IR’s textbook histories of metatheory

The social sciences have had a long and extensive engagement with the philosophy of science (Wight Reference Wight2002, 26–29), and there are many historical explanations for why metatheory became incorporated into IR when and how it did. IR is an extremely broad and complex field, with a multitude of authors, topics, theories, journals, etc., always in flux. To delve into each is far beyond the scope of this article, which aims to trace and untangle only one thread of IR’s massive knot of interwoven practices. It remains important, however, to outline IR’s textbook narratives here, in order to situate the genealogy provided below and to highlight the significance of this article’s differing methodology and conclusions.

First, it is commonly asserted today that metatheory reflects how the discipline has become ‘increasingly unified by a self-conscious aim on the part of its practitioners to make it a ‘science’’ (Hollis and Smith Reference Hollis and Smith1990, 16). Metatheories contribute to IR’s ongoing desire to feel that ‘the field as a whole is progressing’ towards a ‘scientific status’ (Jackson Reference Jackson and Nexon2013, 9–11; Knutsen Reference Knutsen1997; Gunnell Reference Gunnell1995; Schmidt Reference Schmidt1998, Reference Schmidt2002, 10). Second, as Wight points out, the problem of ‘naturalism’ has always concerned the desirability, definition, and applicability of science to IR, from the time of Thucydides, to Hobbes, and up to the present day (Reference Wight2002, 23, 27). Hence, the use of the PoS and metatheory today should not surprise us, since it keeps IR in sync with developments in the philosophy of science. Third, due to the positivist and post-positivist theoretical debates of the 1980s, IR scholars were ‘forced’ to incorporate metatheory into their work to guard against fears of the discipline’s theoretical fracture in the face of nihilistic post-positivism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and Critical Theory (Lapid Reference Lapid1989; Schmidt Reference Schmidt2002, 10,16; Wight Reference Wight2002, 33; Reus-Smit Reference Reus-Smit2012, 528). Fourth, Wight also offers a variety of justifications for IR’s recent engagement with metatheory, ranging from assertions that increasingly refined levels of disciplinary self-reflection have ‘inevitably’ taken IR theory ‘into the terrain of the philosophy of science’ (Kurki and Wight Reference Kurki and Wight2013, 14); that metatheory was required for the discipline’s foray into the agent-structure debate (Wight 2006; Hollis and Smith Reference Hollis and Smith1994); and that, because the philosophy of science ‘had not yet emerged as a sub-discipline of philosophy,’ it was only once it became more established that it could be usefully imported into IR theory (Wight 2002, 24–25). Alternative and common explanations for IR’s use of metatheory also include the introduction of influential publications to the disciplinary milieu, such as Allison’s Essence of Decision (Hollis and Smith Reference Hollis and Smith1990, 54, 147–55; Allison 1971), Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (TIP) (Wæver Reference Wæver2010, 314; Waltz 1979), Onuf’s World of Our Making (Wendt Reference Wendt1991; Onuf Reference Onuf1989), Hollis and Smith’s Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Wendt Reference Wendt1991), and Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (Gunnell Reference Gunnell2011, 1458; Hollis and Smith Reference Hollis and Smith1990; Wendt 1999); the theoretical and substantive vacuum opened for new scholarship and theorizing catalyzed by the end of the Cold War (Monteiro and Ruby Reference Monteiro and Ruby2009; Knutsen Reference Knutsen1997, 6, 277–80; Holsti Reference Holsti1985, 131); the erosion of overtly normative theory in the late-1980s (Guzzini Reference Guzzini1998, 193); the concomitant rationalist-reflectivist or ‘fourth debate’ (Wæver Reference Wæver1997, 20; Reference Wæver1998); the rise of constructivism as a middle-way or ground (Adler 1997); and the search to replace the faltering ‘hegemony’ of realism’s paradigmatic yet anomalous ‘research programme’ (Vasquez Reference Vasquez1998, 213, 240–2). Considered from today’s present standpoint, each of these explanations presents a cogent case for how and why metatheory entered IR when it did.

With so many historical narratives to choose from, why bother conducting this genealogy? What new value does this article provide, that these common and (generally) accepted narratives do not? In short, they are presentist accounts. Each offers a detailed history of IR’s past from the perspectival vantage point of our current ‘end of IR theory.’ Reaching backwards into the past, they embrace a top-down form of conceptualizing history in which the stability and importance of the referents selected at each inquiry’s outset – such as IR’s great events, debates, authors, texts, and even theoretical concepts themselves – are projected backwards in time, accidentally determining their developmental trajectory from today’s standpoint. This is conducted with the intention of shedding additional light on a referent’s checkered past, but without challenging the fundamental assumptions justifying its inquiry – and conceptual boundaries – in the present. However, as a bottom-up or nominalist tracing of practices, a genealogy works very differently. Rather than adding new twists to a linear historical narrative, it adopts a radical historicist methodology that inverts the focus of the narratives above, so as to become a history of the present ‘in terms of its past’ (Bartelson Reference Bartelson1995, 7; Foucault Reference Foucault1991). Rather than looking backwards, a genealogy looks in a mirror. For any genealogist, despite our best intentions, our current historical (and subjective) perspective is never a neutral nor objective judge of past nor present experience or knowledge; it is akin to an a priori conceptual framework that orients and predetermines what forms and concepts of knowledge, truth, and practice, will be relevant for us – and for our historical inquiries – before any analysis can even begin (Hamilton Reference Hamilton2014). This article’s genealogy, therefore, aims to make visible this subjective framework. It circumvents IR’s historical and subjective presentist bias by refusing to acknowledge the historical continuity of any present referents or concepts. It ‘has not its task to tell what actually happened in the past’ by describing or elucidating entire topics, disciplines, or worldviews, nor does it prescribe what is ‘good or bad’ metatheory from an assumedly learned, enlightened, or atemporal normative standpoint. Its task, rather, is ‘to describe how the present became logically possible’ by focusing ‘only on those episodes of the past which are crucial to our understanding of what was singled out as problematic in the present’ (Bartelson Reference Bartelson1995, 8). By uncovering the forgotten and implicit episodes and problems of the past that could never be spotted by glancing backwards in time, and then by interpreting the transformations in our own knowledge and rationality that these moments engendered, this article offers IR a new and unexpected narrative regarding how and why we now think of IR, metatheory, and ontology, the way we do today. Histories of the past should not change, but histories of the present will transform and shift in accordance with the constitution of subjectivity that engages them in that moment. It this ethos to always question ourselves anew, rather than to reify a lost true past, that animates a genealogy.

