Abstract
This article responds to Charlotta Friedner Parrat’s critique of our argument that the English School of international relations should embrace a more thoroughgoing interpretivism. We address four of Friedner Parrat’s objections to our argument: that our distinction between structuralism and interpretivism is too stark; that our understanding of the relationship between agency and structure is problematic; that our approach would confine the English School to the study of intellectual history; and that the English School should eschew explanation. We argue that if the School is to use structuralism, it must be clearer about how it understands structures and their relationships to agents. We argue too that interpretivism not only offers a better account of situated agency, but also that it provides the English School with one way to move beyond the description and classification of institutions in international society towards better explanations of international relations.
We are grateful to Charlotta Friedner Parrat for her thoughtful response to our work (Friedner Parrat, 2022; cf. Bevir and Hall 2020a, 2020b). Among the main points on which we agree with her, the most important is surely that the English School of international relations would benefit from greater reflection on philosophical issues. Although we disagree with some of the philosophical positions she stakes out, we are pleased to find our work has begun to prompt reflection and hope it will continue to do so. Indeed, we would like to think that replying to her response will encourage more reflection even if others inside and outside the English School also disagree with our arguments.
Friedner Parrat (2022) advances several arguments in response to our own, but here we think it might be fruitful to concentrate on what we take to be the four most important. First, she argues that our distinction between interpretivism and structuralism is too stark. Second, she questions our account of the relationship between agency and structure. Third, she suggests that our version of interpretivism confines the English School to the ‘history of thought’, focused on the work of intellectuals (p. 2). Finally, she maintains it is possible to be both an interpretivist and to engage in structuralist ‘institutional theorising’ (p. 3).
Obviously, we disagree. We think the contemporary English School’s preoccupation with treating institutions as structures is problematic. We favour another way of understanding institutions and a stronger account of agency. We argue both are better grounded. We do not advocate an exclusive focus on intellectual history, nor do we think a thoroughgoing interpretivism prevents scholars from engaging in ‘political analysis’ (Friedner Parrat, 2022: 2). 1 Rather, we think interpretivism offers the English School a philosophically justifiable approach to political analysis. And we also think embracing interpretivism allows the English School to clearly distinguish itself from other approaches and shed some persistent but ill-founded inhibitions, notably about explanation in international relations.
Institutions and structures
The English School has long been concerned with institutions – indeed, one alternative name for the School is ‘British institutionalism’ (Suganami, 1983; cf. Schouenborg, 2011). But confusingly the English School has advanced different understandings of institutions, some of which we think are philosophically incompatible, and relate to different kinds of social science.
For example, Wight (2019) treats institutions as sets of norms and rules advanced by scholars and practitioners concerning war, diplomacy, the management of the balance of war and international law. For him, institutions are bundles of ideas informing, justifying and challenging diplomatic practice: they emerge and last for as long as the politicians, diplomats, soldiers, lawyers and thinkers doing the work of international relations believe they were right, useful, serve their and their countries’ interests or are too costly to change. For that reason, Wight thinks institutions should be studied in terms of what thinkers and practitioners think about them. In other words, he stands for a hermeneutic approach to the study of international relations that focuses on the meanings that actions or rules have for the agents who perform or follow them (see Epp, 1998; Hall, 2006).
By contrast, Buzan (2014) refers to institutions and notions like ‘international society’ as ‘analytical concepts designed to capture the material and social structures of the international system’ (p. 19). They are abstractions used to describe patterns or modes of interaction between polities in different kinds of international system at different points in time. They also help to explain the actions of units within those systems. For Buzan, the institutions of war and the market – to take two examples – impose a Darwinian logic on states, driving them to build power and wealth to ensure their survival. In these kinds of ways, on his account, institutions constrain the behaviour of states and other political actors (see Buzan, 2004). And for that reason, Buzan (2014) treats them as ‘international social structures’ akin or analogous to natural structures and argues they should be studied according to the rules of modernist social science, with a ‘positivist approach’ (p. 20).
In our view, Wight’s account of institutions should be considered ‘interpretivist’ and Buzan’s ‘structuralist’. We also think they should be acknowledged as arising from different understandings of the social world and different kinds of social science. The first is agent-centred and historicist – it focuses on individuals thinking and acting in time and on the meanings of those actions for them and for others. The second is formal and ahistorical – it focuses on constructing an abstract model of the behaviour of collective actors under certain conditions. One conceives the social world as constructed and contingent and comprehensible only by accessing the meanings actions have for people. The other holds that the social world is better explained by classifying, modelling and correlating data gleaned from examining the outward behaviour of groups. One emphasises agency and the other structure (see Adcock et al., 2009).
Friedner Parrat argues that this distinction between interpretivist and structuralism is too stark and is unhelpful. She suggests the approaches are reconcilable. We disagree. We think it is necessary to make a clear and sharp distinctions precisely because they bring clarity as to what is at stake and what needs to be done. The question of how best to think about agency and structure demonstrate this point, in our view.
