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From Wendt to Kuhn: Reviving the ‘Third Debate’ in International Relations

  • Another ‘Great Debate’ in IR?
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Abstract

Constructivism is often identified as the legitimate occupant of the middle ground between rationalism and reflectivism that emerged from the Third Debate in international relations (IR) theory. Indeed, the rationalist–constructivist debate is already being framed as the next dominant debate with the IR community. This paper evaluates the bridge-building project as initiated by Alexander Wendt, and takes issue with the via media as proposed by the so-called conventional constructivists. It is claimed that the rationalist–constructivist debate has been limited to a discussion of ontology, which has brought about a contradiction between ontology and epistemology. Returning to the pressing epistemological issues that were put on the table by reflectivist scholars, this article refocuses the current debate by taking up the Kuhnian link between substance and science. It elaborates a view of science as a communal practice built on intersubjective conventions and argumentative procedures. This leads to an alternative conception of the middle ground as a communicative space.

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Notes

  1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fifth Pan-European International Relations Conference ‘Constructing World Orders’ of the ECPR/SGIR The Hague, September 9–11, 2004.

  2. See also Checkel (1997), Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 2001), Jupille et al. (2003), Risse (2002), and Sterling-Folker (2002). For a genuine debate between constructivism and rationalism, and an elaboration of a constructivist research program in positivist terms, see Checkel and Moravcsik (2001).

  3. For typologies of different types of constructivism, see for instance Katzenstein et al. (1998), Adler (1997), Hopf (1998), Ruggie (1998).

  4. Especially poststructuralists have questioned the idea of epistemology as rules on how to produce secure, let alone objective, knowledge (cf. Wæver, 1997, 16–17). Also, for them the ontological does not refer so much to ‘what is’ but is invoked mainly as a way of criticizing the onto-political (see e.g. Campbell, 1998; Edkins and Pin-Fat, 1999). However, even if the concern is with the onto-political (the way central ontological categories such as sovereignty or the state are politically constructed), it is still necessary to document carefully the dominant discourses through which the onto-political is produced, resisted and reified. In other words, poststructuralists too cannot escape the question of what constitutes good research in the examination of the onto-political (see Price and Reus-Smit, 1998; Milliken, 1999). See also the fourth section.

  5. Mervyn Frost (1986), Towards a Normative Theory of International Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; quoted by George and Campbell (1990). Lapid makes a similar remark when he talks about the tragedy of international relations, as ‘they proved incapable of either fruitfully adopting or decisively rejecting the grail of positivist science’ (Lapid, 1989, 246).

  6. This was also the point of contention in the so-called Second Debate between traditionalist/historians and behavioralists/scientists (cf. Schmidt, 2002). However, this ‘history vs science’ controversy did not really disturb the safe grounds of positivist epistemology, and focused on methodological issues instead (cf. Lapid, 1989). In this account, Wæver's (1996) explicit distinction between the interparadigm debate and the more philosophical debate between rationalists and reflectivists has indeed been useful to draw attention to the latter. Nevertheless, it risks a too clear separation of substance and science. This issue is pursued below.

  7. The strategy to reduce reflectivism to idealism and to reject it on those terms has been repeatedly deployed by IR theorists (see Mearsheimer, 1995; Østerud, 1996; Wight, 1999). On the difference between reflectivism and idealism, see Laclau and Mouffe (1990).

  8. Keohane (1988, 382) reproached reflectivist scholars for leading the discipline into a ‘debate at the purely theoretical level,’ which distracts researchers from the subject matter, world politics, in favor of a ‘programmatically diversionary philosophical discussion.’

  9. It should be noted that whereas Lapid equals the rationalist/reflectivist debate with positivism vs post-positivism, the ‘dissident agenda’ entails more than a post-positivist stance. George and Campbell (1990, 270) identify the following interdisciplinary elements of critical analysis: (i) inadequacy of positivist/empiricist approaches to knowledge; (ii) focus on actual process of knowledge construction in repudiating external sources of understanding (i.e. Archimedean points); (iii) focus on linguistic construction of reality; (iv) focus on question of subjectivity, that is, construction of meaning and identity.

  10. See Wendt (1992) for a first contribution to the bridge-building project, but notably Wendt (1999) for a full-fledged articulation of a social theory to international politics.

  11. For a detailed discussion of the uneasy tensions of structure/agency, and in particular of mental causality and rump materialism in ‘middle-ground’ constructivism see also Kessler (2007).

  12. In turn this makes it virtually impossible to theorize change (which was one of the original promises of constructivism and its main critique against neo-realism, see e.g. Wendt, 1992). Moreover, such a reading of norms ignores another of Wendt's premises, that is, the need to move beyond the level of behavior and take effects on identity and, ultimately, interests into account (see e.g. Wendt, 1999). Finally, it ignores Kratochwil and Ruggie's (1986, 767) famous critique that it is problematic to conceive of norms as causes, because they are counterfactually valid.

