IR/Scenario Planning

Case First
Case disproves the critique the alts normative ethical vision for IR is
unattainable and gets coopted. Managing insecurity through the plan is
better than the alt AND only evaluate link args if they win alt solvency
Chandler, IR Prof @ University of Westminster, 13
(David, No emancipatory alternative, no critical security studies, Critical Studies on
Security, 2013 Vol. 1, No. 1, 4663)
We would argue that the removal of the prefix critical would also be useful to distinguish security study based on critique
of the world as it exists from normative theorising based on the world as we would like it to be. As long as we keep the
critical nomenclature, we are affirming that government and international policy-making can be understood and
critiqued against the goal of emancipating the non-Western Other . Judging policy-making and policy
outcomes, on

the basis of this imputed goal, may provide critical theorists with endless
possibilities to demonstrate their normative standpoints but it does little to develop
academic and political understandings of the world we live in. In fact, no greater straw
[person] man could have been imagined, than the ability to become critical on the basis of
debates around the claim that the West was now capable of undertaking emancipatory
policy missions. Today, as we witness a narrowing of transformative aspirations on behalf
of Western policy elites, in a reaction against the hubris of the claims of the 1990s (Mayall
and Soares de Oliveira 2012) and a slimmed down approach to sustainable, hybrid
peacebuilding, CSS has again renewed its relationship with the policy sphere . Some
academics and policy-makers now have a united front that rather than placing
emancipation at the heart of policy-making it should be local knowledge and local
demands. The double irony of the birth and death of CSS is not only that CSS has come full circle
from its liberal teleological universalist and emancipatory claims , in the 1990s, to its
discourses of limits and flatter ontologies, highlighting differences and pluralities in the 2010s but that
this critical approach to security has also mirrored and mimicked the policy discourses of
leading Western powers. As policy-makers now look for excuses to explain the failures of the promise of liberal
interventionism, critical security theorists are on hand to salve Western consciences with
analyses of non-linearity, complexity and human and non-human assemblages. It appears that the
world cannot be transformed after all. We cannot end conflict or insecurity, merely
attempt to manage them. Once critique becomes anti-critique (Noys 2011) and emancipatory alternatives
are seen to be merely expressions of liberal hubris, the appendage of critical for arguments
that discount the possibility of transforming the world and stake no claims which are
unamenable to power or distinct from dominant philosophical understandings is highly
problematic. Let us study security, its discourses and its practices, by all means but please let
us not pretend that study is somehow the same as critique.

Care
Preventing violence good turn its bad to make us justify why its bad

Ling, New School International Affairs professor, 2001

(LHM, Post-Colonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire Between

Asia and the West, google books)
Without concrete action for change, postmodernism's `dissident voices' have
remained bracketed, disconnected, not really real. In maintaining `a critical distance' or
`position offshore' from which to `see the possibility of change' (Shapiro, 1992: 49), the postmodern critic
brushed off too conveniently the immediate cries of those who know they are
burning in the hells of exploitation, racism, sexism, starvation, civil war,
and the like but who have few means or strategies to deal with them. What
hope do they have of overthrowing the shackles of sovereignty without a
program of action? After all, asked Mark Neufeld, `What is political without partisanship?' (Neufeld, 1994: 31). In
not answering these questions, postmodernists recycled, despite their avowals to the
contrary, the same sovereign outcome as (neo)realism: that is, discourse
divorced from practice, analysis from policy, deconstruction from
reconstruction, particulars from universals, and critical theory from problemsolving. Dissident international relations could not accommodate an interactive, articulating, self-generative Other. Its
exclusive focus on the Western Self ensured, instead, (neo)realism's sovereignty by relegating the Other to a familiar,
subordinate identity: that is, as a mute, passive reflection of the West or utopian projection of the West's dissatisfaction

Critique became romanticized into a totalizing affair - especially for

those who must bear the brunt of its repercussions . bell hooks asked, appropriately: `[s]hould
with itself.

we not be suspicious of postmodern critiques of the "subject" when they surface at a historical moment when many
subjugated people feel themselves coming to voice for the first time? ' (hooks, 1990: 28) Without this recognition,

postmodernists ended up marginalizing, silencing, and exiling precisely those

who are `the greatest victims of the West's essentialist conceits (the
excolonials and neocolonials, Blacks, women, and so forth )' (Krishna, 1993: 405). Worse
yet, added Roger Spegele, dissidence as offshore observation has `freed us from the
recognition that we have a moral obligation to do anything about it' (Spegele,
1992: 174).

at: china threat

This is a link to people like the heritage foundation the aff does not
construct the threat of a rising China -- it explicitly challenges the dominant
narrative of how we understand China and military presence
Policing China threats reproduces enmity analysis of discrete military
threats is key
Callahan, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, 05
(William A., How to understand China: the dangers and opportunities of being a rising
power, Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 701-714)
Although 'China threat theory' is ascribed to the Cold War thinking of foreigners who
suffer from an enemy deprivation syndrome, the use of containment as a response to
threats in Chinese texts suggests that Chinese strategists are also seeking to fill the
symbolic gap left by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the key threat to
the PRC after 1960. Refutations of 'China threat theory' do not seek to deconstruct
the discourse of 'threat' as part of critical security studies. Rather they are
expressions of a geopolitical identity politics because they refute 'Chinese' threats as a
way of facilitating the production of an America threat, a Japan threat, an India threat,
and so on. Uniting to fight these foreign threats affirms China's national identity.
Unfortunately, by refuting China threat in this bellicose way - that is by generating a
new series of threats - the China threat theory texts end up confirming the
threat that they seek to deny: Japan, India and Southeast Asia are increasingly
threatened by China's protests of peace.43
Moreover, the estrangement produced and circulated in China threat theory is not just
among nation-states. The recent shift in the focus of the discourse from security issues to
more economic and cultural issues suggests that China is estranged from the
'international standards' of the 'international community'. After a long process of
difficult negotiations, China entered the WTO in December 2001. Joining the WTO was
not just an economic or a political event; it was an issue of Chinese identity.44 As
Breslin, Shih and Zha describe in their articles in this Forum, this process was painful for
China as WTO membership subjects the PRC to binding rules that are not the product of
Chinese diplomacy or culture. Thus although China enters international organisations
like the WTO based on shared values and rules, China also needs to distinguish itself
from the undifferentiated mass of the globalised world. Since 2002, a large proportion of
the China threat theory articles have been published in economics, trade, investment,
and general business journals - rather than in international politics, area studies and
ideological journals as in the 1990s. Hence China threat theory is one way to differentiate
China from these international standards, which critics see as neo-colonial.45 Another
way is for China to assert ownership over international standards to affirm its national
identity through participation in globalisation.46
Lastly, some China threat theory articles go beyond criticising the ignorance and bad
intentions of the offending texts to conclude that those who promote China threat must
be crazy: 'There is a consensus within mainland academic circles that there is hardly
any reasonable logic to explain the views and practices of the United States toward China
in the past few years. It can only be summed up in a word: "Madness" \47 Indians
likewise are said to suffer from a 'China threat theory syndrome'.48 This brings us back
to Foucault's logic of 'rationality' being constructed through the exclusion of a range of
activities that are labelled as 'madness'. The rationality of the rise of China

depends upon distinguishing it from the madness of those who question it.
Like Joseph Nye's concern that warnings of a China threat could become a self-fulfilling
prophesy, China threat theory texts vigorously reproduce the dangers of the very
threat they seek to deny. Rather than adding to the debate, they end up policing
what Chinese and foreigners can rationally say.
Conclusion
The argument of this essay is not that China is a threat. Rather, it has examined the
productive linkages that knit together the image of China as a peacefully rising power
and the discourse of China as a threat to the economic and military stability of East Asia.
It would be easy to join the chorus of those who denounce 'China threat
theory' as the misguided product of the Blue Team, as do many in China and the
West. But that would be a mistake, because depending on circumstances anything - from
rising powers to civilian aircraft - can be interpreted as a threat. The purpose is not to
argue that interpretations are false in relation to some reality (such as that China is
fundamentally peaceful rather than war-like), but that it is necessary to unpack the
political and historical context of each perception of threat. Indeed, 'China
threat' has never described a unified American understanding of the PRC: it has always
been one position among many in debates among academics, public
intellectuals and policymakers. Rather than inflate extremist positions (in both the West
and China) into irrefutable truth, it is more interesting to examine the debates
that produced the threat/opportunity dynamic.
Not our argument the aff is a nuanced depiction of Chinese motives
backed up by empirics
Swaine 15
Michael Swaine is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
and has a PhD in Government from Harvard, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, April 20, 2015, Beyond American Predominance in the Western Pacific: The
Need for a Stable U.S.-China Balance of Power,
http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyond-american-predominance-inwestern-pacific-need-for-stable-u.s.-china-balance-of-power/i7gi
This strategy can no longer provide adequate security for China. Beijing must now
defend against threats before they can reach the Chinese homeland and vital coastal
economic centers. For the first time in its history, Beijing now has both the ability and
the motivation to seek to diminish significantly if not eliminate the potential threat to its
domestic and growing regional economic interests posed by Americas long-standing
predominance in the Western Pacific. Indeed, its ongoing acquisition of military
capabilities designed in large part to counter or complicate U.S. and allied air, naval,
missile, space, and cyber operations along its maritime periphery, as well as its
increasing economic and political-diplomatic initiatives across the Asian littoral and its
call for a new, postCold War cooperative security architecture for the Asia-Pacific,
partly serve such ends. Moreover, the desire to reduce Americas past maritime
superiority and economic power has become more achievable and hence more
compelling to many Chinese as a result not only of Chinas continued economic success
but also of the troubles now plaguing America and the West, from anemic economic
growth and domestic political dysfunction to image concerns resulting from arguably
unjust Middle East wars and apparent egregious human rights abuses.
This should not be surprising to anyone who understands modern Chinese history and
great power transitions. Beijing has an ongoing and likely long-term and deep incentive
to work with the United States and the West to sustain continued, mutually beneficial

