AFTER POSTPOSITIVISM?

THE PROMISES OF CRITICAL

REALISM1

INTRODUCTION:
TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT

For at least a decade now the positivist orthodoxy has been under a sustained challenge
from what are variously labelled reflectivist or postpositivist theories. For many post-
positivists, positivism is not only epistemologically and ontologically flawed; it is also
co-responsible for many of the social ills and political catastrophes of the modern world.
Yet, for many positivists the post-positivist assault amounts to advocating subjectivism,
irresponsible relativism and lack of standards, which work against conducting proper
research and the effort to make the human conditions better. We think that, at least in
many cases, both suspicions carry some weight.

The typical solution in this kind of situation is to try to find a compromise position, which
would enable a constructive synthesis of the main points of both positions. Indeed, it
seems that in IR “constructivism”, in various guises, is rapidly emerging as a kind of a
new middle ground (Adler, 1997). We find Wæver’s (1992:186; 1996:165-169; 1997:18-
23) schemes, summarised (and slightly modified) in Figure 1, particularly helpful in
understanding the current situation and mainstream self-understanding in IR. The triangle
in the middle is a variation of the (already anachronistic) “inter-paradigm debate”.

1
Critical realism is a position within the philosophy of science and social science, it has no relationship to
political realism. In fact we will argue that political realism rests upon an implicit philosophical anti-
realism.

1
Figure 1: IR debates in the 1980’s and 1990’s

Positivism

Political realism
Construc-
tivism
Neo-neo
debate

Liberalism Socialism Deconstructionism

(Leftist radicalism)

In the 1980’s the main movements seemed to be towards a synthesis of neo-liberalism

and neo-realism (the neo-neo debate spot in the Figure 1) and the fading away of
Marxism as the third position. The main challenge that emerged in the 1980’s, however,
was that of the epistemological radicals (post-positivists of all sorts). If the new radicals
were radical enough (like Ashley & Walker, 1990a; b), they exceeded, according to
Wæver, the “boundary of negativity” (dotted line on the epistemological axis); and if the
neo-neo scholars were too positivist (like the work of mathematical model builders or the
Correlates of War project), they exceeded the “boundary of boredom” (the other dotted
line on the epistemological axis). The happy face that has seemingly avoided all these
pitfalls and has found, by the late 1990’s, a position in the middle of everything, is
constructivism (cf. Adler, 1997).

As a story, illustrated by a nice picture, this may augur well for constructivism, and other
middle ground positions, particularly if we take for granted the widespread de facto
aversion against following strictly positivist, scientific methods (“the boundary of
boredom”) and against being too “radical” either politically or epistemologically (“the
boundary of negativity”) (Sørensen, 1998). The problem is that, as it stands, this very
loose category of the “middle ground” does not really resolve any of the underlying

2
problems. The dilemma is that where the “middle ground” is deemed to be is a function
of where one draws the boundaries. In this respect, the attractiveness of the middle
ground for IR scholars is a direct corollary of a particular understanding of the boundaries
- an understanding we intend to challenge.

With the boundaries as currently conceptualised the middle ground does indeed appear
attractive. Although prima facie an appealing position, Max Weber provides a damning
indictment of this kind of “middle groundism”. Weber held that we should “struggle
relentlessly against the self-deception which asserts that through the synthesis of several
party points of view […] practical norms of scientific validity can be arrived at” (Weber,
1904:58). Weber was here opposing the naïve idea that simply because positions differ
from one another, a “mid-point” synthesis that steers a line among them is somehow
more objective and less partisan. This is the position we fear that the current attempt to
occupy the “middle ground” in IR is in danger of articulating. A synthesis based on two
problematic metaphysical systems produces only a synthesis of two problematic
metaphysical positions - not an improved metaphysical position.

The problem is how to move forward? How do we move beyond a sterile and debilitating
debate where one side chastises the other for its naïve belief in a world “out there”, while
the other berates its mirror image for making the world “all in here” and all the while a
third position claims legitimacy in terms of its middle-groundedness. Given that the
debate, as currently framed, tends to be primarily epistemological perhaps a more
ontological focus could facilitate a move forward. This is not to say that ontological
considerations do not play a role in current understandings, but we argue that where they
have played a role these ontological issues have been based on epistemological
considerations. In this respect we want to reverse a long-standing western philosophical
dogma; that of the privileging of epistemological questions over ontological ones. Indeed,
we think that when viewed from an ontological perspective current understandings of IR
take on an altogether different hue.

Any attempt to locate oneself in the centre of current epistemological debates without a
consideration of the ontological problematic risks duplicating the worst of both extremes.
Moreover, it is not simply a scientific ontology we mean here, as in theoretical
disagreements over whether states are the most important actors, for example. What we

3
mean by ontology is a philosophical ontology; an inquiry into which is logically prior to
the development of any scientific or social ontology (Bunge, 1996).

It is here that we think that the philosophy known as critical realism can be of benefit to
IR scholars (for some of the key texts, see Archer et.al., 1998). We suggest that critical
realism can incorporate many of the recent epistemological developments and at the same
time move the debate forward due to its focus on ontological matters. Critical realism
highlights the conditions of possibility for a resolution of many of the theoretical,
methodological and praxiological cul-de-sacs International Relations Theory currently
finds itself in. From a critical realist perspective and contrary to the dominant
understandings within IR theory, the boundaries of negativity and boredom are not
diametrically opposed, but share much in common.

The key to any move forward is not simply to take the middle ground, but to engage with,
and challenge, the extremities that constitute the conditions of possibility for a certain
understanding of the middle ground. This can only be achieved through an examination
of the boundaries of boredom and negativity, or better, the theory “problem-field” within
which they are constituted. Here lies one of the benefits of metatheoretical inquiry to IR.
In this piece we wish to engage in just such a metatheoretical investigation in the hope of
throwing some light on some of the important contemporary problems facing IR scholars.

First, we locate a common structure to both the boundary of boredom and the boundary
of negativity. In this section we aim to show how both are embedded upon a discourse of
philosophical anti-realism. Second, we attempt to show, through the philosophies of
David Hume and Immanuel Kant, how this anti-realism constitutes what we call the
“problem-field” of IR. A “problem-field” that, we argue, serves to construct a particular
understanding of IR theory with a very particular and restricted understanding of its own
possibilities. Third, we develop a very brief account of our proposed alternative, critical
realism. And fourth, we try to show the difference that critical realism might make to a
more ontologically attuned IR. In this section we argue against the incommensurability
thesis and in favour of epistemological pluralism and opportunism. We try to revive
causal theorising by redefining causality in realist terms and by arguing that both
meaningful reasons and social structures are causally efficacious. Drawing on this
analysis we discuss the agent-structure problem and suggest how the social world can be

4
decomposed in causal and ontological elements. We also challenge what we consider to
be the misleading manner in which IR theory currently understands the levels of analysis
problem. Finally, we indicate how critical realism has also normative implications for the
study of IR.

REALISM AND ANTI-REALISM

Given the widespread acceptance of the view that positivism and postpositivism stand as
binary opposites the claim that they share much in common will likely strike many IR
scholars as simply perverse. Within the philosophy of science and social science,
however, such a claim would not appear at all controversial. Larry Laudan, for example,
has explored the common structure of assumptions they share (Laudan, 1996). Foucault
openly admitted his empiricism and Peter Dews has even gone as far as to label him a
positivist (Foucault, 1988:106; Dews, 1987:184).2 One could quite easily point to many
of these shared assumptions; the fascination with language, for example, which is hardly
in doubt as far as postmodernism is concerned, but the fact that the more radical of the
logical positivists attempted to reduce philosophy, and up to extent also science, to the
systematic analysis of language, seen as logical statements, seems to have been lost on IR
scholars (Feyerabend, 1995. See also Carnap, 1972).

The attack on the Cartesian subject, again so energetically pursued by postmodern

writers, was carried out in an equally vigorous manner by positivists in their attempt to
purge the residues of subjectivity from their epistemology (Copjec 1994; Kolakowski
1969). Even in the relationship between facts and values one can find evidence of a
common structure, with many of those beyond the boundary of negativity echoing the
positivist injunction that one can never move from facts to values; that value positions are
simply divorced from factual considerations (Campbell, 1999). One could, as indeed
Laudan and others have done, proliferate examples such as these, but we think there is a

2
We think it important here not to lapse into a facile rejection of positivism where the function of the term
is simply to label of body of work one disagrees with. Although we fundamentally disagree with positivism
we view it as an important, although flawed, body of thought within philosophy.

