International Studies Association, Annual Conference 2014, Toronto Paper to be presented in the panel “Buzan, Causality and Method in the English School”, March, 28, 2014 The Quest for Causality: Understanding Change through the English School Charlotta Friedner Parrat, Department of Government, Uppsala University Charlotta.Friedner_Parrat@statsvet.uu.se Work in progress In mainstream approaches to the study of international relations, the ambition is often to study cause and effect; that is, how change in an independent variable causes change in a dependent variable. The English School attitude towards this kind of explanatory social science endeavour has been lukewarm at best, and at times directly hostile. However, the schism over the idea of what constitutes a good explanation makes communication between different approaches to IR difficult. In this paper it is acknowledged that much recent work across the discipline has been grappling with other types of causal explanation than the traditionally positivist causality, while progress has also been made towards making the methods of the English School more explicit. These developments raise the questions of what ‘explaining’ and ‘understanding’ might mean to the English School, and what type of causal explanation could be acceptable to its theoretical ambitions. It is argued here that it is the English School’s view of history, as much as its epistemologically interpretivist orientation, which lies behind its disdain for traditional causal explanation. ~1~ Introduction In a critique of the English School, Dale Copeland argues that the School is unclear in its objectives and its scientific claims. ‘For American social scientists, it is difficult to figure out what exactly the School is trying to explain, what its causal logic is, or how one would go about measuring its core independent (causal) variable, “international society”. As it stands, the English School is less a theory that provides falsifiable hypotheses to be tested (or that have been tested) than a vague approach to thinking about and conceptualising world politics’. 1 His is not the only effort to push the English School into a positivist frame. 2 For any methodologically interested scholar in the English School, these arguments, however, can be straight-forwardly rebutted; 3 indeed, to a large part, they were already answered by Hedley Bull in his 1966 debate with Morton Kaplan, although the vocabulary back then was a little different. International society is not an independent variable which can cause cooperation – international society is the element of inter-state cooperation in world politics. There is therefore no use in suggesting that the English School should keep its independent variable distinct from its dependent variable; and moreover, this is not a measurement problem, as Copeland frames it, but an issue of conceptual understanding. Copeland maintains that he is not holding the English School to a positivist standard [sic!] but that most scholars would agree that ‘there are causal forces out there (power, domestic factors, shared ideas and so on) that drive state behaviour, and that our collective goal is to understand when and how these forces operate, and with what explanatory salience.’ 4 This is questionable, to say the least. However, similar criticism of the English School come also from other standpoints; for instance from Martha Finnemore using a constructivist perspective. She points out that ‘causal arguments in the two most common American senses of the word are not the centrepiece or motivator of most English School work. Most English School work does not fit well into the independent/dependent variable language that 1 Dale Copeland, "A Realist critique of the English School," Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 427. See also Balkan Devlen, Patrick James, and Özgur Özdamar, "The English School, International Relations, and Progress," International Studies Review 7, no. 2 (2005). 3 Although it should be noted that Richard Little fails to make this point in his reply to Copeland: Richard Little, "The English School vs. American Realism: a meeting of minds or divided by a common language?," Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 458. 4 Copeland, "A Realist critique of the English School," 428, emphasis in original. 2 ~2~ dominates American IR, nor does it make arguments in the constitutively causal sense described by Wendt in this journal.’ 5 The usual response from writers in the English School when confronted with arguments of the Copeland kind has been to distinguish between different ways of conducting international studies. 6 This is what Bull did in the 1960s when he contrasted the ‘classical approach’ and the ‘scientific approach’ during what is usually referred to in IR as ‘the Second Debate’; and this is what Martin Hollis and Steve Smith did when contrasting the ‘inside’ with the ‘outside’ perspective in their work of reference Explaining and Understanding International Relations. 7 However, there are several grounds on which we are entitled to question this reaction: first, it seems to be ultimately unconvincing as the same criticisms tend to keep resurfacing; 8 second, it involves settling for a negatively defined category (understanding) which carries with it an air of second-best choice, which in turn has important implications for the possibilities of dialogue within the discipline; and third, it has allowed the English School to avoid being precise and open about its methods and scientific claims for a long time. The question to be addressed in this paper is consequently what approach to causal explanation is appropriate in the English School. I will argue that the impression expressed by both Copeland and Finnemore, albeit from different perspectives, that the English School is uninterested in causality only applies with the important qualification that it is indeed Human causality we intend. I show that if that causality is replaced with the wider concept of causation, the English School actually uses several varieties of causal reasoning. Causal Explanation in the English School The English School is famous for its resistance to behaviouralism and the later positivist standards of science. Indeed, the idea of the ‘second debate’, epitomised by the exchange between Hedley Bull and Morton Kaplan, is part of the creational mythology of IR. While causal explanation is sometimes dismissed by non-positivists in somewhat apologetic terms, 5 Martha Finnemore, "Exporting the English School," Review of International Studies 27(2001): 510. British IR seems to have been very inspired here by the philosophy of R G Collingwood, who devoted a lot of attention to the development of the distinction between naturalism and ‘human sciences’ over time; see R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946). 