parademic falls in ir theory

8/8/2019 Parademic Falls in IR Theory

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Paradigmatic Faults in International-

Relations TheoryPatrick Thaddeus Jackson

American University

AND

Daniel H. Nexon

Georgetown University

American scholars routinely characterize the study of international rela-tions as divided between various Kuhnian paradigms or Lakatosianresearch programmes. Although most international relations scholarshave abandoned Kuhns account of scientific continuity and change,many utilize Lakatosian criteria to assess the progressive or degener-ative character of various theories and approaches in the field. Weargue that neither specific areas of inquiry (such as the democraticpeace) nor broader approaches to world politics (such as realism, lib-eralism, and constructivism) deserve the label of paradigms orresearch programmes. As an alternative, we propose mapping thefield through Weberian techniques of ideal-typification.

T.S. Kuhns notion of paradigms and Imre Lakatos concept of research pro-grammes continue to influence how international relations scholars map ourfield. Some represent international relations theory, at least in the United States,as a three-cornered fight between realism, liberalism, and constructivism (Walt1998); they describe each as paradigms or research programmes (Gellerand Vasquez 2004). Others speak of distinct research programmes suchas analysis of the democratic peace (Ray 2003), balance-of-power theory

(Vasquez 2003), and power-transition theory (DiCicco and Levy 1999). In thisessay, we argue that none of these collections of theories qualify as Kuhnian para-digms or Lakatosian research programmes.

Our core argument is as follows: To qualify as a paradigm, a set of theoriesmust involve not merely common assumptions and orientations but shared incom-mensurable content with respect to some other paradigm. Although Lakatos rejectswhat he takes to be Kuhns incommensurability thesis, his research programmes

Authors note: For helpful comments and criticisms, we thank the editorial team at International Studies Quarterly,

a surprising number of anonymous reviewers, J. Samuel Barkin, Jeffrey Checkel, Raymond Duvall, Stacie Goddard,

Peter Howard, Victoria Hui, Yosef Lapid, Richard Ned Lebow, Jennifer Mitzen, Jennifer Sterling-Folker, as well as

participants at panels at the 5th Annual Pan-European Conference on International Relations, the International

Studies Association, and a conference on Realist Constructivism sponsored by the Mortara Center for Interna-

tional Studies at Georgetown University. We are particularly grateful to Michael D. Gordin and Rom Harre for gen-

eral comments and suggestions. Finally, we extend special appreciation to the late Steven Poe, whose careful

consideration, honesty, and willingness to take a chance on this manuscript made its publication possible.

2009 International Studies Association

International Studies Quarterly (2009) 53, 907930


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are also comprised of theories that share the same sort of content that Kuhndescribed as sources of incommensurability.

The problem for the use of Kuhnian and Lakatosian frameworks to describetheoretical aggregates (Elman and Elman 2002) such as realism, construc-tivism, and the democratic peace is that the specific theories conventionallyassociated with them lack shared incommensurable content; some of the bettercandidates for sources of incommensurability in the discipline, by contrast, cutacross them. It follows that we should not use Kuhnian and Lakatosian accountsof theory choice to evaluate these aggregates, and that treating them as para-digms or research programmes distorts dialog and debate in the field.

But if neither framework describes these aggregates, how should we under-stand their place in international relations theory? We argue that specific areasof shared research, such as power transitions, can be labeled research pro-grams so long as we stipulate that this does not imply Lakatosian philosophicalbaggage (for example, Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner 1998:646-647). Butmore general aggregates such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism are bet-

ter seen as ideal-typifications of core wagerssometimes implicit, other timesexplicitabout the nature of international politics. These ideal typifications, inturn, produce property spaces within which many substantive theories reside. Weexpand on this argument in the second part of the paper.

Of Paradigms and Research Programmes

In this section, we argue against designating many theoretical aggregates in inter-national relations scholarship as Kuhnian paradigms or Lakatosian researchprogrammes. First, the specific histories of the natural sciencesand sometimesmathematicssupply the empirical data for Kuhn and Lakatos. The history of

the field of international relations departs markedly, however, from the historyof chemistry, physics, or biology. It lacks, for instance, the background conditionsof concrete, widely recognized, scientific achievements of the kind that Kuhnand Lakatos take for granted in their analyses of the natural sciences. Whateverthe merits of international relations scholarship, it has not allowed us to manipu-late our environment in ways equivalent to the natural sciences; it is not unques-tionably progressive in the same way as physics or chemistry. Therefore weconfront no puzzle of scientific progress of the kind Kuhn and Lakatosassume (cf. Chernoff 2002, 2007).1

Second, collections of specific theories constitute a paradigm when they sharecommon content that renders them incommensurable vis-a-vis other paradigms.

A Lakatosian research programme also requires content that produces whatKuhn would call local incommensurabilities with other research programs.Like the theories that comprise a paradigm, those belonging to competingresearch programmes cannot be directly tested against one another. In conse-quence, we must appeal to Lakatos Methodology of Scientific Research Pro-grammes (MSRP) to provide second-order, or external, criteria of theory choice.But these conditions do not obtain for most of the theoretical aggregates thatinternational relations theorists classify as paradigms or research programmes.

Most putative research programmes, such as power-transition theoryand democratic-peace theory, are commensurable and comparable.

1 International-relations scholars also embraced Kuhn and Lakatos out of their aspiration for the field to

achieve the status of a science. Both provide (or provided) accounts of the nature of science and scientific pro-

gress compatible with disciplinary practices in international relations and political science scholarship. Thus, the

familiar narrative is that scholars gravitated to Kuhn because his approach suggested that division into multiple

camps is compatible with science, but once they recognized his apparent relativism, they turned to Lakatos as

a more scientific alternative (see, for example, Ball 1976). We thank one of our reviewers for raising this issue.

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Many of the specific theories conventionally associated with the differ-ent isms, such as realist and liberal theories utilizing rational-choiceanalytics, are commensurable and comparable.

The most plausible sources of incommensurability in the field involvemuch larger debates about how to pursue social-scientific knowledge,complexes of theoretical terms, and so forth; these sources of incom-mensurability are orthogonally related to the isms.

It follows that neither such specific research programs nor the isms shouldbe treated as unitswhether paradigms or research programmesfor the pur-pose of theory choice, and that we need not appeal to second-order criteria toresolve many existing inter-paradigmatic debates in so-called internationalrelations theory.

Kuhnian Paradigms

Kuhn (1970a:154) sought to make sense of the historical development of sci-ence, specifically the interruption of periods of normal science by scientificrevolutions consisting of those non-cumulative developmental episodes inwhich an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part of an incompatible newone. Kuhn (1970a:85) argued, at least initially, that the changes in the historyof science between sets of fundamental assumptions about the world and how tostudy it are akin to change[s] in visual gestalt whereby something that previ-ously appeared one way to a research community subsequently appears in a dif-ferent way. Kuhn (1970a:122) further suggested that these changes infundamental worldview arise, contra many existing accounts, from a relativelysudden and unstructured event by which our perceptions are reordered.

Hence, no exclusively logical criteria can entirely dictate the conclusion thatthe scientist must draw from particular empirical observations (Kuhn1970b:19). The growth of anomalies within a paradigm may, over time, lead toan epistemic crisis in the scientific community and, given the right conditions,paradigmatic change.