5
much more fundamental issue that unites these seemingly opposed positions, that of their
anti-realism; whether explicit or implicit.

A common postpositivist critique of mainstream IR (for this read positivist) is that of the
supposed naïve belief in a “world out there” (George, 1994:11, 21). Indeed, one could be
forgiven for thinking that for some postpositivists, Jim George for example, positivism is
nothing other than a belief in a “world out there” (George, 1994). The paradox of
George’s, position is that he sees only too clearly that positivism, as a philosophical
position, is anti-realist. There is, as George puts it, “no logical basis, even in positivism’s
own terms, for the proposition that knowledge of reality is directly derived from an
independent world “out there”“ (George, 1994:53).3 Martin Hollis has likewise claimed
that empiricist theories of knowledge (upon which positivism is based) are “anti-realist at
bottom” (Hollis, 1996:303-4). George notes that this issue has never been raised in a
serious way anywhere in IR (George, 1994:53). We raise it now, but draw different
conclusions than those of George. Because having noted the implicit anti-realism of
positivism it is paradoxical that George adopts an anti-realist position himself.

According to George (who might considered by some to be beyond the boundary of

negativity) the objects and subjects of reality “are sociolinguistically constructed”
(George, 1994:156). Compare just how close this position comes to that of Kenneth
Waltz, considered by many postpositivst writers to be beyond the boundary of boredom.
For Waltz, “what we think of as reality is itself an elaborate conception constructed and
reconstructed through the ages. Reality emerges from our selection and organisation of
materials that are available in infinite quantity” (Waltz, 1979:5).

From an ontologically orientated perspective both the positivists and the postpositivists
share a common metaphysical structure. For positivists the real is defined in terms of the
experienced (esse est percipi) and for many postpositivists in terms of language/discourse
(esse est dictum esse). What can be considered real always bears the mark, or insignia, of
some human attribute; in effect, an anthropocentric philosophy (Bhaskar, 1989:147). We
argue that this anthropocentrism is unintelligible, tying, as it does, existence to its being
experienced or being spoken. Yet “to be” means more than “to be experienced” or “to be
spoken”. A world prior to the emergence of humanity is a condition of possibility for that
3
The issue of a common anti-realism has also been noted by Alexander Wendt. See Wendt, 1999.

6
emergence. Even the term construction, employed by both George and Waltz, implies a
set of materials, whether social or natural, out of which this so called reality, is
constructed and which have to exist prior to the construction.

But does this latent anti-realism make any difference? After all, even though many
(though not all) postpositivists, claim that “nothing exists outside of discourse”
(Campbell, 1998:24-25), they continue to refer to it (Wight, 1999). And positivists,
despite dismissing talk of an independently existing reality as metaphysical, still
construct theories that treat non-observable theoretical entities “as if” they existed. We
think, however, that an explicit commitment to ontological realism has real consequences.

On the boundary of negativity, in terms of epistemology, the denial of objects existing

independently of the discourses which construct them as objects seems unable to
differentiate between competing truth claims (Norris, 1996). If discourses construct the
objects to which the discourses refer, then the discourse itself can never be wrong about
the existence of its objects, in any meaningful or methodologically interesting way. Nor
can an alternative discourse possibly critique another discourse since the objects of a
discourse exist if the discourse says they exist. Ontologically, if discourses do construct
their own objects, then what constructed the discourses themselves? There is, of course, a
long and venerable philosophical tradition of overt idealism that attempts to answer just
this question. For example, for Berkeley it was God, for Hegel Geist. We are unconvinced
by these arguments, but if IR scholars want to adopt idealist positions then let us at least
have the arguments in the open where they might be assessed. Methodologically, and
despite the rhetoric of the “new”, we see little change in the manner of research practices
beyond the boundary of negativity. Arguments are still advanced and assessed, evidence
offered, and independently existing objects, whether created in the discourse or not, are
still referred to.

Those beyond the boundary of boredom fare little better. Epistemology and ontology
become tied together (what Bhaskar calls the epistemic fallacy); what is known is what
can be experienced and/or observed and what “is” is what can be known. Non-observable
theoretical entities are treated instrumentally. They are “mere fictions”, useful perhaps but
in no sense can they be considered real. Note also that this empiricist metaphysics can
never achieve the flight from subjectivity and hence the objectivity it so desires. The

7
tying of existence to experience implies a subject capable of experiencing. There can be
no experience without someone to experience. The world “out there” is inextricably tied
to the world “in here”. Methodologically, the useful little fictions become not just useful
but indispensable and even the arch-Dadist Paul Feyerabend declared realism far superior
to instrumentalism (Feyerabend, 1985).

There are two further reasons why a more explicit acceptance of realism is desirable.
First, as noted above, and despite denials to the contrary, the commitment to realism is a
condition of possibility for science and one that all parties adhere to; for positivists,
sense-experience is real; for post-positivists, discourses or intersubjectivity is real. Hence
the question becomes, not whether one should be a realist, but of what kind? But realism
comes in many forms and the depth-realism advocated by critical realism plays a crucial
role in defending the very idea of inquiry itself - in effect science. For beyond the
boundary of negativity, if objects are constructed in discourses then there is simply
nothing more to discover. Everything that is an object of discourse would be said to exist,
that which is not an object of discourse would not exist. Science, at least as currently
practised, would come to an end. A recent example of this comes from Sherry Turkle,
who argues that in our postmodern world “the search for depth and mechanism is futile,
that it is more realistic to explore the world of shifting surfaces than to embark on a
search for origins and structure…the future does not lie in this ‘really, really’ question. It
lies in taking things at interface value” (Turkle, 1999).

Beyond the boundary of boredom, on the other hand, if it works on the presumption of
“as if” they existed, then why continue inquiry into whether or not they really exist and
have whatever form? There is simply no need to go beyond the appearances and inquire
into the nature of things. Science would come to an end when we could “save the
appearances”. David Hume provides a less contemporary example, but one which
graphically illuminates the affinities between those beyond both boundaries:

tis still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that pretends to
discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected
as presumptuous and chimerical…When we see that we have arrived at the utmost
extent of human reason, we sit down contented (Hume, 1967:88-89).

8
The depth realism we advocate on the other hand challenges both of these positions. We
argue that part of the rationale for science is the attempt to know whether or not things
are really as described, and what it is that makes them appear as such. Science on this
account never comes to an end. No account is ever immune from challenge. Discourses
can be, and often are wrong about their objects, and the assumption of “as if” they exist is
at best a short term solution. The world is real and science is dependent upon the making
of existential hypotheses. This is not, however, to advocate a blind allegiance to science,
for as Bhaskar puts it, science is not:

[…] a supreme or overriding value, but only one among others to be balanced (in a
balance that cannot be wholly judged by science) in ergonic, emancipatory and
eudaimonistic activity. Nor do I think the objects of science exhaust reality. On the
contrary, they afford only particular angle or slant of reality, picked out precisely for
its explanatory scope and power (Bhaskar, 1993:15).

In this manner, scientific outputs, understood simply as knowledge that attempts to

explain, still require social evaluation. 4 We feel the above arguments provide compelling
arguments for taking critical realism seriously. But before turning to outline some of the
differences critical realism might make to IR we want to provide a sketch of how it is that
IR, in common with other social sciences, finds itself in the two boundaries and middle
ground position and the manner in which this latent anti-realism helps construct such an
understanding.5 Our main target here will be anti-realism and deep scepticism that plays a
major role in the construction of both the boundaries of boredom and negativity.

HUME, KANT AND THE LOSS OF THE WORLD

We will try to show in this section that the post-positivist reaction to positivism is
embedded within same background discourse and is derived from a long philosophical
tradition of anti-realism/scepticism. We do not mean to suggest that we identify
philosophical irrealism as the single master-source of all contemporary problems in IR
theory. But we do suggest that a more explicit and attentive explication of the issue of
realism is a necessary condition in order for IR to move beyond the two boundaries given
that anti-realism is fundamental to both.
4
Examples of this process are the public debates over genetically modified food and human cloning.
5
On this issue see Wight, 1998.