7 Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 8 Moreover, it was rejected by British philosophers of history long ago as unsustainable given what the direction which the natural sciences have taken; see Collingwood, The Idea of History; E. H. Carr, What is history? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures, Second ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1987 [1961]). 6 ~3~ the English School has been far more offensive: ‘The scientific approach has contributed and is likely to contribute very little to the theory of international relations, and in so far as it is intended to encroach upon and ultimately displace the classical approach, it is positively harmful’. 9 To Bull, it was clear that it is the subject matter which will not allow for ‘scientific’ analysis. He summarized his way of theorising international politics as the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.’ 10 Bull closes his article in style: ’In the present controversy, eclecticism, masquerading as tolerance, is the greatest danger of all; if we are to be hospitable to every approach (because “something may come of it some day”) and extend equal rights to every cliché (because “there is, after all, a grain of truth in what he says”), there will be no end to the absurdities thrust upon us’. 11 In her recent contribution to clarifying English School methods, Navari summarizes the classical English School view on causal explanation. She starts by noting that Bull distinguished between ‘mechanical factors’ and ‘normative factors’ (in line with the later familiar distinction between explaining and understanding) ‘to establish clear blue water between the then dominant aspirations for a social science that approximated the natural sciences, especially positivist methodologies that aimed to exclude the subjective views of the actors being studied, and a “human science” that took into account the value orientations of actions and the norms embedded in institutions’. 12 This did not, however, mean that the canonical English School writers were uninterested in causal explanation altogether. Rather, they were weary of over-specifying correlations, and they balanced between explaining the particular and understanding the general. 9 Hedley Bull, "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach," World Politics 18(1966): 366. Ibid., 361, emphasis in original. 11 ibid., 377. 12 Cornelia Navari, "What the Classical English School was Trying to Explain, and Why its Members Were not Interested in Causal Explanation," in Theorising International Society: English School Methods, ed. Cornelia Navari (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 40. 10 ~4~ That reality is constituted by, among other things, rules of conduct ... These rules do not “cause” things to occur, at least not in any direct manner. They do not cause things to occur, because in logical terms, they do not exist before being demonstrated in action. They cannot be construed as causes because, in a causal relationship, causes must come before effects, whereas rules of conduct can only be demonstrated in their effects. In the language of cause and effect, they are effects; they are not causes. They are downstream outcomes; they are not upstream inputs. 13 K J Holsti, in a recent re-reading of The Anarchical Society also detects causal explanation, claiming that Bull’s vision of order is an underspecified causal model. The institutions, rules and common interests that underpin international order are ’among the necessary and sufficient conditions of its occurrence’. 14 Moreover, Holsti argues that Bull’s ’causal analysis is consistent with his epistemological stance: causes and outcomes are usually put in a conditional language of “may” instead of “is”’. 15 In Holsti’s reading then, the classical English School writers, or at least Bull, used causal explanation, only founded on an interpretivist epistemology rather than the naturalist one employed by positivism. E H Carr, who is by most accounts not to be thought of as a member of the English School, but who was nevertheless a very influential figure on the British IR scene, has declared his view of causal explanation. 16 He argues that causes are necessary, although it is equally important not to fall prey to determinism or to the view that all is chance. Instead, his contention is that significant causes are selected by the analyst, and the hierarchy of causes is presented in a way which is suitable for the point which is to be made. ‘The relation of the historian to his causes has the same dual and reciprocal character as the relation of the historian to his facts. The causes determine his interpretation of the historical process, and his interpretation determines his selection and marshalling of the causes’. 17 13 Cornelia Navari, "Methods and Methodology in the English School," in Theorising International Society: English School Methods, ed. Cornelia Navari (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 5-6, emphasis in original. 14 Kalevi J. Holsti, "Theorising the Causes of Order: Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society," in Theorising International Society: English School Methods, ed. Cornelia Navari (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 131. 15 Ibid., 133. 16 Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998); Tim Dunne, "All Along the Watchtower: A Reply to the Critics of Inventing International Society," Cooperation and Conflict 35, no. 2 (2000); Hidemi Suganami, "A New Narrative, a New Subject? Tim Dunne on the 'English School'," Cooperation and Conflict 35, no. 2 (2000); Carr, What is history? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures. 17 Carr, What is history? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures: 103. ~5~ But science requires causality – surely? In his recent book, Patrick Jackson traces the debates of how to define a scientific enterprise, arguing that ‘playing the science card raises the stakes’. 