Suchergebnisse

One of the central concerns of International Relations (IR), as well as International History (IH), is to explain how a given event came to occur. However, the importance and effectiveness of narrative as explanation is often neglected in IR. By focusing on the structure and role of narrative causal accounts, this article argues that drawing a distinction between IR and IH on the basis of their treatment of narrative is senseless. In the course of the discussion, a number of standard philosophical distinctions underpinning mainstream IR are challenged: in particular, reasons and causes, understanding and explanation, history and social science, and history and theory. It contends that the historical mode of knowledge production is indispensable to IR in addressing its substantive issues. However, it also warns that if IR is to take advantage of history in this way, it should also take seriously the epistemological and political critique of history and the narrative mode of representation. It ends by taking a critical glance at the works of Hollis and Smith, Lebow, and Edkins, and identifies a number of important meta-historical questions that need to be addressed in order to deepen our understanding of our ways of knowing world politics.

ABSTRACTKelsen and Schmitt, two leading legal theorists of the twentieth century, constitute a powerful pair that sheds light on the intertwining of politics and law in the phenomenon of sovereignty. Although their conceptions of sovereignty are far apart, they are interconnected as different ways of making sense of the same social phenomenon, or what I call the 'practice of sovereignty', whereby an ultimately unauthorised authority continuously authorises itself as the authority and the rest by and large accept this, acquiesce in this, or are made to do so. Having clarified their differences and interconnection, I explore some of the implications of the two writers' differing conceptions of sovereignty and of the practice of sovereignty that underlie them.

This article first identifies the nature and substance of the so-called English School of International Relations and outlines a distinct body of thought emanating from its central figures. It then examines in detail an unresolved tension between their strong West-centricity and their acknowledgement of the multicultural character of the contemporary world. A brief conclusion suggests a number of ways in which we may build on their works and transcend their parameters.

This article outlines and examines the ways in which the phenomenon of war has been explained by political scientists and historians of international relations. The discussion is conducted with reference to the following three types of question which are regularly raised in this context: (1) `What conditions must be present for there to be war at all?'; (2) `What conditions are likely to give rise to war?'; and (3) `How did this particular war come about?'. The article ends with a brief reflection on the extent to which answers given to these questions need to be modified as we move our focus away from `old' to `new' wars.