Conducting a genealogy: problematization, practice, rationality, emergence

Most commonly associated in IR with philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, a genealogy is a way to analyze, historicize, and denaturalize commonplace or immutable practices, subjects, objects, referents, and truths. In showing how forms of knowledge and meaning that are considered to be universal or obvious are actually temporal and historical, a genealogy thereby opens the possibility for transcending the limits and boundaries that these concepts create in our thought. If an ahistorical universal is historicized and thus reconceptualized as being temporal and malleable, the possibility to think and do otherwise than what came prior to the genealogy, is created (Walters Reference Walters2012, 118; Saar Reference Saar2002, 233; Bevir Reference Bevir2008; Foucault Reference Foucault1991, Reference Foucault2000a). The essence of a genealogy lies in momentarily circumventing two fallacies orienting our historical and subjective perspective, and which were hinted at above when discussing the historical narratives of IR: presentism and finalism. Presentism occurs through the unintended projection of our contemporary discursive meaning(s) into the past, thereby mistaking present referents as being coexistent or contiguous with the past. Finalism occurs by accidentally (pre)determining or assuming a current referent as developing along a progressive or linear teleological path, from a kernel or germ in the past into its present and immutable form (Bartelson Reference Bartelson1995; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983). Unbeknownst to us, these implicit predilections invariably determine how our present knowledge and thought conceptualizes our world(s). Labeled here as presentism/finalism, it is from these twin fallacies that every successful genealogy must momentarily escape (Bevir Reference Bevir2008; Foucault Reference Foucault1991).

As Biebricher has noted, it is impossible to review every single one of the numerous studies invoking genealogy, and Foucault’s own inconsistent use of the term makes a genealogical method ‘difficult to pin down’ (2008, 365). Simply put, there is ‘no single genealogical method’ (Walters 2012, 7). That being said, this article will now offer a brief heuristic guide for conducting a Foucauldian genealogy, using four concepts that it argues are essential to genealogical analytics: problematization, practice, rationality, and emergence. As such, this article is not a declaration of what every genealogy was, is, should, or can be, but is a recipe or toolkit that scholars may draw upon in the future when conducting their own.

A genealogy of metatheory in IR

Having now problematized a contemporary referent (i.e. metatheory in IR), selected a subtle and everyday practice found within it to trace (i.e. the use of the philosophy of science to theorize and conceptualize IR’s world(s)), and interpreted the rationality underlying this practice today (i.e. a plurality of worlds), we may now analyze past texts so as to trace when and how our own rationality emerged in practice. Considering the massiveness of IR’s literature, and in order to conduct an operable genealogy within the scope of this article, this genealogy begins in the post-WWII era when our problematized referent and rationality are found to be completely absent from the selected practice.

In 1949 Dunn noted that IR’s research methodology was shifting from forms of philosophic speculation dealing with the world as a whole, to a parceled and systematic form of observation and analysis akin to the natural sciences (Reference Dunn1949, 83). If research methodologies captured these political divisions existing in the world, then IR as a ‘policy science’ could thus be established through the rigorous classification, logic, and testing, of verifiable hypotheses (Reference Dunn1949, 92). Yet, difficulties in IR’s aspiring policy science began to emerge in the early 1950s when the internal ‘perspective’ of the IR scholar became recognized as a problem. Dunn had cautioned in 1949 that the ‘unconsciously acquired value patterns’ of the IR scholar meant that there was one external world, but many different ways or internal perspectives through which scholars viewed it (Reference Dunn1949, 92). IR could only be ‘both a science and an art’ when it accounted for this problem of ‘perspectivism’: how and why ‘people … see the social world in entirely different ways’ (Icheiser Reference Icheiser1951, 311). If not, IR would be consigned to the ‘most serious occupational disease of social scientists,’ the tacit ignorance of how the ‘unconscious’ values and biases contained within each perspective differed (Reference Icheiser1951, 316; Thompson Reference Thompson1955, 740). Hence, Wright claimed that IR had to emulate the science of ‘Einstein, Planck, and Heisenberg,’ because ‘A unified discipline of international relations implies a generally accepted conception of the human world’ (Reference Wright1955, 484). This uniform ‘picture’ was ‘the Weltanschauung accepted by an individual or group,’ and was best captured by an agglomerative synthesis of the mental ‘images’ unique to each IR scholar’s perspective (Reference Wright1955, 484, 492–95).