18 More specifically, IR as a discipline has, at least since the ‘second debate’, been divided between a dualist and a monist view of science. According to the latter position, only a naturalist meta-theoretical stance, with accompanying implications for methodology and causal explanation, is scientific. According to the former position, naturalist and interpretivist meta-theoretical stances are equally scientific although different in methods and areas of interest. Whether science should be conceptualised in a dual or monist way has been discussed before, and at length, in history. For students of IR, as well as political science, the distinction between a monist conception of science influenced by the natural sciences, and a dualist conception making a sharp distinction between the ‘inside’ interpretivist view and the ‘outside’ naturalist view is familiar. The monist argument finds a strong contemporary formulation in the American methods bible of the 1990’s: Designing Social Inquiry by Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba. A major purpose of this book is to show that the differences between the quantitative and qualitative traditions are only stylistic and are methodologically and substantively unimportant. All good research can be understood – indeed, is best understood – to derive from the same underlying logic of inference. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be systematic and scientific. Historical research can be analytical, seeking to evaluate alternative explanations through a process of valid causal inference. History, or historical sociology, is not incompatible with social science. 19 A corollary of KKV’s influential statement was that studies using qualitative methods (too) were claimed by the explaining approach, as it is taken to ‘derive from the same underlying logic of inference’ as quantitative methods. A famous declaration of the dualist conception of science is Explaining and Understanding International Relations by Martin Hollis and Steve Smith. Their explicit intention was to put the two traditions of inquiry on equal footing, so as to recognize that ‘both traditions are 18 Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations (Routledge: London and NewYork, 2011), 3. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry. Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 5. Emphasis added. 19 ~6~ fertile for the study of international relations, despite a lively tension between them’. 20 Arguably, the dualist conception has led to deep divisions in the discipline as; so that either is research done according to KKV standards – regardless of whether quantitative or qualitative methods are chosen – or ambitions to explain or address causal effects are completely renounced. 21 These terms were almost completely left to ‘explanatory science’ by the adherents of understanding, who implicitly accepted to settle for (only) understanding, ‘leaving “explanation” and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other’. 22 Importantly, the monist view denies any particular standing to social sciences, which is just seen as one kind of science, whereas the dualist view recognises both an interpretivist and a naturalist epistemological stance within the social sciences. There could of course also be a reversed monist position in which we deny any utility of a naturalist epistemology in the social world. E. H. Carr took that stance in the 1960s, and Bull also came close to it when he bashed the ‘scientific approach’. 23 R G Collingwood, too, made a similar argument about the caricature of natural sciences embraced by positivism. ‘But positivism, though it actually was a philosophical system, refused to claim that title. It claimed only to be scientific. It was in fact nothing but the methodology of natural science raised to the level of a universal methodology: natural science identifying itself with knowledge. Consequently an attack on positivism was bound to appear in addition as a revolt against science and also as a revolt against intellect as such. ... [but] it was [rather] a revolt against the philosophy which claimed that science was the only kind of knowledge that existed or ever could exist.’ 24 In the English School, scientific dualism has largely been accepted, although a worthwhile scientific endeavour has been defined overwhelmingly along the lines of ‘understanding’ rather than ‘explaining’. The problem with this state of things is that while standards for 20 Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations: 1. For another example of a dualist conception, see Jonathon W. Moses and Torbjørn L. Knutsen, Ways of Knowing. Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 21 In the rest of Europe, however, participants of the ‘Second Debate’ were less ferocious, and the KKV controversy has also been less profound, excepting, incidentally, ‘the quasi-Anglo-Saxon world of Scandinavia’: ‘In Scandinavia, behaviouralism maintains a couple of strongholds, particularly in Norway and Sweden, but has otherwise ceded to other approaches.’ Knud Erik Jørgensen, "Continental IR Theory: The Best Kept Secret," European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 1 (2000): 15-16. 22 Stefano Guzzini, "Securitization as a causal mechanism," Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 329. 23 Bull, "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach."; Carr, What is history? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures. 24 Collingwood, The Idea of History: 134. ~7~ ‘explaining’ are well defined (although impossible to adhere to, according to some); 25 understanding is consistently underdefined, both with regards to methods and to its criteria for science. This seems to suggest, first, that understanding is a problematic category where all sort of research may fit as long as it does not conform to the criteria of explaining. This asymmetry imposes a hierarchy on the dual view of science, as it is biased towards trying for explaining first, thereby aiming for wider ‘scientific’ acknowledgement, and settling for understanding only if explaining cannot be achieved; alternatively, aiming for understanding at once will risk being understood as not trying for the proverbial ‘sour grapes’. Second, it suggests that the division between explaining and understanding is a culprit of the fragmentation of IR as an academic discipline, as argued by Milja Kurki. 