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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2013
This article looks at prospects for a mechanism-based research strategy in the study of International Relations. Over the past three decades, the notions of mechanism and microfoundation have taken a central place in discussions of explanation and ‘micro-macro’ problems in social science. The upshot of much of this discussion has been a call for mechanism-based explanations – explanations of macro-level phenomena in terms of micro-level mechanisms. Some work of this kind can already be found in IR theory, including in systemic research. However, a number of IR theorists, including Kenneth Waltz and Alexander Wendt, have argued that micro-oriented strategies like this will not work, pointing to incongruities between system- and unit-level phenomena. This article argues that these pose less hindrance to a fully-developed model of mechanism-based explanation, and that the field has much to gain from further exploration of this strategy. In particular, mechanism-based explanations could help bring structure back to the centre of discussion in IR theory, and might even give us a way out of the field's own micro-macro problems.
1 See, among many others, Deutsch, Karl W. and Singer, J. David, ‘Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability’, World Politics, 16:3 (1964), pp. 390–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, ‘Systemic Polarization and the Occurrence and Duration of War’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 22:2 (1978), pp. 241–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1979), ch. 8Google Scholar. I elaborate on these and other examples below.
2 See, for example, Thomas, George M., Meyer, John W., Ramirez, Francisco O., and Boli, John (eds), Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987)Google Scholar; Ruggie, John Gerard, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization (London: Routledge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See, for example, Collins, Randall, ‘On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology’, The American Journal of Sociology, 86:5 (1981), pp. 984–1014CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elster, Jon, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Little, Daniel, Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Hedström, Peter and Swedberg, Richard (eds), Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Coleman, James S., Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
4 On the mechanistic worldview, see Gerring, John, ‘The Mechanismic Worldview: Thinking Inside the Box’, British Journal of Political Science, 38:1, (2007), pp. 161–79Google Scholar; and Hedström, Peter and Ylikoski, Petri, ‘Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences’, Annual Review of Sociology, 36:1, (2010), pp. 49–67, among othersCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 See, for example, Morgan, T. Clifton and Campbell, Sally Howard, ‘Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War: So Why Kant Democracies Fight?’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 35:2 (1991), pp. 187–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cederman, Lars-Erik, ‘Modeling the Democratic Peace as a Kantian Selection Process’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45:4 (2001), pp. 470–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Nexon, Daniel H., ‘Whence Causal Mechanisms? A Comment on Legro’, Dialogue IO, 1:1 (2002), pp. 81–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goddard, Stacie E. and Nexon, Daniel H., ‘Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 11:1 (2005), pp. 9–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vasquez, John A., The War Puzzle Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sil, Rudra and Katzenstein, Peter, ‘Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions’, Perspectives on Politics, 8:2 (2010), pp. 411–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 See Dessler, David, ‘Beyond Correlations: Toward a Causal Theory of War’, International Studies Quarterly, 35:3 (1991), pp. 337–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wendt, Social Theory.
7 Some that make reference to the idea include Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics’, International Organization, 51:4 (1997), pp. 513–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levy, Jack S., ‘Prospect Theory, Rational Choice, and International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 41:1 (1997), pp. 87–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Checkel, Jeffrey T., ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics, 50:2 (1998), pp. 324–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wendt, Social Theory; Lake, David A. and Powell, Robert (eds), Strategic Choice and International Relations, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Yue Leon, David Pak, ‘Reductionism, Emergence, and Explanation in International Relations Theory’, in Joseph, Jonathan and Wight, Colin (eds), Scientific Realism and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 31–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 See, for example, Goddard and Nexon, ‘Paradigm Lost’, pp. 12–13.
9 See Waltz, Theory, ch. 4.
10 See, for example, Wendt, Alexander, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, 41:3 (1987), pp. 335–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wendt, Social Theory. See also Dessler, David, ‘What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?’, International Organization, 43:3 (1989), pp. 441–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wight, Colin, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Joseph, Jonathan and Wight, Colin (eds), Scientific Realism and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 One particularly important issue I do not tackle is the meaning of the term ‘structure’. Here I use it in a relatively broad and conventional sense, to refer to both social entities (for example, institutions, societies, systems) and their properties (for example, unstable, anarchic, bipolar) – the kinds of things mechanism-based explanations normally target, and which reductionists and holists disagree most sharply about. Alternative uses of the term can be found in some work on the agent-structure problem.