9
Every problem, whether practical-political or theoretical, has a set of in-built
presuppositions. Put together – to the extent that there is some consistency – these
presuppositions form what Bhaskar calls a theory/problem solution field (henceforth a
“problem-field”). Our argument is that those beyond the boundaries of boredom and
negativity share the same “problem-field” despite the surface rhetoric that separates
them.6

Leaving aside the crucially important socio-economic and political context of the
emergence of this “problem-field” (but see Toulmin, 1990:13-22) it emanates from a
number of metaphysical presuppositions. Although many philosophers – such as
Descartes, Hobbes and Locke – were quite explicit about the atomism, rationalism,
dualisms and empiricism on which they were grounding their political theories, it was the
much more secular and anti-theological 18th century philosopher David Hume who most
clearly articulated and developed the implications of this modern metaphysics7.

Hume’s importance to the “problem-field” we identify is multifaceted, but given the

limitations of space we will focus on his influential account of causation, which is
accepted by those beyond both boundaries, and which, crucially, is derived from his
thoroughgoing scepticism and anti-realism. Hume was radically sceptical about the
persistence and existence of reality outside the human mind and perceptions. For Hume,
there are only perceptions based upon Impressions, and Ideas, which, if they are justified
can only be legitimated on the basis of experience. That is, he claimed that there is
nothing outside an individual’s perceptions/experience. In common with most forms of
scepticism Hume was deriving ontological arguments from epistemological ones. Since
we could never know there was an external reality, the only reality we could legitimately
refer to what that which could be experienced. Hume’s scepticism constituted the ground
upon which empiricist theories of knowledge are based.

6
By a "theory/problem solution field we mean the set of unchallenged theoretical assumptions and the
inevitable solutions such assumptions generate” (Bhaskar, 1994:10). The following argument will be
outlined in more detail in (forthcoming).
7
Our reading of Hume and Kant and their importance is in many ways informed by Bhaskar, 1986:224-
308.

10
Since experience could not be divorced from a subject which experiences. Hume
concluded that the “science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences”
(Hume, 1967/1739:88). And the basis of this science of man can only be that of
experience and observation (Hume, 1967/1739:88).

As with most sceptics, and despite his denial of reality, Hume, in practice, adhered to a
form of empirical realism. But in limiting what can be meaningfully said of the world to
what could be experienced, Hume face a difficult problem vis-à-vis causation. Hume
noted that a common sense understanding of causality involves the notion of force
through which the cause somehow produces the effect; in essence a necessary connection.
But, and as a result of his scepticism, Hume argued that since no such force or necessary
connection can be empirically verified (experienced), such a common sense
understanding is in error. For Hume, causation is just one of the three “bonds that unite
our thoughts together” (Hume 1975/1777:50). All we ever observe, he argued, is the
constant conjunction of events. This account of causation has been hugely influential and
even among those scholars who reject causal talk in terms of the social world, the account
of Causation being rejected is generally that of Hume (e.g., see Hollis and Smith, 1994).

But Hume’s scepticism also played a role in the formation of his political thinking. His
radical scepticism implied the view that nothing can ever change and that although things
were co-joined (in the human mind) they were never really connected. 8 It is thereby no
surprise that in his study on the balance of power, Hume concludes:

In short the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so much on

common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it could altogether have
escaped antiquity, where we find, in other particulars, so many marks of deep
penetration and discernment (Hume, 1950/1825:107).

Although Hume presupposed the modern political theoretical problem of order (see
Hirschman, 1977), he taught that there has always been a balance of power politics. This
belief is driven by his metaphysical conviction that there have been no real changes and
that there can be none. Since “when we say that one object is connected with another, we
mean only that they have acquired a connexion in our thought” (Hume 1975/1777:76) the
balance of power is itself a construct of the mind. Little wonder that Hume thought that it
has always existed and always will, at least insofar as there are minds. It is also telling
8
Again, this argument was also advanced by Hobbes (Hobbes, 1909:19-21.)

11
how Hume argues that the balance of power has no practical effect. In Hume’s view
statesmen are driven by their passions, not by rational considerations or the external
world (which of course he denies); again a condition that does not change and one at least
consistent with his radical scepticism. In terms of morality Hume’s scepticism served to
ground a form of self-interest far more radical than that of Hobbes. Consistent with his
scepticism Hume famously declared “that it is not contrary to reason to prefer the
destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” (quoted in Bhaskar,
1994:192). However, although Hume was a seminal influence in the construction of the
“problem-field” of IR it was Kant who finally put all the pieces together and gave the
familiar shape IR confronts today.

Awoken from his “dogmatic slumbers” by Hume’s scepticism, Kant systematically

collected the pieces of the “problem-field” together. Kant was concerned to refute
Hume’s scepticism of an external reality and in a widely influential solution posited two
worlds – that of phenomena/noumena. At the level of phenomena – the world we
experience – Kant’s world is ultimately Humean. But this phenomenal world we inhabit
was not the real world for Kant. As a transcendental idealist, Kant also introduced the
noumenal world - the site of reason and morality. Yes there was a real world but we could
know nothing of it. The only world we could meaningfully speak of was that which we
could know; the phenomenal world. If there is indubitable scientific knowledge of, and an
objective order to, this phenomenal world, argued Kant, then it emanates from the
universal categories of understanding - not the nature of the world itself. Time, space,
form, content, meaning and hence causation, in effect the world we confront, were all
categories of the mind. Again, as with Hume, the practical effect of giving priority to the
epistemological question of what we can know over the ontological question of what
there is to know is an impoverished ontology. Kant’s answer to Hume’s scepticism was
achieved through the cutting of his ontological cloth to fit his epistemological givens.

Kant’s world is dualistic; there is no way that noumena (moral reasons) could have any
causal impact on phenomena (determinist causal processes of the world). For Kant,
freedom was defined as “spontaneity” and in no way could an act be considered free if it
was in any way caused. Hence, the noumenal world was cut off from the determinist
world of causal phenomena. Science could hope to understand the phenomenal world
where all events and processes can, in principle, be subsumed under a causal order, but

12
the noumenal world - the site of reason - could not be explained causally. As Kant himself
puts it, “we are dealing with two kinds of causality conceivable by us; causality according
to nature or that which arises from freedom” (Kant, 1934:253-268). And there is simply
no way to link these two worlds, because since freedom is defined “as a state of
spontaneity…Such causality will not, therefore, itself stand under another cause
determining it in time, as required by the law of nature” (Kant, 1934:253-268). Equally,
nor can reason bring about any change in the causal order of things since “no action
begins in this active being itself” (Kant, 1934:257).

International relations develops under the shadow of this “problem-field” and the
following is meant to be only suggestive of this development (see Patomäki,
forthcoming). For Hegel, Kant’s solution represented an act of cowardice. It was
cowardice because, at the end of the day, it had to turn to other-worldly solutions in its
search for morality and rationality. 9 Hegel wanted to show that the existing world is
already rational by uniting Kant’s two worlds into one through Geist; itself manifested
through the state - the Divine Idea on Earth.

It was in this intellectual context that the term Realpolitik was coined in Germany after
the unsuccessful revolutionary year of 1848. Generally, ideas of Realpolitik were
developed by the disillusioned liberals who drew the conclusion that liberal thinkers
should denounce their ambitious programmes of change (Palonen, 1987:99-102).
Realpolitik can be understood as a reaction to Kant’s idealist noumena and the
“rationalist” Enlightenment thinking. After all, what use was a world in which we could
do nothing and know nothing of? Far better is it not, to deal only with the phenomenal
world which we inhabit.

The other key figure in the development of this “problem-field” is Max Weber (about the
centrality of Weber to the 20th century IR, see for instance Smith, 1986). Weber was a
synthetic thinker who combined ideas from Hume, Kant, Hegel, romantic and
hermeneutical thinkers (themselves drawing on Kant) such as Schleiermacher, Realpolitik
pessimistists such as Nietzsche, as well as turn-of-the-century positivists. In domestic
politics, Weber was a liberal, a sceptical and sometimes critical believer in modernisation
9
To rescue his moral convictions, Kant resorted to a speculative theory of possible historical development,
and ultimately, to his faith in Providence. Although Kant’s theory of possible history is not without merits,
it does not resolve the ontological problem. See Kant (1983/1783, and 1983/1784).

