TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v
INTRODUCTION 1
The Resurgence of Ethnic Conflict 2
Civic Solutions for Ethnic Problems? 11
Towards a Political and Ethical Vocabulary 15
Methodology issues 20
1. THE RESPONSE OF CONVENTIONAL
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY 23
A Tradition of Neglect 26
Realist and Liberal Responses to the Problem of Peoples 33
The Ontology and Epistemology of the Inter-State System 47
The Case for Critical Classicism 56
Neomedievalism 61
Conclusion 66
2. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 69
Challenging State-centrism 72
Marxisms 76
Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism 89
Postmodernism in International Relations Theory 106
3. THEORIES OF ETHNICITY: PRAGMATIC AND DISCURSIVE 111
Sociobiology 115
Primordialism 122
Instrumentalism 129
Constructivism 136
Conclusion 140
4. COMPOSITION OR CONSTITUTION OF ETHNICITY?
A GENEALOGICAL CRITIQUE 143
Compositional or Constitutive Features of Ethnicity 144
A cluster of features? 156
The Politics of Labelling 158
From Ethnos to Ethnicity: A genealogy 160
Vernacular and Academic Discourse of Ethnicity 176

i
 1
THE RESPONSE OF CONVENTIONAL
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

Between the idea

And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

When the term International Relations was reputably first coined by Jeremy Bentham in
1797, it launched an ambitious cosmopolitan question: how should we conceive of the
ethical and legal frameworks for ensuring that safety and liberty could be afforded to
citizens of the world. Benthams purpose was to outline a system of legal norms for the
prevention, or at least regulation, of war. But his overriding ideal was to extend the social
contract to a global context of a society of peoples and conceive of the ethical and legal
frameworks that would be necessary for ensuring the rights and responsibilities of citizens
of the world.1 However, as the field became formalised as discipline in the interwar years,
conventional International Relations theories have assumed that states have ontological
primacy in world politics. The prospects of war and the possibility of peace have always
been understood as the primary area of study for International Relations scholars but the
discipline neglected the study of violence among peoples, and struggles between peoples
and states were seen to be outside of its the research purview. Both practitioners and
scholars in the post Cold War context appear to have come to the conclusion that intra-
state war and, peoples movements more generally, should be regarded as matters of
international politics.

1
Bentham, The Principles of International Law. In his 1999 publication, The Law of Peoples,
John Rawls has revisited this classical liberal proposition, introduced by Bentham and developed
by Kant. Rawls, The Law of Peoples. For an interesting discussion on Rawls and Bentham see
Archibugi, Demos and Cosmopolis, 30-31.
23
Much to the embarrassment of structural realists, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
end of the Cold War was brought about by social movements rather than a shift in military
capabilities.2 Neoliberal theories claimed that the transformations were an expression of
the universal endorsement of democratic politics, yet they seemed equally inadequate when
it came to understanding the apparent resurgence of ethnopolitical or ethnonationalist
movements. International Relations scholars began making appeals for the field to develop
a more sophisticated understanding of ethnicity; its role in mobilising people to go to war
and; the international significance of these conflicts. For example, Fred Halliday made the
point that the end of the Cold War had signified the need for both a new agenda and the
resuscitation a few old agendas within the discipline.3 Recognition of the fields neglect of
ethnicity in its theoretical pursuits lead even rational choice theorists such as David
Carment to surmise that in the post Cold War context, it is no longer possible to ignore the
widespread tenacity of ethnic conflict and the way in which it is deeply influencing current
interstate behaviour.4 As a discipline concerned with questions on the nature of
contemporary world order, justice and socio-economic relations, International Relations
came to realise that it could no longer afford to treat these apparently intensifying and
spreading conflicts as unimportant domestic problems.

It would appear then that the discipline has finally responded to criticisms that it had
neglected the problem of peoples, and now recognises that internal war is the wave of
the future.5 The self-congratulatory historiography of the discipline learning from its
mistakes is generally recited according to the following stages. First, the end of the Cold
War produced an initial wave of triumphalism followed by nostalgia and alarmism as it
became apparent that global politics was more usefully described as a New World
Disorder. Second, to describe and explain why these problems were not anticipated earlier
they point to a tradition of neglect in the discipline which had assumed that internal
conflicts were a matter of low or domestic politics. Third, equipped with this hindsight,
the solution offered is to learn from past mistakes in order to make the necessary
adjustments to theories and practices of global politics. In particular these ideas have been
manifested in the foreign policies of Great powers who now acknowledge that internal
conflicts are matters of international security and correspondingly developments in

2
Kratochwil, The Embarrassment of Changes.
3
Halliday, International Relations: Is there a new agenda?
4
Carment, The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict, 137. Also see Holsti, International
Relations at the end of the Millennium.
5
David, The Primacy of Internal War.
24
international law protecting minority peoples and rules of engagement for acts of
humanitarian intervention should be endorsed.6

This chapter will argue that, while the diagnosis of a tradition of neglect is important and
necessary, the prescription of fine tuning inter-state institutions fails to address the more
systemic challenges posed by the problem of peoples. Conventional International
Relations theorists interpreted and responded to post Cold War ethnic conflicts by either
rediscovering ethnic conflict within the discipline as a pervasive concern since at least the
period of Wilsonian liberalism7 or by arguing that the current resurgence of
ethnonationalism was a historically specific aberration produced by a culmination of
various global conditions such as the ideological vacuum or a fragmentary response to
globalisation. For the most part, these analyses of the international dimensions of ethnic
conflict do not seem to have had any serious impact on International Relations thought by
way of offering any substantial ontological or epistemological challenge. The
overwhelming response has been to incorporate the phenomenon of ethnic conflict within
existing dominant theoretical perspectives. This has involved certain degrees of fine
tuning and adaptation but the inclusion of ethnic conflicts into these discourses has not
caused any dramatic transformation of the underlying assumptions within the two main
theoretical traditions in the field: realism and liberalism.8

The subject of the following discussion is then concerned with reviewing the response of
conventional International Relations theories to the global challenges of ethnic conflict in
the post Cold War era, but its critical purpose is to argue that this inadequacy is a symptom
of deeper historical, philosophical and sociological issues. Section one develops a critical
historiography of the tradition of neglect narrative by drawing attention to the critical
openings traditional and contemporary thought that it has obscured. Section two develops
a critique of neorealist and neoliberal theory in terms of their explanations and
prescriptions for the struggles of ethnic peoples in world politics Section three explores the

6
Often this narrative implicitly informs the research agenda. For an explicit statement of this
general line of argument see Ryan, Ethnic Conflict and International Relations.
7
This form of remembering has been particularly notable in the case of commentaries and research
on the war in former Yugoslavia - which quickly became (re)known as the Balkans to invoke the
ghosts of the Chetniks, Archduke Ferdinand, the Ottoman empire and even the rebellions in that
region under the Roman empire.
8
The other main theoretical tradition of Marxism is discussed in the following chapter. Marxists
do not subscribe to such a rigorous state-centric perspective and consequently are distinguishable
from the conventional (state-centric) theories being examined here. Marxism has traditionally
subscribed to many modernist assumptions and should be distinguished from more critical
approaches such as post-structuralism especially in these terms. See the discussion on Marxism
and critical approaches in chapter 2.
25
underlying ontological and epistemological significance of state-centrism in these
dominant schools of thought. In particular the impact of the structuralist turn on
contemporary International Relations theories has led to a convergence of their
international imagination. Realist conceptions of geopolitical anarchy have mutually
constituted neoliberal conceptions of a de-regulated geoeconmic world order and vice
versa. Section four and five re-examines the case for a classical approach and Hedley
Bulls consideration of a neomedieval world order as a means of rephrasing the problem of
peoples in less state centric and structuralist terms while still remaining committed to
questions of power (order) and ethics (justice) in contemporary global politics.

A TRADITION OF NEGLECT

Throughout the Cold War particularly, International Relations scholars neglected the study
of ethnic groups and ethnic conflicts as significant features of the international landscape
because they perceived them to be matters of low or domestic politics. While this
tradition of neglect continued to characterise the discipline, the end of the Cold War
brought about a shift in focus and a recognition of the importance of ethnic struggles as a
matter of concern in international affairs.

For example, in a review of three books on the state of International Relations theory at the
end of the Cold War, Kalevi Holsti complained that,

almost all theoretical work in the field has ignored... ethnicity, religion,
language, and other primordial (sic) attributes... the intense trend toward
political fragmentation within the context of a globalizing economy.9
Holsti was correct in decrying the past failure of International Relations theory to address
the significance of ethnic conflict, but by the end of 1993 the field did seem to have
responded to the challenge of what Lake and Rothchild have since described as a world,
engulfed in convulsive fits of ethnic insecurity, violence and genocide.10 The eruptions of
violence in Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, Somalia and Rwanda, forced the
discipline to acknowledge that ethnic conflict had become a profoundly important global
phenomenon; one that represented a challenge to human, state, regional and international
security, as well demanding significant changes in international law.11 Questions of ethnic
or communal conflict and religious fundamentalism, alongside the paradoxical

9
Holsti, International Relations at the end of the Millennium, 407.
10
Lake and Rothchild, Containing Fear, 41.
11
See Bedjaoui, Modern Wars and Donnely, Human Rights, Humanitarian Crisis and
Humanitarian Intervention and McDermott, Humanitarian Force.
26
relationships between globalisation and fragmentation have become amongst the most
pervasive preoccupations in the field: what was seen as being ignored or neglected, now
saturates the discipline.12 However, many of these accounts of ethnic conflict have
suffered from a lack of deep theoretical examination characterising these struggles in terms
of catch-all phrases such as the Clash of Civilizations, End of History or Coming
Anarchy. Furthermore they were interpreted through the inappropriate theoretical
frameworks characterised by their state-centrism and a lack of concern for culture. It is
useful to review the arguments that have been forwarded to explain this tradition of neglect
during the Cold War period. However, the more intriguing site of inquiry is this
transitional period from neglect to the somewhat faddish response of International
Relations scholars which followed.

Stephen Ryan argues that the principal reasons for the neglect of ethnic conflict in
International Relations during the Cold War were due to: (i) the overall focus of attention
on the ideological conflict between Western liberalism and Soviet style Marxism; (ii) its
generally embedded assumption that ethnicity would disappear with modernization or
increasing supra-state integration and; (iii) the pervasive tendency to be preoccupied with

12
International Relations scholarship which has examined ethnic conflict as a significant global
phenomenon has clearly become more common since the end of the Cold War. Individual scholars
who were regarded as marginal to the discipline emerged as influential sources for the filed. For
example, works such as Ryan, Ethnic Conflict and International Relations; Stavenhagen, The
Ethnic Question; Moyniham, Pandaemonium; Gurr, Minorities at Risk or Smith, Nations and
Nationalism in the Global Era attempted to draw broad conclusions on the nature of ethnic and
communal conflicts in a post-Cold War world. By the mid 1990s numerous edited collections had
appeared which examined ethnic conflict in relation to familiar themes in international studies. For
example, Brown (ed), Ethnic Conflict and International Security and The International Dimensions
of Internal Conflict on international security; Gonzalez and McCommon (eds), Conflict, Migration,
and the Expression of Ethnicity on migration; McGarry and OLeary (eds), The Politics of Ethnic
Conflict Regulation or de Silva and Samarsinghe (eds.), Peace Accords and Ethnic Conflicts on
conflict resolution; Thompson and Rudolph, Ethnoterritorial Politics, Policy and the Western
World on comparative public policy; Diamond and Plattner (eds), Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict,
and Democracy on democracy; Esman and Telhami, International Organizations and Ethnic
Conflict on international organisations; David and Kirgamar, Ethnicity on identity; Stasiulis and
Yuval-Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies on gender; Toland, Ethnicity and the State and
Rupesinghe and Marcial (eds), The Culture of Violence on the state; Dietz, et.al. (eds), Ethnicity,
Integration and the Military on the military and a myriad of region focused studies. Seminal
articles from Ethnic Studies such as Connor, A nation is a nation, is a state, is an ethnic group is a
...; Enloe, Ethnic and Political Development; Glazer and Moyniham, Ethnicity, Theory and
Experience; Esman (ed), Ethnic Conflict in the Western World; Smith, The Ethnic Revival or; Stack
(ed), Ethnic Identities in a Transnational World have been revived as important resources and
reappeared in a variety of Readers on ethnicity and nationalism. See Chabour and Ishray, The
Nationalist Reader; Hutchinson and Smith (eds), Ethnicity Reader; During (ed), Cultural Studies
Reader; Williams and Chrisman (eds), Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory and
Balakrishnan, Mapping the Nation. Finally, a number of journals have responded to the apparent
increase in ethno-nationalism either with special issues.
27
inter-state behaviour.13 Similarly, Bernard Schecterman, in his review of International
Relations textbooks over the last sixty years, found that whilst the subject of ethno-
nationalism was discernible in various forms (such as self-determination, minority rights
and nationalism); there was a tendency for ethnicity to be relegated as a matter of low
politics and internal affairs in the 1930s to 1950s; either as a backward destructive
dimension of proto-nationalism or as a pathway to socio-economic revolution by the
integrationists and developmentalists in the 1960s and 1970s and; as an annoyance to
the prevailing issues of superpower rivalry or internationalism in the 1980s to 1990s.14

Lost Opportunities

The assumption that ethnic and communal conflicts are essentially internal or domestic
phenomena coupled with the rigid delineation between political relations on the inside
versus those with the outside is usually cited as the most significant reason for the
general ambivalence towards ethnic conflict within International Relations. 15 Civil or
internal wars had been acknowledged, but not accorded any sustained interest. For
example, throughout the Cold War period there was no discernible subfield of orthodox
International Relations dealing with the subject of intra-state violence. This neglect of
internal conflicts of all sorts was observed by Eckstein in 1964.

