of abstract ‘nows’. Time is involved in social phenomena in a very complex manner. An adequate iconic model should be able to capture the relevant aspects of temporality. The historical nature of social being includes the geo-historical processes of formation of all components of causal complexes. Hence the need to write genealogies of these components and the fields and problematics they give rise to. Moreover, social interaction occurs in time. Adequate iconic models have to account for the irreversible temporal sequences of episodes and processes. Temporality is also an essential part of social action in a deeper sense. According to Paul Ricoeur (1984:68–84), there is a unity of having-been, comingtowards and making-present, since these are thought and acted upon together by the actors. This is the temporality of practical experience and action. The makingpresent of practical action stems from the anticipation of possibilities of transformative action producing outcomes on the basis of understanding of that which has-been (history). The horizon of action is thus inherently temporal. Moreover, particularly the appeal of more total narratives may be reinforced by

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awareness of one’s own mortality. Many political projects derive their motivation from the sense they render to our/their lives. This opens up the way to the questions posed by Alker: What motivating power or charisma does this story, or ‘myth’, contain? What basic structure or structures, what infectious, self-replicating, ‘viral’ qualities account for this power? Can we replicably discover and empirically test some of the ways in which its deepest structure has been rewritten into different ‘surface’ texts? (Alker 1996:105) Ricoeur (1984:52–87) makes a distinction between three moments of mimesis. Mimesis1 represents the temporal signification enacted by the actors themselves. In purposeful actions, actors organise factual and possible events imaginatively in terms of plots. Narrated actions have symbolic aspects that stem the capacity for poetic transposition: actions are evaluated in terms of characters and consequences and on the basis of inherent norms and standards. At this level, time is prefigurated. Mimesis2 is the moment effected by the narrative of the social scientist in his or her attempt to explain social phenomena by constructing an iconic model. The time of social scientific modelling is constructed to the nth level upon the already constructed temporality. This time never ceases to refer back to the temporality of practices described by mimesis1. A researcher draws a meaningful story of his or her own from a diversity of temporal events of reality. The transition from mimesis1 to mimesis2, which can be called the activity of configurating, is an organic part of the reductive approach of iconic modelling. Like any other hypothesis, a hypothesis concerning emplotment should be made vulnerable to refutation and qualification, and open to the probative force of empirical evidence. Emplotment combines two temporal dimensions. By stipulating causal hypotheses one captures the episodic dimension of temporality and creates components of explanation that go beyond mere chronicle. By grasping together the whole of the episode one constructs a narrative or a story proper, a story that has a (counterfactual; unreal) sense of ending. This sense of ending makes it possible to read the story from the conclusion to the beginning, i.e. to ‘reverse’ the irreversible real time. However, if history is always open, how can there be ‘a sense of ending’? Interpretation here is compatible with explanation, to the extent that it is confined to providing inquiry with the guidance of some seminal idea and to indicating degrees of importance. It is no longer, as a consequence, the only worthwhile interpretation, to the exclusion of all the others. But the most interesting interpretation is the one that assigns itself the task of evaluating a sequence of events or a set of institutions in terms of their terminal consequences, themselves evaluated in terms of their value or lack thereof. The overall meaning of a process is these very terminal consequences. (Ricoeur 1984:119)

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A research project may thus also begin with a pre-understanding of some terminal consequences—actual or potential—which are assumed to be important. The choice of terminal consequences must itself be a responsible choice. In principle it is possible that the same material of temporal actors, rules and resources, practices, interactions, circumstances and intended and unintended outcomes can be ordered according to different actual or potential terminal consequences. All these temporal interpretations can be true with regard to the causal powers and sequences upon which they are elaborated. There may thus be many stories to tell on the basis of the same material. Ricoeur (1984:70–82) argues that narrative has its full meaning only when it is restored back to the time of action and human practices. Mimesis3 marks the intersection between the world of social scientific modelling and the world of the hearer and the reader. Although there may already be redundancy of meaning in the social world itself, there is always potentiality for new and better stories such as is assumed to be the case in psychoanalysis (by both parties) or trial (by the judge). The main point of mimesis3 is that it re-signifies human practices in their temporal dimension, to the extent that explaining and narrating is to remake action. Ricoeur calls this process iconic augmentation of practices. Iconic augmentation depends upon the symbolic structuring of the prefigurated time. The practical question is: How plausible is the new and purportedly more true and better explanatory story when compared to the prefigurated one(s)? More structurally, it is also a question of whether the new stories have access to the world of prefigurated practices.

Conclusion It is not easy to build adequate social scientific explanations. The real difficulty does not lie in any technical or formal details. It is all too easy to stick to the ampliative approach and imagine that one can substitute complex thinking and research with a few technical operations of deductive or theoretical reasoning, or statistical analysis. In the reductive approach to iconic modelling, it is rather the multiplicity of possibilities, layers and components that have to be taken into account, which forms the real difficulty. This chapter has given some methodical guidelines about how to construct an explanatory iconic model. First there is a question and an X (some ‘terminal consequences’) to be explained. The presuppositions of this question, and the description of the X or ‘terminal consequences’, have to be scrutinised critically. The next task is to specify available interpretative hypotheses and stories, and possibly envisage new ones; and determine sources of available evidence, whether quantitative or qualitative. Are there many interesting candidates for endorsement? Is evidence abundantly available? If not, one has to use all possible clues to construct a plausible iconic model and narrative. If yes, different hypotheses have to be assessed systematically against available evidence, and, eventually, a judgement about the truth of these hypotheses has to be made.

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The components of a layered, relational causal complex and all the relevant material and efficient causes must be specified in sufficient detail. The researcher has to decide the extent to which spatial location, distance and organisation are important aspects of the causal complex. Moreover, she will also have to thematise the temporal structure of the explanation at the levels of mimesis1 and mimesis2. In every step of the double hermeneutics of iconic modelling, there is, first, a movement between a wide variety of theoretical concepts, and, second, a movement between the researcher, her explanatory models and the lay meanings. In mimesis3, the explanatory story assumes its full meaning when it is restored back to the time of action and human practices. However, mimesis3 is not the only practical implication of social scientific explanations. In Chapter 6, I shall explicate the logic of explanatory emancipation and its relation to legitimate transformative actions. Social sciences also concern normative issues.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5 6

In his highly acclaimed book Fights, Games and Debates, Rapoport (1960) argues that, although social physics is a good starting point, the theory of games implies a partial critique of that model, while the notion of debate implies a more thorough critique. Thus, social physics can yield at best only a very partial insight into social processes. For an explication of the metaphoric and analogical basis of these theories, and for an analysis of the (lack of) explanatory power of these theories in the context of explaining the end of the cold war, see Patomäki 1992a. To speak of the characteristics of an entity in this manner implies that there are relevancy criteria, which, however, are always partially relative to the task. The notion of thematising comes from Heidegger, but I have modified and reinterpreted it. Heidegger attempts to do justice to the possibility of positivist or scientific realist natural sciences with the help of this notion; I am using it in developing methodological tools for the social sciences based on critical realism. See Heidegger (1990 [1962]):414–15, and Dreyfus 1991:82–3. Peace research has also been elevated by this vision. See Chapter 2 for lessons of Alker’s development; and Patomäki 200la for a reconstructive analysis of the development of Galtungian peace research. This idea is summarised by David E.Linge in the ‘Editor’s introduction’ for Gadamer 1977:xlvii. The definition of ‘horizon’ can be found in Gadamer 1975 [1965]:269.

6

The normative logic of emancipation

Truth and social scientific explanations have normative and political implications. In contexts in which the transformation of politics into violence is more than a mere abstract and remote possibility, the politics of truth is far from being innocent. Grand narratives about the end of war have justified wars and violence. For instance, the aim of people’s wars has typically been defined, as Mao Zedong said, by a historical movement from capitalism to socialism: ‘Once man has eliminated capitalism, he will attain the era of perpetual peace, and there will be no more need for war’ (Alker et al. 1989:152). This view is based on a theory of society and a story of history as a whole. It presupposes judgements about the truth of that theory and the story. Similarly, the USA, led by Woodrow Wilson, took part in the intervention against the Soviet Union in 1918. In accordance with the Kantian liberalist theory of world politics, Wilson saw the anti-democratic Bolsheviks as a general threat to peace and security, besides rendering more difficult the defeat of Germany in the ‘war to end all wars’. Hence, in Kantian thought, wars may seem justified in terms of making the world more peaceful and orderly. Modern emancipatory projects have also confronted each other on the battlefield. ‘Isn’t the most general of political problems the problem of truth?’ asks Michel Foucault (1991b:82). Indeed, there is a close connection between politics and truth—truth understood socio-historically as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation and operation of statements (Foucault 1986 [1971]:74). Truth has effects of power. Under suitable conditions, a particular truth can produce, via actions, parts of social reality. Truth also has the effect of including and excluding, legitimating and de-legitimating potential or actual components of reality, including military actions. Foucault is not alone in seeing a very close connection between politics or its failures and truth. Any notion of truth implies criteria, standards and measures, which have social and political consequences. Strict standards and measures have also lost much of their credibility, because intellectuals would like to freeze and dismantle the guillotine, as well as other modern machines of violence stockpiled all over the fragile planet (see, for example, Schürmann 1984:175–6). Hannah Arendt (1973:82) articulated this sentiment three decades ago: ‘At least we can learn from Rousseau and Robespierre that absolute goodness [truth] is hardly any less dangerous than absolute evil [untruth and deceit].’ 143

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Critical realism makes a distinction between realist ontology, relativist epistemology and judgemental rationality, and includes a truth-based theory of emancipatory explanation. In the following, I shall discuss Roy Bhaskar’s theory of truth and the related theory of explanatory emancipation. My argument is that because of the normative nature of truth and epistemological relativism, there is an essential connection between explanatory or any normative criticism and the non-violence of political action. This is also an attempt to explicate a possible theoretical basis for a peace culture of the critical social sciences.1 In other words, my twofold argument is a suggestion of how a truth-based emancipation is possible without violent consequences in a pluralist world. In this chapter, I also argue for a rich normative discourse about alternatives. Truth and non-violence do not exhaust moral and political problems. Besides truth, there are many other normative notions, which can be brought into ethico-political discourse about social relations and practices. Also, transformative action would be futile without concrete and feasible ‘Utopias’ of alternative possibilities. The normative logic of emancipation is not only precarious; it is also pluralist and multifaceted by its very nature. Epistemological relativism Epistemological relativism means that all beliefs are socially produced. Knowledge is transient, and neither truth-values nor criteria of rationality exist outside geohistorical processes. Epistemological relativism should be distinguished from the incorrect thesis of judgemental relativism, which asserts that all beliefs (or statements) are equally valid, in the sense that there can be no rational grounds for preferring one to another (Bhaskar 1979:73). This distinction is necessary. Any kind of action presupposes some criteria: it is clear that if one is to act at all there must be grounds for preferring one belief (about some domain) to another; and that such activity is typically codifiable in the form of systems of rules, implicitly or explicitly followed. (Bhaskar 1979:74) Anything does not go. To take a simple example (from Putnam 1989:54): if someone really believed he could fly and were foolish enough to pick a conceptual system that confirmed this, and then acted upon it by jumping out of a window, he would, if lucky enough to survive, see the weakness of the conceptual system at once. Social relations are similarly real, because they have causal effects via actions. For instance, breaking regulative rules—say by failing to complete a census form or by hauling your boss over the coals—tends to have definite consequences. Bhaskar (1986:24) argues that judgemental rationality depends upon the recognition of ontological realism and epistemological relativism. Explicit denial of this condition would lead to a theory/practice contradiction (cf. also Habermas 1979:2 and 66–8). Action presupposes reality, which is independent of beliefs of

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any particular actor, otherwise the whole idea of action would be unintelligible. People could be jumping out of windows if they just believed that they could fly. Yet relativism regarding explanations prevails. This is also a condition for rational research and discussions. If there were absolutely true or self-evident claims or statements, there would be no room for research or debates about their validity. Moreover, because a choice between theories or explanatory models is a matter of geo-historically situated human judgements, the choice also depends upon the ethical responsibility of the cognitive agents concerned (Bhaskar 1986:24–5). Duality of truth? It is not possible to know the world except under certain particular, geohistorically, transient descriptions, as Bhaskar (1986:99) argues. What, then, is truth in Bhaskar’s theory? It seems to relegate the notion of correspondence between epistemic statements and ontic objects to the status of a mere metaphor for the goal of an adequating practice, in which ‘cognitive matter is fashioned into a matching representation of a non-cognitive object’. However, Bhaskar goes on to explain his notion of truth as follows: truth effectively functions bivocally—to designate, on the one hand, claims, judgements and values…which are, or could be, made or avowed within social activity; and on the other, conditions, states of affairs and…composite referents (truth-conditions or more simply truths) which exist quite independently of us. (Thus, although truths are not things, laws, natural kinds, etc., it would be misleading to deny that the latter were, in some sense, truths.) Truth thus has a genuine ontological and not just an ontogenetic (e.g. heuristic or regulative) use…; but its ontological use depends upon the possibility of ontogeny (and hence human practice) in a way which the concept of a natural law, for instance, does not. (Bhaskar 1986:100) Bhaskar maintains that his theory of truth can sustain the duality of the epistemic and ontic aspects of truth instead of reducing these two aspects to the ‘oneness’ implicit in the (conventional) correspondence theories of truth.2 The selfproclaimed pragmatist Richard Rorty (1987), for example, would strongly object to Bhaskar’s views. For the pragmatist, Rorty argues, the notion of ‘truth’ as something ‘objective’ is just a confusion between the following: 1 2

Most of the world is as it is whatever we think about it. There is something out there in addition to the pragmatically known true statements, which is called ‘the truth about the world’.

The pragmatist agrees with (1) but cannot make sense of (2). According to Rorty, the realist tries to explain (2) with a further idea:

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3

The truth about the world consists of a relation of ‘correspondence’ between certain sentences (many of which have yet to be formulated) and the world itself.

The pragmatist, Rorty (1987:41) says, can only retort that many centuries of attempts to explain what that correspondence is have failed. What is Bhaskar’s position here? There is no disagreement between Rorty and Bhaskar as far as (1) is concerned, but there is certainly disagreement in respect of (2), for this is one of the basic claims of Bhaskar’s transcendental realism. In effect, (3) is the ‘metaphysically realist notion of truth’—truth as ‘correspondence to the facts’, or something of that kind. Hilary Putnam (1982:4), among many others, denies this on the grounds that we do not have notions of the ‘existence’ of things or of the ‘truth’ of statements that are independent of our conceptual constructions, procedures and practices. Also, Bhaskar says clearly that it is not possible to know the world except under particular geo-historically transient descriptions. Where, then, does the difference between Bhaskar and the critics lie? Bhaskar is not arguing for a metaphysically realist notion of truth (3). ‘The supposition of the possibility of a (logocentric) correspondence, if interpreted as a logical thesis, is meaningless or at the very best unverifiable’ (Bhaskar 1979:201). Rather, he maintains that there is ‘a difference which makes a difference between (a) “it works because it’s true” and (b) “it’s true because it works“’ (Bhaskar 1991:7). In open systems, where invariant regularities do not occur, only (a) makes sense. Applications require knowledge about transfactually efficacious mechanisms or structures. Therefore Bhaskar, unlike Rorty, accepts claim (2). Bhaskar’s argument is largely based on the presuppositions of the natural scientists’ historical practice of experimentation: In an experiment scientists produce a pattern of events. There is nothing in itself special about this. For, as causal agents, we are co-responsible for events all the time. And scientists could, in fact, produce a vast array of events, most of no conceivable significance. What is so special about the patterns they deliberately produce under meticulously controlled conditions in the laboratory is that it enables them to identify the mode of operation of natural structures, mechanisms or processes which they do not produce. What distinguishes the phenomena the scientist actually produces out of the totality of the phenomena he could produce is that when his experiment is successful, it is an index of what he does not produce. A real distinction between the objects of experimental investigation, such as causal laws, and patterns of events is thus a condition of the intelligibility of scientific activity. (Bhaskar 1979:11–12) Bhaskar argues explicitly against Rorty, in that from the argument ‘there is no way to know a thing except under a particular description’ one cannot infer that ‘there is no way to know that thing exists and acts independently of that description’. In fact, one must know that the world has existed prior to science,

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and one can know that it exists and acts independently of science, because this is a practical presupposition of science (Bhaskar 1989:152). Philosophy, as a fallible mode of investigation of the necessary presuppositions of geo-historical practices, can tell us that it is a condition of the possibility of scientific activities that the real world is stratified, differentiated and structured, and that change and emergence are possible, independently of our knowledge concerning its specific content (Bhaskar 1979:8). Hence, the claim (2) that there is something out there in addition to pragmatically known true statements, or in addition to what is called ‘the truth about the world’, which is not only possible but also necessary for scientific practices (Rorty does not reject scientific practices or their fallible results). Therefore, we can also speak about the manner in which ‘cognitive matter is fashioned into a matching representation of a non-cognitive object’, and we can also make judgements on this (mis-)match. So far, so good. Bhaskar nevertheless argues that there is also an ontological aspect of truth. In Plato etc., Bhaskar (1994:63–4) has further distinguished between truth as ontological (‘achievable when referential detachment occurs’) and as alethic (the non-propositional truth of or reason for objects). What are these aspects of truth? What do they add to Bhaskar’s scientific realism? If ‘many centuries of attempts to explain what correspondence between statement/theory and facts is have failed’, is it possible to explain what ontological and alethic aspects of truth are (unless they amount merely to a restatement of ontological realism)? According to Rom Harré, a statement using the word ‘true’ is typically used merely (1) to refer to a statement, and (2) to pass a well-justified judgement on it. In some contexts what matters is whether a statement ‘corresponds’ to the objects of knowledge, while in other contexts our assessment may depend more upon whether the statement under review coheres with other statements (see Harré 1970:190). In both cases, intersubjective evidence and reasons for a judgement are required. This would seem to indicate that truth is merely an evidence-based human judgement about descriptions and explanatory statements, concerning how the differentiated, layered, structured and changing world really is. However, truth must be seen as partially independent of justification here and now: truth is something more than the actually available evidence. In the sense of ontological realism, there are independently existing conditions for truths, i.e. the way the world really is (or has been). Thus, concrete truthjudgements should never be seen as total or unambiguous.3 Rather, the emergence of being into ‘unconcealment’ is best seen as the covering up of ‘truth in its inexhaustible fullness’ (cf. Palmer 1969:245). Because of the condition of relativism, reality can never be reduced to our current knowledge of it. We should accept that even when we are right—given the available evidence—in making a judgement that something is true, there are always more things left to be learned: perhaps a finer network of relations and deeper layers of reality; perhaps new perspectives and conceptions that would make it possible to see new aspects of reality; perhaps new evidence, which would allow us to revise

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our descriptions and explanatory models. There is always an abundance of potential evidence in addition to actual evidence, and potential theoretical concepts in addition to the actually existing ones. Do we need to talk about the ‘ontological aspect of truth’ to make these points? The duality theory of truth merely adds to the complexity of critical realism (CR), without improving its explanatory or illuminatory power or any other characteristics. If other things are equal, simplicity is desirable. Second, the ontological interpretation of truth may have unfortunate political consequences. Bhaskar (1979:201) himself argues that the metaphysical correspondence theory of truth is reactionary in that it reinforces the authority of dominant—or any other accepted—interpretations by ontologising human judgements. However, this applies to his own notion of truth as well. Third, if the argument about the political consequences of ontologised truths is accepted, then a more general point follows: by seeing truth exclusively as a product of actual and potential human activity (in contrast to the real world to which true statements make references), we can best sustain openness to new interpretations and evidence. For these reasons, Harré’s theory of truth—truth as it is used in scientific practices—seems to be better grounded than any ontologised theory. In Harré’s theory, truth is seen as a normative and metaphorical principle, which guides conduct: If we read the realist manifesto ‘Scientific statements should be taken as true or false by virtue of the way the world is’ as a moral principle it would run something like this: ‘As scientists, that is members of a certain community, we should apportion our willingness or reluctance to accept a claim as worthy to be included in the corpus of scientific knowledge to the extent that we sincerely think it somehow reflects the way the world is.’ Put this way the manifesto has conduct-guiding force. It encourages the good and the worthy to manifest their virtue in trying to find out how the world is. Seeking [ontological] truth is a hopeless epistemic project, but trying to live a life of virtue is a possible moral ambition. (Harré 1986:89) Instead of ontologised truth, what is needed is a consistent distinction between realist ontology, relativist epistemology and the possibility of judgemental rationality. Judgemental rationality is a normative notion. Read in the normative manner, Karl Popper’s fallibilism, for instance, would therefore mean something like ‘However much personal investment one has in a theory, one should not ignore contrary evidence’ or ‘One should seek harder for evidence and reasons that would count against a theory than for those which would support it’ and so on (Harré 1986:90). Thus, truth relegates the notion of correspondence between epistemic statements and ontic objects to the status of a metaphor for the goal of scientific practices, which aim at articulating a matching representation of components of a complex and their essential relations.

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Pluralist truth as a regulative metaphor What is metaphorical truth? A metaphor testifies to the freedom of consciousness and the power of imagination. A metaphor suggests a resemblance between two domains. The positive function of a metaphor is that, with its help, our conceptual grasp of the subject matter is enhanced (see Cooper 1985:43–58; Harré 1986:76– 7). In this manner, truth can be understood and explained metaphorically: truth as a metaphor suggests a resemblance between theory-dependent statements used in explanatory descriptions, on the one hand, and the imagined but also presupposed reality, on the other. A picture of an aspect or part of the world can be—among other things— accurate, but it cannot be similar, or isomorphic, to the world. Arne Naess (1972:120–32) argues that even if reality is one (at any particular moment), it does not follow that there is one correct description of the reality (of that moment). Two mutually inconsistent systems of statements may both correspond to a particular domain of reality. This is because the relation between a systemdependent statement/set of statements and the particular domain of reality is not one of mirroring or copying, and not even one of structured isomorphism. Moreover, in principle, there is no end to different characterisations and descriptions, some mutually consistent, others inconsistent, which a researcher can offer in responsible social research. Each description is conceived in its relation to a wider and deeper theoretical system. In addition to systematic analysis of available evidence, each description and explanation should thus also be assessed in relation to the relevant background theories (which also codetermine conceptions of adequate data). Naess (1972:131) even suggests that all sufficiently consistent and comprehensive (‘near-total’, ‘near-global’) points of view (frameworks, theories, systems) have a non-zero status of validity (truth, correctness). This is because it is untenable to proclaim that the validity of a comprehensive system is absent altogether. A comprehensive system must explicitly include ontology, methodology, logic and semantics—or a set of arguments to the effect that a body of rules and assertions concerning one or more of these is unnecessary, nonsensical or has some property justifying its absence from a maximal comprehensive view. It is only within such comprehensive systems that concrete theories/models and precise statements can live. As Ludwig Wittgenstein (1979:105) has put it, ‘all testing of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life.’ The problem is how to compare and assess statements, descriptions and explanations that belong to different systems. This problem can be analysed with the help of Naess’s notion of ‘preciseness’. A statement Ti is more precise than a statement T0, if there is at least one interpretation that T0 admits, but Ti does not, and if there is no interpretation admitted by Ti which is not also admitted by T0. Preciseness thus defined is a transitive relation. Now, Naess argues that ‘it is problematic to compare scientific theories or images of the scientific enterprise which are made precise in different directions’ (Naess 1972:130). Furthermore,

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‘if one starts making an exposition of a theory more and more precise in a definite direction, what is gained in preciseness is lost in neutrality and comparability, and vice versa’. However, as Thomas Kuhn (1970:202) has noticed in responding to his critics, new languages and theoretical systems can be learned, and the meaning of the statements belonging to a particular ‘system’ can be translated— though only contingently and without a resort to a neutral ‘third’ language. In this sense, human beings have the power to break through languages and theoretical systems. Furthermore, although Naess is right that theory-comparison and choice is problematic, it does not follow ‘that there are no good reasons for being persuaded. Nor does it even imply that the reasons for choice are different from those usually listed by the philosophers of science: accuracy, simplicity, fruitfulness, and the like.’ What is suggested, however, is that ‘there is no algorithm for theory-choice, no systemic decision procedure which, properly applied, must lead each individual in the group to the same decision’ (Kuhn 1970:199–200). There are also differences between ‘comprehensive views’, or ‘systems’, in the sense that they may be more or less open to different possibilities of making a theory/model precise. The more precise a statement is, the easier it is to assess it against available evidence. Thus, we need a plurality of initial hypothesis drawn from different theories; constant hermeneutic mediations between theoretical concepts; and the reductive approach to iconic modelling. Moreover, some comprehensive views are also capable of admitting that there are holes, silences, contingent incommensurabilities, ambivalences and ambiguities; and that the open texture of all discourses is, in fact, a rich source for potential development (Bhaskar 1989:155). By admitting this much, as I think CR does, a comprehensive discourse can remain open to change and learning. Openness and learning enable more adequate, yet geo-historically situated, truth-judgements.

Explanation and critique The nature of objects determines their cognitive possibilities. The substances, qualities and relations of social worlds are not independent of concepts or intentional human agency. In the words of Bhaskar (1979:43–4), ‘society is both the ever-present condition (material cause) and the continually reproduced outcome of human agency’. This ontological condition makes the relationship between a researcher and his or her object of knowledge more complicated than in natural sciences. Although, usually, (also contemporary) social objects exist and function quite independently of the researcher, subject and object tend to be internally and externally related. In time, social scientific models and stories may contribute to the re-signification and transformation of practices. The task of social-scientific explanation is to form a plausible and empirically confirmed iconic model of geo-historical components and their relations. The researcher has to grasp the meaningful elements and internal relations of a social complex; the relevant regulative rules; the resources and action-possibilities of different positioned actors; the unintentional causal consequences of action;

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the possible emergent powers of social system; and so on. It may well be that there are many historical episodes, practices and/or systems that can be grasped in terms of a particular iconic model. It is also possible to form higher-order models Mn with wider range but with lesser accuracy than the concrete models An–1 Bn–1 Cn–1, etc., which in some relevant respects are essentially similar. The hermeneutic assumption of relative privilege of an agent’s own account of his or her reasons depends upon the causal efficacy of his or her practical competencies and reasons—for otherwise there would be no reason to prefer her account to that of an outsider. However, causal efficacy establishes an ontic distance between the agent’s competencies and reasons and any particular expression or statement of them. Moreover, the description of even our own sensations, competencies, beliefs and emotions is profoundly affected by a host of conceptual choices. The ontic distance and interpretative openness mean that any description of the agent’s real beliefs must be corrigible. (Bhaskar 1986:164). Also, a social scientific explanation can reveal that beliefs of actors are in some regards false or illusory. An explanatory model can explain why they must be false or illusory. A rationalisation of action does not necessarily correspond to the real causes of the action, nor is it necessarily able to grasp the wider consequences of action. Yet that very rationalisation can be necessary for the (re)production of particular social relations and practices. The stratification model of human action and agency captures this idea. According to this model, illustrated in Figure 6.1, agency and action are conditioned (i.e. caused materially) by social structures, which are, dialectically, also the continuously (re)produced outcome of human agency and actions. The consequences of actions include thus (re)production of particular structures. This consequence can provide motivation M(r) both for reasons r and particular rationalisation R(r) of these reasons; motivation M(r) may also be partially unconscious; and rationalisation R(r) may conceal, mystify or reify the consequence, which, at this level, is likely to be unintended. Bhaskar (1979:74) distinguishes three ways in which interference between a subject’s interest in an object and his or her knowledge of it could operate. It could operate consciously (as in lying); it could operate semi-consciously, as in the wishful thinking of the incurable optimist or the special pleading of a pressure group; or it could operate unconsciously, whether or not it may subsequently become accessible to consciousness. The conclusions of the unconscious mode of interference can be either rationalisations of motivation, or they can constitute mystifications or reifications of social structure (ideologies). This is the ontological ground for the possibility of explanatory critique. Explanatory critique is directly connected to emancipatory political change: the object that renders illusory (or superficial) beliefs necessary comes…, at least in the absence of any overriding considerations, to be criticized in being explained; so that the point now becomes, ceteris paribus, to change it. (Bhaskar 1979:67)

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Figure 6.1 Stratification of agency and action4

The force of explanatory criticism comes from the positive value of truth. In the following, I shall explain in detail the necessary connections between explanation and criticism, and take Bhaskar’s argument a few steps forward in political theoretical terms.

The logic of explanatory emancipation If interests are given an economistic interpretation, Bhaskar’s schema can be seen as an articulation of Marxist ideology-critique. We do not have to assume, however, that only one mode of action—strategic action—prevails, or that interests can be defined narrowly in terms of money or property ownership. More generally, interests can be layered—surface level interests are justified in terms of deeper background discourses—and are explainable in terms of geo-historical processes. For instance, repression and violence stemming from defending particular established interests can be an outcome of a pathological learning process. For Karl Deutsch (1963:248), the learning process is pathological if it leads to ‘a change in inner structure that will reduce rather than increase the future learning capacity of the person or organization’. He goes on to argue that: will and power may easily lead…[even] to self-destructive learning, for they may imply the overvaluation of the past against the present and the future, the overvaluation of the experiences acquired in a limited environment against the vastness of the universe around us; and the overvaluation of present expectations against all possibilities of surprise, discovery, and change. (Deutsch 1963:248)

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Deutsch argues that pathological learning processes often occur in the context of fear, stress and conflict. Background discourses, which naturalise, reify and mystify social relations, can stimulate pathological learning. Layered interests can also be related to aspects of structures such as the occupation of social positions (‘power’ in the conservative sense) or resources for transformative actions (‘power’ in the radical sense of political mobilisation). Once real, whether fully conscious or not, interests can intervene in the formation of agency by providing motivation M(r) both for reasons r and particular rationalisation R(r) of them. Illusion can also become institutionalised and appear for a given actor as a natural part of assuming a position in practices and organisations. According to Bhaskar (1979:80), one is justified in characterising a discursive formation (DF) as ‘ideological’ if both (1) some relevant elements of DF are false; that is, one possesses a superior explanation T1 for the phenomena, and (2) one possesses an explanation T2 of the falsity of the beliefs of DF in question and why they are held. Where different theories are required for the satisfaction of (1) and (2), they must at least be consistent with each other. (1) is the critical, (2) the explanatory condition. (1) suffices for criticism and all intellectual criticism satisfies this condition; (2) is required if the criticism is to be explanatory and directed at emancipatory social change (Bhaskar 1986:179). Schematically, the logic of explanatory emancipation can be summarised as follows: Arg. 1:

(1) T1 is more true (explains and illuminates more) than TDF; it also covers at least some of the relevant areas of the range of the TDF, which in turn is an essential part of DF, a ‘near-total’ system. (2) T2 explains the (re)production of DF in terms of a causal complex K i. (3) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant parts of the causal complex (K i) that are responsible for the (re)production of false beliefs. (4) Consequently, one should also evaluate positively political action directed at absenting or transforming the relevant parts of complex Ki.