13
(and rationalisation and secularisation) as progress. Sometimes he was simply fatalistic
and in terms of international relations he articulated a vision that denied the possibility of
progress and emancipation. Weber thought that outside of modern nations, there are no
shared values only the quasi-Nietschean struggle of wills-to-power of different
charismatic national leaders.

Hans Morgenthau brought this German Realpolitik discourse to the US. Here in his most
Nietzschean moment, contrasting idealisations of “scientific man” to the brute “realities
of power politics”, and appealing to Hume and to Kant’s problematic understanding of
the relationship between phenomena and noumena:

Aristotle anticipated this modern problem, as so many others, when he remarked in

the Nicomachean Ethics: ‘Intellect itself, however, moves nothing.’ When rationalism
was reaping its philosophic triumph, Hume could say: ‘Reason is, and ought only to
be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve
and obey them’ (Morgenthau, 1946:154).

The Morgenthau of Scientific Man vs. Power Politics was extremely sceptical about
finding any scientific knowledge about the world, because, ultimately, the world is
romantically tragic and Nietzschean. Interestingly, Nietzsche also relied upon the
Humean account of the phenomenal world; he believed that Hume’s (“English petit
bourgeois”) scepticism could be rewritten in terms of the metaphysical voluntarism of
“will-to-power”. Some postmodernists are very close to repeating this pattern (on the
close links between the Humean notion of causality, scepticism, Nietzsche and many
forms of deconstruction, see Culler, 1983:86-87). And, finally, we have the Unhappy
Consciousness of the Christian “realists” such as Niebuhr, and early Butterfield and
Wight, who saw the origin of world historical tragedies to lie in the original sin of
humankind, and thought that the salvation must be other-wordly, too. Many of these
sceptical and anti-Enlightenment IR thinkers took for granted the Kantian dualism
between the phenomenal world of Humean causality and the noumenal world of reason
and meanings. On the other hand, Humean and Nietzschean tenets notwithstanding, the
founding role of anti-realism and scepticism was gradually forgotten particularly in the
scientistic USAmerican discourse attempting to deal with the world “as it is”.

14
Note that all the classical IR debates are within this same “problem-field”. This holds
obviously true for idealism vs. realism, but also for the “great” methodological debate of
the 1960’s, which was a dispute between the scientists and the advocates of a more
hermeneutically orientated IR. And the so-called “Third debate” between positivism and
post-positivism is within the same “problem-field”, with many Nietzschean
deconstructionists and hermeneuticists relying upon the Kantian dichotomy between
reasons and causal phenomena. What typically goes unnoticed is the role played by
scepticism and anti-realism in structuring these debates.

And it is here that the importance of Hume, Kant and the implicit anti-realism of
empiricist theories of knowledge cannot be overstated. Kant, who articulated the IR
“problem-field”, relied upon a Humean ontology. The ontology of Kant’s phenomenal
world is essentially that of Hume. The existence of another world (Kant’s noumenal
world) opens up the possibility of transcending Hume, but Kant closes off this possibility
by divorcing the world of reason from that of causation. In effect, Kant forces a sharp
separation between the material and ideational. And what has been ripped apart in this
manner is very difficult, if not impossible, to reunite. Scholars operating in the shadow of
this “problem-field” are now faced with two alternatives; either accept the phenomenal
world as it is and with it Hume’s atomistic and deterministic individualism, or, divorce
the world of reason from that of physical causation and perhaps even causation itself.
Explanation vs Understanding, Rationalism vs Reflectivism, Positivism vs Postpositivism
are all embedded within the same “problem-field”.

We argue that a rethinking of this “problem-field” requires a substantially different

understanding of the ontological problematic, one that reverses the long standing
prioritising of epistemological matters over ontological ones. Critical realism, we argue,
is suggestive of potential solutions to these problems, because of its radical break with
both Humean scepticism and Kantian transcendental idealism. Critical realism provides
an alternative “problem-field” which embeds the social within the material without
reducing one to the other.

CRITICAL REALISM

15
Every theory of knowledge must also logically presuppose a theory of what the world is
like (ontology), for knowledge (epistemology) to be possible. Or as Bhaskar, inverting a
Hegelian aphorism, puts it, “all philosophies, cognitive discourses and practical activities
presuppose a realism - in the sense of some ontology or general account of the world - of
one kind or another” (Bhaskar, 1989:2). The question is not of whether to be a realist, but
of what kind of realist to be. We have attempted to show how both the boundaries of
negativity and boredom share a common “problem-field”, which is structured by various
forms of anti-realism/scepticism. We have also argued that those beyond the boundary of
boredom tend to be empirical realists and those beyond the boundary of negativity tend
towards linguistic realism. We want to now situate a different “problem-field”: One that
takes the possibility of a deeper realism to be a condition of possibility for both empirical
and linguistic realism. The form of realism we advocate can be called critical realism (for
essential readings, see Archer et.al., 1998).

There are two distinct ways in which critical realism differs from empirical and linguistic
realism. First, according to critical realism the world is composed not only of events,
states of affairs, experiences, impressions and discourses, but also of underlying
structures, powers and tendencies that exist, whether or not detected or known through
experience and/or discourse. For critical realists this underlying reality provides the
conditions of possibility for actual events, and perceived and/or experienced phenomena.
According to critical realists, empirical and linguistic realists collapse what are, in effect,
different levels of reality into one (Bhaskar, 1975:56). For both the underlying reality that
makes experience possible, and the course of events that is not experienced/spoken, is
reduced to what can be experienced or become an object of discourse.

Second, for critical realism the different levels may be out of phase with each other. What
we mean by this is that although the underlying level may posses certain powers and
tendencies these are not always manifest in experience, or even for that matter realised. A
nuclear arsenal has the power to bring about vast destruction and this power exists
irrespective of being actualised. Moreover, this power is itself based on more than that
which we directly experience. The conception we are proposing is that of a world
composed, in part, of complex things (including systems and complexly structured
situations) which, in virtue of their structures, possess certain powers, potentials and
capacities to act in certain ways even if those capacities are not always realised. The

16
world on this view consists of more than the actual course of events and experiences
and/or discourses about them.

Science, on this view, is not a deductive process that attempts to seek out constant event
conjunctions, but aims at identifying and illuminating the structures, powers and
tendencies that structure the course of events. A significant part of what constitutes
science is the attempt to identify the relatively enduring structures, powers and
tendencies, and to understand their characteristic ways of acting. Explanation entails
providing an account of those structures, powers and tendencies that have contributed to,
or facilitated some already identified phenomenon of interest. It is important to note that
the mode of inference implied by critical realism is neither deduction nor induction, but
retroduction. This consists in the movement, on the basis of analogy and metaphor
amongst other things, from a conception of some phenomenon of interest to the
development of a model of some totally different type of thing, structure or condition
that, at least in part, is responsible for the given phenomenon.

From this perspective there can be no a priori assumption that the scientific endeavour
could ever come to an end. For as one phenomenon is explained by a deeper level, that
deeper level itself becomes a new phenomenon that requires explanation. Equally, as
deeper layers are revealed and understood, the knowledge we gain of them may
necessitate that we revise our understandings of the original phenomenon. Science is seen
to proceed through a constant spiral of discovery and understanding, further discovery
and revised, and hopefully more adequate, understanding. Note also, that on this view
there can be no such thing as “the scientific method”. Such an ontologically orientated
perspective implies, given the commitment to a structured and differentiated reality, that
each science will require its own methods of inquiry. But equally, each science, insofar as
it attempts to explain, will still be a science.

Critical realism, then, differs from empirical and linguistic realism in viewing the world
as, in part, composed of objects, including causal laws which are structured and, to adopt
Bhaskar’s term, are “intransitive” to those that would wish to come to know them. This
intransitive dimension to the world is irreducible to events and their patterns and it is
these of structures, powers and tendencies that are designated in causal laws, not Humean
constant conjunctions.