When todays social science has become intellectual history, one question will
almost certainly be asked about it: Why did social science, which has produced
so many studies, produced so little on violent political disorder - internal war?16
This is, of course, the view from within the orthodoxy of International Relations as an
American political science.17 It seems to ignore the extensive research on civil wars and
especially revolutionary movements. For example, works such as Hannah Arendts On
Revolution (1963), Ada Bozemans Politics and Culture in International History (1960)
and F.S.C Northrups The Taming of Nations (1954) all provided sophisticated analyses of

13
Ryan, Ethnic Conflict and International Relations, xix-xxi.
14
Schechterman and Slann, The Ethnic Dimension in International Relations. It should be noted
that one area where direct references were made to ethnic groups was in relation to ideologically
aligned or non-aligned internal factions and sub-national groups in the context of Third World
conflicts. See Jackson, Quasi-States; Stern, Choosing Sides and Nietschman, The Third World
War.
15
See critical discussions on this assumption in Premdas, The Internationalization of Ethnic
Conflict; Rupesinghe, The Disappearing Boundaries Between Internal and External Conflicts
and Stavenhagen, Ethnic Conflicts and their Impact on International Society and idem, Peoples
Movements
16
Eckstein, Introduction: Toward the theoretical study of internal war, 1.
17
Hoffman, An American Social Science.
28
the struggle of peoples against states.18 Thus, not all scholars of international politics
neglected the study of ethnic conflict and internal war throughout the Cold War period. To
assume otherwise perpetuates a narrow self image of the discipline which conforms with
Ecksteins assumption that the only real research is that which is riddled with empirical
data and quantitative analysis of these phenomena.

Consequently, while Ryans argument on why liberal and realist perspectives have been
negligent and Schectermans review are both useful, they omit important literature and
consequently limit the scope of what International Relations is as a discipline. Firstly,
Schectermans review, in particular, is highly Americo-centric - thus underplaying the
significant role of the English School, and its concern with the role of culture as a
significant constitutive dimension of international society.19 Moreover, there is very little
attention given to non-Anglo-American perspectives. This could be understood, again in
Schectermans case, as a reflection of the focus on International Relations textbooks
which have been written predominantly by North American writers.20 However it is
ultimately evidence of embedded ethnocentrism given the considerable amount of
literature broaching the subject of ethnic conflict which was produced outside of the
United States, Great Britain, Australia and Canada; not to mention the non-Anglo-
American contributors in edited volumes often used as basic texts.21

Secondly, Schechterman does not mention the sub-fields of peace research or adequately
account for the impact of international political economy. Peace research, which became
influential particularly from the 1970s, has referred explicitly to ethnic conflict and intra-
state violence more generally as a major destructive force in international affairs. Ryans
analysis is written from within the field of conflict resolution and consequently draws
conclusions on the separate discipline of International Relations from an interdisciplinary
vantage point. However, there has been considerable osmosis between the two areas of
study especially through the exchanges in empirical research on the percentage of civilian
casualties in modern war, democratic peace theory and influential theories such as

18
See a discussion on the relevance of these works to International Relations theory in Puchala,
Third World Thinking.
19
See Bull and Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society, especially Vincents essay
on Racial Equality. Also see earlier work by E.H. Carr which seriously grappled with the tension
between cultural representation and internationalism and was highly critical of ethnocentrism, the
profoundly unhistorical view which elevates the values of a comparatively recent Western
European past into an absolute standard. Carr, From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays, vii.
Roxanne Lynne Doty makes a similar observation about the insights of the English School
theorists. Doty, The Bounds of Race in International Relations.
20
Hoffman, An American Social Science.
21
See Neuman (ed.), International Relations Theory and the Third World.
29
Burtons basic needs or Galtungs structural violence.22 Conversely, critical
International Relations theory since the 1980s has provided useful discourses for
challenging state-centrism which have cross fertilised with peace studies.23

While both writers acknowledge the interpretations of integrationists and

developmentalists, they neglect to mention the significant contribution of International
Political Economy which continues to inform International Relations literature to a
considerable degree.24 The major contribution of international political economy has been
to conventionalise three critical points which are at least tacitly relevant to a review of the
significance of ethnic conflict to International Relations theory. Specifically these are that:
(i) there should not be a rigid delineation between so-called high and low politics; (ii)
non-state actors can play a significant role and; (iii) conceptions of power should be
broadened beyond military definitions to include social and economic issues. Works such
as Suhrke and Nobles Ethnic Conflict in International Relations (1977) or Stacks Ethnic
Identities in a Transnational World (1981) both employed the Keohane and Nyes theory
of complex interdependence to explore the lack of congruence between ethnic nations and
geographical and political boundaries of states.25 Nevertheless, I concur with Richard
Leavers assessment that International Political Economy seems to have involuted rather
than evolved from its promising and dramatic inculcation into the discipline of
International Relations during the 1970s.26 The evidence for this is most clearly illustrated

22
Galtung, Violence, Peace, and Peace Research; Azar and Burton, (eds.), International Conflict
Resolution; Burton, Conflict: Human Needs Theory and; Rupesinghe, Internal Conflict and
Governance
23
See Jabri, Discourses on Violence.
24
An early appeal for more of a focus on international economics was made by Susan Strange,
International Economics and International Politics. Perhaps the most significant influential
writings on the field came from the complex interdependence literature. Keohane and Nye, Power
and Interdependence. For a general reviews on the impact of international political economy on
International Relations see Crane and Amawi, The Theoretical Evolution of International Political
Economy and Spero, The Politics of International Economic Relations. Joan Edelman Speros
introductory essay, The Link between Economics and Politics, is only one of many examples of
these writers argue that international economic relations are influenced by political considerations
and vice versa: Thus politics shaped economics in the postwar era. And in the 1970s, as before, it
was to a great extent the changing political scene that caused the breakdown of the postwar
economic system. The decline of American power and increasing pluralism in the West, a
superpower dtente, and a new political consensus in the underdeveloped countries transformed the
international economic system. Spero, The Politics of International Economic Relations,. 3, 8.
25
Stack, Ethnic Groups as Emerging Transnational Actors, 17.
26
Richard Leaver has asserted that the challenge of societal interdependence in the 1970s was
effectively abandoned during the 1980s and 1990s signifying a fork in the evolutionary pathway
where International Political Economy theory took a wrong turn towards state-centricity. Leaver,
International Political Economy and the Changing World. Examples of International Political
Economists who adopt a strong realist perspective can be found in Gilpin, The Richness of the
Tradition of Political Realism and War and Change in World Politics and Kindleberger, The
30
in the shift back towards state-centric arguments and a focus on military power in the later
writings of both Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye. Only seven years after the publication
of Power and Interdependence, where Keohane and Nye had argued that although the
distribution of military power affects the international economic order, by itself it provides
only a small part of the explanation, Keohane famously retracted from the societal
interdependence position when he declared: A hegemonic state must possess enough
military power to be able to protect the international political economy that it dominates
from incursions by hostile adversaries.27

Fourthly, whilst Ryan and Schecterman both mention Marxist perspectives, they under-
emphasise the more subtle treatment of ethnicity within Marxist and neo-Marxist theory:
that is, beyond the more easily discreditable pronouncements of state officials in the Soviet
Union. As I will allude to in the following chapter, Marxist analyses of ethnic conflict
have produced sophisticated accounts on the ideological dialectics which circumscribe
race, ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Fifth, the post-colonial critique of international politics,
beginning with Cabral and Fanon, and culminating in the critical writings works of Edward
Said should also not have been totally omitted.28 While some argue that the influence of
post-colonial theory on International Relations remains quite limited, its relevance as both
a theoretical perspective on the impact of ethnocentrism and representations of non-
Western cultures and as a practical concern in international organisations should not have
been overlooked in a survey on the ethnic dimensions of international politics.29 For
similar reasons, the dramatic impact of post-structural, post-modern, feminist and
environmental literature on the field should not have been ignored.

Despite these omissions which are significant these reviewers were correct in their
general observation that, prior to the early to mid 1990s, conventional International
Relations literature had overlooked ethnic and communal violence and its role in
international affairs. On those occasions where the field seemed to be recognising the

International Corporation. Critical scholars such as Robert Cox and Susan Strange have
challenged these regime theorists for leaving, the study of international political economy far too
constrained by the self-imposed limits of the state-centered paradigm. Strange, Cave! hic
dragones, 491-3 and Cox, Social Forces and World Orders and idem, The New Realism
27
Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, 47 and Keohane, After Hegemony, 39. See also
Keohane, Neorealism and its Critics and Nyes The Making of Americas Soviet Policy and Bound
to Lead.
28
See Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; Cabral, Return to the Source; Said, Orientalism and Said,
Culture and Imperialism. For a review of earlier influences see Chambers and Curti (eds), The
Post-Colonial Question. On the interaction between postcolonial and International Relations
theory see Darby and Paolini, Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism.
29
For a critique along these lines see Seth, A Post-Colonial World.
31
potential significance of ethnic peoples and their struggles it was largely through the
vehicles of inter-state organisations, or supra-state affairs (such as the League of Nations,
the United Nations, Cold War superpower interests or North/South structures of economic
dependency). Ryans argument that there is a need to de-nationalize and de-
internationalize ethnic conflicts, seems to be offering an alternative approach to this
institutionalised state centrism although his overarching thesis is on strategies of
management suggests that he expects states to retain primary and exclusive political and
moral agency over the problem of peoples.

Several features commonly attributed to ethnic groups and ethnic conflicts have made them
appear to be beyond the concern of conventional International Relations theory. Firstly,
ethnicity is typically used to describe human groups who share a sense of local sentiments
or attachments. Likewise, ethnic conflicts usually take place in relatively concentrated
local or domestic contexts and, unlike international wars, they are seen to place
competing demands on the same space which must be shared afterwards. 30 Secondly,
ethnicity has been preclusively construed as a cultural association underpinning the view
that it is apolitical, pre-modern and irrational compared to other communal categories in
the social sciences such as civil society, nation, state, class and gender.

Conversely the more critical perspectives omitted by these reviewers almost all share in
common at least a suspicion of the viability of rigid state-centric perspectives, if not an
outright hostility towards what Jim George for example has characterised as a
reductionist, crude and primitive31 representation of world politics. Many of these
critical perspectives share a general commitment to accept the transformative significance
of discourses, norms and processes of social construction in actively transforming the
nature of world politics. They also acknowledge that cultural ideas and beliefs are
significant subjects of concern for International Relations generally. 32 I will argue that
these critical perspectives provide the more sophisticated analyses of ethnic conflict in
global politics, even if they continue to be marginalised from the dominant discourses of

30
Rapaport, The Importance of Space in Violent Ethno-Religious Strife, 8.
31
Jim George describes realism as a crude theology of power and maintains the dependence of
conventional International Relations on scientific method constitute primitive subthemes of the
discipline. George, Understanding International Relations after the Cold War, 39, 42. See also
Ashley, The Poverty of Neorealism and Der Derian and Shapiro (eds), International/Intertextual
Relations.
32
See Chey (ed), Culture an International Relations and Lapid and Kratochwil (eds), The Return of
Culture and Identity in International Relations Theory.
32
International Relations theory.33 We will return to the way in which critical perspectives
have interpreted ethnic conflicts in contemporary global politics in the next chapter. The
following discussion concentrates on the prevailing responses of neorealist and neoliberal
theorists to ethnic conflict in the post Cold War period.

