International ideologies: paradigms of ideological analysis and world politics

Abstract

Recent years have seen significant interest among scholars of International Relations (IR) in ideological analysis. By treating international theories as international ideologies, this trend entails both a radical reconceptualization of IR’s disciplinary foundations as well as the emergence of important new lines of inquiry for scholars of ideology. And yet, as a research programme, ideological analysis in IR has failed to establish a significant foothold in the discipline. This article locates the source of this weakness in the fractious nature of IR as a discipline, which has contributed to the emergence of five distinct paradigms of ideological analysis: analytical, historical, philosophical, critical and reflexive. Reviewing these five distinct bodies of scholarship, this article demonstrates that ideological analysis is ‘alive and well’ in IR, but argues that greater engagement between divergent paradigms will be required in order to fully understand the complexities of international ideologies.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Andre Barrinha and Michael Freeden for their helpful comments on the manuscript, as well as participants of the ‘Re-energizing ideology studies’ conference at the University of Nottingham (27–28 November 2015) who commented on an earlier version of the paper.

Notes

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7. The works in question are: Roberto Farneti, ‘Cleavage lines in global politics: left and right, East and West, earth and heaven’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(2), (2012), pp. 127–145; Alex Schulman, ‘Carl Schmitt and the clash of civilizations: the missing context’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(2), (2012), pp. 147–167; Jan Zielonka, ‘Europe’s new civilizing mission: the EU’s normative power discourse’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 18(1), (2013), pp. 35–55; Rafal Soborski, ‘Globalization and ideology: a critical review of the debate’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(3), (2012), pp. 323–346; Jean-Philippe Thérien, op. cit., Ref. 6; and Laurence Whitehead, ‘International democracy promotion as political ideology: upsurge and retreat’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 20(1), (2015), pp. 10–26.

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9. The annual TRIP survey asked IR scholars across the globe which approach best defined their work. Of all the respondents (n = 4659), 18% indicated realism, 23% constructivism and 12% liberalism. Daniel Maliniak, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers & Michael J. Tierney, TRIP 2014: Faculty Survey (Williamsburg, VA: Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations, 2014). Available at https://trip.wm.edu/charts/.

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34. John Ikenberry is one self-identified liberal who has taken seriously this claim. See: G. John Ikenberry, ‘Liberal internationalism 3.0: America and the dilemmas of liberal world order’, Perspectives on Politics, 7(1), (2009), pp. 71–87; and ‘A world economy restored: expert consensus and the Anglo-American postwar settlement’, International Organization, 46(1), (1992), pp. 289–321. Many other liberal IR theorists have strongly resisted labelling their analyses ‘ideological’. See, for example: Beate Jahn, ‘Liberal internationalism: from ideology to empirical theory – and back again’, International Theory, 1(3), (2009), pp. 409–438 and Andrew Moravcsik, ‘‘Wahn, Wahn, Überall Wahn’ A reply to Jahn’s critique of liberal internationalism’, International Theory, 2(1), (2010), pp. 113–139.

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36. For examples of neoclassical realist works on ideology see: Mark L. Haas, ‘Ideology and alliances: British and French external balancing decisions in the 1930s’, Security Studies, 12(4), (2003), pp. 34–79; Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989 (London: Cornell University Press, 2005), Chapter 4.

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38. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (London: Cornell University Press, 1987).

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40. A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe: 1848–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954).

41. See Jack S. Levy, ‘Too important to leave to the other: history and political science in the study of international relations’, International Security, 22(1), (1997), pp. 22–33, at p. 28, for a discussion.

42. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

43. Positivist scholars, in contrast, strive hard to avoid ‘over-fitting’ models, lest this reduce their general applicability.

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45. Martin Ceadel, op. cit., Ref. 1.

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52. Jean-Philippe Thérien & Alain Noël, Left and Right in Global Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

53. G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Although Ikenberry is regarded as a liberal theorist within the discipline of International Relations, much of his work is historical in its assumptions and presentation.

54. Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 18–20.

55. Kant, Hobbes, Machiavelli and Rousseau typically figure in most accounts. For a discussion of international theory in the ‘Western’ canon see Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger, International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Beate Jahn, Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

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90. Pugh, op. cit., Ref. 44.

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105. Jarrod Hayes & Patrick James, op. cit., Ref. 39.

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109. Martin Ceadel, op. cit., Ref. 1.

110. Nicholas F. Martini, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 421.

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112. Chris Brown, op. cit., Ref. 58.

113. Laurence Whitehead, op. cit., Ref. 7.

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120. Martin Ceadel, op. cit., Ref. 1.

121. Mark Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989, op. cit., Ref. 36.

122. Ole R. Holsti, op. cit., Ref. 29.

123. Jean-Philippe Thérien, op. cit., Ref. 6.

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125. For a review of the concept of ‘global governmentality’ in International Relations see: Scott Hamilton, ‘Add Foucault and Stir: The Perils and Promise of Governmentality and the Global’, European Review of International Studies, 1(2), (2014), pp. 129–141, at p. 139.

126. On Lakatosian criteria, progressive research programmes can be distinguished from their degenerative counterparts through their ability to generate additional questions and insights without undermining the programme’s theoretical ‘hard core’. See Imre Lakatos, ‘The methodology of scientific research programmes’, in Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) and John Vasquez, ‘The realist paradigm and degenerative versus progressive research programs: an appraisal of neotraditional research on Waltz’s balancing proposition’, American Political Science Review, 91(4), (1997), pp. 899–912.