26 The problem with the distinction between explaining and understanding has been located at various levels. For some, the problem rests with the ‘monopoly’ on causal explanation which has been granted by researchers in the understanding tradition to the explaining tradition, 27 thereby degrading the scientific ambitions of the practitioners of understanding. This is in spite of the explicit intention of Hollis’ and Smith’s book to put the two traditions of inquiry on equal footing. 28 For others, the division itself – and the underlying dual view of science – is the problem. ‘The assumption elicited by Hollis and Smith that there is a fundamental dichotomy between causal and non-causal approaches to the social world, has come to permeate the discipline of IR in the last decade or so. While the so-called scientific theorists have advocated systematic causal analysis in IR, the so-called reflectivist “constitutive” theorists have maintained that causal analysis is neither a necessary, nor a desirable aim in understanding world politics’. 29 Arguably, the dual view manifest in the distinction between explaining and understanding has not only provided a division of labour, but also gotten in the way of scholarly conversation and contributed to creating a hierarchy of approaches. In particular, there has been a tendency to think of understanding as a second-rate ‘rest-post’, containing everything that is not up to the standards of explanation. Some trace this tendency back to the ‘Second Debate’, blaming 25 Adam R.C. Humphreys, "The heuristic application of explanatory theories in International Relations," European Journal of International Relations 17, no. 2 (2011); Hidemi Suganami, "Narrative Explanation and International Relations: Back to Basics," Millennium - Journal of International Studies 37, no. 2 (2008). 26 Milja Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006). 27 Guzzini, "Securitization as a causal mechanism," 338. 28 Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations: 1. 29 Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," 189. ~8~ it on the failure of the practitioners of the ‘classical approach’ to continue the debate after Bull’s original attack on the ‘scientific approach’, giving the impression that the scientific side won. 30 Audie Klotz and Cecilia Lynch approach the explaining/understanding distinction from yet another angle, what I have called the ‘reversed monist position’, arguing that as long as researchers agree on a social ontology, various epistemological divides can be overcome. 31 They also argue for subversion of Hollis’ and Smith’s distinction, but on grounds which presume that a social ontology is combinable with both. A similar point has been advanced by Walter Carlsnaes in FPA, and the present piece will also add some support for this line. 32 Replacing Causality with Causation As the distinction between understanding and explaining seems to be under sustained attack from various angles, much recent effort has gone into figuring out what we may have instead. Milja Kurki locates the problem in the Humean conceptualisation of causality. 33 She argues that within the social science approach to IR, that is, the ‘scientific approach’ in terms of the Second Debate, the Humean concept of causality used is an impoverished version compared to the Aristotelian concept of causation. 34 She notes that the predominant Humean view of causality is accepted not only by positivist but also by non-positivist scholars (n. b. that this is another negatively defined category, reinforcing the ‘dustbin’ status of understanding), who tend to throw the whole idea of causal explanation out with the proverbial water. ‘Causal analysis is associated with the “ahistorical” neorealist frameworks and the “scientific” claims of objectivity of the mainstream. Causal analysis, then, is understood in accordance with Humean assumptions and, as a result, rejected altogether’. 35 Instead, Kurki suggests we revert to Aristotelian causation, where causes are understood in a much wider sense: as material, formal, efficient and final causes. 36 Within this alternative understanding of causal explanation, common-sensical causes are allowed as well as the correlational variety. Using Aristotelian causation, we see three types of causes which would previously have been tossed 30 Roger D. Spegele, "Traditional Political Realism and the Writing of History," in International Society and its Critics, ed. Alex J. Bellamy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 98. 31 Audie Klotz and Cecilia Lynch, "Translating Terminologies," International Studies Review 8, no. 2 (2006). 32 Walter Carlsnaes, "The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis," International Studies Quarterly 36(1992); Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, "Two Stories about Structure and Agency," Review of International Studies 20, no. 3 (1994): 243-50. 33 Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory." 34 Following Kurki, I will use causation to denote the wider, Aristotelian version. Causality will be used in the traditional sense, namely to denote Humean causality. This means that causality (narrower) will be conceptualized as one specific form of causation (wider). 35 Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," 198. 36 See also Alexander Wendt, "Why a World State is Inevitable," European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003). ~9~ into the dustbin of understanding, supposedly after failing at explaining. Applied to the discipline of IR, this means that once we talk about causation rather than just causality, a whole lot of relationships which have not been perceived as causal in the Humean sense now can be recognised. This widened view of causal explanation will, moreover, make possible a categorisation of causal claims according to what kind of causation they use. ‘Aristotle saw the world as shaped through the complex interaction of all these different types of causal forces. To explain why any change or thing has come about one would need to refer to all these different categories of cause and the relations between them.’ 37 Material Causes To Aristotle, the material cause of a table was the wood it was made of. Kurki points out that this notion helps us conceptualise material causes as enabling or constraining factors rather than mechanical effects. ‘This framing is useful in the social sciences as it gets us away from complete rejection of material factors ... as well as the deterministic overtones often attached to more materially based explanations of the social world.’ 