Kuhns account challenged a number of views of science, but most notably theclaim of deducibility, that is, that earlier sciences are derivable from later. Theexistence of incommensurable content in paradigmatic cores precludes thedeductibility of pre-revolution theories from post-revolution ones (Shapere1964:389). A post-revolution theory represents not a simple replacement for apre-revolution theory, but rather a change in at least some of a theorys basic

ontological categories (Sankey 1993:770). For Kuhn, in fact, one cannot unpro-blematically test paradigms against one another: the very possibility of scientificcommunication and dialog becomes problematic and the process of theorychoice can no longer be reduced to the simple picture presented, for example,by the logical empiricists (Biagioli 1993:211; see also Wight 1996:296).

Kuhns incommensurability thesis (IT) accounts for why we might need toappeal to, for example, sociological and psychological factors in order to explainthe history of paradigmatic shifts. It also occupies a central role in his distinctionbetween normal and revolutionary science. Without paradigmatic incom-mensurability, major changes in scientific knowledge would simply be break-throughs that progressively improved upon, or discarded, earlier theories (forexample, Meiland 1974:182; Szumilewicz 1977:346; Sankey 1993:761). But sincefor Kuhn different paradigms divide up the phenomenal world differently, therecan be no simple empirical adjudication between them, and in order to accountfor the history of science we need a division between moments of normalscienceempirical work within a paradigmand revolutionary scienceempirical work that establishes a new paradigm (Chernoff 2005:181).

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Forms of IncommensurabilityKuhn initially offered three sources of paradigmatic incommensurability, whichKitcher (1982:690) terms conceptual incommensurability, observationalincommensurability, and methodological incommensurability (see also Pearce1982:395; Sudhakar 1989; Sankey 1993). The first involves shifts in the linguisticelements of scientific theories, or what some term meaning variance acrosstheories (Sankey 1991). According to Chen (1990:67), two theories are incom-mensurable if and only if they are articulated in languages that are not mutuallytranslatable or communicable without loss. Such meaning variance, as Farrell(2003:80) notes, implies that there can be no relations of strict deducibilitybetween any two universal theories. This means that, for example, Aristotelianphysics cannot be stated in the terminology of Newtonian physics (Szumilewicz1977:346; Sankey 1993:762).

The second kind of incommensurability results from differing assumptionsabout the nature of evidence that counts for the evaluation of theories. Rejectinga paradigm involves, in consequence, an often profound shift in scientists work-

ing observational theories. Thus, even if protagonists in an inter-paradigmaticdebate could formulate their rival claims in a common language, they couldnot agree on a shared body of observational evidence against which competingclaims are to be judged. In the absence of such agreement, progress cannotproceed through a smooth process of testing and discarding theories (Kitcher1982:690).

Finally, paradigms may involve differences over the very methods that comprisescientific investigation. Galileos opponents, for example, rejected many aspectsof his claims, including the early form of the hypothetical-deductive method heused to adjudicate the truth-status of the Copernican and Ptolemaic models ofthe solar system (Kuhn 1957). As a result, notes Kitcher (1982:690), even

given a common language for the formulation of rival claims and a shared bodyof evidence, reasonable disagreement could still persist among proponentsworking in different paradigms (see also Meiland 1974:183184).

Kuhn faced intense criticism for his claims. Many of Kuhns critics reactedagainst the implication that the history of scientific progress stemmed from irra-tional and non-rational factors, particularly socio-psychological ones, and there-fore that no objective criteria for resolving inter-paradigm disagreementsexisted (cf. Meiland 1974:179, 184185; Laudan 1976:596; Siegel 1976:422, 448;Chen 1990:67). These criticisms involved a multi-pronged attack on Kuhnsunderstanding of scientific change, as well as on his formulation of incommensu-rability. For our purposes, one of the most important arguments centered on the

relationship between incommensurability and comparability. Many read Kuhn asarguing that incommensurability rendered paradigms incomparable. His criticscontended that paradigms might involve incommensurable internal standards,but this did not preclude the existence of objective external standards to judgebetween them. In other words, incommensurabilities between the internal crite-ria of paradigms do not reflect upward, in criterial differences at the secondlevel (Scheffler 1982:84; also Shapere 1964).

Kuhn responded that his opponents deployed an overly narrow understandingof rationality, chose to ignore the complicated history of the rise and fall of sci-entific theories, and mischaracterized his views of scientific progress. In fact,Kuhn repeatedly stressed that the emergence of a new paradigm owes a greatdeal to the scientific communitys widespread recognition of its concrete achieve-ments; Kuhn argued that incommensurability did not render paradigms literallynon-comparable (for example, Kuhn 1970c:139, 143146; Meiland 1974:182187;Siegel 1980:363; Sankey 1993:762; Wight 1996:305). Kuhn also increasinglyshifted the focus of IT toward a more limited claim about meaning variance,sometimes called local incommensurability (for example, Chen 1990:6768).



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So construed, incommensurability is the limited ability to translate from a localsubgroup of terms of one theory into another local subgroup of terms inanother theory. As such, language peripheral to the non-translatable subgroupof terms constitutes semantic common ground between theories (Sankey1991:771).

Kuhn notes, in this context, that linguistic-taxonomic architecture oftenchanges in the history of science and that it is simply implausible that someterms should change their meaning when transferred to a new theory withoutinflecting the terms transferred with them. Thus, local incommensurabilitiesstill present problems for the deducibility of some scientific theories from others(Kuhn 1982:671). He illustrates this point though the example of phlogiston ineighteenth-century chemistry. Although it appears that modern-languagephrases might be compounded to produce a modern-language translation ofphlogiston this is not the case. Among the phrases which describe how thereferents of the term phlogiston are picked out are a number that includeother untranslatable terms like principle and element. Together with phlogis-

ton, they constitute an interrelated or inter-defined set that must be acquiredtogether, as whole, before any of them can be used, applied to natural phenom-ena (Kuhn 1982:676).

Lakatosian Research Programmes

Some argue that Kuhn and Lakatos embrace different epistemologies orincompatiblemetatheories (Elman and Elman 2002:59). Others claim thatthe two scholars practical accounts of scientific progress are indistinguishablefrom one another (for example, Kuhn 1970c; Barnes 1983:6163; Nadel1984:447448). Lakatos, in fact, accepts Kuhns thesis that, in the context of

normal science theories are relatively immune against falsification but con-cludes that the immunization strategies that Kuhn had claimed for normal sci-ence are rational after all. Lakatos MSRP thus seeks to develop objectivecriteria for the appraisal of various research strategies (Radnitzky 1991:277278). As such, Lakatos rejects the claim that scientific theories cannot be adjudi-cated via second-order criteria. But he accepts the claim that scientific theoriescannot simply be compared with one another solely on the basis of empirical evi-dence. MSRP, then, is an attempt to preserve objective, if retrospective, second-order criteria for scientific progress in the light of the difficulties Kuhn identi-fied as stemming from paradigmatic incommensurability (Vasquez 1998:30).

The Architecture of MSRPLakatos research programmes, as most international relations scholars know,involve leading ideas that constitute their respective hard cores. As Larvor(1998:51) explains, these represent a set of commitments which cannot beabandoned without abandoning the research programme altogether. Researchprogrammes also contain a protective belt of auxiliary hypothesis that shieldthe hard core from direct refutation. This protective belt, although subject tomajor alterations and reformulations, remains guided by the research pro-grammes heuristic, that is, a set of problem-solving techniques for scientistsengaged in a particular research programme. Lakatos, argued that, for exam-ple, the heuristic of Newtons research programme chiefly consisted in its math-ematical apparatus: the differential calculus, the theory of convergence anddifferential and integral equations (Larvor 1998:53).

