Neo-Realism and the ‘Scientification’ of International Political Theory

Abstract

Whereas the English School proponents and their idea of an international society struggled with the question of what principles constitute and how to construct cooperation among states and finally failed in envisioning state-transcending, universal notions (as discussed in the previous chapter¹⁵⁹), mainstream inter-national political theory in the twentieth century epitomized in neo-realism (or ‘structural realism’ as Waltz initially termed it) and neo-liberalism abandoned the idea of unity among states. Particularism triumphs, and both the ontology and the epistemology of twentieth-century IR mainstream solidify and lift the particularistic entity of the nation state as ultimate reference for political theory and practice. Ontologically, this enhancement of particularism manifests in the notions of nationalism, patriotism, and the ‘national interest’; epistemologically, the particularizing neo-realist/neo-liberal assumption of ‘anarchy’ and the confusion between an analytical and normative dimension of political theorizing, based on the self-belief of nonnormative theorizing and the scientification of international political theory according to a natural science model — or, to put it differently, the reification of politics — are liable for the ‘triumph of particularism’. This ontological and epistemological abandonment of unity (see below Chapter IV. 1.1) results in a theoretical logic of the inevitability of conflict and war among states (see below Chapter IV.1.2).