Suchergebnisse

The essays in this ambitious volume take as their foil the democratic peace hypothesis: the claim that liberal democracies, while still going to war against nonliberal states, rarely wage war on one another. "This volume challenges the received international wisdom about democracy, liberalism, and war," write the editors in the Introduction. "The democratic peace, with its transhistorical causal law based on fixed definitions of democracy and war and a nation-state ontology of the international, is far too simplistic a frame from which to analyze the various historical and contemporary configurations of democracy, liberalism, and war" (p. 2).

Constructivism in the study of world politics is little more than a decade old, yet in that short time it has risen to challenge realism and liberalism as a leading approach in international relations. Its ascent has been dramatic. One prominent theorist recently suggested that constructivism has now replaced Marxism as the main paradigmatic rival to realism and liberalism. While this particular judgment might be debated—other scholars may wish to defend the continued relevance of a revived Marxist or socialist approach, for example—the fact remains that constructivism has reshaped many core debates in international relations theory.

Recent developments in the philosophy of science, particularly those falling under the rubric of "scientific realism," have earned growing recognition among theorists of international relations but have failed to generate substantive programs of research. Consequently, the empirical relevance of much philosophical discourse, such as that centering on the agent-structure problem in social theory, remains unestablished. This article attempts to bridge the gap between the philosophy and practice of science by outlining a model of international structure based on the principles of scientific realism and by considering its implications for a structural research program in international relations theory. Appealing to Imre Lakatos's methodology of theorychoice, the article presents an ontological case for adopting a "transformational" model of structure over the "positional" model developed in the work of Kenneth Waltz. The article demonstrates that the positional approach offers no conceptual or explanatory hold on those features of the international structure that are the intended products of state action. In conclusion, the article argues that the stakes in the agent-structure debate include the capacity to generate integrative structural theory and the ability to theorize the possibilities for peaceful change in the international system.