Bhaskar (1986:178) claims that his version of arg. 1 is naturalist, not moral, in character. ‘The notion of false consciousness employed here simply involves in the first instance that of disjuncture, mismatch or lack of correspondence (representative adequacy) between belief and object.’ Bhaskar’s main target is the positivist fact/ value-distinction: Might it not be objected, however, that the fact/value distinction only breaks down in this way, because one is committed to the prior valuation that truth

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is a good, so that one is not deriving a value judgement from entirely factual (natural) premises? But that truth is a good (‘ceteris paribus’) is not only a condition of moral discourse, it is a condition of any discourse at all. Commitment to truth and consistency apply to factual as much to value discourse; and so cannot be seized upon as a concealed (value) premise to rescue the autonomy of values from factual discourse, without destroying the distinction between the two, the distinction that it is the point of the objections to uphold. (Bhaskar 1979:81) The positivist fact/value-distinction fails. Nevertheless, Bhaskar cannot sustain the claim that he is deriving value-judgements from purely naturalist premises. However necessary and universal truth may seem for all discourses, commitment to truth is a normative commitment (cf. Habermas 1979:2). Truth is therefore a value among many values in normative discourse. Value-judgements are relative. As Andrew Collier (1994:170) argues, ‘taking money from that Coca Cola machine would be theft’ may imply ‘you should not take money from that Coca Cola machine’. However, if it is ‘the only way to get coins to phone the US President and stop nuclear war’, the case is drastically altered (as in the film Dr Strangelove). Sometimes other normative considerations may, even, override truth. Peter Winch makes a conservative argument to this effect: question concerning the importance in human life of knowing the world as it really is. I am thinking of the moral question which so exercised Ibsen in such plays as ‘The Wild Duck’ and ‘Ghosts’: How far is it important to a man’s life that he should live it in clear awareness of the facts of his situation and of his relations to those around him? In ‘Ghosts’ this question is presented by considering a man whose life is being ruined by his ignorance of the truth about his heredity. ‘The Wild Duck’ starts from the opposite direction: here is a man who is living a perfectly contented life which is, however, based on a complete misunderstanding of the attitude to him of those he knows; should he be disillusioned and have his happiness disrupted in the interests of truth? (Winch 1971 [1958]:21–22) In social sciences, this hesitancy may be reinforced by the fact that there are no neutral criteria of truth to which to appeal. Epistemic criteria differ and are dependent on the wider system to which they belong. Theories can be made precise in many ways, and the hermeneutic movement between theoretical concepts is always precarious. Moreover, in social sciences, subject and object tend to be internally and externally related. These relations are also a matter of ethical concern. Derrida’s concept of undecidability addresses these ethical problems. Undecidability pertains that any judgement about truth or other normative issues has to assume ethico-political responsibility. ‘A decision can only come into being in a space that

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exceeds the calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into a programmable effect of determinate causes’ (1988:116). For Derrida (1978:79–153), this ethico-political responsibility is also a question of violence. Determinate decisions about truth of statements, models and stories can be made on rational and pragmatic grounds. However, by talking about undecidability, Derrida (1978:83; see also 1988:112 and 150–3) calls for responsibility of decision and non-violent ethical relationships with the others.

The problem of violence Science is a value-based social enterprise, relying on practical judgements, which are in principle structurally similar to lay-actors’ judgements. Researchers have no a priori privileged position—outside geo-historical processes—for making normative truth-judgements. Hence, the following ethico-political problems: 1

2 3

Under what conditions is it possible to decide rationally, in relation to an audience and situation, at some definite moment in the flow of time, that arg. 1 is valid? Should we give the ‘accused’ a chance to answer the implicated accusation? If communication does not suffice for a change, should some conditions be set for strategic, transformative action?

The condition of epistemic conflict prevails. In most matters, we have different possible, and contradictory, sources of knowledge. CR admits the possibility that even a person opposed to all his contemporaries may turn out to be right in matters of truth. However, an epistemology, which relies on inter-subjective judgements and criteria, must seek rationality in dialogue. How should truthjudgements be appraised? A rational judgement is not a matter of voting. The requirement of openness implies that we cannot name any particular decisive community; nor do we need a universal consensus for making rational judgements. Rationality is about good reasons and learning, and implies openness to criticism from whatever source. If a person is deaf to the arguments of others he may either ignore contrary reasons or reply to them with mere dogmatic assertions. Without openness, there would be no basis for learning or claiming that the probative strength of all relevant evidence has been considered.5 What matters are: good reasons for particular (falsifiable) iconic model and explanatory story; engagement in dialogue in which the goodness of these reasons are tested; and openness to critical debate. It is a condition for rational truth-judgements that these requirements are not contradicted. Bhaskar argues that, once we have also fulfilled the explanatory condition of arg. 1, there is a moral obligation to remove or change the parts, which have cocaused the false beliefs. This is too simple and strong, and therefore easily misleading. False beliefs can be absented or revised by rational dialectical persuasion. In open systems, some of the causally relevant components may survive revised beliefs.

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Moreover, because of the requirements of dialogical rationality, there is a strong prima-facie case for a rational, open-minded dialogue instead of some form of strategic action. Strategic political action may in fact violate these requirements. For these reasons, and in order to explicate the positive value of truth, the logic of explanatory emancipation should be modified as follows: Arg. 2

(1) T1 is more true (explains and illuminates more) than TDF; it also covers at least some of the relevant areas of the range of the TDF, which is an essential part of DF, a ‘neartotal’ system. (2) Truth is a positive value. (3) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant parts of DF, and engage in a discussion about the merits and problems of theories. (4) T2 explains the (re)production of DF in terms of a causal complex Ki. (5) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant parts of the causal complex K i that are responsible for the (re)production of false beliefs. (6) Attempts (3) do not make any difference. (7) T1 and T2 still hold, even if only in a qualified form. (8) Consequently, one should evaluate positively public communicative action directed at removing or changing the relevant parts of Ki.

This explication also makes the criticised actors equal partners in a sustained dialogue. It also counters Arendt’s (1973 [1965]:78) scepticism about politics based on revealing sources of unconscious motivation: ‘Since [this demand to reveal innermost motivation] actually demands the impossible, transforms all actors into hypocrites; the moment the display of motives begins, hypocrisy begins to poison all human relations.’ Indeed, is it possible to put forward critical arg. 1 without destroying the trust, which is necessary for all communication? I think this is a potential source of violence in CR, and therefore it has to be addressed explicitly. Any social theory has to be aware of the violence inherent in its own categories, and of the violence potentially justified in terms of its categories. Arg. 2 tackles this problem. What if public communicative action is not possible because of political repression and violence, or has no success, perhaps because DF ignores criticism

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or remains deaf and closed for other reasons? Should we conclude a positive evaluation of strategic action directed at removing or changing relevant parts of the complex Ki? Only a conditional conclusion to this effect is possible. Rational judgements cannot, and the consequences of rational judgements should not, contradict the notion of good reasons and openness to further critical debate. Hence we could continue arg. 2 as follows: Arg. 2

(9) Either despite the public communicative actions, TDF (and DF) remains unchanged, or critical communicative actions are not politically possible with respect to the relevant political situation.

(10)

Thus, one should evaluate positively strategic political action directed at absenting or changing relevant parts of the complex Ki on the condition that the rational persuasion that T1 or T2 or both are false remains politically possible also with respect to the changed political situation, which is co-caused by that transformative action and its consequences.

Does (10) of arg. 2 exclude the use of any violent means to achieve the desired end? I agree with Derrida (1988:112) that violence may ‘remain in fact (almost) ineradicable’. The aim is, nonetheless, to argue for a peace culture of social sciences and for reflective non-violence. Reflective analysis of violence and its conditions in one’s own categories are among ‘the least violent gestures’ (Derrida 1988:112). The openness of social systems points towards the same conclusion (10). In open systems, within which social actors possess generic powers, qualitative changes and emergence are possible, but predictions are not. Changes may also concern one’s own geo-historical, open-ended being. Moreover, in open systems, unintended consequences of action are ubiquitous. The requirement (10) can be read as a moral obligation to limit strategic action to such modes that are conducive to preserving or building a sphere for public politics (see Patomäki 2001a). Even in precarious and dangerous political situations, this may be more feasible than it appears. Periods of relative stability, and widespread reifications and mystifications of social structures, may make us forget the basic insight of the theory of non-violent political action. Power is ‘fragile, always dependent for its strength and existence upon a replenishment of its sources by the co-operation of a multitude of institutions and people—co-operation which may or may not continue’ (Sharp 1984:8).

The role of other values I have now argued that truth is a regulative metaphor of correspondence, a virtue of scholarly practices and a condition of many discourses. Because truth has normative force, an explanatory model, which is judged to be true by

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virtue of its explanatory statements being true, has normative political implications. These implications are, however, conditioned by the relational nature of human judgements and therefore by the ethico-political principle of non-violence. My account of the logic of explanatory emancipation indicates that Bhaskar has not succeeded to deduce ought from is. Rather, the discourse about ‘what is’ is guided by regulative rules, and is therefore already normative. There seems to be no reason why a normative discourse should be concerned exclusively with truth and non-violence. It is one thing to say that practices and systems should be evaluated only if we have adequate knowledge of them, and another to say that explanation is the only possible source of ethico-political critique. Social practices and systems can, in fact, be evaluated from a number of normative standpoints, including economic efficiency and stability as well as rights, justice, democracy, human flourishing and ecological well-being. Most of these are not necessarily derivable from explanations (Sayer 2000:156). In the 1990s, Bhaskar (1993:279–308; 1994:141–60) and Andrew Collier (1999) have attempted to widen the sphere of CR normative discourse. However, their aim is to derive values from fundamental realities such as (abstract) action and (the independent existence of) being. Although some of their arguments can be employed context-sensitively, I would like to defend a more concrete and dialogical normative discourse. A philosophical preoccupation with the issue of how an entire system of ethics and politics can be derived from a few simple premises (see Bhaskar 1993:224–31; 1994:161–6) has simultaneously two effects: (1) it detaches normative discourse from concrete realities; and (2) it makes normative discourse monological and potentially violent by ignoring or excluding the ethico-political concerns of different others. Bhaskar’s (1993:87) own term ‘speculative illusion’ describes these effects well. Preoccupation with the derivability of philosophical systems implies the sublimation of both social life and research into philosophy. This is, indeed, the speculative illusion of Dialectic and Plato etc.6 It makes more sense to start with a concrete geo-historical problematic and see whether and how any philosophical arguments can be invoked in that context. Philosophical arguments can be deployed in connection with statements that attempt at description, explanation, iconic augmentation and evaluation of practices and systems. There is no point in trying to reduce various explanatory, normative and edifying arguments to philosophy, or making them all at once and for good, independently of their geo-historical context. Moreover, judgements about normative matters are structurally similar to truth-judgements, i.e. relational and situated human judgements (see Patomäki 1992b).

The role of concrete Utopias Clearly, a society would be improved if its illusions, contradictions, violence and injustices were reduced. However, do we know how this could be achieved? Mere negative criticism is not sufficient for concrete action. Criticism presupposes the possibility of better practices (Sayer 2000:161). To address this problem, Bhaskar

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(1993:286, 297) has introduced the term ‘concrete Utopia’.7 A concrete Utopia does not currently exist, but should be politically possible to achieve, and feasible as an alternative way of organising social practices and relations. The realisation of a concrete Utopia involves practical wisdom, lessons drawn from past or contemporary models, counterfactual reasoning about the possible effects of an altered context, as well as thought-experiments about the consequences of the transformed practices and systems (See Sayer 2000:160–5). Practical wisdom is an Aristotelian intellectual virtue, a state that allows an actor who attains it to be able to ascertain what is ethico-politically good, and then to deliberate about how best to reach that good. This calls for knowledge about the concrete political situation, and a systematic reflection on the conditions of action. The more difficult part may concern, however, ascertaining what would be a better, yet feasible set of practices or parts of a system. Lessons drawn from the past or present practices may provide ‘drafts’ or models for transformative projects, whether successful or not (Sayer 2000:162–3). The lack of success of a particular practice or project could have been dependent on the particular geo-historical context in which it originally occurred. What would have been the possible effects of a somewhat different context? Is it possible to build components of a complex that would make something similar more feasible in the future? Roberto Unger emphasises the action- and context-dependency of political projects: Some of our projects may fail and by their failure may cast a critical light on the descriptive and explanatory assumptions that informed them. But we can never be entirely sure that these same projects might not succeed under slightly different circumstances or with the help of slightly different methods. (Unger 1987b:323) Unger may over-emphasise the contingencies of failure and success. However, this cannot be judged a priori. Practices or projects that have failed are thus worth studying in great detail. It is, moreover, possible to produce at least partially new and untried models or projects. How do we test their workability? Knowledge about related existing mechanisms and contexts, coupled with analogical and counterfactual reasoning, can help to determine some of the potential problems of making them real. Although history is open and unpredictable, at least some of the likely consequences of introducing novel practices and relations can be scrutinised in terms of historical lessons, analogical and counterfactual reasoning and thought-experiments. Transformed practices and systems may also have emergent properties or powers, which will have to be taken into account as well. A concrete Utopia can remedy some problems while generating others. The new problems could even be worse than the old ones. Social life may therefore be frequently ‘dilemmatic’, as Sayer (2000:163) emphasises. Realist social sciences cannot assume that any ideas or concepts can construct whatever social realities.

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To the contrary, it is necessary to study the viability of concrete Utopias by all available means. In any given geo-historical context, there are thus limits to programmatic imagination. However, by changing parts, or the nature of, the wider context, new concrete Utopias may well become possible.

Conclusion: the tasks of critical social sciences In the dialectical comment of Chapter 1, I argued that, to overcome the international problematic, reality should be reclaimed. Causal powers, absence, emergence and change are all real. I argued further that instead of the usual conflation between subject and object, and the consequent confusions, their relations should be analysed in more specific terms. Now we should know how. First, subject and object of social sciences are separate geo-historically, causally and ontically. Second, subject and object are also related internally in case-specific ways—also through the double-hermeneutic process of understanding laymeanings. Third, social sciences are not only subject to causal determinations (e.g. funding, research governance), but their products can also have geo-historical causal effects on practices. Social sciences and their objects are both situated in the differentiated, stratified and structured world of geo-historical determinations. I have now concluded my articulation of a realist ontology and epistemology, and related methodology, by locating social sciences in the world. In Chapter 5, I argued that in mimesis3 social sciences can re-signify practices in their temporal dimension, to the extent that explaining and narrating is to re-make action. In this chapter, I have further elucidated how and why social sciences tend to have critical ethico-political implications. The logic of explanatory emancipation is based on the normative force of truth. Bhaskar’s basic insight is correct: ‘The object that renders illusory beliefs necessary comes to be criticised in being explained; so that the point becomes to change it.’ The problem is to specify the rules and conditions of applying this critical argument without destroying trust and openness to communication, which are necessary for adequate truth-judgements. I have tried to accomplish this by rewriting the logic of the critical argument (arg. 2). The relations between explanatory criticism and more general normative discourse are manifold. Valid normative judgements depend on adequate descriptions and explanations. Any normative criticism presupposes the possibility of better practices, and their feasibility must be assessed in terms of realist social-scientific models and thought-experiments. In these senses, descriptive and explanatory conceptions are primary. However, truth is only a value among many. There is no reason why normative discourse should be concerned exclusively with truth and non-violence. To the contrary, practices and parts of systems can be evaluated from a number of normative standpoints. Moreover, as stated, criticism presupposes the possibility of better practices and parts of systems. Social sciences are therefore also about Aristotelian practical wisdom. They can contribute to ascertaining what is ethico-poiitically good and how to reach that good—if it is achievable at all. In the ideal world of mutually

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reinforcing and cumulative reforms, however, humankind may triumph over anything we can now imagine.

Notes 1

2

3

Galtung defines ‘cultural violence’ as those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence—exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science (logic, mathematics)—that can be used to justify or legitimise violence. In this sense, even peace research may be a form of cultural violence. Galtung goes on to argue ‘that a major task of peace research, and the peace movement in general, is that never-ending search for a peace culture…’ (see Galtung 1990:291). Bhaskar 1986:100–1. Consider, for instance, Popper’s theory of truth, which is largely based on Tarski’s account of the meaning of truth. According to Popper, it is ‘decisive to realise that knowing what truth means, or under what conditions a statement is called true, is not the same as, and must be clearly distinguished from, possessing a means of deciding—a “criterion” for deciding—whether a given statement is true or false’. In this theory, the meaning of truth is that ‘an assertion, proposition, statement, or belief, is true if, and only if, it corresponds to the facts’. However, there are no general criteria of truth, and hence ‘science is fallible, because science is human’, and because ‘we may err’. Nevertheless, we can say ‘that a statement “a” gets nearer to the truth than a statement “b” if and only if its truth content has increased without an increase in its falsity content’. Moreover, ‘it should be very clearly understood that the idea of one statement “a” getting nearer to the truth than another statement “b” in no way interferes with the idea that every statement is either true or false, and there is no third possibility’, for ‘it only takes account of the fact that there may be a lot of truth in a false statement’. Finally, although Popper argues that in principle nothing is exempt from criticism, he also maintains that ‘at least at the moment it seems to me unlikely that criticism of the logical theory of truth and the theory of getting nearer to truth will succeed’ (see Popper 1971:369–96). This is a conventional version of the correspondence theory of truth, which, like the other versions, is untenable. The problem with Tarski’s account of the meaning of truth is that, as far as it is seen as philosophically neutral, it is tautological, trivial and noninformative. As such, it cannot be used as a philosophical theory of truth. However, Popper’s theory of getting nearer to truth, which utilises Tarski’s account, is neither neutral nor trivial. The problem is that it presupposes that the truth is already known, for, unless the truth is already known, how would it be possible to tell something about the truth-content of an assertion, statement, belief and the like? In other words, in fact Popper, if he is to keep his notions of truth and ‘verisimilitude’, slips back towards absolutism, which he is so eager to refute, at least as far as Plato, Hegel and Marx are concerned, (see Harré 1986:41–5; Margolis 1986:89–96). Hence, the consequence is that there is no longer any difference between the best available ‘scientific’ theory or interpretation of the world—the one decided to be the yardstick of truth, or the description of the ‘facts’—and the world. This is the implicit ‘oneness’ of being and knowledge of it of all traditional accounts of the correspondence theories of truth. As Galtung notes, if the logical tool used is bivalent logic with its strict line between valid and invalid, then no interference can be made with ambiguous truth-values for the antecedents or the interference, and ‘truth’ becomes absolutist in nature (Galtung 1988:162–75; Galtung 1990:301). That this has been seen as a limitation is also clear from the effort to develop the language of polyvalent logic with more than two truthvalues, by adding ‘indeterminate’, ‘undefined’ or ‘possible’ truth-value(s) to the standard two-values system (see Haack 1974: particularly 30–5). Haack argues for

162 Explicating a critical realist methodology ‘deviant logics’ on the grounds that the positivist and logicist analytic/synthetic distinction should be rejected: logic is not about ‘pure form’, as in Kant’s view, but rather about more or less substantial rules of thought, and ‘no factual statement is immune from revision’. However, if the classical laws of thought used in deriving theorems in polyvalent logic are still based on bivalent logic, and/or if the ‘third possibilities’ are of the nature ‘not yet decided to be true or false…some of the more plausible interpretations of the intermediate values of many-valued systems are such that “true” and “false” remain mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive’ (Haack 1974:61), then it is hard to see that any real exception has been made to the following ‘classical’ rules: (i) Excluded middle (tertium non datur): ~p v p. (ii) No contradiction: ~(p & ~p). (iii) Principle of identity: (p)p=p.

4 5

Many philosophers use the expressions tertium non datur and ‘principle of bivalence’ interchangeably, or take for granted that these principles are equivalent. However, it is, in principle, possible to deny ‘bivalence’ and still hold that (~p v p) is a theorem of the logical system. Nevertheless, if tertium non datur is a theorem of a system, and if Tarski’s principle that ‘A’ is true if ‘A’ holds for that system, then the principle of bivalence must also hold (see Haack 1974:67–8) (This seems to suggest, moreover, that it has been very commonplace to assume Tarski’s principle implicitly, as a selfevident truth). Moreover, although ‘tertium non datur’ does not exclude the possibility that (p & ~p), it is thought, almost without exception, that ‘from a contradiction anything is derivable, so that such a logic [which accepts (p & ~p)] would be useless for the purpose of discriminating valid from invalid inferences’ (Haack 1974:36). Now, if logic and mathematics are viewed as a formal bivalent game with one basic rule, that a theorem T and its negation ~T cannot both be valid, then there may be violent social and political consequences in the sense analysed in this chapter: truths come to be seen as absolute and non-compromised (even though the possibility of errors is admitted, in principle). Indeed, the praxis of scientific theory-choice and criteria-choice requires and presupposes ‘alternative’ logical systems. Moreover, bivalent logic is also inadequate in assessing the validity of a descriptive and picturesque model concerning an aspect and part of the differentiated, structured and stratified reality with its complex and ‘inexhaustible fullness’. From this point of view, it is easy to agree with Joseph Margolis, who argues that relativism is a thesis according to which ‘it is methodologically advisable to retreat from insisting on a strong bipolar model of truth and falsity’ (see Margolis 1986:111). Modified from Giddens 1979:54; Bhaskar 1986:128. These points rely on Habermas 1984 [1981]: Ch. 1. Habermas argues (1984 [1981]: 8) that ‘rationality has less to do with the possession of knowledge than with how speaking and acting subjects acquire and use knowledge’. Further, he bases ‘the rationality of an expression on its criticizability’ (Habermas 1984 [1981]:10). Further, ‘corresponding to the openness of rational expressions to being explained, there is, on the side of persons who behave rationally, a willingness to expose themselves to criticism and, if necessary, to participate properly in argumentation. In view of their criticizability, rational expressions also admit of improvement; we can correct failed attempts if we can successfully identify our mistakes. The concept of “grounding” is interwoven with that of “learning”. Argumentation plays an important role in the learning processes as well…. The medium in which these negative experiences (failed attempts) can be productively assimilated is “theoretical discourse” that is, the form of argumentation in which controversial truth claims are thematized’ (Habermas 1984 [1981]:18–19).

The normative logic of emancipation 163 6

7

In fact, the later Bhaskar seems to oscillate between the speculative illusion of a Hegelian philosopher and the romantic, radical democrat illusion about a free, eudaemonic society, within which free, concretely singular individuals are capable of emancipation that stems directly from ‘an inner urge that flows universally from the logic of elementary absence (lack, need, want or desire)’ (Bhaskar 1993:299). Both illusions would make CR social sciences redundant and therefore also negate the original purpose of CR, which was to ground and show a place for critical social sciences. The oscillation mentioned in note 6 applies also to Bhaskar’s version of the idea of concrete Utopia. The following explication is therefore based more on Sayer, Unger and my own analysis than on Bhaskar.

Part III

Visions of world politics

7

Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode

To concretise the notion of iconic modelling, I shall explain the well-known Melos massacre described by Thucydides in his The Peloponnessian War.1 I follow upon Hayward Alker’s (1996:23–63) analysis of ‘the dialectical logic of Thucydides’ Melian dialogue’2, and aim at developing Alker’s analysis into a fully-fledged CR explanation. I shall assess different hypotheses about the Melos episode, and show how an iconic model about the relevant causal complex and development of its key elements can be built. Because there is little other readily available evidence, other than Thucydides’ text and its interpretations, the task of gathering and assessing evidence is made relatively simple.3 The chief point about the choice of this case is, however, that Thucydides’ History is constitutive of the international problematic and, thereby, of contemporary political realism. David Hume (1994 [1777]:135) used Thucydides to support his view about the universality of the balance of power system: ‘Thucydides represents the league, which was formed against Athens, and which produced the Peloponnesian war, as entirely owing to this principle.’ Immanuel Kant (1983 [1784]:38n) wrote that ‘the first page of Thucydides (says Hume) is the only beginning of all true history’.4 Ever since, Thucydides’ History has been taken as a corroboration of the wisdom of the tradition—and therefore as evidence for the timeless inevitability of the international problematic. For instance, Robert Keohane writes: To explicate the research program of Realism, I begin with two classic works, one ancient, the other modern: The Peloponnessian War, by Thucydides, and Politics Among Nations, by Morgenthau. The three most fundamental Realist assumptions are evident in these books: that the most important actors in world politics are territorially organised entities (city-states or modern states); that state behavior can be explained rationally; and that states seek power and calculate their interests in terms of power, relative to the nature of the international system they face…. In reconstructing state calculations, Thucydides and Morgenthau both assume that states will act to protect their power positions, perhaps even to the point of seeking to maximize their

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power. Thucydides seeks to go beneath the surface of events to the power realities that are fundamental to state action. (Keohane 1986:163–4) Keohane refers to one of the most contested passages in The Peloponnessian War (I: 23), according to which the real cause of the Peloponnesian war was ‘the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon’. This ‘made war inevitable’. This was probably written two decades after its textual context, as a post-war afterthought. Keohane takes it as evidence of Thucydides’ neo-realism.5 On this reading, it is also obvious to assume that the Melos massacre is an indication of a universal invariance. This is the law of the stronger: great powers naturally impose their will; weaker powers accommodate this or are crushed. Athens acted inevitably as any great power would do, yet the Melians did not submit. Hence, the Melian men were killed, and the women and children enslaved. Readings of Thucydides legitimise or criticise contemporary practices. This is why Thucydides remains important. I shall argue that available evidence points to a very different explanation than that offered by followers of Hume. A crucial cause of the massacre was that Athens as a collective actor changed in the course of the war. The Athenians’ claim ‘that it is a necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can’ (V:105) is not a statement about a Newtonian law but an attempt to justify their imperialism and, genealogically, a causal result of the pathological processes that restructured the opinions and actions of Athenian citizens. The development that led to these changes is part of Thucydides’ overall explanatory and moral narrative about the fate of Athens and, also, Hellas. The Peloponnesian war was, to use contemporary categories, also a civil war. Thucydides seems to have viewed history as an open process, produced by actors capable of arguing and acting otherwise. A few passages point towards a more necessitarian story, and they suggest that the Peloponnesian war is best conceived as a tragedy. Methodical iconic modelling can help to explicate relevant components of the causal complex and also to reflect systematically upon different possible temporal structures of the explanation.

A rational-choice model As is well known, the Melos episode—which occurred during the Nicias Peace period 416 BC, in the middle of the 27-year-long Peloponnesian war—consists of a long dialogue and a short statement of the subsequent events. The subsequent statement explains laconically that Melos was attacked, all adult men were killed and other Melians were enslaved by the Athenians (Thucydides V:84– 116). Why did the massacre happen? What caused it? At the outset, it is enough to have interesting possibilities and somewhat plausible candidates for endorsement. The first possibility is to articulate the neo-realist logic in terms of a rational-choice model. The Melos massacre can be seen as an outcome of strategic choices of two state-actors, Athens and Melos. Actually, this

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interpretation can be effected in at least two different ways. The research programme of situational determinism tends to see the necessitarian logic of rational choice everywhere; it is based on the ampliative strategy of modelling. A rationalchoice model can also make sense from a critical realist (CR) viewpoint, but then the preferences and (contingent) prevalence of strategic action, in a particular geohistorical context, can be subjected to explanation too. According to Spiro Latsis (1972), the research programme of situational determinism endeavours to find, describe and analyse situations where the ‘obvious’ course of action is determined uniquely by objective conditions. These situations can be called single-exit situations. Latsis explains them with the help of an analogy: to say that a seller under perfect competition deliberately chooses a course of action to maximise profits is analogous to saying that a member of the audience is maximising if he runs out of the single exit available to him in a burning cinema. (Latsis 1972:210–11) According to Latsis, the temptations for the social scientist to employ such a method are considerable, for it makes the application of mathematical techniques easier—and the utilisation of mathematical tools is often equated with the quality of being ‘scientific’. It also renders his field of study relatively autonomous and hence immune to criticism from outside.6 Some general, regulative, philosophical principles of this programme are (Latsis 1972:208–9): 1

2

3

The approach is individualistic: behaviour is explained in terms of individual human agents, who are acting in a social situation, and their exogenous preferences. The strategically rational choices of the individual agents are so constrained by their situation that only ‘minimal psychological assumptions’ are required to explain their actions. Agents are rational: they act appropriately to the ‘logic of the strategic situation’; this implies that there are no chronic information problems, although uncertainty may well be present.

