Assess the contribution of Critical Theory to the interparadigm debate in International Relations.

CT Steiner: Politics Coursework.

Theories & Concepts in Political Science & Comparative Politics.

The roots of critical theory can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and are connected to the ideas of Hegel, Kant and Marx. In the 20th Century, critical thought became associated with the Frankfurt School, advocated by writers such as Adorno, Horkheimer and more recently, Jurgen Habermas. The central aim of critical theory is the advancement of human emancipation, and central to all critical theorists is a concern with how the present order has evolved, thus attempting to question existing world orders and power relationships. In terms of International Relations (IR) theory, it is only recently that critical theory has emerged as a valuable critique in challenging existing theories. Banks used the term ‘inter-paradigm debate’ to describe the constant changes and modification taking place within the boundaries of IR since its inception following the 1st World War. The aim of this essay is to analyse the affect that critical theory has had upon this debate, and highlight its importance as a new approach to this area, using examples such as the phenomena of globalisation to support this.

According to Hoffman, the development of critical theory within International Relations has had two sources – one internal, the other external. Internally, the development of critical theory was driven by a reaction to the re-articulation of Realism in Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (in 1979). Realism had, up until this time, been the dominant strand within the inter-paradigm debate of IR. However, the hybrid nature and lack of an agreed ‘core’ to the discipline ultimately led to a breakdown of the consensus, with Realism being increasingly called into question. Externally, the critical theory perspective developed independently of the theoretical developments within International Relations, and was then used to critique Neo-realism from ‘a point already arrived at’. Thus we can see the value of critical theory as a new theoretical approach to asking previously unanswered questions in the realm of International Relations, and providing the basis for an attack on the epistemological foundations of the discipline.

The development of critical theory in the 20th Century, externally from the field of IR, can be most closely associated with the ‘Frankfurt School’, who were heavily critical of the mass conformity of society to the administrative form of capitalism. Devetak states that essential to the Frankfurt’s School critical theory was a concern to comprehend the central features of contemporary society by understanding its historical and social development, and tracing contradictions in the present which could open up the possibility of transcending contemporary society and its built in pathologies and forms of domination. Therefore critical theory intended ‘not simply to eliminate one or other abuse’, but to analyse the underlying social structures which resulted in these abuses, with the intention of overcoming them. In Horkheimer’s 1937 essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, he saw a central characteristic of critical theory as being the recognition of the connection between knowledge and interests. Horkheimer argued that knowledge is integral to social relations, and has a social function – it is not independent from our existence. This negated the traditional theory approach, which would argue that knowledge is a result of human discourse in describing the world. For Horkheimer, traditional approaches failed to gain an understanding of the world, as theory lacked a self-reflective and self-analytical aspect. Thus, ‘traditional theory was not concerned with the realisation of human potential, it was actually enhancing the capacity for manipulation and control which impeded the realisation of human potential’. By drawing attention to the relationship between knowledge and society, with society itself as the object of analysis, critical theory therefore attempted to ‘radicalise epistemology by unearthing the roots of knowledge in life’.

However, the Frankfurt School became increasingly disillusioned by the Marxist principles it was based upon. The rise of positivism, as a means of ‘bringing increasingly compliant individuals under the complete domination of technical rationality’ began translating itself into an increasingly bleak view of the quest for emancipation, with Horkheimer stating that ‘‘reason’ has never really directed social reality, but now, reason…has finally renounced even the task of passing judgement on mans actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world seems abandoned’. Thus, the Frankfurt School ultimately abandoned Marxism, and their belief in the eventual emancipation from the shackles of capitalism. However, the Second Generation of the Frankfurt School that emerged in the 1950’s, sought to re-emphasise the importance of critical theory, and redefine the Marxist principles it was based on.