The negative heuristic instruct[s] us to modify auxiliary hypothesis ratherthan to change the hard core and to rule out radically different sorts ofexplanatory attempts (Koertge 1970:161). The positive heuristic functions toprotect the scientists from becoming confused by the ocean of anomalies. It



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lays out a programme which lists a chain of even more complicated models sim-ulating reality: the scientists attention is riveted on building his models followinginstructions which are laid down in the positive part of the programme. Indoing so, the scientist ignores the actual counterexamples, the available data(Lakatos 1978:135).

Lakatos MSRP framework therefore reformulates the architecture of Kuhnsargument (for example, Koertge 1970:161; Kuhn 1970c; Nadel 1984:447). Scien-tific research programmes take the place of paradigms. The interplay of the

positive and negative heuristic of a research programme operates to account forKuhns commitments and puzzle-solving of the normal scientists while the concepts of

progressive and degenerative problem-shifts serve to explain paradigm changes as aresult of rational decisions rather than with reference to Gestalt Psychology(Kulka 1977:325326; emphasis original; see also Lakatos 1970b:175). Workingwithin a research program remains rational for Lakatos as long as the programas a whole continues to generate progressive problemshifts, but becomes increas-ingly risky as these problemshifts take degenerative forms. After a certain point,

scientists abandon the research program in favor of another one (Yuxin 1990;Elman and Elman 2002).2

Lakatos and Remediable IncommensurabilityMost proponents of MSRP in the field of international relations do not considerthe identification of incommensurable, or incommensurable-like, content as abasis for distinguishing between research programmes (for example, Vasquez1998; Elman and Elman 2002). And not without good reason: Lakatos rejectsITas he understood it. Lakatos (1970a:125n37), for example, explicitly dis-misses the psychological incommensurability of rival paradigms on thegrounds that some scientists participated in multiple, but supposedly incommen-

surate, research programmes.But, as Lakatos also argues, the empirical content of a theory depends on

our decision as to which are our observational theories and which anomalies areto be promoted to counterexamples. Indeed, if one attempts to compare theempirical content of different scientific theories in order to see which is morescientific, then one will get involved in an enormously complex and thereforehopelessly arbitrary system of decisions about their respective classes of relativelyatomic statements and their fields of application. Such comparison, henotes, is possible only when one theory supercedes another. And even then,there may be difficulties (which would not, however, add up to irremediableincommensurability) (Lakatos 1978:111n8; emphasis original).

Here we find the crucial role that, in effect, local incommensurabilities play inMSRP and Lakatos delineation of research programmes. First, although researchprogrammes are not irremediably incommensurable, we cannot adjudicatebetween specific theories found within two different research programmesthrough a straightforward set of experiments (that is, we need second-order cri-teria to render them comparable).3 Second, MSRP provides second-order criteriafor rendering the development of science rational and progressive, and thereforeresolves the problems Kuhn identified with paradigmatic incommensurability.Third, such local incommensurabilities create sufficient difficulties, in fact, thatonly retrospective judgments by the scientific communityalong the lines of the

2 Lakatos notion of progress, as Dessler (2003:382) notes, fuses the answers to the demarcation and ratio-

nality questions in a single argument. It allows us, in principle, to differentiate science from pseudo-science: a

discipline is scientific so long as progressive programmes triumph over degenerating ones (Larvor 1998:53).3 Compare Lakatos solution, which accepts the difficulty of a direct translation between theories, with

Poppers reassertion of methodological falsification as the solution to the problems that Kuhn identifies. Also note

that Lakatos, like Kuhn, accepts normal science as part of the activity of science properly understood (Koertge

1970:161), while for Popper Kuhnian normal science remains justbad science.



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criteria found in MSRPallow it to account for the failure of any given researchprogramme. As Krasner (1985:143) argues, Lakatos, despite his challenge toKuhn, is not trying to restore the traditional view in which science is seeking theone real world, sharply distinguishing between theory and observation, and read-ily accepting or rejecting hypothesis on the basis of empirical testing.

Translation problems between theories play an important role in Lakatosattempts to provide an objective theory of scientific progress. Lakatos acceptsthe lack of a theoretically neutral substratum of facts against which two theo-ries could be measured. Lakatos (1978:110) borrowsfrom conventional-ismthe license rationally to accept by convention not only spatio-temporallysingular factual statements but also spatio-temporally universal theories. Henotes that institutional practices, rather than a firm grounding in some set ofempirical facts, arbitrate scientific truth on a day-to-day basis: Poppers greatnegative crucial experimentswhich were supposed to have falsified theo-riesdisappear: crucial experiment is an honorific title, which may, ofcourse, be conferred on certain anomalies, but only long after the event, only

when one programme has been defeated by another one (Lakatos 1978:111).Discussing the clash between Galilean and Aristotelian conceptions of the cos-mos, Lakatos (1978:98) points out that it was not Galileospure, untheoreti-calobservations that confronted Aristotelian theory but rather Galileosobservations in the light of his optical theory that confronted the Aristote-lians observations in the light of their theory of the heavens. There existsan irreducibly conventional element in deciding whether a particular experi-mental trial falsifies the entirety of a substantive theory (Lakatos 1978:107).

What Lakatos calls the hard core of a research programme, therefore, con-sists not merely of substantive claims, but also contains commitments to particularkinds of observational theory: ideas about how measurement works, how terms are

to be defined, and how auxiliary hypotheses derived from the theorys hard coreare to be evaluated. The genius of the Newtonian research programme, Lakatos(1978:133) suggests, came not merely from its substantive assumptions aboutmotion, but also from its novel way of doing science, which involved the sub-sumption of empirical anomalies under a simple set of laws. Similarly, Bohrsproduction of a novel account of light emission involved a relaxation of the stan-dard of theoretical consistency in the short-term so that new phenomena couldbe predicted (Lakatos 1978:141142).

It follows that the hard core of a research programme contains not merelya list of variables that adherents believe to be relevant to their explanations anda set of favored techniques for gathering and evaluating empirical data, but also

epistemological and ontological differences that preclude nave falsificationismor other non-MSRP standards of inter-theoretical adjudication. This produces,not irremediable incommensurability of the sort (wrongly) associated withKuhn, but rather something we might refer to as remediable incommensura-bilitythat is, a translation problem that can be worked around withoutrecourse to the imagery of fundamental discontinuity that incensed so many ofKuhns harshest critics.

This also explains why, for Lakatos, judgments about the progressive or degen-erating character of a particular problemshift are necessarily retrospective. Someinterpreters of Lakatos argue that the notion of progressive problemshiftsbetween and within research programs can be used to advise scholars on howto respond to degeneration (Elman and Elman 1997:925). But Lakatos(1978:117; emphasis original) criticizes Kuhn (and others) for conflat[ing]methodological appraisal of a programme with firm heuristic advice about what todo. Lakatos distinguishes between the internal and the external history ofa research programme, arguing that normative reconstructions that provide an



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internal history may have to be supplemented by empirical external theories toexplain the residual non-rational factors.

The history of science is always richer than its rational reconstruction.Externalhistory either provides non-rational explanation of the speed, locality, selective-

ness, etc. of historic events as interpreted in terms of internal history; or, when his-tory differs from its rational reconstruction, it provides an empirical explanationof why it differs. But the rational aspect of scientific growth is fully accounted forby ones logic of scientific discovery (Lakatos 1978:118).