  13. The resort to cognitive psychology is advocated by Checkel (1998, 2001a). See also Johnston (2001). To understand how socialization works, many constructivists study arguing dynamics, focusing on the role of persuasion, deliberation, shaming and rhetorical action (see, among others, Risse et al., 1999; Risse, 2000; Checkel, 2001b; Schimmelfennig, 2001). Although substantial differences exist among them, most authors — drawing upon laboratory-like, non-contextual experiments of communication — go on to specify the conditions under which actors are more likely to persuade other actors of the appropriateness of new norms. The question is, however, whether socialization can be ‘measured’ accurately if one only focuses upon arguing dynamics as such, hence ignoring issues of embeddedness in broader discursive frameworks. Kessler (2007), in this regard, distinguishes between ‘thin’ and ‘thick intersubjectivity.’

  14. See also a recent exchange between Friedrich Kratochwil (2007a, 2007b) and Colin Wight (2007a, 2007b) on these issues.

  15. This parallels Poppers later conception of the scientific community as ‘a set of persons who share certain techniques such as measurement procedures, methodological commitments and presumptions of what constitutes “good practice” in a given field’ (Karl Popper (1972), Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Oxford University Press; quoted by Lebow, 2007, 17).

  16. In distinction to societas, Oakeshott refers to universitas as a mode of association that postulates the idea of a substantive or common purpose. This is the type of association characteristic for Kuhn's paradigmatic community which pursues a set of common goals, hence enjoying relatively full communication and unanimous professional judgement (Kuhn, 1970: 176–178).

  17. For a similar analogy, see Hermann (1998) who compares different approaches to distinct kind of grammatical structures and IR to the Tower of Babel. See also Guzzini (2001).

  18. In terms of engagement and open dialogue between opposing perspectives, a recent exemplar is Checkel and Moravcsik's (2001) forum about constructivism vs rationalism in European Union Politics. A similar endeavor was undertaken by Fierke and Nicholson (2001) in their conversation on the notion of games from a linguistic, respectively rational choice perspective. However, as discussed above, we take issue with the emphasis on synthesis, which seems to be the aim in both cases.

  19. Kratochwil (2000, 92) argues that Popper's stance in his later work does not differ that much from Kuhn's. In The Myth of the Framework Popper argues the virtue of disagreement, where communication does not depend on a shared (theoretical) framework, but rather on the respect of certain ethical principles. See also Lebow (2007).

  20. This has also been the stake of a recent debate on the merits of a pragmatic approach to theory building, as proposed by Kratochwil (2007b) in his Tartu lecture. See the special issue of the Journal of International Relations and Development 10(1): 2007.

  21. For instance, Foucault remarks that ‘those texts that we now would call scientific — those dealing with cosmology and the heavens, medicine and illnesses, natural sciences and geography — were accepted in the Middle Ages, and accepted as “true”, only when marked with the name of their author. “Hippocrates said”, “Plinty recounts”, were not really formulas of an argument based on authority; they were the markers inserted in discourses that were supported to be received as statements of demonstrated truth’ (Foucault, 1991, 109).

  22. In The Essential Tension Kuhn (1977, 322) lists five indicative criteria that partly overlap: ‘accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness.’ Whereas these count as a set of values to guide and shape theory development, these criteria are rather imprecise on their own terms — which is the(ir) very point: ‘What the tradition sees as eliminable imperfections in its rules of choice I take to be in part responses to the essential nature of science’ (Kuhn, 1977, 330). In other words, this only illuminates the social character of the scientific endeavor — because scientists may differ about the relative weight of the criteria, and for instance their application to concrete cases, science is not a determinate process dictated by ‘rational, unanimous choice’ and a given formula (Kuhn, 1977, 326, quoted by Suganami, 2007, 31). The discussion about ‘scientific’ criteria is as much part of the academic endeavor ‘of our making’ as the substance of particular research projects themselves.

  23. This includes conventions with regard to citations, footnotes and bibliographies (see also note 21).

  24. For instance, the operationalization of mutual constitution of much conventional constructivist work is problematic in this regard. While these scholars are to be praised for their efforts to deal with the structure/agency problem in empirical research, the proposed solution of ‘bracketing’ so far does not seem very satisfying for it ends up measuring the impact of structure upon agents on the one hand, and the impact of agents on structure, but cannot grasp the dynamic of mutual constitution. This is even more problematic in case of those studies that add a temporal dimension to the analysis. Alternatively, such analyses result in privileging the agent over the structure, or vice versa.

  25. Pollins (2007, 93–94) usefully distinguishes between falsifiability and falsificationism. Whereas he rejects the latter because of its positivist overtones, he embraces the ideal of falsifiability. Falsifiability can be defined simply, as King et al. (1994, 19) do, as ‘the principle that theories should be stated clearly enough so that they could be wrong.’

  26. To a certain extent this possibility is reflected in how we teach students about the historiography of our discipline. Being detached to the enmities of the debates, they are often encouraged to put on different hats in order to give specific theories their best shot, and dissect internal inconsistencies at the same time. On parochialism in teaching, see Alker and Biersteker (1984).

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  1. Department of Political Science, Leiden University, Postbus 9555, Leiden, 2300 RB, The Netherlands

    Tanja E Aalberts

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, Odense, C 5000, Denmark

    Rens van Munster

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Aalberts, T., van Munster, R. From Wendt to Kuhn: Reviving the ‘Third Debate’ in International Relations. Int Polit 45, 720–746 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2008.26

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