Central to this development is the work of Jurgen Habermas, whose ‘Theory of Communicative Action’ combined the ideas of his predecessors with a renewed belief in the emancipatory vision, but whereas classical Marxism had focused on tendencies immanent within modes of production, Habermas shifted to the potentials inherent in human communication, for the goal of ultimate emancipation. Habermas sought to build on the central features of Horkheimer’s argument – the contrast between traditional and critical theory, and the recognition of the connection between knowledge and interests - through an epistemological critique of positivism to highlight Habermas’s view that in modern society we have lost the classical notion of politics. He argues that politics has been transformed from being concerned with the nature of social order to being concerned with making possible a life of well being within a preordained order. Reason, Habermas argues, had lost its emancipatory function and has been incorporated into scientific rationality. Habermas focused on how human discourse is shaped by forms of communication such as the mass media. He stressed the need for independent human discourse, based on understanding, and not power relations. Indeed, for Habermas, communicative action is being ‘replaced by media steered interaction, when language, in its function of co-ordinating action, is replaced by media such as money and power’. Habermas saw the goal of critical theory to be the construction of a politics orientated towards the development of a rational consensus between human beings – to the development of an emancipatory politics in which the individual is subject and not object and in which constraints on human autonomy are removed.

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Habermas and the Frankfurt School have heavily influenced the more recent study of critical international relations theory. Linklater attributes Robert Cox’s approach to world politics as representing the first major attempt to show how critical theory can be used in the development of a post-realist analysis of international relations, relying on a historical materialism to analyse alternative paths of historical development and to assess the prospects for a politics of universal emancipation. Cox’s distinction between ‘problem solving’ and critical theories of international relations highlights the influence of the Frankfurt School on his work. Problem solving ‘takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and political relations and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action. The general aim of problem solving theory is to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble’. A critical perspective ‘stands apart from the prevailing order of the world and asks how that order came about’. Cox argues that critical theory calls into question institutions, social and power relations by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of change. It is directed towards an appraisal of the very framework of action which problem solving takes as its parameters. Furthermore, critical theory ‘provides a guide to strategic action for bringing about an alternative order; its method of immanent as opposed to ethical critique supersedes the dichotomy between idealism and realism’.

Hoffman also identifies Cox as being influential in his critique of neo-realism. Cox argued that existing neo-realist assumptions of International Relations focused on an understanding of the world in which states were the ‘principle aggression of political power’ and where there was a clear separation between the state and civil society, with foreign policy as a ‘pure expression of state interests’. Cox, however, believed that this view of International Relations was no longer credible, as a more complex relationship existed between state and society with an interlinking of aims and values, and a ‘plurality of forms of state expressing different configurations of state/society complexes’. The influence on Cox of the Frankfurt School is evident, highlighted through the links between interests and knowledge drawn on by Cox: He states that ‘theory is always for someone and for something’. By emphasising theory as a product of period and circumstance, Cox emphasises the self-analytical nature of theory, and its awareness of the possibilities within it for the transformation of a political order. Therefore ‘theory must not only describe, explain and understand, but also be capable of recognising and eliminating the distortions within it, which serve to reproduce and reinforce a particular order as universalised and ahistorical’.

The development of a critical theory of international relations has served to challenge the dominance of existing theories, and highlight tensions within Banks’ three paradigms. George points to Ashley’s critique of the Realist paradigm in his work ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, which also shows a heavy influence from Habermas. Ashley argues that since the Cold War, Realism has systematically reduced understanding and explanation in International Relations to a single knowledge form (scientific rationalism), a single methodology (deductive empiricism) and a single research orientation (problem solving). Realism, in this sense has reduced International Relations to a single cognitive interest, in a technical knowledge and the methodology of control. Ashley sought to change the perspective of this blinkered neo-realist approach, to a more traditional realist perspective, to shift the emphasis away from controlling a given environment, to one where power and knowledge could be understood as products of history, culture and politics. Thus global life could be freed from ‘the constraints, relations of domination, and the conditions of distorted communication that deny humans the capacity to make the future through free will and consciousness’.

