Session 8
Alternate Approaches to IR
The English School
● Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, Nicholas Wheeler
● A predominantly British approach
● Primary object of analysis: International Society
●
Essence can be summed up by the following quote
“…those who believe that anything goes in war are as
wrong as those believe the use of force can never be
justified…”
● Middle ground between realism and liberalism
● There’s more to international politics than realists
suggest but there will always be less than what the
Liberals desire...
● Like realists, the English School proponents begin
with anarchy and the subsequent security concerns,
but they believe in the prospects of global reform
● They do not believe that the current international
order will simply evolve into a universal community
● Survival of international community cannot be taken
for granted because it can be undermined any time
by an aggressive power
Marxism
● Marxism can be traced back to the works of Karl Marx
● As a political force, Marxism was the chief enemy of
western capitalism during 1917-1991
● Marxism as a form of socialism – focus on community,
social equality, needs based distribution of wealth,
common ownership and opposition to class system
● Formed the basis of the international communist
movement of the 20th century
● Historical Materialism: Focus on the economic life
and the conditions under which people produce their
means of subsistence.
● Economic base (relations of production + forces of
production) → Mode of production → economic
system → Political structure
● Class Struggle: This arises because of private property
which creates a division between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat
● Surplus value: All value derives from the labour that
goes into the production of goods → to make profits,
the capitalist has to extract surplus value → he pays
lower wages → exploitation of proletariat
● Continued exploitation of the proletariat →
Proletarian Revolution → dictatorship of the
proletariat
● Soon a fully communist society will emerge and the
proletarian state will wither away → classless society
with common ownership of wealth and the means of
production
● USSR under Lenin and Stalin was a manifestation of
Marxism modified by Leninist principles
❑ Leninist version:
● Lenin – ‘Imperialism: The Highest Stage of
Capitalism’ – surplus capital seen as the chief reason
for the demise of a relatively peaceful international
system and a major impetus for imperialism
● The proletariat might temporarily rally around the
state with nationalist sentiments, but soon it would
return to the main project of abolishing state
boundaries and merging all the people into one
Socialist family (International working class
solidarity)
● Human loyalty will shift from the nation to the
species, especially after a brief walk down the
disastrous path of militarism and war
Global Economic Structuralism
● Views the global context (in which states and other
actors interact) as a function of the class structure of
the international system
● Marxist view of the structure refers to global class
formations – the bourgeoisie in various countries that
dominate the proletariat (working classes)
● Neo-Marxist view of the structure is in terms of the
core, periphery and the semi-periphery – core of the
advanced capitalist states, periphery of the capital
poor states and the semi-periphery of the ones
caught in between
● Dependency Theory:
Capital rich countries of the core keep the capital
poor countries of the periphery locked in a
dependent and exploitative relationship. Resources
flow from the periphery to the core and keep the poor
countries poor and enrich the already rich countries
of the core
● The exploited lesser developed countries (LDCs) are
deliberately kept dependent because they are an
important source of cheap labour and raw material
and hence crucial for the smooth functioning of the
global capitalist system
● Neo-Gramscian school (Robert Cox):
“..analyzes how hegemony is maintained through forms
of close cooperation between powerful elites inside and
outside the core regions of the world system and
through the growing network of international economic
and political institutions which are responsible for
global governance.” (Linklater, 2005, p.127)
● Economic Structuralists view IR from a historical
perspective – identify the rise of capitalism in 16 th
century as a breaking point in the structure of world
politics
● Even though individual countries might follow
socialist and egalitarian principles, yet they have to
conform to capitalism
● International organizations viewed as mechanisms of
domination in a capitalist world order.
Constructivism
● Gained popularity after the end of cold war
● Focus on interests and identities of actors
● Actors give meaning to the external world hence
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states can redefine their interests
Therefore interests and identities are socially
constructed
Actors→ shape their own social contexts→ shapes
the actors’ behavior and interests
Concepts like sovereignty and anarchy have value
because we give them meaning
The power of ideas and norms
● “Anarchy is what states make of it” (Alexander Wendt)
It signals the rejection of the neo-realist claim that
international environment is characterized by
anarchy which puts constraints on the way states can
behave. According to Wendt,
‘...structure has no existence or causal powers apart
from process.’ (Wendt, p. 394, 1992)
● Emphasis on the role of ideas, institutions and norms
to mitigate anarchy
Feminism
● Turns our attention to women and gender relations as
important but ignored aspects of international
relations
● Women’s lives and experiences have been largely left
out from the study of international relations
● Aims to rectify misrepresentation of women arising
from the false assumptions that male experience can
count for both men and women, and that women are
not that relevant to global processes
● Excessive focus on conflict, anarchy and power
struggles is a projection of masculinity onto world
affairs
● Since the 1990s, empirical feminist research has taken
a variety of forms in IR – Women in International
Development (WID) and Gender and Development
(GAD)
● These approaches document how male bias in the
development process has led to poor implementation
of projects and unsatisfactory policy outcomes in
terms of eradicating poverty and empowering
communities
● Highlight the central role of women as subsistence
producers
● Feminist scholars of IR study how economic
globalization has intensified world wide inequality
between men and women
● A gendered international division of labour has
emerged as migrant Third World women become a
cheap and flexible source of labour for MNCs
● Darker underside of globalization – growth of sextourism, transnational trafficking of girls for
prostitution
● However women are also empowered by global
processes – provision of new employment
opportunities
● Women rarely a part of the actual institutions making
and implementing foreign policy
● Women leaders likely to oppose the use of force in
international relations
● Domestic gender equality reduces the chances of a
state going to war