How could we analyse the Melos episode in terms of the situational determinist research programme? There are a few selected passages in Thucydides that are usually taken up and presented to justify a political realist or a rational-choice reading. For instance, ‘my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said’ (I:22). This passage is often combined with the view that Thucydides believed that brute power politics ruled relations between states. It is assumed that Thucydides made a distinction between relations within, and between, states. In the

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inter-state relations, there is no justice—just the rule of brute force. It is the strong who decide how they will treat the weak, and moral judgements are virtually inapplicable. This is how we should also interpret the expression ‘what was demanded by the various occasions’. The adequate explanation must therefore start from the fact that given ‘situations’ make demands on actors and that the actors must speak in accordance with these demands. However, what, then, did Thucydides mean by ‘the general sense of what they really said’ or ‘what was called for by each situation’ (I:22)? This is a translation of the Greek terms xympasa gnome. In accordance with the tradition of political realism, G.E.M. de Ste.Croix interprets these words as follows: If I may offer my own conception of a xympasa gnome for what is undoubtedly the set of speeches most often accused of having no basis in fact, namely the Melian Dialogue, I would suggest that it is the Athenians’ assertion that the Melians are far too weak to be able to resist Athens on their own and can hope for no assistance from outside, and therefore would be wise to surrender without further ado, and the Melians’ denial of this assertion. (de Ste.Croix 1972:10) The ‘what was called for by each situation’ must therefore be based on calculations of available force. Consequently, rhetorical moves stem from the requirements of the power political situation. Or as Keohane puts the idea, ‘Thucydides seeks to go beneath the surface of events to the power realities that are fundamental to state action.’ The Athenians sent envoys to Melos in 416 BC, at the time of a temporary peace between Athens and Sparta, in order to persuade the Melians to be subordinated under the power of the Athenian empire. The Athenians considered the terms of submission to be moderate and reasonable, namely ‘alliance on a tribute-paying basis and liberty to enjoy your own property’ (V:111). They argued, moreover, that it would be in the interests of both parties if Melos agreed. From this perspective, it seems that the following arguments reveal the essence of the Melian dialogue: MELIANS: And how, pray, could it turn out as good for us to serve as for you to rule? ATHENIANS: Because you would have the advantage of submitting before suffering the worst, and we should gain by not destroying. (Thucydides V:92–3)

Here, actors express their preferences about possible states of affairs in these statements. The only options open to Athens seemed to be either to destroy Melos or to rule it. It would be much easier and more profitable to rule than to destroy. For Melos, it would obviously be better to surrender than to be destroyed. The statement by the Athenians can be read first of all as a statement of facts, but simultaneously also as an ultimatum. From these, we can derive the strategic

Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode 171

Figure 7.1 The strategic decision-making tree of Melos and Athens

game-tree presented in Figure 7.1. (For the notation and general technique, see, for instance, Ordershook 1986.) Melos faces a choice between resisting and surrendering, while Athens may, depending on the choice of Melos, face the choice between conquering Melos with force and letting Melos be independent. For both parlies the preference order is (a>b>c). Had Melos had perfect information about the situation, the only real exit option would have been to ‘surrender’. Melos did not surrender, however. Consequently, either Melos was irrational, or the model specified is not a good one. Thus, further complications of the model are needed (given that the rational-choice approach is not questioned, only the specific model). There must have been uncertainty as to Athens‘s real capacities and intentions. It can be assumed that when Melos was forced to make its choice, it did not know what Athens was going to choose if Melos itself chose resistance. To indicate this, an information set is drawn into the picture. Melians may have given a high probability (p) to the Athenians doing nothing if they themselves just resisted. Consequently, ‘resist’ is a rational choice for Melos if: (7.1) [p(aM)–(1– p)(cM)]>bM In other words, if the expected value of ‘resist’ was higher than the value of ‘surrender’, the strategically rational choice would have been to ‘resist’. Because this actually occurred, surely this must have been the case. The massacre is, therefore, best explained by an unfortunate misjudgement on the side of the Melians.

Some problems of the rational-choice model The rational-choice model predicts, after the event, the actual outcome. Is this an explanation of the Melos episode? It is always possible to construct a

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rational-choice model that predicts any outcome that has already occurred. If ‘prediction’ in this sense is the only criterion, then anything goes—at least as far as it is articulated in rational-choice terms. In the case of genuine predictions, the same immunity to criticism can also be effected with a ceteris paribus clausul.7 The question is whether the rational-choice model provides us with a true explanation. If other hypotheses or evidence is given no chance, if there is no accuracy and depth, and if there is no illuminatory power, can there be any real explanation either? Of all possible hypotheses, does the evidence support only the rational-choice model? What other hypotheses could have been explicated and assessed? Driven by the scholarly virtue of truth, should not we test other hypotheses and check the available evidence? Have all relevant components of the causal complex been brought to the fore; all relevant aspects of the story been told? Are we satisfied with the depth achieved in the model? Any episode of social interaction can be re-described as a utility-maximising decision-making problem of multiple interdependent actors. The first question is: Is this re-description adequate? What does this re-description explain, if anything? When rationality is understood as learning and openness to evidence, how ‘rational’ is the model (7.1) as an explanation? For instance, historical reasons cast a shadow of doubt on the accuracy of applying probabilistic, utilitybased choice-theoretical terms to explaining episodes in ancient Greece. There is also direct textual evidence in Peloponnesian Wars that contradicts the rationalchoice model. By a careful analysis of the evidence, it is possible to move towards deeper layers of social reality and also achieve depth epistemologically. By specifying and writing a genealogy of the relevant key components, a different story about the Melos episode can be told. The conception of strategic rationality was alien to the Greeks. They were not familiar with the Humean notion of causality or calculative, utility-maximising action, which in seventeenth-century Europe was modelled on book-keeping and capital accounting. For ancient Greeks, causes were rather defined in terms of possibility, potentiality and teleological nature of entities rather than in terms of empirical invariance.8 Thus, their strategic reasoning must have been different from the modern economistic cost—benefit analysis. Moreover, to understand the evidence Thucydides provides about the real causes of events and processes, it is important to grasp what Thucydides was doing when he was writing the History. It is not at all clear that Thucydides had any idea of writing ‘scientific’ history in a modern sense. Although he seems to have sought, quite methodically, accuracy and true descriptions, and although he criticised the ancient poets for making up stories, he worked within the genre of serious arts, particularly tragedy. […Thucydides] did not, as is commonly asserted, take a scientific view of human history. Rather he took the view of one who, having an admirably scientific temper, lacked the indispensable aid of accumulated and systematic knowledge, and of the apparatus of scientific conceptions… Thucydides

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possessed, in common with his contemporaries at Athens, the cast of mind induced by an early education consisting almost exclusively in the study of poets. (Cornford 1965 [1907]:ix–x) Thucydides did not, for instance, make references to his sources or have his book scrutinised by a scholarly community. He says only that his tried to check different accounts to the extent possible, but this was difficult because ‘different eyewitnesses give different accounts of the same events’ (I:22). More importantly, I take Francis Cornford’s point to indicate that at the level of mimesis2 (see Chapter 5), Thucydides worked with the poetic narrative structures available to him, given his education. Moreover, like the authors of great tragedies, it seems that Thucydides was writing moral philosophy as concrete lessons that he meant to be drawn from his story, which he claimed to be true (see Farrar 1988:126). The dialectical logic of the Melian dialogue, part I Social-scientific iconic models, themselves interpretative, deal with a preinterpreted world of lay meanings. The research process itself can be understood as a dialogue between the researcher and the alien object to be grasped—and explained. A paradigmatic case of object is social action in context. Social action can be understood in terms of inter-subjective rules, which exist as parts of open, yet structured, wholes. To a varying extent, rules are known only practically, not discursively. Communication in general, and dialectical argumentation in particular, can bring rule-commitments and parts of background discourses to the explicit level of ‘know-that’. At least a dialogical process tends to make commitments public. I agree with Alker (1996:27) that it is illuminating to think ‘in contemporary language, Thucydides’ polimetrics…as one of seeking to uncover—through critical, partly formalizable, rational argumentation—the determinative structures, the characteristic contrasts, the syntheses and transformations practically constitutive of Greek polities’. Thucydides’ ‘polimetrics’ involves also depth, since we can think ‘with Thucydides of reality as layered and define scientific progress as the uncovering of the deeper, dialectically inner, determining layers or characteristic dispositions’ (Alker 1988a:813).9 By first presenting a long dialogue between Athenians and Melians, Thucydides reveals the most important aspects and layers of reality as accurately as the subject matter and his sources of information permit. (Classical scholars agree that the Melian dialogue was Thucydides’ dramatic reconstruction, and not a reproduction of eye-witnesses’ reports.) If ‘the deeper, dialectically inner, determining layers or characteristic dispositions’ have been explicated, it is quite reasonable merely to state, in a few lines, what actually happened after the debate. Dialectics is the realm of arguable opinions about contingent and plausible truths concerning, for instance facts, identities, interests, Jaws of nature, justice or honour. It is possible to reconstruct the dialectical logic of the Melian dialogue systematically

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and quasi-formally Systematic formalisation can be of help in analysing and uncovering the deeper layers and interconnections. Following Alker, I use two modes of formalisation. First, a part of the Melian dialogue will be analysed with the help of Nicholas Rescher’s formalisation of dialectics. Thucydides’ account of the arguments used in the Melian dialogue is compatible with dialectical logic. Second, graphical argumentation analysis permits a systematic analysis of interconnections between arguments and the deeper layers of the Greek political realities. Thucydides sets the scene of the Melian episode by explaining briefly its background: The Melians are a colony of Lacedaemon that would not submit to the Athenians like the other islanders, and at first remained neutral and took no part in the struggle, but afterwards upon the Athenians using violence and plundering their territory, assumed an attitude of open hostility. Cleomedes, son of Lycomedes, and Tisias, son of Tisimachus, the generals, encamping in their territory with the above armament, before doing any harm to their land, sent envoys to negotiate. These the Melians did not bring before the people, but made them state the object of their mission to the magistrates and the few; upon which the Athenian envoys spoke as follows. (Thucydides V:84) In Table 7.1, the first seven substantial moves of the Melian dialogue are reproduced and in some cases summarised. For a brief introduction to Nicholas Rescher’s (1977) formalised dialectics, see Figure 4.1 and the discussion thereof. The basic idea is that the proponent takes the initiative and bears the burden of proof. The opponent has three or four possible countermoves, including cautious denial, provisoed denial and weak distinction or exception. The Melian dialogue can be seen as a dialectical disputation—initiated by the Athenians—about whether it is in the interest of the Melians to submit to the Athenian empire. In Table 7.2, the seven substantial moves of the Melos dialogue are presented formally by using this notation. Flexible Rescherian rules of rational argumentation seem to fit to this political debate quite well, even though the survival of the other party is at stake. However, this formalisation is in itself nothing more than a systematic reconstruction of the argumentation. Could the dialogue also help to reveal deeper layers of the reality and truth about the Melos massacre? The dialogue begins with what a situational determinist would consider as the essence of the whole episode (moves 1–3). However, this is only the surface level. The preferences and the prima-facie cases are stated here, but the reasons for these (dis)positions are not yet given. Moreover, as the debate moves towards deeper discursive levels, relevant components of the causal complex are disclosed, such as partially shared practices, relevant actors and the dynamics of their positioning. The debate also indicates that there are two different, yet equally constitutive, perspectives about reality, the Athenian and the Melian. Reality is not the same thing as the Athenian interpretation of it. Rather this reality involves

Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode 175 Table 7.1 The first seven moves of the Melian dialogue

at least two different and partially contradictory interpretations (and soon more differences will be revealed). Move 4 shifts the debate to qualitatively novel levels. The Melians ask: ‘Why could we not remain neutrals, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side?’ The Athenian envoys answer in move 5: ‘Your hostility cannot hurt us, but your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our weakness, and your enmity of our power.’ Finally, in their move 7, the Athenians make public a number of still deeper theories and rules: 1

A constitutive rule, which establishes Athenians as rulers: Athenians define and interpret themselves essentially as sea rulers and seem to think that others do so as well

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Table 7.2 The first seven moves quasi-formalised

(‘we rule the sea and you are islanders’); this establishes an internal relation between Athenians and all islanders. 2 A ‘realpolitik’ view about the dangers of any signs of Athenian ‘weakness’ as an imperial ruler, coupled with the claim that morality is irrelevant: [Athens’s subjects think that] ‘those still independent do so because they are strong, and if we fail to attack them it is because we are afraid’; [others, and subjects in particular] ‘see no difference between right and wrong’; [it is therefore particularly important that] ‘you should not escape’. (1) and (2) explain the Athenian position, as well as their original claim. However, to explain the Melian position in a similar way, it is necessary to analyse the Melian dialogue further. Graphical argumentation analysis techniques have a number of advantages over Rescherian formalisation. First, a graphical tableau is relatively easy to read, because the natural language expressions are preserved. Second, graphical techniques make it possible both to analyse the relations of substantiation, grounding and criticism, and to present them in a visually illustrative manner. Further, it is also possible to indicate how actors often make each others’ implicit assumptions explicit (or at least claim to do that). In Figure 7.2, the rest of the Melian dialogue is presented from move 5 onwards. There is a systematic pattern in this argumentation. Arguments M6, M10 and M12 are all about equity, courage, honour, bravery and justice. M12 also supports M10 while simultaneously attacking A11. M10 (‘does not this mean that you are strengthening your enemies?’), in turn, partially supports MM10 (the Melian statement that ‘we who are still free would show ourselves great cowards and weaklings if we failed to face everything that comes rather than submit to slavery’). This is because M10 indicates that other people, too, can act out of ethical considerations. This gives reasons to believe that the Athenians are taking a great risk by acting so aggressively. This claim contradicts the Athenian realpolitik view about the dangers of being ‘weak’ ((2), above). Evidently, the crux of Thucydides’ story is that, in the end, the Melians proved to be right. Athens’s aggressive imperial actions had adverse, counterfinal consequences and contributed to its final defeat. Athenians never denied that the Melians were right, in principle, about matters of justice and honour. Their arguments concerned whether there was space for questions of right and wrong. ‘You should be sensible, this is not

Figure 7.2 A graphical presentation of the rest of the Melian dialogue Sources: Thucydides 1900:V:84–116; cf. Alker 1988b.

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about honour’ (A11b); ‘prophecies and oracles lead men to ruin by encouraging hope’ (A13); ‘of all people that we know the Spartans are most conspicuous for believing that what they like doing is honourable and what suits their interest is just’ (A15). Finally, there is the ultimate argument, which discloses that the Athenian realpolitik theory is not only about the potentialities and nature of Athens’s subjects. Instead, it tends towards universalist claims about the nature of the social world: So far as the favour of gods is concerned, we think we have as much right to that as you have…. Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way. (Thucydides V:105; my emphasis) The Athenians acted upon a realpolitik theory (2). Now we can see that this theory included naturalisation (reification) of social worlds: ‘it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can’. This alleged law is by no means Newtonian. It is nonetheless necessitarian and used explicitly to justify actions. The Athenians think that this ‘natural law’ makes their actions right, also in the eyes of gods.10 The Athenians’ realpolitik theory is a set of rules of interpretation and judgement that they followed. At that time, it was a deep element of the Greek social reality. Whereas the Melians were making ethical and moral arguments, the Athenians tried to persuade them that this was not sensible, that there is not even a slightest sign of hope that these considerations would help them. However, the Melians, like many others, never accepted this claim. The Melians were ‘not prepared to give up in a short moment the liberty which our city has enjoyed from its foundation for 700 years’ (Thucydides V:112). In the light of this analysis of evidence, what were the causes of the occupation and massacre? Two at least tentatively plausible counterfactual possibilities can be constructed: CF1

CF2

If the Melians had accepted the Athenian interpretation of the situation and the Athenian horizon of action, they would have submitted (for they were rational). If the Athenians had accepted the relevance of justice, equity, courage, honour and bravery, as the Melians asked them to do, they would have been forced to admit the illegitimacy, injustice and potential insensibility of their expansionist imperialism. Consequently they would have been compelled to change some of their self-understandings concerning their identity, aims and horizon of possibilities.

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CF1 is the onlys counterfactual possibility that can be seen from the perspective of political realism and the rational-choice model. Political realism is compatible with the Athenian view. Political realism sees it as the only possibility and therefore contributes to legitimising, long after the event, the Athenian imperialism and acts of violence. Many have seen the second counterfactual (CF2) as more important, either for prudential or moral reasons. However, there are multiple contradictory perspectives in reality, and all of them are real and also products of particular geo-historical processes. It is my argument that from a causal explanation point of view, CF2 is decisive. According to Thucydides’ narrative about the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians acted quite differently earlier in the war. Pericles—the famous leader of the golden time of the Athenian rule—warned, for reasons of honour and prudence, against adopting a policy of expansionist imperialism and aggression. Hence, a different kind of Athenian policy had already been actual, not only a possibility. Moreover, even at the time of the Melos episode, in 416 BC, Athenian imperial expansionism was contested within Athens.

The prophasis of the Melos episode, part I Thucydides distinguished between two types of causes, between aitia and prophasis. Aitia refers to the rationalisation of action, and prophasis to the underlying causes, to the causes which are ‘behind’ or ‘under’ the level of rationalisations and concrete events (see, for instance, Edmunds 1975:172–3). For political realists, this means that ‘Thucydides seeks to go beneath the surface of events to the power realities that are fundamental to state action’ (as Keohane put it). However, there are other possibilities. For a critical realist, there are a number of things in social reality that do not belong to the level of aitia, without there being any fixed set of empirical invariances, which would determine the aitia. From a CR perspective, the ‘going beyond’ of rationalisation can be done at least in three directions. The first possibility is to move deeper into the discursive formations and meanings, possibly towards explicating the implied internal relations between social entities, possibly by moving analytically towards unconscious levels (e.g. by analysing the mythical structuration of meanings, perhaps in relation to the interplay between partially unintended consequences of action and real reasons for a particular rationalisation). The second possibility is to explain the concrete possibilities open to positioned actors—particularly the possibilities taken seriously by the actors. These can be analysed in terms of the relevant rule-constituted and rule-governed contexts of positioned practices and by writing genealogies of the key elements of these contexts. The third possibility is to analyse causal or existential, often unintended, consequences of action, such as effects of power; the—often coincidental—timing of the occurrence of these consequences; as well as the external relations of systemic (inter)dependence, which may give rise to emergent powers and properties, and which are (re)produced in the context of unintended consequences of action.

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To contextualise adequately the counterfactual possibilities (CF1 and 2), the next step is to move from aitia to prophasis by constructing an iconic model of the material and efficient causes of the Melos episode. We have to specify a model M = {A; R}, in which A=a1, a2, a3>,…is a set of elements, which themselves can be relations or relational systems, and R=r1, r2, r3,…is the set of the relations between these elements. One way to do systematic iconic modelling is simply to explicate the causally effective components at a particular geo-historical juncture. The problem with this procedure is that it freezes history. This deficiency must subsequently be corrected with some countermeasures. Table 7.3 summarises a few hypotheses about some of the most relevant components. These hypotheses stem from my analysis of the evidence provided by Thucydides in the Melian dialogue in particular, but also, more generally, in the History as a whole. They are open to criticism and revisions.11 The Athenians’ mode of action is a combination of the expressive and the strategic. In the debate, the Athenians express themselves proudly as ‘sea rulers’ and as the imperial power. They acted strategically towards Melos. There is, however, also the shared rule that Hellenes share a cultural and political identity (WH), in contrast to barbarians, living outside Hellas. Thucydides even speaks of ‘the country now called Hellas’ (Thucydides I:2).12 It is very ambiguous whether the Peloponnesian war was, in modern terms, a civil or an international war. It also involved strife between social classes: land-ownership-based oligarchy versus trade-and-seafaring-based democracy of free, propertied men. Many, including Thucydides himself and the ruthless Athenian leader Alcibiades, had to flee from their polis in the course of the war, because of violence between parties, and because of various suspicions and allegations. Hellas was not a prototype of the modern European states system. Not only was there no balance of power system, there was not even any formal recognition of poleis as collective actors (Sylvan 1991a:7). Even the term ‘Athens’, as an indication of a collective actor, as it is used in Table 7.3, may be misleading. In Thucydides, polis is not usually referred to as a unitary actor. It was the citizens of poleis that conducted actions, made treaties and could speak of ‘us’. Exclusion from the citizenry was a major punishment, and could sometimes even lead to violent enslavement (as emphasised by Sylvan 1991a). However, it was usually possible, at least for the wealthy, to travel freely (unarmed) and, if necessary, settle down in another polis, and, quite often, acquire a new citizenship.14 There were also shared practices. Thucydides describes the development of ‘civilised customs’ in ‘modern’ Hellas: It was the Spartans who first began to dress simply and in accordance with our modern taste, with the rich leading a life that was as much as possible like the life of the ordinary people. They, too, were the first to play games naked, to take off their clothes openly, and to rub themselves down with olive oil after their exercise. In ancient times even at the Olympic Games the athletes used to wear coverings for their loins, and indeed this practice was

Modelling Thucydides’ Melos episode 181 Table 7.3 Relevant causal components of the Melos episode

still in existence not very many years ago…. Indeed, one could point to a number of other instances where the manners of the ancient Hellenic world are very similar to the manners of foreigners today. (Thucydides I:6) The Olympic Games were an institution that brought the whole Hellenic world regularly together and reinforced shared assumptions of Hellenic identity and common ‘modern’ manners. From the Trojan War onwards, Hellas had also been united many times against external enemies. Besides external enemies, Hellenic co-operation was based on the partially shared linguistic, cultural and political identity (e.g. Thucydides I:23 distinguishes between Hellenic and foreign armies). Very importantly, the Hellenic unity was also based on pacification of land and sea, which enabled trade and accumulation of wealth (Thucydides I:4–9). According to Thucydides’ genealogy, ‘as Hellas became more powerful

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and as the importance of acquiring money became more and more evident, tyrannies were established in nearly all the cities, revenues increased, shipbuilding flourished, and ambition turned to sea-power’ (Thucydides I:13). After the Spartans had ‘put down tyranny in the rest of Greece’, the final obstacle to the rise of Hellas was removed (Thucydides I:18). Soon after the Persian wars, however, Hellas was divided into two competing camps: ‘Not many years after the end of tyrannies in Hellas the battle of Marathon was fought between the Persians and the Athenians. Ten years later the foreign enemy returned with his vast armada for the conquest of Hellas, and at this moment of peril the Spartans, since they were the leading power, were in command of the allied Hellenic forces. In face of the invasion the Athenians decided to abandon their city; they broke up their homes, took to their ships, and became a people of sailors. It was by a common effort that the foreign invasion was repelled; but not longer afterwards the Hellenes…split into two divisions, one group following Athens and the other Sparta. (Thucydides I:18; my emphasis) By the time of the Melian dialogue, the Athenians were losing the legitimacy of their leadership. They had originally acquired this leadership in the Persian wars. Ethical notions (mutually agreed regulative rules) played a decreasing role. The Athenians attempted to replace legitimate leadership with brute force. Party strife and inter-polis violence were thus making the shared practices and common Greek identity less important in determining the course of actions. However, the Nician peace treaty between Athens and Sparta, which was beginning to break down in 416 BC, included rules regulating aggression between the camps. The most important constitutive rule, depicted in Table 7.3, was the self-definition of Athens as the sea ruler. Trade and imperial fees gave Athens many resources; it was considered the greatest Hellenic power economically and militarily. Moreover, at this moment, it was neither engaged in war with Sparta (the Lacedaemonians), nor was its effective transformative capacity yet being weakened due to the growing lack of legitimacy. In Melos, the Athenian envoys represented Athenian citizenry. The constitutive rule they acted upon was ‘we are Athenians’. The decision to adopt a policy towards Melos was made in Athens. The envoys were normatively tied to the given instructions. Nevertheless, they must have had an amount of autonomy, also because of long communication distances. They were also committed to the rules of argumentation. Debates, which in most poleis were usually public, organised political life throughout Hellas. However, Melians pointed out that the Athenian envoys may not been following the rules of dialogue: MELIANS: No one can object to each of us putting forward our own views in a calm atmosphere. That is perfectly reasonable. What is scarcely consistent with such a proposal is the present threat, indeed, the certainty of you making

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war on us. We see that you have come prepared to judge the argument yourselves, and that the likely end of it will be either war, if we prove that we are in the right, and so refuse to surrender, or else slavery. ATHENIANS: If you are going to spend the time in enumerating your suspicions about the future, or if you have met here for any other reason except to look the facts in the face and on the basis of these facts to consider how you can save your city from destruction, there is no point in our going on with the discussion. If, however, you will do as we suggest, then we will speak on. (Thucydides V:85–6; my emphasis)

Melians relied on the logic of normative and expressive action. They made points about the requirements of equity and justice. However, Athenians were not interested in these requirements; Melos was just one of the small islands with a scarce population, oligarchic governance and limited military facilities. Melians began to make expressive arguments: they are free and independent; and if they have any sense of honour and bravery they are not going to submit, for it would change the very nature of what they are. No matter what the consequences, they wanted to stay independent, with great honour. In Hellas, the notion of honour was particularly important (see Donnelly 1991: especially 32–7). This makes it understandable why the Athenians were compelled to answer to the Melians in a manner that implied the acceptance of the relevance of honour: ‘You will see that there is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms’. The Melians did not agree. In the last instance, when a reference to heaven and fortune had proved futile, the Melians pointed out that Sparta (the Lacedaemonians) might come to help them. Melos did not belong to the Lacedaemonian alliance, and the Athenian army was already encamped on the soil of Melos. The Spartans had the reputation of acting slowly and cautiously, and their actions were restricted by the normative requirements of the Nician Peace. The Athenian argument that ‘where danger is concerned the Spartans are not, as a rule, very venturesome’ must have thus seemed quite plausible. In ancient strategic terms, it is unlikely that the Melians made any misjudgement about their hopeless situation (cf. the rational-choice model of Figure 7.1). It was for reasons of identity-constituting independence, courage and honour that they refused to submit to the rule of the Athenian empire. The prophasis of the Melian episode, part II: the genealogy of Athenian aggressive imperialism The Athenians initiated the Melian episode and also committed the massacre and enslavement. Causally, the Athenians were responsible for the outcome. Although the Melians could have acted differently, from a causal explanation point of view, it is the aggressive Athenian imperialism that should be explained. In accordance with CF2, it is possible to isolate from the causal complex the Athenian aggressiveness as a particularly relevant INUS-component, and write its genealogy.

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In contrast to the realpolitik justification of imperialism presented by the Athenians in the Melian dialogue ((2), above), in the beginning of the war, Pericles argued for an Athenian empire whose laws are just and should thus appear legitimate—and whose actions stand up to the standards of honour. For Pericles, justice and honour were both values in themselves and necessary means for keeping the empire together. In a speech where he defended the decision to make war against Sparta, Pericles stated: ‘What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy, but our own mistakes’ (Thucydides I:144). Thucydides explains Pericles’ position as follows: For Pericles had said that Athens would be victorious if she bided her time and took care of her navy, if she avoided trying to add to the empire during the course of war, and if she did nothing to risk the safety of the city itself. But his successors did exactly the opposite, and in other matters which apparently had no connection with the war, private ambition and private profit led to policies which were bad both for the Athenians themselves and for their allies. Such policies, when successful, only brought credit and advantage to individuals, and when they failed, the whole war potential of the state was impaired. (Thucydides II:65; my emphasis) Had Athens continued to ‘avoid trying to add to the empire’, or to observe the principles or justice and honour, no Melos episode could have occurred. Why did the policy of Athens change? There must be two aspects to this explanation. First, at the collective level, the adoption of a particular policy can be explained by giving an account of the decisions in terms of debates and voting in Athens. These were conducted in accordance with certain agreed procedures. Second, a change in the structure of the ‘seriously taken’ discourse can be explained in terms of learning, power and interests in a changing context of action. In the fourth year of the war, the Peloponnesians (Sparta and confederates) invaded Attica (Athens and its environment). Immediately after this invasion, all of Lesbos (except Methymna), led by the Mitylenes, revolted against the Athenians and tried to ally with the Peloponnesians. After long and bitter military struggles, the Mitylenes finally surrendered. ‘In the fury of the moment’, as Thucydides puts it, the Athenians were ‘determined to put to death not only the prisoners at Athens, but the whole adult male population of Mitylene, and to make slaves of the women and children’ (Thucydides III:36). However, the next day ‘brought repentance with it and reflection on the horrid cruelty of a decree, which condemned a whole city to the fate merited only by the guilty’ (Thucydides III:36). The case was re-opened for debate and vote. Cleon spoke for the original decision, arguing in a manner similar to that of Athenian envoys in Melos: Fears or plots being unknown to you in your daily relations with each other, you feel just the same with regard to your allies, and never reflect that the

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mistakes into which you may be led by listening to their appeals, or by giving way to your own compassion, are full of danger to yourselves, and bring you no thanks for your weakness from your allies; entirely forgetting that your empire is a despotism and your subjects disaffected conspirators, whose obedience is ensured not by your suicidal concessions, but by the superiority given you by your own strength and not their loyalty…. I proceed to show that no one state has ever injured you as much as Mitylene. I can make allowance for those who revolt because they cannot bear our empire, or who have been forced to do so by our enemy. But for those who possessed an island with fortifications;…who were independent and held in the highest honour by you—to act as these have done, this is not revolt—revolt implies oppression; it is deliberate and wanton aggression…. Punish them as they deserve, and teach your other allies by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion is death. (Thucydides III:37; my emphasis) Cleon’s interpretation of the Athenian situation and possibilities was not accepted, at least not by the majority of citizens. Diodotus, representing a Periclean point of view, argued that the ‘two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind’ (Thucydides III:42). Diodotus also protested against using fear and intimidation as rhetorical devices. Instead, in his view, fair and calm arguments were needed. Diodotus shared the opinion that the Mitylenians were guilty of an unjust revolt. He argued, however, that the Cleonian policy would be catastrophic in the long run. Many citizens accepted this argument. In a nearly equal vote, the Athenians decided to save the majority of Mitylenians. During the years following the Mitylenian revolt, the Cleonian perspective became predominant in Athens. Athens as the ‘sea ruler’ was becoming increasingly expansionist. A quick look at Cleon’s arguments can help to explain how and why this occurred. In Cleon’s view, the world outside the city of Athens was full of ‘fears’ and ‘plots’. All concessions and compassions were ‘full of danger’ to Athenians. All Athens’s subjects were ‘disaffected conspirators’. Even partially independent states like Mitylene were potential aggressors and allies of the enemy, the Peloponnesians. Thus, Cleon concluded, ‘obedience is ensured by force and fear, not by loyalty’. Gradually, the Athenians came to believe that Cleon was right. It seems that continuous strife, fear and violence made Cleon’s points more plausible. According to Thucydides, ambitious individual leaders—or leadercandidates—also used these fears as a rhetorical (populist) power resource. The result was the ‘realpotititk’ theory ((2), above), according to which ‘right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ (Thucydides V:89). Power was at the core of this change. In its more narrow sense, power as domination can be taken to mean, as Karl Deutsch (1963) does, that one does not have to give in, because one has facilities and capabilities to force others to

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comply. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listening. In a sense, it is also the ability to afford not to learn and change what one is. ‘When carried to extremes, such narrow power becomes blind, and the person or organization becomes insensitive to the present, and is driven, like bullet or tornado, wholly by its past’ (Deutsch 1963:111). This kind of actor has a will in a sense that comes quite near to the Nietzschean sense of a will-to-power. The experiences of the long war and the plague caused the Athenians, metaphorically speaking, to auto-program themselves to adopt the will of a ‘sea power’, and to attempt to have an ability to speak and enforce their will but not to listen. This was also because they did not trust others (including their subjects) any more. According to this Cleonian perspective, if weaker parties are not willing to listen to and to obey, it is necessary not only to force them to do so but also to ‘teach others by a striking example that the penalty of rebellion [and disobedience] is death’. This was the logic of the aggressive Athenian imperialism, which eventually proved counterproductive and led to the defeat of Athens.