17
This intransitive dimension to science however, is, of course, only one side of the
equation. As is already implied in the rejection of the idea that this deeper level of reality
is immediately given in experience, another dimension to science is necessary in order to
make sense of knowledge production. Rejecting, for the sake of intelligibility, that
knowledge of these underlying structures emerges ex nihilo, it would seem that it must
come about through a transformation of pre-existing knowledge; a set of antecedent
materials, what Bhaskar calls transitive objects - theories, paradigms, models, facts,
speculations, linguistic conventions, beliefs, hunches, hypotheses, guesses, symbolic
gestures, and so on. Knowledge, then, is a social product, actively produced by means of
antecedent social products - albeit on the basis of a continual engagement, or interaction,
with its (intransitive) object. That is, widely different theories can interpret the same,
unchanging world in radically different ways. However, because it is knowledge of an
independently existing reality then knowledge is not totally arbitrary and some claims
about the nature of this reality may provide better accounts than others.

In summary, the critical realist “problem-field” we advocate can be said to be committed

to ontological realism (that there is a reality, which is differentiated, structured and
layered, and independent of mind), epistemological relativism (that all beliefs are socially
produced and hence potentially fallible), and judgmental rationalism (that despite
epistemological relativism, it is still possible, in principle, to provide justifiable grounds
for preferring one theory over another).

But can this new “problem-field” be applied to the study of the social world? In the social
world, are things not radically different? For the specific material structure of the social
world – its institutions, social relations and practices – are dependent upon social
meanings in numerous ways. Thus, as part of the object, the ideas, beliefs, concepts and
knowledge held by people in societies must be understood. In studying social objects,
such as war, nationality and gender we must interpret what these and other relevant social
objects mean for the subjects whose practices constitute these objects. In a sense the
study of the social world requires that the subject becomes part of its object. This
necessitates an essential critical component to all properly conceived social sciences. For
any given social object will necessarily be constituted by, inter alia, a set of practices
(themselves concept dependent) and a number of ideas about those practices. Insofar as

18
some of the ideas and beliefs circulating within social groups about a given set of
practices may be incorrect, a social scientist that identifies these incorrect beliefs must
necessarily be critical of them. And if this sociological account contradicts the
participants understanding of the situation it must necessarily be critical of these
understandings.

This constitutes a radical difference between the study of the social world and the natural
world, but it does not, in our opinion violate the intransitive nature of social phenomena
in relation to those minds or persons who would wish to come to know it. The social
world certainly depends upon the concepts that the agents acting in it possess, but it
cannot be the case that any given social phenomenon requires the existence of a social
scientist to conceptualise it before it can come into being. Equally, the depth ontology
suggested by critical realism also foregrounds a stark contrast to positivist and
postpositivist ontologies deeply embedded with the “problem-field” of IR. On a critical
realist reading, the social world cannot be reduced to either its experiential moment or its
intersubjective elements. That the social world consists of more than can experienced is
self evident from the importance of ideas, beliefs, concepts and knowledge to the social
world.

Some of those beyond the boundaries of boredom, behaviouralists for example, attempt
to deny the validity of this notion of depth to the social world by taking only observable
behaviours as worthy of inquiry and it should be obvious how impoverished this ontology
is. But as one would expect from approaches deriving from a common “problem-field”,
many of those beyond the boundary of negativity and even some attempting to occupy
the middle-ground tend to define society solely in terms of intersubjectivity or practices
(Doty, 1997). Alexander Wendt, for example, seems to view the difference between the
individual and society as that between the subjective and the intersubjective, hence his
claim that the social world is “ideas all the way down” (Wendt, 1992). 10 Society, for
Wendt, is intersubjectivity. But what is lost with this definition?

To critical realism the intersubjective merely represents one important and necessary part
of the social. Yet important though intersubjective meanings and relations are they do not
10
Although it should be noted that Wendt has recently added a question mark to this assertion (Wendt,
1999). However, according to critical realism the social world can no more be ideas all the way down than
it can be materiality all the way down.

19
exhaust the social world. According to Bhaskar (1979:152-205) intersubjective relations
typically represent only the immediate appearance of the social relations that constitute
society, even if they are also necessary for the (re)production of all social relations. Thus
for Bhaskar, the surface appearance of intersubjectivity, although possessing causal
powers, is typically distinct from its underlying – and potentially hidden, reified or
mystified – essential relations.

PUTTING CRITICAL REALISM TO WORK IN IR

The Incommensurability-thesis

Critical realism shares with postpositivist approaches a commitment to methodological

and epistemological pluralism. Yet the incommensurability thesis threatens any nascent
multi-paradigmatic approach.11 If incommensurability entails that meaningful
communication across paradigms is, in principle, impossible, then any form of multi-
paradigmatic inquiry would seem to be futile. In effect, although incommensurability
seems to provide the rationale to keep the conversation going, no “real” conversation
takes place. Within International Relations the argument for incommensurability is
generally attributed to Thomas Kuhn. (Kuhn, 1970a) Although superficially a liberating
position, Kuhn’s thesis quickly legitimates a stagnant conservatism (Guzzini, 1993:446;
Wight, 1996). For Kuhn, normal science represents that phase when problems are solved,
but crucially, it also describes a situation in which one paradigm dominates.

Given the complexity and open nature of the social world, however, it is hardly possible
that one paradigm could ever dominate. Taking a complex social ontology seriously
requires a commitment to multi-paradigmatic approach. But if the incommensurability
thesis holds any attempt to put a multi-paradigmatic approach into practice is doomed to
failure. The incommensurability thesis legitimates apartheid for paradigms where
proponents of competing paradigms assume that they alone know (epistemological
incommensurability) the truth of the world they have created (ontological
11
For a more detailed refutation of the incommensurability thesis and its attendant problems see Wight,
1996.

20
incommensurability). Incommensurability buttresses competing approaches from
criticism from alternative approaches - a situation we find deplorable since we consider
all claims should, at least potentially, be open to challenge. But what are the arguments
for incommensurability anyway?

Incommensurability signifies the idea that there is no common measure among paradigms
of inquiry.12 It can take either ontological or epistemological forms. The ontological
argument is actually a non sequitur. For if two theories/paradigms have different objects
then they cannot be said to clash. In order for theories to clash they must clash over
something. Einstein’s theory of relativity does not clash with Darwin’s theory of
evolution. Strictly speaking, the idea that theories of differing parts of reality are
incommensurable is true, but uninteresting. Of course, theories can clash and posit
differing ontologies in their attempt to explain some phenomena. Note however, that in
order to be interesting, and to be said to clash, some aspects of the phenomena remain
constant and what changes/clashes are the explanations of the phenomena.

All theories that attempt to explain the end of the Cold War accept that certain important
episodes and changes took place, which require explanation. It is obvious that theories
understand the Cold War and its end in different ways – and many of them misidentify
both badly (see Patomäki, 1992a). But they accept that they are referring to at least
partially same real phenomena. If they did not we could not know that they were
clashing. Admittedly, in the attempt to explain some events will be privileged over others,
and it may be the case that some events undergo a comprehensive redescription such that
they are no longer recognisable under the old descriptions. But even in these situations it
is rare for there to be no overlap of phenomena. For if there was no ontological overlap in
what sense could we say the accounts clashed? In this sense, critical realism’s refocusing
of ontological questions escapes the “problem-field” of IR and directs our attention to the
13
question of “ontological overlap” between theories. Put simply, if there is no

12
It seems to us that the argument that there is no 'neutral' metalanguage with which to compare competing
theories is basically sound. However, this does not mean that communication/translation across
theories/paradigms is impossible. If one is translating from one language into another one does not first
have to learn a neutral third language in order to communicate. Interestingly, Kuhn was keen to distance
himself from some of the more radical interpretations of the incommensurability thesis that have emerged.
(see Kuhn, 1970b, 1982, 1990)
13
For how this kind of analysis is done in the context of explaining the Economic and Monetary Union, see
Patomäki, 1997.

21
ontological overlap then there is little point in trying to compare theories, or bemoaning
the fact that we can’t.

The epistemological argument for incommensurability is altogether more interesting,

although we think no more convincing. This epistemological argument suggests that since
differing theories/paradigms have different epistemological criteria then there is simply
no way to compare them; the evidence accepted by one may be rejected by the other. Yet
the epistemological argument rests upon the fallacious assumption that paradigms are
embedded in one, and only one, epistemological outlook, and are hermetically sealed. We
find this assumption wholly implausible.

