As I returned to my academic studies after a 4-year break, I believe it is time to ask age-old questions and reach at conclusions that leave you hanging. Social sciences, anyone?
Recently, I began re-reading some graduate-level textbooks on IR theories, right from the beginning. As any good book, my IR textbooks begin with a chapter penned for convincing the reader that the book is talking about something worth listening to. And this translates into that International Relations discipline would shatter without IR theories. Well, IR (in capital letters, the academic discipline) would probably collapse instantly if we removed the theories but would international relations (the daily conduct of world politics) survive or even care about such a catastrophe?
For Steve Smith, IR theories fill the knowledge gaps. He starts out with the premise that even the decision makers in international relations sometimes don’t know the reasons behind the things they do. He says theories help us stuff these voids[1]. Therefore I understand that theories are for academic purposes only; they help the researcher make sense of an event, even when its culprits are not sure what they are doing.
However, I am quite sure that leaders do know what they are doing even if their course of action might be against our common sense. And on that knowledge gap, after spending some years as a part of state machinery, I have seen that decision-makers are daily supplied with a wide spectrum of expertise information, which usually cover most of the aspects of a given issue. For example, when Turkish president intends to visit a foreign country, he is provided with a quasi-encyclopedic booklet that covers bilateral political, economic, cultural, and societal relations as well as other issues Turkey wants to have a chat with that country. And occasionally these include classified information that are off limits for a researcher.
Likewise, while a researcher usually confines herself to a particular aspect of an issue, the decision maker is legally responsible for all related branches. So, is it still possible to talk about a knowledge gap to be filled with a theory on the side of the statespeople? This does not mean that they know everything. Every state keeps secrets and hiding information lies at the heart of diplomacy. But for what they don’t know, they make guesses or issue-based, operative theories such as “if we suggest cooperating on X, they will probably reject because they have other interests in the Y business with Z state.”
All of these up to now, makes me think that IR theories are just for academic purposes. They seem to be created to cover up for the information that the researcher cannot reach but the decision maker already posseses.
But before my professors who taught me IR theory lament the time they spent on me, I need to mention the some of the possible answers from IR literature.
Robert Cox for example, would maintain that the presidential booklet would be rife with implicit theories and value-laden statements about how life and international relations should be.[2]
Booth would argue that IR theories are indeed taken into account by statespeople for guiding their practice. And, he would warn, if these theories are inconsiderate of the wellbeing of individuals, they would open the path for disastrous consequences.[3]
Bilgin and Morton would say that the booklet was probably beefed up with knowledge that had already been produced under the guidance of an implicit or explicit theory.[4]
While writing this post and reading some more at the same time, I realized that the missing information which theory compensates for is not about the trade figures between two countries, number of citizens living in a foreign country nor a classified report about strength of rebel factions in a civil conflict. Rather, it is about the embedded philosophical assumptions[5] that led to compilation of a presidential info-booklet.
Going back to my initial question: can international relations survive without theories? Well probably not. That’s because even before the establishment of the discipline in 1919 and even before there were nations, the inter-city-state/inter-monarch/inter-faith relations were guided by set of ideas on how the world should be and who should get what. That presidential booklet would only reflect a fraction of these guiding ideas.
Yet, would it survive if we stopped studying these theories? That question begs for further research and thinking.
[1] Smith, Steve. “Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations.” International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity. Ed. Timothy Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 1-13.
[2] Cox, Robert W. “Social Forces States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory.” Millenium: Journal of International Studies 10.2 (1981): 126-55
[3] Booth, Ken. “Human wrongs and international relations.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) (1995): 103-126.
[4] Bilgin, Pinar, and Adam David Morton. “Historicising representations of’failed states’: beyond the cold-war annexation of the social sciences?.” Third World Quarterly 23.1 (2002): 55-80.
[5] Hedley Bull (1973: 183-4) is quoted for this argument in Burchill, Scott, and Andrew Linklater. “Introduction.” Theories of International Relations. By Scott Burchill et al. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 1-30.
Emre Baran 