The prophasis of the Melian episode, part III: the origin and ‘necessity’ of Athenian imperialism Thucydides thus tells a story, according to which the Melos massacre was not necessary. With a wiser, Periclean policy Athens could have refrained from imperialist expansionism as well from the policy of teaching lessons by means of the threat of death to others (CF2). However, there are also traits of necessitarianism in Thucydides’ History. In one of the most contested passages of the History, Thucydides argues that ‘the real cause of the [Peloponnesian war was…[t]he growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon’. These, he argues, ‘made war inevitable’ (Thucydides I:23). Thucydides himself was an Athenian general exiled after his strategic failure in 424 BC, in the seventh year of the war. Thucydides was committed to the Athenian position of the early war and he makes it quite clear that he agreed with the policy line of Pericles. Afterwards he was in a position of a critical, cosmopolitan outsider. He also communicated with the representatives of the former enemy. For Thucydides, the Athenian policy possibilities ranged from the prudent statemenship of Pericles to the aggressive excesses of Cleon and others. (Roughly the same set of policy possibilities existed on the Spartan side.) If this horizon of possibilities is combined with Thucydides’ protosociological theory of the growth of the population, trade, navy and alliance revenues of Athens,15 the war really was ‘inevitable’ because no counterfactuals can be seen from this horizon. As Thucydides describes it, the Peloponnesians were worried about the growth of Athenian power. Many believed that most of Hellas would sympathise with those trying to dissolve the Athenian empire, which had developed out of the Delian League (an alliance against Persia). Before the final outbreak of the war,

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‘both the Athenians and the Peloponnesians had already grounds of complaint against each other’ (Thucydides I:66). In this situation, there were debates in both camps about what to do. In Sparta, most shared the view that Athens was already acting aggressively and oppressing large parts of Hellas. Therefore, war should be declared without delay. Even the Athenians present in Sparta at that time did not deny that there was some truth in these claims: We did not gain this empire by force. It came to us at a time when you were willing to fight on to the end against the Persians. At this time our allies came to us of their own accord and begged us to lead them. It was the actual course of events which first compelled us to increase our power to its present extent…. So it is with us. We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human nature in accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then in refusing to give it up. Three very powerful motives prevent us from doing so— security, honour, and self-interest. And we were not the first to act this way. Far from it. It has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong; and, besides, we consider that we are worthy of our power. (Thucydides I:75–6) The main arguments of these Athenians were that they have done nothing ‘contrary to human nature’, and that they ‘are worthy of their power’. In Sparta, the viewpoint of the King Archimadus prevailed. Accordingly, Sparta sent a mission to Athens to complain about the grievances and continued war preparations but did not (yet) declare war. It is noteworthy that Thucydides does not present a full debate with different points of view about Athens’s decision. Thucydides admits that ‘many speakers came forward and opinions were expressed on both sides, some maintaining that war was necessary and others saying that the Megarian degree should be revoked and should not be allowed to stand in the way of peace’ (I:139; my emphasis). Yet, only the speech of Pericles can be found in the History. In his speech, Pericles supported the policy of ‘no concessions to Lacedaemonians’: Athenians, my views are the same as ever: I am against making any concessions to the Peloponnesians…. It was evident before that Sparta was plotting against us, and now it is even more evident. It is laid down in the treaty that differences between us should be settled by arbitration, and that, pending arbitration, each side should keep what it has. The Spartans have never once asked for arbitration, nor have they accepted our offers to submit to it. They prefer to settle their complaints by war rather than by peaceful negotiations, and now they come here not even making protests, but trying to give us orders…. [I]f we do go to war, let there be no kind of suspicion in your hearts that the war was over a small matter…. If you give in, you will immediately be confronted with some greater demand, since they will think

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that you only gave in on this point through fear. But if you take a firm stand you will make it clear to them that they have to treat you properly as equals. (Thucydides I:140) If Thucydides maintained, as it seems, that the Periclean line of thinking and policy was correct, there was no reason to report other opinions on this occasion. Yet Pericles’ claims about Sparta do not cohere with the evidence that Thucydides gives about the reflections and discussions in Sparta. It seems that Sparta was made to respond to the grievances and claims of its allies, although it was very cautious about taking any action against Athens. The war was inevitable only given the insistence of Pericles that Athens should keep the empire and make no concessions, although its actions were giving rise to grievances. An interest to preserve the empire had been established in Athens. The grandeur and luxury of many of the wealthy Athenian citizens had become dependent on the fees of the subjects of Athens—besides exploitation of slaves, women and weaker free men, such as the rowers. However, although deeper emancipatory possibilities were inconceivable to an ancient poetic historian, Thucydides could have considered the line of those in Athens who argued that ‘the Megarian degree should be revoked and should not be allowed to stand in the way of peace’.

Moral, tragic and emancipatory aspects of the History In ancient Hellas, it was common to think that some individuals and some communities, by their moral qualities, were entitled to positions of leadership and power. However, power is dangerous and corrupting, and in the wrong hands it quickly leads to immoral behaviour, and then to civil strife, unjust war and destruction. The development of Athens, as re-configured by Thucydides, can be seen in these poetic terms. There are also elements of tragedy in his text. For instance, the tragedy of the Melos episode is that both the Athenians and the Melians were right. In the short run, the Athenians were right: the Melians had no hope unless they submitted, because ‘the strong do what they have power to do and the weak suffer what they must’. Nonetheless, Melos did not submit, and they suffered. In the long run, the Melians were right: by trying to replace moral legitimacy with brute force, the Athenians eventually turned most of Hellas (and later also Persia) against them. The result was the total defeat of Athens. This spectre of suffering notwithstanding, Athens was set on a policy that was expansionist, aggressive and harsh. Speeches, dialogues and debates occupy a central place in the History, as in a theatre drama. Any adequate reading of Thucydides should take into account the drama-like structure and moralism of the History. In his Poetics, Aristotle stated that every tragedy consists of a problem, which is presented in the

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beginning of the spectacle, and the rest of the drama is about the settlement of the problem (Aristoteles 1982 [335–22 BC]: section 18). In Thucydides’ work, the ‘Great War’ is the problem, set out in the beginning. The rest is about the settlement of this problem. In the History, there are a number of turnings (peripeteias) of events, perhaps the most important of them being the internal development of Athens and its consequences. In Aristotle’s view, tragedy is an imitation of worthy action. Tragedy does not imitate by telling the narrative in the voice of a third person but through the settings of the people active in the tragedy There are two ‘natural causes’ of action: the ways of thinking and the characters of actors, which are both expressed in action. Furthermore, Aristotle equates thinking with the ‘capability of expressing with words that which is possible and is called by the situation’ (or occasion). This capability belongs to the sphere of politics and rhetoric (Aristoteles 1982 [335–22 BC]: section 6). From this perspective, Thucydides’ method becomes quite understandable: ‘My habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.’ Thucydides aimed at accuracy in his descriptions, but he was forced to reconstruct the speeches in accordance with his knowledge of the characters of the participants. He was also structuring—particularly during the final decade of the war—his narrative as a tragic drama, thereby trying to make sense of the whole. The temporal structure of a moralist strategy can be consonant with writing CR genealogies of causal components and with the scepticism about closed schemes of history. The History also provides a narrative that fulfils all three stages of mimesis, it aims at iconic augmentation of future practices: It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever. (Thucydides I:22) Mistakes may be repeated, processes may resemble those of the Athenian development and a somewhat similar tragedy may re-occur even in the twentyfirst century The forming of an iconic model always involves abstractions and idealisations, and thus a model is necessarily more general than the concrete context that is its source. There may be many historical episodes, practices or systems, which can be reasonably identified with a model that is in some regards similar to (say my reconstruction) of the History and the Melos episode in particular. Violence, pathological learning and exploitative domination are possibilities open to humanity. In this sense, Thucydides’ work has lasting value ‘for ever’. It does not make sense to criticise ancient Athenian practices of domination, more than 2,400 years after the Melos massacre. Past practices

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and relations cannot be changed and nobody can now be prosecuted. Criticism should be pointed towards practices that are based on theories, which function similarly to the Athenian ‘realpolitik’ view, and which claim that weakness is dangerous and morality is irrelevant. I mean many political realist and rational-choice interpretations of world politics. It is rather alarming that the quality of being ‘scientific’ can be equated with safeguarding oneself from external criticism. This kind of closed-mindedness can constitute and legitimate, in concrete contemporary contexts, tragic acts of aggression, oppression and imperialism.16

Conclusion To stop the process of iconic modelling of X is always risky. There may be a new fruitful perspective, a fresh argument or a previously unknown or unnoticed piece of evidence waiting just around the corner. Moreover, modelling can always be turned towards different aspects of reality. New genealogies of other components of a complex can be written, and they may stimulate the development of rather different stories about the same X. Nonetheless, at some point a judgement must be made whether a model is true. Truth refers, of course, not only to the judgements concerning actual statements and models, but also to how the world really is and thereby to potential evidence, conceptions and theories, which can change our present views and judgements. So it is also with my model of Thucydides’ Melos episode. This model explains in detail the coming about of the Melos massacre and enslavement. The Athenian citizens had concluded that, instead of moral leadership, their empire can be based only on fear and brute force. Against the earlier policy of Pericles, they had also decided to further enlarge their empire. This pathological learning process, which ultimately led to the total defeat of Athens, was a partial consequence of war experiences, which made it possible for ambitious leaders to inflame fear, suspicion and a sense of archaic revenge also for their own benefit. It presupposed, however, the violent and highly exploitative socio-economic system of Hellas. Hume and Kant and their followers have mis-read Thucydides to support their own ontological assumptions and ahistorical categories. Thucydides was not the first positivist historian, and neither did he say anything about sovereign states or balance of power. However, Thucydides was not a proto-critical realist either. The point of this chapter is not to argue for a Thucydidean approach to world politics. Rather I have tried to exemplify CR methodology and demonstrate the historical specificity of the modern international problematic. Having said this, however, there is a sense in which the value of the History may ‘last for ever’. Violence, pathological learning, illegitimate domination and exploitation are possibilities always open to humanity. We can learn not only from the content of Thucydides’ noble tragedy, but also from his simultaneous quest for truth, relevance and composition of an outstanding story, from which the readers can draw ethico-political lessons.

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Notes 1

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3

4 5 6

7

8

When I refer to this text, I stick to the standard way of first giving the number of the ‘book’ (or part) of the text (there are eight of them altogether), and then the section. Because of my inability to read Greek, I have had to content myself with English translations. I have used particularly the translations by Richard Crawley (1952) and Rex Warner (1954), but in some points I have compared these translations to the first English translation by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and to the Finnish translation by J.A. Hollo (1964), which have enriched my reading of many of the key passages. Within classical scholarship there have been extensive debates about different interpretations of Thucydides. The naïve rationalist interpretation, according to which Thucydides followed the canons of Newtonian science and by careful observations determined laws of history that, in turn, would make possible predictions in the contemporary world, prevailed in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s, but has been since then challenged and rejected (see Connor 1985:3–19). Alker was the first international relations (IR) theorist to become interested in critical readings of Thucydides. His paper was first presented in a conference in 1980 and finally published in 1988 in the American Political Science Review, it was re-published, with amendments, in Alker 1996. Others became interested in re-readings of Thucydides soon after Alker. See in particular Garst (1989:3–27); Donnelly (1991); Bagby (1994); Kokaz (2001); and Bedford and Workman (2001). It is perhaps worth noting that Machiavelli has also become an object of similar reinterpretations by Walker (1993:26–49). Thucydides is not the only possible source of evidence, but clearly without Thucydides’ readily available account, our knowledge about the Peloponnesian wars would be very scant. Classical scholarship has nonetheless been able to piece together, for instance, a picture of the intellectual setting of the Peloponnessian Wars and the class structure of Athens at the time of the wars. Mostly, I will confine myself to the account of Thucydides only. Kant does not give his source; the relevant passage of Hume’s ‘On the populousness of ancient nations’ is cited in Connor (1985:20). For a similarly fetishist neo-realist statement on Thucydides, see Gilpin (1984:287– 304). It is quite alarming that rational-choice theorists have the confidence to declare that their aim is to avoid external criticism! However, it is in fact possible, up to an extent, to relax the aim of finding a unique ‘exit’ without moving out of the situational determinist programme. Is this relevant? In IR most discursive practices are simplified; most sophisticated applications of rational choice are typically only of highly specific academic interest. Moreover, although it is possible to relax one assumption, or a few assumptions, in time, and then to develop a new strand of research around those qualifications; and although new research can be opened towards different directions; this does not, in general, change the core assumptions. The core assumptions unite the different strands, and they are also taught in the basic courses and textbooks. Critical debates about a research programme should be concerned with the core assumptions, not so much with the peculiarities of a particular strand of the large and well-funded programme. Besides, most modification of the assumptions of rational-choice theory are modest in most respects. They tend to respond only to internal criticisms, not to external ones. Even when the possibility of legitimate external criticism is admitted, it is not taken seriously. If the model fails to predict, as it usually does, it is assumed that the problem lies in the false ceteris paribus assumptions. If it is, quite surprisingly, able to predict, it is seen as correct, even though there could have been many other, different models capable of doing the same thing. At least, this was the view of Aristotle, and in any case the Galileo-Copernicus-Bacon

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9

10

11

12 13

14

15

16

view was very revolutionary in its own time. No such accounts are known to have existed before. About the Aristotelian notion of causality, see any philosophy textbook. The 1996 version does not include this important quote; it seems to have been a victim of length-control in the context of the tendency towards ever-expanding richness of quotes and exploration of possible research paths, which has become ever more evident in the 1996 version. This English translation fails to capture the argument that the gods rule, according to the Athenians, whenever they can. Also, gods are hierarchical rulers (masters), and thus would not condemn the Athenians. See Thukydides (1964:V:105), the second sentence). Referring to an earlier version of this iconic model, Alker (1996:44) talks about Patomäki’s ‘most ambitious misspecification [which] treats the entire Melos episode as iconically modelled history’ [my emphasis]. I hope this version is a more adequate specification of the major components of the relevant causal complex. The term ‘country’ does not appear in the Finnish translation; it only speaks of Hellas; see Thukydides (1995 [1964]:I:2, the first sentence). There are hermeneutic risks of misunderstanding in applying these concepts to the ancient Greek world (even if the mode of teleological/strategic action is partially reinterpreted to fit with the ancient Greek contexts). Nevertheless, it seems that no great injustice is done to the meanings expressed in the Melian dialogue if they are reconstructed along these lines. On the other hand, this sense may well be due to my inability to imagine alternative frameworks of interpretation. This is how Athens developed in the first place, according to Thucydides (I:2). War and disturbances drove people to Attica, which, as a land of poor soil, was relatively free of violence and robbery. Immigrants could become citizens in Athens. Much later, during the Peloponnesian war, Thucydides himself had to go in exile from Athens in 424 or 423, but he never lost his revenues from the silver and gold mines in Trachia. Alcibiades fled to Sparta in 414 and immediately assumed an important position there. Although death and enslavement may have been considered as threats to those outside their poleis, as David Sylvan (1991a) maintains, many well-endowed Hellenes could in fact travel freely and often assume a new citizenship without great difficulties, even during the war (see, for example, Thucydides V:4). For Thucydides’ account of this, see (I:6–19; I:89–117). It is interesting that this part of the narrative could be easily interpreted in terms of the lateral-pressure theory. This theory is presented in Choucri and North (1975), and Ashley (1980). For a general account, largely based on Thucydides, of the development of the Athenian empire, see Meiggs (1972). Compare this to the imperialistic logic of game theory, according to which—and from the point of view of an iterated ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ in particular—there is a universal need to make commitments and threats credible and to establish a ‘hard reputation’ by realising the threats every once in awhile. This may, then, require imperialist operations such as the Vietnam War. See, for example, Axelrod 1984:154.

8

A global security community

International relations (IR) have been conventionally defined in contrast to the order of modern political community, the nation-state (see Wight 1966; cf. Ashley 1987:413). Inside, there is a peaceful social order, perhaps a good way of life and shared security, or welfare, or justice or democracy—or at least the possibility of progress towards achieving them. Outside, however, a state of nature or war prevails. As long as there is no social contract, and a resulting state (or something equivalent), the international sphere must be a struggle for power, peace and survival. Put schematically: Arg. (a)

(Pr. 1) There are sovereign nation-states that have an administrative staff and a legitimate monopoly over violence in their own territory. (Pr. 2) There is no world-state in the sense of (Pr. 1). (Conclusion) Anarchical struggle for power and peace—and the related ‘security dilemma’—prevails in the sphere of international politics.

This view has been reinforced by the three world wars—including the Cold War—that spanned the period from 1914 to 1989. International war, actual and potential, occupied a central role in the world history of the twentieth century. Yet, empirical evidence of large-scale violence and actual wars, particularly since the Second World War, does not seem to support either (Pr. 1) or the conclusion. Most political violence, and most wars, have concerned the ‘inside’ of states rather than been wars between sovereign states. International wars have in fact been relatively rare. Only about a tenth of armed conflicts have been inter-state wars (see Alker 1989:21–4; Rummel 1995; Wallensteen and Sollenberg 2000). Neither is a peaceful system associated exclusively with the confines of the more stable states. The ‘security dilemma’, as conventionally understood, seems to be a problem only in relations between some states. Many groupings of states (regions) have rather developed into a community within which the ‘security dilemma’ appears irrelevant. The democratic peace hypothesis, according to 193

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which liberal-democratic states do not fight each other, covers some but not all of these actual and possible security communities (see Adler and Barnett 1998a). Karl Deutsch and his associates (1957) introduced the notion of security community. They argued—at the height of the Cold War—that the existence of the state is not a necessary or a sufficient condition for peace, nor is the nonexistence of the state a necessary or a sufficient condition for the prevalence of the acute threat of political violence. These connections are contingent. The imposition of a common government, with its capability of violent enforcement of norms, may well decrease rather than increase the chances of peace. Besides claiming that there is no axiomatic relationship between the absence of state machinery of violence (or anything equivalent), and the condition of war, Deutsch and his associates tried to disprove Arg. (a) as an empirical hypothesis. (For an excellent summary of this innovative work, see Lijphart 1981.) A group of eight scholars—six historians and two political scientists—studied systematically the past experience of Germany, the Habsburg Empire, Italy, Norway—Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA, ‘to learn what history might tell us about the problem’ (Deutsch et al. 1957:vii).1 Recently, this work has been extended to cover the latter half of the twentieth century and, most importantly, the world outside the North Atlantic area (Adler and Barnett 1998a). In developing alternative and more processual hypotheses about the sources of peace, Deutsch et al. (1957:5) distinguished between an amalgamated and pluralist security community. Deutsch conceived both as political communities, characterised by a process of political communication and the existence of some shared rules and practices: Amalgamated community: A single governmental unit with a process of political communication, a single supreme decision-making centre, some machinery for enforcement and practices of compliance. Security community: A social group of people, which has become integrated: • By integration is meant the attainment, within a territory, of a ‘sense of community’ and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to ensure, for a long time, dependable expectations of ‘peaceful change’ among its population. • By sense of community is meant that there is a belief on the part of actors that they have to come to agreement on at least this one point: that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes of ‘peaceful change’. • By peaceful change is meant the resolution of social problems, normally by institutionalised procedures, without resort to large-scale physical force. A security community is one in which there is a real assurance that the members of that scommunity will not fight each other physically, but will settle their disputes and conflicts in some peaceful way. If the entire globe were an integrated security community, wars and large-scale political violence would have been

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eliminated. Amalgamated political communities may or may not be security communities, and vice versa. Thus, two types of security communities can be distinguished. Deutsch’s well-known 2×2 conceptual scheme, presented in Table 8.1, is based on these distinctions. To use critical realist (CR) terminology, the notion of security community was meant as a concrete Utopia, with the power to guide political practices (cf. Deutsch et al. 1957:3–4, 7, 10–11). A concrete Utopia involves: lessons drawn from past or contemporary models; counterfactual reasoning about the possible effects of an altered context; as well as thought-experiments about the consequences of the transformed practices and systems. Studies on the OSCE (Adler 1998), the Gulf Cooperation Council (Barnett and Cause 1998; cf. Patomäki 1994), South-east Asia (Acharya 1998), the Mercosur region in South America (Hurrell 1998) and the NAFTA, including Mexico (Gonzales and Haggard 1998) have thus shed new light not only on the current conditions of these regions, but also of their possible, desirable futures. The point of this chapter is twofold. First, I deploy philosophical and social theoretical arguments to generalise and develop further the notion of security community. The key point is that social contexts vary in their openness to transformation. This provides a deeper, CR explanation of the conditions for a security community. Second, I argue that the metaphor ‘complex social system as a community’ has tended to mislead scholars to look only at regions based on geographical proximity. I also make a case for studying global rules, practices and processes. This is not just to reiterate the point that actions and their contexts can be independent of particular spatial settings; neither is it only about the relative detachment of action from location or place. What I have in mind, first and foremost, is rules and institutions of international society and global governance. Do they enable peaceful changes and, thereby, a sense of global community? Or are we rather seeing steps towards amalgamation without pluralist integration? A global security community in the sense of this chapter does not presuppose that every locality, state or region on earth must first be a security community. Rather, it implies the opening up of global spaces for political communication Table 8.1 Amalgamation and integration

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and rule making. Public disagreements require conscious public airing. Politics and violence both fall within the area of conscious, purposeful conflicts. Violence, and threats of violence, tend to emerge with the rise of stubborn wills. In the public sphere of politics, identities and interests are transformable and new processes are initiated. Politics in this sense is non-violent; violence inevitably destroys the preconditions of politics (Arendt 1970:54–6). Wæver (1996:127) says the same thing when he notes that ‘for politics to emerge—not necessarily “democracy”, but the precondition for it—we need to eliminate the logic of war’. He does not speak generally of political violence but suggests, however, that ‘politics in this sense demands the exclusion of security—the exclusion of security policy as well as of insecurity’. A study of the conditions and nature of a global security community thus has far-reaching implications for the possibility of world politics.

The conditions for a security community Deutsch et al. (1957:12) suggested twelve essential background conditions for an amalgamated security community to emerge and succeed. These include: the mutual compatibility of main values; a distinctive way of life; capabilities and processes of cross-cutting communication; high geographic and social mobility; multiplicity and balance of transactions; a significant frequency of some interchange in group roles; a broadening of the political elite; and high political and administrative capabilities. They also include the willingness and ability of the majority of the politically relevant strata: 1 2 3

to accept and support common governmental institutions; to extend generalised political loyalty to them; and to operate these common institutions with adequate mutual attention and responsiveness to the messages and needs of all participating units.

These are the most essential background conditions. Deutsch et al. (1957:12–13) feel that ‘success is extremely improbable in the absence’ of the essential conditions. However, they argue that these are not sufficient, for, in any concrete context, other conditions may be—and typically are—needed as well. Moreover, ‘we cannot assume that because conditions in one century led to certain effects, even roughly parallel conditions in another century would lead to similar effects’ (Deutsch et al. 1957:11). There are no timeless necessary and sufficient conditions. Even if achieved, an amalgamated political community will remain contingent. It is vulnerable to strife, secession and civil war (Deutsch et al. 1957:29–31). Pluralistic security communities, however, are easier to establish and maintain. Of the twelve conditions ‘that appeared essential for the success of an amalgamated security community’, only the compatibility of major political values, responsiveness to one another’s messages and needs, and partial mutual predictability is required (Deutsch et al. 1957:66).

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The pluralist security community is a path-breaking idea. At once it goes beyond the mystifications of the international problematic. According to Deutsch’s theory, the choice is not between diplomacy and balance of power, on the one hand, and rule of law, supported by republican mechanisms, on the other. There are variable social conditions for peace, war and politics, which work beneath the appearances of the international problematic. However, Deutsch blurs the distinction between internal and causal relations, and vacillates between an empiricist and realist conception of causality. He is thus led to confuse the features of a security community and the conditions of its emergence and success. Consequently, the actors of geo-historical processes tend to fade into the background, and there is only little space for politics of identities, rules and practices. Deutsch discusses causal relations in terms of empirical regularities and conditions—not in terms of a productive relationship. Deutsch thinks that this enables him to avoid a difficult problem: ‘Political scientists can very well seek out and test possible regularities and probabilities without becoming entangled in the metaphysics of any absolute causality concept’ (Deutsch 1963:13). There are nonetheless hints of critical scientific realism. Deutsch argues that the accuracy of a model and its match to ‘empirical processes’ must also be tested (Deutsch 1963:11). This is a call for realistic and geo-historically (sufficiently) accurate assumptions. Moreover, Deutsch’s explicit use of models seems to indicate that he is, up to an extent, an epistemological relativist: In the end, we had to rely most of the time on nothing more scientific than the use of analogy, occasional insight, and judgement. It is true that ‘events are not affected by analogies; they are determined by the combination of circumstances’. But analysis of events is certainly affected by analogies. To throw analogies away would be prodigal, in the absence of any better source of clues. (Deutsch et al. 1957:13) However, Deutsch’s qualifications of positivism are not enough. The dream of Deutsch (and many others) of constructing a general theory of invariant political processes cannot but fail. From a CR perspective, to say that A is necessary or ‘essential’ for B, is to say that B cannot exist without A. In other words, A becomes an almost definitional feature of B. Is this logical relationship internal or external? What could, then, be the difference between a necessary characteristic and a causal condition? Indeed, for Deutsch, the background conditions and the geo-historical processes tend to merge: So long as this assembling of conditions occurs very slowly, we may treat the status of each condition and the status of all of them together at any one time as a matter of stable, seemingly unchanging background…. But as the last of

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the conditions in each sequence are added to those whose attainment was assembled previously, the tempo of the process quickens. Background and process now becomes one…. Moreover, it is a process that may become accelerated as a by-product of other processes of political and social change…. In this assembly-line process of history, and particularly in the transition between background and process, timing is important. (Deutsch 1957:70–1) The basic idea is sound: no necessary condition is able to produce historical outcomes alone. Many conditions together might suffice. The methodological question is, however, would not the essential conditions that form a sufficient condition imply logically the existence of a security community? What exactly could the interplay between political events and actions and effects of background conditions be? (cf. Deutsch et al. 1957:38). Where are the causal powers capable of producing these effects? Where is agency and action? If the theory of the emergence and existence of a security community is based on external necessary and sufficient conditions in the positivist sense, it seems very hard to get meanings, action and intentional making of history back. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (1998b:37–59) have taken a step forward by distinguishing between three tiers of mechanisms and processes leading to the development of a security community. Tier one, the precipitating conditions, is largely exogenous, such as changes in technology, the rise of new world views or external threats. They trigger states’ initial interest in co-operation and, later, community building.2 Tier two, ‘factors conducive to the development of mutual trust and collective identity’, involves both structures (conceived as power and knowledge) and processes (actors and their actions and learning). Tier three, ‘necessary conditions of dependable expectations of peaceful change’, concerns the dynamics of mutual trust and collective identity. In this scheme, actors, their knowledge/power and their actions matter. But how exactly? Adler and Barnett (1998b:46) point out that trust comes logically prior to collective identity Trust is based on past actions, and consequent expectations about the future, but may be facilitated by third-party mechanisms. Beyond this, Adler and Barnett have little to say about how power, knowledge, actors and their actions may matter.