In ‘The Poverty of Neo-Realism’, Ashley develops this emancipatory theme, and through further interpretation of the Habermasian approach, he identifies different characteristics in realist thought. Thus he identifies both technical and practical forms of realism. Devetak states that Ashley’s technical realism is guided by an interest in obtaining knowledge to expand a subject’s control over an objectified environment. Waltz’s afore mentioned neo-realism is cited as an example of technical realism, it being a ‘scientific version of power politics’. Ashley argues that the very method employed by neo-realism, positivism, leads to a view of politics defined in terms of technical efficiency. The focus is on the means with which to achieve a given end rather than the validity of the end itself. As a result, ‘statecraft is reduced to figuring out technical adjustments states can make irrespective of their impact on other state’. Constituted by a technical interest, neo-realism provides a theory of and for the state and for extending its power, security and control in the international environment.

Practical realism, on the other hand, is guided by an interest in obtaining knowledge to maintain and further develop communication and mutual understandings. In contrast to neo-realism, practical realism’s logic of enquiry is more hermeneutic or interpretive. It substitutes positivism for an approach more guided towards historical and moral lines. The focus is thus on principles and practices which maintain international order by orientating actors to respect common traditions, institutions, rules and norms in order to avoid the outbreak of conflict and war wherever possible. Constituted by a practical interest, this form of realism provides a theory of and for international order and for sustaining the inter-subjective background which makes possible dialogue between states.

Ashley emphasises that due to the mutually reinforcing nature of these strands of realism, it makes questions of change or progress impossible: ‘practical realism cannot break free of technical realism…it remains anchored in a problematique set by an interest in control’. Thus the possibility for global transformation is denied. Ashley however does not seek to denigrate the two strands of realism. Indeed he can be attributed as trying to develop a critical realist theory of IR, combining both practical and technical realism into the ‘Dialectical Competence Model’. This stresses ‘the need to preserve classical realisms rich insights into international political practice, whilst at the same time exposing the conditions and limits on the potential for change in this tradition’. This model has received criticism however, by writers such as Waltz, who argues that in character, Ashley’s model differs very little from Waltz’s own approach, and only in terms of a capitalist world economy gloss. Thus, argues Waltz, there is still no real emancipatory component to it. Hoffman states that the distance between critical theory and realism is such that it would be a contradiction to try and offer a model incorporating both of these in, as ‘if a theory of IR moved in the direction that critical theory suggests, it would have moved so drastically from the core assumptions of political realism that it would be a misnomer to speak of it as a critical realist theory of IR’. However Ashley has served to strengthen the status of critical theory in IR, through highlighting the limitations of realism, and this can only be beneficial to the discipline of critical theory and its interest in emancipation.

Whilst the Realist paradigm has been the focus of the critical theory critiques, Banks’s inter-paradigm debate includes the pluralist and structuralist paradigms, which are both analysed by Hoffman in his 1987 article. For Hoffman, the pluralist paradigm has come into little contact with critical theory, whilst its similarities with Cox’s work make this somewhat surprising. Indeed, a key tenet of pluralism is that ‘rather than taking the world as given, it is concerned with describing and developing an alternative conception of world order’. Similarly, Hoffman identifies the structuralist approach as having the closest affinity to critical theory, having developed outside of the realm of IR, and focused on positivism as a critique. The development of the World System Analysis Approach is the most widely known attempt by the structuralist camp to developing an alternative explanation. However, once again, many of the key tenets of this approach coincide with Cox’s criteria for a critical theory, and they also lack substance in terms of practical cognitive interests, or an explicit normative element, other than which is implicitly drawn from Marxism and a guide to action. Thus the two paradigms are ultimately limited as ‘they constitute an important component of a critical theory of IR but cannot constitute such a theory on their own’.

In summarising the achievements of critical theory to the interparadigm debate on IR, Linklater offers a four-fold interpretation of the critique. First, argues Linklater, critical theory has taken issue with positivism by arguing that knowledge always reflects pre-existing social purposes and interests. In the context of IR theory this has led to powerful criticisms of rationalist theory, and what Linklater terms a ‘gradual recovery of a project of enlightenment and emancipation reworked to escape the familiar pitfalls of idealism’. Second, critical theory stands opposed to claims that the existing structures of the world are immutable and ‘examines the prospects for greater freedom immanent within existing social relations’. Thirdly critical theory learns from and overcomes the weaknesses in Marxism, emphasising forms of social learning, drawing very heavily on Habermas’s reconstruction of historical materialism, and opening up new possibilities for constructing a ‘historical sociology with an emancipatory purpose’. Fourth, critical theory ‘judges social arrangements by their capacity to embrace open dialogue with all others…and envisages the use of unconstrained discourse to determine the moral significance of national boundaries and to examine the possibility of post-sovereign forms of political life’.