Agency and structure
Friedner Parrat is right to say that our philosophical argument involves a call on the English School to think again about agency and structure. Of course, this issue is an old one widely debated in several contexts in the field of International Relations (see Hollis and Smith, 1994; Wight, 2006). Nonetheless, we like to think that we are bringing something new to these debates – and that some members of the English School, like Wight, have already staked out a distinctive position on agency and structure, which we think worth re-examining.
We define interpretivism as committed to agency and structuralism as opposed to agency – or to be accurate, interpretivism as committed to and structuralism as opposed to
Friedner Parrat (2022) notes that the English School is ‘in general very accepting of the notion’ that ‘agency’ brings about ‘changes’ (p. 9). But at the same time, she wants to retain the idea that institutions should be treated as structures or at least as ‘soft structures’ (Friedner Parrat, 2022: 12). She argues these are constructed ‘intersubjectively’ (Friedner Parrat, 2022: 17). She uses Bain’s (2003) account of the emergence and delegitimisation of trusteeship to show how this works. We are sympathetic to this idea, but we question the need to retain concept of structures at all. Bain uses the word ‘structure’ once, in a discussion of Herbert Spencer’s sociology (Bain, 2003: 179), and does not rely on the concept to make his wider argument.
If the concept of structure is to be used, we argue that there must be a clear explanation of what is means. Words like ‘structure’ need to be disaggregated to indicate what those objects are and what work they supposedly do in international society. In this context, we welcome further discussion of these questions: What types of structure are there? Do discursive structures exist independent of subjective and inter-subjective intentionality? Can any type of structure constrain beliefs and so the actions people might think of performing? Do structures ever generate unmediated pressures, or are all pressures experienced only as theory-laden dilemmas? Are some structures non-ideational (or material) in that they are not even in part constructs of contingent beliefs embodied in actions? Which (if any) of the different types of structure resemble natural kinds with essences? What forms of explanation are appropriate to each type of structure?
Classification and explanation
Friedner Parrat (2022) is also right to say that we think parts of the English School use structures to explain what happens in international relations. She insists, however, that the School has ‘sought to avoid causal explanation at all costs’ and that causation ‘has never been a prime concern for the School’. 2 Instead, it restricts itself – and should restrict itself – to ‘ontological theorising’, ‘thick description’ and ‘classification’, focusing on how institutions and international society ‘constitute’ things like states (p. 5).
Again, we disagree. The English School has long asserted that certain ideas and institutions produce certain kinds of international relations. Wight (2019) and Bull (1977) argue that ‘Western values’ have created and continue to sustain ‘international society’ – and that without Western values, international society could and probably would lapse into anarchy, in the everyday sense of the term. Wight and Bull (and others) are convinced that unless the institutions of international society are conceived, valued and upheld in a certain way by thinkers and practitioners, ‘order in world politics’, to borrow the subtitle of Bull’s best-known book, will not persist, at least in the form we have come to know. There is an unambiguous causal claim being made here: without X, Y will follow. And there are more such claims in last part of
We do not think that Wight or Bull were wrong to try to explain what happens in international relations. Nor do we suggest, as some critics have, that the School needs to define hypotheses and test them to establish general laws (Copeland, 2003: 427). Rather, we contend that the English School should re-examine its philosophical underpinnings and provide a better account of how it explains things, acknowledging that there are alternatives to naturalist forms of explanation. Thick description, for example, is widely recognised, as a form of explanation. Geertz’s (1973) famous account of a Balinese cockfight is an attempt to explain why the human protagonists engage in what might appear to an outsider as irrational behaviour by reference to the meanings their actions have for them. Narrative is another form of explanation, used widely in the humanities and social science, as well as in everyday settings, like law courts (see Bevir, 2000; Hall, 2014). We suggest the English School look more closely at how interpretivists explain what occurs in the social world using thick description, narrative and concepts that do not depend on structuralist logics, including tradition, dilemma, practice and unintended consequences (see Bevir and Blakely, 2018: 18–43). These concepts allow interpretivists to describe the meanings actions have for those who perform them and thereby provide robust explanations for why they perform them.
Tradition
A tradition is the ideational background against which individuals come to adopt a web of beliefs. It influences (without determining or, in a strict philosophical sense, limiting) the beliefs they later go on to adopt. The philosophical justification for this definition of tradition derives from a postfoundational rejection of autonomy combined with a defence of situated agency. Traditions help to explain why people hold the beliefs they do; and because beliefs are constitutive of actions, they also help to explain actions. They cannot fully explain actions partly because people act on desires as well as beliefs, and partly because people are agents capable of innovating against the background of a tradition. While a tradition explains why an agent adopted an initial web of beliefs, the tradition itself is composed solely of the beliefs of other actors. We are unsure how soft structuralists would conceive of traditions. Perhaps they would think of them as systematic extra-individual level meanings. If so, they need an analysis of how meanings can exist apart from individual subjects.
Dilemma
A dilemma is any experience or idea that conflicts with someone’s beliefs and so prompts them to alter their beliefs. Dilemmas combine with traditions to explain (although not determine) the beliefs people go on to adopt and so the actions they go on to perform. Dilemmas and traditions cannot fully explain actions both because actions are informed by desires as well as beliefs and because people are agents who respond creatively to any given dilemma. Although dilemmas sometimes arise from experiences of the world, experiences are always theory-laden, so we cannot equate dilemmas with the world as it is. Like all meanings, dilemmas are always subjective or inter-subjective. In contrast, soft structuralists sometimes equate dilemmas or, if you prefer, ‘pressures’ with the world as it is. If they are to define dilemmas or pressures in this way, they need an analysis of how these pressures lead people to change their beliefs and actions. They need to argue either that people are bound to experience a pressure as it is, or that a pressure leads to new beliefs and actions even though the actor has no subjective awareness of it.
Practice
A practice is a set of actions, often a set of actions that exhibit a pattern, perhaps even a pattern that remains relatively stable across time. Practices often give us grounds for postulating beliefs, for we can ascribe beliefs to people only in interpreting their actions. Nonetheless, practices cannot explain actions since people act for reasons of their own. People sometimes act on their beliefs about a practice, but, when they do, we still explain their action by reference to their beliefs about the practice, and, of course, these beliefs need not be accurate. There is a sense in which practices can be the consequences of actions. The effects of actions often depend on the responses of others. Thus, if we equate a practice with the set of actions by which others respond to an act, then, by definition, that practice constitutes the consequences of the act. Nonetheless, we should remember that the practice is composed solely of the contingent actions of individuals; it is these actions in their diversity and contingency that constitute the consequences of the action, and we explain these actions by reference to the beliefs and desires of the relevant actors, rather than by reference to the practice itself. Soft structuralists typically want to ascribe to practices or ‘structures’ a constraining power greater than our analysis allows. If they do, they need to specify what they mean by constraint and how exactly practices constrain actions. Clearly practices – or at least the actions of others – constrain the effects. What remains unclear is how practices could constrain the actions people might attempt to perform.
Unintended consequences
Clusters of actions can have consequences that – unlike actions – are not constituted by intentional states. If a thousand people try to drive their cars across the Golden Gate Bridge at 9 am on a Monday morning, the result will be a traffic jam. Such unintended consequences are emergent properties of clusters of actions. We can explain them by reference to these actions, which in turn we explain by reference to the intentional states of the actors. Unintended consequences cannot explain actions. When people act in accord with their beliefs about the unintended consequences of a set of actions, we still explain their action by reference to their beliefs, which might not be accurate. Soft structuralists sometimes appear to assimilate all structures to unintended consequences whereas most structures are surely traditions or practices. If soft structuralists want to argue they constrain the actions people can attempt to perform (as well as those they can succeed in performing), they face the same issues we raised when considering practices.
New agendas
We do not think that adopting concepts like tradition, dilemma, practice and unintended consequence would signal a radical new direction for the English School. Nor would an overt commitment to explanation, rather than ontological theorising or classification. Several scholars associated with the School already favour a hermeneutic and historicist approaches to explaining international relations (see Epp, 1998; Jackson, 2000). Several have explored concepts like practices (see Navari, 2011). We have already noted Wight and Bull’s explanation of the origins and persistence of ‘international society’. We could also point to Vincent’s (1974) work on non-intervention, Mayall’s (1990) study of nationalism, Wheeler’s (2000) exploration of humanitarian intervention and Ian Clark’s histories of hierarchy, legitimacy and hegemony in modern international relations. All these works explain how changes in political ideas shaped and reshaped diplomatic practice in the modern period (Clark, 1989, 2005, 2007, 2011). Like Bain’s (2003) account of trusteeship, none of these depend on structuralism, and some scholars in the School overtly reject it (see Wilson, 2012).
We agree with Friedner Parrat that the English School should be inclusive. But we also think the School should continually examine the philosophical commitments of the concepts and approaches it uses. Structuralism, we argue, poses significant problems for the School, because it imports an account of the social world that all members might not affirm and that we think is ill-conceived. Drawing on structuralist concepts also undermines its distinctiveness, subordinating the School to the dominant form of social constructivism in IR, which is also committed, like Friedner Parrat, to soft structuralism. 3 We think that outcome is unfortunate. The School could be a site for the development of new interpretivist agendas, as well as the historically-sensitive studies of the development of ideas and institutions for which it is arguably best-known. Moreover, the School could move beyond classification and once more take up the more challenging and important task of explanation, drawing on well-grounded interpretivist approaches to analysing the actions of situated agents.