REALIST AND LIBERAL RESPONSES TO THE PROBLEM OF PEOPLES

Both the assumption that ethnic community and locality are synonymous and the
distinction between culture and politics are legacies of Enlightenment and modernist
thinking.34 They relate specifically to studies on ethnic conflict because they manifest
themselves in the assumption that ethnic sentiments, as well as the struggles driven along
ethnic lines, would eventually recede as they were displaced by processes of modernisation
and state building. Conventional International Relations theory adheres to modernist
principles, and many of its basic assumptions are consistent with Enlightenment
foundationalism.35

The effect of this tradition has been to relegate considerations on the political significance
of ethnic conflict to the disciplinary realms of sociology, anthropology and comparative
politics. A similar division of labour has persisted within these disciplines which
restrained them from dealing with issues of high politics. There have been some calls for
more interdisciplinary approaches, but the few provident studies on the international
dimensions of ethnic conflicts which have appeared over the last few decades have
emanated from these other disciplines rather than International Relations.36 Consequently,

33
See Gilpin, The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism and Linklater, The Question of
the Next Stage in International Relations Theory.
34
For a critique of the modernist assumptions inherent in the link between community and locality
see Agnew, Place and Politics and idem, Representing Space; Massey, Double Articulation and
Soja, Postmodern Geographies. For an explicit defence of the view that the Enlightenment project
was one of separating politics from culture. See Berlin, The Age of Enlightenment, 28. Two
excellent overviews on the tension between culture and society and culture and politics respectively
can be found in the introductions to Steinmetz (ed), State/Culture and Alexander and Seidman
(eds.), Culture and Society.
35
Smith has documented the tradition within International Relations theory to make claims of
objectivity and scientism, see Smith, The self-images of a Discipline. For a classic account of the
primary agents in international being rational statesmen see Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations.
For a defence of scientism see Waltz, Theory of International Politics. For a critique see Bull,
International Theory: The case for a classical approach.
36
For interdisciplinary studies on ethnicity between comparative politics and International
Relations see Said and Simmons (ed), Ethnicity in an International Context; Enloe et.al. (eds),
Ethno-Nationalism, Multicultural Corporations and the Modern State; Suhrke and Noble (eds),
Ethnic Conflict in International Relations; Stack (ed), Ethnic Identities in a Transnational World
and; de Silva and May (eds), The Internationalization of Ethnic Conflict. Historical and political
33
there has been an overwhelming tendency for conventional perspectives on International
Relations to treat ethnic diversity as little more than an incidental concern and to neglect
ethnic conflict as a significant phenomenon in modern global politics.37

The indications that this disciplinary insulation is changing has become more apparent as
scholars have sought to understand, the empirically contestable assumption, that there has
been a resurgence of ethnic conflict in the post Cold War period; and partly in response
to the more historically substantial argument that intra-state war had displaced interstate
war as the major source of violent struggle in contemporary world politics. 38 In the main
however, ethnic conflicts continue to be perceived as profoundly localised phenomena and
this aspect continues to perplex both International Relations practitioners and theorists who
insist on maintaining rigid delineations between domestic and international political
spheres.39

Realism

Many realist theorists take issue with their critics for over-simplifying representations of
the realist school as one unanimous group which professes the same state-centric, power
orientated view of the international system. Dissolving all realists into one category
ignores the important differences, especially in how they conceptualise history and their
conception of power.40 While this is a fair observation, it is still possible to identify some
shared general assumptions about international politics in at least the dominant strands of
realist thought. These include the assumptions that states are the principal agents, that war
and anarchy are the natural characteristics of the international system and that the

sociology has made important contributions through analyses of the global processes of social
transformation and their relationship to ethnic conflict. See Connor, Nation-Building or Nation-
Destroying? and Smith, The Ethnic Revival. Similarly, anthropologist have made recent appeals to
be more concerned with global politics. See Nash, The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World
and Ahmed, Ethnic Cleansing as a Metaphor of our Time?
37
Connor argues that studies on nationalism in general have ignored ethnic diversity as a political
problem through their assumptions of homogeneity. Connor, Nation-Building or Nation-
Destroying?, 319.
38
For example, in 1993, all but five of the twenty two ongoing wars involved internal ethnic or
communal challenges against states. These conflicts resulted in the reported deaths of four million
people and created twenty five million refugees (not including internally displaced peoples). See
Wallensteen and Sollenberg, The End of International War? and Armed Conflict and Regional
Conflict Complexes, 198997; Brown (ed), The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict
and Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1991, 1993 and 1996.
39
Critical International Relations theory, which challenges state-centrism, has been more
concerned with ethnic conflict. Walker argues that his reformulation is an attempt to, make sense
of what it might mean to speak of world politics rather than just inter-state or International
Relations. Walker, Inside/Outside, 20. However, because these sorts of reconstructive efforts
typically emanate from marginal theoretical perspectives, they have not caused any radical
paradigm shift within the discipline.
40
Smith, Realist Thought From Weber to Kissinger, 20.
34
dynamics of world politics can be viewed ahistorically because war, or the potential for it,
has been a never ending constant in human history.

Realism, argues Stephen Krasner, has an aura of permanence and parsimony because
states are the ontological givens in the system, other actors are constituted by states 41
Realism maintains that inter-state relations are essentially anarchic. This view continues to
be informed by Hobbes thesis of a state of nature, which held that the absence of any
absolute or sovereign power would create a social condition of perpetual fear. This image
of pure anarchy continues to reverberate as one of the most famous adages in political
philosophy and it constitutes the spiritual heart of International Relations realist theory.

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power
to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called warre; and such
a warre, as is of every man, against every man.42
In the international system states are sovereign and independent and therefore live
without a common power. The absence of world government places states in an
antagonistic relationship with one another and realists generally subscribe to the principle
that domestic politics do not (or ought not) have a significant impact on International
Relations because peoples because they have not demonstrated a capacity to lay a
successful claim to the monopoly of the means of violence43 Accordingly, realists argue
that international order can only be achieved through constant struggle aimed at
achieving a balance of power.44

Classical realists are distinguishable from neorealists especially in terms of their penchant
for a more hermeneutic and historicist approach.45 But both perspectives draw a rigid
distinction between the high politics, third image or international sphere on the one
hand, and low, second image or domestic political concerns on the other hand.

41
Krasner, International Political Economy, 18.
42
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.13, 185.
43
Giddens, Nation State and Violence, 18. Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1. 2, ch. 5.
44
See Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 3-4; Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Ch. 5-6
and; Little A Balance of Power?
45
In particular, several commentators have made this observation about the writings of E.H. Carr.
See Fox, E.H. Carr and Political Realism; Linklater, The Transformation of Political
Community. I would argue along with Cox and others that a complex intellectual such as E.H.
Carr does not fit neatly into the classical realist school. Not only was he, as Jones puts it, closer to
Lenin than Morgenthau, Carr was also distinctly historicist and hermeneutic in his approach.
Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations and Cox, Social Forces and World Orders, 168.
See also Cox, (Michael), E.H. Carr: A critical appraisal.
35
Classical realists have also been more prepared to examine the question of the political
process of group formation.46

Primarily because realist theory relies upon several a priori assumptions about human
nature, state sovereignty and the ahistorical character of international politics, it has been
equated with the primordialist theories of ethnicity.47 Structural realists make these
assumptions, but the important linkage point between classical realism and primordialism
is their acknowledgement of agency and emotion. Hobbes theory of human nature is,
after all, fundamentally premised upon the function of fear. Consequently, classical
realism has been more inclined to recognise the potential international significance of
tribalism for example.48 Nevertheless, these realists have not provided any thorough
analysis of ethnicity for the study of international politics. In so far as they consider it at
all, all realists have treated ethnicity as something which is largely insignificant in the face
of the dominance of states which held a monopoly of military power.

Ironically, however, the pervasive image that ethnic conflicts are the consequence of
ancient hatreds coincides with the principal theoretical premises of realism. Realist
conceptions of agency tend to be aprioristic - assuming that actors are unitary and for all
intents and purposes homogenous. Furthermore, the basic structure of the inter-state
system is understood as ahistorical or unchanging. As Gilpin has expressed it, there is
little distinction between the time of Thucydides and the present because, the fundamental
nature of International Relations has not changed over the millennia.49 Consequently,
primordial explanations of ethnic identity and ethnic conflict are broadly consistent with
the general tenets of realist thought, which assume that groups, however defined, seek
power and relate to one another in a condition of anarchy.

For neorealists, a common description of the post-Cold War period asserts that the
international system is going through a transitory phase as a result of the collapse of a
bipolar order. This systemic disruption is often understood as a repercussion of imperial
break-up and the subsequent process of re-negotiation over the structure of a new system
which typically ensues.50 One of the more famous advocates of this view has been John
Mearsheimer who has characterised post Cold War international politics as unstable and

46
Carr, Nationalism and After.
47
See for example Baban and Rygiel, Situating Ethnicity in Global Society and Croucher,
Constructing the Ethnic Spectacle.
48
See Isaacs, Power and Identity and Hughey (ed), New Tribalism.
49
Gilpin, 1981:7.
50
Bernstein, Ethnicity and Imperial Break-up.
36
regressive in his article, Back to the Future.51 Mearsheimer treats the phenomenon of
resurgent ethnic nationalism as part of this aberration or distortion of the inter-state
system. For Mearsheimer it has manifested itself as a consequence of a structural
transition that raised of the lid on militant groups who had been previously contained
within the state. The neorealist panacea for these conflicts is to build stronger states. As
such, they also implicitly endorse a primordial perspective in their prescriptions for the
management of these struggles. For example, Mearsheimer argued that the surest way to
resolve the Yugoslavian crisis was to forcibly create discrete homogenous states: [a]
Bosnian state peopled almost exclusively by Muslims, a Croatian state for Croations, and a
Serbian state made up of Serbians.52

Thus, while structural realists continue to view the state as the ontological unit of analysis
and regard domestic politics as secondary to international systemic forces; they have come
to accept that in the post Cold War context, extreme incidences of ethnic conflict can have
an impact on systemic stability. Mearsheimer conceded that the problem of hyper-
nationalism is a serious domestic factor, but only because it can provide additional
incentives for [interstate] war.53 Similarly, Barry Posen has argued that ethnic conflicts
emerge in conditions where there is an absence of sovereignty or as a consequence of
anarchy. He contends that a security dilemma emerges in cases where sovereignty
collapses, just as it affects relations among states.54

In the post Cold War era neorealists have increasingly come to acknowledge that internal
conflicts can spill over into the international system. Michael Brown, for example, has
argued that internal conflict should be studied as part of contemporary international politics
because it has become the most pervasive form of armed conflict in the international
system today.55 More importantly, from a theoretical perspective these conflicts can
destabilise the international system. Weak or imploding states are dangerous because
they can create a spreading instability. In turn this instability can spill over and challenge
regional or international security in a number of ways. Brown argues that the main

51
Mearsheimer, Back to the Future.
52
Mearsheimer, Shrink Bosnia to Save it. Containment of the problem through increases in
military deployments along the borders of ethnic conflicts is a common solution posed by realists.
See Bernstein, Ethnicity and Imperial Break-Up. Similarly, many structural realists argue for the
need to redraw the map such that territorial boundaries reflect the conditions of anarchy and
sovereignty of an ordered interstate system. In Identity, Sovereignty, Responsibility Campbell
criticised this prescription as a form of ethnic cleansing.
53
Mearsheimer, Back to the Future, 7, 35.
54
Posen, The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict, 27, 29. Also see Snyder, Nationalism and
the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State, 11.
55
Brown, Introduction in idem (ed), The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, 3.
37
international dimensions of ethnic conflict are that they can: (i) prompt other countries to
intervene in order to maximise their national interests, (ii) involve interference or
interdiction between states in cases of transborder population and; (iii) involve other states
if groups engage in terrorism or organised criminal activity.56

Whilst Brown offers no explicit reason for the general neglect of internal conflict in the
field, the implicit assumption in his assessment is that internal conflicts should be treated
as significant today not because of a theoretical shortfall in the field, but because of a
profound sense that the reality of world politics has changed in a way which makes these
struggles more salient international concerns. That is, the neglect was justifiable.
Similarly, Kaufman explains the oversight easily in terms of the levels of analysis
problem which has directed International Relations research to systemic or third image
questions. He prescribes that the widespread nature of protracted ethnic violence in the
contemporary context has created the need for a synthesis of structural realist
international theory and theories on inter-ethnic war.57

This is quite an unsettling concession for neorealists to make because they had been quite
insistent on regarding domestic politics, let alone ethnic dimensions, as first image or
second image problems which should not significantly impact on the distribution of
power in the interstate system. But these structural realists have now attempted to
incorporate theories of ethnic conflict within their analyses. Brown argues that most
internal conflicts are caused by a combination of second and third image problems, 58 or as
he puts it, bad neighbourhoods and bad leaders.59 Kaufman argues that ethnic war
occurs when there are crises evident at each level simultaneously. He characterises the
cause of ethnic war in the following manner.

