Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

International Relations Theory Today
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become a major source for the journal literature in this area – see, for example,
Emmanuel Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’ (1997), Richard Price and
Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Dangerous Liaisions: Critical International Theory
and Constructivism’ (1998) and Stefano Guzzini, ‘A Reconstruction of
Constructivism in International Relations’ (2000). Vendulka Kubalkova et al.,
International Relations in a Constructed World (1998), is a useful overview.
Rodney Bruce Hall’s National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and
International System (1999) is a model of serious constructivist scholarship, as
is the collection by Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (eds) The Return of
Culture and Identity in International Relations Theory (1996). Kratochwil’s
critique of Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics, ‘Constructing a
New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics and the
Constructivist Challenge’ (2000), is itself a major statement.
For the ‘English School’, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (1977/1995/
2002), remains crucial, and an earlier collection, Herbert Butterfield and Martin
Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (1966), is still the best general intro-
duction to the approach. Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society (1998), is
rapidly establishing itself as the standard history of the School. The most
interesting development in this mode is the attempt of two younger scholars to
develop a ‘critical’ international society theory: N. J. Wheeler, ‘Pluralist and
Solidarist Conceptions of International Society: Bull and Vincent on
Humanitarian Intervention’ (1992); Tim Dunne, ‘The Social Construction of
International Society’ (1995); and Dunne and Wheeler, ‘Hedley Bull’s Pluralism
of the Intellect and Solidarism of the Will’ (1996). A useful general collection of
articles can be found in the Forum on the English School in the Review of
International Studies (2001). Following an initiative by Barry Buzan, with
Richard Little and Ole Waever, there is now a very useful website promoting
the English School as a research programme – http://www.leeds.ac.uk/polis/
englishschool/.
Hazel Smith, ‘Marxism and International Relations Theory’ (1994) is a valu-
able bibliographical survey. Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism:
A Critical Survey (1990), is the best survey of both older and newer theories of
imperialism. Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (1994), offers
the most accessible and best overview of the field from a (somewhat) Marxist
perspective. Works on dependency theory and centre–periphery analysis will be
discussed in Chapter 8 below. Gramscian international political economy is
also discussed in Chapter 8; Stephen Gill (ed.) Gramsci, Historical Materialism
and International Relations (1993) is a useful collection, and a good survey is
Randall D. Germain and Michael Kenny, ‘Engaging Gramsci: International
Relations Theory and the New Gramscians’ (1998).
Habermasian critical theory is well represented by Linklater’s The
Transformation of Political Community (1998); see also his Beyond Realism
and Marxism (1990) and the programmatic ‘The Question of the Next Stage in
International Relations Theory: A Critical-Theoretic Approach’ (1992). The
collection by James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (eds), Perpetual

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Understanding International Relations
Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (1997), contains essays by a
number of important critical theorists, including Jürgen Habermas himself. The
latter’s The Past as Future (1994) contains some of his explicitly ‘international’
writings on the Gulf War and German politics and in The Inclusion of the
Other (2002), he reflects on the future of the nation-state and the prospects of
a global politics of human rights. Habermas’s Die Zeit essay on the Kosovo
Campaign of 1999 (translated in the journal Constellations), is as fine an
example of critical thinking in practice as one could hope for (1999).
Major poststructuralist collections include James Der Derian and Michael
Shapiro (eds) International/Intertextual: Postmodern Readings in World
Politics (1989); Richard Ashley and R. B. J. Walker (eds) ‘Speaking the
Language of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies’, Special Issue,
International Studies Quarterly (1990), Michael Shapiro and Hayward R.
Alker (eds) Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities (1996)
and Jenny Edkins, Nalini Persram and Veronique Pin-Fat (eds) Sovereignty and
Subjectivity (1999). Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International
Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (1999) is an excellent, albeit quite
difficult guide to this literature; easier going guides include Richard Devetak,
‘Critical Theory’ (1996) and ‘Postmodernism’ (1996), and Chris Brown,
‘Critical Theory and Postmodernism in International Relations’ (1994a) and
‘ ‘Turtles All the Way Down’: Antifoundationalism, Critical Theory, and
International Relations’ (1994c). Also very valuable are Yosef Lapid, ‘The Third
Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era’ (1989)
and Emmanuel Navon, ‘The “Third Debate” Revisited’ (2001).
Apart from the feminist writers mentioned in the text, readers are referred to
V. Spike Peterson (ed.) Gendered States: Feminist (Re) Visions of International
Relations Theory (1992), Marysia Zalewski and Jane Papart (eds) The ‘Man’
Question in International Relations (1997) and, best of recent textbooks in the
area, Jill Steans, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction (1998).
The debate between Adam Jones and his critics in the Review of International
Studies provides an interesting insight into the issue of feminism and emanci-
pation: see Jones, ‘Gendering International Relations’ (1996), Terrell Carver,
Molly Cochran and Judith Squires, ‘Gendering Jones’ (1998), and Jones,
‘Engendering Debate’ (1998).

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