For example, Martin Hollis and Steve Smith suggest that “explanatory” accounts and
“interpretive” accounts necessitate different epistemologies (Hollis and Smith, 1991,
1994). It seems to us that Hollis and Smith are confusing epistemologies with
methodologies. Given that the social world constitutes a different kind of object
compared to atoms, for example, it is hardly surprising that its study will require a
differing set of methods, but methods are not epistemologies. This Explanation vs.
Understanding controversy is embedded within the IR “problem-field”. Yet what can it
mean to talk of an “interpretative epistemology”? Or an explanatory epistemology? The
reduction of Explanation and Understanding to one and only one epistemology does
violence to the many disputes that have shaped and formed debates within these
traditions. Explanations (taken to mean a commitment to scientific methods) can be
empiricist, rationalist, pragmatist and/or conventionalist in epistemological outlook. And
of course, these epistemologies should not be viewed as mutually exclusive.

We argue that the more appropriate epistemological stance is one of “epistemological

opportunism”: anything goes, as far as there are good reasons for it and it gives the
promise of advancing our knowledge (cf Feyerabend, 1995:123). Equally,
epistemological speculation in an ontological vacuum can at best be arbitrary and
invariably leads to debilitating disputes over epistemological “turf”. Obviously, these
good reasons are contested and should be discussed also in the context of concrete
research puzzles. Critical realism nonetheless suggests that the plausibility of existential
hypotheses and the explanatory power and originality of models are crucial. But so is the
capability to incorporate different perspectives.

22
The rejection of ontological and epistemological incommensurability, however, does not
demonstrate how communication between differing approaches might be achieved in
practice. What it does demonstrate, however, is that such communication is in principle,
possible.

Ontologically the social world is composed of a fragmented interplay of practices based

on various partial, relational perspectives, and a more comprehensive perspective is
achieved by transcending and adapting these partial perspectives and synthesising them
into a broader, non reductive perspective capable of incorporating the strengths of all.
Note, however, that this does not imply the destruction of competing perspectives. The
synthesis we advocate does not imply a grand theory of everything. This, we think, is the
real methodological import of Nietzscheian perspectivism (Nietzsche, 1989:119). What is
important to realise is that this process is continual. No synthesis can ever be absolute and
final: reality is constantly changing, and so there can only be a “dynamic” synthesis that
is constantly being reformulated.

The dynamic synthesis that we advocate can be achieved only if the relativity and the
partial nature of all perspectives is recognised, appreciated, and incorporated into a more
comprehensive account, and if we begin by challenging the unnoticed assumptions of the
“problem-field” into which these problems are embedded. This will require a rethinking
of these partial perspectives; a rethinking that fundamentally challenges them and
reformulates them.

Causality

Outside the strictly positivist camp there has been very little talk about causality in IR. In
general this is because those that reject the applicability of causal talk in the social still
presume the Humean account of it. When based on this positivist-Humean account of
cause, scientific explanations are essentially deductive in form. According to this view
the explanandum (the event to be explained) is the logical conclusion of a general law
and the occurrence of a set of initial conditions, which together constitute the explanans
(that which does the explaining). This model of explanation is generally known as the D-

23
N, or “covering law” model. To get a clearer picture of what this model entails, suppose
that events A and B are related by the general law, “if event A occurs then event B must
occur”.14 The following schema exemplifies the D-N model:

If event A occurs, then event B must occur. (the covering law)

Event A has occurred

Therefore event B must (had to) occur

The D-N model implies that the role of an empirical science is to uncover general laws
(covering laws) that can then be used as the premises of deductive arguments. This model
implies the symmetry of explanation and prediction: if one has knowledge to explain B,
one could have also predicted it. It also implies the parity of explanation, prediction and
falsification, in that a failed prediction falsifies (Bhaskar, 1994:20). But what are the key
problems with this model?

First and foremost, based as it is solely at the level of co-joined events, it does not really
constitute an explanation at all. To say that “this acid turns litmus paper red, or this metal
conducts electricity because all do is hardly explanatory” (Bhaskar, 1994:20). Moreover,
the model cannot sustain the distinction between a necessary and an accidental sequence
of events. There may well be a correlation between democracies and peace, but is there a
connection? The Humean model also cannot account for the fundamental common sense
experience of trying to do something we are unable to do, and failing (Gerwin, 1987).
The world resists all attempts to reduce it to our ideas.

The question that critical realists pose for this model is: Is the noted constant conjunction,
i.e., the principle of empirical invariance, either necessary, or sufficient for explanation?
The answer is no. For constant conjunctions (empirical regularities), in general only
obtain under experimentally controlled conditions. That is under closure. Given that the
social world is open not closed, then it is hardly surprising that no laws have yet been
discovered. Both the ontology (perception or sense-realism and the implicit assumption

14
Note that this is a simplification to the extreme. The covering law model does not, in general, presuppose
that there is a unique A, which is a sufficient condition for B. Moreover, even within positivist approaches,
causal relations can be conditional, multistage and allow for alternative causation of the same phenomena,
thus allowing for more appropriate construction of “models of some fragments of ‘historical reality’” (see
Nowak, 1960).

24
that social systems are closed) and the related theory of causality are false and
misleading.

Among the recent and most systematic attempts to tackle the problem of causality in IR is
that of Suganami’s On the Causes of War (1996). With a simple analysis of causes as
necessary and/or sufficient conditions, Suganami (1996:48-53) is able to demonstrate the
implausibility of the Waltzian notion of international anarchy as an explanation of war.
He also shows how the claim that liberal states have not fought against each other is also
without an adequate account of the historical mechanisms that would explain this alleged
statistical invariance. In general, as admitted even by the main advocates of the thesis,
dyadic liberalism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for peace (Suganami,
1996:70-74 and also Chapter 3, particularly 101-112). This is explained by Suganami:

A number of different explanations can coexist for the phenomenon of interliberal

peace as a whole, but this point seems mostly unnoticed by Doyle, his supporters,
and his critics. […] there is no guarantee that only one of the above theses [about the
causes for peace] will hold true consistently with respect to all instances of inter-
liberal peace. Indeed, there is no guarantee even that the cause of peace between any
two liberal states remains the same throughout different historical periods
(Suganami, 1996:104, 107).

This explanation points to the right direction. In open systems outcomes might be the
result of many differing causes and the same cause might lead to differing outcomes.
Moreover, Suganami correctly pays attention to the ambivalent formulations of Hempel
employed – are the alleged laws known or are they existing in the world, whether known
or not? He nonetheless only wants to “considerably dilute”, at least in the first phase of
his argument, the Humean account of causality (See Suganami, 1996:119-128).

Yet because of his ontological coyness Suganami assumes that further elaboration on the
notion of causality would not lead us anywhere, and that the basic ambivalences and
ambiguities of the deductive-hypothetical model of explanation would remain. Yet in
rejecting a strict positivism Suganmi moves to an ontological idealism similar to many
forms of post-positivism, and gives up the idea of an independent – ontological – notion
of causality entirely and argues for a narrative as the fundamental basis for explanation.
This is a paradigmatic example of the manner in which the “problem-field” of IR limits
the possibilities of theoretical advance.

25
 A narrative account renders the outbreak of the war more intelligible to us than
before, the sequence of events thus narrated constituting the cause of the
war(Suganami, 1996:140; italics in original).

Obviously, Suganami has an important point here, but its nature is epistemological, not
ontological. Social scientists do tell stories about temporal sequences of events and
processes. However, the ontological status of the sequence of events is unclear in his
account. Are these narrative sequences projections of the narrative themselves, or are they
real causal complexes which brought about the war independent of the narrative?

Explanations are indeed interpretative (narrative) attempts to make explanandum

intelligible to us (whoever the “we” are), but they must include existential and causal
hypotheses about the real world. Events, episodes and processual tendencies are caused
by the causal powers existing in the world (within which we dwell as a very small part of
it and possibly incapable of understanding large or most parts of it), not by our stories and
scientific texts. For instance, however we tell the story about the three World Wars of this
century, we can not change their existence or causes more than we can change the geo-
historical processes of the formation of the planet Earth and the evolution of the life-
forms on it. Stories about world politics presuppose and contain existential and causal
hypotheses about the tensed, processual real world, which – to the extent that we are
talking about the past, and to a large extent also if we are talking about the present and
the future – exists, existed, and to a contingent extent will exist, quite independently of
our stories about it, whoever the “we” are (given that there are always multiple,
structurally positioned actors playing a role in world history).