38 It is important to consider that a material cause is not sufficient, but rather a necessary condition for a particular outcome. With the wood, not necessarily a table, if no one cares to build it or has an idea of what a table should look like; but without the wood, definitely no table. In the following, material causes are operationalised as material preconditions; that is, a material cause is a necessary material prerequisite. Formal Causes Formal causes are ideational and relational, so that the formal cause of the table is the idealtypical table. ‘In the social world, ideas, rules, norms and discourses – often interpreted as non-causal “constitutive” forces – can usefully be understood through the notion of formal cause’. 39 A formal cause is then, like a material cause, enabling or constraining rather than pushing or pulling. This gets us away from the ‘first wave’ of ideas as causal factors. Rather, it is about the shared idea of something, just like the material for it, makes the realisation of that idea available. Like the material cause, the formal cause is not sufficient, but necessary. This is why both material and formal causes can be grouped together under the heading of ‘conditioning causes’. In the following, formal causes are operationalised as ideational 37 Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," 206. Ibid., 207. 39 Ibid. 38 ~ 10 ~ preconditions; that is, a formal cause is an idea without which the corresponding effect could not have happened. Efficient Causes Efficient causes are ‘active causes’, those that make something come about. Humean causality, namely something which makes something else happen, can be subsumed under the heading of efficient causes; but, importantly, efficient causes are not mechanic or deterministic (neither, contrary to claims of the more extreme proponents of ‘explaining’, is Humean causality, which in the social sciences, including ‘explanatory’ IR, tends to be probabilistic rather than deterministic) 40. The carpenter who has available the conditioning causes (such as an idea or a blueprint of a table and the wood required) may very well still decide to build a set of drawers instead of a table. Moreover, ‘efficient causes, for Aristotle, were fundamentally embedded within, and in relation to, other types of causes and could not in and of themselves explain anything’. 41 The efficient cause, too, is then necessary but not sufficient. In the following, efficient causes are operationalised as the actors who make a specific end come about. Final Causes Final causes are the ‘ends and purposes’ for which something happens. Like efficient causes, they are ‘active causes’ to Aristotle, as opposed to ‘conditioning causes’. In our example, the hypothetical carpenter probably needed, or had been asked, to make a table rather than a set of drawers. To Alexander Wendt, final causes are teleological so that an end-state directs effects, either through intentional goal-seeking or through ‘non-conscious boundary conditions’. 42 To Kurki, however, final causes as necessarily intentional, so that ‘when we talk of the intentions, motivations or, in certain contexts reasons, that direct actors, we are in fact referring to the final causes “because of which” certain (efficient) actions are taken’. 43 In the following, final causes are operationalised as specific ends or intentions which come about, but without being assigned to a specific agent. 40 Suganami, "Narrative Explanation and International Relations: Back to Basics," 329-33. Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," 208. 42 Wendt, "Why a World State is Inevitable," 496. 43 Kurki, "Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory," 208. 41 ~ 11 ~ Varieties of Theorising In a parallel effort, Stefano Guzzini points out that our understanding of theory is also affected by the division between causal and non-causal science; that is, roughly between explaining and understanding. According to the explaining camp, there is a tendency to see only one kind of theorising as legitimate, namely what Guzzini calls empirical theorising.44 Guzzini instead distinguishes no less than three additional modes of theorising: normative theorising, meta-theoretical theorising and ontological theorising. 45 Interestingly, the English School works with all four kinds of theorising. The form of normative theorising which Guzzini envisages ‘consists in applying the scientific criteria of moral and political philosophy to issues of international relations’. 46 (Scientific here should be understood much in the same sense as Bull’s positive version of it: ‘in the sense of being a coherent, precise and orderly body of knowledge, and in the sense of being consistent with the philosophical foundations of modern science’. 47 Although, as has been argued by Monteiro and Ruby, what ‘the philosophical foundations of modern science’ may be is itself essentially contested. 48) As is frequently argued within the English School, Guzzini also contends that ‘our research problems need to be or are informed ultimately by major ethical and/or political value issues’. 49 Examples of texts from the English School which deal with normative theory in this sense is R. J. Vincent’s Human Rights and International Relations (the text book example of the engagement with normative issues which is taken to be one of the distinctive features of the English School), but also Nicholas Wheeler’s Saving Strangers. 50 By meta-theoretical theorising, Guzzini means theorising which ‘provides the building-blocks and fundaments upon which all theories are built’. 51 As such, it is often used in a critical form, to control the internal consistency of theories; but it also comes in a positive form when new 44 Stefano Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 3 (2013). On this problem, see also James Johnson, "Consequences of Positivism: A Pragmatist Assessment," Comparative Political Studies 39(2006). 45 Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 13-17. 46 Ibid., 13. 47 Bull, "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach," 375. 48 N.P. Monteiro and K.G. Ruby, "IR and the False Promise of Philosophical Foundations," International Theory 1, no. 1 (2009). 49 Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 13. 50 R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations, The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers. Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 51 Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 13. ~ 12 ~ theories are formulated or established ones are clarified. The old argument that the English School has been quiet on its methods relates to this mode of theorising, in that it is difficult to find examples of meta-theoretical theorising in the canonical English School. A more recent contribution, however, is Barry Buzan’s From International to World Society?, which was conceived as a bid to re-brushing the English School in a meta-theoretically conscious way. 52 Ontological theorising is what we are most used to seeing in the English School, and also what it is most famous for. It is telling that Guzzini, too, in his description of ontological theorising, chooses a book from the English School to illustrate it. Ontological theorising is ‘mainly about theorising the central phenomena that constitute the field of inquiry (power, sovereignty, state, etc)’ and ‘visible often in the establishment of frameworks of analysis or typologies which are mainly concerned with the constitutive function of theorising’. 53 One example of ontological theorising is Bull’s The Anarchical Society, which, according to Guzzini is a ‘relentless analysis of ‘What “is”...?’. 54 Other examples include James Mayall’s Nationalism and International Society, Coral Bell’s Negotiation from Strength, Ian Clark’s Legitimacy in International Society, and Martin Wight’s Power Politics. 55 Empirical theorising, finally, is ‘more inductively driven research agendas’ which can include KKV style inference, hypothesis testing and ditto generation; positivist or non-positivist varieties of causal mechanisms; 56 as well as ‘”performative” analysis’ where ‘our theories or basic concepts become themselves the object of empirical analysis’. 57 For an example of empirical theorising in the English School canon I settled for Gerrit Gong’s The Standard of Civilization because it has exactly that thrilling performative perspective where the concept does something to the empirical reality on which it is applied. 58 52 Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 53 Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 14-15. 54 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002 [1977]); Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 14. 55 James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Martin Wight, Power Politics [2nd edition, edited by Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad] (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1978); Coral Bell, Negotiation from Strength: A Study in the Politics of Power (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962). 56 On causal mechanisms, see Guzzini, "Securitization as a causal mechanism." 57 Guzzini, "The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorising," 15. 58 Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of 'Civilization' in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). ~ 13 ~ Causes and theorising in the English School Overlaying Guzzini’s varieties of theorising with Kurki’s varieties of causation gives us a whole new spectrum of valid scientific endeavours, which I will test out on the English School. At this stage, I can only offer a few brief examples. Varieties of theorising Normative Meta- Ontological Empirical theoretical Varieties of causation Material - - X X Formal X X X X Efficient - - X X Final X - X X In the normative category, first, the most evident types of causal explanation employ formal and final causes. Vincent, for instance, sometimes writes about human rights as a formal cause – that is, an enabling or constitutive idea – of the boundaries of sovereignty. As such, human rights ‘fulfil the function once fulfilled by the theory of natural law in putting certain claims about how humans are to be treated beyond the whims of tyrants, but within realist estimates of the limits of the possible. They shape the content of claims that any decent government should respect.’ 59 He also makes causal arguments about why human rights are not placed at the centre of the diplomatic agenda, and here, his argument is rather an example of final causation: ‘the primary reason for this seeming gutlessness was systemic, having to do with the structure of the diplomatic world, not the personalities of its members’. 60 This is active cause which is why an action, intentional or not, comes about. Wheeler, similarly, makes causal claims using formal causation: ‘To reiterate one of the guiding themes of Saving Strangers, state action will be constrained if they cannot be justified in terms of a plausible legitimating reason’. 61 Writing explicitly about ‘explanations’, Wheeler refers to what would in the present framework be final causation: causes with both a specific end in sight. ‘There is no need to choose between these three explanations, since all 59 Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations: 111-12, emphasis added. Ibid., 137, emphasis added. 61 Wheeler, Saving Strangers. Humanitarian Intervention in International Society: 287. 60 ~ 14 ~ of them probably influenced the reasoning that led Brazil, Gambia, and Gabon to acquiesce in NATO’s action’. 62 In the meta-theoretical category, Buzan’s causal claims have to do with how theory is built up. For instance, when discussing Wight’s contribution to theorising world society, he points to ‘the idea that world society is defined by common culture shared perhaps at the level of individuals, and certainly at the level of elites, and that the development of international society requires the existence of world society in these terms as a precondition’. 63 World society is here treated as a formal cause of international society, namely an enabling condition. In Bull’s writings, Buzan instead locates (again, formal) causation in the reverse sense so that Bull’s conceptualization of international society hinders him from developing his concept of world society because the two cannot logically coexist. 64 Again, formal causation is at stake when Buzan contends that ‘it is probably fair to say that many solidarists believe that some cosmopolitanism, and concern for the rights of individuals, is necessary for international society’. 65 Similarly, ‘because the pluralist position is entirely state-based, it is relatively straightforward and coherent’. 