The rational reconstruction of a research programmeas well as its historicaltwists and turnscan only be comprehended in hindsight. Only after the scien-tific community makes a practical determination about the importance of a par-ticular experiment or controversy can we make judgments about whether theirresolution amounted to progress or degeneration. We cannot make such a deter-mination in advance, because the answer depends on which research pro-

grammes terminology and concepts are used to make sense of the controversialissue. As Lakatos (1978:113) argues, one can be wise only after the event.The contents of a research programme, moreover, may not be identical with

any of its practitioners specifications of the research programme: Prout neverarticulated the Proutian programme: the Proutian programme is not Proutsprogramme (Lakatos 1978:119). Rather, a research programme constitutes, ineffect, an ideal-typical specification of how a series of theories relate to oneanother; its utility is in the evaluation of that series, not in directing the series asit evolves. We cannot easily know whether a problemshift was progressive or notuntil we see the whole series of subsequent research projects that arose from it.Viewed prospectively, science is a good deal messier than the abstract series thatthe philosopher derives from it. As Lakatos (1978:131) argues, no set of humanjudgments is completely rational no rational reconstruction can ever coincide with actual history. Hence Lakatos approach is best suited for a retrospective,and (Popperian) third-world, account of the progress of research programmes(Barnes 1983:6162).

(Mis)applications to International Relations Theory

Our discussion of Kuhnian paradigms and Lakatosian research programmes sup-ports the two claims we advanced at the outset. Both scholars seek to make senseof the history of the natural sciences, particularly with respect to how that historyconfounds earlier universal theories of scientific progress. Thus, both argue

about the specifics of the differences between, for example, classical physics andquantum mechanics, phlogiston theory and modern chemistry, as well as Galileofrom his various critics. Both Kuhn and Lakatos ultimately appeal to the judg-ment of the scientific community concerning the existence of concrete, well-rec-ognized advances in scientific thought.4 We should, therefore, exercise caution when it comes to applying their accounts of scientific progress to the field ofinternational relations. We should be particularly reticent to apply them tocontemporaneous theories in the field, as we lack the luxury of retrospectivereconstruction when assessing such putative paradigms and research pro-grammes.

But if we still desire to apply Kuhnian or Lakatosian metrics for theory

choice, then we must demonstrate that the theoretical aggregates we classify as

4 On this point, Radnitzky (1991:277278) notes that Lakatos falls back on appraisals contained in the nor-

mative basic judgments of the scientific elite. This again leads to a circle: in order to determine who should

belong to the scientific elite, we need objective criteria for appraising past achievement. See also Farrell

(2003:6064).



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paradigms or research programmes qualify as such; we need to identifyinternal incommensurabilities that differentiate them from other theoreticalaggregates in the field and that require recourse to second-order criteria of the-ory choice (cf. Vasquez 1998:187188). We next turn to a discussion a numberof putative paradigms and research programmes in order to demonstrate thatmany of them lack such local incommensurabilities. But before doing so, weshould note two considerations that further caution against deploying Kuhnianand Lakatosian accounts to make sense of the divisions in our field.

On the one hand, recall that Kuhn largely dropped observational and method-ological incommensurability from his analysis. He restricted incommensurabilityto semantic differences, that is, the problem of meaning variance, and focusedon the existence of translation failure between a localized cluster of inter-defined terms within the language of theories (Sankey 1993:760). In Kuhns laterreformulations, he abandoned much of his earlier conceptual architectureentirely and instead reconceptualized scientific revolutions in terms of the speci-ation of disciplines and subdisciplines within the natural sciences (Kuhn 1990).5

This retreat raises doubts about, at the very least, appeals to such differences(insofar as they are independent from meaning variance, rather than follow fromit) as a basis for identifying paradigms or, in Lakatosian terms, the need toinvoke MSRP to assess theoretical aggregates distinguished by them.

On the other hand, we agree that some of the practices in our field track withthose identified by Lakatos and Kuhn. Advocates of so-called research pro-grammes and paradigms resist abandoning the assumptions associated withtheoretical aggregates. They doggedly insist on the relevance of their approaches while discounting the analysis and evidence offered by rival scholars. They tendto ignore some phenomena in favor of others.6 But these parallels represent, inour view, insufficient warrants for adopting Kuhnian and Lakatosian frameworks.

First, at least some of this behavior may stem from contamination effects. Polit-ical scientists have been drawing on Kuhn to make sense of divisions in the fieldsince the 1960s, and have appealed to Lakatos since the 1970s. It would be sur-prising, in fact, if our constant invocations of Kuhnian and Lakatosian languagefailed to influence our scholarly practices.

Second, we can, in principle, explain this behavior through any number of dis-ciplinary and individual incentives, as well as through other sociological factors.The development of intellectual cliques, the status that comes with staking out anew framework for understanding world politics, and a reluctance to abandonmodes of thought need not be explained by invoking paradigms or researchprogrammes with all their attendant epistemological and ontological baggage.7

Third, our practices also depart, and in very significant ways, from that ofscholars genuinely operating in paradigms or research programmes. Wefrequently construct two- and three-cornered tests of the isms utilizingcommon first-order criteria of theory choice. Some supposed researchprogrammes, such as inquiry into the democratic peace, are comprised of par-ticipants from multiple paradigms without any serious difficulties of transla-tion. And scholars seem relatively unmoved by accusations that their researchprogrammes are degenerative, which, at the very least, lends support to the

5 Adaptations of this later argument to international relations scholarship might actually prove interesting, but

this is a topic beyond the scope of our analysis.6 Vasquez (1998) documents this behavior quite well in his seminal work on realism and paradigmism, but we

disagree that it provides a warrant for calling realism a paradigm.7 In this light, we might be interested in the pragmatic question of when and why scholars invoke claims about

incommensurability. Such claims may serve a number of strategic and disciplinary interests irrespective of whether

or not they involve genuine examples of incommensurability. See Biagiolis (1993:21144) discussion of the anthro-

pology of incommensurability.



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proposition that Lakatosian metrics are best suited to rational reconstructions ofour disciplinary history.

In sum, absent the identification of the scope conditions for treating an inter-national relations theoretical aggregate as a paradigm or research program-methe identification of shared local incommensurabilities vis-a-vis some othertheoretical aggregateour practices provide insufficient grounds for invokingKuhn or Lakatos to make sense of many relevant divisions in the field, let aloneto assess the comparative merits of such theoretical aggregates through arecourse to MSRP.

Putative Paradigms and Research ProgrammesInternational relations scholars, as we have noted, often describe inquiry intothe democratic peace, the study of security communities, and power-tran-sition theory as comprising research programmes. If each of these were distinctresearch programmes, we would expect them to be differentiated from oneanother by incommensurable-like content of the conceptual, observational, or

methodological kind in their hard cores. But we find scholars working on, forexample, the democratic peace and power-transition theory deploying the samekind of statistical methodology and even using the same data sets in their analy-sis. Their conceptual apparatuses are commensurable and comparable. One tra-dition simply claims that democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another,the other that great-power wars tend to happen during periods of power transi-tions. These both present straightforward empirical propositionsin fact, propo-sitions that need not even contradict one another.

