IR and the false promise of philosophical foundations

Abstract

International Relations (IR) is uneasy about its status as a 'science'. Throughout a long history of attempts to legitimate the field as 'scientific', IR scholars have imported multifarious positions from the Philosophy of Science (PoS) in order to ground IR on an unshakable foundation. Alas, no such unshakable foundation exists. The PoS is itself a contested field of study, in which no consensus exists on the proper foundation for science. By importing foundational divisions into IR, the 'science' debate splits the discipline into contending factions and justifies the absence of dialogue between them. As all foundations require a leap of faith, imperial foundational projects are always vulnerable to challenge and therefore unable to resolve the science question in IR. In this article, we seek to dissolve rather than solve the 'science' debate in IR and the quest for philosophical foundations. We argue that IR scholars should adopt an 'attitude towards' rather than a 'position in' the irresolvable foundational debate. Specifically, we advocate an attitude of 'foundational prudence' that is open-minded about what the PoS can offer IR, while precluding imperial foundational projects, which attempt to impose a single meta-theoretical framework on the discipline. This requires knowing what PoS arguments can and cannot do. As such, foundational prudence is post-foundational rather than anti-foundational. A prudent attitude towards philosophical foundations encourages theoretical and methodological pluralism, making room for a question-driven IR while de-escalating intradisciplinary politics.

The Agency of the Muslim IR Researcher in Developing a Theory of Islamic Agency in International Relations

“…And fourth, that by being a Muslim, an individual becomes morally responsible and accountable before Allah (SWT) for observing moral guidelines given to human beings in the Quran. These beliefs are presented as foundational in the sense of being the Islamic version of what Monteiro and Ruby describe as “indubitable beliefs from which further propositions can be inferred to produce a superstructure of known truths” and that “there are no further commitments to which one might turn to justify knowledge.” They state that “foundational positions have become part and parcel of the way IR scholars think about themselves and their work” (Monteiro & Ruby, , p. 19). These realizations do not only justify that Muslim IR researchers are entitled to think of themselves and of their own agency in terms of their Islamic foundational commitments, but also bring into light a layer of faith‐based knowledge when producing/seeking knowledge about the social world, which in turn puts both Muslim scholars and western IR scholars on the same level of epistemic access, one that is underlined by faith; the question then becomes not one of who base their knowledge claims on faith, but which faith each base their work on.…”

“…Those barriers ensure that whatever ontological “truths” he picked up from his prayer rug do not make it to his desk. Indeed, the Muslim researcher takes a leap of faith when moving from his prayer rug to his desk, but so do positivists, anti‐positivists, and postpositivists when moving back and forth between their philosophical foundational commitments and IR theory (Monteiro & Ruby, , p. 19), and in turn reproducing the ontological and epistemological barriers that “police” knowledge production in the discipline. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that a “theory of Islamic agency in international relations” needs a commitment to Islamic foundations.…”

What Should We Expect of a Liberal Explanatory Theory?

“…One reason for caution is that it is unclear what kind of foundational position might underpin such a claim. See Monteiro and Ruby (2009). 6 What may be deduced from a causal generalization is not an explanation of a particular episode, but rather its membership of a class of episodes that always occur in a particular way.…”

SYSTEM EFFECTSAND THE PROBLEM OF PREDICTION

“…4 International relations is the most predictively oriented subfield of political science (Monteiro and Ruby 2009); here Jervis's book makes a striking contrast. Yet even in the other empirical subfields, the positivist notion that everything must ultimately be reducible to (knowable) universal laws displays its hold in excrescences such as quadrennial attempts to derive formulae for predicting the next presidential election outcome, usually on the basis of ''real'' (economic) factors.…”