International Relations in the prison of Political Science
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Author | Justin Rosenberg |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117816644662 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations
2016, Vol. 30(2) 127 –153
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117816644662
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International Relations in the
prison of Political Science
Justin Rosenberg
University of Sussex
Abstract
In recent decades, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has experienced both dramatic
institutional growth and unprecedented intellectual enrichment. And yet, unlike neighbouring
disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, History and Comparative Literature, it has still not
generated any ‘big ideas’ that have impacted across the human sciences. Why is this? And what
can be done about it? This article provides an answer in three steps. First, it traces the problem
to IR’s enduring definition as a subfield of Political Science. Second, it argues that IR should be re-
grounded in its own disciplinary problematique: the consequences of (societal) multiplicity. And
finally, it shows how this re-grounding unlocks the transdisciplinary potential of IR. Specifically,
‘uneven and combined development’ provides an example of an IR ‘big idea’ that could travel to
other disciplines: for by operationalizing the consequences of multiplicity, it reveals the causal and
constitutive significance of ‘the international’ for the social world as a whole.
Keywords
historical sociology, International Relations, international theory, Political Science, uneven and
combined development
Introduction
The modern discipline of International Relations (IR) is nearly 100 years old. Its first
Chair was established in 1919 at the then University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and
the coming centenary will doubtless witness a variety of celebratory events. There will
be much to celebrate. In the decades since the end of the Cold War, public awareness of
the importance of international affairs has dramatically increased. Courses in interna-
tional studies have proliferated across the higher education sector. And the discipline of
Corresponding author:
Justin Rosenberg, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN19RH, UK.
Email: j.p.rosenberg@sussex.ac.uk
644662IRE0010.1177/0047117816644662International RelationsRosenberg
research-article2016
Article
128 International Relations 30(2)
IR itself has opened up intellectually in a truly remarkable way. It has been transformed
from a rather narrow study, heavily focused on Cold War military and diplomatic rela-
tions, into what sometimes looks like a universal discipline: a thriving intellectual hub
where ideas and approaches are imported from right across the social sciences and
humanities, and where they meet each other in a rich and enriching cacophony of debate
and innovation.
Yet IR today is also experiencing a kind of crisis of intellectual confidence. In 2013,
the editors of the European Journal of International Relations introduced a special
issue on ‘The End of IR Theory?’ by suggesting that the fundamental debates which
shaped the discipline as a whole ‘have now subsided and … the discipline has moved
into’ a period in which theory-building has largely been replaced by the much narrower
activity of hypothesis testing.1 By contrast, Ole Waever has argued that IR today con-
tains more theory than ever – ‘only it is not IR theory!’ but rather theory imported from
other disciplines.2 Christine Sylvester has analysed how all this theory is fragmented
among numerous intellectual ‘camps’ which see only by the light of their own camp-
fires, and are no longer engaged in a shared conversation about their common subject
matter. In this sense, she claims, it is indeed possible that ‘IR theory per se is at an end’.3
If so, however, it is apparently not an end that will be particularly noticed elsewhere
in the social sciences. For as Chris Brown has recently reminded us, the external impact
of IR theory has been more or less negligible. While IR has indeed imported numerous
concepts, theories and methods from outside, ‘the exchange between our discipline and
the rest of the social/human sciences is pretty much one-way, and not in our favour’.4
This fact that IR has produced no big ideas that have influenced other fields has often
been lamented in the past.5 Today, however, IR’s credentials as an independent discipline
are apparently so weak that in 2015, the Annual Review of Political Science actually
published an article called ‘Should we leave behind the subfield of International
Relations?’ In this article, the author pondered whether ‘the IR subfield should be aban-
doned and its pieces allocated to new subfields of conflict, institutions, political econ-
omy, and political behavior’.6 He eventually concluded that IR should be left for now,
but mainly because breaking it up would result in new boundary problems among its
several replacement disciplines. There was no suggestion that IR had a vital contribution
of its own to make to the social sciences.
What explains this peculiar situation? Why has the great flowering of IR as a field
been unable to shake off this sense of failure and vulnerability? And what can be done
about it?
In this article, I seek to answer these questions in three main steps. First, I suggest that
at a deep level, IR has never been established as a field in its own right. It emerged as an
extension of Politics or Political Science and has remained trapped within a borrowed
ontology. I call this confinement ‘the prison of Political Science’, and I believe it explains
our failure to produce ideas that can travel to other disciplines.
Yet this outcome, I then argue, was not a necessary one at all: no less than more
established disciplines like Geography, History, Sociology and Comparative Literature,
IR rests upon a fundamental fact about the social world which is full of implications
for all the social sciences and humanities. This is the fact that the human world com-
prises a multiplicity of co-existing societies. Knowing how to take intellectual
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