66 In the ontological category, Bull consistently makes causal claims, and of various kinds. Already when defining order, the key concept of the book, Bull states that it is ‘a pattern that leads to a particular result, an arrangement of social life such that it promotes certain goals or values. In this purposive or functional sense, a number of books display order when they are not merely placed in a row, but are arranged according to their author or subject so as to serve the purpose or fulfil the function of selection’. 67 This seems to be a clear instance of final causation, as this refers to a desired outcome without a specification of who is the agent organising that order. On the other hand, Bull also writes that ‘by international order I mean a pattern of activity that sustains the elementary or primary goals of the society of states, or international society’. 68 Here, the causal claim is rather that of an efficient cause, as it regards the intentional or purpose-oriented activity of someone, in this case of international society as a whole. When discussing (European) international society after the French and American 62 Ibid., 292. Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation: 32, emphasis added. 64 Ibid., 40. 65 Ibid., 47, emphasis added. 66 Ibid. 67 Bull, The Anarchical Society: 3-4, emphasis added. 68 Ibid., 8, emphasis added. 63 ~ 15 ~ revolutions, Bull makes appeal to formal causation: ‘The actual course of event was no more determined by the national or popular doctrine of international legitimacy than in the earlier period it had been determined by the dynastical or monarchical one, but these doctrines did determine the kind of justifications that could be offered for whatever was done’. 69 Finally, there are also examples of what I take to be material causation in Bull’s writing, for instance when he argues that ‘the element of international society has always been present in the modern international system because at no stage can it be said that the conception of the common interests of states, of common rules accepted and common institutions worked by them, has ceased to exert influence’. 70 This claim specifies enabling conditions the presence of which we cannot exclude. In fact, it even seems to me that Bull’s oft-quoted statement that ‘order in this sense is maintained by a sense of common interests in those elementary or primary goals; by rules which prescribe the pattern of behaviour that sustains them; and by institutions which make these rules effective’ 71 contains three forms of causation on its own. The common interests would be the final cause; the rules would be the formal cause; and the institutions the material cause. If we were to add an efficient cause as well, that would be the states themselves, as they have to display the actual conduct required to maintain order. 72 Indeed, perhaps this is what Bull means with his (otherwise) intriguing statement that ‘in this sense, it is the states themselves that are the principal institutions of the society of states’. 73 In the empirical category, finally, Gong initially makes appeal to efficient causation: ’Europe’s expansion to the non-European world resulted in confrontation between different standards of “civilization” which underpinned their different polities, economies, and societies’. 74 Here, it is an active cause, namely Europe’s expansion, with an agent, namely Europeans. The same goes for the description of how European disease (an efficient cause), disrupted the social systems of native peoples, both by decimating the populations and by undermining traditional patterns of authority. Moreover, ‘the concept of the standard of “civilization” decisively influenced the way the European countries perceived the nonEuropean countries should be drawn into the international society’. 75 Here, the standard of 69 Ibid., 33, emphasis added. Ibid., 40, emphasis added. 71 Ibid., 51, emphasis added. 72 This reading of Bull’s causal claims is partly in accordance with Holsti’s, where Bull is taken to sketch an underspecified causal model. To Holsti, the institutions, rules and common interests that underpin international order are ’among the necessary and sufficient conditions of its occurrence’. See Holsti, "Theorising the Causes of Order: Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society," 131.. 73 Bull, The Anarchical Society: 68. 74 Gong, The Standard of 'Civilization' in International Society: 97, emphasis added. 75 Ibid., 100, emphasis added. 70 ~ 16 ~ civilization is a final cause, namely providing a goal for which certain action needs to be taken. In his discussion on the Ottoman Empire, Gong’s causal claims seem to be both formal and material: ‘The humiliation felt to derive from the capitulations was a factor in the Ottomans joining the Central Powers in the Great War’. 76 The humiliation is an ideational constraint on the Ottomans, while the capitulations are a material constraint. A New Approach to Causation in the English School? First of all, and with regards to Guzzini’s typology of theorising: that the English School has all four kinds of theories readily available seems to speak to its completeness as a research programme. This remark is in accordance with usual claims advanced by proponents of the School; namely that it is holistic, non-reductionist and opens up an extensive research agenda. ‘The English School takes a hermeneutical starting point, but it is grounded by relational analysis as well. In the language of British IR, it offers, at least in its finer moments, both “understanding” and “explanation” of world politics’. 77 At the same time, it needs to be acknowledged that there are indeed some weaknesses in the discussion of method, especially in the older works, and that the canonical writers also showed a certain sleight of hand when it came to using, or at least demonstrating their use of, primary sources. Interestingly, the pattern emerging here is that the studied English School works all use formal causes; that is, the kind of causation in which they are accused by American constructivists of being uninterested. 