With this problem, a space opened for psychological decision-making theories aiming to unify these disparate psychological images and perspectives. ‘It is what we think the world is like’ from many imagined viewpoints, ‘not what it is really like, that determines our behavior,’ noted Boulding. ‘If our image of the world is in some sense ‘wrong’ … it is always the image, not the truth, that immediately determines behavior. We act according to the way the world appears to us, not necessarily according to the way it ‘is.’’ (Reference Boulding1959, 120). The point here was to use the philosophy of science to aid decision-making theories in unifying disparate images and perspectives, into one objective world (McClosky Reference McClosky1956, 283). Comprising ‘a filter through which we pass our data’ in IR, a young scholar by the name of Kenneth Waltz highlighted three overlapping yet inherently ‘contradictory’ images in Man, the State, and War (Reference Waltz1959, 10, 12). He also stressed that each ‘picture of the world’ was only partial and thus overlapping, but still examined ‘the same world, the same range of events,’ albeit with ‘a different ambit’ (Reference Waltz1959, 6). Three internal images shared one concept of the world: ‘In a manner of speaking, all three images are a part of nature,’ wrote Waltz, because ‘… seldom does an analyst, however wedded to one image, entirely overlook the other two’ (Reference Waltz1959, 160). The world was stable, external, and immutable, while scholars were not.

Interpreting the rationality underlying IR theory at this time, we see a disjuncture between many individual perspectives and images, and the conceptualizing of a singular objective or external world. IR scholars had not yet divided into factions based upon their respective scientific or philosophic images or theories, but shared the frustrations of a perspectivism that saturated the entire discipline with fractured viewpoints or mental representations. There was no philosophy of science divide nor debate in IR at this point. Even into the early 1960s, IR scholars expressed ‘caution against being excessively concerned with ‘theorizing about theory’ because this ‘peril’ presented ‘the danger of visualizing a forest without any trees’ (Claude Reference Claude1960, 264; Singer Reference Singer1960, 431). Discussions concerning ‘theorizing about theory’ referred only to the epistemological scope and scale of perspectival mental representations, and the aim to achieve a single ‘grand theoretical scheme, embracing the entire reality of international relations within an agreed intellectual framework’ (Claude Reference Claude1960, 264, 265; Fox 1964). From philosophers of science commenting on IR (Kemeny Reference Kemeny1960) to IR theorists (Fox Reference Fox1967; Boulding 1967), discussions centered on avoiding pure or metatheory in IR, because, unlike the physical sciences, IR would always be a collection of fractured and subjective representations of reality. McClelland wrote disapprovingly that these perspectivist biases among IR scholars fostered ‘numerous individualistic conceptualizations about ‘realities’ and the study of those phenomena’ (Reference McClelland1960, 306), attributing these multiple subjective perspectives to a lack of mental organization or ‘consubjectivity’: a common frame of reference for ‘reality-identification’ that formed ‘the total social reality’ of ‘the empirical world that we investigate’ (Reference McClelland1960, 307, 331; Farrell and Smith Reference Farrell and Smith1967, vi).

Notably, although IR’s ‘second great debate’ has been described elsewhere (see Schmidt Reference Schmidt1998; Schmidt Reference Schmidt2002; Wight Reference Wight2002), IR’s traditionalists and behavioralists shared the same underlying rationality: both theorized and conceptualized only a single, external, ‘real world.’ Bull accused behavioralists of hiding behind ‘a world of intellectual constructs’ to escape from ‘political reality’ (Reference Bull1966, 365, 370–2), while Kaplan claimed that, unlike the traditionalist’s ‘style of story telling’ (Reference Kaplan1961, 468), behavioralist models demanded a higher degree of sophistication to ‘fit’ the ‘real world.’ (Reference Kaplan1966, 1) Behavioralists lauded the logical positivism popular in the philosophy of science for its perceived capability to exchange the philosopher’s ‘worlds of [utopian] knowledge’ or thought, for the singular ‘empirical world of politics, that has been made possible by science and technology.’ (Leiserson Reference Leiserson1967, 243, 244, 248. Also, see Alker Reference Alker1966, 639; Hamlett and Neal Reference Hamlett and Neal1969, 282; Thompson Reference Thomspon1967, 150).

As the second great debate grew stale, IR scholars became frustrated with grand theories aiming to unify the discipline’s images under one ‘underlying conception of the world [that] has remained essentially the same’ (Holsti Reference Holsti1971, 169). Yet, the underlying rationality remained: a singular world. As Jervis wrote in The Logic of Images, to ‘investigate the world from the perspective of the projection of images’ (Reference Holsti1970, 18) meant to turn away from superfluous philosophies of science and grand theory: ‘one of the best routes to international relations theory … [lies now] in the attempt to see what the world would look like if only a few dominant influences were at work.’ (Reference Holsti1970, 16; Rosenau Reference Rosenau1976, 1) Eschewing ‘grand theory’ to move inside the perspectives of the state or the individual, scholars could now view the world ‘within limited frameworks, paradigms, or hypotheses’ (Holsti Reference Holsti1971, 169, 172; Young Reference Young1972, 188). Allison bemoaned ‘The fact that almost as much time has been spent lamenting the lack of theory, and theorizing about theory in international relations, as has been invested in producing substantive work,’ implying ‘that the “discipline” is retarded’ (Reference Allison1971, 273). He theorized three self-contained and logical models, each acting as a ‘conceptual lens’ and ‘common frame of reference’ for how individuals behaved within national governments. Why? Not to unify ‘a full description of the world,’ but to ‘pick up pieces of the world in search of an answer’ (Reference Allison1971, 279, 249). Underneath the practice of IR, there was a rationality still conceptualizing one world, with no ‘metatheory’ as we know it today, being used.