Learning and power In a security community, problems and conflicts can be resolved or transformed by peaceful means. This implies openness to the possibility of changes. The basis is thus the development of dependable expectations of peaceful change among the relevant actors. Trust and we-feeling, the formation of collective identity, facilitate this dependable expectation. However, identity formation is not a matter of a shared way of life:

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The kind of sense of community that is relevant for integration, and therefore for our study, turned out to be rather a matter of mutual sympathy and loyalties; of ‘we-feeling’, trust, and mutual consideration; of partial identification in terms of self-images and interests; of mutually successful predictions of behaviour, and of co-operative action in accordance with it—in short, a matter of perceptual dynamic process of mutual attention, communication, perception of needs, and responsiveness in the process of decision-making. ‘Peaceful change’ could not be assured without this kind of relationship. (Deutsch et al. 1957:36) Homogenisation of ways of being and practices is not required; in fact, it can be counterproductive. Deutsch illustrates this with the deterioration of EnglishIrish relations between 1880 and 1914. As the Irish became more like English in their way of life, practices and explicit political values, they became more anti-English. To emphasise their anti-Englishness, some of their leaders then sought deliberately to foster additional symbols and values, such as the use of Gaelic language.3 Power is transformative capacity. Creating conditions for trust, fostering particular symbols and values, and forging co-operation and collective identities presupposes power—and may create new resources for subsequent actions. On the other hand, also domination and organised violence presuppose power as transformative capacity. How should we understand these different faces of power and their connections to development of insecurity and violence or a security community? In his Nerves of Government (1963), Deutsch introduces important conceptual connections. For him, the key is the inner nature of actors, which is constructed by mechanisms of learning. Will is related to power. Hardening a decision—that is, closing the decisionmaking system against any further messages by which that decision might possibly be modified—is the key to the formation of a will. To have [narrow] power means not to have to give in, and to force the environment of the other person to do so. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listen. In a sense, it is the ability to afford not to learn…. When carried to extremes, such narrow power becomes blind, and the person or organization becomes insensitive to the present, and is driven, like bullet or torpedo, wholly by its past. The extolling of power by certain conservative writers may not be unrelated to this pattern. (Deutsch 1963:111) Will in this sense implies the desire not to learn and change; and power as domination may imply the ability not to have to do so. Will is constituted by one’s understanding of the world, of one’s identity, of the right conduct of action and one’s interests and preferences. ‘Both will and power may form aspects of the pathology of social learning’ (Deutsch 1963:247). By pathological learning Deutsch means ‘a learning process, and a corresponding change in

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inner structure, that will reduce rather than increase the future learning capacity of the person or organization. The result is an overvaluation of the present expectations against all possibilities of surprise, discovery, and change’ (Deutsch 1963:248). One way to impose one’s ‘will’ upon others in a situation where there is a conflict of interpretations or interests is to enhance one’s relative power to others, by dominating others in terms of giving orders, making binding rules hierarchically and manipulating with threats of violence. This tends to result in an insecurity community with many related others (cf. Ashley 1987:428). A lot depends thus on how open actors are to learning and changes. How tolerable are they towards others and pluralism? And how responsive are they to the wills of others? Tolerance, responsiveness and learning capabilities are connected to the nature of the community—and therefore social context.

The self-transformative capability of social contexts The assumption is that there will always be disputes and conflicts between social forces. This implies that there can never be a stable ‘order’, an eternally fixed set of practices and institutions. In more metaphorical terms, Deutsch’s assumption is that it is not possible to tame or freeze history for a long time. History is open. New interests and claims will emerge and new ‘messages’ demanding changes will be sent and made public. To simplify: if, despite sustained efforts, there is no responsiveness from the side of status quo forces, a pathological learning process may occur also among the advocators of changes. This may lead to the escalation of conflict and (threats of) violence. The preparedness to use large-scale violence inside and/or outside indicates nonintegration and is a sign of an insecurity community—inside and outside. Security communities, in contrast, are characterised by the expectation that future changes are going to be peaceful. Integration generates non-preparedness to use violence. This can be explicated as follows: A1 If a social system has become integrated, no relevant actor has any reasons to prepare for the use of political violence. A2 As actors know (A1), they do not expect anybody to use political violence either to preserve the status quo or to foster changes. B1 Non-preparedness becomes a generally followed and rarely, if ever, questioned rule of action. B2 In the course of social time, (A2) becomes an automatic, routine-like and self-evident presupposition of political thought, argumentation and action. (A1) is based on the thesis that actors are causally responsible for the outcomes and that, at any point in time, actors could have done otherwise. Actors have discursively or practically known reasons for acting in a particular way; they act upon these reasons. Reasons are embedded in practices, narratives about one’s identity and position in the world, world-understandings and related interests.

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What matters, however, is not only whether actors really have any reasons for violence but also whether they expect anybody else to think that way. Hence, a security community presupposes both (A1) and (A2). If the practical experience of actors confirms in the longer run (A1) and (A2), the security community becomes sedimented in the longue durée of social time, i.e. becomes institutionalised. (B1) and (B2) describe an institutionalised security community, such as the Nordic countries from, at the latest, the early 1950s onwards. Are there any general conditions for the generation of (A1 and A2) and (B1 and B2), for the virtuous circle of the development of security community? The inner structure of actors, communication and learning are socially conditioned. For instance, the scope and diversity of the narratives (or scenarios) an actor is capable of generating is the result of past learning of shared cultural meanings and forms the basis for contemporary moral and strategic choices. However, available narratives also depend on the mechanisms of choice that select and amalgamate them. A system of domination can control or structure communication, and thereby shape not only available narratives, but also trust and loyalty between actors. Moreover, actors and actions are structured and stratified. Constitutive and regulative rules define and position an actor, who has stratified and structured reasons for his or her actions that occur in the context of unintended consequences of action. Reified and naturalised, hierarchical or heteronomic, relations of domination may sustain particular practices and related patterns of practical reasoning and rationalisation. Following Roberto Unger (see 1987a:155–7; 1987b:35–6, 277–312), I think it is possible to change not only the content but also the force of social contexts. By force of contexts I mean their relative immunity to challenge in the midst of everyday practices, the rigidity of positions of their positioned practices and the consequent rigidity of social division and hierarchy. Social contexts can be distinguished with respect to their openness to transformation. Unger refers to this openness as the ‘negative capability’, but I think self-transformative capability of contexts describes the idea better. It means the facility to challenge the context in the midst of everyday practices and the disengagement of actors’ ‘practical and passionate dealings from a pre-existing structure of roles and hierarchies’ (Unger 1987b:278–9). Since only agents in social relations can carry out contexttransformations and since this is social activity, the conditions for individual self-transcendence and collective context-transformation are, in large part, social conditions.4 On the basis of this reasoning, a general hypothesis emerges: Hypothesis (b)

The self-transformative capability of contexts determines the possibilities for a pluralist and amalgamated security community.

This is the hypothesis that the expectation of peaceful changes should be higher in the more self-transformative contexts. It is compatible with the empirical research of Adler and Barnett, Hayward Alker, Deutsch and others. For instance, many of Deutsch’s background conditions for amalgamated security communities—capabilities and processes of cross-cutting communication; high

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geographic and social mobility; multiplicity and balance of transactions; a significant frequency of some interchange in group roles; a broadening of the political elite; and responsiveness of elites—indicate high self-transformative capacity (but should not be confused with that capability per se). For pluralist security communities, the requirements are less demanding, but the basic idea is the same: contexts differ in their openness to change, and this is crucial for the emergence and maintenance of a security community. It should be noted, however, that a security community defined by the existence of the sense of community and the expectation of peaceful changes is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the absence of large-scale political violence. In principle, security as non-preparedness to use violence for long periods of time is possible, in principle, without integration in the Deutschian sense. On the other hand, mere dependable expectation of peaceful changes is not usually enough: Will the ‘minimalist’ or ‘maximalist’ view of international organization find more support in historical experience [?] That is to say, can a securitycommunity be organised on the basis of agreement on only one point—the necessity for peaceful change—or must agreement be achieved on many other things as well? (Deutsch et al. 1957:21) Other agreements may be needed. It is also true that the idea of connecting the development of social forces in time to the need for changes is characteristically modern, which may limit its geo-historical applicability. Moreover, social systems are open and hence there can be overriding mechanisms or processes at work (for instance, think about the potential effects of an economic collapse or depression in the midst of a politicisation process). The process towards increasing self-transformative capacity of social contexts may also have unintended consequences such as anomalies, pathological learning, socio-economic problems, etc. Last but not least, the advancement towards greater disentrenchment is never more than possible. It can be reversed or overridden by other factors. Thus, hypothesis (β) does not imply that relative disentrenchment of contexts will guarantee, permanently, the absence of political violence. Also, it is not possible to generate a list of the institutional arrangements or imaginative preconceptions that correspond to different degrees of disentrenchment. All efforts to build more revisable contexts must work with the contemporary contexts in or with the past or remote sequences of context making that we study or remember (Unger 1987a:157). These qualifications notwithstanding, hypothesis (β) seems to bear a great promise for future research and practical actions. It is a CR re-interpretation of the nature of mechanisms and processes underlying any security community. Hypothesis (β) can be qualified, revised or refuted by means of empirical research and theoretical argumentation.5 It can also be used in explanatory models and concrete Utopias.

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The role of emancipatory research Disentrenchment creates and enhances possibilities to transform social contexts. This gives grounds for the dependable expectation of peaceful changes. A further argument for the hypothesis (β) can be made. A security community may require agreement on a number of things, and may lead to collective identity-formation. Any sense of community can develop and harden into a will. The preparedness to use violence is typically based on the necessitarian assumption about the unchangeable essence of both oneself and the others (perhaps enemies). The selftransformative capability of contexts has epistemic implications: it is not compatible with illusions and mystifications about, or reifications and naturalisations of, social realities. Conversely, the de-naturalisation of understandings can contribute to the openness and responsiveness of the community. Different strands of my argument are collected together in Figure 8.1. First, there is the definition of a security community. A security community consists of geo-historical social systems in which actors do not prepare for the use of political violence against each other. Mere separate indifference is not enough for a community. There must be some interdependence of elements of the systems. Integration generates and helps to sustain a security community. Integration consists of sense of community and expectation of peaceful changes. Interdependence as such does not imply integration. Increasing interdependence—or globalisation—can in fact reinforce existing incompatibilities or induce the creation of new ones, particularly if connected to growing disparities in the distribution of resources and wealth (Eberwein 1995:351–52). Also, emancipatory research is situated in Figure 8.1. Various unjustified psychological rationalisations and ideological mystifications of social structure support the (re)production of those structures (Bhaskar 1986:194). Realist explanations tend to work for enhancing the self-transformative capability of contexts by criticising untrue naturalisations, reifications and fetishisations of social being and related mystifications of knowledge, by making arguments for peaceful transformations, and by creating mechanisms of reflective learning. At a deep level, criticisms may also concern, say, the alienation and atomism characteristic of capitalism—and the essentially related international problematic. Any relevant relations and practices can be revised. More straightforwardly, social scientific research can also propose concrete Utopias that either presuppose or concern building or maintaining a security community.

A global security community Adler (1997) argues that a security community does not have to be tied to a geographical region. There can be also imagined security communities as ‘cognitive regions’. Thus, ‘security communities might emerge between noncontiguous states’ (Adler and Barnett 1998b:33). For instance, Australia or Israel can be part of the Western security community This point is important, but

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Figure 8.1 Generation of a security community

does not go far enough. Adler (1997:252) himself maintains that multilateral regimes and economic arrangements have created a non-territorial functional space; that state authority in the realms of security, economic welfare, ecology and human rights has been increasingly internationalised; and that a primitive global civil society has emerged. Rules, relations of authority and systems of domination do not have to follow the principle of territoriality. John Ruggie (1998:192–7) describes the non-territorial economic ‘region’ of the world vividly. He argues that states continue to engage with external economic relations with each other. The terms of these engagements are largely set in systems of multilateral governance. In the nonterritorial global economic region, however, distinctions between internal and external once again are exceedingly problematic, and any given state is but one constraint in corporate strategic calculations. This is the world in which IBM is Japan’s largest computer exporter, and Sony is the largest exporter of television sets from the United States. It is the world in which Brothers Industries, a Japanese concern assembling typewriters in Bartlett, Tennessee, brings an antidumping case before the US International Trade Commission against Smith Corona, an American firm that imports typewriters into the United States from its offshore facilities in Singapore and Indonesia. It is the world in which even the US Pentagon is baffled by the problem of how to maintain the national identity of ‘its’ defense-industrial base. (Ruggie 1998:196)

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The non-territorial economic ‘region’ of the world is rule-governed. Some fundamental rules, such as private property rights, originate in the seventeenthcentury expansion of the capitalist world economy. Others are sedimented in various historical layers. The Bretton Woods system, which was created during the Second World War, regulated economic activities in detail and also created new organisations, the IMF, the World Bank and the GATT In the early 2000s, the economic policies of many dozens of countries, particularly in the southern hemisphere, are directly dictated by the IMF and the World Bank. The GATT has been turned into the WTO, which has, despite widespread resistance and the failure of Seattle, an ever-increasing mandate to regulate the terms of any economic activities anywhere. The global financial markets re-emerged in the 1970s and have consequently given rise to new heteronomic relations of domination, which have been rendered also into the service of reviving the hegemony of the USA. The global financial markets are also governed multilaterally, in part by the IMF, but to a large extent by the Bank for International Settlements, BIS (see, for example, Patomäki 2000b; 2001b: Chapter 3). My (hypo)thesis is that this emergent sphere determines many parts of various contemporary contexts of action across the globe. Thus arises the problem of global security community. The conditions for collective context-transformation are, perhaps increasingly, not only regional but also global. We should expect this to have effects on the possibility of the emergence and maintenance of security communities in various parts of the world. Even more far-reachingly, we can also talk about the possibility of a global security community. To what extent do the emergent global rules and relations have self-transformative capacity? In the opinion of relevant actors, is there a firm belief in the existence of a global community? How large preparations are made for war against (potentially) deviant or context-challenging groups or states within the global community or by them?

Why the Kantian world order is not a security community To conclude this chapter, I shall briefly explain why the Kantian world order— his solution to the international problematic—may not be a security community; how Immanuel Kant was led to a dilemma he could not resolve; and how the notion of global security community can help to overcome this problematic. For Kant, all public rights are transcendental, i.e. universally valid. He claims that the civil state is based a priori on the following principles (Kant 1983 [1793]:72): 1 2 3

The freedom of every member of society as a human being (every person may seek happiness in the way that seems best to him or her). The equality of each member with every other as a subject (everyone in a nation who is subject to laws is a subject to the right of coercion). The independence of every member of the commonwealth as a citizen

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(= men who own property and are their own masters, not women, wage-labourers or children); in the process of law-making, all citizens have one vote. Kant’s federation of free nations must be partially different from a government of a nation, because persons and nations also differ from each other. However, in respect of (1) there is no difference. As human beings are free to seek their own way to happiness within the state, so nations are free within the world federation in a sense analogical to (1). In respect of (2), Kant was hesitant. He was not sure whether everyone in a world federation should be subject to coercion should they violate the universal cosmopolitan norms, including republicanism, openness to free trade and the implicit assumption of globally valid private-property rights. Moreover, it seems to me that the Kantian theory gives rise to a prima-facie transcendental duty to make all nations similar (republican, based on free trade), and, perhaps, but only ambiguously, also by means of enforcement. The basic difference lies, however, in (3). In the world federation there is no—and, so Kant assumed, should be no—real law-making activities. Is this world order, envisaged by Kant, a security community? Within the states, there are republican institutions, which make it possible to create and transform laws by the citizens. Within the states there is also tolerance of difference and pluralism, but only in the private sphere of persons. This means limited selftransformative capacity6 For these reasons, the partially Kantian liberal-democratic countries of the twentieth century may be argued to have, relatively speaking, more disentrenched frameworks of social and political institutions and practices than the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European monarchies. Internationally, however, the Kantian model seems fixed. Once the world order has been created, no possibility of further changes is envisaged. Although a high degree of interdependence and globally valid property rights are presupposed, the only explicit norm is: ‘You shall not make war against another free nation.’ In contrast to a security community, in the Kantian world order there is no way to change anything. A peaceful status quo is the norm, whatever this implies at the level of concrete practices. All political arguments presuppose a number of contextual features, although these are usually left unexplicated. This is also true of the contemporary Kantian arguments. 1

There is the formal separation between private (including property) and public, which is equated with a particular kind of society/state relationship. Private capitalist economy is privileged; the public state is controlled and checked by regular elections and the system of ‘checks and balances’. 2 The model assumes free trade, interdependence and, in that sense, a globalising laissez faire economy. 3 The model includes implicitly Western, and particularly US, hegemony and dominance of global governance. The USA, the EU and Japanese state managers and ‘private’ actors also control global investment decisions and flows. The UN Security Council—dominated by the USA—is responsible for identifying the violators of the norms that define one as ‘a peace-loving nation’.

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4

The US army, supported by other Western states, enforces these norms, with or without the UN Security Council (see Patomäki 1999a; 2001c). At a thinly hidden level, there also is the US power projection, which consists of extended deterrence, on the one hand, and the ‘idealist’ project of spreading the US conception of genuine identity and right political conduct, on the other (Klein 1988; see also 1990).

Even Kant, however, who is often taken to have advocated collective security, was not arguing for a world government. Kant was suspicious of the idea of a world government. In his view, a world government could be easily turned into a tyranny: a federative state of nations whose only purpose is to prevent war is the only state of right compatible with their freedom…. The idea of international right presupposes the existence of many separate, independent, adjoining nations; and although such a situation is in itself a state of war (assuming that a federative union among them does not prevent the outbreak of hostilities), yet this situation is rationally preferable to their being overrun by a superior power that melds them into a universal monarchy. For laws invariably lose their impact with the expansion of their domain of governance, and after it has uprooted the soul of good a soulless despotism finally degenerates into anarchy. Nonetheless, the desire of every nation (or its ruler) is to establish an enduring peace, hoping, if possible, to dominate the entire world. (Kant 1983 [1795]:138 and 124–5) For Kant, anything resembling world government is likely to lead to tyranny. Because the pre-contract ‘state of war’ is not acceptable either, Kant attempted to construct a third way. For him, the solution was a very loose federation of free nations, whose peace-proneness is based on the shared understanding of the human and economic costs of increasingly destructive war; on the economic interdependence of nations; on the inherent peacefulness of republican states; and on the rule of law. Kant’s dilemma was: if these (in themselves already homogenising) conditions are enough for guaranteeing peace, why is there a need for a league of peace in the first place? If these conditions are not sufficient for peace, is there then not a need for a world government exercising a monopoly on the control of the means of violence? However, if there is such a world government, is there not a danger of it being just an expression of a desire of a particular nation (or its rulers) to dominate the entire world? In that case, is it not possible that the end result of global integration may be a form of tyranny that may also ‘finally degenerate into anarchy’? To a limited extent, Kant was also asking some right questions—but could not answer them. The notion of a global security community provides a fresh and, it seems, more adequate perspective on contemporary developments. If the self-transformative capacity of contexts is the key, then the focus should be on attempts, both theoretical and practical, to challenge and revise global contexts

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of actions. The crucial issue is whether these challenges and revisions could lead—how?—to increased learning and self-transformative capacity. This is a question, it seems to me, that can be posed only after the international problematic. A new background theory gives rise to a characteristic set of problems and also provides some plausible answers to them.

Conclusion Like CR, Deutsch’s notion of security community presupposes that history is open. Otherwise there would be no point in trying to disentrench social contexts instead of entrenching the arrangements of the illusory end of history. Even a non-innovating humanity would be constantly heterogeneous in its identities, practices and understandings of proper political conduct. At some point these differences may well give rise to efforts to change the current contexts of action. Moreover, past struggles can be re-opened, perhaps in new contexts that may be more favourable to the previously suppressed possibilities; new combinations of the already existing elements of social contexts can be invented and innovated; and also genuinely novel elements may be innovated and fed into the processes of political struggles. These political possibilities are always open to humanity. The possibility of a global security community depend on how open the relevant social contexts are to social transformations. However, any attempt to challenge and revise global contexts of actions must be studied concretely, to assess the relative impact of various causal mechanisms and powers efficacious in open systems. Any real tendency can be overridden by other causally efficacious tendencies. A security community can also be simply presupposed by an explanatory model or a concrete Utopia. The relevant issues may have little if anything to do with security per se. Public politics may be about anything; any aspect of context can be politicised, although not all of them simultaneously (agreements are always necessary). It is a sign of an institutionalised security community that security does not persist as a major issue. Wæver (1998:69) calls this ‘desecuritisation’, the progressive marginalisation of mutual security concerns in favour of other issues. De-securitisation opens up the possibility of world politics. In the public sphere of politics, identities and interests are transformable and new processes can be initiated. If this becomes a widely accepted principle of world politics, humanity has succeeded to establish a global security community.

Notes 1

Deutsch et al. (1957:16) explain the selection of their cases as follows:‘In selecting a limited number of cases for intensive investigation, we concentrated on the area of Western European and North Atlantic civilization. There are obviously other cases that we should have liked to include. Considerations of time, resources, availability

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2 3

4 5

6

of data, or apparent comparability with contemporary problems, excluded some of the earliest cases as well as those located in Asia, native Africa (south of the Sahara), and most of Eastern Europe.’ They go on to state ‘this collection of cases…supplies reasonably good samples of most of the important cultural traditions and institutional patterns of Western Europe and the North Atlantic area’. Adler and Barnett, however, seem to focus on the co-operation and community building between states, whereas Deutsch studied social formations much more generally. I follow Deutsch in this regard. Deutsch et al. (1957:42) in fact point out that a particular political event—the failure of the Parliament to respond quickly and adequately to the disastrous Irish famine of 1846—led to the rise of movements that tried to distance Ireland from England. More generally, the shared way of life and values notwithstanding, nationalism gave an increasingly legitimate ideology for the Irish to oppose the asymmetric and often exploitative relationship with London. Gould (1978: particularly 109–10) argues that this kind of view of social action can be attributed to the Marx of Gründrisse. I will have to leave aside the methodological problems of studying hypothesis (β) by empirical means. Suffice it to say that like any qualitative research on open systems, it has to rely on the systematic use of analogy, occasional insight, available evidence and judgement. The rules and practices of different contexts have to be judged in terms of their openness to challenge and transformation, and then compared systematically (even if a closed list is not possible, some relevant comparisons are). Since it is a matter of interpreting geo-historical evidence in rather broad strokes, particular care has to be taken about the coding procedures and practices (see the Alker chapter for some details). In addition to all the fixed background assumptions and implicit exclusions, there is also the Foucauldian argument that, despite the rights of individuals, there may be little real freedom and pluralism in Kantian liberalism. Rather, discourses of normalcy and order, and the related practices, have tried, despite resistance, to make life uniform (‘normal’) also in the private sphere. Thus, everyone ‘has his own Gulag’, independently of his or her time-space location. Against this, Walzer’s point is partially apt: ‘[Foucault’s] account of the carceral archipelago contains no hint of how or why our own society stops short of Gulag. For such an account would require what Foucault always resists: some positive evaluation of the liberal state’ (Walzer 1986:62). However, some positive evaluation of the liberal state does not imply that Foucault is entirely wrong. The state is indeed non-relevant to whole series of power relations, as Foucault correctly asserted—yet failed to grasp the global aspects of this claim.

9

From security to emancipatory world politics Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’

This final chapter is a call for making the Nordic model a basis for emancipatory, regional and global political action. My case is only superficially connected with recent attempts by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton—with the assistance of Anthony Giddens (1998)—to resuscitate the Third Way.1 Rather, the argument of this chapter is based on a causal model, which explains the decline of the Nordic model. Moreover, I also make a case for re-defining many of the ideals of Norden in the context of the legitimation problems—if not crisis—of the socalled Washington consensus. At the outset, the question is: Are the principles of the Swedish model2 sustainable in a changing world that tries to re-formulate and re-define the public sphere and rules for economic policy in accordance with orthodox marketmonetarist postulates in macro-economics (fiscal and monetary policy) and microeconomics (e.g. trade, labour market and industrial policy)?’ However, the issue of the future of the Nordic model also has a significance that goes far beyond the immediate concerns of economic policies of states. Norden has also been a model of an enlightened and anti-militaristic society that follows the principles of distributive justice and which was supposed to be morally superior to two alternative models of modernisation: the USA and the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it thus appears that the question of whether there is a future for the Nordic model also means ‘Is there any socially oriented, democratic alternative to the Washington consensus-led neo-liberalist globalisation?’ My answer is affirmative. It is of course true that, due to fundamental contextual changes, attempts to preserve the Nordic model within the confines of a nation-state have been in difficulties for a quarter of a century. However, there are many features in these models and related moral and political ideals that also carry weight in the globalising world at the dawn of the century. In light of this, I discuss democratisation, solidarity, de-commodification and universalistic social policy as moral ideals; and the activist politics of neutrality that gave rise to globalist attempts at building a more just and peaceful world. At the threshold of a new century, these are potential elements in the formation of new identities and in telling new stories and creating new myths for counterhegemonic purposes. 210

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 211

Explaining the decline of the Nordic model There are at least two main ways of understanding the Nordic model in terms of its content and place in world history. This contextual specification also determines the identification of the main features of the Nordic model. First, Norden can be seen as a political ideal and model of sovereignty-based active internationalism in the Cold War context. With the sudden fading away of the Cold War, there were constitutive reasons and real tendencies for the decline of this model (Wæver 1992). Second, it can just as easily be seen as a model of organising production and exchange relations and income distribution within the Bretton Woods system of embedded liberalism. In this interpretation, the Nordic model and the social forces driving it were vulnerable to the processes of gradual disembodiment of ‘embedded liberalism’ that started to make a qualitative difference at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s (see Ruggie 1982, 1995). In this reading, the active internationalism of Norden stemmed more from the shared societal values that were translated into foreign-policy orientation than from the Cold War context.

Norden in the context of the Cold War and European integration I shall start with the Cold War contextualisation, following Ole Wæver’s (1992) interpretation of Norden’s fate after the end of the Cold War. Wæver claims that in the early 1990s there emerged a ‘Nordic nostalgia’, a longing for the certainties of, and Nordic privileges in, the Cold War world. Originally, as a political ideal in the Cold War context, the Nordic model was defined as representing the Third Way: neither US capitalist liberalism, nor Soviet-style state socialism, but social democracy. In this sense, the Nordic identity was dependent on the competition between capitalism and communism. Moreover, the neutrality of Sweden—and also that of Finland—stemmed from the Cold War struggle over models of organising society, and from the related military competition (even if sometimes the Cold War seemed to have assumed for its participants a form of an eternal and politically neutral Waltzian system of bipolar power-balancing). The presumed superiority of the rational, enlightened and (mostly) antimilitaristic Nordic society was in part based on the fact that in Norden the military tensions were much lower than in Central Europe. This was despite Norway and Denmark being members of NATO and Finland having a Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance (signed in 1948) with the Soviet Union. Further, Norden was a passport-free zone of common labour markets and shared social security systems. For Wæver, however (1992:84–5), this regime was partially independent of the Nordics, and only partially stemmed from ‘rather grandiose schemes and declarations about issues somewhat intangibly related to the Nordic countries themselves’. It is true that there were also Cold War-related military-strategic reasons for creating a pluralist security community and for deepening co-operation among

212 Visions of world politics Table 9.1 The Cold War interpretation of Norden

the Nordic countries.3 Nonetheless, even in the Cold War context, it was the social democratic Sweden that led Norden, by showing an example of social reforms and by exercising ethico-political leadership in building the idea of actively internationalist Norden. This ideal was widely accepted for decades, until the end of the 1980s. Even in this security-oriented interpretation, Norden was not only about security, but also incorporated a particular socio-economic system and a particular theory of modernisation. The main features of this Norden, as seen through the lens of the Cold War competition, are summarised in the first row of Table 9.1. The second row sets forth Waever’s account of how the end of the Cold War undermined the identity and idea of Norden. Wæver claims that, contrary to what many people might have expected, the Nordic countries reacted to the end of the Cold War with scepticism, frustration and attempts to limit the impact of change (Wæver 1992:77). Why? According to Wæver, it is a matter of nostalgia both for a secure identity and for the Golden Age of Social Democratic vision of world historical progress and the building of a just society and peaceful world. For Wæver, the way that the vision of Norden as an alternative has functioned was visible, for instance, in all the EC debates in all the Nordic countries, where the ‘Nordic card has regularly been played by opponents of EC membership’ (Wæver 1992:94). Nordic values have been contrasted with the European market; Nordic co-operation has been put forward as an alternative to European integration.