12 Elster, Jon, Explaining Technical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 23–4Google Scholar; and Elster, Nuts and Bolts, pp. 3–10.
13 See, for example, Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google ScholarPubMed; Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn’; and Moravcsik, ‘Taking Preferences Seriously’.
14 I have in mind, in addition to the examples I discuss below, virtually all that have engaged in some kind of systemic theorising, from Morton Kaplan to Immanuel Wallerstein to John Mearsheimer. Few IR theorists are strict systemic theorists, but this is part of the point I want to make – they recognise the explanatory value of lower levels of analysis, and the need for microfoundations of some kind. For overviews of various parts of the literature, see Jervis, Robert, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Levy, Jack S. and Thompson, William R., Causes of War (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)Google Scholar.
15 Waltz, Theory, pp. 73–7.
16 Ibid., ch. 8. See also Waltz, Kenneth, ‘The Stability of a Bipolar World’, Daedalus, 93:3 (1964), pp. 881–909Google Scholar.
17 Waltz, Theory, ch. 5.
18 Ibid., pp. 88–93.
19 See, for example, Singer, J. David, ‘Man and World Politics: The Psycho-Cultural Interface’, Journal of Social Issues, 24:3 (1968), pp. 140–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Accounting for International War: The State of the Discipline’, Journal of Peace Research, 18:1 (1981), p. 5.
20 Singer, ‘Man and World Politics’, p. 143.
21 See, for example, Siverson, Randolph M. and Sullivan, Michael P., ‘The Distribution of Power and the Onset of War’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27:3 (1983), p. 474CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce and Lalman, David, ‘Empirical Support for Systemic and Dyadic Explanations of International Conflict’, World Politics, 41:1 (1988), p. 1 and 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 See Bueno de Mesquita, , ‘Systemic Polarization’; and ‘Neorealism's Logic and Evidence: When is a Theory Falsified?’, in Vasquez, John A. and Elman, Colin (eds), Realism and The Balancing of Power: A New Debate, (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), pp. 166–99Google Scholar.
23 See Waltz, ‘Stability of a Bipolar World’; and Theory, ch. 8.
24 See, for example, Deutsch and Singer, ‘Multipolar Power Systems’.
25 Vasquez, War Puzzle Revisited, pp. 269, 325.
26 Wendt, Social Theory, ch. 7.
27 Ibid., ch. 4.
28 Ibid.
29 Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’, p. 359.
30 Indeed, this criticism has already been made of structuration theory, on which Wendt partly bases his own. See, for example, Carlsnaes, Walter, ‘The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis’, International Studies Quarterly, 36:3 (1992), pp. 245–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wight, Agents, Structures.
31 See Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 152–4; and Leon, ‘Reduction’.
32 Lukes, Steven, ‘Methodological Individualism Reconsidered’, The British Journal of Sociology, 19:2 (1968), p. 121CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Udehn, Lars, Methodological Individualism: Background, History and Meaning (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 354Google Scholar.
33 On this issue see Kincaid, Harold, ‘Reduction, Explanation, and Individualism’, Philosophy of Science, 53:4 (1986), pp. 492–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McGinley, William, ‘Reduction in Sociology’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 42:3 (2012), pp. 370–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Wendt, Social Theory, p. 153.
35 See, for example, Hedström and Swedberg, Social Mechanisms; and Hedström and Ylikoski, ‘Causal Mechanisms’ (see fns 3 and 4 above).
36 On the distinction, see Craver, Carl F., Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 107–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Elster, Explaining Technical Change, p. 24.
38 Kim, Jaegwon, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 106Google Scholar. Note that causal mechanistic explanations can also be inter-level, relating lower-level causes to higher-level effects.
39 Cummins, Robert, The Nature of Psychological Explanation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), p. 1Google Scholar.
40 The description is Kim's. See Kim, Jaegwon, Philosophy of Mind, second edn (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
41 See the reviews of the literature provided in Craver, Explaining the Brain; and Hedström and Ylikoski, ‘Causal Mechanisms’.
42 See, among others, Gillett, Carl, ‘Understanding the New Reductionism: The Metaphysics of Science and Compositional Reduction’, The Journal of Philosophy, 104:4 (2007), pp. 193–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Craver, Explaining the Brain; and Polger, Thomas W., ‘Mechanisms and Explanatory Realization Relations’, Synthese, 177:2 (2010), pp. 193–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Craver, Explaining the Brain, p. 5.
