The Politics of Normative Arguing in Regional Organizations (original) (raw)

Reframing the International

ERIS – European Review of International Studies, 2014

The 'modern' world from the 17 th century to the 20 th was characterised by the consolidation of an 'inter-national' system, 1 structured around relations among sovereign nation-states. This system grew out of the post-medieval European states system and the spread of European (and later American and Asian) interstate relations, 18 th and 19 th century imperialism, and great Power (later super Power) conflict in the 19 th and 20 th centuries, culminating in the emergence of postcolonial 'new states' and developing countries in the middle of the 20 th century. This system was state-centric in two ways. On the one hand, the domestic politics of states focused increasingly on the centripetalisation 2 of political power within those states into what have been called 'arenas of collective action'; on the other hand, states increasingly interacted systemically with each other, making 'credible commitments' 3 in their roles as segmentally differentiated 'unit actors' 4-or, indeed, credibly breaking those commitments through interstate conflict and war, only to establish new structural forms in their wake. 5 These two dimensions have been seen as reinforcing each other in virtuous-or indeed vicious-circles until the late 20 th century. In this context, the international-or interstate-system has been seen as characterised by hierarchy-that is, which states are up and which are down-and by polarity-that is, how many states (and their alliance formations) 'counted' as structurally significant actors. States were constrained mainly to seek 'relative gains' vis-à-vis each other rather than to pursue 1 Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Political Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996). 2 I use the awkward term 'centripetalisation' rather than 'centralisation' in order to signal that this process does not necessarily involve a pyramidal hierarchisation of structures and institutions within states, but rather a potentially complex and endogenously differentiated system that is nevertheless dynamically unified around central principles and forms of institutionalisation and behaviour: see

The Language of International Actorness

The Language of Interstate Relations, 2013

The Language of International Actorness Most of us have some preconception of world affairs, no matter how incomplete it is. Scholars of IR are not unanimous in their views on what precisely constitutes the scope of the discipline. While the political state used to be considered the major, if not the only, point of interest for theorists of IR, recent decades have witnessed an uncontrolled growth of other international entities. In this chapter, our focus is on the language used in both IR theory and practice whenever specific reference is being made to the major divisions of the world-system. Those divisions have traditionally been called actors (or agents). Both terms evoke the idea either of acting or of those who actively participate in relations and exert their influence upon other actors. The language of international actorness generally conforms to the language used in any of the major schools of IR. Owing to the multiplicity of studies and approaches, those schools have been given different names. The well-established division of schools in IR can be enumerated as follows: (1) realist, (2) pluralist, liberal, or rationalist, and (3) structuralist, Marxist, or revolutionist. All three paradigms deserve a summary description. Realism, the oldest tradition in IR, goes as far back as ancient Greece and has become the dominant paradigm within the contemporary discipline of IR (see Beer and Hariman, 1996: 1). The Athenian general Thucydides, Chinese strategist Sun Tsu, Indian statesman Kautilya, Italian diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and many others in more recent times have contributed substantially to the realist tradition. Among the commonly accepted characteristic features of the realist doctrine is the deeply flawed nature of humanity, that is, self-interest, pride, anger, and ambition provoking fear and suspicion among people, putting at risk the possibility of 7

European Journal of International Relations-2013-Dunne-405-25

With a view to providing contextual background for the Special Issue, this opening article analyses several dimensions of 'The end of International Relations theory?' It opens with a consideration of the status of different types of theory. Thereafter, we look at the proliferation of theories that has taken place since the emergence of the third/fourth debate. The coexistence and competition between an ever-greater number of theories begs the question: what kind of theoretical pluralism should IR scholars embrace? We offer a particular account of theoretical engagement that is preferable to the alternatives currently being practised: integrative pluralism. The article ends on a cautiously optimistic note: given the disciplinary competition that now exists in relation to explaining and understanding global social forces, International Relations may find resilience because it has become theory-led, theory-literate and theory-concerned.

The Reaches of the International System: Six Channels

Critically building upon existing discussion on system, structure, and the agent-structure problématique in IR and the broader social sciences, I argue that the international system impacts states via six distinct but interacting channels. Because existing discussions have either relied on one or two of the six channels or failed to adequately appreciate the interaction of the six channels, much of our existing understanding of states’ ideas and behavior has been inadequate. The new framework developed here sheds important lights on some of the key debates on the making of states and states’ ideas and behaviors in IR, thus adding clarity and coherence to our understanding. Our framework also contributes to the recent resurging interest in systemic approach in IR and the broader social sciences.