What Should We Expect of a Liberal Explanatory Theory?
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | Adam R. C. Humphreys |
| DOI | 10.3366/jipt.2012.0024 |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT OF A LIBERAL
EXPLANATORY THEORY?
ADAM R. C. HUMPHREYS
Abstract: One of the most problematic aspects of the ‘Harvard School’ of liberal
international theory is its failure to fulfil its own methodological ideals. Although
Harvard School liberals subscribe to a nomothetic model of explanation, in
practice they employ their theories as heuristic resources. Given this practice,
we should expect them neither to develop candidate causal generalizations
nor to be value-neutral: their explanatory insights are underpinned by value-
laden choices about which questions to address and what concepts to employ.
A key question for liberal theorists, therefore, is how a theory may be
simultaneously explanatory and value-oriented. The difficulties inherent in
resolving this problem are manifested in Ikenberry’s writing: whilst his work
on constitutionalism in international politics partially fulfils the requirements of
a more satisfactory liberal explanatory theory, his recent attempts to develop
prescriptions for US foreign policy reproduce, in a new form, key failings of
Harvard School realism.
Keywords: Ikenberry, international relations (IR) theory, Keohane, liberalism,
methodology, Moravcsik
In 1995, David Long called for the closure of what he termed the ‘Harvard
School of Liberal International Theory’. He coined this term to denote efforts by
scholars such as Robert Keohane and Andrew Moravcsik, then based at Harvard,
to develop a liberal theory that would subsume or supersede (neo)realism.1
Long (1995: 489–91, 501) welcomed attempts to ‘frame liberalism’ as an
‘explanatory theory’, but criticized Harvard School liberals for borrowing
‘a number of normative, ontological, and methodological premises’ from
realism. He argued that this stifled the prospects for a renewal of liberalism’s
Journal of International Political Theory, 8(1–2) 2012, 25–47
DOI: 10.3366/jipt.2012.0024
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
www.eupjournals.com/jipt
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Adam R. C. Humphreys
‘emancipatory project’ and reinforced ‘the centrality and primacy of state-centric
power-oriented realism’.
Long was right to be dissatisfied with the narrowing of the liberal tradition
imposed by Harvard School liberals. However, he was too quick to set up
his own preference for a historical approach to the development of liberal
political thought as the only alternative to the sort of explanatory theory that
Keohane and Moravcsik seek to develop. He largely ignores one of the most
problematic aspects of Harvard School liberalism: its failure to live up to its own
methodological ideals. Harvard School liberals are, in principle, committed to
a nomothetic model of explanation wherein the function of theory is to develop
causal generalizations from which outcomes may, under specified conditions, be
deduced. In practice, however, they do not manage (or even attempt) to specify
such generalizations. Instead, their theories function as heuristic resources: they
help to identify causes by specifying a particular type of question, providing
a conceptual vocabulary, and highlighting certain empirical foci. Because they
help to identify causes, these theories are explanatory, but they do not offer the
certainty or determinacy associated with the nomothetic ideal.
Harvard School liberals’ explanatory practices thus reveal their own
methodological demands to be empty: theories do not need to develop testable
causal generalizations in order to create explanatory insight. It cannot, therefore,
be right to concede methodological superiority to Harvard School liberals,
allowing their aspirations to define what we should expect of a liberal
explanatory theory: their practices provide a better guide than does their
rhetoric. In fact, liberal theories are more likely to help us to understand (and
hence to explain) international relations by developing distinctive conceptual
vocabularies than by developing causal generalizations.2Liberal theorists should
adapt their ambitions and expectations accordingly. Construing theory as a
heuristic resource creates space for broader and more satisfactory liberal
explanatory theories than those which Long criticizes.
Closely associated with Harvard School liberals’ failed pursuit of the
nomothetic ideal is a critique of what they see as ideological formulations of
liberal ideas and a determination to develop strictly value-neutral liberal theories.
This methodological prescription fails to recognize the force of Max Weber’s
(2004) contention that all social scientific theories are rooted in evaluative
judgements. The significance of his argument is twofold. First, it reveals the
importance of distinguishing between the way in which all explanatory theories
are value-laden and the way in which ideologies universalize particular claims,
thereby promoting particular ends. Because Harvard School liberals fail to draw
this distinction, they tend to represent liberal ideas in ways that make those
ideas appear ideological. They do so through an inappropriate universalization
that is, in fact, the flipside of the nomothetic ideal. Because they believe that
theories explain by developing testable generalizations, they re-present ideas
that may otherwise be heuristically useful in a universalized form that makes
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