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Peace in our Time? Causality, Social Facts and Narrative Knowing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2017

John Gerard Ruggie*
Affiliation:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

Abstract

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Type
Theoretical Perspectives on International Institutions
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1995

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References

1 This shift was inaugurated by Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory Of International Politics (1979).

2 Mearsheimer, John J., The False Promise of International Institutions , Int’l Sec, Winter 1994/95 , 549. I have commented on the substance of Mearsheimer’s argument in John Gerard Ruggie, The False Premise of Realism, Int’l SEC, Summer 95, 62; here I focus on epistemological differences between the two positionsGoogle Scholar.

3 The concept of’ “pluralistic security community” is due to Karl W. Deutsch Et Al., Political Community In The North Atlantic Area (1957). Western Europe is, if anything, more institutionalized than the ideal-type that Deutsch and his colleagues envisioned.

4 See Mearsheimer, John J., Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War , Int’l Sec , Summer 90, 556; and Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War, Atlantic Monthly, August 1990, 40Google Scholar.

5 Much the same holds for the branch of institutionalism Keohane has labeled “rationalist.” Robert O. Keohane, Int’l Stud. Q, December 88, 376-379. Keohane grouped all other institutionalist approaches, from neo-Weberian to neo-Marxian to post-modern, under the category of “reflectivist.”

6 Bernert, Christopher, The Career of Causal Analysis in American Sociology , 34 Brit. J. Of Soc. 231 Google Scholar.

7 Cook, Thomas D. & Campbell, Donald T., Quasiexperimentation 10 Google Scholar.

8 This discussion draws on Berk, Richard A., Causal Inference for Sociological Data , Handbook Of Sociology , (Neil J. Smelser, ed., 1988)Google Scholar.

9 Id., at 157, emphasis in original.

10 Id., at 158.

11 For a thorough analysis of the differences between logico-scientific and narrative approaches to the social sciences, see Polkinohorne, Donald E., Narrative Knowing And The Human Sciences (1988)Google Scholar.

12 Searle, John; Minds, Brains And Science 13 (1984)Google Scholar.

13 Id., at 15.

14 Kratochwil, Friedrich V., Rules, Norms, And Decisions: On The Conditions Of Practical And Legal Reasoning In International Relations And Domestic Affairs 2228 (1989)Google Scholar.

15 Searle, at 16.

16 Id., at 61, emphasis added.

17 I explore the bases of these world order ideas in Gerard Ruggie, John, Third Try at World Order? America and Multilateralism after the Cold War , 109 Pol. Sci. Q. 553570 Google Scholar.

18 Kratochwil, at 24.

19 Some of the everyday mechanisms whereby this phenomenon is instituted in the legal realm are discussed by Burley, Anne-Marie and Mattli, Walter, Europe Before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration , Int’l Org. , Winter 93, 4176 Google Scholar. The relationship between other elements of civil society and prospects for peace in Eastern and Western Europe are discussed by Snyder, Jack, Averting Anarchy in the New Europe , Int’l Sec , Spring 90, 542 Google Scholar; and Van Evera, Stephen, Primed for Peace: Europe After the Cold War , Int’l Sec , Winter 90/91, 11 Google Scholar.

20 Hempel, Carl G., Aspects Of Scientific Explanation , Chap. 12 (1965)Google Scholar.

21 Mearsheimer, Back to the Future, at 18.

22 See Hempel’s classic statement, The Function of General Laws in History, in Aspects Of Scientific Explanation 243.

23 Nagel, Ernest, The Structure Of Science: Problems In The Logic Of Scientific Explanation 568575 (1961)Google Scholar.

24 Nagel argued that is necessary to “analyze”–that is, reduce–such aggregative phenomena “into a number of constituent ‘parts’ or ‘aspects’.” Id., at 571. But that procedure is rejected flat out by Waltz and his followers; see Waltz, Theory Of International Politics, especially Chaps 2 and 4.

25 Bruner, Jerome; Actual Minds, Possible Worlds 11 (1986)Google Scholar.

26 Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing And Human Sciences.

27 “I call all such inference by the peculiar name, abduction, because its legitimacy depends upon altogether different principles from those of other kinds of inference.” Pierce, Charles S., Philosophical Writings , 150156 (Justus Buchler, ed., 1955)Google Scholar.