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Problems with Wæver’s account There is reason to believe, however, that this Cold War and security-centred model of Norden and its prospects is at least partially inaccurate and inadequate. Consider the explanations for changes from the Cold War Norden to the post-Cold War Norden. The logic in each explanation is similar and always inadequate. The argument about the impossibility of the Third Way after the end of the Cold War is conceptual only—and incorrect as such. It seems to be based on the idea that there are only relational differences, and that the world is about language only (cf. Wæver 1992:79, 86): The old system had two competing points—the planned economy and capitalism—so that any distance naturally led to the privilege of being third. The new system has one dominant centre—the EC—and all distance from this becomes simply peripheralism. (Wæver 1992:86) However, even in its own terms, this argument is questionable. Why should the third be automatically ‘privileged’ (whatever that means)? Many critical cultural theorists would argue on the contrary that there is little room for the third in the binary logic of Western—and many other cultures’—metaphysics. (About the violent implications of strict either/or thinking, see, for example, Beardsworth 1996:54–97; Galtung 1990). During the Manichean struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union, there certainly was very little room for any third possibilities in many parts of the world. Also, the essentialist argument about the EC as the dominant centre has only little grounding, at least at logical and conceptual levels. It presupposes the pseudo-Hegelian master—slave argument, which says that if there is a master, all attempts by the slaves to keep a distance are simply ‘peripheralism’. Hence, the only worthwhile strategy for the slaves is to try to gain recognition from their master and participate in his practices. This reading finds support in claims, for example, that the previously anti-militarist Nordic countries should now start to ‘carry power-political responsibility’ (Wæver 1992:82). Obviously, there could be more emancipatory readings of the master-slave dialectics. However, the logic of the argument itself is problematic. Suppose we talked not of the Third Way but instead about the Nordic model. Would we not still be making reference to roughly the same real entity X (i.e. a particular social complex, consisting of systematically organised relational, institutionalised practices, and to the associated values of democracy, solidarity and egalitarianism)? The question is: Why is it that this X had to change? Why is it that X could not compete with the US model of modernisation without any problems even after the collapse of the Soviet Union? There is no compelling logical, conceptual reason why it could not have done so. Only if we can demonstrate, by way of systematic empirical research, that this fallacious way of thinking was in fact

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prevalent in Norden after 1989, would it be possible to claim that this was a cause of the decline of the Nordic model. Wæver does not provide any systematic empirical evidence. However, at the level of constitution of discursive practices, there is also the possibility that Waever’s article has, after 1992, reinforced the acceptance of this fallacious inference and thereby contributed to the relative decline of Nordic values, particularly among foreign-policy elites in these countries. Consider, next, the explanation of change in the socio-economic system. Besides simple descriptions of changes in economic policies in Sweden in particular, the main explanation seems to be that the social democratic welfare state is in an identity crisis because it is essentially connected to the notions of modernisation and rationalisation, which, in these post-modern days, are in crisis (Wæver 1992:85). However, even if we accepted this argument, and I think there is something to it (cf. Leonard 1997), it would be far from obvious why the US welfare system or neo-liberalism would be less in crisis. Even the EU is typically represented as an exemplar of modernisation, although its complexity and divergent nature has also given rise to more post-modernist interpretations (cf. Ruggie 1993). Ruggie and others notwithstanding, the modernity of social democracy cannot be a cause for the crisis of the social democratic form of welfare state as contrasted to the ‘key ideas’ of standard, modern liberalism, namely ‘political freedom rights, the free market and integration’, as Wæver claims. Notably, Wæver only mentions the main characteristics of the social democratic form of the welfare state in a footnote (Wæver 1992:85, n. 13). Finally, there is a further argument: Norden was not only defined as the Third Way between capitalism and communism, but also in contrast to Europe. That is, particularly in security political terms, it was supposed—by whom?, with what effects?—to be better than Europe. After the end of the Cold War, the key positive dynamics, in terms of movement towards peacefulness, were taking place in Europe, and this supposedly turned the whole setting upside down. It was Europe that proved to be somehow better than Norden. However, the problem in this argument is the ambiguity in the terms ‘better’ and ‘Europe’. To be a causal argument (that could, possibly, constitute a partial explanation of the change of the Norden), Wæver’s point has to be seen as a claim about the prevalent political rhetoric that was also efficacious in practice and action. Yet, Waever’s point seems to be at least as much, if not more, a normative argument that, in contrast to Norden, Europe after the end of the Cold War is now morally and/or politically better. Simultaneously, the term Europe is used in different senses in this argument. Sometimes it is the ‘common European home’ of Mikhail Gorbachev (1989 as the key dynamics), and sometimes it is the Europe of the EU (1992 as the key dynamics). However, exactly in what sense could it be argued that Europe, in either of these two senses, suddenly became more peaceful than Norden? There is no justification for this presumption, or for the significance of the comparison itself. Yet, we do recall the argument that the reluctant Nordics should now partake in the new master’s power political practices.

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 215

Towards an alternative explanation Above I shed a shadow of suspicion over the Cold War and European integrationoriented interpretation of the Nordic model. However, false beliefs can be causally efficacious. The Cold War and security-centred model of Norden together might explain the decline of Norden to the extent that the arguments discussed above were de facto playing a role among the relevant political actors by constituting their actions and practices. It is the task of further research to determine the extent to which this was significant in the late 1980s and 1990s. Even if it were true to a significant degree, this fact would simply become the next object or tendency to be explained in depth. There are reasons to believe that the causal processes bringing about difficulties for Norden—and the Swedish model in particular—were largely unrelated to the Cold War. In Sweden there had been adjustments to the Nordic model for a decade before Gorbachev. The economic problems of Sweden started as early as the 1970s, with some of them having their origins in the 1960s. In different phases, they continued over the Second Cold War of the early 1980s and became more severe again after 1989. The responses to these crises further changed the context of political action and favoured particular solutions at a later stage. They had already brought about a re-definition of the Third Way by the early 1980s. The Third Way began to mean, increasingly, a compromise between pure social democracy and neo-liberalism, rather than the Third Way between capitalism and communism (Ryner 1994a:389 and 423, n. 2). The problems and related re-definitions stemmed mostly from the internal— external dynamics of the Swedish political economy, entangled in the globalisation of social relations. Since the early 1970s, this globalisation has, in turn, taken place in the context of the partial disruption and transformation of the Bretton Woods system. However, to make the case for a political-economy explanation of the decline of the Swedish model, we first need an adequate identification of its major features.

Identifying Norden in the global political-economy context Norden is most frequently associated with the universalist welfare state. Indeed, the already classic power mobilisation thesis of Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990) makes Sweden a representative of the institutional re-distributive model of social policy, which operates externally to market logic. This model presupposes poverty to be a permanent condition of industrial societies if not counteracted by decommodified social institutions. For Esping-Andersen (1990:44), decommodification is emancipation from the dependency of capitalist labour markets—and thereby also from employers’ control—by means of universalist, high-level social benefits. Also, education, Healthcare and insurances were organised collectively and outside markets, that is, in a de-commodified way.

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Finally, this social democratic model was coupled with a full employment policy. However, there was more to the Swedish model than this. The Nordic model also implied a certain way of organising production and exchange relations, and presupposed a particular world order. Table 9.2 summarises the major features of this model, again also by contrasting two eras (here I follow closely Ryner 1994b; 1997; but see also Weiss 1998:86–100; and in particular the more detailed historical account by Pontusson 1992:37–123). The Rehn-Meidner programme, named after its key proponents Gøsta Rehn and Rudolf Meidner, emerged with the Saltsjöbaden capital-labour Accord of 1938 and was developed in the 1940s and 1950s. This model advocated solidaristic wage policy but also encouraged firms to make technological innovations, by squeezing low-productivity firms and industries. It also helped adjustments to the technological dynamism of the capitalist world economy by Table 9.2 A political-economy interpretation of the Swedish model

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 217

means of an active labour market policy: unemployed were re-trained and moved to new employment by the state. The Social Democratic Party (SAP) rose to power in 1932 by winning parliamentary elections. It remained in office—either alone or by forming coalition governments—uninterruptedly for forty-four years, until 1976. SAP provided ethico-political leadership in developing and consolidating the institutional framework. The Saltsjöbaden Accord formed the basis for centralised, corporatist wage negotiations between the Swedish Union Federation (LO) and the Swedish Employers’ Association (SAF). However, the Accord also guaranteed absolute autonomy for the capitalist firms and their managers in deciding upon finance and investments, intra-firm relations and the allocation of returns and profits. Since the Accord, this capitalist laissez faire aspect of Swedish social democracy remained unchallenged until the late 1960s. The Swedish model also presupposed a particular world order. The era of Pax Americana between 1945 and 1973 was the ‘Golden Age’ of the Swedish model—and the original Bretton Woods system of embedded liberalism (Ruggie 1982). The essence of the embedded liberalism compromise of the original Bretton Woods system was to devise a framework that would safeguard and even aid the quest for domestic stability and legitimisation, ‘without, at the same time, triggering the mutually destructive external consequences that had plagued the inter-war period’ (Ruggie 1982:393). Moreover, the Bretton Woods system also represented a partial victory of productivism over financial capital: the Bretton Woods systems imposed significant constraints on the freedom of movement of financial capital including fixed exchange rates and capital controls (Gill 1997a:7). In the embedded liberalism compromise, it was up to nation-states to design their own variations of domestic stability and legitimation in terms of liberal democracy and the welfare state, but Pax Americana set definite limits to possible variations. Although its foundations were laid before the Second World War, the Swedish model was, in fact, a possible variation. It was also more pluralistic than it might have appeared at the outset. Particularly the Cold War-centred interpretation of the Third Way would see Norden as competing with the USA and the Soviet Union as the symbol of modernity and enlightenment, and, in its own self-understanding, as a model of a ‘more developed society’. Yet, the Swedish model allowed internally for competing understandings of its meaning. It was seen either as a modernisation of capitalism—rendering class struggle and ideology irrelevant (capitalists, industrialists)—or it was seen as a middle way of extreme tendencies (mainstream social democracy). It was also envisaged as a stage on the way to democratic socialism (radical social democracy, the New Left). Many industrialists and most mainstream social democrats would argue that Sweden was able to establish a relatively egalitarian society by means of an exceptionally generous and comprehensive welfare state. In contrast, the more radical social democracy and the New Left would emphasise that social democracy had neither changed the underlying capitalist economic structure nor gained control over investments (Rothstein 1996:4–5).

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Outline of a political economy explanation By the 1960s, the Swedish model had become the basis of the identity of Norden. However, despite its long-lasting success in fulfilling its own promises, it started to come under pressure from a number of directions. The turning point for the Swedish model came in 1976. The Social Democrats had to step down from the Government for the first time in forty-four years, giving way to the Centre Party and Conservatives. That, in turn, took place six years after the US declaration that the dollar was no longer convertible to gold, and two to three years after the oil crisis, in the context of a deep Swedish economic depression. Figure 9.1 illustrates how, in open systems, both internal and external conditions tend to change, and how the basis of an institutional framework may erode. This also happened to the Swedish model, despite its sustainability and achievements between 1938 and 1976. Figure 9.1 summarises the underlying socio-economic dynamics in terms of changes in occupational structure and related class identity, as well as in the identity, interests and options of private capital. These processes co-explain many of the difficulties that emerged by the 1970s, and also some of the first transformations of the Swedish model. The first signs of trouble emerged in the 1960s: expansionary macroeconomic policies triggered inflation, and in-built tendencies for technological dynamism were compromised for political reasons. Increasing alienation between the trade union leaders and the rank and file led to wildcat strikes, quickly followed by a leftist revolt against the decision-making monopoly of capitalist owners and managers over investments and workplace practices. Backed up by the global New Left movement, the labour movement in Sweden introduced the ideas of active industrial policy, industrial democracy and collective share ownership, and thereby it also challenged the fundamentals of the Saltsjöbaden Accord (see Pontusson 1992). Continuous wage-push inflation became a recurrent problem in the Swedish economy Productivity growth declined dramatically in the 1970s, particularly after 1973.4 Indeed, the global economic crisis of Fordism of the 1970s hit Sweden more severely than any other OECD country. Stagflation, declining productivity growth after decades of high productivity growth, led to Sweden accumulating substantial budget and payment deficits and a foreign debt during the period 1976–82 (Ryner 1994a:387–92). Simultaneously, a new world order began to emerge. The new world was dominated by globalisation and trends towards both more orthodox economic liberalism and the dominance of financial capital over production. In these circumstances, organised business and the bourgeois parties of Sweden began a massive mobilisation against industrial democracy and, more concretely, against the wage-earner funds. Consequently, the labour movement retreated from the more radical features of the plans to co-control and democratise investments. Despite these political developments—a turn to right favourable to capital—Swedish firms began an investment boom abroad in the 1980s, exploiting the new exit options. The new Social Democratic government, elected in 1982, also tried to use

Figure 9.1 Structuration of the conditions of the decline of the Swedish model 1976–89, in the context of stagflation and indebtment

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financial liberalisation as a means to find a new discipline. It increased the constraint of global capital markets on Sweden’s balance of payments and interest rate (Ryner 1994a:392), and eventually decided to de-regulate financial markets. Figure 9.1 also shows how the welfare state was, ultimately, fairly ambiguous in its capacity to generate power mobilisation. Assuming consumerist culture, the improvements in living and working conditions suggested that there were less reasons for social democratic or leftist struggles. Outside the public sector, the labour market changed and fragmented. In sum, the LO’s constituency declined between 1960 and 1988 from 75 to 58 per cent of organised labour. On the other hand, changes in the composition and positioning of the blue-collar wage labour and the middle class, as well as the new exit options for firms, created new conditions for the mobilisation of social forces behind the interests and visions of the trans-nationalising capital. Between workers and employers in sectors exposed to world markets, there in fact emerged a shared concern with containing the upward pressure on domestic costs generated by large public sectors (Clayton and Pontusson 1998:97). In the context generated by these transformations, the new Third Way based on introducing new forms of market discipline soon appeared to be contradictory by further undermining the legitimisation principles and industrial relations presupposed by social democracy. In the 1980s, the employers’ federation SAF—at that time already representing mainly the ideas and interests of trans-nationalised firms—abandoned all major elements of the traditional Swedish capital-labour accord. SAF started to campaign for welfare cutbacks, privatisation, reduced taxes and employers’ contributions and EC membership. It is therefore not surprising that the Social Democratic economic policy of 1982–91, which the SAP government called the Third Way, was represented as an alternative to both the neo-liberal doctrines of the newly elected regimes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, on the one hand, and to traditional Keynesian policy, on the other hand. Already in 1983, the Swedish government explicitly defined their policy as departing from the Rehn—Meidner model, although the government also claimed that it was ‘adapting the Rehn-Meidner model to new times’. This policy led to a partial recovery in the 1980s, followed by a new series of major economic troubles that began in 1989–90. In the 1980s, and even more so in the 1990s, the initiatives came from the SAF and neo-liberal conservatives. SAF was insisting on decentralisation of wage negotiations, and had found support from governmental committees of economists (see, for example, Lindbeck et al. 1994). Their SAF position had also changed because the structural power of capital was greatly enhanced owing to the trans-nationalisation of production and finance (cf. Gill and Law 1989:479 ff.). Also, economic policies appeared to be more strongly conditioned by the rapid reactions of short-term financial capital (cf. Hayat 1999). In this era, which had already started to emerge in the late 1960s, embedded liberalism compromise became dis-embedded, i.e. more akin to or orthodox economic liberalism, driven and sustained by the power of the re-emerging global financial markets (see Harmes 1998; Patomäki 2001b: Chapter 3).

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Globalising and thoroughly liberalised financial markets began to discipline the Swedish government and economic actors particularly thoroughly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the context of the banking crisis of 1990–1, which was co-caused by the liberalisation of financial markets, and experienced at least as severely by Finland and Norway, Sweden decided to apply for EC membership in October 1990, thus causing a lot of alarm and irritation in the other Nordic countries, not least in Finland. The membership that was put into effect in 1995 implied that Sweden accepted the Maastricht Treaty in its entirety, including the Economic and Monetary Union and its convergence criteria and tendencies towards monetarist economic policies. It seemed that Sweden was again leading Norden—with the partial exception of Denmark, which had already joined the EU in 1973—but this time away from the Nordic model. Finland and Norway liberalised their capital movements and financial markets more or less simultaneously with Sweden in the 1980s. As far as European integration was concerned, Finland followed Sweden by applying for EU membership in 1992 and having its application accepted in a referendum in 1994. The leadership in Norway attempted to follow suit, but was defeated in the 1994 referendum on membership by a close majority. These changes were brought about by interplay between (interconnected) internal and external forces, examples and options. Obviously, the weakness of this explanation is that it tends to silence the concrete history and choices of many actors. Things could have been otherwise, and choices do matter. Moreover, despite the economic problems, social democratic corporatism was still doing relatively well in the 1980s (Katzenstein 1985). Also in the 1990s, there remained many arguably sustainable responses to globalisation, and some of them were more in accordance with egalitarian and democratic values and highly capable democratic states than others. The fact that the particular features of the Swedish model—and those of the other, lately more successful variations of the Nordic model—have been under pressure does not mean that there have been, are or will be no national alternatives (see Garrett 1998; Weiss 1998; cf. also the more radically democratic argument of Unger 1998). My argument is not that there have been or are no alternatives, but that many of the conditions for the sustainability and, possibly, partial demise of the Nordic model have been beyond the reach of a territorial nation-state. Because of the political choices made, and because of the deepening of the multidimensional and multi-layered process of globalisation, the choices may be more limited now than they were in the 1970s, 1980s and even in the early 1990s. To repeat, globalisation—including the previous choices of nation-states to privatise and liberalise areas of the economy that were previously controlled by the state—has obviously meant new exit options for private, productive capital and new room for manoeuvre for financial capital. However, globalisation has also transformed important aspects of culture (Tomlinson 1999); technologically mediated public and expert discourses (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1999; Herman and McChesney 1997); and European and global relations of domination (Minkkinen and Patomäki 1997; Patomäki 2000b; and 2001b and c). Economic

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policies are now largely determined within multilateral systems of governance, both European and global. Developments associated with globalisation have also conditioned the electoral politics of the Nordic countries. Hence, as a complement to the search for plausible national alternatives, it is increasingly crucial to re-orient and re-define the political project of Norden in time and space.

Relative persistence of the Nordic model In terms of the moral and political ideals, the Nordic (or Swedish) model has been in decline for a quarter of a century. Even still, these ideals are shared by the majority of the population in all Nordic countries, although they have been on the defensive, and are often blurred with themes of ‘necessary adjustments’ and ‘European integration’. In Sweden, the ideal of a Third Way was re-defined and compromised as early as the 1980s. The reforms of the welfare state that have been taking place since then have had very little to do with traditional social democratic ideals. They are much more in line with the neo-liberalist political programme on state re-structuring and economic liberalisation in accordance with the Washington consensus (for a recent articulation, see World Bank 1997; and for a slightly contrasting view, Stiglitz 1998). Consequently, Sweden has been losing its ethicopolitical leadership in the Nordic countries. The unilateral decision by the Swedish government to apply for EC membership in October 1990 was, in one perspective, perhaps the last nail to the coffin of Norden. Finland and Norway followed suit. Finland has become an exemplary EU member that has in many respects renounced its Nordic values, as well as its association with Swedish ethico-political leadership. The Norwegian population, however, voted that Norway should stay outside the Union, largely on the grounds that membership would compromise its Nordic values. So, was this the end of the Nordic model? Not necessarily. Although the model itself has been compromised by neo-liberalism, there are signs and indicators of the persistence of the power of social democratic institutions and values. My argument is not only about the size and welfare benefits of the state or the average public opinion in these countries, but also concerns deeper processes. Institutional transformations are conditioned by public will-formation, which in turn is the outcome of complicated processes of formation of ways of life, dominant forms of representation and, indeed, institutions, which structure the decision-making situation faced by actors and influence trust (Rothstein 1998:134). There is reason to believe that, given a more adequate understanding of the changing context of Nordic politics, support for revived Nordic values should clearly outnumber the current—hesitant, confused and ambiguous—approval of neo-liberalism. Now, the quantitatively measured role of the state has in fact been rising in Norden since 1980, despite the partially implemented efforts at welfare state retrenchment. Table 9.3 gives the figures for total expenditure of central

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government budget as a percentage of GDP in 1980 and 1995 (World Bank 1997:241). In Finland, in particular, there has been a huge leap from 25.2 per cent to 42 per cent. Obviously, Esping-Andersen (1990:19) is correct in arguing that a focus on spending can be very misleading. Indeed, this growth of the state reflects more the costs of the banking crisis, unemployment, government debt and widening income inequalities than any real rise in the government final consumption expenditure or welfare entitlements. With the significant exception of Norway, which is not a member of the EU, there has been zero or negative growth in real welfare spending, coupled with rising labour market inequalities and commodification of welfare services, since 1989 (see Clayton and Pontusson 1998). The outcome of the trends in the labour markets and transformation of the welfare states has been a significant rise in inequalities, particularly in Sweden (which remains nonetheless more egalitarian than most countries in the world). It is equally telling that the former model Sweden has fallen behind Denmark, Norway and Finland in GDP/capita figures in the late 1990s, although it is still well above Finland and Denmark in the Human Development Index (see UNDP 1999: particularly Tables 1 and 5, on pages 136 and 149 respectively). Despite these major qualifications, the very rapid growth of the relative size of state expenditure to the GDP indicates the relative persistence of the institutions of the welfare state in a situation that has been characterised by high unemployment and major financial problems. This persistence of welfare institutions explains the paradox that, measured in terms of employment, the tradable, open sector has halved in size since the 1950s, although the exports/GDP ratio has continued to grow. The explanation is that employment has risen only in the public, non-tradable sector, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s (see Weiss 1998:95–8). Equally importantly, it also seems that universalist, egalitarian welfare values remain shared by a majority of the populations of Norden. It is exactly its universalism that has made it so appealing and strong: This formula [of social democracy] translates into a mix of highly decommodifying and universalistic programs that, nonetheless, are tailored to different expectations. Thus manual workers come to enjoy rights identical to those of salaried white-collar employees or civil servants; all strata are incorporated under one universal insurance system, yet benefits are graduated according to accustomed earnings. This model crowds out the market, Table 9.3 Central government budget, total expenditure, as percentage of the GDP

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and consequently constructs an essentially universal solidarity in favour of the welfare state. All benefit; all are dependent; and all will presumably feel obliged to pay. (Esping-Andersen 1990:28) As the drafters of neo-liberal political programmes also know, unlike the situation in the nineteenth century when capital also had global reach—even if without the technological devices of the network society (cf. Castells 1996)—global political innovations today must confront mass democracy and the broad-based desire for representation. Democracy, at least in the sense of periodic voting in free elections, is more institutionalised on a world-scale than ever before (cf. Gill 1997a:1–2). In Norden, national democracy is sedimented in the longue durée of history: all Nordic countries have been liberal democracies since the early 1920s, in Sweden and Finland without any interruptions. The democratic, solidaristic and egalitarian values and interests seem to have been deeply institutionalised. Measures to lower the level of social benefits, at high levels of unemployment and with increasing pressure to deregulate labour market and relations, have tended to be unpopular and hard to implement. In Sweden, they cost the Conservative-led coalition government of 1991–4 its support, and the Social Democrats have since been losing support as they implement welfare cutbacks. After the September 1998 elections, SAP is only able to form a government with the support of the Greens and the Left Party (former Communist Party) (Widfeldt 1998). In Finland, practically all parties have been integrated, to varying degrees, into the neo-liberal programmes of state restructuring and economic liberalisation, so there is no real electoral alternative. Apparent consensus among parties notwithstanding, there are critical discussions within parties about the current imperatives and options, and, most notably, a clear majority of citizens seem to have been against the present (more laissez faire and commodified) kind of capitalist market economy. The popular resistance against deepening integration seems to have been stronger than in any other EU country (see, for example, Europinion 1995). Finns have been against a European single currency and EMU, yet Finland entered the third phase of EMU in 1999. In general, it can be argued that, given the common sentiment, the acceptance of government policy seems to indicate a false understanding of the EU processes. Danish and Norwegian popular resistance to the European integration process indicates a similar adherence to Nordic values. Denmark first rejected the Maastricht Treaty and then had it accepted in the second referendum but with major qualifications. Danish support for European integration has been primarily confined to its function in facilitating trade. The opposition to the Maastricht Treaty was based not just on Danish nationalism but also on the defence of the Scandinavian model of democracy and welfare state (see Lawler 1997:574–8). In Norway, the majority of voters have twice rejected EC/EU membership, first in 1972 and then again in 1994. In the latter Norwegian anti-EU campaign, the debate and referendum was represented as struggles between ‘commonsense

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and capitalism’. This ‘commonsense’ was typically, either directly or indirectly, the discourse of Nordic social democratic values, exceptionalism and progressive internationalism, although authentic voices of the countryside and nationalism were also strong (Lawler 1997:578–81). In the Nordic democracies, which used to be highly participatory, a cleavage between the political elite and large segments of the population has emerged. The mainstream of the elite has been convinced of the necessity of neo-liberal adjustments and European integration, yet the population tends to be much more supportive of social democratic values. The conviction of the political elite has been at least partially based on false beliefs about the situation and the existing choices. For instance, it is a mistake to try to understand the popular resistance to the EU only in terms of societal security, identity and nationalism, as Wæver et al. (1993:24–40) do.5 Given a linear temporality, this misidentification tends to reinforce the elite belief that their societies are simply lagging behind in the evolution of social organisation. This, of course, justifies attempts to educate and lead or manipulate the bulk of citizenry. It has indeed been claimed that political elites manipulated the acceptability of EU membership. Not only did the elites of the parties in office make the decision first, expecting their political parties, and ultimately, the wider public opinion to join them later (preferably just before the referendum) (Lawler 1997:583), but they also manipulated the conditions for public will-formation. For instance, the currencies of Norway, Sweden and Finland were linked to the ECU in the course of the financial crisis of 1990–1. This was a clear step towards membership, yet it was neither supported by the expert opinion of economists nor discussed democratically (Moses 1997). Similarly, the order of the 1994 referendums clearly maximised the bandwagoning effect in favour of the membership. Had the first referendum been held in Norway, Sweden, too, would very likely have rejected membership. This, in turn, would have strengthened the NO (to the EU membership) side also in Finland, the country most favourable towards membership. Joining the EU cannot be reduced to enforcement of neo-liberal reforms, but given the nature of the EU of the 1990s, these are concomitant and mutually reinforcing aims (as recognised also by Wæver 1994b:7–8). Although the EU is facing severe legitimation problems everywhere, in Norden, it seems to be particularly difficult for anti-state, commodifying, free-market neo-liberalism to find sufficient support for free-market and privatisation reforms. Neo-liberal reforms are therefore usually conducted under the rubrics of economistic necessity and ‘pragmatic’ or ‘realist’ acquiescence to the new globalised and post-Cold War world. However, sometimes a reference is also made to more elevating stories that justify neoliberalisation and the European integration in terms of a quasi-Hegelian Zeitgeist. Times are now different; social democratic Norden is mere nostalgia for the past. Wæver’s article about Nordic nostalgia is a case in point. Elite discourses notwithstanding, Norden abides in terms of both institutionalised practices of the welfare state and, in particular, popular values, partially enabled and sustained by the very institutions created by the social democratic movement. Finally, it should be noted that Nordic co-operation

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remains more or less intact. Common labour markets, freedom of movement without passports and common social security systems—already achieved in the 1950s and early 1960s—continue to exist. The Nordic Council still functions, albeit with a partially transformed form and substance. Norden is still a part of the identity of these countries. There may have been a crisis of the Nordic model and identity for some time, but Norden is far from being dead. Certainly, Baltic Sea identity and co-operation, as was envisaged by Wæver (1992:96–102), have not replaced it. It is worthy of note that Wæver later qualified his vision: Identity building is only a pre-condition, it is not a guarantee for success. Whether the region, in phase two, takes off from this platform is largely dependent on economic success stories. This part of the story is still open. Security developments, too, might cause a rupture ending the Baltic venture. (Wæver 1994b:9) It is very hard to make any sound judgements on the relative strengths of different identities (are we talking about opinion polls, widely circulated public discourses, presuppositions of practices or what?). It nonetheless seems to me that the Baltic identity has remained much weaker and more vague than the Nordic one by all accounts. Leaving aside Norway and, more ambiguously, Finland, there have been few if any economic success stories around the Baltic Sea in the late 1990s. Despite the relative perseverance of Norden, there is a widespread confusion and few non-neo-liberal visions about the direction to be taken. Beyond Nordic nostalgia: globalising social/democratic vision It is in the real interest of Norden—the majority of Nordics—to struggle for changing the conditions, which have made it so difficult to sustain, reconstruct and develop social democratic ideals. The real interest in this argument is defined in terms of the existing Nordic identity and values, coupled with an accurate understanding and plausible explanation of the relative decline of Norden. Moreover, Norden, understood as a set of ideals constituting an emancipatory process, should be reoriented in terms of time and space. More concretely, this process should be at least partially detached and freed from the notion of a sovereign state. Instead, the focus should be on making world politics more empowering regarding national alternatives as well as universally more democratic, socially responsible and egalitarian. These are indeed existential conditions for the Nordic project itself.

The real interest of Norden Tautologically, people act in accordance with their perceived interests. However, are these perceived interests their real interests? When defining their interests, if

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people are misinformed and misled by a false account of the reasons for occurrence of unwanted things or the absence of wanted or desired things, it is accurate to say that their perceived interests are not in their real interests. Although the only way to test a hypothesis about real interests is a sustained dialogue (under sufficiently ideal conditions), it is both possible to examine the reasons for illusions, reifications and mystifications, and develop visions informed by better accounts of the real-world processes. Actors can be misinformed and misled at different levels. Meta-theoretically, abstract ontological, epistemological and axiological assumptions—many of which go unnoticed most of the time—can make concrete interpretations susceptible to stoicism (indifference to the world), scepticism (denial of the world) or unhappy consciousness (compensation for the frustrations of the real world found in a fantasy world), or, in general, to different discursive there-is-no-alternative (TINA) formations (see Bhaskar 1993, 1994; and, in the IR context, Figure 1.1 of Chapter 1. In elite discourses, the problems of the Nordic model since the 1970s have made sense in terms of theories presupposing irrealist philosophies giving rise to TINA-formations. These have included positivist economics/rational-choice theories and sceptical post-modernism, both typically imported from the USA (although the latter originates in France).6 These have been coupled with more substantial theories that assumed that neo-liberalist reforms are necessary adjustments to the irrevocable processes of Europeanisation and globalisation. Theoretical concepts can also be vastly misleading simply by being rooted in historical realities other than the one under scrutiny, and by being applied in an unreflective and uncritical way (see Bourdieu and Waqcuant 1999). Whatever the variation, the result is always the same: tacit acceptance of the existing relations of domination and other constraints and absences, which are jointly causing the unwanted and undesired situation that prohibits further flourishing of human possibilities. These irrealist elite discourses are then fed to popular commonsense, particularly through endless, repetitive discussions and images of the increasingly privatised and commercial media intimately tied to the globalising—mostly US—networks and corporations (see Herman and McChesney 1997). Yet, although many understandings have changed because of these powerful forces, some of the institutions and most of the values of the ‘commonsense’ have tended to remain characteristically social democratic and Nordic. What, then, is the real interest of Norden? My argument is that it is in the real interest of the Nordics to struggle for changing the conditions, which have made it so difficult to sustain and further develop social/democratic ideals. Consider the model I have suggested for explaining the relative decline of Norden. There are two sets of conditions here. First of all, there are those glocal conditions and tendencies—essentially local and national processes having global conditions— which have made labour-based power mobilisation, corporatist joint central regulation and the welfare state itself more difficult to sustain. They have also turned out to work against attempts to re-introduce ideas about democratic

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control over investments and production process. Second, there are the related, mostly external global processes that have undermined the embedded liberalism of the original Bretton Woods system and have made the liberalism of the Washington consensus appear so indisputable.