Thus, the inter-paradigm debate has undoubtedly benefited from the contribution of the critical theorist approach. It is now time to turn to a critical area of IR to interpret the differing theoretical approaches into an empirical perspective - globalisation. The concept of globalisation is a contested term. David Held defines Globalisation in terms of a spatial phenomenon, lying on a continuum with 'the local' at one end and 'the global' at the other. He states that:

‘Globalisation denotes a shift in the spatial form of human organization and activity to transcontinental or interregional patterns of activity, interaction and the exercise of power. It involves a stretching and deepening of social relations and institutions so that day-to-day activities are increasingly influenced by events happening on the other side of the globe, and the practices and decisions of local groups or communities can have significant global reverberations also’.

Proponents of the realist paradigm argue that international relations is essentially about states and their interactions. States pursue power as their dominant motivation and internal and external politics are largely separate forms of activities. It follows that the behaviour of one state can be understood only in terms of its relationship with other states but also that internal factors are of no substantial importance except as determinants of the power base. Furthermore, interactions between social groups which cross state boundaries are of minor importance. Thus, realists would state that globalisation is a process of competition, conflict and co-operation between nation-states, asserting the primacy of the state in global relations. Proponents of the pluralist paradigm, however, argue that other actors besides the state are also of great significance. Multinational corporations, religious groups, and other organisations which cross state boundaries are not peripheral actors, as the realist would claim, but dominant in any discussion of international relations. States occupy a role as an actor in the system though pluralists would disagree as to the extent of their significance. Structuralists argue more generally still that international behaviour can be understood only in terms of social, political and economic structures of which the greatest of these is economic. Here we can see a strong influence of Marxist thought. So for both of these paradigms, globalisation as a concept would relate to the competing interests on a global and national level on the nation state.

Applying the critical theorist viewpoint to the globalisation debate would entail a combination of a criticism of the other paradigms, with a re-emphasis on the emancipatory aim of the critical theory approach. A critical analysis of globalisation would argue that far from maintaining power, states and national governments in an increasingly globalised world are becoming weaker, as transnational companies and corporations increase their strangle hold over political economic and cultural forms of power. Thus we are increasingly becoming influenced and controlled by a global culture of consumerism, and capitalism.

Indeed, for Cox, the global economy and globalisation has meant that the primary function of states is to adjust domestic economy practices to the functional requirements of the neo-liberal global economy. Domestic interests, he argues, are best served by allowing free reign to the global economy, and new efforts at regulation such as those embodied in the WTO and World Bank are designed to limit the capacity of states to interfere with the working of the neo-liberal economic order. Stevenson identifies a culture of ‘McDonaldisation’, which is growing in global society, reflecting the ‘persistent fear with the growth of modern bureaucracies and rational calculative reason that the world is being emptied of human difference, meaning and spontaneity’. Stevenson states that the fast food industry can be identified with four basic components of formal rationality: efficiency, predictability, quantification and the displacement of human labour. These principles of bureaucratic organisation are being transferred across all strata of society. Indeed, a key tenet of the Frankfurt School (and earlier writers such as Weber) was that the growth of expert systems has been represented as having a rationalising and ordering effect upon modern life, constructing a dehumanising cage that holds modern subjects prisoner. McDonaldisation in this sense can be seen as a way of replacing human’s culture with forms of mediation and control. Hence, ‘the daily flow of television news programmes only superficially appear to be ‘different’, but viewed more critically, they rely upon well tested formats, and easily consumable sound bites’.