44 See Polger, Thomas W., ‘Realization and the Metaphysics of Mind’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85:2 (2007), pp. 233–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Philosophers disagree about the exact nature of realisation relations, a matter I will not get into here. They do, however, agree that they are non-causal.
45 Mechanism-based explanation resembles what Wendt has called ‘constitutive explanation’. The latter involves identifying the conditions that make it possible for an object or event to have a certain property. Wendt mentions constitutive explanations of dispositional properties, but focuses more on explanations of qualitative properties – properties of ‘being’ this or that, rather than ‘doing’ this or that. See Wendt, Alexander, ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 24:5 (1998), pp. 101–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Waltz, Theory, p. 61. See also Fearon, James D., ‘Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Theories of International Relations’, Annual Review of Political Science, 1 (1998), pp. 289–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 These theories might be interpreted as providing mechanistic explanations of a causal variety instead, but this is beyond the scope of this article.
48 See Kim, Jaegwon, Supervenience and Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Sawyer, R. Keith, ‘Nonreductive Individualism: Part I – Supervenience and Wild Disjunction’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32:4 (2002), p. 543CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 See Kim, Philosophy of Mind, pp. 8–14 and 273–5.
51 See Epstein, Brian, ‘Ontological Individualism Reconsidered’, Synthese, 166:1 (2009), p. 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 See, for example, Elster, Explaining Technical Change, pp. 28–9; and Jackson, Frank and Pettit, Philip, ‘In Defense of Explanatory Ecumenism’, Economics & Philosophy, 8:1 (1992), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 See, respectively, Kauffman, Stuart A., ‘Articulation of Parts Explanation in Biology and the Rational Search for Them’, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 8 (1970), pp. 257–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cummins, Psychological Explanation; Bechtel, William and Richardson, Robert C., Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research (2nd edn, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010)Google Scholar; and Kim, Physicalism.
54 Bechtel and Richardson, Discovering Complexity, p. 7.
55 Ibid., pp. 23–4.
56 Ibid. See Craver, Explaining the Brain, for a different, counterfactual approach.
57 See Most, Benjamin A. and Starr, Harvey, ‘International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and “Nice” Laws’, World Politics, 36:3 (1984), pp. 383–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Ibid., pp. 405–6.
59 This is only a partial example of a microfoundational explanation, however, because in their theory system structure still plays a constraining, opportunity-determining role. Keohane's ‘issue-area’ disaggregation strategy also seems to be in the spirit of mechanism-based explanation, and localisation in particular. See Keohane, Robert O., ‘Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond’, in Keohane, Robert O. (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 182–90Google Scholar.
60 Hedström and Ylikoski, ‘Causal Mechanisms’, p. 54.
61 Chalmers, David J., The Conscious Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 48Google Scholar.
62 See, for example, Harré, Rom and Madden, Edward H., Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975)Google Scholar; and Salmon, Wesley C., Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.
63 See Kim, Physicalism.
64 See McGinley, ‘Reduction’.
65 See, for example, Singer, J. David, ‘The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations’, World Politics, 14:1 (1961), pp. 77–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mouritzen, Hans, ‘Selecting Explanatory Level in International Politics: Evaluating a Set of Criteria’, Cooperation and Conflict, 15:3 (1980), pp. 169–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 See Churchland, Patricia Smith, Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), p. 376Google Scholar.
67 On explanatory leverage, see King, Gary, Keohane, Robert O., and Verba, Sidney, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 29–31Google Scholar.
68 See, for example (and among several others), Singer, ‘Level-of-Analysis Problem’; Singer, J. David, ‘From A Study of War to Peace Research: Some Criteria and Strategies’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 14:4 (1970), p. 537CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; Gourevitch, Peter, ‘The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics’, International Organization, 32:4 (1978), pp. 881–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mouritzen, ‘Selecting Explanatory Level’; Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’; and Levy and Thompson, Causes of War. I say more on this below.
69 See, for example, Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’.
70 See ibid.; as well as Dessler, ‘What's At Stake’; Carlsnaes, ‘Agency-Structure Problem’; and Wight, Agents, Structures, among several others.