In order to provide causal explanation we need theories about what it is that brings about
changes in the world outside of the texts we are writing ourselves; that is, an account of
causal powers of different structured mechanisms or complexes at different layers of the
world. Positivists and post-positivist alike, embedded in the “problem-field” of IR, have
difficulties in explaining anything happening outside their own sense perceptions and
texts.

According to critical realism, there are different layers of world, each being able to
influence each other causally. These layers include ecological, biological and social

26
worlds. Now, it is a central critical realist argument that, at the social layer, reasons for
actions by social beings are among the causally powerful elements of the real world. For
instance, the Cold War ended because a multiplicity of actors contributed to it in a
causally efficacious manner in the context of world-wide state-diplomacy between 1985
and 1991. These actors included amongst others, the Reagan administration, Western
peace movement, parties and governments, Soviet thinks tanks, Gorbachev himself,
nationalists of different Soviet states, and the Soviet and Eastern European dissidents.
Many of these participants were also constituted (in part) by the concepts and political
theories circulated in and disseminated from the West (some of them articulated for
instance in the CSCE Final Act, even if only in a compromise form). These kinds of
existential – and related causal – hypotheses presuppose, in turn, the pre-existence (the
reality) of a differentiated, layered and structured world with real causal powers, upon
which these agents draw.

Agency/structure

The fundamental issue in the agent structure problem (ASP) is enshrined by the pithy yet
compelling truism articulated by Marx. Men (sic) do indeed make their own history but
not in circumstances of their own choosing. Within the community of International
Relations scholars the ASP has tended to be subsumed under the guise of the level-of-
analysis problem. Explicit recognition of the agent-structure problem came with
Alexander Wendt’s influential 1987 article, although Ashley (1984) had already discussed
it. Following this, interventions by David Dessler (1989), Martin Hollis and Steve Smith
(1990, 1992, 1994), and Walter Carlsnaes (1992), to name but a few, have served to
highlight the importance of this debate to IR scholars and have separated this problem
from the “level-of-analysis” problem.

At heart the agent-structure problem is an ontological problem concerning the

constitutive elements of the social world and their interrelationships. From this
ontological problem epistemological and methodological problems arise. The approach
we advocate rejects both individualism (however the individuals are defined - generally
states) and holism. We argue that every social act, event or phenomena is only possible

27
insofar as the conditions for action exist as well as the agents which act; conditions
which, we argue, are real and not reducible to the discourses and/or experiences of the
agents. Ontologically, the social world can only be understood as a processual flow that is
intrinsically open and subject to multiple and at time contradictory causal processes. On
this view the issue is not of how to integrate agents and structures into one account, but of
how they could ever be separated. Even when such a separation becomes necessary on
analytical grounds, as in the abstracting of agency from structure in order to study
structure, it is vital to remember that this is only an analytical separation and not an
ontological one.

Agents cannot be separated from structures for at least three reasons. First, agents cannot
easily be separated from the social situations in which they are routinely embedded. This
should not be taken to imply a denial of an individual’s sense of identity, personality and
perception of the social world as these things are experienced and/or influenced by her, or
his, social experience. Individual selves, however, are rhythmically developing, stratified
beings, and a critical realist account would necessarily reject extreme psychological
explanations that view the individual as a separate unit possessing a fixed inner core or
essence. In this sense critical realism puts the realm of individual deliberation (Kant’s
noumenal realm) firmly in the realm of phenomena.

Second is the fact that all social activity is, as Derek Layder has called it, situated activity
(Layder, 1993:80-9). This highlights the dynamic nature of the social world and draws
attention to the dynamics of interaction itself. Social activity generally occurs in
gatherings of, or encounters between, several individuals and can tend to produce
outcomes and properties that are a result of the interchange of communication between
the group as whole rather than the behaviour of the individuals viewed singly. That is to
say, situated activity displays emergent properties that are the result of the way in which
individuals interact and coalesce and which could never have been understood or
explained through an analysis of the individuals themselves.

And third, all social activity is dependent upon antecedent structural materials and takes
place in a context. Selves and situated activity exist within a wider and deeper relational
context. All social reproduction and/or transformation takes place under conditions and
relations inherited from the past. These conditions and relations represent the already

28
established character of social forms that have been reproduced and/or transformed in the
past and which confront new generations of individuals as obdurate structural contexts
which constitute actors and action-possibilities as well as inspire, encourage and reward
certain forms of behaviour and dishearten, discourage and punish others. As such, these
structural contexts entail relations of power and authority, which constitute and influence
social activity in these settings and the wider contexts within which these settings are
embedded.

Context, however, has to be viewed as a complex concept, thus there are many contextual
circles. The gendered nature of state occupations, such as the army, for example, has to be
seen in the wider context of gender social relations that locate women in certain kinds of
occupation. It is only in this context, and in the even wider one of the power and control
implicated in patriarchal relations in society in general, that we can begin to understand,
for instance, phenomena such as mass rape in war (Stiglmayer, 1989).

As this particular example makes clear, the question becomes not one of how to integrate
agents and structures into one coherent account, but of how it could ever be possible to
consider methodological individualism, or methodological structuralism as viable
alternatives. That is, it is always difficult, if not impossible, to separate out the relations
and effects of the immediate setting of (often face-to-face) interaction from the wider and
deeper relations such as patriarchal power relations, or class relations. Similarly, it is
impossible to understand the way in which these wider and deeper structures are
reproduced over time unless we understand how reproduced and sometimes transformed
in the course of face-to-face (or, nowadays more and more often technologically
mediated) spatio-temporal episodes between individual selves.

The example of gender relations and a state occupation such as soldiering is a good one
since it highlights the manner in which the immediate settings of activity (the barracks, or
the battleground) are firmly connected to increasingly remote and mediated relations of
domination and subordination in the wider social fabric (Enloe, 1989). In this sense,
global processes feed into local activity “here and now” and in some way make it
possible, while the situated activity itself reproduces these wider social relations and co-
constitute the related processes.

29
To summarise: In the social world, there are beings that possess causal powers that can
make a difference by changing the course of the flow of events that would have otherwise
taken place. Equally, the existence and exercise of these causal powers presuppose the
intentionality of agency. Intentions (“I am about to do X”) are reasoned (“…in order to”;
and also, at another level, “… because”), and in general reasons are causally efficacious,
even if the actors themselves might be confused about the role, nature and origin of their
reasons for, and rationalisation of, actions. By doing things agents bring about changes of
states of affairs even when those actions amount to the mere reproduction of already
existing social relations and positioned practices (there are states of affairs that would be
otherwise without agent’s actions).

Equally, every social act, event or phenomena is only possible insofar as the conditions
for activity exist. Agents, their intentions, and the reasons for these intentions, however,
are not enough to account for social causality. Although reasons are causes for actions,
social structures are real conditions (in different senses, but also always necessary
conditions) for both these reasons and their causal efficaciousness. The real question is
thus: how should we decompose the internally and externally related elements of social
settings and contexts? And our general, even if (always) tentative answer is: there are (i)
historically constructed, yet also idiosyncratic corporeal (bodily) actors, who are both
internally and externally related to each other; (ii) intentional action, the meanings of
which are socio-historically structured; (iii) regulative and constitutive rules implicated in
every action and constitution of actors; (iv) resources as competencies and facilities,
bringing about also productive and destructive capabilities; and (v) relational and
positioned practices, which might be organised in a manner of accomplishing collective
identities and actors, and which are often – also in other cases – (inter)dependent.

Moreover, social systems are open systems, that is, susceptible to external influences and
internal, qualitative change and emergence. Spaces and times intersect and overlap and
overlapping, elongated, truncated, spatio-temporalities may and do coalesce. Different
tendential causes can bring about similar episodes and trends and the same (kinds of)
tendential causes can bring about different (kinds of) events, episodes and trends,
depending on the totality of relevant (open-systemic) causal complexes and processes.

30
Levels of analysis

Before Wendt’s (1987) article, individualism and holism were discussed in IR in terms of
“levels-of-analysis”. Even after that article, there seems to have been confusion about the
relationship between ASP and “levels of analysis” problem (cf. Wendt 1991; Hollis &
Smith 1991; Wendt 1992; Hollis & Smith 1992). It is our contention that the discipline of
IR should fundamentally rethink its understanding of the “levels of analysis” problem. As
presently formulated it confuses and misleads much more than illuminates (Patomäki
1996; Wight 2000; Walker 1993:131-140).

