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Mechanisms and microfoundations in International Relations theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2013

WILLIAM MCGINLEY
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Abstract

This article looks at prospects for a mechanism-based research strategy in the study of International Relations. Over the past three decades, the notions of mechanism and microfoundation have taken a central place in discussions of explanation and ‘micro-macro’ problems in social science. The upshot of much of this discussion has been a call for mechanism-based explanations – explanations of macro-level phenomena in terms of micro-level mechanisms. Some work of this kind can already be found in IR theory, including in systemic research. However, a number of IR theorists, including Kenneth Waltz and Alexander Wendt, have argued that micro-oriented strategies like this will not work, pointing to incongruities between system- and unit-level phenomena. This article argues that these pose less hindrance to a fully-developed model of mechanism-based explanation, and that the field has much to gain from further exploration of this strategy. In particular, mechanism-based explanations could help bring structure back to the centre of discussion in IR theory, and might even give us a way out of the field's own micro-macro problems.

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Articles
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Review of International Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 367 - 389
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Copyright © British International Studies Association 2013 

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References

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11 One particularly important issue I do not tackle is the meaning of the term ‘structure’. Here I use it in a relatively broad and conventional sense, to refer to both social entities (for example, institutions, societies, systems) and their properties (for example, unstable, anarchic, bipolar) – the kinds of things mechanism-based explanations normally target, and which reductionists and holists disagree most sharply about. Alternative uses of the term can be found in some work on the agent-structure problem.

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14 I have in mind, in addition to the examples I discuss below, virtually all that have engaged in some kind of systemic theorising, from Morton Kaplan to Immanuel Wallerstein to John Mearsheimer. Few IR theorists are strict systemic theorists, but this is part of the point I want to make – they recognise the explanatory value of lower levels of analysis, and the need for microfoundations of some kind. For overviews of various parts of the literature, see Jervis, Robert, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Levy, Jack S. and Thompson, William R., Causes of War (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)Google Scholar.

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16 Ibid., ch. 8. See also Waltz, Kenneth, ‘The Stability of a Bipolar World’, Daedalus, 93:3 (1964), pp. 881–909Google Scholar.

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20 Singer, ‘Man and World Politics’, p. 143.

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23 See Waltz, ‘Stability of a Bipolar World’; and Theory, ch. 8.

24 See, for example, Deutsch and Singer, ‘Multipolar Power Systems’.

25 Vasquez, War Puzzle Revisited, pp. 269, 325.

26 Wendt, Social Theory, ch. 7.

27 Ibid., ch. 4.

28 Ibid.

29 Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’, p. 359.

30 Indeed, this criticism has already been made of structuration theory, on which Wendt partly bases his own. See, for example, Carlsnaes, Walter, ‘The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis’, International Studies Quarterly, 36:3 (1992), pp. 245–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wight, Agents, Structures.

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38 Kim, Jaegwon, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 106Google Scholar. Note that causal mechanistic explanations can also be inter-level, relating lower-level causes to higher-level effects.

39 Cummins, Robert, The Nature of Psychological Explanation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), p. 1Google Scholar.

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44 See Polger, Thomas W., ‘Realization and the Metaphysics of Mind’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 85:2 (2007), pp. 233–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Philosophers disagree about the exact nature of realisation relations, a matter I will not get into here. They do, however, agree that they are non-causal.

45 Mechanism-based explanation resembles what Wendt has called ‘constitutive explanation’. The latter involves identifying the conditions that make it possible for an object or event to have a certain property. Wendt mentions constitutive explanations of dispositional properties, but focuses more on explanations of qualitative properties – properties of ‘being’ this or that, rather than ‘doing’ this or that. See Wendt, Alexander, ‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 24:5 (1998), pp. 101–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Waltz, Theory, p. 61. See also Fearon, James D., ‘Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, and Theories of International Relations’, Annual Review of Political Science, 1 (1998), pp. 289–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 These theories might be interpreted as providing mechanistic explanations of a causal variety instead, but this is beyond the scope of this article.