To oversimplify slightly, ethnic war requires mass hostility, ethnic outflanking

by political elites, and a security dilemma. When all three factors are present
each acts to exacerbate the other two, and the result, in the worst case, is an
increasing spiral of ethnic violence.60

56
Brown, Ethnic Conflict and International Security and Ryan, Ethnic Conflict and International
Relations.
57
Kaufman, An International Theory of Inter-ethnic War, 149. The levels of analysis problem
that Kaufman refers to comes from David Singer, and is resolved through an adaptation of Kenneth
Waltzs first, second and third images to ethnic conflict situations. See Singer, The Levels of
Analysis Problem in International Relations and Waltz, Man, State and War.
58
Waltzian images correlate to the following: First image human nature and mass behaviour.
Second image nature of states and elite behaviour. Third image nature of international system.
Waltz, Man, State and War.
59
Brown, The International Dimensions of Internal Conflict, 579.
60
Kaufman, An International Theory of Inter-ethnic War, 150.
38
Neorealist theory is then employing what might be described as international analogy to
the domestic arena. Even Hobbes was not prepared to make such a bold claim. In fact he
conceded that it was difficult to imagine places in the world where men actually lived in
such a condition of pure anarchy. In Hobbes dystopian image of a state of nature, the
conditions of life were extremely severe and bereft of any civilisation and there would be,

no place for industry no navigation no commodious Building no

Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters;
no Society And life of man [would be] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and
short.61
While Hobbes is cautiously prepared to concede that the savage people in many places of
America (and perhaps peoples afflicted with civil war) might be thought to live in a
condition approximating a state of nature,62 the idea that the dissolution of a
Commonwealth through civil war leads to pure anarchy is inconsistent with Hobbes own
presumption that a state of nature has no industry, science or arts. Once peoples have
experienced life under the protection of a state they have experienced industry, science,
arts and so forth. Theoretically, peoples afflicted with civil war could only be said to
deteriorate into a genuine state of nature if all evidence and memory of civil life had been
erased.

Finally, cultural or civilisational factors have recently been acknowledged by realist

scholars as significant forces in the post Cold War international system. Conflicts which
arise as part of this period of structural transition are often seen to be caused by the revival
of pre-existing cultural or civilisational fault lines which have been frozen over by the
receding power structures of Cold War bi-polarity. This view has been most famously
articulated by Samuel Huntington in his essay, The Clash of Civilizations?63 In Huntington
we find images of natural and ancient fault lines which demarcate huge tectonic divisions
between civilisational entities (such as the West, Islam or Confucianism). These rifts,
he argues, have been reinstated in the contemporary era to replace the ideological and
security vacuum that was created by the end of the Cold War. In the emerging crisis,
Huntington anticipates the release of primordial civilisational differences which always

61
Hobbes, Leviathan, 186.
62
Ibid, 187.
63
While Huntington has become most famous for his civilisational thesis, it should also be noted
that he had already made several interpretations on the end of the Cold War before1993. In 1989
he rebuked hegemonic decline and end of history arguments. In 1991, he published a book
documenting the third wave of democracy and an article which argued that the end of the Cold
War signified an emerging uni-multipolar world. Huntington, No Exit; The Third Wave;
Americas Changing Strategic Interests and The Clash of Civilizations?
39
have been, and always will be, fundamentally antagonistic towards each other. He
contends that in this emerging crisis,

The fundamental source of conflict... will not be primarily ideological or

primarily economic. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in
world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between
nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will
dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle
lines of the future.... Civilizations... are far more fundamental than differences
among political ideologies and political regimes.64
Huntingtons civilisational thesis is a structuralist account of international politics which
retains many basic assumptions of the realist tradition. Power is, in the final instance,
conceived in material, predominantly military, and statist terminology. International
politics is inherently anarchic, and order is attainable only through new balances of power.
Thus, it is ultimately a realist account of the nature of impending anarchy and order in the
international system; even if civilisations have displaced ideology as the main systemic and
alliance forming cleavage of the epoch.

Liberalism

Two connected propositions dominate liberalism deliberations on contemporary world

politics. They are firstly, that the world is experiencing a widespread increase in
democratisation and secondly that democracies rarely wage war on one another.65

Between 1974 and 1991, roughly a third of the countries on the planet converted their
political systems to democratic rule. This process has increased since the end of the Cold
War such that by 1992, more than half of the worlds governments claim to be
democratic.66 Democracy, observes Held, seems to have scored an historic defeat over
other forms of governance.67 Today, there are only a handful of governments in the world
(such as Cuba, North Korea and China) which claim to be Communist. Communist
political parties in the rest of the world appear to be in serious decline. There is
considerable variation in the forms of democratic rule - authoritarian, social or Christian
democracies for example. But they all share at least a rhetorical commitment to the basic

64
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, 22, 25.
65
The second statement was made by President Clinton and enjoys strong scholarly support.
Richardson, The Declining Probability of War Thesis, 2. See also Gowa, Democratic States and
International Disputes and Russet, Grasping the Democratic Peace.
66
Kegley and Wittkopf, World Politics, 69-70. Also see Huntington, The Third Wave and Kegley,
The Neoidealist Moment in International Studies?
67
Held, Democracy and the Global Order, 3.
40
democratic ideal: that in human political communities it ought to be ordinary people and
not extra-ordinary people who rule.68 At the very minimum, the aspiration of democracy
seems to have no rival.69 Dunn argues that democracy has become the, overwhelmingly
dominant, and increasingly the well-nigh exclusive, claimant to set the standard for
legitimate political authority.70

The triumph of democracy has implications for consolidating appeals to the Kantian
democratic peace argument, namely that major war has become obsolete. Jack Levy has
surmised that the recurrent tendency for democracies to deal with conflict with each other
in ways other than warfare is, as close to anything we have to an empirical law in IR.71

Others have maintained that this phenomenon represents a grand civilisational trend
representing a radical shift away from what has been traditionally viewed as a basic human
drive towards warfare. John Mueller, for example, made the claim in his book, The
Retreat From Doomsday that war between democratic states would be become obsolete
because people would find it uncivilised:

Like duelling and slavery, war does not appear to be one of lifes necessities...
War may be a social affliction, but in important respects it is also a social
affection that can be shrugged off.72
Similarly, the political anthropologist Robert OConnell, in his book The Rise of the
Second Horseman, celebrates this phenomenon as nothing less than a great civilisational
transformation signifying the death of war.

[F]or a very long time warfare was deeply embedded in civilisation, and it
follows that if war has indeed become defunct, then it must be the result of
societal changes of sufficient magnitude to undermine its fundamental utility. 73
The most common liberal interpretation of the end of the Cold War which brings both of
these propositions - democratisation and the obsolescence of war - together has been that it
represented the victory of liberal democracy over communism and capitalism over
command economies. This view has been famously elucidated by Francis Fukuyama in his

68
Dunn, Preface in idem (ed), Democracy, v. Note, that this is a very broad definition which
encompasses Communist or socialist conceptions of democracy. The distinction between
Communist and liberal forms lies in the degree of state control over the economy, degrees of
individual freedom and subsequent forms of political participation.
69
Even in countries which do not have democratic governments such as Myanmar (Burma), the
aspiration is evident amongst the military junta who consistently claim that military rule is a
necessary stage of transition from communism to democracy. See Mount, The Human rights
Situation and Lack of Progress Towards Democracy in Burma (Myanmar).
70
Dunn, Conclusion in idem (ed), Democracy, 239.
71
Levy, cited in Kegley and Wittkopf, World Politics, 444.
72
Mueller, The Retreat from Doomsday, 13.
73
OConnell, Ride of the Second Horseman, 231.
41
seminal article, The End of History.74 The explicit argument in Fukuyamas thesis is that
liberalism has won a dialectical victory over communism. But implicitly his argument
celebrates the triumph of liberal political principles over irrational, regressive and
parochial expressions of culture. Ethnic conflict is associated with a primal urge and
appeals to ethnicity are represented as a backward or lagging condition which will be
plagued by warfare until they finally, and inevitably, extinguish themselves. Fukuyama
maintains that the ideological questions have been resolved, but in practice there are still
those who are caught up in the grip of history. Thus, even in the post Cold War era, he
anticipates a, continuation of ethnic and nationalist impulses - both seen as antithetical to
the liberal project.

This does not by any means imply the end of international conflict per se. For
the world at that point would be divided between a part that was historical and
a part that was post-historical. Conflict between states still in history, and
between those states at the end of history, would still be possible. There would
still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and nationalist violence, since
those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of the post-historical
world. Palestinians and Kurds, Sikhs and Tamils, Irish Catholics and Walloons,
Armenians and Azeris, will continue to have their unresolved grievances. This
implies that terrorism and wars of national liberation will continue to be an
important item on the international agenda. But large-scale conflict must
involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear
to be passing from the scene.75
Note that Fukuyama acknowledges that pockets of ethnic violence may well persist even in
the post-historical world (amongst the Irish Catholics or the Belgian Walloons for
example). This is because there are elements within democratic or partially democratic
states which have not fully embraced democratic principles.

Thus, liberal perspectives view the politicisation of ethnic differences as an obstacle to the
celebrated victory of democracy, and they frame ethnic conflicts within a broader discourse
on the struggle between civilisation and barbarism. That is, the victory of liberalism is
claimed on behalf of the civilised West,76 portrayed as the geosocial or geopolitical
embodiment of liberalism. In this vision, the West is conceived as the force which will
ethically regulate a New World Order, and will be extensively interconnected through a
global village. The liberal perspective anticipates the progressive interdependency of the

74
Fukuyama, The End of History?
75
Ibid, 18. [my italics].
76
It is acknowledged that the category of the West needs to be more thoroughly surveyed than
what has been achieved here. International Relations scholars identified in the present section use
the term, although they employ it in subtly different ways - as an ideology, a geopolitical force, an
economic one and so forth. To adequately address this aspect of their writing, refer to OHagan,
Conceptions of the West in International Relations Thought.
42
worlds enlightened people - whether as citizens of states or as cosmopolitan individuals -
under the aegis of a shared global culture, peaceful free trade and the adherence to
multilateral regimes and universal declarations of human rights and the rule of law.

Inherent in these interpretations is the idea that ethnicity can, or inevitably will, be
transcended as citizens shift their loyalty and ideals increasingly towards democratic
principles and institutions. Liberalism is built upon the modernist foundation which
assumes that civic structures will eclipse or eradicate any latent ethnic and nationalistic
particularisms. But liberals cannot ignore making the observation that nationalism clearly
persists as a significant, even growing, phenomenon in contemporary world politics.77 In
contemporary liberal International Relations analyses this contradiction is resolved most
cogently through recourse to the distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism.78

Civic nationalism is conceded as a legitimate political discourse because it privileges

civic institutions and universal human rights, conceived especially in terms of individual
freedoms as a fundamental aspect of national identity. Ethnic nationalism on the other
hand is denounced as exclusionary because it undermines individual freedoms and has a
predilection towards essentialised communal social and political structures. Extreme
forms of post Cold War ethnic nationalism are often equated with Second World War
European fascism - the historical arch-enemy of modern liberalism - and as such are
persistently discredited.79

A related liberal view of the post Cold War period represents the world in terms of a crisis
between religious and secular forms of governance. Juergensmeyer has drawn this
distinction in his projected scenario where, religious nationalism confronts the secular
state. Juergensmeyer argues that the ideological divisions between East and West have
been replaced in the post Cold War context with two different ideologies of order which
stipulate competing understandings of ethical governance.80 Similarly, Barbers more
critical image of Jihad vs McWorld contends that the post-Cold War world is being

77
See Guibernau, Nationalisms.
78
See Snyder, Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State and Ignatieff, Blood and
Belonging. Most of these writers are critical of nationalism and treats civic forms as only the lesser
of two evils. For a critique of this see Cards, Politically correct anti-nationalism who argues
that this conceptual distinction is profoundly Americo-centric.
79
Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood, 34, puts this in the starkest of terms in a reference to
German and French forms of citizenship. The former leads logically to ethnic cleansing; the latter
to ethnic integration. For critical discussion on the association between contemporary forms of
ethnic cleansing and German fascism see Mestrovic, The Balkanization of the West and Snyder,
From Voting to Violence.
80
Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War?
43
reshaped by two opposing forces of economic and religious fundamentalism. 81 Elsewhere,
Barber has asserted that ethnicity is like a cell that has been infected with cancer and
democracy appears to be the immunological key.82

The overwhelming neoliberal prognosis for ethnic and religious conflict in world politics is
that they require democratisation because they represent inherent assaults on freedom.
For example, a 1994 Freedom House report, argued that the decline in Free countries was
a consequence of the rise in ethnic, religious, cultural and historical tensions at a general
level. According to this view, the normative agenda is to vigilantly challenge those who
attempt to flout liberal ideals and democratic principles by privileging ethnic sentiments
over civic ones. Utilitarianism, which professes the greatest good for the greatest
number, can be distorted especially by unethical elites who manipulate the media and
play the communal card.83 Freedom House appear to be arguing that the free world has
an ethical and ideological obligation to arrest this phenomenon because sporadic
incidences of ethnic conflict have the capacity to inspire other tyrants to do the same:

Part of the shift away from freedom is the result of an awareness among tyrants
that they can flout international law and the democratic community, which has
proved incapable of exerting its influence on behalf of freedom in Bosnia,
Somalia and Haiti.84
Underlying almost all contemporary liberal perspectives is the view that the Cold War
ideological divide has been, for all pragmatic purposes, resolved. But, we should be
attuned to the way that the imagery of a crisis between the free and unfree world
persists. The language in the Freedom House report cited above for example appears to be
seamlessly consistent with Cold War containment rhetoric employed as the central nostrum
against the threat of international communism. For example, it is reminiscent of George
Kennans prescription for containment in 1946 advocating a policy of, unalterable
counter-force at every point where [communists] show signs of encroaching upon the
interests of a peaceful and stable world.85

Perhaps Cold War discourses of containment are being replicated in the post Cold War
period, only now the ideological nemesis of the free world is no longer Communism but

81
Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld. For an excellent discussion on Barber see Croucher, Constructing
the Ethnic Spectacle: The Politics of Identity in a Postmodern World.
82
Barber, Democracy and the New Ethnicity.
83
Human Rights Watch, Playing the Communal Card.
84
Karatnycky, Freedom in Retreat, 4.
85
Kennan also proposed a policy of ideological impressionism for the United States. It should,
demonstrate among the peoples of the world, that it was a self assured country, which has a
spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the ideological currents of the time. Kennan,
The Sources of Soviet Conduct, 581.
44
rampant and resurgent ethno-nationalism? This is wholly consistent with a fundamental
internal tension within liberal discourse between politics and culture; a tension which
has existed since liberalism original emerged as an ideal of the Enlightenment project. The
politicisation of culture - whether in the form of ethnicity, religion or the intensification of
parochialism - appears to be the new counter-ideology to universal liberalism. Democracy
is still seen as fragile and under constant threat. Like communism, the global threat of
ethno-nationalism is seen as corrosive and it can manifest itself domestically and
internationally. The significance of the end of the Cold War for liberalism may be that it
has finally discovered, or recovered, its real enemy in these revised political ideologies of
culture.

It is no coincidence that most critical liberal thinkers, such as Connolly, Tamir, Kymlicka
or Taylor, are preoccupied with precisely this impasse between culture or multi-
culturalism and the promises of liberal democracy.86 For example at a recent conference on
political theory and indigenous rights, many of the participants were perplexed by the
incongruence between liberal theory, collective rights and cultural diversity. 87 Ross Poole
argued that liberalism, which places the individual at the centre of the moral universe,
treats nationalism as a problem because it never came to terms with culture;88 William
Connolly examined Mill in conjunction with Renan to show that undergirding liberal
theory there is a subterranean connection of race and nation. Furthermore, he contended
that secular claims of liberal thought were embedded within Judeo-Christian
foundationalism89 and several speakers, such as James Tully and Iris Marion Young,
attempted to reformulate cultural diversity within a liberal framework, by proposing a
theory of strange multiplicity.90 The general consensus amongst these theorists and their
attempts to rescue culture from the liberal tradition appears to be rather despairing. As
Ephrami Nimni concluded, critical liberal theorists such as Kymlicka, Tamir and Taylor, in
attempting to reconcile cultural difference with political universalism, are taking liberalism
to its conceptual limits.91

While liberal political philosophers and political theorists seem aware that the problem of
peoples bears down upon the pivotal debate between libertarianism, communitarian and

86
See Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture.
87
Indigenous Rights, Political Theory and the Reshaping of Institutions Conference, Australian
National University, Canberra, 8-10 August, 1997 Selected papers published in Peterson and
Sanders, Citzenship and Indigenous Australians
88
Poole, Indigenous Claims, Political Theory and Globalization.
89
Connolly, The Liberal Image of the Nation.
90
Young, The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference and Tully, Strange Multiplicity.
91
Nimni, The Limits of Liberal Democracy.
45
cosmopolitan theories, the dominant form of liberalism in International Relations theory
neoliberalism - has tended to be far less self critical. This is because neoliberalism has
positioned itself within libertarian philosophy and therefore regards notions of an
embedded cultural identity or cosmopolitan theories with suspicion. The answers to the
worlds problems are sought in the iconography of democracy rather than republicanism,
free markets rather than redistributed wealth and working to ensure the efficiency of
transnational organisations rather than redressing the fundamental norms that underpin the
state system.

Consequently, the international significance of ethnic conflict from a neoliberal

perspective is that it represents part of a wider ideological opponent that espouses a
cultural and communal challenge to the fundamental premises of liberal thought. Political
struggles driven by ethnic allegiances are seen to undermine ideals of individualism, civic
participatory politics and universal human rights. There is a civilisational discourse which
runs through liberal assessments which are manifested both in the end of history and
obsolescence of war arguments. The Enlightenment project has always sought to displace
or defeat culture in the name of civic politics and war has always been portrayed as
both a proclivity in barbarians and an exclusive privilege of civilisations. Contemporary
neoliberal interpretations of ethnic conflict continue these projects.

The above discussion has sought to develop an implicit critique of state-centric and
modernist assumptions as the most significant theoretical obstacles to analysing ethnic
conflicts as global phenomena. The fundamental obstacle underlying both the tendency of
cold war neglect as well as the ensuing confusion surrounding the global significance of
ethnic conflict relates to the deeply embedded assumptions inherent within state-centric
and modernist thinking. The two traditions of realism and liberalism have both been
generally concerned with the behaviour of states, conceived as the principal agents of
modern politics, and more specifically with the relations and associations formed between
these entities.92 The most important of these relationships which has preoccupied scholars
of International Relations has been that associated with questions of war and peace. But

92
Liberalism emphases the significance of individual freedom to participate in domestic
structures, and an ethic which professes the possibility of peace through the protection of these
principles. But it shares with realism the same spatial imagery of the territorial state. See
Walker, Inside/Outside 126. The difference lies in the perceived function of this basic unit of
analysis. For liberalism the state is the principal agent of participatory politics whether for
individual citizens or multilateral communitarian structures. For realism it is the most effective
means of maximising military power and providing security for its members in an essentially
anarchic world. See Doyle, Liberalism and World Politics and Smith, Realist Thought From
Weber to Kissinger respectively.
46
again, the significance of ethnic war as a type of global relationship has not been afforded
any serious attention.

THE ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE INTER-STATE SYSTEM

Conventional International Relations theory has been thoroughly seduced with state-centric
thought, and its assumption that politics is the study of coercive wielding institutions.
David Mitranys diagnosis of political theory as suffering from a condition of state
fixation93 seems to have become an obsessive compulsive disorder in orthodox
International Relations theory. Even though the discipline has weathered a series of
significant challenges to state-centrism for the better part of its history, these challenges
have been resiliently countered by equally virulent responses. It may be that, as such an
integral fixture in the sociology of knowledge of the discipline, debates about the role of
the state are more than theoretical questions in International Relations; they are a way of
life.94

In fact, all modern theories of world politics - whether they defend or challenge state-
centrism - have been forced to engage in some form with the key arguments of classical
state theory. Consequently, each of the major schools in the discipline can be
differentiated in terms of their competing representations of the state as an actor in world
politics. The important point to bear in mind is that they all share a deep ontological
tendency to assume that the state should be the principal site of analysis in their arguments.
For example, realism stubbornly insists on a circular logic which asserts the central
primacy of states in a world that it defines as an anarchical inter-state system. Rationalism
qualifies the realist view by arguing that the international society of states provides order
and justice for humanity and is bound together by societal norms. Liberalism champions
the domestic experience of democratic states as a model for increasing levels of
interdependence and the potential for universal humanism or world government. Marxism
rejects the state as a viable or ethical form of political organisation arguing that it is an
expression of the ruling classes in the capitalist system. Finally, critical theories challenge
93
Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics, 98.
94
International relations departments to some extent live or die depending on their (funding)
relationship with governments and the discipline has evolved through its deep association with host
states and the states sponsored international organisations. The orthodoxy has enshrined an
understanding of world politics that mediates broad historical and geographical forces in terms of
how they might impact on the core concerns of international military or economic order and justice.
But, because these analyses are often conducted for the implicit or explicit purposes of providing
policy assistance to governments, they serve to reaffirm the view that states are the most significant
actors in global affairs.
47
state-centric thinking arguing that it relies on a limited conception of power and obscures
the inherent diverse relationships that make up global politics. In each case, the state is a
central theoretical problematic, irrespective of whether it is regarded as a military
capability maximising ontological given within an anarchical system or deeply
simulated and unstable representation of identity, power and ethics.95

Correspondingly, any theory of change or transformation in world politics must engage

with the question of whether or not the role of the state and the nature of inter-state
relations is undergoing any fundamental change. In 1966 Stanley Hoffman evocatively
characterised this longstanding debate as being between those who asserted that the nation-
state was either obstinate or obsolete.96 Two points should be made about this
distinction. Firstly, while it is generally assumed that the staunchest defenders of the
obstinate view have been the realists, it is important to draw a distinction between the
historical reflectiveness of the traditional realists on the one hand and the ahistorical
scientism of neorealists on the other. The former defend state centrism through historically
reflective and hermeneutic analyses. Bulls historically comparative and normative study
of world order is an example of the traditional or classical approach. 97 Neorealist
approaches on the other hand, have challenged traditional realists on the grounds of their
over-emphasis on historical and legalistic method and their corresponding lack of scientific
objectivity.98 For the purposes of this discussion, a particularly important feature of this
neorealist challenge is its reliance on ahistorical arguments to assert the ontological primacy
of the state and the states system. History in the neorealist framework is then reduced to a
perpetual struggle between political units to achieve balances of power. For example,
whilst a scholar such as Gilpin concedes that the nature of a states internal monopoly of
force may change over time, he still maintains that, the fundamental nature of
International Relations has not changed over the millennia.99

Secondly, those perspectives contending that the primacy of the state is eroding, adapting
or becoming obsolete are still required to explain what form of political organisation(s) are
replacing states in their alternative understandings of global politics. These challenges
should also be differentiated into two types of debate. The first form emphasises material
interests and agendas. It has generated a more polemical and polarised set of arguments on

95
Compare Krasner, International Political Economy, 18 with Weber, Simulating Sovereignty and
Campbell, Identity, Sovereignty, Responsibility.
96
Hoffman, Obstinate or Obsolete?
97
Bull, International Relations as an Academic Pursuit
98
Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 227.
99
Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, 17.
48
the life and death of the state. Protagonists are divided over whether or not the state is
able to maintain its physical territorial integrity and pursue its traditional interests in the
face of transnational phenomena and increasing levels of interdependence between states
and non-state actors. The second form of debate emphasises qualitative characteristics
including the core normative principles which privilege the idea of the state as the
principle agent of change and continuity in world politics. This more conceptually
enriched debate contextualises the claims of state-centric ontology within broader
historical, geographical and social patterns of transformation and continuity or political
formation and disintegration. The key issue in this debate is concerned with whether or not
the state has lost, or is losing, not just its physical capacity to maintain its monopolies of
force, finance, legality or command of human loyalties, but an ability to defend the ideas
of legitimate political community which have vested these monopolies in state sovereignty.
Defenders argue that the state has been remarkably adaptive even in the face of various
normative transformations. Critics argue that a more fundamental normative
transformation, a legitimacy crisis,100 is taking place which is reconstituting the
foundational conceptions that legitimise political and cultural community in the
contemporary world.

The Real and the Ideal

Contrary to characterisations of International Relations as being a discipline divided into

two diametrically opposed theories, one representing the real world and the other the ideal,
it is important to recognise that realism and liberalism (idealism, utopianism) share many
of the same epistemological foundations. Consequently, it is the similarities between the
two schools of thought in International Relations theory, than the differences, which raises
more profound questions. In particular, they share equivalent views of the rudimentary
state of human nature, a commitment to linear historicism, a similar spatial imagery and a
parsimonious understanding of political and moral agency. This is a provocative statement
which seems to contradict the conventional self- image of the discipline as being neatly
divided between, on the one hand, the normative project of those who entertain the
possibility of peace and, on the other hand, a vigilant stance of preparedness in the face of
the objective realities of a world where the potential for war is constant or inevitable. In
between there are the pragmatists who strive for the former while remaining ever mindful

100
The term is most famously associated with Jrgen Habermas. See Habermas, Legitimation
Crisis and Outhwaite, The Habermas Reader.
49
of the latter. Pragmatists curtail the politics of the possible with the possibilities of politics
when they make the claim what is beyond planning is not worth making promises about
or base their judgements on a reasonably plausible extrapolation from current events.
But they also recognise what E.H. Carr once described as the fascination and the tragedy
of all political life and what Richard Rorty seems to be restating with his intuitive
observation that political deliberation presupposes hope. It presupposes that things can be
changed for the better.101

If the real world is one which is most usefully described in terms of the interplay between
ideals and material limitations, then we need to ask why the discipline of International
Relations has persisted with such an inappropriate and impractical conceptual language.
Ironically, the answers to this practical problem seem to be buried within in the realms of
epistemological inquiry. That is, while the two orthodox schools of thought have
generated two broad sets of research agendas, explanations and prescriptions, it is now
generally acknowledged that they both accept a number of modernist metaphysical
assumptions about the nature of knowledge and the material world.102 Even the supposed
assumptions that they hold different conceptions about human nature, time and space can
also create something of a false dichotomy.103 I will briefly consider each of these
convictions in turn.