As IR sought to theorize within disparate images or perspectives, the philosophy of science’s concept of the ‘paradigm’ became common. Popularized by Thomas Kuhn in Reference Kuhn1962, despite frequent usage in American political science literatures (see Truman, Reference Truman1965), paradigms were not widespread in IR until the mid-1970s (for early exceptions, see Fox Reference Fox1967, 100; Morgenthau Reference Morgenthau1967, 26; Allison Reference Allison1971, 32). Defined in 1974 by Lijphart, a paradigm was ‘a way of seeing and interpreting the world’ that combined a philosophical and metaphysical ‘world view’ with sociological sets of ‘scientific habits’ shared by research communities (Reference Lijphart1974a, 55, 43). After Keohane and Nye contrasted their ‘world politics paradigm’ against the ‘classic’ or ‘state-centric paradigm’ (Reference Keohane and Nye1971, 332, 345), the paradigm slowly became the ‘conceptual framework’ that made ‘a real difference’ in determining how IR scholars conceptualized their ‘real world.’ (Young Reference Young1972, 188) Paradigms were now used to bring clarity to a discipline self-consciously ‘without a general concurrence on a paradigm that would serve to explain the changes that the international system has undergone.’ (Morse Reference Morse1976, xvi) For instance, in a 1974 article tellingly titled ‘International Politics in the 1970s: A Search for a Perspective,’ Fagan and Puchala advocated a ‘new image’ of a security politics paradigm over previous ‘images of the world out there, [because images] produce fewer insights than they once did’ (Reference Fagan and Puchala1974, 247, 248). According to Lijphart, Kuhn’s description of scientific development entailed ‘normal science’ as securing a dominant paradigm’s worldview. But this process was dynamic, giving way to paradigmatic anomalies, competitions, debates, and eventually, replacement by a new dominant paradigm (Reference Lijphart1974a, 58). Lijphart proclaimed that a ‘traditional paradigm’ (i.e. realism) had held sway over IR’s puzzle solving from the days of Thucydides into the 1960s, but that now a competing worldview in the form of a ‘behavioral paradigm’ was predestining a ‘paradigm shift’ (Reference Lijphart1974a, 69). Being both ‘wider than and prior to theory,’ this paradigm shift would again restore a single conceptual mode of ‘seeing and interpreting the world’ for IR, quelling its longstanding theoretical and perspectival disparity (Reference Lijphart1974a, 43, 62).

Despite Phillips (Reference Phillips1974, 187) noting that predicting a paradigm shift ‘is a difficult question, one which is not answerable directly by the philosophy of science,’ a boom of paradigmatic competition in IR then occurred. IR theorists competed intensely, inventing and prophesizing a variety of paradigms – from transnational, to state-centric, to cobweb – they claimed would soon assume the mantle of the discipline’s new dominant, ‘accepted,’ or ‘future paradigm’ (Rosenau Reference Rosenau1979, 135, 143. Also see Leurdijk Reference Leurdijk1974, 54; Banks Reference Banks1978; Rochester Reference Rochester1978). Even with this increasing paradigmatic conflict and competition on the explicit surface of IR theory, like the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s before it, in the 1970s IR’s underlying rationality remained the same. From Reynolds describing how the role of the philosophy of science in IR was to determine that ‘reality’ and ‘validity’ is found in and ‘consists of our world-view’ (Reference Reynolds1973, 48), to systems thinkers taking opposite epistemological stances on the ‘organized complexity’ of reality, asserting that systems were not mere ‘mental abstractions … [because] systems exist in the real world’ (Little Reference Little1977, 281), IR’s theorizing remained within a rationality of a single ‘real world.’ Paradigms simply warred on its surface to claim it.

