It will hardly have escaped even the most myopic observer of international relations that we all have to become familiar with the East Asian region. This new engine of growth in the global economy is transforming the patterns of economic, military and even cultural dimensions of global power. Long gone are the days when a specialist on British foreign policy was considered an international relations authority, while someone who studied Chinese foreign policy was a mere area studies expert.

In the January 1996 issue of the Review, Bill McSweeney argues that our 1993 book, Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (IMNSAE), ‘subverts’ the analysis of Buzan’s People, States and Fear (PSF) ‘without enhancing our understanding of the problem of security’ (p. 93).Bill McSweeney, ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 81–93; O. Wæver, B. Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre with David Carlton et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London, 1993). Of the many charges that McSweeney brings to bear we will address three. First is that societal security is merely a trendy response to current concerns about nationalism rather than a more theoretically considered move. Second — and this seems to be the core of his complaint — is that the view we take of ‘identities’ is far too objectivist and not (de)constructivist enough, and that our approach makes it impossible to consider the process of identity formation as part of the politics of security. Third, he says that Buzan’s association with IMNSAE contradicts strong positions he developed in PSF and that his analysis has therefore become incoherent.

Three principal schools of political economy — economic liberalism, economic socialism and economic nationalism — are offered to students of international political economy by the professional literature. Since the end of World War II and in the context of the rivalry between the ‘liberal West’ and the ‘Socialist East’, economic nationalism has been a neglected field of study.Notwithstanding, some excellent studies of economic nationalism have been published. In the field of international relations, see R. Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987), and J. Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge, 1990). In the field of economic development, see D. Seers, The Political Economy of Nationalism (Oxford, 1983), and P. Burnell, Economic Nationalism in the Third World (Brighton, 1986). For a study of the interaction between Communism and nationalism, see R. Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List (Oxford, 1988); for the economist's point of view, see H. Johnson (ed.), Economic Nationalism in Old and New States (Chicago, 1967), and A. Breton, ‘The Economics of Nationalism’, Journal of Political Economy, 72 (1964), pp. 376–86. For an excellent review of the origins of the concept, see J. Kofman, ‘How to Define Economic Nationalism?: A Critical Review of some Old and New Standpoints’, in H. Szlajfer (ed.), Economic Nationalism in East-Central Europe and South America, 1918–1939 (Geneva, 1990), pp. 17–54. During the Cold War period and up until after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, economic nationalism attracted more attention among scholars of Africa, Latin America and Asia than among those of us who studied the political economy of the ‘centre’ (e.g., Mayall, Burnell and Seers, to mention just three, are all scholars of economic nationalism who were initially concerned with the study of developing countries). Economic liberalism and economic socialism have vied for scholarly attention, resulting in greater theoretical and analytical sophistication. During the interwar period the situation was different: economic nationalism was well represented in widely read textbooks on international relations and enjoyed attention from both its proponents and its opponents.F. H. Simonds, The Great Powers in World Politics: International Relations and Economic Nationalism (New York, 1939); J. M. Keynes, ‘National Self Sufficiency’, The Yale Review, 22 (1933), pp. 755–69; J. Viner, ‘International Relations between State Controlled National Economies’, American Economic Review, supp., 34 (1944), p. 328; L. Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order (London, 1937), pp. 326–7; T. E. Gregory, ‘Economic Nationalism’, International Affairs, 10 (1931), pp. 289–306; W. E. Rappard, ‘Economic Nationalism’, in Harvard Tercentenary publications, Authority and the Individual (Cambridge, MA, 1937), pp. 74–112. Now, with the collapse of the Communist regimes, the consequent change in world politics, the current economic problems in North America and in Europe and, last but not least, the lessons derived from the miraculous economic success of the mercantilist states of East Asia,On Japan and East Asian states as mercantilist, see Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford, CA, 1982), and Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State (New York and London, 1995); James A. Gregor (with Maria Hsia Chang and Andrew B. Zimmerman), Ideology and Development: Sun Yat-sen and the Economic History of Taiwan (Berkeley, CA, 1981). the time seems to have come to re-examine our perceptions of the discourse of political economy, and redirect scholarly attention toward the theory of economic nationalism.

In his 1996 review essay William Wallace, ‘Truth and Power, Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 22:3 (July 1996), pp. 301-21. William Wallace makes a powerful case for the discipline of International Relations adopting a ‘semi-detached’ relationship to the policy arena. Although Ken Booth has already written a response to that article,Ken Booth, ‘Discussion: A Reply to Wallace’, Review of International Studies, 23:3 (July 1997), pp. 371-7. I want to add my voice to the debate about the appropriate relationship between theory and practice.

In his review article in the July 1996 issue of this journal (‘Truth and power, monks and technocrats: theory and practice in international relations’) William Wallace wasted the opportunity to say some interesting things about an important issue. Because he has been seen by some to be making some necessary points about the state of International Relations in Britain in recent years, I wish to point out seven major problems in his argument. If I am correct about this then readers might wonder about the validity of his conclusions about the relationship between truth and power and theory and practice, but I will leave it to others to comment upon these.