BOOK REVIEW
A Cultural Theory of International Relations. By Richard Ned Lebow.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi+762.
(paper);
ISBN-13:
9780521691888;
£60.00
(hard);
£21.99
ISBN-13:
9780521871365.
Dr Harry Bauer
IPPR Volume 5 Number 1 (October 2009)
pp. 75-78
© 2009
International Public Policy Review • The Department of Political Science
The Rubin Building 29/30 • Tavistock Square • London • WC1 9QU
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ippr/
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BOOK REVIEW
A Cultural Theory of International Relations. By Richard Ned Lebow. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xi+762.
£21.99 (paper); ISBN-13:
9780521691888; £60.00 (hard); ISBN-13: 9780521871365.
All books, including those in our disciplines, can be understood as invitations.
Sometimes they are warm and welcoming, sometimes they are reluctant even awkward.
In any case, books turn their readers into guests of rather special occasions. Sometimes
we witness more or less dry lectures in badly lit and badly aired lecture halls, sometimes
we find ourselves in neatly organised, slightly freakish laboratories, and sometimes—
perhaps in the best of cases—we enter into a conversation. Reading Ned Lebow's A
Cultural Theory of International Relations might still evoke another scene, somewhat
reminiscent of Giorgio Varsari's Lives and apposite to Lebow, one of the very few true
Renaissance men in International Relations (IR) these days: here we find ourselves in the
workshop of an Italian master painter in the 15th century and follow him from dusk to
dawn, while he outlines the draft sketch of a painting on a massive canvas.
Lebow's book is, in many respects, a highly ambitious and demanding enterprise.
In fact, the volume itself is part of a Herculean project, which began with Lebow's The
Tragic Vision of Politics in 2003 and is meant to find its provisional conclusion with a
third study to be published in the years to come. The overall aim of this grand endeavour
exceeds the narrow confines of IR by far; it attempts nothing less than to offer “a new
ontology for social science”1 and to “'develop[ing] a new paradigm of politics and
theories nested within it.”2 In this regard, the volume's focus on IR is just seen as a
special (intricate) case of the more genuine issue of political order, its genesis, various
forms and trajectories. The book therefore develops a framework for the study of politics
and “derives from it a theory of international relations.”3
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1
Lebow, R.N. A Cultural Theory of International Relations Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), ix.
2
Ibid., p.28.
3
Ibid., p.505.
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While The Tragic Vision of Politics reconstructed the concepts used implicitly or
explicitly by von Clausewitz, Morgenthau and Thucydides, in order to engage with their
attempts to come to a universally valid understanding of the underlying dynamics that
govern particular social processes, A Cultural Theory applies the reverse strategy. It
transports concepts stemming from Greek antiquity (and especially from Plato, Aristotle,
and Thucydides, as well as their reception in modern Western thought) to the course of
(Western) history—from Homer to George W. Bush—on the grounds that “these
concepts capture universal attributes of human nature that find expression in all cultures
all times, with the very important caveat that they are manifested and described in a wide
variety of ways.”4 This approach is deliberately multidisciplinary; it draws on Lebow's
interest into antique political thinking, his expertise in social theory, political psychology
and international history.
The keystone of Lebow's framework for the analysis of politics and therefore his
theory of international relations is, with some understatement, “a simple set of
assumptions about human motives.”5 Drawing on his Greek sources, he identifies
universal “human needs”—spirit, appetite, reason and fear—all linked “with distinct
objects or ends.”6
These drives in turn induce distinct patterns of behaviour, like
cooperation, conflict or risk-taking, which have different implications for the way social
and political orders unfold. Moreover, the different drives translate into distinct forms of
hierarchy grounded in different concepts of justice. By applying this concept of order to
the different levels of social association—individual, state, regional and international—
Lebow links individual behaviour and different forms of social aggregation, human
drives and the normative equipment of political organisations. But even more, an element
of change is also introduced, as the hierarchies in which orders rest are vulnerable. They
can become weak and break down, when mismatches between (elite) behaviour and
principles of justice become all too big. In this way, order is conceived as a constant
achievement, change as a constant occurrence, while disorder at one level can easily
spread to other levels. With this core conception, Lebow formulates his ontology as an
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4
Ibid., p.41.
Ibid., p.26.
6
Ibid.
5
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implicit response to a number of seminal issues IR has grappled with in recent decades:
the structure and agency problématique, the issue of methodological individualism, the
problem of change and the locus of norms as well as emotions in IR.
Lebow is very much aware that the human drives he identifies blend in social
reality, which naturally also applies to the associated behaviours, hierarchies and
principles of justice. In order to tease out the mechanisms that lead to order and disorder,
he describes ideal-type worlds with the respective characteristics of spirit, appetite and
reason. The main concern of his argument lies however on 'spirit' as motive for human
conduct, as for him this element has been neglected in IR's analysis. Spirit is understood
as the universal human drive for self-esteem—for honour, glory, standing—and the
'theory' of IR Lebow develops, by passing through world history, is in essence a historical
account of the impact of self-esteem during the ages.
What makes Lebow a fascinating read is perhaps most of all his inclination to
pursue unusual paths to offer surprising arguments—take the recourse to Greek
philosophy as the most obvious one—and to (implicitly) take issue with the current state
of IR. Although he positions himself within constructivism, he is not afraid to repeatedly
criticise some variants of constructivism7 and other mainstream theories. Despite a
growing trend to turn to practices and, hence, also to the micro-level of interaction as
object of research, Lebow forcefully argues for grand theorising, in order to provide
focus and inspiration for research through “abstract and normative theories of human
nature and conduct.”8
Certainly, a book of such proportion and complexity must provoke criticism. Let
me just highlight a very few points. The argument made is ambitious, perhaps overly
ambitious for just one book—somewhat reminiscent of Rosenau's Turbulence in World
Politics, whose title became a catchphrase, but whose sophisticated analytical framework
found hardly anyone able or willing to apply its approach. To develop a general
framework for the analysis of politics would have justified a volume on its own, and
would have offered demonstrations of this approach at different levels and areas of
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7
Ibid., p.509.
Skinner, Q. “Introduction: the return of Grand Theory,” in The Return of Grand Theory in the Human
Sciences, ed. Quentin Skinner (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.1.
8
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politics. Lebow's starting point, his human drives, indicates an inherently foundational
perspective, yet it becomes not entirely clear how this is reconciled with the overall
constructivist outlook of the project. This brings me to the 'empirical part' of the volume.
It takes on the form of an essentially Western world history. However, it would have
been interesting to see how the universal human needs, derived from Western political
thought, fare in non-Western cultures.
Now what kind of picture could we witness emerging over the 500 odd pages of
Lebow's A Cultural Theory of International Relations? It might perhaps be fair to say that
there are still essential elements missing to the classical triptych the overall project
intends to be. So perhaps it is not really Hans Holbein we are yet confronted with, but
rather a collage by Georges Braque with some fine sand trickling down, reminding us to
have a look at the next inspirational canvas already in work.
Harry Bauer‡
REFERENCES
Lebow, R. N. A Cultural Theory of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
_______.
The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Rosenau, J. N. Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Skinner, Q. “Introduction: the return of Grand Theory.” In The Return of Grand Theory
in the Human Sciences, edited by Quentin Skinner, pp.1-20. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1985.
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‡
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SIAS Fellow 2009/2010. Harry Bauer recently co-edited Pragmatism in International Relations.