DiCicco and Levy (1999:678), for example, use Lakatosian metrics to analyzepower-transition theory. They note that incommensurability does present a prob-lem for comparing two research programmes, but that they use MSRP for the

purpose of evaluating the development and progressiveness of a single researchprogramme. And this is correct, insofar as meaning variance presents a prob-lem for any strict reliance on content increase as a basis for determining whether one theory has superceded another (Farrell 2003:8687). But it side-steps the crucial issue: which set of common hard-core assumptions of power-transition theory (DiCicco and Levy 1999:678) renders it so theory-laden vis-a-visother research programmes as to force us to resort to MSRP as a method forevaluating its internal progress? Their list contains entirely empirical proposi-tions, such as the international order is hierarchically organized under the lead-ership of a dominant power (DiCicco and Levy 1999:678). None of thesereflect the kind of differences among scientific theories that concern Kuhn and

Lakatos; the translation problems with which Kuhn and Lakatos grapple are farmore serious and severe than the technical difficulties presented because differ-ent theories have different dependent variables (Krasner 1985:138).

Similarly, scholars sometimes invoke the democratic peace as an example ofa Lakatosian research programme (Ray 2003). But the lack of war betweendemocracies is merely an empirical proposition, and has very little in common with, for example, Prouts contention that the atomic weights of pure chemicalelements are whole numbers or with Plancks calculation of an indivisible unit ofaction at the subatomic level, that is, the Planck constant. The latter both involvecontentions about how to do scienceabout what kinds of evidence count foror against a theoryin a way that the notion of a democratic peace simply doesnot. It therefore makes little philosophical sense to speak of a democratic peaceresearch programme, and given the absence of any significant translation prob-lems when trying to compare a proposition positing a democratic peace with aproposition that does not, the appeal to Lakatos seems misplaced.

The same could be said, we argue, of many putative research programmesin the field. Consider Vasquezs (1997:903) attempt to delineate a research



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programme on balance-of-power theory. The hard core of the research pro-gramme is the proposition that states balance rather than bandwagon under con-ditions of anarchy. But this should not be regarded as a hard core assumptionany more than objects fall to the ground when dropped should be regardedas a hard core assumption of the Newtonian research programme. Rather,both empirical statements comprise auxiliary hypotheses derived from hardcores having to do with the nature of empirical inquiry and the specific charac-ter of the phenomena under investigation. Balancinglike fallingis aconsequence of the application of broader assumptions, not an assumption itself(Elman and Elman 1997:925). There is no need to invoke second-order criteriato resolve the dispute about whether international systems tend toward balancedpower over time.

The ismsConsider three other putative hard core assumptions often thought to gener-ate local incommensurabilities between the ismsrealism, liberalism, con-

structivism, Marxism, etc.and therefore requiring us to evaluate thesetheoretical aggregates as cohesive units vis-a-vis one another, and to utilize sec-ond-order criteria in order to do so. These assumptions include claims about theprimary actors in world politics, about the decision-making logic followed byindividual people, and about the malleability of social reality.

Primary ActorsOn one side of this issue stand the state-centrists, who argue thatthe legal structure of sovereignty and the concentration of destructive capacity inthe hands of governments mean that states remain the most important actors onthe world stage at the present time. This position is usually associated with real-ism (Waltz 1979:158159; Forde 1995:144; Harvey 1999:866), but state-centrism

can also be found in neoliberal-institutional theory (Baldwin 1993; Lake 1996)and some variants of constructivism (Wendt 1992:424, 1999). On the other sidestand those scholars whose work departs from a different set of assumptions: theprimacy of individuals and private social groups (Moravcsik 1997:516517), theinfluence of international organizations (Finnemore 1996) and transnationalsocial movements (Keck and Sikkink 1998), and the importance of firms andother economic actors (Keohane and Milner 1996).

But claims such as states are the primary actors in world politics (Keohaneand Martin 2003:73) and that the fundamental actors in international politicsare rational individuals and private groups (Moravcsik 1997:161) contain nospecial philosophical content of the kind associated with any of Kuhns three

forms of incommensurabilityat least so long as primary actors and funda-mental actors are defined in an empirically testable way. Doing so would simplyrequire a precise operational definition of primary actor so that we couldgather the appropriate data (Vasquez 1998:188).

Decision-Making LogicsScholars sometimes treat the distinction between logicsof consequences and logics of appropriateness as the fundamental dividingline between rationalists and constructivists (Katzenstein et al. 1998:67980;Krasner 1999). Rationalists, particularly in the rational-choice camp, adopt mod-els of decision making that stress logics of consequence: they hold that mostsocial action can be explained by goal-oriented action on the part of actorsas opposed to being motivated by habit, tradition, or social appropriateness(MacDonald 2003:553). Constructivists, for their part, stress logics of appropriate-ness: they view social action as governed by the rules, roles, and norms in whichan agent is embedded (Sending 2002).

At the same time, most constructivists who focus on this distinction also arguethat it does not sharply differentiate constructivists from rationalists. Thomas



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Risse (2000:3), for example, notes that while constructivism and rationalism aremetatheoretical orientations, their main point of disagreement is how farone can push one logic of action to account for observable practices and whichlogic dominates a given situation. Similarly, March and Olsen (1998:952) writethat any particular action probably involves elements of both logics; in princi-ple, one ought to be able to investigate the interaction between the two subsetsof voluntaristic decision making.

Not only do we confront no translation problems, but we are looking at thesame linguistic-taxonomic architecture: the logic of consequences and thelogic of appropriateness, at least as conceptualized in this debate,8 comprisepartial specifications of a single approach to the explanation of social action: asrooted in the subjective beliefs of individuals, whether those beliefs stem frominstitutionalized norms, economic preferences, or wherever.

The Ontology of Social LifeMany argue that constructivists embrace a distinctiveontology from that of scholars associated with other paradigms. Constructivists

view international politics through the prism of the mutual constitution ofagents and structures, the intersubjective character of both, and of the signifi-cance of social facts. Theorists often contrast these ontological commitments with, for instance, realisms putative denial of agent-structure mutual constitu-tion, its materialist ontology, and its conflation of social facts with objective con-ditions (for example, Dessler 1989; Wendt 1992).

Many realists, however, accept the ontological co-constitution of agents andstructures but disagree with constructivists about how to cash this out analytically.Realist claims about the causal priority of military power does not, in fact, imply arigidly materialistontology. And, for many realists, anarchy amounts to a social fact.Realists often differ with constructivists, rather, over both the plasticityof anarchical

structures and whether anarchical environments produce similar dynamics acrosstime and space (for example, Sterling-Folker 2002; Goddard and Nexon 2005).

Indeed, constructivism, at its heart, involves the claim that some phenomenonX need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at pres-ent, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable (Hacking1999:6). With respect to any particular international-political phenomenaGerman foreign policy, sovereignty, the ban of landmines, the inevitability ofcertain consequences associated with anarchyconstructivist arguments there-fore amount to empirical wagers (for example, Price 1998; Banchoff 1999). Mostinternational relations theories involve some level of commitment to the socialconstruction of world politics. Almost no theorist believes that significant inter-

national political outcomes reflect the inevitable consequence of the nature ofthingssuch as the laws of physics or genetic determinismrather than theresult of historical and agentic contingency (Guzzini 2000). Constructivistclaims concern the degree of social and historical contingency vis-a-vis specificarguments advanced in the other paradigms. In this sense, although characte-rized by quite significant disagreements, many constructivist and realist theoriesare commensurable and comparable.