A common presupposition in the field of International Relations is that realists adopt a

pessimistic view and liberals an optimistic view of human nature. But we need only
recollect that Immanuel Kants thesis on perpetual peace was premised upon the
concession that war is an inclination that seems innate in human nature. Kant makes his
point quite clear in a statement that one would be forgiven for thinking might belong in the
chapter on realism rather than idealism if it were to appear in a standard International
Relations theory textbook:

101
Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 93 and Rorty, Hope and the Future, 149, 152. I have chosen
two figures on the edges of realism and liberalism intentionally here. Carr was also a foreign
policy practitioner. Rorty, a liberal who audaciously claims that John Stuart Mill has already said
pretty much everything there is to say about what sort of society to hope for (Ibid, 150) also
regards himself as a pragmatist.
102
Epistemologically, International Relations theories of realism and idealism tend to subscribe to
the edicts of positivist social science. Their differences do not reflect complex distinctions made in
philosophy between realism the view that there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or
properties subjectivism or relativism. See Smith et. al., International Theory: Positivism &
Beyond and Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.
103
The more substantial differences inherent in naturalism, as well as conceptions of temporality
and spatiality will be examined in later chapters.
50
 The state of peace among men living in close proximity is not the natural state
(status naturalis); instead, the natural state is one of war, which does not just
consist in open hostilities, but also in the constant and enduring threat of
them.104
Conversely, just as we can discern in liberalism a subterranean tradition of despair about
the realities of human nature we find glimmers of hope throughout the works of the
realists. Kants point of departure seems to correspond with Thomas Hobbes
emancipatory vision of a Commonwealth, namely that war is a necessary misery which
accompanies the Liberty of particular men.105 Similarly, one might be surprised to
discover that the observation that Cities have never increased either in power or in wealth
unless they have been established on liberty106 comes from a significant humanist,
Machiavelli, at least a century before similar observations would be made by Locke, Mill
or Bentham.

There seems to be a burgeoning intellectual industry within the discipline of International

Relations which provides the service of identifying these sorts of anomalies within the
historiography of the two schools of thought. A favoured analytical technique is to claim
that the field got its labelling all wrong and therefore is in need of correction. 107 The
alternative approach is to argue that the system of classification is inadequate or, more
radically, that systems of classification per se are fundamentally problematic. This seems
like a distinctly postmodern strategy but, as is often the case, we can find examples of it
from modern or premodern sources. Martin Wight seems to be directing us towards a
methodology which regards these systems with suspicion.

104
Kant, Perpetual Peace, 111.
105
Hobbes, Leviathan, 188 [My Italics].
106
Cited in Skinner, The Italian City-Republics, 65.
107
The exemplary figure who has recently received considerable critical scrutiny is E.H. Carr, who
for many years was characterised as a realist and now has been rediscovered as a constructivist
or a critical theorist. See for example, Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations and Cox, E.H.
Carr: A critical appraisal. The issue here is that Carrs writings have been appropriated and
deployed to serve different agendas in the discipline over the last fifty years. Moreover, I suspect
that, as a hermeneutic historian, Carr would find the sociology of knowledge surrounding these
reinterpretations of his own work intriguing if not a little disheartening. We should remind
ourselves that Carr provocatively argued that he was a better Marxist than the Marxists
themselves because he refused to accept the fundamentally non-Marxist assumption that
Marxism came straight down from the heavens like the Tables of Law Similarly, even though he
accepted in retrospect that his polemic in The Twenty Years Crisis was one-sided, other than
withdrawing his defence of the policy of appeasement he chose not to change anything else of
substance in second edition, merely on the grounds that [he] should not endorse them today. See
Carr, Preface, Karl Marx and idem Preface to Second Edition, The Twenty Years Crisis. The
critical questions that contemporary International Relations scholarship should be asking are not
only concerned with retrieving the nuance in Carrs writings, nor even in understanding why he
was classified in International Relations textbooks as such a crude realist, but what sociological
function this renaissance is serving in the current intellectual climate.
51
 In all political and historical studies the purpose of pigeon-holes is to reassure
oneself that the raw material does not fit into them. Classification becomes
valuable, in humane studies, only at a point where it breaks down.108
It is tempting to pursue the fissures in the orthodox foundations of International Relations
theory to demonstrate that the dilapidated state of the canon is the result of a misguided
ontological convention that segregates the ideal from the real. That is not, however, the
task at hand. It is nevertheless useful to consider several other areas where the two schools
of thought appear to converge because they constitute the major assumptions of state-
centric thought which, in turn has served as the major obstacle in the field to seriously
engaging with underlying questions raised in ethnic struggles. For the sake of brevity, we
can draw upon the insights of R.B.J. Walker who, in his book Inside/Outside, has done
much of the leg work to sustain the claim that both of the dominant schools of thought in
conventional International Relations conceptualise time, space and identity in remarkably
similar ways.

Walkers central premise is that International Relations has been content with a singular
spatial imagery which is rooted especially in sixteenth and seventeenth century
ontological traditions.109 To understand the embedded scientific imagery of the modern
sovereign territorial state it is necessary to reflect on the aspirations of the Enlightenment
and its attempt to comprehend the material world through systems of classification and
scientific models. Time, or history, was rendered linear, and space, or geography was
imagined to be subscribing to a fixed spatial order. Sovereignty was then imagined in
these terms to be distinctly modern and contained within clearly defined territorial
boundaries. Thus,

modern accounts of history and temporality have been guided by attempts to

capture the passing moment within a spatial order: within, say, the invariant
laws of Euclid, the segmented precision of the clock or the sovereign claims of
territorial states.110
By locating these ideas in a historical and social context, Walker shows how this abstract
spatio-temporal framework was translated into political philosophy and the discursive
practices that it both informed and reflected. For example, the publication in 1648 of
Hobbes Leviathan, a text which exemplified the aspirations of formulating a mechanistic
theory to discern what makes political science tick,111 coincided with the Treaty of

108
Wight, International Theory, 259.
109
Walker, Inside/Outside, 126.
110
Ibid, 4-5.
111
It is important to note that Hobbes cautioned against pushing the mechanical analogy too far and
that his conception of an original state of nature was always presented as an imaginary or even
52
Westphalia which is now widely regarded as the denouement in international history that
signified the transformation from the medieval to the modern era.112 The constitution of the
modern state system into independent fixed spatial entities then set the conditions under
which latter accounts of temporality could be articulated as a linear, and thus measurable,
progression.113 The discourse of sovereignty has been deeply inculcated with these
assumptions to such an extent that alternative conceptions of world politics outside this
modernist framing of all spatiotemporal options114 seems untenable and unrealistic.
Moreover, it is also a conceptual framework which has enveloped both of the dominant
schools of thought; indeed the apparent juxtaposition between the two ontologies of real
and the ideal, Walker argues, was a product of these changes.

Because territorial states are assumed to be fixed in space, both theories endorse an
affirmation of permanence which assumes that governments and regimes will come and
go, but states go on forever: All states are now assumed to claim sovereignty... however
much this norm may be qualified in practice by messy patterns of hegemony and
interdependence.115 As Walker concludes, the inherent assumptions in the principle of
state sovereignty of linear time and fixed space constituted what would become the debate
in International Relations theory because it narrowed down the options into one of two
possibilities: either those patterns are permanent or that they must be erased in favour of
some kind of global cosmopolis.116 According to this interpretation, the primary (and
incidentally, normative) concern of realism is about maintaining order in the sates system
by ensuring that power is balanced. Liberalism is concerned with improving, refining or
progressing this order through the mechanism of law or justice. Both theories accept the
ontological primacy of the state and adopt a managerial disposition to the normative
agenda of ensuring the stability of international order and justice.

Walker has provided a deep and pervasive explanation for the similarity between realism
and idealism. But the confluence of realism and liberalism worldviews can also be
understood in more simple terms. The following section will draw upon Martin Wights
idea that his three traditions can be derived from the way in which a theorist responds to

analogous proposition. The Leviathan is above all else a study through analogy and is built around
Hobbes proposition that we imagine the state as though it were like a mans body or one of
Natures Automata: Engines that move themselves by springs as doth a watch. Hobbes,
Leviathan, 81.
112
See Kratochwil, Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality; Ruggie, Territoriality and
Beyond and for an alternative view, Krasner, Westphalia and All That.
113
Walker, Inside/Outside, 11.
114
Ibid, 7.
115
Ibid, 166-7.
116
Ibid, 179.
53
the question, what is international society? A realist responds, it is not a society but an
arena, rationalists respond, it is a society, but different from a state and revolutionists
reply, it is a state (or ought to be).117 Leaving aside for the moment the third
cosmopolitan formulation, the distinction between an anarchic arena and a liberal society
can also appear blurred the closer we examine it.

Anarchy and Society

Anarchy has a relatively precise meaning in International Relations thought which arises
from the assumption that war is always a constant possibility so long as there is no
sovereign, as Hobbes would have it, to keep the people in awe.118 The status of this
proposition is equivalent in International Relations to what Darwins theory of evolution
has become in biology. As Richard Devetak has phrased it, anarchy is the ontological
condition119 in which both states and theorists find themselves immersed. For example,
Kenneth Waltz defines anarchy as, the absence of a central monopoly of legitimate force
but also as the essential structural quality of the [international] system.120 Note that Waltz
presents his model as being formed on pure scientific principles and therefore makes no
explicit normative claims on anarchy as an ideal in these propositions. But the inherent
assumptions are there. The entire system depends on the a priori assumptions that
legitimate force (statehood) and maintaining a stable structure of the system are
inherently good things.121

There is an embedded moral grammar within this discourse of anarchy which suggests that
the absence of governance would be meaningless without some relational conception of
what governance is. This view persists (whether acknowledged or not) in the popular
constructivist idiom anarchy is what states make of it.122 Despite the constant
descriptions of anarchy or chaos being ascribed to ethnic conflict, the notion that anarchy
is both an essential structural quality of the system and what ethnic groups make of it,
represents a fundamental challenge to state-centric thought. Because ethnic groups are
denied legitimate agency in comnventional international affairs, they are not considered to
be engaged in the constitution of structural forces.

117
Wight, International Theory, 48.
118
Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.13.
119
Devetak, Incomplete States.
120
Waltz, Man, State and War, 232 and idem, The Origins of War in Neo-realist Theory, 42.
121
Put another way, Waltz is not a political anarchist in the other sense of rejecting the basic
premises of all coercive (as opposed to mutually constituted) forms of legitimacy. For a useful
essay on Anarchism see Sylva, Anarchism in Goodin and Pettit, A Companion to Contemporary
Political Philosophy.
122
Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of it [My italics].
54
The other interesting point to make about the neorealist conception of anarchy is its close
convergence with a neoliberal world view. It is now broadly acknowledged that, as status
quo rationalist theories,123 both neorealism and neoliberalism agree that the international
system is inherently anarchic. We should recall that Kenneth Waltz formulated his
structural theory of the international political system on established abstract models of the
economic market. In particular, he transposed the pivotal principle in econometric theory
of ceteris parabis (all things being equal) to disregard superfluous variables. Waltz also
seems to have been highly impressed by the circular logic of economic theory to explain
relative fluctuations in demand and supply.124 He proposed that the logical connection
between economic actors and the market is analogous to the logic of the political system as
are its structural components. According to this view, political units are functionally the
same as economic units; the anarchy of the international system is directly comparable to
the inert nature of the market and; the maximizing of profit is functionally identical to the
maximizing of power. Consequently stability in both systems is achieved through
structural balance which dictates a rule of self-help on the actors.

International-political systems, like economic markets, are individualist in

origin, spontaneously generated, and unintended. In both systems structures
are formed by the coaction of their units. Whether those units live, prosper, or
die depends on their own efforts.125
Questions of intentionality and motivation, that is agency, are assumed to be constant
because all units are assumed to be seeking to maximise their capabilities. Predictably
then this image of the international arena bears a striking resemblance to a geoeoconomic
vision governed by neoliberal doctrine and a profoundly de-regulated market. Structural
realism has also assumed its place in international political economy. In Krasners
formulation where states have ontological primacy, neorealist geopolitics defines
relationships in the market. That is, the military capabilities of states give them ontological
primacy in the overall system: on its scope - realism covers both international political
economy and international security.126

As we shall see this conception of world politics is the obverse of structural Marxism
which subsumes the state within economic structures such that the accumulation process

123
Lamy, Contemporary mainstream approaches: Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism Neo-realism
and Neo-liberalism, 196.
124
For example, the proposition which links the increase in demand for a commodity to the
increase in price, profits and production, which in turn leads to over supply, thus the decreases in
price, profit and production. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 90.
125
Ibid, 91.
126
Krasner, International Political Economy, 18.
55
includes the logic of state building and geopolitics.127 What neorealist theory does seem to
resonate with is Margaret Thatchers epitaph for the decade of the 1980s, there is no such
thing as society.128 Translated into the global context the dominant image of world politics
provided by neoliberal theory and policies of economic rationalism is one where
individuals are free to fend for themselves, which, in turn, correlates with the traditional
theory of anarchy.

THE CASE FOR CRITICAL CLASSICISM

In its pursuit of a more scientific approach, neoliberal International Relations theory seems
to have abandoned its roots in critical philosophical dialogue. By and large, International
Relations neoliberalism rejects both cosmopolitanism and communitarian liberal
philosophy in favour of libertarian assumptions and neoclassical economics.

If we regard Machiavelli as a seminal figure of classical realism then it seems reasonable to

note that the philosophy of state sovereignty and the balance of power emerged out of the
humanist moment of the Italian Republicanism. We should also recall Hobbes theory
was fundamentally concerned with the philosophy of emotion, namely fear. Buried deep
inside realist discourse then we may be able to reveal an underlying philosophy of
recognition and the emotional struggle for preservation. There is an eloquent defence of
cultural identity, one which is sensitive to the emotional dimensions of human nature and
conscious of the way these can be manipulated through power relationships.

The English School was the communitarian intermediary that pursued Hegels grand
philosophical quest to unite somehow the radical moral autonomy of Kant and the
experience of the Greek polis.129

While realism and liberalism can be distinguished primarily in their response to questions
on the causes of war and the prospects of achieving peace,130 they have pursued this inquiry
in such a way that they have been intellectually imprisoned by the tyranny of the
concepts and normative principles of classical state theory.131 Both share the same spatial
imagery of the territorial state even if they differ in their respective emphasis on the
appropriate level of analysis. Within each tradition we also need to distinguish between
127
Chase-Dunn, Socialist States in the Capitalist world -economy, 25. See discussion on this in
the following chapter.
128
Thatcher, Interview with Women's Own magazine, October 3 1987.
129
Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society, 95.
130
Holsti, The Dividing Discipline.
131
Bull, Anarchical Society.
56
classical and new (or neo-) variants of theory. At the risk of oversimplifying, classical
realist and liberal approaches place a greater emphasis on the concepts and practices that
guide human agency, while neorealist and neoliberal approaches rely far more upon the
structural characteristics of the international political and economic system. To complicate
matters further, while structuralist neo approaches presuppose the rational logic of their
systems, classical approaches should be differentiated in terms of their scepticism towards
instrumental theories of rational choice. As a general rule, the more rational practitioners
are assumed to be, the more likely theories are to lean towards structuralist arguments.
Conversely, as theorists confidence in the rationality of human agency declines, the more
likely they are to incorporate interpretivist or hermeneutic considerations. According to
this framework, the potential in orthodox International Relations theory for critical
openings that go beyond state-centric assumptions is more likely to be found among the
hermeneutic insights of classical theories, or those theories which have sought to reconcile
the tension between agency and structure.

In his 1966 essay, International Theory: The case for a classical approach, Hedley Bull
presented a critique of what he called the scientific approach which he believed was
leading the discipline down a false path. Bull defined his preferred classical approach as
a process of

theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is
characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgement and
by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of
verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about
IR, that generalizations that can be said about this subject must therefore derive
from a scientifically important process of perception or intuition, and that these
general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative
inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.132
Bull overdraws the argument when he implies that philosophy, history and law are
somehow not deeply committed to the ideals of verification and proof. Nevertheless, the
spirit of his argument is that normative and epistemological debates, including scientific
approaches, can be accommodated readily enough within the classical approach.133 The
impressiveness of this argument is that the obverse claim, that the scientific approach
might incorporate the nuances of the classical approach, is much more difficult to sustain.

132
Bull, International Theory, 361. In contrast, the scientific approach aspires to form
propositions based either upon logical or mathematical proof, or upon strict empirical procedures
of validation., 363.
133
Ibid., 377.
57
Furthermore, Bulls account of why the scientific approach flourished in the United States
to such a degree that in the space of a decade it had become the orthodox methodology
while having virtually no impact at all in the British academy, 134 prefigures what would
become a very important field of inquiry into the social history not only of the discipline,
but of the relationship between knowledge and power. In keeping with the tenor of Bulls
argument it is worth bearing in mind that, in advocating an engagement with philosophy,
he was both exhuming and contributing to the development of the argument that
knowledge and power are inextricably linked. In philosophy this postulate was an old idea
attributable to the early seventeenth century writings of Francis Bacon who had argued,
optimistically, that the application of scientific invention and techniques was the primary
means through which humanity would achieve mastery over earth.135 Bulls scepticism
towards the faith in the applications of science in the modern world was not inconsistent
with certain critical trajectories in contemporary philosophical and social theory. For
example, Bulls technique, perhaps unwittingly, paralleled Friedrich Nietzsches nihilist
critique of modernist thought by turning the truth requirement of science back against
itself.136 It also seemed to confirm the research agenda of critical social theory and its
concerns about the impact of technocratic rationality on society. It is also worth bearing in
mind that as an essay as clearly concerned with a understanding a contemporary paradigm
shift in International Relations theory Bulls reflections on the discipline served as an
example of what Thomas Kuhn had described in his highly influential 1962 publication,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it pre-empted Stanley Hoffmans seminal
essay, An American Social Science, by over a decade.137

Bull recognised that there were important political and social motivations underscoring the
impulses towards the appropriation of the methodologies of social science as a managerial
technique of modern governance. For example he referred to attempts by the logical
positivists of the 1930s to appropriate English philosophy and of the role of
McNamaras Whiz Kids who were employed by the Pentagon. Champions of the new
scientific approach to International Relations that emerged during the late 1960s in the
United States envisaged themselves as tough-minded and expert new men, taking over an
effete discipline, or pseudo discipline.138 This insight reflected the concerns of political
philosophy of the Frankfurt School, and especially Karl Mannheims concerns about the

134
Ibid., 363.
135
See Bacon, Francis in Vesey & Foulkes, Collins Dictionary of Philosophy, 37-39.
136
Cited in Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 39.
137
Hoffmans, An American Social Science was published in 1977.
138
Bull, International Theory, 362.
58
sociology of knowledge. Bull may not have been explicit about the relevance of his
critique to a much broader argument that was forging the foundations of what would
become known as critical social theory.139 Nevertheless, he was highly conscious of the
intense ideological climate of the period and the unique role of the United States as a world
superpower in this profoundly structured war of ideas. Bearing this in mind, Mannheims
theory on the sociology of knowledge, and specifically his writings on the relationship
between ideology and science, would have reinforced Bulls critique. As Mannheim put it,

With the emergence of the general formulation of the total conception of

ideology, the simple theory of ideology develops into the sociology of
knowledge. What was once the armament of a party is transformed into a
method of research in social and intellectual history generally.140
That the dialectic between capitalist and communist ideology clearly preoccupied
International Relations theory from the 1950s to the 1980s seems irrefutable.
Consequently, arguments that research in the field from either the United States or the
Soviet Union were conducted in a purely dispassionate and objective manner are equally
unconvincing. The superpowers were after all engaged not merely in an arms race but an
introspective sociological struggle for the hearts and minds of humanity141 and to think
that International Relations theory was not deeply complicit in Pentagonism or
Kremlinism is nave to say the least.

The more radical claim inherent in Mannheims sociology of knowledge argument, one
which I am suggesting was at least potentially implicit in Bulls polemic, was that the
rigidly bipolar ideologically-orientated Cold War generated a powerful impetus towards
structuralism and the consolidation of the modernist aspiration for a social science. I
believe that this argument is not only defendable because it correlates with the rise of
structuralist and behaviouralist theories in the discipline of International Relations but
because it offers a plausible explanation for the emergence of a rift between the scholarly
orientation of the United States, Britain, and the divided Euro-Asian continent.

139
It is not my intention to demonstrate any overt conscious connection between Bulls polemic
against scientism and critical social theories emanating from the Frankfurt School, the Chicago
School and continental philosophy more generally. In seeking to identify latent critical openings in
the classical approach is it sufficient to show that it was enough consistency between the two fields
of inquiry rather than any direct cross-fertilization.
140
Manheim, Ideoloogy and Utopia, 69. Also see Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, ch.
13.
141
In the words of George Kennan, the core purpose of the Cold War was for each side to
demonstrate their status as a world power by asserting a spiritual vitality capable of holding its
own among the ideological currents of the time. Kennan, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, 581.
Also see Kennans reflections on the sociological character of the Cold War from his 1957 BBC
Reith Lectures in Kennan, Russia, The Atom and the West
59
As a discipline, International Relations has not been as self reflective about its own social
and intellectual history as other major social science/humanities disciplines. But this kind
of inquiry seems essential if we are to locate not only the core ideas and assumptions of
our field into a historical and social context, but also aspects of world politics which have
been systematically neglected. In the field of anthropology such intellectual enterprises
have stimulated a great deal of intellectual debate. Writers such as Henrika Kucklick for
example have focused on critical turning points by documenting the social history of
anthropology as it was transformed from a profession, enterprise or hobby into an
academic discipline. Focusing on the context of British anthropology, she argues that the
creation of university disciplines in general was a manifestation of the changed
occupational structure indeed newly defined class system of nineteenth-century
Britain whereby,

specialized knowledge became critical to the advancement in high-status

occupations traditionally termed professions the elite branches of medical
and legal practice as well as in civil service and the Army. Such enterprises
as engineering and architecture gained elevated prestige as they rationalized
their handicraft methods in scientific terms. University credentials became
more valuable in the marketplace, and in consequence the university system
expanded and changed in character.142
A particular striking example of this in contemporary political and social thought is the
often overlooked insights of critical studies in the discipline of human geography which
have revealed the depth of the relationship between geographical knowledge and political
power in the construction of national identity, imperial conquest, the Cold War and the
post Cold War context. The history of ideas approach in critical geography is highly
pertinent to both the study of global politics and Ethnic Studies.143

The disciplining of knowledge is then also a process of locating ideas or research agendas
into pigeon-holes. They serve a pragmatic function, but can obscure interesting and
relevant research on the same topic which might be treated elsewhere. The relationship
between the International Relations academy and the Cold War seems so pervasive that it
is almost too obvious to mention or study. In the next chapter we will consider how
structuralism infiltrated Marxist theory and had a similar delimiting effect.

142
Kuklick, The Savage Within, 27.
143
For a general overview of the political philosophy of geographical knowledge see Slowe,
Geography and Political Power. More critical accounts documenting the role of geographers as
practitioners in world politics can be found in Hooson (ed.), Geography and National Identity;
Godlewska and Smith (eds), Geography and Empire and Driver, Geographys Empire. For
specific accounts of the relationship between geographers during and after the Cold War see Kirby,
What did you do in the war Daddy?; Gregory, Geographical Imaginations and Smith, History
and Philosophy of Geography: Real wars and theory wars.
60
Structuralist realism and liberalism have made some important contributions to the study of
systemic forces and their impact upon inter-state relations, but because they have tended to
regard questions of agency as being pre-determined, they have tended to perpetuate the
tradition of neglecting non-state, and especially culturally-based, political identities.
Theories of world politics that limit their focus on systemic or structural characteristics
tend to reduce agency to the status of scientific units of analysis.144 Regardless of
whether they are defined as states or firms does not create critical openings for an inquiry
into the constitution of non-state communities, other than through the negation. The
critical hermeneutic tendencies of the classical approaches on the other hand seem to have
more potential for the purposes of building a more inclusive conceptual language to
comprehend the significance of ethnic conflict in the context of a climate of world politics
which seems to be experiencing a legitimacy crisis.