In general, the metaphor of level is widely used in realist theories of science, and for
good reasons (Bunge, 1963:36-48). There are different ontological layers in the world,
and the social world is itself a causally efficacious emergent level. Given the empirical
realism and linguistic realism adhered to by those of either boundary, then the best that
can be said of levels is that we treat them “as if” they existed (beyond the boundary of
boredom), or deny the notion of depth altogether (beyond the boundary of negativity).
Contrary to these positions we suggest that it is a question of building substantial theories
and models that attempt to resolve exactly where the layers are to be located and their
interrelationships. Moreover, we would also wish to talk about levels and depth within
social worlds. We suggest at least two directions of depth, that is, of movements towards
deeper levels.

First is the ontological stratification of agency and discourses, which are closely
interrelated, but not reducible to each other. Language and discourse for example are
closely connected to, but not reducible to the unconscious level. And in both of these
levels and there can be interrelated mechanisms that could co-explain reasoning for, and
rationalisation of, actions. Here the image is of two levels interacting to produce
outcomes, not one level determinate in the last instance.

Second, there are also ontological layers conceived in terms of emergence in time. In this
sense, the institutionalised meanings and practices sedimented in the longue durée of
world history – such as the institutions of diplomacy; international law; sovereignty (all

31
of which are embedded in potentially contradictory discourses) – form a deeper layer of
social realities.

In both cases, however, we can make no a priori assumptions about the deeper strata or
layers being causally more “powerful” (whatever that would mean) or less susceptible to
change in the future. Nor can we assume that institutions such as diplomacy and
international law would have a context-independent identity that has remained unchanged
throughout centuries of the history. More concrete, relational identifications and locations
of these deeper elements would most likely show their manifold transformations as well.

Now, even if we can find – in addition to analytical depth in our own explanations –
ontological depth in the real social worlds, there is little sense talking about
individual/sub-state, state and international “levels-of-analysis”. Again, the critical realist
focus on ontology plays a role here. The causal powers of relational social phenomena
cannot be grouped in different artificial “factors” which are then located at “different
levels” “as if” things were as described. As the above discussion of the agent-structure
problem demonstrates, ontologically speaking, state activities occur in the course of, and
due to, gatherings of, or encounters between, several individual actors and manifold
structural contexts. These gatherings and encounters produce outcomes and properties
that are a result of the interchange of communication between the group of actors
positioned in foreign policymaking practices of a state.

The point about decomposing social worlds – both situated activity and its wider and
deeper context – into elements of causal complexes is that whatever the contextual and
tendential phenomenon we want to explain, we should be looking for the same kinds of
elements at all levels: actors, actions, rules, resources and practices, all forming together a
spatio-temporally situated relational whole, or totality. It makes no sense, and this is the
key error, to treat the levels of the state and the international system as related as agents
to structures.

There is also a further sense why the levels-of-analysis talk is so misleading: it reifies
collective actors and social relations. Social research, given the hermeneutically saturated
nature of the social world, should proceed bottom-up. The first stage is to
hermeneutically understand, and familiarise oneself with the meanings held by the

32
concrete actors in spatio-temporally and contextually situated activities. 15 That is to
understand how the social phenomena under scrutiny are constituted. We need to discover
what happened before we can ask why. The second stage is to proceed to reconstructing
interactive action episodes on that basis. Building iconic models of the wider and deeper,
relational contexts and their inherent, real causal tendencies should follow this (Patomäki,
1992b: Chapter 4).

Fact and Values

We think that in this respect critical realism seems the most radical of all approaches. A
reconsideration of the theory/problem field of IR can demonstrate this point. To
positivists facts are distinct from values. The genesis of this distinction comes from
Hume, but is filtered through Kant’s dualistic world outlook. This distinction has been
vigorously challenged by postpositivists, yet devoid of the metaphysical means to unite
Kants two worlds, postpositivism treats facts as nothing other than disguised values. This
situation mirrors that of the interwar dispute between idealists and realists, with the
realists accusing the idealists of speculative idealism and the idealists accusing the
realists of moral vacuity. This debate resonates through current exchanges with many of
the postpositivists claiming the moral high ground, but in line with positivists also
rejecting the idea that epistemological issues have any bearing on ethico-political ones
(Campbell, 1999). Outside of this repetitious theory/problem solution field critical
realism is suggestive of a radical insight.

For critical realism, reality is differentiated yet interconnected. So, although facts are not
merely values and vice versa, they are mutually implicating. Facts are always value-
laden, because at the transitive dimension of science truth is a positive value and truth as
correspondence to the world is a regulative metaphor guiding scientific and other
practices. But this is the radical move. For if facts are always in this sense value-laden,
then values must in a sense be factually embedded. Nietzsche captures nicely what is at
stake here arguing, “Let us articulate this new demand: we need a critique of moral
values. The value of these values themselves must first be called into question – and for

15
In this rather limited methodological sense, hermeneuticists such as Winch , 1958, have been on the right
track. But the price of the Kantian dichotomy between phenomena and noumena has been the
disappearance of causes and, ultimately, social structures.

33
that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances under which they
grew, under which they evolved and changed” (Nietzsche, 1989:6).

The implication of this point is clear. We can move from facts to values. Indeed, we must
in order to explain those values themselves. No doubt this will appal both positivists and
many postpositivists. For positivists this move is inadmissible, and for many
postpositiviststs unnecessary (values simply being contingent preferences). Critical
realism, on the other hand, situates a genuinely critical moment at the heart of analysis; a
moment that at once depends upon values being factually explained and facts being
subject to evaluation. The implication is an account of emancipatory practice embedded
within a general account of knowledge construction able to identify the possibility of a
transition from an unwanted, unnecessary and oppressive situation to a wanted and/or
needed and empowering or more flourishing situation (see Bhaskar, 1994:Chapters 6 and
7). And this because critical realism rejects the “problem-field” of IR and locates agency,
and the knowledge upon which such agency is based, in this world not another.

Conclusion

We have argued for an approach that makes its commitment to realism explicit as
opposed to secreting an implicit realism. Through such a recovery of realism the
“problem-field” of IR may be transcended. The positivism/postpositivism dichotomy that
replaced the interparadigm debate seems so natural now. It is as if we have always
thought in this way and always will. Yet this debate itself is a construct of those engaged
in it and reveals itself to be very much a product of the “problem-field” of IR. Mapped
onto the “problem-field” of IR this divide mirrors Kant’s dualistic worldview. The
positivists concern themselves with Kant’s phenomenal realm and the postpositivists with
the noumenal. Critical realism suggests a different theory/problem solution field. One, no
doubt, that will contain the seeds of its own destruction, for we make no claims to
finitude or ahistorical knowledge.

34
The “problem-field” of IR constitutes the present day conditions of possibility for
thinking about, hence acting in, the realm of international relations. And as such, it blocks
the development of more ethically and politically aware body of scholarship orientated
towards emancipation. For as Margaret Archer has put it:

we would betray ourselves, as well as our readers, by offering any form of social
scientism with ‘laws’ which are held to be unaffected by the uses and abuses we make
of our freedoms, for this renders moral responsibility meaningless and political
action worthless and self-reflection pointless. Equally, we delude one another by the
pretence that society is simply what we choose to make it and make of it…(Archer,
1995:2).

Critical realism provides a potential (and partial) way out of this “problem-field”. Critical
realism, highlights the disconnected nature of Kant’s two world outlook and the manner
in which this dichotomy provides the ground for all the key debates and category
distinctions which constitute international relations; in thought and deed. Critical realism
sees society as an emergent entity with material and ideational aspects and hence makes
any attempt at an easy separation problematic. Critical realism suggests that the material
and ideational have to be viewed as a whole. A whole that it is necessary to investigate as
an integral system with all its necessary interconnections, not as isolated fragments torn
out of context. Things, even social things, have to be to seen in their movement and
interconnections. The parts cannot be correctly understood apart from their relationship
with the whole. Critical realism also reconnects the world of ethical deliberation with the
world of real causal processes and highlights the manner in which we act in this world as
a result of the knowledge we possess of that which we value and that which we can do.
And what we can do is much more than reject this reality, accept this reality, or retreat
from this reality. It is in this emancipatory sense that we need to reclaim reality from
where it has been lost in the “problem-field” of IR.

35
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