economic growth and to address a growing array of common global and regional
concerns, from pandemics to climate change and terrorism. At the same time, it
understandably wishes to reduce its vulnerability to potential future threats from the
United States and other politically and militarily strong nations, while increasing its
overall influence along its strategically important maritime periphery. As Beijings
overseas power and influence grow, its foreign interests expand, and its domestic
nationalist backers become more assertive, it will naturally become less willing to accept
or acquiesce in international political and economic relationships, norms, and power
structures that it believes disproportionately and unjustly favor Western powers; put
China at a strategic, political, or economic disadvantage; or generally fail to reflect
movement toward a more multipolar global and regional power structure. It will also
likely become more fearful that a declining (in relative terms) Washington will regard an
increasingly influential China as a threat to be countered through ever more forceful or
deliberate measures. Indeed, this view is already widespread among many Chinese
observers.
One does not need to cast Beijing as an evil or predatory entity to understand the forces
driving such beliefs. They stem from national self-interest, historical insecurity (and
nationalist pride), suspicion, fear, and uncertainty. To some degree, they also stem from
a level of opportunism, driven in part by fear, but also in part by the understandable
desire to take advantage of Chinas growing regional and global influence and Americas
apparent relative decline in order to strengthen Chinese leverage in possible future
disputes.
Reps dont shape reality in the China debate
Goddard 9/18/15
Stacie E. Goddard is the Jane Bishop 51 Associate Professor of Political Science at
Wellesley College, Ronald R. Krebs is Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in the Liberal
Arts and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duck of
Minerva, September 18, 2015, Securitization Forum: The Transatlantic Divide: Why
Securitization Has Not Secured a Place in American IR, Why It Should, and How It Can,
http://duckofminerva.com/2015/09/securitization-forum-the-transatlantic-divide-whysecuritization-has-not-secured-a-place-in-american-ir-why-it-should-and-how-itcan.html
* modified for ableist language
But there are (good) substantive and (not so good) sociological reasons that
securitization has failed to gain traction in North America. First, and most important,
securitization describes a process but leaves us well short of (a) a fully specified causal
theory that (b) takes proper account of the politics of rhetorical contestation. According
to the foundational theorists of the Copenhagen School, actors, usually elites, transform
the social order from one of normal, everyday politics into a Schmittian world of crisis by
identifying a dire threat to the political community. They conceive of this securitizing
move in linguistic terms, as a speech act. As Ole Waever (1995: 55) argues, By saying it
[security], something is done (as in betting, a promise, naming a ship). . . . [T]he word
security is the act . . . [emphasis added]. Securitization is a powerful discursive process
that constitutes social reality. Countless articles and books have traced this process, and
its consequences, in particular policy domains.
Securitization presents itself as a causal account. But its mechanisms remain obscure, as
do the conditions under which it operates. Why is speaking security so powerful? How do
mere words twist and transform the social order? Does the invocation of security prompt
a visceral emotional response? Are speech acts persuasive, by using well-known tropes to

convince audiences that they must seek protection? Or does securitization operate
through the politics of rhetorical coercion, silencing potential opponents? In
securitization accounts, speech acts often seem to be magical incantations that upend
normal politics through pathways shrouded in mystery.
Equally unclear is why some securitizing moves resonate, while others fall on deaf ears
[are ignored]. Certainly not all attempts to construct threats succeed, and this is true of
both traditional military concerns as well as new security issues. Both neoconservatives
and structural realists in the United States have long insisted that conflict with China is
inevitable, yet China has over the last 25 years been more opportunity than threat in US
political discoursedespite these vigorous and persistent securitizing moves. In very
recent years, the balance has shifted, and the China threat has started to catch on:
linguistic processes alone cannot account for this change. The US military has repeatedly
declared that global climate change has profound implications for national securitybut
that has hardly cast aside climate change deniers, many of whom are ironically foreign
policy hawks supposedly deferential to the uniformed military. Authoritative speakers
have varied in the efficacy of their securitizing moves. While George W. Bush powerfully
framed the events of 9/11 as a global war against American values, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, a more gifted orator, struggled to convince a skeptical public that Germany
presented an imminent threat to the United States. After thirty years as an active
research program, securitization theory has hardly begun to offer acceptable answers to
these questions. Brief references to facilitating conditions wont cut it. You dont have
to subscribe to a covering-law conception of theory to find these questions important or
to find securitizations answers unsatisfying.
A large part of the problem, we believe, lies in securitizations silence on [disregard of]
the politics of security. Its foundations in speech act theory have yielded an oddly
apolitical theoretical framework. In its seminal formulation, the Copenhagen school
emphasized the internal linguistic rules that must be followed for a speech act to be
recognized as competent. Yet as Thierry Balzacq argues, by treating securitization as a
purely rule-driven process, the Copenhagen school ignores the politics of securitization,
reducing security to a conventional procedure such as marriage or betting in which the
felicity circumstances (conditions of success) must fully prevail for the act to go
through (2005:172). Absent from this picture are fierce rhetorical battles, where
coalitions counter securitizing moves with their own appeals that strike more or less
deeply at underlying narratives. Absent as well are the public intellectuals and media,
who question and critique securitizing moves sometimes (and not others), sometimes to
good effect (and sometimes with little impact). The audience itselfwhether the mass
public or a narrower elite stratumis stripped of all agency. Speaking security, even
when the performance is competent, does not sweep this politics away. Only by delving
into this politics can we shed light on the mysteries of securitization.
We see rhetorical politics as constituted less by singular securitizing moves than by
contentious conversationto use Charles Tillys phrase. To this end, we would urge
securitization theorists, as we recently have elsewhere, to move towards a pragmatic
model that rests on four analytical wagers: that actors are both strategic and social; that
legitimation works by imparting meaning to political action; that legitimation is laced
through with contestation; and that the power of language emerges through contentious
dialogue.

Heuristic Good
Saying we arent policy makers is self-fulfilling and a cop out---it is only true
if you accept their totalizing critique that eschews pursuing concrete
policies of accountability for individual thinking

Chandler, Westminster IR senior lecturer, 2004

(David, Building Global Civil Society `From Below'?, Millennium - Journal of

International Studies, March, 33.2, SAGE)
The celebration of global civil society from the bottom up would appear to be based less on any emergence of new political forces at the
global level than the desire of Western activists and commentators to justify their avoidance of accountability to any collective source of
political community or elected authority. The

focus on the shared interests with those excluded, or the

imagined global community of radical activists, is a way of legitimising the avoidance of
any accountability to those still trapped insidethe electorate.113 The struggle for
individual ethical and political autonomy, the claim for the recognition of separate
political spaces and for the incommunicability of political causes, demonstrates the
limits of the radical claims for the normative project of global civil society from below .
The rejection of the formal political sphere, as a way of mediating between the individual
and the social, leaves political struggles isolated from any shared framework of meaning
or from any formal processes of democratic accountability. This article should not be read as a defence of
some nostalgic vision of the past, neither does it assert that the key problem with radical global civil society approaches is their rejection of
formal engagement in existing political institutions and practices. The

point being made here is that the rejection

of state-based processes, which force the individual to engage with and account for the
views of other members of society, is a reflection of a broader probleman unwillingness
to engage in political contestation. Advocates of global civil society from below would
rather hide behind the views of someone else, legitimising their views as the prior moral claims of othersthe
courtly advocatesor putting themselves in harms way and leading by inarticulate example, rather than
engaging in a public debate. The unwillingness of radical activists to engage with their own society reflects the attenuation of
political community rather than its expansion. Regardless of the effectiveness of radical lobbying and calls
for recognition, this rejection of social engagement can only further legitimise the
narrowing of the political sphere to a small circle of unaccountable elites . If the only
alternative to the political game is to threaten to take our ball homethe anti-politics
of rejectionismthe powers that be can sleep peacefully in their beds.

IR Method Justifications
Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable enhances creativity and selfreflexivity, deconstructs cognitive biases and flawed ontological
assumptions, and enables the imagination and creation of alternative
futures.
Barma et al. 16 (May 2016, [Advance Publication Online on 11/6/15], Naazneen
Barma, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Assistant Professor of National
Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brent Durbin, PhD in Political Science
from UC-Berkeley, Professor of Government at Smith College, Eric Lorber, JD from
UPenn and PhD in Political Science from Duke, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Rachel
Whitlark, PhD in Political Science from GWU, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the
Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, Imagine a World in Which:
Using Scenarios in Political Science, International Studies Perspectives 17 (2), pp. 1-19,
http://www.naazneenbarma.com/uploads/2/9/6/9/29695681/using_scenarios_in_poli
tical_science_isp_2015.pdf)
**FYI if anyone is skeptical of Barmas affiliation with the Naval Postgraduate School, its worth looking at
her publication history, which is deeply opposed to US hegemony and the existing liberal world order:
a) co-authored an article entitled How Globalization Went Bad that has this byline: From terrorism
to global warming, the evils of globalization are more dangerous than ever before. What went
wrong? The world became dependent on a single superpower. Only by correcting this imbalance
can the world become a safer place.
(http://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_globalization_went_bad)
b) most recent published scenario is entitled World Without the West, supports the a Non-Western
reinvention of the liberal order, and concludes that This argument made a lot of people
uncomfortable, mostly because of an endemic and gross overestimation of the reach, depth and
attractiveness of the existing liberal order (http://nationalinterest.org/feature/welcome-theworld-without-the-west-11651)

Over the past decade, the cult of irrelevance in political science scholarship has been lamented
by a growing chorus (Putnam 2003; Nye 2009; Walt 2009). Prominent scholars of international affairs have diagnosed the roots
of the gap between academia and policymaking, made the case for why political science research is valuable for
policymaking, and offered a number of ideas for enhancing the policy relevance of scholarship in international relations and comparative politics (Walt
2005,2011; Mead 2010; Van Evera 2010; Jentleson and Ratner 2011; Gallucci 2012; Avey and Desch 2014). Building on these insights, several initiatives have
been formed in the attempt to bridge the gap.2 Many of the specific efforts put in place by these projects focus on providing scholars
with the skills, platforms, and networks to better communicate the findings and
implications of their research to the policymaking community, a necessary and worthwhile objective for a field in which theoretical debates,
methodological training, and publishing norms tend more and more toward the abstract and esoteric.

Yet enhancing communication between scholars and policymakers is only one component of bridging the gap between international
affairs theory and practice. Another crucial component of this bridge is the generation of substantive research programs
that are actually policy relevanta challenge to which less concerted attention has been paid. The dual challenges of bridging the gap are especially acute for
graduate students, a particular irony since many enter the discipline with the explicit hope of informing policy. In a field that has an admirable
devotion to pedagogical self-reflection, strikingly little attention is paid to techniques for
generating policy-relevant ideas for dissertation and other research topics. Although numerous articles and conference workshops are
devoted to the importance of experiential and problem-based learning, especially through techniques of simulation that emulate policymaking processes (Loggins 2009; Butcher 2012; Glasgow
2012; Rothman 2012; DiCicco 2014), little has been written about the use of such techniques for generating and developing innovative research ideas.

This article outlines an experiential and problem-based approach to developing a political

science research program using scenario analysis. It focuses especially on illuminating the research generation and pedagogical benefits of this
technique by describing the use of scenarios in the annual New Era Foreign Policy Conference (NEFPC), which brings together doctoral students of international and comparative affairs who share
a demonstrated interest in policy-relevant scholarship.3 In the introductory section, the article outlines the practice of scenario analysis and considers the utility of the technique in political
science. We argue that scenario analysis should be viewed as a tool to stimulate problem-based learning for doctoral students and discuss the broader scholarly benefits of using scenarios to help
generate research ideas. The second section details the manner in which NEFPC deploys scenario analysis. The third section reflects upon some of the concrete scholarly benefits that have been
realized from the scenario format. The fourth section offers insights on the pedagogical potential associated with using scenarios in the classroom across levels of study. A brief conclusion reflects
on the importance of developing specific techniques to aid those who wish to generate political science scholarship of relevance to the policy world.
What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science?

Scenario analysis is perceived most commonly as a technique for examining the robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers
in future states that go beyond conventional extrapolations of current trends , preparing
them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and to protect themselves from

adverse exogenous shocks. The global petroleum company Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes scenario analysis as the art of considering what if
questions about possible future worlds. Scenario analysis is thus typically seen as serving the purposes of
corporate planning or as a policy tool to be used in combination with simulations of decision making. Yet scenario analysis
is not inherently limited to these uses. This section provides a brief overview of the practice of scenario analysis and the motivations
underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the technique for political science scholarship
and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were created.
The Art of Scenario Analysis

We characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing current trends in unexpected

combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet plausible futures, often referred to as
alternative worlds. Scenarios are thus explicitly not forecasts or projections based on
linear extrapolations of contemporary patterns, and they are not hypothesis-based expert
predictions. Nor should they be equated with simulations, which are best characterized as functional
representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005). Instead, they are
depictions of possible future states of the world, offered together with a narrative of the
driving causal forces and potential exogenous shocks that could lead to those futures. Good scenarios thus rely on explicit causal
propositions that, independent of one another, are plausibleyet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future worlds. For example, few predicted the dramatic fall in oil
prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent driving forces, such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, Chinas slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major Middle
Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends thatcombined with OPECs decision not to take concerted action as prices began to declinecame together in an
unexpected way.
While scenario analysis played a role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are found in corporate futures studies of the late
1960s and early 1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not
capturing the rapidly changing environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends
were inadequate for anticipating the evolving business environment. Shell-style scenario planning helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will
look much like the present (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4). Using scenario thinking, Shell anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position
itself for major disruptions in the global petroleum sector.
Building on its corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it
defines as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another
prominent application of scenario thinking is found in the National Intelligence Councils series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in anticipating and planning
for future challenges. These reports present a handful of alternative worlds approximately twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and
opportunities, and intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical change and its effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range
general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and coping with more narrow and immediate challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Funds EuroFutures project, which
uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German Marshall Fund 2013).

Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking .5 Long-term
global trends across a number of different realmssocial, technological, environmental, economic, and politicalcombine
in often-unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges. Yet the ability of decision
makers to imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the policy realm is constrained by their
existing mental models and maps. This limitation is exacerbated by well-known cognitive
bias tendencies such as groupthink and confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005). The power
of scenarios lies in their ability to help individuals break out of conventional modes of
thinking and analysis by introducing unusual combinations of trends and deliberate
discontinuities in narratives about the future. Imagining alternative future worlds
through a structured analytical process enables policymakers to envision and thereby
adapt to something altogether different from the known present.
Designing Scenarios for Political Science Inquiry
The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs.

Scenarios are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine
how the future political-economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy challenges and opportunities.
For example, terrorist organizations are a known threat that have captured the attention of the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore
how seemingly unrelated vectors of changethe rise of a new peer competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and
nonstate actors in surprising ways, and the destabilizing effects of climate change or infectious disease pandemicscan be useful for illuminating the nature and limits of the terrorist threat in
ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized states and groups. By illuminating the potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats,
scenario analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding of global politicaleconomic trends and dynamics. The notion of exogeneityso prevalent in social science

Very simply, scenario analysis can throw into sharp relief

often-overlooked yet pressing questions in international affairs that demand focused
investigation.
Scenarios thus offer, in principle, an innovative tool for developing a political science research
agenda. In practice, achieving this objective requires careful tailoring of the approach . The specific scenario
scholarshipapplies to models of reality, not to reality itself.

analysis technique we outline below was designed and refined to provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-based research questions with contemporary international policy
relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating the scenario set described here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the goal; on the
contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing theories about global change (e.g., a resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle
underpinning the transformation of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was to simplify, then exaggerate them, before fleshing out the emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the
contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details about the possible pathways to that point filled in second. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal
claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree of bias or our own form of groupthink went into construction of the
scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare these especially implausible claims and systematic
biases.8
An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as the analytical process around themthat of case-centered, structured, focused comparison, intended

The use of scenarios is similar to counterfactual

analysis in that it modifies certain variables in a given situation in order to analyze the
resulting effects (Fearon 1991). Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally retrospective in nature and explore
events that did not actually occur in the context of known history, our scenarios are deliberately forward-looking and are designed
especially to shed light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005).

to explore potential futures that could unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying how individual events might expand or shift
the funnel of choices available to political actors and thus lead to different historical outcomes (Nye 2005, 6869), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better illuminate surprising

We see scenarios as a
complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in international affairs, rather
than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other methodological tools.
intersections and sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical knowledge.

In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are employed, acting as cases for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit driving
forces which represent hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process itself employs templates (discussed further below)
to serve as a graphical representation of a structured, focused investigation and thereby as the research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett 2005). In
essence, these templates articulate key observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios and serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and
Verba 1994). Finally, this structured, focused comparison serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario analysis that leads directly to the articulation of new research
agendas.

The scenario process described here has thus been carefully designed to offer some
guidance to policy-oriented graduate students who are otherwise left to the relatively
unstructured norms by which political science dissertation ideas are typically developed. The initial
articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students might choose topics based on their coursework, their
own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research agendas are thus typically developed by looking for puzzles in existing research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral
students also, understandably, often choose topics that are particularly amenable to garnering research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their funding priorities on
extrapolations from what has been important in the recent pastleading to, for example, the prevalence of Japan and Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000sin the
absence of any alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance.

The scenario approach to generating research ideas is grounded in the belief that these
traditional approaches can be complemented by identifying questions likely to be of
great empirical importance in the real world, even if these do not appear as puzzles in existing
research programs or as clear extrapolations from past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC
envision alternative worlds that could develop in the medium (five to seven year) term
and are designed to tease out issues scholars and policymakers may encounter in the
relatively near future so that they can begin thinking critically about them now. This
timeframe offers a period distant enough from the present as to avoid falling into current
events analysis, but not so far into the future as to seem like science fiction . In imagining the worlds in
which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for avoiding failures of creativity and for
overturning the assumptions that prevent scholars and analysts from anticipating and
understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in international affairs.
Valid, descriptive theories of the world are an essential prerequisite to
emancipatory critique epistemic decolonization is impossible without
reclaiming the concept of objectivity.
Jones 04 (August 2004, Branwen Gruffydd, PhD in Development Studies from the
University of Sussex, Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at Goldsmiths
University of London, From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power,
knowledge and objectivity in International Relations, Paper presented at Theorising
Ontology, Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism,
University of Cambridge, http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf)
The common-sense view pervading recent discussions of epistemology, ontology and methodology in IR asserts that objectivity
implies value-free neutrality. However, objective social inquiry has an inherent tendency
to be critical, in various senses. To the extent that objective knowledge provides a better and more
adequate account of reality than other ideas, such knowledge is inherently critical
(implicitly or explicitly) of those ideas. 30 In other words critical social inquiry does not (or not
only) manifest its criticalness through self-claimed labels of being critical or siding with
the oppressed, but through the substantive critique of prevailing ideas . Objective social
knowledge constitutes a specific form of criticism: explanatory critique. The critique of
dominant ideas or ideologies is elaborated through providing a more adequate explanation
of aspects of the world, and in so doing exposing what is wrong with the dominant
ideology. This may also entail revealing the social conditions which give rise to ideologies, thus exposing the necessary and causal relation between particular social relations and
particular ideological conceptions.

the reproduction of those

structured relations is in the interests of the powerful, whereas transformation of existing structured
relations is in the interests of the weak . Because ideas inform social action they are casually
efficacious either in securing the reproduction of existing social relations (usually as an unintended consequence of social
In societies which are constituted by unequal structures of social relations giving rise to unequal power and conflicting interests,

or in

transforming social relations

ideas cannot be neutral

practice),
informing social action aimed at
. This is why
. Ideas
which provide a misrepresentation of the nature of society, the causes of unequal social conditions, and the conflicting interests of the weak and powerful, will tend to help secure the reproduction
of prevailing social relations. Ideas which provide a more adequate account of the way society is structured and how structured social relations produce concrete conditions of inequality and

ideas which are false are ideological and, in

serving to promote the reproduction of the status quo and avoid attempts at radical change, are in the
interests of the powerful. An account which is objective will contradict ideological ideas, implicitly or explicitly criticising them for their false or flawed accounts of
reality. The criticism here arises not, or not only, from pointing out the coincidence between ideologies and the interests of the powerful, nor from a prior
normative stance of solidarity with the oppressed, but from exposing the flaws in
dominant ideologies through a more adequate account of the nature and causes of social
conditions 31 .
A normative commitment to the oppressed must entail a commitment to truth and
objectivity, because true ideas are in the interest of the oppressed, false ideas are in the
interest of the oppressors. In other words, the best way to declare solidarity with the oppressed is
to declare ones commitment to objective inquiry 32 . As Nzongola-Ntalaja (1986: 10) has put it:
It is a question of whether one analyses society from the standpoint of the dominant
groups, who have a vested interest in mystifying the way society works, or from the
standpoint of ordinary people, who have nothing to lose from truthful analyses of their
predicament.
The philosophical realist theory of science, objectivity and explanatory critique thus
provides an alternative response to the relationship between knowledge and power.
Instead of choosing perspectives on the basis of our ethical commitment to the cause of
the oppressed and to emancipatory social change, we should choose between contending
ideas on the basis of which provides a better account of objective social reality . This will
inherently provide a critique of the ideologies which, by virtue of their flawed account of the social world, serve the
interests of the powerful.
exploitation can potentially inform efforts to change those social relations. In this sense,

Exemplars of explanatory critique in International Relations are provided in the work of scholars such as Siba Grovogui, James Gathii, Anthony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Jacques Depelchin,
Hilbourne Watson, Robert Vitalis, Sankaran Krishna, Michel-Rolph Trouillot 33 . Their work provides critiques of central categories, theories and discourses in the theory and practice of IR and
narratives of world history, including assumptions about sovereignty, international society, international law, global governance, the nature of the state. They expose the ideological and racialised
nature of central aspects of IR through a critical examination of both the long historical trajectory of imperial ideologies regarding colonized peoples, and the actual practices of colonialism and
decolonisation in the constitution of international orders and local social conditions. Their work identifies the flaws in current ideas by revealing how they systematically misrepresent or ignore the
actual history of social change in Africa, the Caribbean and other regions of the Third World, both past and present during both colonial and neo-colonial periods of the imperial world order.
Their work reveals how racism, violence, exploitation and dispossession, colonialism and neo-colonialism have been central to the making of contemporary international order and contemporary
doctrines of international law, sovereignty and rights, and how such themes are glaring in their absence from histories and theories of international relations and international history.

Objective social knowledge which accurately depicts and explains social reality has these
qualities by virtue of its relation to its object, not its subject. As Collier argues, The science/ideology distinction is an
epistemological one, not a social one. (Collier 1979: 60). So, for example, in the work of Grovogui, Gathii and Depelchin,
the general perspective and knowledge of conditions in and the history of Africa might be due largely to the
African social origins of the authors. However the judgement that their accounts are
superior to those of mainstream IR rests not on the fact that the authors are African, but on the greater
adequacy of their accounts with respect to the actual historical and contemporary production
of conditions and change in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World. The criteria for choosing their accounts over others derives from the
relation between the ideas and their objects (what they are about), not from the relation between the ideas and their subjects (who produced them). It is vital to retain explicitly some commitment
to objectivity in social inquiry, to the notion that the proper criterion for judging ideas about the world lies in what they say about the world, not whose ideas they are.

A fundamental problem which underlies the origin and reproduction of IRs eurocentricity is the
overwhelming dominance of ideas produced in and by the west, and the wilful and determined
silencing of the voices and histories of the colonised. But the result of this fundamental
problem is flawed knowledge about the world. Eurocentricity is therefore a dual problem
concerning both the authors and the content of knowledge, and cannot be resolved
through normative commitments alone. It is not only the voices of the colonised, but the histories of colonialism, which have been glaring in their
absence from the discipline of International Relations.

Overcoming eurocentricity therefore requires not only concerted effort from the centre
to create space and listen to hitherto marginalised voices, but also commitment to
correcting the flaws in prevailing knowledge and it is not only the Other who can and
should elaborate this critique. A vitally important implication of objectivity is that it is the responsibility of European
and American, just as much as non-American or non-European scholars, to decolonise
IR. The importance of objectivity in social inquiry defended here can perhaps be seen as a form of
epistemological internationalism. It is not necessary to be African to attempt to tell a
more accurate account of the history of Europes role in the making of the contemporary

Africa and the rest of the world, for example, or to write counter-histories of the expansion of international society which detail the
systematic barbarity of so-called Western civilisation. It is not necessary to have been colonised to recognise and document the violence, racism,
genocide and dispossession which have characterised European expansion over five hundred years.