NEOMEDIEVALISM

In the final three chapters of The Anarchical Society, Bull assessed a range of theoretical
arguments on alternative paths to world order where he rejected the claim that the states
system was either in decline or becoming obsolete.145 Beyond his preferred societal model
of the states system he offered a critique of the following alternative theories of world
order: a system but not a society (the billiard ball model); a collection of states but not a
system (a concert of powers); a world government (Kantian cosmopolitanism or Marxist
internationalism); a new medievalism; and non-historical alternatives.146

Bull rejected each of these alternatives but he regarded his own intermediary new
mediaeval model as having more potential than the others. In the modern context it was
fanciful to propose that an alternative system may emerge where a universal political
system was basically theocratic and all authority was thought to derive from God, such as
it had been in Mediaeval Christendom. However, he argued that it was much less fanciful
to imagine that a system might emerge which shared other characteristics of Medieval

144
See Yurdusev, Level of Analysis and Unit of Analysis.
145
The relevant sections of the book are Part 3: Alternatives to World Order. Chapter 10,
Alternative paths to the contemporary states system begins with an assessment of four possible
scenarios which merely altered the existing system. These were: (i) a disarmed world; (ii) the
solidarity of states; (iii) a world of many nuclear powers; and (iv) ideological homogeneity. The
following discussion concentrates on Bulls critique of proposals beyond the states system.
146
Ibid, 248-256. Bull did not speculate upon what the exact nature of possible non-historical
alternatives might be. I suspect he included this category to accommodate his underlying view of
historical change as proceeding accidentally particularly in view of the potential radical
implications and unpredictable significance of technological change. Ibid., 258
61
Europe.147 Notably, he contemplated that a secular variant similar to the European
medieval universal world order, distinctive in terms of its overlapping authorities and
multiple loyalties, might develop in the modern context under the following conditions.

If modern states were to come to share their authority over their citizens, and
their ability to command their loyalties, on the one hand with regional and
world authorities and on the other hand with sub-state or sub-national
authorities, to such an extent that the concept of sovereignty ceased to be
applicable, then a neo-mediaeval form of universal political order might be said
to have emerged.148
It is important to point out that Bulls understanding of genuine qualitative transformation
of this form did not rest on either technological determinism or the premise of non-state
actors simply becoming more prominent in world politics. He regarded the observation
that states were not the only important actors in world politics as obvious, and the claim
that these process were new as absurd.149 Even the emerging evidence of the increasing
activity or decision making role of these other associations was not necessarily a
sufficient indication that the state system was in decline, or that the international society
would necessarily be replaced by another world order. Rather, Bull argued that genuine
transformation required some indication that there was genuine qualitative change. For
example, a new medieval world order may emerge if these actors pursued ideals of order
and justice that significantly arrested, or transfixed in an intermediate state, the
legitimacy of states to maintain their monopolies of authority and loyalty within their
territorial domains. Such a transformation would represent a significant shift if it could
effectively deprive the concept of sovereignty of its utility and viability.150

Bull reviewed five trends in contemporary world politics which he believed provided
prima facie evidence that such a normative shift towards a new mediaeval world order
might be emerging. They were: (i) regional integration between states, (ii) disintegration
within states, (iii) the restoration of private international violence, (iv) transnational
organisations, and (v) the technological unification of the world.151 He continually

147
In that system no ruler or state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given
territory and a given segment of the Christian population; each had to share authority with vassals
beneath, and with the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above... [It was]
a system of states which [did] not yet embody universal government. Ibid, 254.
148
Ibid, 254-5. The sort of evidence that would indicate a new mediaeval order might be if the
United Kingdom were to share authority over a region like Wales or Wessex with their own local
authorities on the one hand, and regional or world authorities in Brussels, New York or Geneva on
the other hand.
149
Ibid, 264, 278.
150
Ibid, 267, 264.
151
Ibid, 264-76.
62
reiterated that only if these trends were to generate a significant degree of uncertainty
surrounding the ideal and practice of state sovereignty, could the underlying legitimacy of
the current states system be said to be brought into question. And only under these
conditions could theories of an alternative world order be seriously considered.

At the time he was writing, almost three decades ago, Bull concluded that the impact of
these trends did not amount to any genuine qualitative change. In his view they did not
sufficiently challenge the prevailing concepts and normative principles which sustained the
anarchical society of states.152 For example, while states in some regions of the world did
appear to be increasingly organising in regional associations, these processes continued to
be overwhelmingly orchestrated by, and serving the interests of, participating states. Even
in cases where governmental elites proposed more federalist arrangements, a process
amounting to the formation of a supra-state, he maintained that the concepts and practices
of sovereignty themselves were not fundamentally challenged. Similarly, he argued that
whilst some claims for autonomy may evolve into an overlapping framework, the ideals of
disintegrationists rarely implied any alternative world order. These groups almost always
sought to increase their recognition or membership within the states system - either through
their attempts to be better represented within existing states or to create new ones.

Bull acknowledged that there was some evidence that there was a restoration of
international private violence which was forcing states to either share or lose some of their
monopolies of force. In particular, he noted that the emergence of potentially novel
collective or cooperative security communities, such as military operations organised
through the U.N., may transform the concepts and practices of sovereignty. Likewise, the
states system seemed to be experiencing difficulties in managing threats of international
terrorist organisations.153 But again, both of these modern forms of international violence
tended to either reaffirm the boundaries and stability of the states system or challenge these
boundaries only for the purposes of re-establishing new states. Consequently, Bull
concluded that the evidence of a restoration of private international violence did not
constitute any serious erosion or demise of the qualitative ideals or practices of the states
system. Conflict or cooperation between states continued to be the main factors
responsible for determining the political structure of the world.

152
Bull was a Grotian and as such believed that the pursuit of order preceded justice.
Consequently, he claimed that the best argument for doubting the new mediaeval model was that
there was no assurance that it would prove more orderly than the states system. Ibid, 255.
153
In particular, Bull suggested that the contemporary system seemed less capable of dealing with
international terrorist groups compared with the capacity of international societies to muster a
response to piracy in the past.
63
Regarding the increasing role of transnational corporations and other organisations, Bull
maintained that they needed to be assessed in terms of the national composition of these
entities.154 States displayed a considerable capacity to stand up to multinational
corporations for example by denying them access to markets. Moreover, he argued that the
function and survival of these corporations continued to be subject to decisions made by
states. Compared with firms, states were still much more capable of maintaining
monopolies of force, through standing armies and police forces; or finance, through their
definitive ability to extract taxes. Likewise, states continued to be the objects of the most
powerful human loyalties.155

Finally, Bull also rejected the argument that the states system would dissolve into a global
village through the shrinking of the globe caused by technological unification (what we
might today subsume under the category of globalism). He accepted that change in
communications and transport technology may connect distant peoples together. However,
these innovations could also be utilised to intensify local or domestic loyalties and
authorities. To illustrate this point, Bull referred to the then current debate in Australian
history over the impact of communications and transport technology in overcoming a
tyranny of distance156 on the one hand, versus its profound impact in facilitating internal
integration on the other hand.

The great strength of Bulls critique of alternative world orders was firstly his historical
depth and flexibility and secondly, his emphasis on the qualitative or normative
dimensions of global transformation. Historically, both the inter-state system and its
prevailing theories have withstood challenges before and coped with these sorts of
irregularities remarkably well. Similarly, the concepts and practices of state sovereignty as
they have historically operated in the inter-state system have coexisted and prevailed
despite a range of systemic anomalies in the past.157 He acknowledged that these
contemporary trends did create a number of, awkward facts for the classical theory of

154
I regard Bulls critique of the potential transformative impact of trans-national organisations the
weakest of all five. Bull was writing at a time when the sub-field of international political
economy, and more so, studies on new social movements had not yet infiltrated conventional
thinking in international relations. In fact, all of the English School writers have a tendency to
underplay the significance of political economy in world politics.
155
Ibid, 272
156
Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance
157
Bull cites a number of examples such as the German empire until 1871 - a group of states whose
sovereignty was theoretically limited - the British Commonwealth between 1919 and 1939 - a
group of states which denied sovereignty operated inter se - the Vatican until 1929 - a state without
territory- and transnational religious, secular religious, political, ethnic or class allegiances, piracy
or the firms such as the East India Company - which cut across conventional boundaries between
municipal and international affairs.
64
world politics as simply the relations between states.158 However, notwithstanding the
historical resilience of classical statist theory and the states system, Bulls historical
analysis was flexible enough to allow him to cautiously concede that such trends may have
a genuine qualitative effect if they were to intensify.

A time may come where the anomalies and irregularities are so glaring that an
alternative theory, better able to take account of these realities, will come to
dominate the field. If some of the trends towards a new mediaevalism that
have been reviewed here were to go much further, such a situation might come
about, but it would be going beyond the evidence to conclude that groups other
than the state have made such inroads on the sovereignty of states that the
states system is now giving way to this alternative.159
Regarding the second strength of Bulls critique, his emphasis on normative change is a
persistent feature in his appraisals of other scholars models of alternative world order.
They are frequently criticised on the grounds that they provide inadequate evidence to
indicate that the underlying ideas, values or epistemological foundations of the
international society were being seriously undermined. Bull repeatedly maintained that the
main obstacle for alternative paths to world order was a conceptual and normative one.

We have noted that one reason for the continuing vitality of the states system is
the tyranny of the concepts and normative principles associated with it:
regional integrationists in search of new supranational forms, disintegrationist
separatists in search of new forms of autonomy for minority communities,
revolutionary movements engaged in international violence - are alike
intellectually imprisoned by the theory of the states system, and are in most
cases as committed to it as the agents of sovereign states.160
Bull was also critical of any model for alternative world order that did not adequately
include some account of a new world society which might bind an emergent alternative
system together. According to Bull a world society required some form of consensus on a
common intellectual culture such as a shared language, philosophical or epistemological
outlook, a common literary or artistic tradition the presence of which served to facilitate
communication between members and; a common set of values such as religion or
moral code to facilitate a sense of common interest and obligations within the society.161
In addition, an alternative model would be judged on its capacity to expand the
cosmopolitan culture, especially through its ability to include non-Western elements to a
much greater degree.162 His defence of the international (anarchical) society model

158
Ibid, 274.
159
Ibid, 275 [my italics].
160
Ibid, 275.
161
Ibid, 316.
162
Ibid, 317. See also Bull and Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society
65
emphasised its remarkable capacity to satisfy and consolidate these requirements. The
international society is comprised of an elite diplomatic culture and it embodies a general
international political culture that determines attitudes towards both the states system and
the societies that comprise it.

To summarise, Bulls criteria for genuine qualitative transformation included: a new

common culture, set of values, and shared ideas and interests were to emerge and be
accommodated by an alternative global societal system. Even if these criteria were met, he
would argue that the transformation would not be absolute. According to Bulls
framework, the prevailing ideas and institutions of the states system will have a
momentum which should be expected to continue (much like religious or monarchical
states persist today despite Westphalia and the French or Russian revolutions).

CONCLUSION

To summarise the preceding discussion, I have reviewed a transitional period within the
field of International Relations which has witnessed a radical shift of attention towards
ethnic conflicts. The Cold War period was characterised by a prevailing attitude of
ambivalence towards the internal affairs of states generally and, for the purposes of this
analyses, ethnic conflict as one aspect of these affairs more specifically. Those
International Relations scholars which defied this tendency typically occupied the margins
of the discipline or considered themselves to be outside of it altogether.

The end of the Cold War was significant because it corresponded with a radical shift in
perspective which elevated ethnic conflicts as significant features of the international
landscape. The international community came to see ethnic conflict as a new challenge or
threat to international order and its spokespeople made appeals for explanatory theory
which could interpret this sudden resurgence of ancient hatreds throughout the world.
Conventional International Relations theorists responded to this challenge, but the
acknowledgment that intra-ethnic conflicts had become significant concerns for
International Relations did not correspond in any meaningful way to a commensurate shift
in theoretical orientation. Interdisciplinary critics argued that International Relations
theory relied too heavily on Cold War historiography, arguing that ethnic conflicts have
deep historical roots linked especially to processes of nation building and European
colonialism. But these arguments, in relying heavily upon empirical arguments, have
failed to adequately account for the dramatic increase in salience of ethnic conflict in the

66
aftermath of the Cold War. Through a review of the prevalent discursive imagery
circumscribing ethnic conflicts in contemporary world politics, I have attempted to show
how they have become profoundly important symbol of collapse and anarchy in the post
Cold War period.

That the significant change has been predominantly ideational or symbolic suggests that
ethnicity itself has become a more significant concept in International Relations thinking.
As such it appears to have, at least surreptitiously, played a constitutive role in reshaping
the concepts and practices of contemporary world politics. The critical focus of the
approach developed in this thesis is to assess the appropriateness of prevailing concepts
and practices of political agency, structure, legitimacy, power and war for accommodating
ethnic groups in world politics. This chapter has sought to show how the prevailing state-
centric and modernist assumptions of conventional International Relations theory have
served as profound theoretical obstructions for pursuing such an analysis. On the other
hand, the classical approach of the English School suggests the possibilities for critical
potential within the so-called conventional theories of International Relations.

67
68