Reorienting the Nordic model in time and space The Nordic model has been based on an extraordinary reliance on the sovereign state and its capabilities to produce welfare and democratic, internationalist progress. In an intellectual climate dominated by attempts to overcome the state sovereignty, Lawler (1997:566) quite rightly calls this Nordic preoccupation with the state as an ‘intellectually unfashionable attachment to a positive understanding of the sovereign state which a generic term such as nationalism cannot fully capture’. Moreover, the reliance on the state in this way has not produced the typical exclusive self—other patterns to which the notion of state sovereignty is connected in political realist/idealist discourse, as depicted by post-structuralist theories (see, for example, Ashley 1989). Since the early 1950s, the Norden has been the exemplar for a pluralist security community, where it would be totally absurd even to imagine any security threat coming from other Nordic countries (i.e. threat of violence is simply a non-issue), and where all the social problems have been and are resolved by means of peaceful changes (see, for example, Joenniemi 1996:11–22). These peaceful changes have been in accordance with the social democratic ideology. At the end of the 1960s, the Nordic countries attempted to set up NORDEK, a Nordic economic union. Even though the NORDEK project failed in the early 1970s, Nordic integration remains significantly deeper in social areas, labour markets and freedom of citizens than that of the EU. Given the conditions that have been undermining the Nordic model, there is a need for a new spatio-temporal self-understanding. The neat model of inside progress and universal welfare, both within the Nordic countries and in the Norden as a whole, combined with outside foreign policies, might have worked for a while, under the very specific geo-historical circumstances of 1938–68 (partially disintegrated post-war capitalist world economy, the Bretton Woods system, etc.). However, ethically, whether or not Nordic foreign policy has been concerned with security and wealth in a traditional way or with the world’s social problems by means of active state-led progressivism, it has, at least at some level, implied an external other (cf. Neumann 1994). Existentially, it has never come to terms with its own conditions, whether glocal, regional or global. Starting with the critical realist (CR) idea that emancipation is ‘characteristically the transition from an unwanted, unnecessary and oppressive situation to a wanted and/or needed and empowering or more flourishing situation’ (Bhaskar 1993:396; 1994:253), I conclude this chapter by arguing that any meaningful Nordic emancipation must be connected to regional and global social democratic reforms. The explanation of the decline of the Nordic model shows that the causes were

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to a significant degree related to globalisation, disembodiment of the embedded liberalism model of global governance and global relations of domination. Hence, the transformation to a more wanted, needed, empowering and flourishing situation can best be achieved by way of attempting to transform the rules and principles of European and global governance. The call to transform the rules and principles of global governance should not be mistaken as a plea to look to the outside. Rather, the best way to go beyond Nordic nostalgia—longing for those days when there was a direction, movement and moral leadership of Nordic social democracy—at the dawn of the twenty-first century is to come to terms with the realisation that the totality in question is not a nation-state-based society only, with its neat inside/outside distinctions. Instead, there have been, and increasingly are (again, after the catastrophic interruptions of the world wars), larger spatio-temporally processes at work, many of which are not characteristically territorial at all. This idea is not entirely new. Olof Palme, for example, expressed the idea that in the long run the difference between national and world politics would disappear. In this sense, Palme also advocated ‘international democracy’ (see Jerneck 1990:128–9). However, this traditional social democratic orientation was not based on an analysis of the glocal causal processes that have co-constituted and co-transformed what Norden itself is and have conditioned what it can be and how it has been transformed. It is my argument that emancipatory, globally oriented political action is a condition for the Nordic ideals to be realised and developed further under new conditions. However, many of even the more abstract ethico-political principles of the Nordic model require re-thinking. In particular, the ideal of democratisation and ‘the passion for equality’, in particular, will also have to assume novel forms in the regionalising and globalising world. New political innovations are needed if these kinds of ideals are to be enabled and/or implemented through regional or global systems of governance.

Beyond Nordic nostalgia 1: acting through the EU For many Nordic social democrats, nation-states are no longer sufficient as the framework for political action. Perhaps the EU means more than simply necessary adjustments and neo-liberalisation? Perhaps it may also open up new possibilities for regulation and redistribution? Thus, European regionalism has become a possible solution to the problem of controlling and regulating capitalist markets and creating more democratic and solidaristic arrangements. On this basis, Hettne (1993) has argued that there is a new positive understanding of the ‘logic of stateness vis-a-vis the free play of market forces’, this time articulated as the ‘pursuit of regionness’. This strategy addresses at least one of the crucial conditions for the decline of Norden, namely the trans-nationalisation of production and markets within Europe. For the Nordic countries, the single market of the EU is the most important one, whether defined in terms of imports and exports or the activities

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of most trans-national firms. It is also possible to argue that the EMU is a European response to some of the problems caused by the post-Bretton Woods system of flexible exchange rates and the globalisation of financial markets. Yet, there are only few explicit articulations of the content and steps of this strategy. It has persisted as a somewhat vague emphasis on the ‘social dimension’ and transparency of decision-making of the EU, etc. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the Europeanist strategy of Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann (1997) has been widely discussed in the Nordic countries (also critically). Their ‘ten ideas against the 20/80 society’ of global laissez faire capitalism comprise the following programmatic notions (Martin and Schumann 1997:289–92): • • • • • • • • • •

Democratising and empowering the EU. Realising the European Monetary Union, in particular as a leverage to gaining control over tax havens and making private capital incomes taxable. Extending the EU’s legislative powers to the area of taxation. Realising the currency transaction tax (Tobin tax) by the European Central Bank. European ecological tax reform. The realisation of a European luxury tax. Development of European trade unions. Strengthening and Europeanising civil society. Stopping de-regulation without a social safety net. Materialising social and ecological minimum norms for world trade.

These reforms would not amount to transforming the EU into a democratic welfare state, but the direction is clear. These are steps towards democratising decisionmaking and empowering the EU with state powers to control and regulate capitalist market forces, and to take some steps towards European re-distribution. In fact, to make this vision even more Keynesian, it could also include ideas about European demand management, based, for example, on devaluation of the euro, and employer’s contributions and taxes on households. To make it more egalitarian in a Greenish manner, it has embraced ideas about cutting down the working hours a person is allowed to work and distributing the remaining hours more evenly (cf. Lipietz 1996). The programme could go further in tackling problems in localities (in the workplace in particular) through the EU by complementing these reforms with democratic reforms in the labour market and within work organisations. This could be done, for instance, in accordance with the model of negotiated environment, which seeks efficiency not by means of ‘flexibility’ and individualising competition (i.e. by commodification of human beings and social relations), or by discipline (i.e. by neo-Taylorist means), but by means of involvement and participation of both trade unions and blue- and white-collar workers (for some details, see Lipietz 1996; also 1994; and Ryner 1997). To address the quest to re-think political community and democracy, the vision should also include considerations about European citizenship and identity (cf. Minkkinen and Patomäki 1997:111–47). The simultaneous weathering of

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 231

national social and political citizenship and the emergence of the possibility of post-national citizenship could be taken as a step towards reconstructing political spaces and communities in Europe. Currently, European citizenship is based merely on principles of economic liberalism (for criticism, see Habermas 1992). Any sensible programmatic vision about Europe should include a strategy for resuscitation of political citizenship in post-national terms. Finally, to avoid the violence of building a new centre in the world and excluding alternative possibilities, the new European identity should be able to incorporate a moment of indecision and to consciously play against the tendency of creating a new inside/outside dichotomy (cf. Derrida 1992). However, these Derridean remarks already point towards the limitations of the Europeanist strategy. Europe is in fact only a small part of the globalising world. A central puzzle is the EU’s positioning vis-à-vis other parts of the world. The Europeanist strategy of overcoming the Nordic nostalgia has in fact two shortcomings. Obviously, it may cause Norden as a distinct identity to disappear unless it will make Europe appear Norden writ large (cf. Therborn 1997:32–3). However, more importantly, the conditions for the decline of Norden are not only EU-European (cf. Figure 9.1). The relevant cultural and discursive relations of representation and mediation are also global. The basic regulatory framework of the world economy is devised in Washington and multilateral systems of governance. Last but not least, the options of productive capital and the spaces of financial markets are global. Hence, it does not suffice to address these issues merely by pursuing European regionness. Indeed, the European integration process has been and is conditioned by globalisation (see Castells 1998:310–34). Gill (1997b:209) may simplify to the extreme when he argues that EMU can be seen as a ‘structural adjustment programme for Europe’, but he has an important point to make. The (neo)liberalist rules and principles of global governance are constitutive of the core principles of the EU. The Treaty of Rome was based on the free-trade principles of the Bretton Woods system; the Maastricht Treaty and its amendments clearly reflect the concerns of the post-Bretton Woods Washington consensus. This is not a coincidence. Global relations of domination and hegemony are at play.7 A vision of global reforms is thus required as well.

Beyond Nordic nostalgia 2: emancipation by transforming systems of global governance Norden could have a potentially important role to play in advocating and realising global reforms. In contrast to the values of Norden, the globalising world is characterised by: •

tendencies towards deepening and intensifying commodification of human beings, social relations, culture and nature (Esping-Andersen 1990:36–7; Amin 1994:31; Harvey 1996:138, 199, 300–2);

232 Visions of world politics

• • •

rapidly growing inequalities both within countries and globally (UNDP 1999); increasing de-limitation of the space of democratic self-determination (Dryzek 1996: particularly Chapters 2, 4 and 6; Teivainen 1994; 1997); reinforced dominance of the US and non-democratic systems of global governance (Crawford and Marks 1998; Held 1995:74–120; Patomäki 1999a; 2001b: Chapter 3; and forthcoming);

These trends, coupled with slackening conditions for economic growth, caused notably also by financial globalisation (Felix 1995:15–32) and consequent outbursts of major financial crises (see Michie and Smith 1999), imply a deep and growing legitimisation problem for the Washington consensus-led systems of governance. Adherence to the values of democratisation, solidarity, decommodification and universalistic social policy imply a commitment to major changes. Nordic countries have a long tradition of activism in advocating global changes, often together as in the UN (however, for their differences, see Wiklund 1996). During the Cold War, the issues dominating the agenda were related to disarmament and development. Since the mid-1980s, ecological issues (the Brundtland Commission) and global governance (Commission on Global Governance, co-chaired by Ingvar Carlsson) have assumed a central place on stage. The Commission on Global Governance has proposed that there should be a new pillar of the UN system, namely an economic security council, and that the UN system should be funded by means of a global tax (see, for example, Commission on Global Governance 1995; Carlsson 1995). A few days’ revenue from a global tax on financial transactions would suffice to cover all present UN debts and annual expenses. The tax would also enable many new global socio-economic and political projects. Although the UN may already be domesticated and impoverished by the USA and a new universal organisation may be needed (see Patomäki forthcoming), steps towards a global tax seem to be a prerequisite for more adequate principles of governance. To be justifiable, social/democratic values and purposes must always be dialogically tested: Are they sufficiently universalisable? They must also gain concrete ethico-political support to be legitimate (but this in itself is an argument for democratisation). The following sketchy programmatic vision of global reforms builds upon the basis of the past and ongoing projects. Of course, there is a multiplicity of possible strategies of materialising some of the values of Norden in the emerging global political space. An ideal strategy, based on sufficiently universalisable values, would tackle a core issue of economic globalisation, include means to collect major revenues for public political purposes (which must be determined democratically) and enable possibilities for peaceful and democratic changes of the rules and principles of systems of global governance. The re-emergence of global financial markets is perhaps the clearest instance of economic globalisation. In the Keynesian tradition, it can also be argued as being the key issue. Unfettered financial markets create collectively irrational outcomes, increase uncertainty, create conditions for financial crises and compel

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 233

states to follow similar, orthodox economic policies, with strong tendencies for a deflationary bias and decreasing equality (see Kirshner 1999:315–16, 326; Patomäki 200 1b, Chapter 3). ‘When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done’ (Keynes 1961 [1936]:159). Like most IMF members, Finland, Norway and Sweden have had first-hand experience of these effects. They experienced a series of major banking and currency crises in the early 1990s. To curb the power of the financial markets and seize some control over them, at least four measures are needed. First, the horizon of investment decisions have to be made more long-term; second, indebtedness, inter-dependencies and actions of the investors have to be regulated; third, some control over financial off-shores and tax havens must be seized; and, finally, the power of financial flows has to be curbed by raising transaction costs. Investment horizons can be lengthened at global, regional or national level, simply by applying controls over short-term capital inflows (e.g. by minimum non-remunerated reserve or holding requirements, applied in the 1990s by Chile and Malaysia). Although, also, national and regional regulatory measures do help, at least as temporary measures, re-regulation can best be implemented by global arrangements. In particular, financial off-shores and tax-havens can only be controlled by means of wide-scale collective action. The best way to curb global financial flows and raise transaction costs is a small global tax on all transactions. The idea, suggested by James Tobin in the 1970s (Tobin 1978), is simple: by implementing a low-rate tax on currency transactions, many speculative movements would become unprofitable and the financial system more stable. Simultaneously, the tax would yield huge revenues for the international or global community (see ul Haq et al. 1996). Realisation of the Tobin tax requires collective political action. As mentioned, the Tobin tax is also an element in the Europeanist political strategy, as a unilateral tax imposed by the European Central Bank. The premise is that ‘London and New York are always going to prevent it’ from being implemented globally (Martin and Schumann 1997:104). However, Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann have not explained how the EU could implement the Tobin tax unilaterally. A recent Working Paper of the European Parliament summarises the standard view: There would need to be agreement on its [the Tobin tax’s] application in every financial centre in the world—otherwise foreign exchange markets would move to ‘tax-free’ jurisdictions. The problems of introducing a with-holding tax on interest even within the EU alone do not augur well for the chances of such an international agreement. (Patterson and Galliano 1999:6) It thus seems that the minimum requirement is for at least all major financial centres to be within the sphere of taxation, and that there is a system of global governance of the tax (see Tobin 1996; Garber 1996).

234 Visions of world politics

However, it is, indeed, possible to modify the Tobin tax so as to enable any grouping of relevant countries, preferably covering a substantial part of the global financial markets, to start it at any time. (The proposal is made in Patomäki 1999b, and is developed further in Patomäki 2001b: Chapters 5–7.) Norden could play a role in initiating this, by setting up the system and also finding partners in Asia, Russia, non-EU parts of Europe and Latin America. Only for Finland—the only Nordic country that has entered the third phase of the EMU— would it be a prerequisite to have the EMU-Europe included from the outset. The Tobin tax regime can be realised in two phases. In the first, a grouping of countries would establish an open agreement—any state can join at any time— and a supra-national body orchestrating the tax and collecting the revenues of a small underlying transactions tax (10 basis points, at most); much bigger exchange surcharge triggered by exceptional volatility (1–3 per cent or even more); and a relatively high tax, up to 20 per cent in the case of non-cooperative tax havens, on domestic currency lending to non-residents (only to non-residents who are not yet within the tax regime). This arrangement would solve the tax evasion problem and is economically sound. In the second phase, which would be carried out either when all major financial centres and most other countries have joined the first-phase system, or at latest by, say, year 2010, a universal Tobin tax at a higher—yet absolutely low—0.5–1.0 per cent rate would be applied. This arrangement is devised in such a manner that it would build up pressure for the outsiders to join. In other words, since this model empowers actors to work for the Tobin tax also without the support of the USA, the UK, the IMF, etc., it is emancipatory in its implications. Financial markets’ re-regulation and the establishment of the Tobin tax constitute tackling a core issue of globalisation. The Tobin tax would also mean the possibility of collecting major revenues for public political purposes. These revenues could be used as leverage for other reforms. This, in turn, opens up a new global ethico-political problematic. A global tax regime with sanctions and surveillance systems, and potential for huge revenues—hundreds of billions of US dollars—raises the whole problematic of political theory in the global context: What are the principles of legitimation of collective organisations? How should they be assessed in terms of material benefits and their distribution, rightful authority, justice and democracy? There is a quest to re-think democratic accountability, representation, participation and citizenship. The strategy centred around the Tobin tax is both for the autonomy of states and for new global institutional arrangements. The new institutional arrangements would not hinder processes of globalisation but would rather politicise, democratise and re-direct them (see Patomäki 2000a; 2001b). They would also yield new resources for public political action. Some of these could be used for global demand inducements to counteract deflationary tendencies. Like in the Keynesian theory (see Keynes 1961 [1936]:372–84), demand inducements should also contribute to global redistribution. However, it is likely that financial re-regulation and the Tobin tax would not suffice to reverse the tendencies towards increasing de-limitation of the space of

Beyond ‘Nordic nostalgia’ 235

democratic self-determination, rapidly growing inequalities, deepening and intensifying commodification and aggravation of global ecological problems. Simultaneous actions, preferably in collaboration with transnational political actors, to transform the content of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (which was re-discussed in the failed WTO Millennium Round in Seattle, but is likely to come up again in one form or another) or reforming the UN system, among other things, would help. To really tackle the conditions of the decline and the partial neo-liberal transformation of Norden, further programmatic ideas would be needed, perhaps building upon the leverage of the Tobin tax. However, particularly assuming some success in empowerment and increased autonomy, these programmatic ideas may also concern the organisation of very immediate local sites and related national and regional developmental strategies, in the spirit of democratic experimentalism (cf. Unger 1998).

Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that the Cold War and security-oriented interpretation of Norden is, if not entirely incorrect, at least partially inadequate and misleading. The global political-economy dynamic provides a better explanation of the relative decline of Norden. There has been a complex interplay of changes in the relations of production; the dynamics of class identification and welfare state development; and globalisation as the emergence of new exit options, the erosion of the embedded liberalism of the original Bretton Woods system and the re-emergence of global financial markets. These, together with the related cultural and socio-economic changes, have transformed the structural conditions for labour- and capitalbased power mobilisation in Sweden and, mutatis mutandis, in other Nordic countries. Together with the end of the Cold War, this interplay has also given rise to irrealist and economistic stories about the requirements of ‘new times’; of the gradual changes in the meaning of the notion of the Third Way; and the neo-liberal framing of new social problems. Tackling the real conditions of the decline of Norden demands a new social democratic orientation in time and space. The nation-state can no longer provide a sufficient framework for progressivist political action, and the socially flavoured Wilsonian ‘idealism’ appears also to be a somewhat anachronistic basis for ‘progressivist internationalism’. This is not to argue that politics occurs now only outside sovereign states. Rather, local and national struggles are essentially connected to regional and global struggles, and therefore they cannot be taken as separate spheres any more (‘first progressivism at home, and then exportation of these universalist ideals to the rest of the world’). Along these lines, I discussed two programmatic visions that should take Nordics beyond the ‘Nordic nostalgia’. The Europeanist strategy is based on a new positive understanding of the ‘logic of stateness vis-à-vis the free play of market forces’, this time articulated as the ‘pursuit of regionness’. Yet, this strategy

236 Visions of world politics

can at best be complementary to a more globalist strategy of carrying out global social democratic reforms. Within the confines of this chapter, I could only outline some relevant global reforms. The Tobin tax is a particularly promising idea, given that it would tackle a key issue of globalisation, enable the collection of substantial resources for global purposes (including Keynesian demand-inducements and redistribution) and constitute a leverage for other democratic reforms.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

Obviously, there is a closer connection to Giddens’s (1998) attempt at ‘the renewal of Social Democracy’ than to Clinton’s or Blair’s Third Way. While the former takes up issues—even if vaguely—such as ‘democratising democracy’ and ‘cosmopolitan democracy’, the latter appears to be little more than an attempt to revitalise elements of the traditional Anglo-Saxon liberal welfare state (cf. Blair 1998) in the context of continuing neo-liberalist transformations and deepening commodification of all areas of social life. Despite many major differences, I assume that Sweden’s welfare state and, at least in the case of Finland, also neutrality have been the model for the rest of the Nordic countries. Because of the lack of space, I explicate these differences only when it is absolutely necessary. For instance, in the early 1950s, Prime Minister Kekkonen justified Nordic co-operation on the grounds that ‘an alliance of neutrality between the Scandinavian countries could be seen as a logical continuation of the Pact of Mutual Assistance between Finland and the USSR. Its significance would lie in the fact that it would remove even the theoretical threat of an attack on the USSR via Finland’s territory’ (Kekkonen 1970:55–6). There is no room to discuss the causes of this decline. Suffice it to mention that the new safeguards for the weaker firms and workers may have reduced the incentives to compete, whereas the leftist challenge to the control over investments might have led to drastic shortening of the time-horizon of the managers of the corporations (their positions and future became uncertain). These developments took place in the context of the global crisis of the early 1970s. The political response of the managerial class was a right-wing revolt, not proposals for a new Accord. The paradox is that while Wæver is theoretically arguing for de-securitisation, his explanatory categories tend to reduce everything to security issues. Ryner (forthcoming) has shown how the rather realist and/or Marxist understanding of the Social democratic leaders of the 1930s and 1940s, concerning the real crisis tendencies of capitalism, gave way gradually in the 1950s and 1960s to the more positivist understandings. Many of these later leaders were educated in economics, not infrequently in the USA. These changes in the background discourse also paved the way for the characteristically more orthodox solutions of the 1980s. The free-trade core of the EU, based on the principles of GATT, WTO and the IMF, and the related economic interests of the EU are discussed in Patomäki 1996:22–36. For a more thorough analysis of the global relations of domination and hegemony, see Patomäki 1999a; 2000b; 2001b; and forthcoming.

Epilogue

The point of After International Relations is not that relations between states (or nations) would have disappeared. Many states remain important actors. A few may be bigger and more capable than ever. Yet two major changes justify the evocation of the idea about ‘after international relations’. First, one hundred years after the exhaustion of geographical space by the European empires, and the height of the pre-1914 capitalist economic inter-dependence, the world has become even smaller and more vulnerable. The epoch of territorial empires and geo-politics in the original sense is over. There are now about 200 formally independent states, and a majority of them claim to be democratic. Globalisation talk is often geo-historically myopic and ideologically biased. It is nonetheless a sign of the times. It has become increasingly hard to sustain the illusion of the inside/outside—or, worse, society/state of war—dichotomy. Second, the epistemological and ontological ground has shifted. The problematic articulated by Hume and Kant has become increasingly anachronistic. There is a realist alternative to the positivist interpretation of the natural sciences. Although the conceptions, opportunities and problems associated with the rise and expansion of capitalism may be part of everyday practices more than ever, a majority of social scientists, outside orthodox economics and its extensions, have renounced the capitalist conception of man as the basis for social and political theory. Also, the problem of building a modern state cannot appear the same any longer. Whereas, for instance, in Africa this project turned out to be disastrous, the European states have become involved in the long-term process of building an integrated security community and partial union. Many states’ structures, also outside Europe, have become regionalised or globalised. Last but not least, as has been argued in this book, there is now an alternative to the problem of order. Besides criticising the theoretical underpinnings of this problem, I have proposed that a security community, whether pluralist or amalgamated, is essentially dependent on the self-transformative capacity of relevant contexts. Every problem, whether practical-political or more theoretical, lays on a set of presuppositions. The aim of After International Relations has been to establish a way out of the problematic that has puzzled so many great thinkers and scholars of the past 200 years. By showing how and why the theories based on the international problematic have failed (Part I), by articulating an alternative, 237

238 Epilogue

critical realist research programme (Part II) and by illustrating how this research programme can be put to work (Part III), my hope is that this book will enable better research and other practices. Although this may sound overly ambitious, it, in fact, builds upon the contribution of numerous philosophers, social theorists and critical IR and GPE researchers. Simultaneously, it is at best only an opening.1 Marx (1968 [1852]:96) suggested that everything in history repeats itself. The first time is a tragedy, the second a farce. Perhaps there will be an epilogue to international relations too? The problem is that ‘in the past, the worst disasters could not kill mankind’ (Jaspers 1961:318). Would a replay as a farce be possible? History is open, and we can only guess what story will fit. Meanwhile, we can try to learn from past mistakes, past trials and errors, and try to build, on that basis, better models and stories. We know that only learning and change can make a global security community possible.

Notes 1

Where this book ends, other books start. Democratising Globalisation. The Leverage of the Tobin Tax (2001b) is an analysis of the consequences of the re-emergence of global finance. It explains the instability of financial markets and the role of finance in global relations of hegemony and domination. It makes a normative case for a particular concrete Utopia—the Tobin tax—linked to a regulated currency regime, governed by a democratic organisation. Democratising Globalisation will be followed by Critical Realist Global Political Economy, a book that attempts to remedy the absence of power in economics and the absence of economics in GPE. Time and Space in Republican Theory. Rethinking Participation and Representation in the Global Age has been in the making for years. It aims to re-think the nature of public political spaces and political participation and representation under the conditions of the late-modern globalising world. Most importantly, it purports to do this concretely, not just abstractly.

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Index

absence 7, 8, 18, 41, 129 abstractions 127–8, 130 action: communicative 105, 110, 111; complex causes for 81, 91–2, 119; and context 119–20; dependent on reality 144–5; dramaturgical 110, 111; freedom of 119–20; and internal and external relations 117; meaningful 119; need for theory of 116; normatively regulated 110; possibilities 131; and rules 102–3, 108; rationalisation of 151; relationship with power 112–14; relationship with structures 109, 116–17; social 108–12, 116, 136, 173; strategic 111, 152; teleological 110, 111; transformative 120 actors: as components of a causal complex 87–8, 119 and context 119, 120; co-operation among 111; geohistorical constitution of 91, 137–8, 139, 140; ‘internal’ and ‘external’ 80; knowledge of 126, 131; linked by understanding (Habermas) 104–5; and misinformation 227; and practical wisdom 159; in security community 200–1; social 102; states as 71–2 Adler, Emanuel 198, 203–4, 209 Adorno, Theodor 6 Africa 237 agency 151, 152 agency-structure problem 72, 73, 74 aitia 179 Alcibiades 180, 192 Alker, Hayward R. 11–13, 41, 43–69 collection and analysis of data 47–51; and critical realism 44; criticism of scientific and statistical practice 45–6, 47–51; on data-coding procedure s 134; ‘Dialectics of World Order’

project 61, 65, 66; and ‘emancipatory humanism’ 46–7; four phases of 44–7; on history writing 58–9; and importance of openness 44; on Jesus story 56–7; and learning process 43–4; limitations of 64–6; on mathematical social science 135; and modelling approaches 56–61; as President of the ISA 64, 66; on social ontology 99; on temporal motivation 140; theory of conflicts 44 on Thucydides 167, 173, 191; United Nations studies 44–6, 47–8, 54, 68; work on collective dilemmas (Prisoner’s Dilemma) 51–6, 65; and world history theorising 61–3 amalgamated community 194, 195, 196, 201–2 ambiguity 103–4, 106–7 ambivalence 103–4 Amin, Tahir 61 analogy 127, 128, 130, 197 analysis: historical vs. structural 91 anarchy 33, 74, 191 Archer, Margaret 7 Archimadus, King 187 Arendt, Hannah 143, 156 Aristotle 99, 102, 159, 188, 191 arms races 127 artificial intelligence 48, 61 Ashley, Richard 13, 33, 61, 69, 71 astronomy 22 Athens: aggressive imperialism 179, 182, 183–8, 190; conduct of Peloponnesian War 168, 179; debates and voting 184–5; development of 192; eventual defeat 188; and the gods 192; loss of legitimate leadership 182; and Melos episode 170–1, 174–9, 180, 181, 182–8; as misleading concept 180

257

258 Index realpolitik of 176, 178, 185, 189; resources 182 atomism 22, 29; entities 3, 135; individuals 29, 31, 32; social 25; states 78; world 78 Attica 184 Augustine, St 29, 34, 36 Axelrod, Robert 55 Bacon, Francis 22, 30 balance of power 21, 28, 31–2, 42, 167; Alker on 62–3 Bank for International Settlements 205 banking crises 221, 223, 233 banks, international 134, 230, 233 Barnett, Michael 198, 209 Becker, Gary 4 behaviouralism 43, 45, 73, 88, 95 Bennett, James 54–5 Bentham, Jeremy 2, 25 Berkeley, George 2, 22 Bernstein, Richard 123 Bhaskar, Roy 5–7, 9, 14, 35, 162; on action 116; Alker and 64, 65; on atoms 135; on communicative action 105; concepts of structure 100, 114–15; on empirical invariances 76; explanatory emancipation concept 16, 144, 152–5, 156, 158, 160; on Horkheimer 18; on interference with object by subject 151, 152; on IR levels 94; and normative discourse 158; on philosophy and realism 8; on positivism 26, 49; on reason 88; on science 100; on social structure 101–2, 108; on society 150; TMSA 99, 102, 108; on truth 144, 145, 146–7, 148, 153–4, 158, 160; on vagueness and ambiguity 103–4 Biersteker, Thomas 61, 62, 63 Bill of Rights (1689) 27 Blair, Tony 210, 236 Bolshevik Revolution 113, 143 book-keeping 24, 134 Boulding, Kenneth 43 Bourdieu, Pierre 7 bourgeois man 10, 17 Braudel, Ferdinand 58 Bretton Woods system 3, 16, 85, 205, 211, 215, 217, 228, 230, 231 British Institutionalism 78 Brundtland Commission 232 Bruno, Giordano 22