By 1980, many scholars anticipated that IR was on the verge of transitioning to a ‘post-behavioralist’ paradigm that would finally return IR to a uniform and normal science (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1980, 37; Little Reference Little1980, 24; Lijphart Reference Lijphart1981, 233, 238–45; Banks 1979, 266). When this post-behavioralist paradigm failed to materialize, IR became a ‘discipline now in a state of flux’ because each competing paradigm asserted ‘a particular view of the world’ as sacrosanct (Little Reference Little1984, 7; Holsti Reference Holsti1985 vii, 1, 4–5). In an almost frantic mission to ‘search for a dominant paradigm’ (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1980, 42, 44), scholars combined them into patchworks of various frameworks and syntheses, combining structuralist, pluralist, and world society paradigms (Pettman Reference Pettman1981, 39, 47), updated versions of Martin Wight’s three traditions of realist, rationalist, and revolutionist paradigms (Weltman Reference Weltman1982, 40, 41), and ‘cross-paradigmatic fertilization’ between traditional, behavioral, and radical/dialectic paradigms (Alker and Biersteker Reference Alker and Biersteker1984, 125, 136). The aptly-titled In Search of Theory cautioned IR not to hastily replace its faltering realist paradigm, because it was ‘better to have no map of the world than to be guided by one that is badly flawed’ (Mansbach and Vasquez Reference Mansbach and Vasquez1981, 487; Reference Vasquez1983, 149, 153). Even up to the mid-1980s, therefore, these confused paradigmatic battles embodied a rationality that used the philosophy of science to conceptualize a single world, now waiting to be claimed by the winner of the paradigmatic war to become IR’s dominant future-paradigm. ‘Where is all this [paradigmatic competition] taking the field? Will it remain characterized, and perhaps paralyzed, by multiple definitions of ‘reality’? Will one of the candidates for the throne succeed either in replacing or co-opting realism?’ (Sandole Reference Sandole1985, 222; Brown Reference Brown1981) A question raised here, interestingly, is why these bipartite and tripartite frameworks did not transform IR’s theoretical practice of theorizing the world through paradigms, into that which undergirds metatheory today: a style of thought conceptualizing plural worlds. Should not, for instance, have Maghroori and Ramberg’s claim that IR’s third great debate was occurring between globalist and realist paradigms (Reference Maghroori and Ramberg1982, 14), have catalyzed an IPD, or spurred a transformation in IR’s theoretical rationality towards metatheory?

A genealogical analysis ‘means making visible a singularity at places where there is a temptation to invoke a historical constant, … an obviousness that imposes itself uniformly on all.’ (Foucault Reference Foucault2002b, 226) In our case, this transformative singularity, or what Foucault also described as the ‘event’ sought by every genealogical tracing, emerges unexpectedly in 1984. Like Little, Holsti, and many others, Banks believed the realist paradigm was ‘crumbling,’ but that ‘Arguments over [paradigmatic] anomalies caused more confusion than confidence.’ While agreeing with Maghroori and Ramberg’s claim that IR’s third great debate was occurring (Reference Banks1984b, 15), Banks saw their thinking as too narrow. Each paradigm ‘intended to convey a world view more basic than theory,’ with different actors, forces, and effects (Reference Banks1984b, 15), and hence the fundamental tenets of each paradigm could never be merged to form any super-paradigm to claim IR’s throne. They were simply ‘incommensurate’ (Reference Banks1984a, 15, Reference Banks1984b, 19, Reference Banks1985a). So, instead of continuing IR’s longstanding pattern of prophesizing and fomenting dynamic and grand theoretical transitions into an imminent paradigmatic unification or a normal science, IR had to change how theories related to one another. The ‘appropriate judgment to be made is not that of deciding which [paradigm] is right and which is wrong. Rather it is a matter of recognizing how and why it is that thinkers within each paradigm belong to different mental worlds’ (Banks 1984a, xiii). Crucially, the temporality of theorizing these worlds now changed: it was not a dynamic race for conceptual domination, but a static IPD. With this bizarre claim, Banks posited paradigms as plural theoretical worlds coexisting in a safe and atemporal dialogue, rather than as the aggressive and zero-sum competitive race to replace realism with one grand winner as IR’s new, dominant paradigm. Rather than one theory or paradigm being right and another wrong, the IPD’s practice of theorizing coexistent yet ‘different metaphysical worlds’ (Sandole Reference Sandole1984, 42) now transformed one of the most important problematics driving IR theory since the 1940s – namely, ‘What was to be the newly enthroned general theory [paradigm] of international relations?’ (Banks Reference Banks1984b, 13) – into a new type of theoretical problem and practice. With each coexistent paradigmatic worldview now frozen in its place, plural theoretical worlds became, suddenly, paused in a draw. How, therefore, could IR conceptualize, theorize, and delimit the fundaments of plural metaphysical worlds? (See Banks Reference Banks1985a, 10–11; Reference Banks1985b, 219–220; Hoffman, Reference Hoffman1987; Whitworth, Reference Whitworth1989; Lapid, 1989; Smith, Reference Smith1989; Smith, Reference Smith1992; Wight, Reference Wight1996).

Although glossed-over and even ignored by the contemporary histories and narratives noted above, it is here that this genealogy detects the emergence of our contemporary theoretical rationality of plural worlds. The IPD was the germ, the catalyst, of IR’s present use of metatheory. As Goodman wrote, ‘by constructing a static image’ from dynamic experience, such a new pattern of ‘radical ordering’ ‘participates in worldmaking’ by opening new conceptual boundaries or spaces (Reference Goodman1978, 13, 14). ‘The movement is from unique truth and a world fixed and found to a diversity of right and even conflicting versions or worlds in the making’ (Reference Goodman1978, x). After the IPD occurs, we see IR scholars grappling with its new, underlying problematization of theorizing plural worlds, in new ways. From their own standpoint in the 1980s, these scholars were not able to fully articulate how or why they were doing so at the time.Footnote ² For example, Holsti lamented how ‘Meta-Theoretically-Driven-Theory’ suddenly arose from new ontological and epistemological considerations in the late-1980s, leading to ‘dead ends’ because of a failure to enhance a basic understanding of substantive international relations (Reference Holsti1989, 260). Yet, ‘The field [of IR] is maturing,’ Holsti also asserted, ‘because there is an increased recognition and acceptance of multiple realities, and hence of multiple theories’ (Reference Holsti1989, 260, 261). Similarly, while Onuf wrote that his work was ‘a tentative first step toward that new [disciplinary] paradigm’ (Reference Onuf1989, 22), he constructed his ‘world of our making’ through the nominalism of Goodman, who also asserted that ‘no one ‘world’ is more real than others. None is ontologically privileged as the unique real world’ (Reference Onuf1989, 37). Indeed, Onuf’s World of Our Making is a prime example of a scholar’s explicit rejection of the IPD’s substantive content, while answering its implicit problematization. ‘My position, and Goodman’s, as I understand it,’ Onuf claimed, grants ‘existential standing to plural worlds’ because ‘We construct worlds we know in a world we do not’ (Reference Onuf1989, 37, 38). IR’s image of one fixed world was now a plurality of worlds for IR theory to engage.