Key ideas of Habermas can be translated into the globalisation debate. In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas spoke of how the mass media have emerged as a powerful medium in shaping peoples identities and controlling and oppressing modern society. The emergence of a mass media in the 20th Century has witnessed the rapid development of a medium that was originally locally based and orientated around print culture. Thus for most of this time, the media has been specifically national, centralised and defined by hierarchical forms of control. However, processes of technological development, globalisation and deregulation have meant that there has been a rapid increase in the total available amount of information, a spatial compression of the ‘knowable world’, and a fragmentation of new consumptive communities. These developments have helped foster ideas of a global civil society, the decline of a national community and regulatory powers of the state, and the destruction of a mass culture based upon conformity. Thus society is losing its emancipatory vision, as humans are being controlled by a power-based discourse through the medium of the mass media.

However, also key to Habermas’s works was the potential for protest against this world order, and it is possible to see that accompanying the process of globalisation has been the rise of new social movements as the vehicles of protest and the means of prospecting an alternative form of social economy. Whilst arguably these groups have only partially operated through the state, and have rarely operated through formal electoral channels, they nonetheless express a will to reconstitute civil society, on the basis of a strengthened society, a state that would be more fully responsive to the bottom-up forces of civil society. The Zapatista rebellion in the Mexican state of Chiapas is an example of such a new social movement, which is seeking to transform itself from a military-political rebel movement into a broader based movement in civil society that is directed towards the democratisation of the Mexican state, whilst building trans-national links of support. Environmental movements, woman’s rights groups, anti-capitalist groups, and so on have formed a range of non-governmental organisations helping engender a relative shift away from a purely state-centred international system of 'high politics' towards new and novel forms of geo-governance. The success of these groups can be seemed as limited in the global economic and political system, and society is clearly a long way from Habermas’s concept of emancipation, however, the critical theorist approach offers an effective model for IR, and a way of analysing, interpreting and understanding the world around it, including the possibilities for transformation that it holds.

In conclusion, we can see that the inter-paradigm debate has developed considerably through the implementation of critical theory to IR. By calling in to question the validity of existing dominant theories, critical theory has forced its way into the mainstream of IR theory, and has made a strong case for paying more attention to knowledge and values. Underlying all this is an explicit interest in challenging and removing socially produced constraints on human freedom, thereby contributing to the possible transformation of International Relations.

Bibliography

Burchill, S & Linklater, A (1996) Theories of IR, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.

George, J (1994) Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re) Introduction to IR, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.

Germain, R.D (2000) Globalisation & its Critics, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.

Habermas, J (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action: Vol. 2. Polity Press, Oxford.

Hoffman, M (1987) Critical Theory & The Interparadigm Debate, Millennium, Vol 16 No. 2 1987.

Linklater, A (1996) Beyond Realism & Marxism: Critical Theory & IR, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke.

Wyn Jones, R (2001) Critical Theory & World Politics, Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc. London.

Websites

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies: Working Paper 97/5, May 1997: Democracy and Globalisation

http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/pu/workpap/wp97-5/wp97-5.html

Hoffman, Critical Theory & The Inter Paradigm Debate (1987), Pp236-7.

In Burchill & Linklater, Theories of IR (1996), P146.

Ibid; p 147

Linklater, Beyond Marxism & Realism, (1990) Pp24-5.

Hoffman, op.cit. p234.

Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action Vol.2 (1987) P375.

Op.cit, P27.

Op.cit; P237.

Discourses of Global Politics (1994) Pp171-2.

In Burchill & Linklater, op.cit; Pp150-1.

Ibid, p 152.

Hoffman, Op.cit, p240.

Ibid, p240.

Ibid, p241-44.

Wyn Jones, Critical Theory & World Politics, (2001) p 97.

MPIFG Working Paper 97/5, May 1997: Democracy and Globalisation.

In Wyn Jones, Op.cit, p50.

In Germain, Globalisation & its Critics (2000) Pp93-5.

Ibid, Pp110-11

Cox, in Wyn Jones, Op.cit, pp57-8.

Assess the contribution of Critical Theory to the interparadigm debate in International Relations.

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