28 “Thus emplotment is not the imposition of a ready-made plot structure on an independent set of events; instead, it is a dialectic process that takes place between the events themselves and a theme which discloses their significance and allows them to be grasped together as parts of one story.” Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing And The Human Sciences at 19-20.

29 Howard, Michael, Introduction , in Western Security: The Formative Years 16 (Olav Riste, ed., 1985)Google Scholar.

30 If they address this issue at all, neorealists remain content to repeat the distinction made by Wolfers a generation ago between collective defense and fully-fledged collective security systems. See Wolfers, Arnold, Collective Defense versus Collective Security , Discord And Collaboration 181204 (1962)Google Scholar.

31 Hudson, Daryl J., Vandenberg Reconsidered: Senate Resolution 239 and American Foreign Policy , Dip. Hist. , Winter 77, 63. The reference to the UN Charter concerns Article 51, permitting “collective self-defense” arrangements, which Vandenberg helped draft at San Francisco. Vandenberg, it should be remembered, was a former isolationist who, in Kaplan’s words, “had been converted to internationalism on the strength of the United Nations providing collective security for all.”Google Scholar Kaplan, Lawrence S., Nato And The United States: The Enduring Alliance 36 (1988)Google Scholar.

32 See Stephanson, Anders, Kennan And The Art Of Foreign Policy , 152155 (1988)Google Scholar; and Lundestad, Geir; America, Scandinavia, And The Cold War , 1945-1949; 172-173, 188189 (1980). Kennan later recalled favoring a “dumbbell” arrangement, with the European countries cooperating on one side, the United States and Canada on the other, but in which they would have been linked, not by treaty and a permanent U.S. troop presence in Europe, merely by a U.S.-Canadian guarantee of assistance in case of Soviet attackGoogle Scholar. Kennan, George F., Memoirs: 1925-1950, 406407 (1967)Google Scholar.

33 Taft, Robert A., A Foreign Policy For Americans 8889 (1951)Google Scholar.

34 See Duchin, Brian R., The ‘Agonizing Reappraisal’: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the European Defense Community , Dip. Hist. , Spring 92, 201221 Google Scholar; and Helmreich, Jonathan E., The United States and the Formation of EURATOM , Dip. Hist. , Summer 91, 387410 Google Scholar.

35 In an eloquent passage, Peirce remarks that parsimony refers to the empirical, not logical, simplicity of hypotheses; Philosophical Writings, at 156.

36 See e.g., Weber, Max, The Methodology Of The Social Sciences 113-188 (Edward Shils and Henry A. Finch, trans., 1949)Google Scholar.

37 George, Alexander L., Case Studies and Theory Development: The Method of Structured, Focused Comparison , in Diplomacy: New Approaches In History, Theory, And Policy (Paul Gordon Lauren, ed., 1979)Google Scholar.

38 Danto, Arthur C., Narration And Knowledge 1985 , and VOL. 1 Google Scholar Ricoeur, Paul, Time And Narrative (Kathleen Mclaughlin & David Pellauer, trans., 1984)Google Scholar.

39 Sec Dworkin, Ronald, Law’s Empire (1986)Google Scholar.

40 Braudel’s unit of analysis is what he terms “civilizations” in their “ecodemographic context.” The general approach is discussed in Fernand Braudel, On History (Sarah Matthews, trans., 1980); the original empirical study was 1 & 2 The Mediterranean And The Mediterranean World In The Age Of Philip II, (Sian Reynolds, trans., 1972). I was loosely inspired by Braudel’s approach in drawing a configurative explanation sketch of emergence and potential future transformation of the modern international system: see Gerard Ruggie, John, Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations , Int’l. Org. , Winter 1993, 139174 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Sophisticated forms of game theory, for example, have enhanced our understanding of generic forms of strategic behavior.

42 Ashley, Richard K., The Poverty of Neorealism , Int’l. Org. , Spring 1984, 225261. For an excellent and epistemologically sensitive account of the end of the Cold War, utilizing the classical realist narrative structureCrossRefGoogle Scholar, see Wohlforth, William C., Realism and the End of the Cold War , Winter 1994/1995, 91129 Google Scholar.