The Foreign v. the Domestic after September 11th: The Methodology of Political Analysis Revisited
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.2006.00254.x |
| Author | Dirk Haubrich |
| Published date | 01 May 2006 |
| Date | 01 May 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Foreign v. the Domestic after
September 11th: The Methodology of
Political Analysis Revisited
Dirk Haubrich
University of Oxford
The implications of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 are far-reaching and have been
discussed and analysed at great length. In this article, it is contended that the methodology of
analysing the political, too, has been affected. The policies that liberal democracies have adopted
over the past three years to contain the new threat of transnational terrorism call into question
the methodological approaches that political researchers conventionally employ to analyse their
subject matter. Rather than examining political processes at home separately from those occurring
abroad, developments since September 11th demand that we dispense with those boundaries and
develop an integrated approach.
Introduction
Political analysis is concerned with the investigation of the processes and practices
of politics. This covers a multitude of differing perspectives and a wide diversity of
approaches to the political. The analysis of foreign and domestic policy, as sub-
fields of the political, is similarly open to various investigative advances. There is
a widespread consensus in the academy, however, that what occurs at home is dis-
tinct from that abroad, and that both should be examined separately from each
other, so that the ‘outside’ of a society is left to the discipline of international rela-
tions, while the ‘inside’ with its more formal domestic responsibilities is assigned
to political studies broadly conceived.
Early modern scholars of international relations (IR), such as E.H. Carr (1939)and
Hans J. Morgenthau (1951), were particularly eager to advance this dichotomy.
On their view, the fundamental difference between the two domains rests in the
observation that the former is hierarchical in nature, with power and authority
exerted through the compulsory jurisdiction of political and legal processes, while
the latter is irreducibly anarchic, whereby the absence of any overarching author-
ity lets states pursue their national interest of survival and power maximisation.
Most scholars of this conviction identify the state as the principal actor of analy-
sis, so that international affairs are mainly seen as the interplay between states as
rational and depoliticised unitary actors whose agency, moreover, is constrained by
the precisely defined structure of the international system (Waltz, 1979). These
themes are contrasted with the processes that apply domestically, where sub-state
actors such as groups, political parties and even individuals have the capacity to
influence courses of action that they are not granted internationally. Hence, the
POLITICS: 2006 VOL 26(2), 84–92
© 2006 The Author. Journal compilation © 2006 Political Studies Association
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