Better CandidatesThere exist, however, more plausible sources of local incommensurabilitiesamong different theoretical aggregates. Robert Coxs (1996) distinction betweenproblem-solving and critical approaches to the study of world politicsand,implicitly, between two different kinds of knowledge about world politics thatone might producerepresents something close to a genuinely paradigmatic

8 As we argue below, social-choice theory may comprise a research programme due to the way it embeds log-

ics of consequences in a broader context of inquiry.



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division. Similarly, distinctions between scientific and traditionalistapproaches to the production of knowledge (Vasquez 1998:3941; Kratochwil2006) generate sufficiently robust gaps between perspectives that somethinglike MSRP might be called for. The package of assumptions associated withrational choice theory also looks almost paradigmatic, since it is not merelya substantive assumption about how people make decisions, but a comprehensiveapproach to investigating social life featuring such notions as off-the-path-equilibria and a commitment to reconciling observed behavior with apresumption of rationality (Hardin 1995; MacDonald 2003).

Notice, however, three things about these candidates. First of all, many of theirdisputes revolve around epistemological questions about how to do sciencerather than centering on substantive concerns.9 While this makes them bettercandidates for classification as paradigms or research programmes, it takes themfurther away from the empirical content of most of the actual scholarship in thefield: few if any of us spend much of our time doing work designed to advancethe epistemological projects of problem-solving theory or traditionalism,

and these divisions only inform our substantive work obliquely. Second, they cutacross our putative paradigms and research programmes: it is easy to find adher-ents of each of these approaches in any of the isms, to say nothing of theschools of thought revolving around specific empirical puzzles. There arerational-choice and non-rational-choice realists and liberals (Walt 1999); likewise,there are problem-solving and critical-theoretic constructivists (Price andReus-Smit 1998).

Finally, the terms of these differences and debates go well beyond thoseinvestigated by Kuhn and Lakatos. For all the seriousness and importance ofthe distinctions between the various paradigms and research programmes dis-closed by Kuhn and Lakatos, both could implicitly rely on the notion that all

of the natural scientists whose work they discussed were united in an over-arching goal: to increase knowledge of a world presumptively independent oftheir awareness of it (Jackson 2008). But the debates within international rela-tions theory that come closest to being paradigmatic in character oftenrevolve around precisely this presumption, raising further doubts about theutility of Kuhnian or Lakatosian assumptions for the evaluation and adjudica-tion of debates in the field.

The Costs of MisapplicationThe terminology of paradigms and research programmes produces a num-ber of deleterious effects in the field. It implies that we need to appeal to criteria

of the kind found in MSRP in order to adjudicate disputes that require no suchprocedures. In order to do so, we spend a great deal of time specifying theboundaries of putative research programmes and, in effect, unfairly and mis-leadingly holding scholars accountable for the status of theories they often viewas rivals to their own.10

9 It is important to regard these as debates about how to do science, and not simply regard any particular

intervention as an unproblematic application of the principles of philosophy of science (Vasquez 1998:43) to the

subject-matter of world politics. It is precisely the character and meaning of social science that is at issue in the

distinctions that rise to the level of local incommensurabilities in international-relations theory.10 Thus, for example, Vasquez (2003:108) criticizes the realist paradigm for being at risk of becoming so

broad and containing so many contradictory predictions that it becomes impossible to falsify. He then argues

that a critique of balancing cannot logically imply that other parts of the realist and neorealist research agendas

are degenerating or inadequate. These other research programmes must be appraised separately and by the criteria

most appropriate to them. But one does not falsify a paradigm, one falsifies a specific hypothesis. And if various real-

ist research traditions comprise different units of analysis for the purposes of MSRP, then realism writ large itself

can not plausibly be described as a paradigm or research programme.



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Perhaps the most well-known instance of this kind of boundary-demarcationoccurs in the debates surrounding realism in international relations theory.The proliferation of countless lists of the core commitments of a realistparadigmby adherents and critics alikeshifts the focus of scholarshipaway from any actual investigation of whether these commitments give usmeaningful leverage on the phenomenal world, and instead promotes endlessborder skirmishes about who is and is not a realist (Legro and Moravcsik1999), whether predictions of balancing are central to the realist paradigm(Vasquez 1998:26165), and so forth. Such debates and demarcations not onlydistract us from the actual study of world politics, but also harm disputes overinternational relations theory by solidifying stances that ought to remain opento debate and discussion.

Besides the general problems associated with any attempt to delineate theprinciples of a paradigm or research programme contemporaneously rather thanretrospectively, a further issue crops up in the misapplication of Kuhnian andLakatosian language to debates in the field: the conflation of specific causal

factors and mechanisms with a particular, presumptively autonomous, school ofthought about world politics. Hence balancing and threatening to use forcebecome markers of a realist approach, while discussion of markets and profit aresometimes annexed to (neo)liberalism.

But there is nothing inherently realist about a mechanism like balancing, which, as recent scholarship demonstrates, self-identified realists actually bor-rowed from republican and liberal thought (Deudney 2006; Boucoyannis2007). One need not, moreover, be a liberal to acknowledge that actors some-times reach Pareto-improving compromises, and one need not be a constructiv-ist to take public diplomacy or symbolic language seriously. Indeed, it is onlybecause of the politics of knowledge in the disciplinea politics supported by

the misuse of Kuhnian and Lakatosian terminologythat we argue overwhether scholars have violated their supposedly all-important allegiance to theirtheoretical aggregates if they combine variables and mechanisms associatedwith different schools of thought. It is one thing to insist on logical and analyt-ical coherence, or to identify and label intellectual communities in the field,but another thing entirely to approach international relations scholarship as aform of identity politics11.

From Paradigms to Ideal Types

Some may read our earlier arguments as a call for dispensing with theoretical

aggregates entirely. But we believe that rejecting the language of Kuhnianparadigms and Lakatosian research programmes does not require an abandon-ment of organizing the discipline into schools of thought or other aggre-gates. International relations remains an eclectic discipline encompassing a variety of different methods, methodologies, and areas of study (Katzensteinet al. 1998:646).

Maps of the intellectual contours of a scholarly discipline serve several func-tions, not the least of which is that they enable scholars to situate themselvesand their work vis-a-vis important conceptual disagreements and theoreticaldebates (Abbott 2001:1014). Casting the field in terms of major contendingapproaches allows individual scholars to discuss their findings with respect tobroadly common questions of concern. It also serves important pedagogicalfunctions. For better or worse, it is difficult to make sense of the last few dec-ades of international relations scholarship without teaching the isms.

11 Unless, of course, we aim to study the identity politics of international-relations scholarship itself.



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International relations scholarship needs such common questions, we submit,for two reasons. First, the parameters of the field are enormous, and only likelyto grow. Second, growing methodological diversity constantly threatens tofragment the field. Thus, if we are to have what Yosef Lapid (2003) callsengaged pluralism, we need some common points of contention.12 In thisrespect, one of the chief virtues of dividing the field into camps such as real-ism, liberalism, and constructivism is that it focuses us on big questionsabout international-political processes, such as the relative importance of tradi-tional power politics in international relations. These kinds of issues are substan-tive; they are amenable to many different tools of social-scientific inquiry.

Ideal-Typification of Disciplinary Debates

For inspiration and guidance we turn to the remarkable methodological essaythat Max Weber (1999) wrote in which he confronted a situation not unlike theone facing the field of international relations at present: a diversity of objects of

inquiry, and a diversity of analytical approaches to those objects. Under suchconditions, was it even possible to advocate for the specificity of social-scientificknowledge? Was there any difference between social-scientific scholarship andthe anything-goes anarchy of pure perspectivism? Weber strongly believed thatsuch a difference existed, and articulated a multifaceted solution designed toboth preserve diversity and rigor (Ringer 2004:7779).