As this new theoretical rationality took hold, an explicit theorization of multiple realities and worlds established itself in IR’s literature (e.g. see Wight Reference Wight1996). With it, a new type of theory entered IR: theories about theoretical worlds, or metatheory. Guzzini, one of the few IR scholars in the 1990s to note that the IPD ‘provided the opening round’ of metatheoretical discussion in IR, wrote that ‘its main effect was to freeze one historical moment in the development of the discipline into allegedly immutable categories’ (Reference Guzzini1998, 109). However, Guzzini joined the chorus of scholars and historians discounting the IPD because its substantive content – its tripartite framework – fostered a theoretical conservatism by legitimizing ‘business as usual,’ reifying rigid tripartite categories that misused the concept of Kuhnian ‘incommensurability’ (Reference Guzzini1998, 191–3; Reference Guzzini1993, 446; Holsti Reference Holsti1985).Footnote ³ Ironically, Guzzini also admitted that he was unable to explain the resilience of this ‘seemingly irreducible’ IPD in the literature, because its being ‘riddled with conceptual difficulties’ should have rendered it facile or quickly supplanted by more accurate metatheories (Reference Guzzini1998, 118). It was declared ‘to be pretty well over’ by 1989 (Windsor, Reference Windsor1989, x), and references and pontifications concerning the IPD, and the eventual domination of IR theory by a single paradigm, were disappearing as well. In their place, scholars such as Lapid (Reference Lapid1989), Holsti (Reference Holsti1989), George (Reference George1989), and Smith (Reference Smith1989) now debated the familiar historical narratives outlined above, discussing ‘paradigmatism’ or perspectivism as facilitating relativistic post-positivist scholarship and normative theories (Guzzini Reference Guzzini1998). Onuf declared that he ‘did not believe a paradigm theory for IR is forthcoming’ and that he did ‘not believe it was possible’ (Reference Onuf1989, 14). Slowly fading from general discussion, the IPD became known as a paradigmatic pluralism that IR was consigned to live with (Wæver Reference Wæver1996, 155; Reference Wæver1998. Also, see Guzzini, Reference Guzzini1993, Reference Guzzini1998; Wight, Reference Wight2002; Schmidt, Reference Schmidt2002; Jackson, 2008, 2010). Today, it has been largely shelved; relegated to textbooks as a bygone pedagogical aid, or simply ignored and forgotten (Guzzini Reference Guzzini2013).

Looking back at IR’s past practices from today’s presentist/finalist vantage point, there appears to be no question that the IPD and its subsequent paradigm wars have largely disappeared from explicit disciplinary debates. Bennett claims they were ‘ultimately distracting and even counterproductive,’ and hence ‘there is a widespread sense that [theoretical] progress has arisen in spite of inter-paradigmatic debates rather than because of them’ (Reference Bennett2013, 460). Even in the 1990s, critics lambasted the IPD’s ‘notion of ‘different worlds’ … [as] something of a de rigueur’ in IR theory, with its erroneous use of Kuhnian incommensurability dooming it through a ‘foundational fallacy’ privileging a nominalist relativism over the epistemological certainty of one material world (Wight Reference Wight1996, 294; Wendt Reference Wendt1998, 107). Yet, from a presentist/finalist vantage point, what these narratives omit is how their critiques take place on the implicit conceptual grounds that first congealed and emerged in the IPD. This event formed and grappled with a new conceptual problem hitherto unexplored in IR: how best to think and to compare the theoretical fundaments of a static plurality of theoretical and metaphysical worlds. As will be explored below, not even Banks (nor detractors of the IPD, and later, metatheory itself) were aware of this transformation in IR’s background or everyday rationality at the time. Instead, while the explicit contents of the IPD’s tripartite framework faded and were even ridiculed (Wight Reference Wight1996), and the discipline’s embrace and later allergy towards metatheory developed, the rationality underlying both the IPD and metatheory evinced tremendous theoretical changes occurring implicitly in the discipline. As theorizing plural theoretical worlds demanded theories about theories, a specific metatheoretical concept pertaining to theorizing world(s) became embraced and naturalized. It is, perhaps ironically, what is de rigeur in IR today: ontology.

