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Integrative pluralism and security studies: The implications for International Relations theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2022

Benjamin Banta  and
Stuart J. Kaufman Open the ORCID record for Stuart J. Kaufman [Opens in a new window]
Benjamin Banta
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, United States
Stuart J. Kaufman*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, United States
*
*Corresponding author. Email: skaufman@udel.edu
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Abstract

The idea of integrative pluralism offers a promising path for the development of theory in international security and international relations. Instead of either trying to shoehorn all theorising into a single, limited paradigm or giving up entirely on theoretical progress, the integrative pluralist approach calls for bringing diverse approaches together. More precisely, integrative pluralism involves explaining specific phenomena by linking causal processes across multiple layers of reality, and then using the findings to inform broader theoretical constructs such as IR theory paradigms. Elements of the integrative pluralism approach are already visible in the work of mainstream scholars such as Snyder and Katzenstein, as well as of critical scholars such as Sjoberg and Hansen, but the field has tended to overlook these scholars’ efforts at theoretical integration. To more explicitly develop integrative pluralism for our field, this article first draws on critical realist philosophy and social theory. It then illustrates how further steps in this direction might be taken, in particular by highlighting the integrative pluralist aspects of Kaufman's applications of symbolic politics theory to explaining ethnic conflict and war more generally.

Keywords

ConstructivismCritical RealismIntegrative PluralismInternational Relations TheoryParadigmsRealismSymbolic Politics
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , November 2022 , pp. 435 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

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14 We have a reservation relating to the commitment to a temporal sequence of causes, which evinces a rather ‘flat’ view of social ontology, in which readily apparent events or conditions follow one after another. Indeed, such a view can be seen as deriving from a neopositivist view of explanation to which we do not subscribe. See David Little, Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 13–19. Detailed further below, we contend that causal processes may interact in complex ways rather than playing out in a linear and chronological fashion.

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31 Ibid., p. 109.

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47 Berth Danermark, Mats Ekström, Liselotte Jakobsen, and Jan ch. Karrlson, Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), p. 5; Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, pp. 9–12.

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49 Andrew Sayer, Realism and Social Science (London, UK: Sage Publications, 2000), pp. 12–13; Douglas V. Porpora, ‘Cultural rules and material relations’, Sociological Theory, 11:2 (1993), p. 222.

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56 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 294.

57 We utilise the term ‘middle-range’ theory fairly loosely, as Merton himself did, to mean any theory that goes beyond empirical observation and simple hypothesis testing, but is less than the ‘total systems’ of ‘grand’ theories. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York, NY: Free Press, 1968), pp. 45–8.

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67 Interestingly, though the broader paradigm has not systematically done this, prominent realists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have increasingly turned to such factors when explaining what they see as wrongheaded US foreign policies. See, for example, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007).

68 Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 2.

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71 Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

72 Laura Sjoberg, Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 53.

73 Ibid., pp. 78–81.

74 Ibid., pp. 87, 94–5.

75 Lene Hansen, Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (London, UK: Routledge, 2006).

76 Ibid., pp. 22–4.

77 Ibid., pp. 25–6, 29–30.

78 Ibid., pp. 146–7.

79 Stuart J. Kaufman, Nationalist Passions (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

80 Stuart J. Kaufman, ‘War as symbolic politics’, International Studies Quarterly, 63:3 (2019), pp. 614–25.

81 Therese Pettersson and Peter Wallensteen, ‘Armed conflicts, 1946–2014’, Journal of Peace Research, 52:4 (2015), p. 539.

82 Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

83 See, for example, Doug McAdam, Sidney G. Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel Nexon, ‘The dynamics of global power politics: A framework for analysis’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 1:1 (2016), pp. 4–18.

84 Stuart J. Kaufman, ‘The irresistible force and the imperceptible object: The Yugoslav breakup and Western policy’, Security Studies, 4:2 (1995), pp. 282–330.

85 Kaufman, Modern Hatreds.

86 Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, ‘Civil war and the security dilemma’, in Barbara Walter and Jack Snyder (eds), Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1999).

87 Kaufman, Nationalist Passions.

88 John Duckitt, ‘Prejudice and intergroup hostility’, in David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Jervis (eds), Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 575.

89 Kaufman, Nationalist Passions.

90 Ibid.

91 Henri Tajfel, ‘Social psychology of intergroup relations’, Annual Review of Psychology, 33 (1982), pp. 1–39.

92 Duckitt, ‘Prejudice and intergroup hostility’.

93 Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, ‘The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice’, Science, 211:4481 (30 January 1981), pp. 453–8; Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman, ‘Framing theory’, Annual Review of Political Science, 10 (2001), pp. 103–26.

94 An example of this version of framing theory is Kimberly Gross and Lisa D'Ambrosio, ‘Framing emotional response’, Political Psychology, 25:1 (2004), pp. 1–29.

95 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013).

96 Charles Tilly, Identities, Boundaries and Social Ties (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005), p. 6.

97 Omar S. McDoom, The Path to Genocide in Rwanda: Security, Opportunity and Authority in an Ethnocratic State (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).

98 Barkin's work on ‘realist constructivism’ makes a similar case, and has begun to translate into productive explanatory work. Samuel J. Barkin, Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Samuel J. Barkin (ed.), The Social Construction of State Power: Applying Realist Constructivism (Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 2020).

99 Owen, John M., ‘How liberalism produces the democratic peace’, International Security, 19:2 (1994), pp. 87–125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 A deeper synthesis might also incorporate psychological insights, embodying Shannon and Kowert's argument that psychology and constructivism are not alternatives but theoretical allies. See Vaughn P. Shannon and Paul A. Kowert (eds), Psychology and Constructivism in International Relations: An Ideational Alliance (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2012). As Kaufman has shown in Nationalist Passions, symbolic politics theory can be modified to serve as a theory of state action with all five causes interacting to explain state choices to engage in international conflict and cooperation.

101 Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, ‘Relations before states: Substance, process and the study of world politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:3 (1999), pp. 291–332.

102 See, for example, Stacie E. Goddard, Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Network analysis for international relations’, International Organization, 63:3 (2009), pp. 559–92.

103 Kaufman, ‘War as symbolic politics’.

104 For a recent example, see Heikki Patomäki, Disintegrative Tendencies in Global Political Economy: Exits and Conflicts (London, UK: Routledge, 2017). We would like to thank [source] for this reminder.

105 For empirical evidence supporting this theoretical claim, see Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little, and William C. Wohlforth (eds), The Balance of Power in World History (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).