71 See, for example, Singer, ‘Level-of-Analysis Problem’; Jervis, Perception; Waltz, Theory; Gourevitch, ‘Second Image Reversed’; Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’; and Levy and Thompson, Causes of War. The view of the debate as a simple reductionist/systemic dichotomy is long gone of course, but this does not mean the terms no longer apply – they just apply in a more complex, relativistic way. See Hollis, Martin and Smith, Steve, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Fearon, ‘Domestic Politics’.
72 Levy and Thompson, Causes of War, pp. 18, 207.
73 See, for example, Jervis, Perception; Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’; Moravcsik, ‘Taking Preferences Seriously’; and Goldgeier, James M. and Tetlock, Philip E., ‘Psychology and International Relations Theory’, Annual Review of Political Science, 4 (2001), pp. 67–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74 See, for example, Putnam, Robert D., ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games’, International Organization, 42:3 (1988), pp. 427–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fearon, ‘Domestic Politics’; and Werner, Suzanne, Davis, David, and Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, ‘Dissolving Boundaries: Introduction’, International Studies Review, 5:4 (2003), pp. 1–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 Dessler, ‘What's At Stake’, p. 443.
76 Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’, pp. 337–8.
77 See, for example, Carlsnaes, ‘Agency-Structure Problem’, pp. 248–50; and Wight, Agents, Structures, p. 131.
78 See Waltz, Theory; and Singer, ‘From A Study of War to Peace Research’, p. 537.
79 See, for example, Waltz, Theory.
80 Levy and Thompson , Causes of War, pp. 18–20, make a similar point.
81 But they may in some cases. See Siverson and Sullivan, ‘Distribution of Power’, p. 474; and Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, ‘Empirical Support’.
82 Kim, Jaegwon, Mind in a Physical World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1998), pp. 80–7Google Scholar.
83 Watkins, for example, famously described methodological individualism as saying that every social outcome is a result of a ‘particular configuration of individuals, their dispositions, situations, beliefs, and physical resources and environment’, and that all social outcomes must be explained in terms of ‘the dispositions, beliefs, resources, and inter-relations of individuals’. See Watkins, , ‘Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 8:30 (1957), p. 106Google Scholar.
84 See Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 157–84.
85 Singer, ‘Man and World Politics’, pp. 143–4.
86 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 162–3.
87 See, for example, Waltz, Theory, p. 66.
88 Ibid., p. 60, emphasis added.
89 See also Wendt's distinction between macro-structure and ‘micro-structure’. Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 145–56.
90 For the two most influential statements of the argument, see Putnam, Hilary, ‘The Nature of Mental States’, in Putnam, Hilary (ed.), Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 429–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fodor, Jerry A., ‘Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’, Synthese, 28:2 (1974), pp. 97–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
91 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 152–6.
92 Wendt, Alexander, ‘The State as Person in International Theory’, Review of International Studies, 30:2 (2004), p. 300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
93 Wendt, Social Theory, p. 152.
94 Ibid., p. 154.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid., p. 156.
97 See Waltz, Theory, pp. 39–40, 65–70, and 77–8.
98 See Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 254, 343, and 364.
99 Ibid., pp. 155–6; and Wendt, ‘State as Person’, pp. 299–301.
100 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 150–2.
101 See Polger, ‘Realization’.
102 See Lycan, William G., Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), ch. 4Google Scholar.
103 Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’, p. 402.
104 See, for example, Kim, Jaegwon, ‘Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52:1 (1992), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bechtel, William and Mundale, Jennifer, ‘Multiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States’, Philosophy of Science, 66:2 (1999), pp. 175–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
105 See Putnam, ‘Mental States’; and Kim, ‘Multiple Realization’.
106 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 279–85.
107 Ibid., pp. 162–4. See also Wendt, ‘State as Person’, pp. 299–301.
108 Bechtel and Mundale, ‘Multiple Realizability Revisited’.
109 See, for example, Jervis, ‘System Effects’, pp. 12–17; Wight, Agents, Structures; Leon, ‘Reduction’; and Joseph, Jonathan, ‘The International as Emergent: Challenging Old and New Orthodoxies in International Relations Theory’, in Joseph, Jonathan and Wight, Colin (eds), Scientific Realism and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 51–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
110 Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’.
111 Wendt, Social Theory. See also Wendt, ‘State as Person’.
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117 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 62–5, and 215–7.
118 Wight, Agents, Structures, p. 46.
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