Ontology: filling the gaps between the IPD’s worlds

IR’s present use of metatheory is associated with the practice of theorizing the basic fundaments of IR’s world(s) using the concept of ontology (see Jackson, Reference Jackson and Nexon2010).Footnote ⁴ ‘It is almost unthinkable among social scientists nowadays to envision a formulation of social theory that does not posit an ontological beginning point … that one takes to be the foundations of the (world-)view being explored or posited’ (Arfi Reference Arfi2012, 191). In other words, ontology is now a common, obvious, or uncontroversial term in IR. Its use – both in (meta)theoretical discussions, and in common parlance – is fairly ubiquitous (for exceptions to the term, see Chernoff Reference Chernoff2005; Gunnell Reference Gunnell2011). Ontologies identify the ‘building-blocks and fundaments’ underlying every referent and theory in IR (Guzzini Reference Guzzini2013, 533; Jackson, Reference Jackson and Nexon2010). They describe the being of entities within our theories, and thus how these beings exist and relate to one another. ‘[W]e all have ontologies,’ notes Wendt, because ‘we all make assumptions about what exists in the world: dogs, cats, and trees’ (Reference Wendt1999, 22, 370). These ontologies order our different ‘visions of how the world is and how it should be’ (Wight 2006, 2). In a recent commentary on the status of metatheory in IR, Reus-Smit notes that ‘ontology is not considered an intractable mire in the same way as epistemology,’ reflecting the tendency of IR scholars ‘of diverse persuasions advocating a focus on ontology over epistemology’ (Reference Reus-Smit2013, 595). Ontology has thus secured an inoffensive place in IR’s lexicon. Indeed, to read that ‘Theories are ontology-building, ontology-defining, and [that] claims regarding the uniqueness or otherwise of ontological statuses must be theoretically based,’ expresses nothing controversial in IR today (Ringmar Reference Ringmar2014). Yet, what explains the apparent normality and widespread use of this concept? It is easy to attribute it to the rise of metatheory since the late-1980s, in that ‘a specific trend has evolved which advocates a renewed focus on matters of ontology as a way to overcome or at least to reconceptualise the divides within the field of IR’ (Michels Reference Michel2009, 397). However, if IR theory has a penchant for borrowing concepts from the philosophy of science (Gunnell Reference Gunnell2011, 1457), and if ontology was commonly used in philosophical texts for centuries, and in the philosophy of science since (at least) the 1940s (e.g. see Margenau Reference Margenau1941; Bergmann Reference Bergmann1950; Maxwell Reference Maxwell1962; Hanneborg Reference Hanneborg1966; Giere Reference Giere1973), then why was ontology very rarely used in IR prior to the IPD? For instance, Waltz’s (1979) brilliant exposition of the philosophy of science in TIP reminds us that discussions of ontological beginning points or divisions were not necessary nor prevalent at this time. But, should not ‘ontology’ have featured prominently in the paradigm wars of the 1970s–80s, and especially during the comparisons of theoretical worlds occurring in the IPD itself? Upon analysis, the concept is absent. This is despite the fact that, prior to the IPD, there were countless situations that would have warranted and demanded the use of ontology by IR’s current standards. For a small example: perspectivism’s ‘multiple realities, multiple perceived’ were structured by ‘taxonomic classifications,’ but not ontologies (McClelland Reference McClelland1960, 320). Young claimed that every IR scholar ‘views the real world in terms of some conceptual framework … [yet determining] what a person regards as worth explaining’ was simply impracticable (Reference Young1972, 188). Presaging the recent work of Guzzini and Jackson almost verbatim, Mitchell exclaimed during the paradigm wars that IR’s puzzle was finding the ‘fundamental’ ‘conceptual element establishing the basic units of which reality is deemed to consist,’ through the ‘picking out and labeling [of] particular phenomena to serve as basic building blocks for the development of theoretical assertions about the nature of … the referent world’ (1981, 40, 41, 3–40. Also, see Lijphart 1974b; Smith 1979, 241-242). Even Banks declared during the throes of the IPD that ‘The most confusing usages [within each paradigm] occur at the level of specific concepts – the building blocks of any theory’ (Banks Reference Banks1984a; Reference Banks1984b; Reference Banks1985a, 13; Reference Banks1985b). Still the concept of ontology was never invoked by these scholars, even when their contentious debates were steeped in the philosophy of science for decades while comparing the fundaments of worldly paradigms.Footnote ⁵ Why this past ontological silence when the concept roars so loudly today?

As Smith once wrote, IR’s ‘silences are often its most significant feature. Silences are the loudest voices’ (1995, 2). Ontology was silent in IR until the IPD transformed its everyday rationality of theorizing, by opening a conceptual gap between static worlds that required theories about the constitution and interrelation of theoretical worlds – metatheory – to fill it. What concept best theorized this new metatheoretical problematique concerning the differing fundaments or building blocks between atemporal ‘metaphysical’ worlds? As Roy Bhaskar wrote, ‘the philosophy of science abhors an ontological vacuum’ (1975, 30),Footnote ⁶ and so the metatheory of scientific realism and its concept of ‘ontology’ entered IR in ways never before possible (see Holsti Reference Holsti1989; Dessler Reference Dessler1989; Lapid 1989; Wendt Reference Wendt1987). As noted by Gunnell, in 1987 Wendt became the first IR scholar to successfully entrench metatheories concerning ontology into IR using scientific realist concepts of ontological differentiation (Reference Gunnell2011, 1458), with the ultimate aim of elaborating the fundamental ontological differences between theories. Giving credit to Maclean’s (Reference Maclean1981) book chapter for being one of ‘the only discussions of scientific realism in international relations’ up to that point, Wendt stressed the importance of researching the ‘ontologically primitive units’ of any agents, structures, or theories under analysis because the structural theories he was discussing were most ‘strongly conditioned by a more fundamental difference of ontology’ (Reference Wendt1987, 336–337). Wendt was closely followed by Dessler’s scientific realist argument that ‘a theory’s ontology (the substantive entities and configurations a theory postulates) is both the basis of its explanatory power and the ultimate grounding of claims it may have to superiority over rival theories (Reference Dessler1989, 444). Coming prior to the IPD in 1981, Maclean’s use of scientific realism’s metatheoretical ontology fell flat when placed within a background rationality of one shared world. Ontological differentiations were just not relevant at this time. After the IPD, however, claims that scientific realism opposed ‘Kuhn’s view that paradigms create “different worlds”, because IR scholars ‘hook on to the world’ through meaning accrued by language regulated and determined by existents in a single, ‘mind-independent, extra-linguistic world’ (Wendt 1999, 53–7), were ideal solutions to IR’s new theoretical problematization. Styles of ontological metatheorizing, as embraced by scientific realism, capitalized on this implicit conceptual vacuum of plural worlds. It exploded in IR scholarship thereafter, and throughout the 1990s, to the present day (for only a small sample, see Wendt Reference Wendt1987, Reference Wendt1991, Reference Wendt1998, Reference Wendt1999; Dessler Reference Dessler1989; Hollis and Smith Reference Hollis and Smith1990, Reference Hollis and Smith1994; Schmidt 1994, 357;Chan and Jabri Reference Jabri and Chan1996; Wight Reference Wight1996, 2006; Smith 1995; Jackson 2008).