Root cause explanations of International Relations dont exist

methodological pluralism is necessary to reclaim IR as emancipatory praxis
and avoid endless political violence.
Bleiker 14 (6/17, Roland, Professor of International Relations at the University of
Queensland, International Theory Between Reification and Self-Reflective Critique,
International Studies Review, Volume 16, Issue 2, pages 325327)
This book is part of an increasing trend of scholarly works that have embraced poststructural critique but want to ground it in more positive political foundations, while retaining a reluctance to
return to the positivist tendencies that implicitly underpin much of constructivist research. The path that Daniel Levine has carved out is innovative, sophisticated, and convincing. A superb
scholarly achievement.

the key challenge in international relations (IR) scholarship is what he calls unchecked reification: the
widespread and dangerous process of forgetting the distinction between theoretical
concepts and the real-world things they mean to describe or to which they refer (p. 15). The dangers are
real, Levine stresses, because IR deals with some of the most difficult issues, from genocides to
war. Upholding one subjective position without critical scrutiny can thus have far-reaching
consequences. Following Theodor Adornowho is the key theoretical influence on this bookLevine takes a post-positive position and assumes that the world cannot be known
For Levine,

outside of our human perceptions and the values that are inevitably intertwined with them. His ultimate goal is to overcome reification, or, to be more precise, to recognize it as an inevitable aspect
of thought so that its dangerous consequences can be mitigated.

Levine proceeds in three stages: First he reviews several decades of IR theories to resurrect critical moments when scholars displayed an acute awareness of the dangers of reification. He
refreshingly breaks down distinctions between conventional and progressive scholarship, for he detects self-reflective and critical moments in
scholars that are usually associated with straightforward positivist positions (such as E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, or Graham Allison). But Levine also
shows how these moments of self-reflexivity never lasted long and were driven out by the compulsion to offer systematic and scientific knowledge.

outlines why IR scholars regularly closed down critique. Here, he points to a range of factors and phenomena, from peer review processes to the
And here too, he eschews conventional wisdom, showing that work conducted in the wake of the third debate, while
explicitly post-positivist and critiquing the reifying tendencies of existing IR scholarship, often lacked critical selfawareness. As a result, Levine believes that many of the respective authors failed to appreciate sufficiently that
reification is a consequence of all thinking including itself (p. 68).
The third objective of Levine's book is also the most interesting one. Here, he outlines the path toward what he calls sustainable critique: a form of self-reflection that can
counter the dangers of reification. Critique, for him, is not just something that is directed outwards, against particular
theories or theorists. It is also inward-oriented, ongoing, and sensitive to the limitations
of thought itself (p. 12).
The second stage of Levine's inquiry

speed at which academics are meant to publish.

The challenges that such a sustainable critique faces are formidable. Two stand out: First, if the natural tendency to forget the origins and values of our concepts are as strong as Levine and other
Adorno-inspired theorists believe they are, then how can we actually recognize our own reifying tendencies? Are we not all inevitably and subconsciously caught in a web of meanings from which
we cannot escape? Second, if one constantly questions one's own perspective, does one not fall into a relativism that loses the ability to establish the kind of stable foundations that are necessary for
political action? Adorno has, of course, been critiqued as relentlessly negative, even by his second-generation Frankfurt School successors (from Jrgen Habermas to his IR interpreters, such as
Andrew Linklater and Ken Booth).

He starts off with depicting

reification not as a flaw that is meant to be expunged, but as an a priori condition for
scholarship. The challenge then is not to let it go unchecked.
Methodological pluralism lies at the heart of Levine's sustainable critique . He borrows from what Adorno
calls a constellation: an attempt to juxtapose, rather than integrate, different perspectives. It is in this spirit that Levine advocates multiple methods to
understand the same event or phenomena. He writes of the need to validate multiple
and mutually incompatible ways of seeing (p. 63, see also pp. 101102). In this model, a scholar oscillates back
and forth between different methods and paradigms, trying to understand the event in
question from multiple perspectives. No single method can ever adequately represent the
event or should gain the upper hand. But each should, in a way, recognize and capture details
or perspectives that the others cannot (p. 102). In practical terms, this means combining a
range of methods even whenor, rather, precisely whenthey are deemed incompatible.
They can range from poststructual deconstruction to the tools pioneered and
championed by positivist social sciences.
The benefit of such a methodological polyphony is not just the opportunity to bring out
nuances and new perspectives. Once the false hope of a smooth synthesis has been
abandoned, the very incompatibility of the respective perspectives can then be used to
identify the reifying tendencies in each of them. For Levine, this is how reification may be checked at
The response that Levine has to these two sets of legitimate criticisms are, in my view, both convincing and useful at a practical level.

the source and this is how a critically reflexive moment might thus be rendered sustainable (p.
103). It is in this sense that Levine's approach is not really post-foundational but , rather, an attempt to
balance foundationalisms against one another (p. 14). There are strong parallels here with arguments advanced by assemblage thinking
and complexity theorylinks that could have been explored in more detail.

Including the state in analysis is necessary for effective scholarship the

historical dominance of state-centrism is an argument for, not against, its
relevance.
Booth 14 (7/25, Ken, former E. H. Carr Professor of the Department of International
Politics at Aberystwyth University, International Relations: All That Matters, google
books)
Scholars love to debate the definition of their discipline. This is hardly surprising, as there is always a great deal riding on where one draws the line between what is

international relations is defined simply as the international level of world politics. By international level I mean
the interactions largely (but not exclusively) of sovereign states; by world politics I mean who gets what, when and how across
in or out. In this book,

the world, to stretch Harold Lasswells classical definition of politics. The reason for accentuating the international level of world politics is twofold. First, as

to engage with who gets what, when and

how across the world without a coherent focus such as the international level is to invite
bewilderment in the face of information overload. This problem is evident in many of the doorstep-sized textbooks about world or global
politics: what in the world is not a matter of world politics? The formulation proposed offers a distinct focus (the
international), while being empirically open (the world). I owe this way of thinking largely to C.A.W. Manning, an early
doyen of IR, who described academic international relations as having a focus but not a periphery. By focusing
on the international, critics will say that I have succumbed to a state-centric view of the world. This is the idea
already mentioned, the international is a level with enormous causal weight. Second,

that states are the fundamental reality of world politics. Such a view is sometimes also described as being statist, meaning endorsing the idea that the state is and

My position is more complicated: I want to

recognize the empirical significance of states and their relations without being statist
politically or ethically. This is like an atheist arguing about religion. An atheist cannot for long discuss religion without talking about God, but
should be the highest level of both political decision-making and loyalty.

this does not make the atheist God-centric; it only means that the atheist is aware of the significance of God when talking about religion. The book will argue that

the international level of world politics is state-dominated in an empirical sense (some states are
the most powerful actors in the world) without succumbing to state-centrism in a normative sense (believing that
the contemporary states-system represents the best of all possible worlds). Later chapters will underline that states are not the only actors at the international

, it would be foolish to play down the

continuing significance of especially the most powerful states in determining who gets what
across the world, or the continuing causal weight of state interactions in shaping the when and how of things happening. Recognizing these
empirical realities is perfectly consistent with accepting that one of the aims of studying IR is to
challenge what is done, and why, and consider whether different worlds are possible and desirable. Matters of continuity and change are always
present in international relations. According to the realist tradition (explained later), the international level or system has had, again in
Waltzs term, a distinct texture (a persisting set of characteristics) over the centuries. This continuity allows us to have a timetranscending understanding of the situations, dilemmas and crises faced by leaders and peoples in other places in other eras.
Critics of this view - those dazzled by whats new - tend to argue that talk of texture exaggerates continuity. This is
mistaken. There can be no doubt that we live in a new era when it comes to technology and its potential, for example, but have relations
between political units fundamentally changed? We cannot, and should not, assume that everything will always be the same,
but it would be foolish to underestimate the stubborn continuities of state interactions.
level: some multinational corporations have more clout than some states. Nonetheless

Middle Range theorizing is good proceding from the particular to the

universal avoids the dangers of reification inherent in top down theory
formation.
Bennett 13 (2013, Andrew, PhD in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, Professor of Government at Georgetown University,
The mother of all isms: Causal mechanisms and structured pluralism in International
Relations theory, European Journal of International Relations 19(3) 459 481)
Finally,

scholars can use the taxonomy to develop middle-range or typological theories about how
A typological theory is a theory that not only defines individual independent

combinations of mechanisms interact in shaping outcomes for specified cases or populations..

provides contingent generalizations on how and under what conditions

Typological
theories can model complex causal relations, including non-linear relations, high-order interaction effects,
and processes involving many variables. Examples from comparative politics as well as IR include theories on alliance
burden-sharing (Bennett et al., 1994), national unification (Ziblatt, 2006), welfare capitalism (Esping-Andersen, 1990), national political
economies (Hall and Soskice, 2001), and rebelhome statehost state relations (Bennett, 2012; for analysis of some of these examples and a long list of typologies in IR and
comparative politics, see Collier et al., 2012). The taxonomy thus encompasses the building blocks of theorized
mechanisms that can be brought together in different conjunctions to develop typological theories on how combinations of variables behave. Typological
theories allow for cumulative theorizing as scholars can add variables or re-conceptualize them to higher or lower levels of abstraction (Elman,
2005), and such theories can be fruitfully and cumulatively modified as they encounter anomalous cases or expand to encompass new types of cases
variables and the hypothesized causal mechanisms that shape their effects, but

they [these variables] behave in specified conjunctions or configurations to produce effects on speci - fied dependent variables (George and Bennett, 2005: 235).

