Neorealism, neoclassical realism and the problem(s) of history
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211033943 |
| Author | Gustav Meibauer |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211033943
International Relations
2023, Vol. 37(2) 348 –369
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211033943
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Neorealism, neoclassical
realism and the problem(s)
of history
Gustav Meibauer
Radboud University
Abstract
Following scholarship on International Relation’s (IR’s) ‘historical turn’ as well as on neorealism
and neoclassical realism, this article finds fault particularly in neorealism’s implicit reliance on
the historically contingent but incompletely conceptualised transmission of systemic factors into
state behaviour. Instead, it suggests that neoclassical realism (NCR) is well-suited to leveraging
‘history’ in systematic and general explanation. This article interrogates two routes towards a
historically sensitive NCR (intervening variables and structural modifiers), and how they enable
different operationalisations of ‘history’ as a sequence of events, cognitive tool or collective
narrative. The first route suggests history underpins concepts and variables currently used by
neoclassical realists. Here, history is more easily operationalised and allows a clearer view at
learning and emulation processes. It is also more clearly scoped, and therefore less ‘costly’ in
terms of paradigmatic distinctiveness. The second route, in which history modifies structural
incentives and constraints, is more theoretically challenging especially in terms of differentiating
NCR from constructivist approaches, but lends itself to theorising systemic change. Both routes
provide fruitful avenues for realist theorising, can serve to emancipate NCR from neorealism
in IR and foster cross-paradigmatic dialog. Examining how ‘history’ can be leveraged in realism
allows interrogating how other ‘mainstream’, positivist approaches can and should leverage
historical contingency, context and evidence to explain international processes and outcomes.
Keywords
history, international relations theory, neoclassical realism, neorealism, positivism
Introduction
In much of mainstream IR, and particularly in neorealist and neoliberal schools of
thought, interests and behaviours are assumed to be predetermined and universal through
Corresponding author:
Gustav Meibauer, Department of Political Science, Radboud University, Elinor Ostrom Building,
Heyendaalseweg 141, Nijmegen 6525 AJ, The Netherlands.
Email: gustav.meibauer@ru.nl
1033943IRE0010.1177/00471178211033943International RelationsMeibauer
research-article2021
Article
Meibauer 349
time and space. History and historical analysis are then relegated to ‘footholds’ for vali-
dating more general theories of foreign policy and international politics.1 Of the major
‘-isms’, only constructivism is ‘propelled towards accounts of time and place specificity,
context and change’.2 The ‘historical turn’ in IR scholarship has therefore largely been a
turn with a direction: away from ‘scientific’ theorising, and especially from neorealism,
in which Schroeder famously diagnosed
‘an attitude toward history not uncommon among scholars of many kinds: an unconscious disdain
for it, a disregard of its complexity and subtleties and the problem of doing it well or using it
wisely; an unexamined assumption that its lessons and insights lie on the surface for anyone to
pick up, so that one can go at history like a looter at an archaeological site, indifferent to context
and deeper meaning, concerned only with taking what can be immediately used or sold’.3
Perhaps inevitably, then, the insight that historical context matters has turned scholars,
including realists themselves, towards more historically literate research. More recently,
neoclassical realists have suggested that (the sum of) state behaviour(s) accumulates
over the longer term to produce ‘systemic outcomes’, and even ‘reshape the structure of
the international system’.4 This was a risky move. Not only was it potentially self-defeat-
ing because it anchored systemic outcomes in unit-level behaviour (what Waltz called
‘reductionist’), it also hinted at the possibility of an iterative relationship between struc-
tures and agents reminiscent of (‘thin’) constructivist work and thus challenged paradig-
matic boundaries. It provides a starting point to specifying the relationship between
history and realist theories of state behaviour and international politics.
In this article, I interrogate venues for a historically literate realism that introduce an
‘understanding of the contingent, disruptive, constitutive impact of local events, particu-
larities and discontinuities’ all the while retaining aspirations to systematically theorising
international phenomena.5 I am less interested here in the ‘true’ nature of history, that is,
what it is, which constitutes the wider ‘problem of history’.6 Different conceptualisations
and understandings of history, alternatively as an (1) objective context (a series of
events), (2) individual memory and/or practical knowledge based on worldviews and
value judgements or (3) social recollection of collective past experience, for example, in
the form of cultural narrative, have permeated the philosophy and discipline of history
and the wider social sciences.7
I am more interested here in how these different conceptualisations of how history
works have been and can be leveraged theoretically and methodologically to inform real-
ist theory, and by extension explanatory theory in IR. They ‘shape and shove’ the theoreti-
cal process in particular ways.8 More specifically for the purposes of this article, I argue
that they provide fruitful avenues of inquiry within and at the paradigmatic borders of
realism. As I explore below, much of (neo)realism tends, because of its desire to glean
from historical example universal rules of international politics, towards the first concep-
tualisation and to treating history like a pool of data. This ‘naturalistic’ inclination opened
neorealism to the historicist challenge in the first place.9 Finding a theoretical place for the
latter two conceptualisations in realist approaches is therefore likely more challenging,
but need not require a return to those classical realists sceptical of the ‘scientific’ study of
history.10 Rather, it is in neoclassical realism (NCR) and its ‘intervening variables’ and
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