The most relevant portion of Webers discussion for our purpose concerns hisnotion of the ideal type. Every scholarly presentation of empirical facts, Weber(1999:170) argued, depends on special and one-sided points of view, accord-ing to whichexplicitly or tacitly, consciously or unconsciouslythey areselected, analyzed, and representationally organized as an object of research.

Scholars operate with ideal-typical constructs, rather than with presuppositionlessdescriptions. Researchers construct ideal types in order to create an idealizationof a phenomenons characteristics that can then be compared against other,related empirical instances. Ideal types will never accurately or exhaustivelydescribe the concrete manifestations of a specific phenomenon, but they do pro-vide benchmarks for the analytical comparison of real phenomena.

Ideal-typical maps, in other words, consist of asymptotic limits within whichactual phenomena reside. A political entity, institution, or other entity canoccupy any point in the field defined by ideal types. A concrete empirical objectcan occupy any point in the field defined by ideal types, but it never occupiesthe ideal-typical positions themselves. Instead, scholars parse the objects proper-

ties, dynamics, and relations to other objects with reference to how it combinesor departs from aspects of the relevant ideal types. Although Weber himself usedideal-typification as a procedure for interrogating social and cultural relations,there is no reason why we cannot apply it to the orientations of disciplines them-selves. Scholars regularly treat the field itself as an object of empirical investiga-tion. They assess the rise and fall of approaches to international politics; therelative influence of journals, departments, and scholars; trends in pedagogy;and so forth. In doing so, they make use of all sorts of typologieswhetherideal-typical or categorical in naturemany of which involve realism, liberal-ism, constructivism, and other camps within the field.

An ideal-typical approach to the field fleshes out implicit organizing principles ofexisting scholarly debates by distilling them to their indispensable characteristics.

12 We agree that pluralism is not an intrinsic good, that is, it is not a license for anything goes and indis-

criminate tolerance. Yet the existence of disciplinary pluralism, combined with a recognition that all knowledge is

inflected by theoretical perspectives, explains the attractiveness of paradigm and research programme lan-

guage. See Kratochwil (2003:126).



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Ideal-typical maps of the field never describe debates and controversies as theyreally are, but instead utilize a relatively spare set of concepts to locate actualdebates and controversies with respect to the organizing principles tacitly con-tained within those debates and controversies. These organizing principles arenot ontologically and epistemologically exclusive of one another; rather, they aremore like wagers about how the world is put togetherwagers that can give riseto different sorts of empirical investigations, including ones driven by differingconceptual, observational, and methodological orientations. The analytical chal-lenge is to disclose a set of wagers animating debates in the field; we generatethese principles though a process of self-consciously teleological reasoning, start-ing with existing schools and approaches and then pressing their logic as far aspossible in order to reach a purified, abstracted version of each approach.

Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism Reconsidered

We focus on ideal-typifying the relationship between realism, liberalism, and con-

structivism for the simple reason that these camps currently predominate inmainstream discussions of the field in the United States (Peterson, Tierney, andMaliniak 2005). We also believe that, properly understood, these positions cap-ture a great deal of surplus argument in contemporary debates stretchingbeyond American shores, but that is something best resolved through furtherevaluation. Our basic argument is this: realism, liberalism, and constructiv-ism can be recast as ideal-typical positions on two debates of long-standing sig-nificance to the study of world politics: first, the degree to which anarchyoperates as a fixed constraint upon actors; and second, the degree to whichpower politics can be transcended in political interactions (see Figure 1). Under-stood in this way, the camps cease to be concrete containers for theorists and

theories; they represent wagers about world politics toward which particularpieces of empirical research can be oriented.

Many consider specific answers to these questions to number among the coreclaims of realism (for example, Schweller and Wohlforth 2000:60). However,

FIG 1. Ideal-Typical Positions in the Field of International Relations



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the two dimensions are usually collapsed in practice, since structural realists(and many so-called neo-classical realists) treat anarchy as the primary reason,or at least one of the major reasons, why power cannot be transcended in inter-national politics. Disaggregating dimensions helps make sense of the different wagers associated with, for instance, neorealism and neoliberalism. It also eluci-dates emerging terms of debate between positions a growing number of scholarsidentify as realist constructivism and liberal constructivism (for example,Barkin 2003). Finally, it does so without requiring that any particular study orargument fall within a self-contained paradigm or research tradition.

Anarchy as Parametric ConstraintThe concept of anarchythe absence of a common authority to make andenforce ruleshas long been central to the discipline of international relations.One can plausibly trace the development of international theory in the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries to attempts to understand what differentiatesrelations between sovereigns from relations within states; one of the most endur-

ing solutions has been to associate the former with the state of nature thatexists in the absence of a sovereign authority (Hobbes [1651] 1951; Locke 1960;Tuck 1999). The assumption that anarchy leads to different forms of interactionthan those found in other political contexts provides the central justification forinternational relations as a distinctive discipline (Schmidt 1998).

The claim that anarchy operates as a necessary constraint on actors in inter-national politics is most closely associated with realism (for example, Snyder2002). Waltz (1979) forcefully articulates this position: that anarchy has aspare set of inexorable consequences for patterns of relations in the interna-tional system: self-help, sensitivity to relative power, the lack of a robust divi-sion of labor between actors, and the formation of recurrent balancing

equilibria. Many of the major disagreements within contemporary realismhinge on what the precise implications of anarchy are for state-level and sys-temic outcomes. Defensive realists argue that anarchy inclines states to privi-lege security over other considerations, offensive realists argue that anarchyinclines states to maximize power, and hegemonic-order theorists see recur-rent concentrations of power as the normal condition of anarchical orders(for example, Gilpin 1981; Mearsheimer 2001) Some realists also argue thatdomestic politics and state interests lead to greater variation in internationaloutcomes than many structural realists do, but they agree that anarchystrongly conditions the range of state behavior. States that ignore the implica-tions of anarchy do so at their peril (Rose 1998).

None of these realists, of course, hold that anarchy overdetermines unit behav-ior. Even structurally inclined offensive realists, for example, adopt positionssomewhere short of the northern limit. Thus, many forms of contemporary liber-alism also operate in the same general domain. Neoliberal institutionalists, forexample, also agree that anarchy is a relatively fixed constraint with crucial con-sequences for state interaction. However, they contend that the range of possiblepatterns of behavior under anarchy includes far more forms of cooperation thanrealists suppose, and that such cooperation is more durable than realists admit(for example, Baldwin 1993:45). As Moravcsik (1997:536) argues, neoliberalinstitutionalism takes state preferences as fixed or exogenous, seeks to explainstate policy as a function of variation in the geopolitical environmentandfocuses on the ways in which anarchy leads to suboptimal outcomes.

Those with a more constructivist orientation toward anarchy, however, view itrather differently. Some argue that anarchy is an empty structure. In Wendts(1992) phrase, anarchy is what states make of it: structural variations inthe culture of anarchy give rise to different logics and dynamics. Others disagree with the proposition that anarchy is, or ought to be treated as if it were,



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fixed. Anarchy describes a particular, but not necessary, social formation thatcan be transformed through norms, rules, and processes of agent-structureco-constitution. Indeed, some kind of orientation toward this position cuts acrossmost forms of constructivist scholarship, whether critical, post-structural, ormainstream (for example, Dessler 1989; Onuf 1989).