Although this literature is massive and cannot be summarized here, since the 1990s, IR’s substantive and explicit theoretical content grew tired of compartmentalized paradigmatic debate. The philosophy of science was soon used to gauge the perils and possibilities of paradigmatism, theoretical synthesis, pluralism, eclecticism, and middle-range theories – yet, all while indirectly taking into account the ‘metatheoretical challenge’ setting forth ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies, for thinking both about a world, and the ‘different worlds’ of IR theories (Jackson 2008; Smith Reference Smith1995; Michel 2013). The point is that not that all IR scholars now using ‘ontology’ are avid Bhaskarians, nor scientific realists. The point is that as the IPD faded from explicit discussion, its underlying rationality – its style of thinking IR – became increasingly entrenched, as evidenced through IR’s widespread use of ontology and (metatheoretical) worlds today. To refer to scientific realism or to ontology, therefore, is to incidentally summon ghosts of the IPD. For instance, Bennett laments how ‘the IR field’s lingering paradigm wars are another manifestation of out-of-date and problematic views on the philosophy of science’ that are distracting and counter-productive. Yet, for Bennett, ‘The way out of the cul-de-sac of paradigms and research programs lies … in a parallel development in the philosophy of social science in the last several decades: the scientific realist turn toward theories about causal mechanisms as the locus of scientific explanations’ (Reference Bennett2013, 462, 465). The irony here is that IR’s contemporary use of ontology and its proclivity to embrace scientific realism as a way out of IR’s ‘sterile, second-order’ metatheorizing, is rolled back upon itself to attack the very conceptual foundation that first established it, and upon which it still stands. To cognize and even to reject metatheoretical debates and concepts by recognizing and theorizing about world(s), ontology, scientific realism, or metatheory, highlights the existence of, and dependence upon, the tacit and shared underlying problematization and rationality that emerged in the IPD. Despite its de rigeur or normalized status today, ‘ontology’ did not fall from theoretical heaven as a pure concept referring to being(s). It is dependent upon an implicit and shared background rationality that allows it to be articulated and made mutually intelligible. Hence, regardless of what side of ontology or the philosophy of science debate one stands on, scholars such as Wendt and Wight, or Smith and Jackson, could not debate metatheory nor ontology without sharing these conceptual rules of the game.

By tracing the emergence of this knowledge, this genealogy has revealed not its permanence or immutability but the recent and unexpected twists it has taken in IR as incidental spinoffs of the IPD and Bhaskarian realist philosophy. For example, Jackson’s noted claim that the ‘contemporary philosophical usage’ of ontology is divided between scientific and philosophic ontologies (Reference Jackson and Nexon2010, 28), is not universally shared across the social sciences, as might be assumed. Instead, it is derived from a specific IR article by Patomäki and Wight (Reference Patomäki and Wight2000), who – for reasons examined above – took this division and definition of ontology from Bhaskarian scientific realism. ‘[V]iewed from an ontological perspective current understandings of IR take on an altogether different hue,’ they write, to be engaged through the ‘benefits of metatheoretical inquiry to IR’: an explicit opposition to an implicit ontological problem of a relativism of worlds (Reference Patomäki and Wight2000, 215, 216). It is thus no wonder why scholars such as Brown note that ‘the exchange between our discipline and the rest of the social/human sciences is pretty much one way, and not in our favour’ (Reference Brown2013, 484). Theories and concepts we in IR assume to be universal, innocuous, or without history – such as ontology – contain their own implicit boundaries, limits, and histories. They have been shaped and steered in unique but forgotten ways that affect what can or cannot be made thinkable when they are cognized and used.Footnote ⁷ Agreeing with Brown, therefore, IR’s present proclivity towards a form of ‘ontology’ that has Bhaskarian roots and has since been developed and shaped specifically within IR, may accidentally encourage conceptual isolation rather than inter-disciplinary conversation. Indeed, it is in revealing these surprising facets of the history of our present constitution that genealogical analysis adds its value. Where IR goes from here is not for a genealogy to declare, although it opens unexpected paths that future researchers may explore.