(for dis - cussion of the example of the evolution of typological theorizing on alliance burden- sharing, see Bennett, 2011). Adding variables of course adds to the complexity of the theory, but
researchers can pare back this complexity by controlling for some of the vari - ables and exploring only subsets of the full typological space in any one study. An additional advantage of shifting

rooting the IR field more clearly in theories about causal mechanisms is that this can
re-energize interchanges among the IR subfield, the other subfields of political science, and the other social sci - ences. These dialogues should be a two-way street,
from the isms and

with borrowing and learning in both directions. The IR field has already shared with the American politics subfield many theories about mechanisms of power and institutions, for example, but the
taxonomy of mechanisms serves as a reminder that the study of American politics could benefit by paying closer attention to theories on legitimacy, persuasion, norms, socialization, and identity
that have been developed more fully in IR. Cross-field discourse with compara - tive politics can also benefit by moving away from the tribal language of the isms, which is not widely used in
comparative politics. Where the two subfields have intersected in ways that focus on causal mechanisms rather than paradigmatic isms, cross-pollination and collaboration have flourished. This is
particularly true in the study of civil and ethnic conflicts and their interaction with foreign states and transnational actors. In this research program, explanations have focused on mechanisms
involving greed, grievance, transac - tions costs, mobilization, framing, informational asymmetries and credible commitments problems, ethnic security dilemmas, principalagent relations, and
many other factors, and comparativists and IR scholars have collaborated and drawn readily on each other in their research (Checkel, 2012; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Fearon and Laitin, 2003;
Kalyvas, 2003; King, 2004; Lichbach, 1998; Salehyan, 2009). Similarly, theoretical con - cepts on causal mechanisms translate far more readily between IR and economics, psy - chology, sociology,

political science has moved increasingly over the last

toward mechanism-based explanations of complex phenomena

and history than does the ingrown and esoteric language of the isms Conclusions The field of

two decades
. This shift is related to the devel - opment
of variants of scientific realism in the philosophy of science, but it has been hampered by limited understanding among political scientists of how mechanism-based explanations differ from

our ontological theories of how politics

works, which increasingly embrace complexity, have outrun our epistemological notions
of how to study politics, which still cling to the vestiges of forms of positivism that lost favor among philosophers decades ago. A focus on explanation
via reference to causal mechanisms offers one way of bringing our ontological assumptions,
epistemological approaches, and research methods back into alignment. Yet political scientists have been
explanations built upon earlier philosophies of science. As Peter Hall has persuasively argued (2003),

hesitant to commit fully to this move because they have lacked a clear sense of the philosophical costs and benefits of mecha - nism-based explanations. The present article has argued that
although mechanism-ori - ented explanations are not without their own drawbacks, they are an improvement over Kuhns concept of paradigms and Lakatoss notion of research programs.
Whereas Kuhnian paradigms and Lakatosian research programs both foundered, in different ways, on the difficulties of justifying large sets of partially testable inter related ideas, the con - cept of
theories about discrete causal mechanisms allows for middle-range typological theories that are more localized, if also more complex. IR scholars also need assurance that explanation via
mechanisms does not entirely lack the key attraction of paradigms or research programs: a structured discourse that provides a framework around which we can organize cumulative research
findings. Why should we move away from the isms realism, liberalism, and constructivism in the IR subfield; rational choice, historical institutionalism, and other isms in the study of
American and comparative politics and toward causal mechanisms if the latter contribute only to a hodgepodge of discrete explanations of individual cases? Here, the taxonomy of causal

extant paradigms and research programs have implicitly relied on

causal mechanisms all along and can be mapped onto an approach that focuses on
explanatory mechanisms without reifying them into grand schools of thought. Cumulation and
mechanisms introduced above shows how

progress enter in as increasingly refined theories on individual mecha - nisms and as improvements in typological theories on how combinations of mechanisms interact to shape outcomes in
problem-based research programs. Mechanism-oriented theorizing poses important costs, particularly a loss of parsi - mony compared to extant paradigms and research programs. Still,

there is a strong
philosophical basis for rooting the study of politics in theories about causal mechanisms ,
and it is possible to do so while maintaining a structured discourse and cumulating research findings.
researchers using this approach to theory-building can choose different trade-offs along the spectrum between parsimony and complexity. In the end,

Institutional analysis good

Their framework/alternative arguments distract from institutional analysis
that undermines their sustainability and effectiveness thats net offence
Welsh, Comm Prof @ Appalachia State University, 13
(Scott, The Rhetorical Surface of Democracy: How Deliberative Ideals Undermine
Democratic Politics, pg. 81)
Certeau does not, however, reduce political contest to the "micro" politics of everyday life. Just because he recognizes
that the power of the weak resides in the effective authority of the strong does not mean
that we can rest assured that everything will simply work out in the end. Jodi Dean finds a
naive faith of this kind in those who imagine that accelerated and broadly dispersed
conversations, made possible by the Internet and social media, might ultimately deliver
free and equal democratic deliberation. So in response, she argues that such efforts "to displace
polities onto the activities of everyday or ordinary people" draw attention away from the
still very real need for political challengers to build support, win elections, and ultimately
exercise authority themselves. While Certeau is partly responsible for drawing recent scholarly attention to the
politics of everyday life, he never- theless deliberately avoids falling into the trap Dean identifies. Instead, as important as
the daily "capture of speech" is to democratic politics, we must not, Ceneau argues, attribute a magical democratic power
to vernacular voices. Speech, he clarifies, is not an adequate "substitute" for "work."S2 Certeau's

It signals, rather, the

necessity of a sustained capture of speech, which is only possible upon winning a
measure of institutional authority. Hence, Certeau rejects the "jubilation" of intellectuals
"who wish to collapse a system of authority without preparing for its replacement."83
Instead, meaningful change requires forms of symbolic resistance that plan an eventual
campaign for and a reintegration with state authority. He writes, "If it is not organized, if it is not
distinction between speech and work, however, may be either more or less than meets the eye.

inscribed, ewen as a strategy, within the network of national forces in order to effec'ively change a system, (al demand Of
conscience Will be neither reformist nor revolutionary," but Will be ' 'extinguished.'

Evaluate the benefits of the plan before our epistemology knowledge is

always contextual and fractured which means specificity is the only way to
verify the 1ACs truth claims focusing debate on our assumptions in the
abstract is intellectual hubris and makes managing violence and
environmental destruction impossible turns the k
Lake, Poli Sci Prof @ University of California San Diego, 14
(David, Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of the Great Debates and the rise of
eclecticism in International Relations, European Journal of International Relations
19(3) 567587, https://quote.ucsd.edu/lake/files/2014/02/Lake-EJIR.pdf)
*ableism corrected
In the end, I prefer progress within paradigms rather than war between paradigms, especially as
the latter would be inconclusive. The human condition is precarious. This is still the age
of thermonuclear weapons. Globalization continues to disrupt lives as countries realign their economies on the
basis of comparative advantage, production chains are disaggregated and wrapped around the globe, and financial crises
in one country reverberate around the planet in minutes. Transnational terrorism threatens to turn

otherwise local disputes into global conflicts, and leave everyone everywhere feeling unsafe. And all the
while, anthropomorphic change transforms the global climate with potentially
catastrophic consequences. Under these circumstances, we as a society need all the help we can
get. There is no monopoly on knowledge. And there is no guarantee that any one kind of
knowledge generated and understood within any one epistemology or ontology is always
and everywhere more useful than another. To assert otherwise is an act of supreme
intellectual hubris. This is not a plea to let a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand intellectual flowers bloom.
Scholars working in cloistered isolation are not likely to produce great insights, especially when the social problems
besetting us today are of such magnitude. All knowledge must be disciplined. That is, knowledge must be shared by and
with others if it is to count as knowledge. Positivists and post-positivists are each working hard to improve and clarify the

standards of knowledge within their respective paradigms. This is an important turn for both, as it will facilitate progress
within each even as it raises barriers to exchange across approaches. So, if not a thousand flowers, it is perhaps better for
teams of scholars to tend a small number of separate gardens, grow what they can best, and share when possible with the
others and, especially, the broader societies of which they are part. Do not mourn the end of theory, if by theory we mean
the Great Debates in International Relations. Too often, the Great Debates and especially the paradigm wars

became contests over the truth status of assumptions. Declarations that I am a realist or
pronouncements that As a liberal, I predict were statements of a near quasi-religious
faith, not conclusions that followed from a falsifiable theory with stronger empirical
support. Likewise, assertions that positivism or post-positivism is a better approach to
understanding world politics are similarly [misleading] blinding. The Great Debates were
too often academic in the worst sense of that term. Mid-level theory flourished in the
interstices of these debates for decades and now, with the waning of the paradigm wars,
is coming into its own within the field. I regard this as an entirely positive development. We may be
witnessing the demise of a particular kind of grand theory, but theory in the plural lives.
Long may they reign.

AT: Pos. Peace

Structural violence doesnt escalate they essentialize degrees of violence,
systems of violence are not causal to international war
Hinde and Pulkkinnen 1 Cambridge Psychology Professor and University of
Jyvskyl Psychology Professor, 2001, (Robert and Lea, Human Aggressiveness and
War, Pugwash, Vol. 2, No. 3, September, Pg. 5-6, PAS)
http://www.pugwash.org/reports/rc/Papers_2-3.pdf 1-17-13
People are capable of perpetrating the most terrible acts of violence on their fellows. From before recorded
history humans have killed humans, and violence is potentially present in every society. There is no escaping the fact
that the capacity to develop a propensity for violence is part of human nature. But that does not mean that aggression is
inevitable: temporary anger need not give rise to persistent hostility, and hostility need not give rise to acts of
aggression. And people also have the capacity to care for the needs of others, and are capable of acts of great altruism and selfsacrifice. A subsidiary aim of this paper is to identify the factors that make aggressive tendencies predominate over the cooperative and
compassionate ones. Some

degree of conflict of interest is often present in relationships between

individuals, in the relations between groups of individuals within states, and in the
relations between states: we are concerned with the factors that make such conflicts
escalate into violence. The answer to that question depends critically on the context. While there may be some
factors in common, the bases of individual aggressiveness are very different from those
involved in mob violence, and they differ yet again from the factors influencing the bomb-aimer
pressing the button in a large scale international war. In considering whether acts which harm others are a
consequence of the aggressive motivation of individuals, it is essential to recognize the diversity of such acts,

which include interactions between individuals, violence between groups, and wars of the WW2 type. We shall see that, with increasing
social complexity, individual aggressiveness becomes progressively less important, but other aspects of human nature come to contribute to
group phenomena. Although research on human violence has focussed too often on the importance of one factor or another, it is essential to
remember that violence

always has multiple causes, and the interactions between the causal
factors remain largely unexplored.

Scenario Planning Good

Even if their links are right our specific scenario planning is key combating
international violence and inaugurating an ethical response to IR conflicts
they cant win a case turn and voting aff is the best way to solve their impact
arguments.
Ole Wver, IRUniversity of Copenhagen, 2000 International relations theory and
the politics of European integration, p. 284-285
The other main possibility is to stress' responsibility. Particularly in a field like security one has to make choices and
deal with the challenges and risks that one confronts and not shy away into long-range
or principled trans-formations. The meta political line risks (despite the theoretical
commitment to the concrete other) implying that politics can be contained within large
'systemic questions. In line with the classical revolutionary tradition, after the change (now no longer the revolution but the meta-physical transformation), there
will be no more problems whereas in our situation (until the change) we should not deal with the 'small questions' of politics, only with the large one (cf. Rorty 1996).

the ethical demand in post-structuralism (e.g. Derrida's 'justice') is of a kind that can never be
instantiated in any concrete political order It is an experience of the undecidable that
exceeds any concrete solution and reinserts politics. Therefore, politics can never be
reduced to meta-questions there is no way to erase the small, particular, banal conflicts
and controversies. In contrast to the quasi-institutionalist formula of radical democracy which one finds in the 'opening' oriented version of
deconstruction, we could with Derrida stress the singularity of the event. To take a position, take part,
and 'produce events' (Derrida 1994: 89) means to get involved in specific struggles. Politics takes
place 'in the singular event of engagement' (Derrida 1996: 83). Derrida's politics is focused on the calls that demand
However,

response/responsibility contained in words like justice, Europe and emancipation. Should we treat security in this manner? No, security is not that kind of call.

Security is a much more situational concept oriented to

the handling of specifics. It belongs to the sphere of how to handle challenges and
avoid 'the worst' (Derrida 1991). Here enters again the possible pessimism which for the security analyst might be occupational or structural. The
'Security' is not a way to open (or keep open) an ethical horizon.

infinitude of responsibility (Derrida 1996: 86) or the tragic nature of politics (Morgenthau 1946, Chapter 7) means that one can never feel reassured that by some 'good deed', 'I
have assumed my responsibilities ' (Derrida 1996: 86). If I conduct myself particularly well with regard to someone, I know that it is to the detriment of an other; of one nation to
the detriment of my friends to the detriment of other friends or non-friends, etc. This is the infinitude that inscribes itself within responsibility; otherwise there
would he no ethical problems or decisions. (ibid.; and parallel argumentation in Morgenthau 1946; Chapters 6 and 7) Because of this there will remain conflicts

Often, our reply will

be to aim for de-securitization and then politics meet meta-politics; but occasionally the
underlying pessimism regarding the prospects for orderliness and compatibility among
human aspirations will point to scenarios sufficiently worrisome that responsibility will
entail securitization in order to block the worst. As a security/securitization analyst, this
means accepting the task of trying to manage and avoid spirals and accelerating security
concerns, to try to assist in shaping the continent in a way that creates the least
insecurity and violence - even if this occasionally means invoking/producing `structures'
or even using the dubious instrument of securitization. In the case of the current European configuration, the
above analysis suggests the use of securitization at the level of European scenarios with the
aim of preempting and avoiding numerous instances of local securitization that could
lead to security dilemmas and escalations, violence and mutual vilification .
and risks - and the question of how to handle them. Should developments be securitized (and if so, in what terms)?

AT: Serial policy Failure

No serial policy failure
Harvey, Dalhousie Political Science Prof, 97
(Frank, The Futures Back: Nuclear Rivalry, Deterrence Theory, and Crisis Stability
after the Cold War, p. 138-139, hec)
Linguistic Relativism. One approach of postmodernists is to point to the complex nature of language and meaning as a critique of
positivism; this critique is, in turn, relevant to the overwhelming amount of work in IR (Phillips 1977; Giddens 1979; George and Campbell
1990). Although a comprehensive assessment of the linguistic relativism debate is beyond the scope of this project, it is possible to address

the linguistic
variant of the criticism contends that any attempt to reduce everyday terms "to a singular
essentialist meaning" is problematic given "the multiplicity of meaning to be found in
social activity" (George and Campbell 1990, 273). By implication, a concept, term, word, or symbol cannot correspond "to some ...
externally derived foundation or object" and ultimately is context-dependent. Similarly, Phillips argues that the validity of
theory cannot be determined because "There is no standard or objective reality (always fixed,
the underlying philosophical argument, which is fairly straightforward. Building on the work of Wittgenstein (1968),

never changing) against which to compare a universe of discourse ... nothing exists outside of our language and actions which can be used
to justify ... a statement's truth or falsity" (1977, 273). Of course ,

it is not entirely clear how this "multiplicity of

meaning" is sufficient to render meaningless an approach that assumes the existence of
an objective reality. An important distinction must be drawn between the assertion that these discrepancies might have a
significant impact on scientific theorizing and the assertion that they do have such an effect. In most cases, errors of
interpretation and generalization produced by linguistic nuances are relatively
insignificant and ultimately have very little impact on the generalizability of social
theories. There are numerous words, symbols, concepts, and ideas, for example, that are commonly understood, regardless of other
linguistic variations, but the implications of this standardized conceptual framework are frequently overlooked and ignored in the
postmodern critique. In any case, it

is contingent upon the theorist to specify the precise meaning of

any variable or symbol that is central to a theory . Although definitions may vary possibly partly, but not
entirely, as a consequence of language scholars nevertheless are more likely than not to understand and agree on the underlying
meaning of most words, symbols and phrases. The point is that theorists

generally do have a common starting

point and often suspend, at least temporarily, counterproductive debates over meaning in order to shift emphasis towards
the strength and logical consistency of the theory itself, a more important issue that has nothing to do with
language. Evaluating the internal consistency of the central assumptions and propositions of a theory, that is, criticising from within,
is likely to be more conducive to theoretical progress than the alternative, which is to reject the idea of theory building entirely. Finally,

the lack of purity and precision, another consequence of linguistic relativism, does not necessarily imply
irrelevance of purpose or approach. The study of international relations may not be exact, given limitations noted by
Wittgenstein and others, but precision is a practical research problem , not an insurmountable
barrier to progress. In fact, most observers who point to the context-dependent nature of language are critical not so much of the
social sciences but of the incorrect application of scientific techniques to derive overly precise measurement of weakly developed concepts.
Clearly, our

understanding of the causes of international conflict and most notably war has
improved considerably as a consequence of applying sound scientific methods and valid
operationalizations (Vasquez 1987, 1993). The alternative approach, implicit in much of the postmodern literature,
is to fully accept the inadequacy of positivism, throw one's hands up in failure, given the
complexity of the subject, and repudiate the entire enterprise. The most relevant question is whether we
would know more or less about international relations if we pursued that strategy.

AT: State Conflict Link

Discussion of war does not displace focus on structural violence it allows
an injection of complexity that is not hierarchical
Barkawi 12 Professor Politics at the New School for Social Research
(Tarak, Of Camps and Critiques: A Reply to 'Security, War, Violence' Millennium Journal of International Studies, Vol 41 No 1, p 124-130, SagePub)
A final totalising move in Security, War, Violence is the idea that the study of war should be subsumed under the category of violence. The
reasons offered for this are: violence does not entail a hierarchy in which war is privileged; a focus on violence encourages us to see war in relational
terms and makes visible other kinds of violence besides that of war ; and that the analysis of violence somehow
enables the disentangling of politics from war and a proper critique of liberal violence.22 I have no particular objection to the study of violence, and I certainly

However, why and how this obviates or subsumes the study

of war is obscure to me. Is war not historically significant enough to justify inquiry into
it? War is a more specific category relative to violence in general , referring to reciprocal organised violence
between political entities. I make no claims that the study of war should be privileged over that of other forms of violence. Both the violence of
war, and that of, say, patriarchy, demand scholarly attention, but they are also distinct if related
think there should be more of it in the social sciences.

topics requiring different forms of theorisation and inquiry. As for relationality, the category of war is already inherently relational; one does not need the concept

What precisely distinguishes war from many other kinds of violence, such as genocide
is that war is a relational form of violence in which the other side shoots back.
This is ultimately the source of wars generative social powers, for it is amidst the clash of arms that the truths
which define social and political orders are brought into question. A broader focus on violence in general risks losing
this central, distinctive character of the violence of war. Is it really more theoretically or politically adequate to start
of violence in general to see this.
or massacre,

referring to the Second World War as an instance of violence? Equally, while I am all for the analysis of liberal violence, another broad category which would

we have far from exhausted the subject of liberalism and war,

an important area of inquiry now dominated by the mostly self-serving nostrums of the liberal peace debates. What perhaps is most
include issues of structural violence, I also think

interesting about Aradaus remarks on violence is that she assumes we know what war is. So, for example, she suggests that we attend to a continuum of violence in
which war is considered alongside insurrections, revolts, revolutions, insurgencies, rebellions, seditions, disobediences, riots and uprisings.23 Apparently, on her
understanding, these other things are not war, even though most of them typically involve reciprocal, organised violence. This is precisely to take as given the IR
disciplinary view of real interstate war that underlies Correlates of War and other mainstream work. This is the definition of war that I sought to critique in From
War to Security, a critique Aradau has overlooked. I was posing new questions and possibilities for the study of war, not proffering definitive answers about what
war is and what it is not, or about where and when it starts and ends. It is, I would suggest, Aradau who is most concerned about hierarchy and privilege,
particularly in respect of perceived slights to Critical Security Studies and her demand that any study of war be in dialogue with Critical Security Studies. In this,
she overlooks the fact that, conceived another way, with a more holistic vision of the community of relevant scholars, my article was already an engagement with
critical inquiry into security relations. Perhaps it was the opening rhetoric of my article that inspired Aradaus ire, my reference to partygoers from Copenhagen
and Aberystwyth dancing on graves, or my suggestion that contemporary wider agenda security scholars know rather less about the composition of carrier battle
groups than did their traditional predecessors.24 But does anyone seriously doubt that wider agenda scholars are less familiar with histories and sociologies of
wars and militaries than were the traditional predecessors, who even so still managed to overlook their significance? These passages were meant to serve a very
specific purpose, to denaturalise our images of the new and old security studies, and to open up the reader to the possibility that, with respect to the study of war,

Neither traditional nor wider

agenda security studies are centrally interested in war. Given the significance of war in
the human past and present, and the dire state of the study of war in the Anglo-American
academy, this seems to me a serious problem for critical thought.
these fields of study share more in common than is conceivable within the current terms of debate.

Ethical obligations are tautological- the only coherent rubric is to maximize

lives
Greene 10 Associate Professor of the Social Sciences Department of Psychology
Harvard University, Joshua, Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings,
The Secret Joke of Kants Soul,
www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/GreeneKantSoul.pdf
What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human moral judgment is not a
pristine rational enterprise, that our moral judgments are driven by a hodgepodge of
emotional dispositions, which themselves were shaped by a hodgepodge of evolutionary
forces, both biological and cultural. Because of this, it is exceedingly unlikely that there is
any rationally coherent normative moral theory that can accommodate our moral
intuitions. Moreover, anyone who claims to have such a theory, or even part of one, almost certainly
doesn't. Instead, what that person probably has is a moral rationalization. It seems then, that we have somehow crossed the infamous "is"-"ought" divide.

How did this happen? Didn't Hume (Hume, 1978) and Moore (Moore, 1966) warn us against trying to derive an "ought" from and "is?" How did we go from
descriptive scientific theories concerning moral psychology to skepticism about a whole class of normative moral theories? The answer is that we did not, as Hume
and Moore anticipated, attempt to derive an "ought" from and "is." That is, our method has been inductive rather than deductive. We have inferred on the basis of

the available evidence that the phenomenon of rationalist deontological philosophy is best explained as a rationalization of evolved emotional intuition (Harman,

Missing the Deontological Point I suspect that rationalist deontologists will remain
unmoved by the arguments presented here. Instead, I suspect, they will insist that I have simply
misunderstood whatKant and like-minded deontologists are all about. Deontology, they will say,
isn't about this intuition or that intuition. It's not defined by its normative differences with consequentialism. Rather,
deontology is about taking humanity seriously. Above all else, it's about respect for persons. It's about treating others as
fellow rational creatures rather than as mere objects, about acting for reasons rational beings can share. And so on (Korsgaard, 1996a; Korsgaard, 1996b). This
is, no doubt, how many deontologists see deontology. But this insider's view , as I've suggested,
may be misleading. The problem, more specifically, is that it defines deontology in terms of values
that are not distinctively deontological, though they may appear to be from the inside. Consider the following
analogy with religion. When one asks a religious person to explain the essence of his
religion, one often gets an answer like this: "It's about love , really. It's about looking out for other people, looking
beyond oneself. It's about community, being part of something larger than oneself." This sort of answer accurately captures the
phenomenology of many people's religion, but it's nevertheless inadequate for
distinguishing religion from other things. This is because many, if not most, non-religious people aspire to love deeply, look out
1977).

for other people, avoid self-absorption, have a sense of a community, and be connected to things larger than themselves. In other words, secular humanists and
atheists can assent to most of what many religious people think religion is all about. From a secular humanist's point of view, in contrast, what's distinctive about
religion is its commitment to the existence of supernatural entities as well as formal religious institutions and doctrines. And they're right. These things really do
distinguish religious from non-religious practices, though they may appear to be secondary to many people operating from within a religious point of view. In the

the standard deontological/Kantian self-characterizatons fail to

distinguish deontology from other approaches to ethics. (See also Kagan (Kagan, 1997, pp. 70-78.) on the difficulty of
defining deontology.) It seems to me that consequentialists, as much as anyone else, have respect for persons, are
against treating people as mere objects, wish to act for reasons that rational creatures can
share, etc. A consequentialist respects other persons, and refrains from treating them as
mere objects, by counting every person's well-being in the decision-making process.
Likewise, a consequentialist attempts to act according to reasons that rational creatures
can share by acting according to principles that give equal weight to everyone's interests,
i.e. that are impartial. This is not to say that consequentialists and deontologists don't differ. They do. It's just that the real differences may not be
same way, I believe that most of

what deontologists often take them to be. What, then, distinguishes deontology from other kinds of moral thought? A good strategy for answering this question is
to start with concrete disagreements between deontologists and others (such as consequentialists) and then work backward in search of deeper principles. This is

If you ask a
deontologically-minded person why it's wrong to push someone in front of speeding
trolley in order to save five others, you will getcharacteristically deontological answers. Some will be tautological:
"Because it's murder!"Others will be more sophisticated: "The ends don't justify the
means." "You have to respect people's rights." But, as we know, these answers don't really explain anything, because if
you give the same people (on different occasions) the trolley case or the loop case (See above), they'll make the
opposite judgment, even though their initial explanation concerning the footbridge case applies equally well to one or both of these cases. Talk
about rights, respect for persons, and reasons we can share are natural attempts to
explain, in "cognitive" terms, what we feel when we find ourselves having emotionally
driven intuitions that are odds with the cold calculus of consequentialism . Although these
explanations are inevitably incomplete, there seems to be "something deeply right" about them because
they give voice to powerful moral emotions. But, as with many religious people's
accounts of what's essential to religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about
the philosophy in question.
what I've attempted to do with the trolley and footbridge cases, and other instances in which deontologists and consequentialists disagree.