78 Moreover, there seems to be space in the English School for efficient causes; that is the kind of causation which they are accused of social scientists to disregard. Material causes are debatable in the works studied here, as researchers in the English School probably would prefer to emphasise the ideational, rather than material, component of international institutions and other semi-material inventories of international society. To my mind, the most important feature of institutions is reproduction of practice, and although that may take material incarnations, such as buildings, documents and ceremonial gear, the bearing component is the idea guiding the practice. Therefore, I am inclined, although not decided, to abandon the claim to have found material causes in the English School. Final causes, finally, are probably distinctively common in the English 76 Ibid., 116, emphasis added. Iver B. Neumann, "The English School and the practices of world society," Review of International Studies 27, no. 03 (2001): 503. 78 As pointed out by Finnemore, "Exporting the English School." 77 ~ 17 ~ School, as the conviction there is strong that events come about for a reason, because of intentions or goals rather than in a deterministic way. This also bears some relation to the close association of normative theory with the English School; most processes are conceived of as oriented towards some understanding of the good. ~ 18 ~ Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books, 2006 [1961]. Bell, Coral. Negotiation from Strength: A Study in the Politics of Power. London: Chatto & Windus, 1962. Bull, Hedley. The Anarchical Society. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002 [1977]. ———. "International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach." World Politics 18 (1966): 361-77. Buzan, Barry. From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Carlsnaes, Walter. "The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis." International Studies Quarterly 36 (1992): 245-70. Carr, E. H. What Is History? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures. Second ed. London: Penguin Books, 1987 [1961]. Clark, Ian. Legitimacy in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. Copeland, Dale. "A Realist Critique of the English School." Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 427-41. Devlen, Balkan, Patrick James, and Özgur Özdamar. "The English School, International Relations, and Progress." International Studies Review 7, no. 2 (2005): 171-97. Dunne, Tim. "All Along the Watchtower: A Reply to the Critics of Inventing International Society." Cooperation and Conflict 35, no. 2 (2000): 227-38. ———. Inventing International Society: A History of the English School. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1998. Finnemore, Martha. "Exporting the English School." Review of International Studies 27 (2001): 509-13. Gong, Gerrit W. The Standard of 'Civilization' in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Guzzini, Stefano. "The Ends of International Relations Theory: Stages of Reflexivity and Modes of Theorising." European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 3 (2013): 521-41. ———. "Securitization as a Causal Mechanism." Security Dialogue 42, no. 4-5 (2011): 32941. Hollis, Martin, and Steve Smith. Explaining and Understanding International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ———. "Two Stories About Structure and Agency." Review of International Studies 20, no. 3 (1994): 241-51. Holsti, Kalevi J. "Theorising the Causes of Order: Hedley Bull's the Anarchical Society." In Theorising International Society: English School Methods, edited by Cornelia Navari. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Humphreys, Adam R.C. "The Heuristic Application of Explanatory Theories in International Relations." European Journal of International Relations 17, no. 2 (2011): 257-77. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Routledge: London and NewYork, 2011. Johnson, James. "Consequences of Positivism: A Pragmatist Assessment." Comparative Political Studies 39 (2006): 224-52. Jørgensen, Knud Erik. "Continental Ir Theory: The Best Kept Secret." European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 1 (2000): 9-42. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry. Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Klotz, Audie, and Cecilia Lynch. "Translating Terminologies." International Studies Review 8, no. 2 (2006): 356-62. ~ 19 ~ Kurki, Milja. "Causes of a Divided Discipline: Rethinking the Concept of Cause in International Relations Theory." Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 189216. Little, Richard. "The English School Vs. American Realism: A Meeting of Minds or Divided by a Common Language?" Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 443-60. Mayall, James. Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Monteiro, N.P., and K.G. Ruby. "Ir and the False Promise of Philosophical Foundations." International Theory 1, no. 1 (2009): 15-48. Moses, Jonathon W., and Torbjørn L. Knutsen. Ways of Knowing. Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Navari, Cornelia. "Methods and Methodology in the English School." In Theorising International Society: English School Methods, edited by Cornelia Navari, 1-20. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. ———. "What the Classical English School Was Trying to Explain, and Why Its Members Were Not Interested in Causal Explanation." In Theorising International Society: English School Methods, edited by Cornelia Navari. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Neumann, Iver B. "The English School and the Practices of World Society." Review of International Studies 27, no. 03 (2001): 503-07. Spegele, Roger D. "Traditional Political Realism and the Writing of History." In International Society and Its Critics, edited by Alex J. Bellamy, 97-114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Suganami, Hidemi. "Narrative Explanation and International Relations: Back to Basics." Millennium - Journal of International Studies 37, no. 2 (2008): 327-56. ———. "A New Narrative, a New Subject? Tim Dunne on the 'English School'." Cooperation and Conflict 35, no. 2 (2000): 217-26. Wendt, Alexander. "Why a World State Is Inevitable." European Journal of International Relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 491-542. Wheeler, Nicholas J. Saving Strangers. Humanitarian Intervention in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wight, Martin. Power Politics [2nd Edition, Edited by Hedley Bull and Carsten Holbraad]. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1978. Vincent, R. J. Human Rights and International Relations, The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ~ 20 ~