Bull, Medley 39, 40, 65–6 Bunge, Mario 82 Butterfield, Herbert 36 cannibals 29 capital accounting 24 capitalism 21, 133, 237; alienation and atomism of 203; central to IR 38; control strategies (EU) 229, 230; development of 24, 25–6, 29, 83–4, 134; and globalisation 38, 79, 84, 118, 224; link with positivism 25–6; and problem of order 30–1; as social system 118; and strategic action 111; Swedish model 217 Carlsnaes, Walter 71, 72, 87 Carlsson, Ingvar 232 cartography 26, 27 Catholics, Roman 27 causal complexes 78–9, 119–20; and iconic models 123, 126, 129–33; and time and space 137 causal efficacy 151 causal hypotheses 132 causal powers 88 causal stories 87–9 causality: Alker’s ontological shift from mechanical model 48; critical realist 5, 8, 15, 76; Deutsch and 197; dialectical 104; and empirical invariances 75, 76; and hierarchies 83; Humean 48, 75, 76, 78; Kantian moral reason cut off from 4; and levels-of-analysis problem 72–3, 74–5; positivist 3; and post hoc ergo propter hoc-fallacy 76, 135; and quantitative data 134–5 causation: Hume’s scepticism about 23 cause: ancient Greek attitude to 172; as an INUS-condition 76–7, 91, 92, 101, 102, 108, 119, 131, 132 centre-periphery structures 60, 128, 138–9 Chammah, A. 55 Chan, Stephen 71 change 43–4 Chase-Dunn, Christopher 64 Chile 45, 233 Choucri, Nazli 50, 69 Christianity 21, 29–30, 34, 36 citizenship 230–1 Cleon 184–5, 186 Clinton, Bill 210, 236 Club of Rome 58, 60 coding practices 50–1, 57

Index 259 Cold War 113, 193, 194, 232; Alker and 44; end of 3, 16, 76, 212, 213, 214; Norden and 211–13, 214, 215, 217, 235; and political realism 39, 43; second 215 collective identity 198–9 collective security 62–3 Collier, Andrew 7, 154, 158 colonialism 27, 28, 29, 84 Commission on Global Governance 232 commodification 231see also de-commodification communication 136, 173 Communist Party 113 comprehensive views 150 computational hermeneutics 57 computers 57, 66, 68, 94 Comte, Auguste 35, 76, 99 configurating 140 constant conjunctions 76 constructivism 4, 39, 108 context:of action 119–20; and quantitative data 134; see also social context contradictions 104, 106–7 contrastive demi-regularity 129 Copernicus, Nicolas 22 Cornford, F. 172–3 correspondence: as metaphor 145; and theory of truth 145–6 critical realism (CR) 1, 4–5; agency/ structure debate 71; components of 77; core notions of context and complex 119; the ‘critical’ aspect 9–10; development of 5–7; and epistemological relativism 8–9; and judgemental rationalism 9; methodology 13–15; and ontological realism 8; see also specific aspects criticism 158 Cunning of Reason 34 currency transaction tax 17, 230, 233–4 cybernetics 48, 60, 127 Darwin, Charles 34 Darwinism 34 data: coding procedures 50–1, 130; collection and analysis 47–51, 134; and epistemology 49–50; nature of 11–12; and ontology 48, 51; primary 14; qualitative 135–7; quantitative 133–5; theory-dependence of 90; verbal 48 Declaration of the Rights of Man 2

de-commodification 215–16 deconstruction 41 deductive-nomological model 75, 91 Delian league 186 democracy: global 224, 229; liberal 224 democratic peace hypothesis 130, 193–4 democratic peace theory 3, 93–4 Denmark 211, 221, 223, 224 Dependencia school 60 dependency relations 60; as levels 83–4 dependent variable 73, 74 depth 81–2; of explanation 91 Derrida, Jacques 7, 40–1, 154–5, 157, 231 Descartes, René 2, 22 desecuritisation 208 Dessler, David 75, 99 Deutsch, Karl 15, 55, 60, 127; on learning 43, 152–3; on power 185–6; and security community concept 41, 194–5, 196–200, 201–2, 208, 209 deviant cases 51 dialectical argumentation 125 dialectical causality 104 dialectical exchange 71 dialectics: definition 173; development of consciousness 54; formalised (Rescher) 106–7, 174–6; and Melian dialogue 173–9; of open, stratified systems 117–18 ‘Dialectics of World Order’ project 61, 65, 66 dilemmas, collective 12, 51–6 Diodotus 185 diplomacy 28 discourse, normative 158, 160 discourse analysis 39 domination, systems of 199, 201, 204, 205, 232 double hermeneutics 14, 103, 109, 111, 160; of iconic modelling 123–42 dualism 64, 89 Durkheim, Emile 99, 108 East Timor 139 EC see European Community ecology 232, 235 econometrics 135 economic cooperation 4 elite discourses 225, 227 emancipation 9, 10, 16, 228–9; and security community 203; see also explanatory emancipation emancipatory explanation 144 emancipatory humanism 46–7

260 Index emergence 8, 18, 41, 129 empirical data see data empirical evidence 132, 133 empirical invariances 3, 75, 76 empirical studies 72 emplotment 140 Emshoff model 52, 54 EMU see European Monetary Union Engels, Friedrich 42 Enlightenment 34 epistemological relativism 8–9, 14, 77, 144–5, 197 epistemology 9–10, 103, 104: and data 49–50 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 215–16, 223–4 EU see European Union Europe: contrasted to Norden 212, 214; development of modern states 27–8; emergence of international relations 2; empires 237; increasing destructive powers 84; powerbalancing system 62–3; problem of definition 214; regionalism 229; seventeenth century breakdown of order 29–30 European Central Bank 230, 233 European Community: Nordic countries and 212, 213, 220, 221, 222 European Monetary Union 224, 230, 231, 234 European Union: capitalism control strategies 229, 230; citizenship and identity 230–1; demand management 230; as exemplar of modernisation 214; free trade 231, 236; and global investment 206; integration 231; labour reform and trade unions 230; Nordic countries and 221, 222, 223, 224–5, 229–31; tax reform 230; taxation 233 evolutionary models 127 existential hypotheses 131 explanation 79, 132; causal 72–3, 74–5; emancipatory 144; social scientific 150–l; teleological 88 explanatory critique 151–2 explanatory emancipation 16, 144, 152–5, 156, 158, 160; see also real interests external relations 102, 104, 107–12, 117 failure 159 fairy tales 55, 58, 59 false beliefs 155, 215

feminism 4 Finland 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 233,234, 236; and Cold War 113, 211; and political realism 113 First World War 11, 37–8, 113 Fordism 84, 218 foreign policy: and agency-structure problem 72, 74; changes and continuity in 55; and history 55, 58; and levels-of-analysis problem 80; Nordic 228 Forrester, Jay 58, 60 Foucault, Michel 55, 65, 100, 209; on panopticism 52–3; on power 112–13, 114; on truth 143 France 7, 28, 39 Frankfurt School 6, 99 free trade 39, 206, 231, 236 French Revolution 26 functionalism, sociological 127 fusion of horizons 136–7 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 99, 136–7, 142 Galbraith, John Kenneth 111 Galileo 22 Galtungjohan 7, 43, 51, 67, 161 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 205 geo-historical processes 147, 158, 159–60, 197; dependence of truth on 144, 145, 146; see also spacetime geometry 24 geo-politics 138 Germany 39 Giddens, Anthony 5, 6, 210, 236; concept of power 100; on context 119; definition of structures 114, 116–17; definition of system 118; on double hermeneutics 90, 103, 123; on internal and external relations 108; on problem of order 104; on social relations 115; theory of structuration 99, 100, 112, 113, 114 Gill, Stephen 231 global political economy 118, 218–22; see also International Political Economy globalisation 227–8, 237: and capitalism 38, 79, 84, 118, 224; commodification trends 231; de-limitation of selfdetermination 232; ecology 232, 235; economy 84, 204–5, 231; European integration 231; finance 232–3; financial markets 205, 233–4;

Index 261 governance 229, 231–5; inequalities 232; political innovations 224; regulation 233; relations of domination 204, 205, 232; and security community concept 203–5; social relations 215; strategy 17; surveillance 139; taxation 232, 233–5, 236 Glorious Revolution (1688) 27 Gold Standard 84 Gorbachev, Mikhail 3, 113, 214 government debt 223 graphical argumentation techniques 174, 176, 177 Greenwood, John 103 Grunberg, Isabelle 68 Gulf Cooperation Council 195 Habermas, Jürgen 5, 18, 41, 54; on rationality 162; theory of social action 109–10, 121; theory of ‘system’ and ‘Lebenswelt’ 112; theory of understanding 89–90, 104–5 Halley, Edmond 22 Harré, Rom 5, 14, 64, 88; on truth 147, 148 Harvey, David 138 haute finance 84 Hegel, Georg 34, 35, 37 Hegelian theory: development of consciousness 54; master-slave argument 213 Heidegger, Martin 133, 142 Hellas 168, 180–2, 186–7, 188, 190; notion of honour 183 Hellenes 180, 192 hermeneutic circle 136 hermeneutics 35, 68, 89, 99, 102, 123, 150; computational 57; second level problem 136; understanding 72; see also double hermeneutics Herz, John 84 Hettne, Björn 229 hierarchical organisations 83, 111, 118 Hirschman, Albert 29, 30 historical analysis 91 historical research 46, 56 history: and causality 10; and foreign policy 55, 58; lessons of 159; openness of 200, 208, 238; problem of ending 140; theorising 12, 61–3, 66, 70; writing 58–9 Hobbes, Thomas 2, 21, 22, 25, 29, 105; on book-keeping 24–5; and problem of order 30

Hollis, Martin 13, 71–5, 89, 91, 99 ‘horizon’ 142 Horkheimer, Max 6, 18 Human Development Index 223 humanism 29 Hume, David 2, 21, 25, 29; ampliative approach of 125–6; as an anachronism 237; on balance of power 28, 31–2, 42; on causality 48, 75, 76, 78; Christian realists and 36; conception of human nature 36; critique of ontology 22–4; on external relations 104; and ‘great debates’ of international relations 36–8; on growing power of Britain 28; on justice 25, 30; liberals and 34; Morgenthau on 35; Nietzsche and 36; political career 28; posivitism 11, 22–4; post-positivism and 4; and problem of order 30; on reality 23; on reason 32; scepticism about causation 23; on selfishness of man 25; on Thucydides 167, 190 Hurwitz, Roger 54, 55, 65 hypocrisy 156 ‘icon’ 129 iconic augmentation 141 iconic modelling 14, 66, 78–9, 80, 100, 109, 123, 173, 189, 190; ampliative and reductive approaches 124–6; analogies, metaphors and metonyms 128–9, 130–1, 132; and causal complexes 123, 126, 129–33; double hermeneutics of 123–42; empirical evidence 133; homoeomorphic 108, 127; hypotheses of 131–3; idealisations and abstractions 127–8, 130; of Melos episode 179–80, 189, 190, 192; paramorphic 126–7qualitative evidence 135–7quantitative data 133–5; space and time in 137–41; teleiomorphic 108–9, 110, 123, 127–9; types of 126–9 idealisations 127–8, 130 idealism 2, 33, 34–5, 36, 39, 40–1 illusion 21; speculative 158 IMF see International Monetary Fund imperialism 237; see also colonialism individualism 99 induction, problem of 23, 31 Industrial Revolution 83–4 Inoguchi, Takashi 61, 62, 63 inside/outside dichotomy 94–5, 229

262 Index institutionalisation 153, 201, 224, 225 integration 203, 204 interaction 76, 79, 116–17 interdependence 36, 39, 203 internal relations 79; and communicative action 100–6; and iconic modelling 131, 136; relationship with action 117; vague and ambiguous nature of 106–7 ‘inter-national’: first use of term 2 International Monetary Fund 134, 205, 233 International Political Economy (IPE) 80–1; see also global political economy international relations: four ‘great debates’ of 36–40 international relations, discipline of (IR) 10–13; foundations 11; in 1960s 43; in 1980s 70; related to emergence of states 82–3; Wendt vs. Hollis and Smith debate 71–5; see also levels inter-state wars 193–4 invariance 3, 75, 76, 134 investment 233 Ireland 199, 209 Jabri, Vivienne 71 James II, King 27 Japan 206 Jesus story 56–7 Johnson, Mark 128 journalistic studies 43, 134 judgemental rationalism 9, 77, 144, 148, 155, 157 Kant, Immanuel 2–3, 9, 10, 11, 21; belief in Kingdom of Angels 34; as classical political theorist 36–7; concept of ‘nation’ 17; concern over Europe’s destructive powers 84; importance of 40; on international problematic 32–4; ‘mechanisms’ for peace 33; on perpetual peace prospects 38; and phenomena/noumena dichotomy 33–4, 35, 39–40; and positivism 3; suspicious of world government concept 207; on Thucydides 167, 190; on war and peace 17 Kantian theory: as anachronism 237; critical questions 6, 9, 10; dualism 89; and ‘great debates’ of international relations 36–40; Hegel’s view of 34; idealism 2, 33, 36, 39; influence on 20th century thinking 39, 43; and IR problematic 15; liberalism 2–3, 4, 34,

36, 37, 143, 209; moral reason 4, 11; theory of peace 3, 21, 39; transcendental arguments 9; world order 143, 205–8 Kaplan, Morton A. 39 Kautsky, Karl 63 Keat, Russell 5 Kelsen (positivist) 35 Kennan, George 43 Keohane, Robert 167–8, 170 Keynes, John Maynard 220, 230, 232–3, 234, 236 Kissinger, Henry 43 knowledge: of actors 126; quantitative, qualitative and relational 117 Kratochwil, Friedrich 75 Kuhn, Thomas 150 labour, division of 84 labour markets 83, 220, 223, 224, 227, 228 Lacedaemon see Sparta Lakoff, George 128 language 90, 105, 116, 150 lateral pressure theory 50, 192 Latsis, Spiro 169 law, rule of 28 Lawson, Tony 7, 129, 135 League of Nations 39 learning process: and change 43–4; and Gorbachev 3pathological 152–3, 199–200 Lebenswelt 112 Lefebvre, Henri 138 Lehnert, G. 56–7 Leibniz, Gottfried 69 Lenin, V.I. 42, 63, 113 Lesbos 184 levels: against scientific (re)conceptualisations of 82–7; as complex assemblies and integrated wholes 82, 85; convenience of 86–7; as degrees 82; as layers 82–3; as ranks 83; realist conceptions of 81–2; social contexts 85–6; and study of social systems 118 levels-of-analysis problematic 72, 73–81 liberalism 3, 70; economic 231; embedded 211, 217, 220, 228, 229; Kantian 2–3, 4, 34, 36, 37, 143, 209; see also neoliberalism Lin Biao 63 Linge, David E. 142 linguistic fallacy 4

Index 263 LO see Swedish Union Federation Locke, John 2, 22, 29, 38 logic 89bivalent 161–2 Lowes Dickinson, G. 39 Luxemburg, Rosa 63 Maastricht Treaty 221, 224, 231 Machiavelli, Niccolò 27, 29, 34 Mackie, J.L. 77, 101 Malaysia 233 Mandel, Ernest 58, 59 Mandeville, Bernard 30 Manicas, Peter T. 6 Mao Zedung 63, 143 Marathon, Battle of 182 Marcuse, Herbert 18 Martin, Hans-Peter 230, 233 Marx, Karl 5, 6, 25, 42, 209; on history 10, 238; on ‘laws’ 18; on social relationships 115 Marxism 63, 70, 99; Bhaskar and 5–6; conceptions of power 18; and Social Democratic Party 16; and Soviet power 113 mass production 84, 218 mathematics 134, 135, 169 meanings 105, 107; contextual nature 134; problem of objectivity 136–7 mechanisms: human 105; as metaphor 130; for peace 33 Mefford, Dwain 54–5 Megarian degree 187, 188 Melos episode (according to Thucydides) 15, 61, 167–92; dialogue 173–9, 182–3; iconic modelling of 179–80, 189, 190, 192; prophasis of 179–88; as rationalchoice model 168–73; as tragedy 188–90; see also Athens; Thucydides Mercosur 195 metaphors 128–9, 130–1, 132, 137; of correspondence 145; of mechanism 130; pluralist truth as 149–50 metaphysics 133 Methodenstreit 99 Methymna 184 metonyms 129, 132 Mill, John Stuart 76 mimesis 14, 140, 141, 142, 160, 173, 189 Mitrany, David 127 Mitylene 184–5 models: Alker and 12, 51–2, 56–61; ampliative and reductive approaches

124–6; descriptions 132; Deutsch’s use of 197; mathematical and statistical 135; as projective 126; source of 126; see also iconic modelling; Norden; Prisoner’s Dilemma Moore, Barrington 42 Morgenthau, Hans 17, 35, 36, 39, 43; Keohane on 167–8 Multilateral Agreement on Investments 235 multilateral regimes 84 multinational corporations 84, 111 Naess, Arne 149–50 NAFTA 195 narratives 56–7, 59, 140, 141; in security community 201; see also stories nation, concept of 26 natural law 32, 178; and justice 25, 30; and private property 25 natural sciences 4, 5, 8, 9, 101 negotiated environment model 230 neo-classical polimetrics 173 neo-liberalism 111, 220, 222, 224, 225, 227 neo-realism 4, 35–6, 39, 76; Thucydides and 168; Waltzian 74, 82, 127 neo-utilitarianism 3–4 New Age philosophies 7 New Left 217, 218 Newton, Isaac 22 Newtonian mechanics 21, 22, 23, 24, 36, 40, 127 Nicias, Peace of 182, 183 Niebuhr, Reinhold 34, 36, 39 Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 34, 35, 36, 37 NORDEK 228 Norden (Nordic model) 16–17, 210–36; Cold War and European context (as Wæver) 211–12; decline of 211, 229–30; and emancipation 228–9, 231–5; and European integration 229–31; in global political economy context 215–17; political economy explanation 218–22; problems with Waever’s account 213–15; real interest of 226–8; relative persistence of 222–6; reorienting 228–9; see also Swedish model Nordic Council 226 Nordic countries 201; co-operation within 225–6; government expenditure 223; nostalgia 212, 225, 229, 231; positivism 39; potential split between elite and population 225; see also

264 Index specific countries Norrie, Alan 7 Norway 211, 221, 222, 223, 224–5, 233 noumena see phenomena/noumena dichotomy objectivity 151 objects, nature of 99, 150 offshore financial centres 84, 233 Olafson, Frederick 54 Ollman, Bertell 49 Olympic Games 180–1 ontological realism 8, 77 ontology 103–4; and data 48, 51; Hume’s critique of 22–4; and levels-of-analysis problematic 73–4; necessity of 9–10; philosphical (limit to) 109; social 49, 77, 78, 99–122, 130; and truth 147, 148 Onuf, Nicholas 85–6, 108 order, problem of 3, 21, 30–1, 237; Alker on 63; Giddens on 104; inter-state 193–4 organisations 111, 134, 137; hierarchical 83, 111, 118 OSCE 195 outcomes 106, 112, 135 Paasikivi, J.K. 113 Palme, Olof 229 panopticism 52–3 Parsons, Talcott 105 passions: in Hume 30 Pax Americana 217 PD see Prisoner’s Dilemma peace: democratic theory of 3, 93–4, 130, 193–4; Kantian theory of 3, 17, 21, 33, 38, 39; research 11, 39, 43, 142; see also violence; war Peloponnesian War see Melos episode; Thucydides Pericles 179, 183–4, 186, 187–8, 190 Persian Wars 181–2, 187 phenomena/noumena dichotomy 33, 34, 35, 39–40 philosophy 8–9, 22–4, 147, 158; of science 5 physics, social 127 Plato 7, 69 poetic narrative structures 173 poetic transposition 140 Polanyi, Karl 42 political realism 11, 15, 39, 43, 70; and Melos episode 178–9; used to

legitimate aggression 189–90 Popper, Karl 148, 161 position-practice systems 104, 111–12 positivism 3–4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 21; and capitalism 25–6; conception of science 40; debate with post-positivism 36, 39–40; debate with traditionalism 36, 39; Humean 22–4, 25–6; and levels-ofanalysis problem 74–5, 76; as misleading term 41–2; and Nordic model 227; post-Second World War 43; and quantitative data 134; rationalchoice theory 168–73, 191, 227; and social factors (Ollman) 49; Weber and 35 post hoc ergo propter hoc-fallacy 76, 135 post-modernism 4, 36, 39, 70, 214, 227 post-positivism 4, 5, 36, 39–40 post-structuralism 4, 11, 39, 40, 228 power 153, 185–6, 188; and command of time and space 138; as domination 199, 201, 204, 205, 232; fragility of 157; relationship with action 112–14; as transformative capacity 199; see also balance of power power politics 169–70 practices: positioned 116, 119; relational 119; social 114 precedent logics 48 Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) 12, 46, 51–6, 65, 68 problem of induction 23, 31 problematic, international 2, 3–4, 15–16, 21, 31, 34–6, 203 property: private 25, 26–7rights 83, 206; see also capitalism prophasis 179; of Melos episode 179–88 Propp, Vladimir 59 Protestants 27 Putnam, Hilary 146 Rapoport, Anatol 55, 127, 142 rational-choice theory 168–73, 191, 227 rationalisation 151; see also aitiareasons rationality: book-keeping as a model (Hobbes) 24–5; as learning 172; see also judgemental rationalism Reagan, Ronald 111, 220 real interests 226–7 realism 5; Alker and 64; Christian 36; conceptions of levels 81–2; vs. idealism 34–5, 36, 40–1; ontological 8, 77; scientific 7, 93, 99; see also critical

Index 265 realism; neo-realism; political realism reality 100–1, 149, 174–5 realpolitik 34–5, 37; Athens and 176, 178, 185, 189 reasons:as causes 41, 72, 78, 87–90, 92; human 151, 200 ‘reductionism’ 76 Rehn-Meidner programme 216–17, 220 reification 11, 178 relations 79; dependency 60; see also external relations; internal relations; international relations; social relations relativism see epistemological relativism religion 21, 29–30, 34, 36 Renaissance 24, 26, 27, 30; humanism 29 repression 152 Rescher, Nicholas 106–7, 124, 174 research 129–30; choice of terminal consequences 141; as dialogue 173; problem of objectivity 136; subject and object relationship 41 resources 119 Ricoeur, Paul 7, 14, 55, 124; on temporality and narrative 139, 140, 141 Rome, Treaty of 231 Rorty, Richard 6, 77, 132–3, 145–7 Rothkin, Karen 55 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 2, 32 Ruggie, John 26, 204, 214 rules 173; constitutive 102–3, 104, 108, 111, 117, 119, 131, 201; regulative 102–3, 108, 119, 144, 201 Russett, Bruce 44, 45 SAF see Swedish Employers’ Association Sainte Croix, G.E.M. de 170 Saltsjöbaden capital-labour Accord (1938) 216–17, 218 Sandinistas 63 SAP see Social Democratic Party Saussure, Ferdinand de 116 Sayer, Andrew 7, 124 scepticism 23, 35, 36, 37, 227 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 35 Schumann, Harald 230, 233 science 155; Bhaskar on 100–1; philosophy of 5; and truth 146–7, 148, 150; see also natural sciences; Newtonian mechanics; social sciences Second World War 11, 43, 113, 193, 205 Secord, Paul F. 5, 88 security community 194–209; amalgamated 196, 201–2; cognitive

203–4; conditions required for 196–8; definition 203; global 203–5; and Kantian world order 205–8; learning and power 198–200; and Nordic countries 211–12; pluralistic 196–8, 202; role of emancipatory research 203; and self-transformative capability of social contexts 200–2, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 237 ‘security dilemma’ 193 security practices 62–3 Shatzki, Theodore 101 Shotter, John 103–4 Shotwell, James 39 Simon, Herbert 45 Singer, J.David 39, 73, 74, 75, 82 single-exit situations 169 situational determinism 169, 174 slaves 213 Smith, Adam 22, 29–30 Smith, Steve 13, 71–5, 89, 91, 99 social action 108–12, 116, 136, 173 social atomism 25 social context 85–6; force of 201; self-transformative capability 200–2, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 237 social democracy 211, 212, 214, 222, 223–4, 228, 229, 236; and corporatism 221 Social Democratic Party 16, 217, 218–20, 224 social engineering 31 social ontology 49, 77, 78, 99–122, 130 social policy: institutional re-distributive model 215 social relations 104, 115–16; difficulty of quantifying 134; see also external relations; internal relations social sciences 5, 8, 9, 101, 115, 160; as analysis of actions and structures 105–6; and hermeneutics 123; inadequacy of mathematical methods (Alker) 45–6, 47–51; and nature of truth 154–5; see also behaviouralism social structure 101–3, 114–18 social systems 118emergent powers and properties 83–5 ssocial world: hermeneutic character 102 sociology 115 South-east Asia 195 Soviet Union 210; Finland’s treaty with 211, 236; influence of Marxism 113; see also Cold War

266 Index space: in iconic models 137–9; and time 94, 118; see also geo-historical processes Sparta 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186–8 spatiality, horizontal 79, 80 Spinoza, Baruch de 30 state: and assumptions of space 138; behaviour 73–5; and hierarchies 83; modern (development of) 21, 26–8, 84, 237; Nordic preoccupation with 228; as open system 118; as person 87, 129; private property analogy 26; and problem of order 31; and quantitative data 134; relationship with institutions 79, 82–3; relationship with peace and violence 15; relationship with war 193–4; as unitary actor 71–2 states system theory 86–7 statistics 117, 133–5; Alker on 45–6, 49, 68 stoicism 35–6, 37, 227 stories 57–8; ‘two stories’ dichotomy 87–90; see also narratives structuralism 91, 99 structuration, theory of 99, 100, 112, 113, 114 structure: definitions of 114–15, 116–18; nature of 100; social 101–3, 114–18 Sweden 224, 235, 236; and Cold War 211, 212; economy 214, 215, 223, 233; and EU membership 222, 225; inequalities 223; 1980s 222; see also Swedish model Swedish Employers’ Association 217, 220 Swedish model 16, 215–22; decline of 215; see also Norden Swedish Union Federation 217, 220 symbols, technical 126 systems: comprehensive 149; definitions of 118; open 76, 117–18, 130, 135, 146, 155–6, 157, 202, 218; positionpractice 104, 111–12; social 83–5, 118theoretical 150 Tarski, Alfred 161, 162 tax havens 84, 233 taxation: EU 230; global 17, 232, 233–5, 236 Thatcher, Margaret 111, 220 thematising 133, 142 Third Way 16, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215, 217, 220, 222, 236 Thucydides (The Peloponnesian Wars) 15, 34, 41; aitia and prophasis concepts 179;

belief in brute power politics 169–70; on causes of Peloponnesian war 186–8; on development of Athens 192; different interpretations of 191; on Hellas 180–2; and history as tragedy 172–3; on lasting value of his work 189; moralism in 188; on Pericles 184; on Persian Wars 182; personal background 186, 192; ‘polimetrics’ of 173; tragedy in 172–3, 188–90; use of dialogue 168, 169–70, 189; see also Melos episode time: in iconic models 137–8, 139–41; and space 94, 118; see also geohistorical processes TINA-formations 227 TMSA see transformational model of social activity Tobin, James 223–5, 236 totalitarianism 68 Toulmin, S. 29 traditionalism: vs. positivism 36, 39; texts 134 tragedy: Aristotle on 188–9; history as 58; Marx on 238; in Thucydides 172–3, 188–90 transformational model of social activity (TMSA) 99, 102, 108 transformative action 120 trans-nationalisation 229–30 trials 137; by jury 103, 107–8, 110–11 truth: as metaphor 149–50; nature of 14, 143–50, 153–4, 155–6, 157–8, 161–2; ontological and alethic aspects 147, 148; politics and 143; Popper’s theory of 161 undecidability 154–5 understanding: of being 133; explanation as 72–3, 132–3; Habermas’s theory of 89–90, 104–5; as productive process 87 unemployment 223, 224 Unger, Roberto 159, 201 unhappy consciousness 34, 35, 36, 37, 227 United Nations: Alker’s studies of General Assembly 44–6, 47–8, 54, 68; collection and analysis of data 134; new proposals for 232, 235; Nordic countries in 232; Security Council 206 Urry, John 5 US Space Command Vision 2020 139 USA 210, 214; action against Soviet

Index 267 Union (1918) 143; covert activities 93; dollar no longer convertible to gold 218; hegemony of 205, 206–7, 232; interdependence school 39; networks and corporations 227; political realism 11; positivism 39; see also Bretton Woods system; Cold War Utopias 2; concrete 158–60, 195, 202, 203, 208 Utrecht, Peace of 2, 28 vagueness 103–4, 106–7 value judgements 153–4 Vico, Giovanni Battista 30 Vienna, Concert of 42, 84 violence 155–8; critical theory and avoidance of 14; ‘cultural’ 161as outcome of pathological learning process 152; politics and 196and security community 193–6, 200–1, 202, 203, 205; state and 15, 194; see also war voluntarism 24, 36, 51, 99 Wæver, Ole 92–3, 196, 208, 225; and Norden 16, 211–14, 226 Waisman, Friedrich 104, 106, 107 Walker, R.B.J. 40, 70, 79 Wallerstein, Immanuel 46, 56 Waltz, Kenneth 39, 74, 82, 83, 94 Waltzian neo-realism 82, 127; reductio ad absurdum of 74 war: and Kantian world order 21, 206,

207; people’s 63, 143; role of states 193–4; to end all wars 63, 143; twentieth century 193; see also violence Washington consensus 222, 228 Weber, Max 35, 37, 109, 128 welfare state 212, 214, 215, 220, 222, 225, 227; spending 220, 223 Wendt, Alexander 13, 86–7, 90–1, 93, 94, 99; debate with Hollis and Smith 71–5 Westphalia, Peace of 2, 27, 40 Wight, Martin 36 will, hardening of 199–200 will-to-power 36, 186 William of Orange 27 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow 62–3, 143 Winch, Peter 99, 104, 154 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 99, 104, 106, 107, 149 Wittgensteinians 39 Woodrow Wilson Chair (Aberystwyth) 39 World Bank 134, 205 world government 207 ‘world polities’ 80–1 World System Analysis 60, 127 World Trade Organization 205, 236 xympasa gnome 170 Young, Oran Zimmern, Alfred 39