Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T10:26:00.860Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Unrealism of Contemporary Realism: The Tension between Realist Theory and Realists' Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2009

Ido Oren
Ido Oren
Affiliation:
University of Florida. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Realist International Relations thinkers often intervene in political debates and criticize their governments' policies even as they pride themselves on theorizing politics as it “really” is. They rarely reflect on the following contradictions between their theory and their practice: if there is a “real world” impervious to political thought, why bother to try to influence it? And, is realist theory not putatively disconfirmed by the fact that realist thinkers have so often opposed existing foreign policies (e.g., the wars in Vietnam and Iraq)? I argue that these contradictions are not inherent in realism per se so much as in the commitment of contemporary realists to naturalistic methodological and epistemological postulates. I show that Hans Morgenthau and especially E. H. Carr, far from being naïve “traditionalists,” have grappled with these questions in a sophisticated manner; they have adopted non-naturalistic methodological and epistemological stances that minimize the tension between realist theory and the realities of realists' public activism. I conclude with a call for contemporary realists to adjust their theory to their practice by trading the dualism underlying their approach—subject-object; science-politics; purpose-analysis—for E. H. Carr's dictum that “political thought is itself a form of political action.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 283 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abel, David. 2001. “War's Fall from Grace with the End of the Cold War.” Boston Globe, January 30.Google Scholar
Ashcraft, Richard. 1975. On the problem of methodology and the nature of political theory. Political Theory 3 (1): 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkawi, Tarak. 1998. Strategy as a vocation: Weber, Morgenthau and modern strategic studies. Review of International Studies 24 (2): 159–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barkin, J. Samuel. 2008. “Realism, Prediction, and Foreign Policy.” Presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, March 26–29.Google Scholar
Bevir, Mark, and Kedar, Asaf. 2008. Concept formation in political science: An anti-naturalist critique of qualitative methodology. Perspectives on Politics 6 (3): 503–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, Edward H. 1945. Nationalism and After. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Carr, Edward H. 1964. The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919–1939. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Copeland, Dale. 2000. The Origins of Major Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Craig, Campbell. 2003. Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and Waltz. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, Jim. 1994. The Discourse of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.Google Scholar
Grimes, William. 2007. “A Prosecutorial Brief against Israel and Its Supporters.” New York Times, September 6.Google Scholar
Halliday, Fred, and Rosenberg, Justin. 1998. Interview with Ken Waltz. Review of International Studies 24 (3): 371–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslam, Jonathan. 1999. The Vices of Integrity: E.H. Carr, 1892–1982. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Hekman, Susan. 1983. Weber, the Ideal Type, and Contemporary Social Theory. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Hollis, Martin, and Smith, Steve. 1990. Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Ish Shalom, Piki. 2006. The triptych of realism, elitism, and conservatism. International Studies Review 8 (3): 441–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus, and Kaufman, Stuart J.. 2007. Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy: A study in Weberian activism. Perspectives on Politics 5 (1): 95–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1994. Hans Morgenthau, realism, and the scientific study of international politics. Social Research 61 (4): 853–76.Google Scholar
Jones, Charles. 1998. E.H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Knorr, Klaus, and Rosenau, James N., eds. 1970. Contending Approaches to International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich, and Ruggie, John Gerard. 1986. International organization: A state of the art on the art of the state. International Organization 40 (4): 753–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklick, Bruce. 2006. Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kurth, James. 1998. Inside the cave: The banality of I.R. studies. National Interest 53 (Fall): 29–40.Google Scholar
Layne, Christopher. 2006. The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Loader, Colin. 1985. The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim: Culture, Politics, and Planning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1985 [1936]. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. San Diego: Harvest Books.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2000. “India Needs the Bomb.” New York Times, March 24.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2001a. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2001b. “Guns Won't Win the Afghan War.” New York Times, November 4.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2002. Realism, the real world, and the academy. In Realism and Institutionalism in International Studies, ed. Brecher, Michael and Harvey, Frank. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2005. “Hans Morgenthau and the Iraq War: Realism versus Neo-Conservatism.” openDemocracy.com, posted May 19. Available from http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-americanpower/morgenthau_2522.jsp#. Accessed 18 May 2007.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J., and Van Evera, Steven. 