The status of anarchy as a focal point for ideal-typical disputes in the field fol-lows from an examination of disciplinary practicefor example, a lot of whatrealists and constructivists argue, concerns the degree to which anarchy is a fixedconstraint. It also follows from an application of ideal-typical reasoning. As weargued above, all (or, at least, most) political phenomena are, in a trivial sense,socially constructed. At one extreme lies the claim that anarchy produces acertain logic approximating a natural necessity; at the other, the denial thatthere is anything natural or necessary about claims associated with anarchy.

Power and its TranscendenceThe second big question in the study of international relations concerns the

degree to which power can be transcended, or tamed, in world politics. The dis-pute about whether or not power can be overcome in international relations wasthe primary marker of the so-called first debate, and can be traced back atleast to Machiavellis (1994) criticism of Christian ethical interpretations of politi-cal processes.

Realists adopt a relatively straightforward position on this point: power is theultima ratio of international relations. Attempts to limit the importance of powerand capabilities in world politics through law, institutions, or regimes may verywell prove counterproductive to state interests and the goal of generally peacefulinterstate relations. To the extent that regimes, law, and institutions are control-ling in international politics, that is because they are sustained and enforced by

hegemons or a temporary confluence of interests among powerful states (forexample, Krasner 1999).

Liberals, for their part, argue that it is possible to establish international coop-eration, institutions, and regimes that limit the salience of power in world politics(for example, Moravcsik 1998; Keohane 2001). Indeed, one of the core wagersof philosophical liberalism is that the proper design of governing institutions, whether domestically or internationally, can restrict arbitrary power such thatactors are free to pursue their interests and values (see for example, Johnston1994).

No actual self-described realist or liberal (at least whom we are aware of)actually believes that power is the only thing that matters or that power can ever

be eliminated from international politics, respectively. These represent, again,ideal-typical positions toward which the two camps orient themselves in theirdebates. The top position is realist because it combines the wager that powercannot be tamed with the wager that anarchy operates as a fixed constraint onactors. The right-hand position is liberal because it combines the wager thatpower can be transcended with wagers about inescapable consequences of poli-tics in the state of nature. In this ideal-typical view, anarchy can be overcomethrough a process of creating more robust international institutions, but eitheronly from within the constraints it imposes in the first place or through transfor-mation away from anarchy through various forms of interdependency (for exam-ple, Keohane and Nye 1989; Moravcsik 1997).

This axis maps onto contemporary constructivism in rather interesting ways.It creates a lower corner we call liberal-constructivist and a left-hand corner we call realist-constructivist. The ideal-typical liberal-constructivist wager isthat the right distribution of norms, identities, discourses, and rules can limitthe importance of power politics. The ideal-typical realist-constructivist wager,in contrast, is that the lack of determinate consequences associated with



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anarchy does not limit the importance of power politics, because power itselfis productive or generative of social and political relations (Barnett and Duvall2005). As we slide northwest from the liberal-constructivist intersection wemight also find claims that anarchy lacks determinative effects, but that partic-ular configurations of anarchy are insufficiently plastic to allow actors to easilyreduce the salience of power politicsa skepticism toward emancipatory projects similar to that found within the English School tradition (cf. Dunne1998).

Indeed, whether in the form of Onufs emphasis on how agents make rules inorder to govern themselves, or Adlers arguments about how cognitive evolu-tion can produce a more just and equitable world order, or in Keck andSikkinks discussion of how transnational social movements can civilize worldpolitics by enforcing human rights norms against recalcitrant state leaders, onecan find a liberal (or progressive) orientation toward the question of powerpolitics (Onuf 1989; Adler 1997; Keck and Sikkink 1998). In an early program-matic statement, Wendt (1992) called for an alliance between strong liberals

and constructivists on the precise grounds of their shared rejection of the realistargument that self-help behavior was inevitable. Other-regarding behavior canpave the way for a different way of behaving in inter-state relations, effectivelytranscending power and coercion in favor of something more cooperative(Wendt 1999:359360).

An increasingly liberal-constructivist position highlights how the diffusion ofthe right norms and identities can orient states away from power-political con-cerns (Checkel 1998; Flynn and Farrell 1999; Tannenwald 1999). It focuses onthe ability of principled transnational movements and interest groups to producenormative environments that privilege values over power. The recent turn towardJurgen Habermas notion of communicative rationality is consistent with the lib-

eral-constructivist impulse; it holds that, to the degree that contextual factors(such as institutional design) approximate Habermas ideal speech condition,coercive power can be displaced from interactions in world politics (for example,Risse 2000).

None of the authors cited in the preceding paragraph would argue that power,and power politics in particular, can ever be completely banished from interna-tional relations. Yet within constructivism we find disagreement about the relativepull of the two ideal-typical poles. Constructivists agree on the historical andsocial contingency of social facts and international-political outcomes, but theycome to different conclusions over the implications of this contingency for theplasticity of power politics. A significant part of the disagreement between, on

the one hand, post-structural and critical constructivists and, on the other,modernist or liberal constructivists turns on precisely this point (for exam-ple, Price and Reus-Smit 1998; Bially Mattern 2004). But an exclusive focus onthe intra-constructivist dimension of this debate obscures how it situates manyself-identified constructivists in a similar domain to self-identified realists.

Conclusions

We agree that observations are theory-laden, that translation problems oftenoperate across the technical language of intellectual communities and their theo-ries, and that some of these problems may rise to the level of local incommensu-rabilities. But none of these disagreements correlate with the boundaries ofmany of the aggregates we typically refer to as paradigms and research pro-grammes. Indeed, as we have seen, trying to turn realism and constructiv-ism, for example, into paradigms or research programmes demonstrates why Lakatosian criteria are best suited to the retrospective, rational recon-struction of the history of science: only after the fact can we make clear



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determinations about the content of a particular research programme. Thus,at the very least, we confront no persuasive rationale for appealing to MSRP toevaluate the status of the isms.

Recasting the isms as ideal-typical limits within which actual scholarshipresides captures many of the benefits of mapping disciplines, but avoids the costsof attempting to compress various scholars and theories into paradigms orresearch programmes. In particular, it decouples variables, processes, andmechanisms from the putative boundaries of theoretical aggregates. A paradig-matic approach often leads to arguments about, for example, whether or notintegrating domestic political culture into an analysis of how states respond topower transition violates realist assumptions and affirms constructivism. Ourapproach implies a focus on how the implications of the theory, not its inherentarchitecture, shape our assessment of value-commitments associated with realism,liberalism, and so forth. All of this allows for genuine analytic eclecticism inso-far as scholars are free to interrogate and combine particular mechanisms, pro-cesses, variables, and methodologiessubject to the constraints of logical and

analytical consistency rather than concerns about the coherence of particularparadigms (cf. Katzenstein and Okarawa 20012002; Katzenstein and Sil 2008).

Other scholars may have, or implicitly operate with, different ideal-typicalmaps. A continental European map of the discipline might, for example, lookrather different than what we propose. The existence of multiple, competingideal-typical maps may actually be desirable, inasmuch as the only scientific wayto evaluate the outcome of an ideal-typical procedure is to see how much insightinto a empirical phenomenon it generates. Alternative ideal-typifications help tomake clear precisely what the strengths and weaknesses of each analytical cutinto reality are, and would help with what must ultimately be the pragmatic evalu-ation of diverse perspectives.

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