48 See Kim, Jaegwon, Supervenience and Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 Ibid., pp. 23–4.

56 Ibid. See Craver, Explaining the Brain, for a different, counterfactual approach.

57 See Most, Benjamin A. and Starr, Harvey, ‘International Relations Theory, Foreign Policy Substitutability, and “Nice” Laws’, World Politics, 36:3 (1984), pp. 383–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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64 See McGinley, ‘Reduction’.

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69 See, for example, Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’.

70 See ibid.; as well as Dessler, ‘What's At Stake’; Carlsnaes, ‘Agency-Structure Problem’; and Wight, Agents, Structures, among several others.

71 See, for example, Singer, ‘Level-of-Analysis Problem’; Jervis, Perception; Waltz, Theory; Gourevitch, ‘Second Image Reversed’; Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’; and Levy and Thompson, Causes of War. The view of the debate as a simple reductionist/systemic dichotomy is long gone of course, but this does not mean the terms no longer apply – they just apply in a more complex, relativistic way. See Hollis, Martin and Smith, Steve, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Fearon, ‘Domestic Politics’.

72 Levy and Thompson, Causes of War, pp. 18, 207.

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75 Dessler, ‘What's At Stake’, p. 443.

76 Wendt, ‘Agent-Structure Problem’, pp. 337–8.

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78 See Waltz, Theory; and Singer, ‘From A Study of War to Peace Research’, p. 537.

79 See, for example, Waltz, Theory.

80 Levy and Thompson , Causes of War, pp. 18–20, make a similar point.

81 But they may in some cases. See Siverson and Sullivan, ‘Distribution of Power’, p. 474; and Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, ‘Empirical Support’.

82 Kim, Jaegwon, Mind in a Physical World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1998), pp. 80–7Google Scholar.

83 Watkins, for example, famously described methodological individualism as saying that every social outcome is a result of a ‘particular configuration of individuals, their dispositions, situations, beliefs, and physical resources and environment’, and that all social outcomes must be explained in terms of ‘the dispositions, beliefs, resources, and inter-relations of individuals’. See Watkins, , ‘Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 8:30 (1957), p. 106Google Scholar.

84 See Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 157–84.

85 Singer, ‘Man and World Politics’, pp. 143–4.

86 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 162–3.

87 See, for example, Waltz, Theory, p. 66.

88 Ibid., p. 60, emphasis added.

89 See also Wendt's distinction between macro-structure and ‘micro-structure’. Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 145–56.

90 For the two most influential statements of the argument, see Putnam, Hilary, ‘The Nature of Mental States’, in Putnam, Hilary (ed.), Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 429–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fodor, Jerry A., ‘Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’, Synthese, 28:2 (1974), pp. 97–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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94 Ibid., p. 154.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid., p. 156.

97 See Waltz, Theory, pp. 39–40, 65–70, and 77–8.

98 See Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 254, 343, and 364.

99 Ibid., pp. 155–6; and Wendt, ‘State as Person’, pp. 299–301.

100 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 150–2.

101 See Polger, ‘Realization’.

102 See Lycan, William G., Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), ch. 4Google Scholar.

103 Most and Starr, ‘Foreign Policy Substitutability’, p. 402.

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106 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 279–85.

107 Ibid., pp. 162–4. See also Wendt, ‘State as Person’, pp. 299–301.

108 Bechtel and Mundale, ‘Multiple Realizability Revisited’.

109 See, for example, Jervis, ‘System Effects’, pp. 12–17; Wight, Agents, Structures; Leon, ‘Reduction’; and Joseph, Jonathan, ‘The International as Emergent: Challenging Old and New Orthodoxies in International Relations Theory’, in Joseph, Jonathan and Wight, Colin (eds), Scientific Realism and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 51–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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111 Wendt, Social Theory. See also Wendt, ‘State as Person’.

112 Wendt, Alexander, ‘Flatland: Quantum Mind and the International Hologram’, in Albert, Mathias, Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Wendt, Alexander (eds), New Systems Theories of World Politics (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), pp. 279–310Google Scholar.

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116 Armstrong, Universals, p. 45.

117 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 62–5, and 215–7.

118 Wight, Agents, Structures, p. 46.

119 Sober, Elliott, ‘The Multiple Realizability Argument against Reductionism’, Philosophy of Science, 66:4 (1999), p. 550CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Jackson and Pettit, ‘Explanatory Ecumenism’.