1996. “Hateful Neighbors.” New York Times, September 24.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J., and Walt, Stephen. 2003a. “Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box.” New York Times, February 2.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J., and Walt, Stephen. 2003b. An unnecessary war. Foreign Policy 134 (Jan.–Feb.): 50–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J., and Walt, Stephen. 2006. The Israel Lobby. London Review of Books 28 (6).Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J., and Walt, Stephen. 2007. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1961. “The Threat to, and Hope for, the United Nations.” New York Times Magazine, October 29.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1970a [1964]. The intellectual and political functions of a theory. In Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–70. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1970b [1966]. Truth and Power. In Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–70. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1970c. Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–70. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1977. Fragment of an intellectual autobiography. In A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau, ed. Thompson, Kenneth and Myers, Robert J.. Washington, DC: The New Republic Book Company.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans J. 1985. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed.New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Oren, Ido. 2003. Our Enemies and US: America's Rivalries and the Making of Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Oren, Ido. 2006. Can political science emulate the natural sciences? The problem of self-disconfirming analysis. Polity 38 (1): 72–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osgood, Robert E. 1977. The mission of Morgenthau. In A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau, ed. Thompson, Kenneth and Myers, Robert J.. Washington, DC: The New Republic Book Company.Google Scholar
Payne, Rodger A. 2007. Neorealists as critical theorists: The purpose of foreign policy debate. Perspectives on Politics 5 (3): 503–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaltzgraff, Robert. 2006. “Letter to the Editor.” London Review of Books 28 (8). Available from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n08/letters.html#5. Accessed 19 May 2007.Google Scholar
Pichler, Hans-Karl. 1998. The godfathers of “truth”: Max Weber and Karl Schmitt in Morgenthau's Theory of Power Politics. Review of International Studies 24 (2): 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postel, Danny. 2004. Realistpolitik. The American Prospect 15 (5): 11–13.Google Scholar
Proctor, Robert. 1991. Value Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Raskin, Marcus. 1977. Morgenthau: The idealism of a realist. In A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau, ed. Thompson, Kenneth and Myers, Robert J.. Washington, DC: The New Republic Book Company.Google Scholar
Sarkissian, A.O. 1947. Review of E. H. Carr's “Nationalism and After.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 249 (January): 184–85Google Scholar
Schmidt, Brian. 1998. The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Schweller, Randall L. 1998. Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael J. 1986. Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Kenneth W. 1977. Philosophy and politics: The two commitments of Hans J. Morgenthau. In A Tribute to Hans Morgenthau, ed. Thompson, Kenneth and Myers, Robert J.. Washington, DC: The New Republic Book Company.Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen. 2004. Morgenthau as a Weberian. In One Hundred Year Commemoration of the Life of Hans Morgenthau, ed. Mazur, G.O.. New York: Semenenko Foundation.Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen. 2006. The importance of social philosophy to Morgenthau and Waltz. In Twenty Five Year Memorial Commemoration to the Life of Hans Morgenthau, ed. Mazur, G.O.. New York: Semenenko Foundation.Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen, and Factor, Regis. 1984. Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value: A Study in Philosophy, Ethics, and Politics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Turner, Stephen, and Mazur, G. O.. 2007. “In Defense of Morgenthau: Weber, Waltz, and the Methodological Presuppositions of Geopolitical Realism.” Unpublished manuscript, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.Google Scholar
Walker, R.B.J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. 1987. The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. 1991. The renaissance of security studies. International Studies Quarterly 35 (2): 211–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1967. The Politics of Peace. International Studies Quarterly 11 (September): 199–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. 1946. Religious rejections of the world and their directions. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. ed, and. Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2004a [1904]. The “objectivity' of knowledge in social science and social policy. In The Essential Weber: A Reader, ed. Whimster, Sam. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2004b [1920]. Basic sociological concepts. In The Essential Weber: A Reader, ed. Whimster, Sam. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2004c [1919]. The vocation of politics. In The Essential Weber: A Reader, ed. Whimster, Sam. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2004d [1918]. The vocation of science. In The Essential Weber: A Reader, ed. Whimster, Sam. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, Michael C. 2004. Why ideas matter in international relations: Hans Morgenthau, classical realism, and the moral construction of power politics. International Organization 58 (4): 633–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakaria, Fareed. 1998. From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar