Critical theory

If there is anything that holds together the disparate group of scholars who subscribe to ‘critical theory’
it is the idea that the study of international relations should be oriented by an emancipatory politics.

Critical theory’ (often called ‘Frankfurt School critical theory’, to distinguish it from the wider category of
critical theories or perspectives) has developed into one of the most influential currents of Marxist-
inspired international theory. A major influence on critical theory has been the ideas of Antonio
Gramsci. Gramsci (1970) argued that the capitalist class system is upheld not simply by unequal
economic and political power, but by what he termed the ‘hegemony’ of bourgeois ideas and theories.

While early Frankfurt thinkers were primarily concerned with the analysis of discrete societies, later
theorists, such as Cox (1981, 1987) and Andrew Linklater (1990, 1998), have applied critical theory to the
study of international politics, in at least three ways. In the first place, critical theory underlines the
linkage between knowledge and politics, emphasizing the extent to which theories and understandings
are embedded in a framework of values and interests. This implies that, as all theorizing is normative,
those who seek to understand the world should adopt greater theoretical reflexivity. Second, critical
theorists have adopted an explicit commitment to emancipatory politics: they are concerned to uncover
structures of oppression and injustice in global politics in order to advance the cause of individual or
collective freedom. Third, critical theorists have questioned the conventional association within
international theory between political community and the state, in so doing opening up the possibility of
a more inclusive, and maybe even cosmopolitan, notion of political identity

Origins of critical theory

Critical theory has its roots in a strand of thought which is often traced back to the Enlightenment and
connected to the writings of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. However, in the twentieth century critical theory
became most closely associated with a distinct body of thought known as the Frankfurt School (Jay
1973; Wyn Jones 2001

The politics of knowledge in International Relations theory

As Robert Cox (1981) succinctly and famously said, ‘theory is always for someone and for some
purpose’. As a consequence, critical international theorists reject the idea that theoretical knowledge is
neutral or non-political. Whereas traditional theories would tend to see power and interests as a
posterior ( logic which usually refers to reasoning that works backward from an effect to its causes)
factors affecting outcomes in interactions between political actors in the sphere of international
relations, critical international theorists insist that they are by no means absent in the formation and
verification of knowledge claims. Indeed, they are a priori factors (existing in the mind prior to and
independent of experience,) affecting the production of knowledge, hence Kimberly Hutchings’ (1999:
69) assertion that ‘International Relations theory is not only about politics, it also is itself political

Theories of international relations, like any knowledge, necessarily are conditioned by social, cultural
and ideological influence, and one of the main tasks of critical theory is to reveal the effect of this
conditioning.
We must concede therefore that the study of international relations ‘is, and always has been,
unavoidably normative

Citical theory is essentially a critique of the dogmatism it finds in traditional modes of theorizing. To
break with dogmatic modes of thought is to ‘denaturalize’ the present, as Karin Fierke (1998: 13) puts it,
to make us ‘look again, in a fresh way, at that which we assume about the world because it has become
overly familiar’. Denaturalizing ‘[allegedly] objective realities opens the door to alternative forms of
social and political life’

Critical theory’s emancipatory interest is concerned with ‘securing freedom from unacknowledged
constraints, relations of domination, and conditions of distorted communication and understanding that
deny humans the capacity to make their future through full will and consciousness

One of critical international theory’s main contributions in this regard is to expose the political nature of
knowledge formation. Underlying all this is an explicit interest in challenging and removing socially
produced constraints on human freedom, thereby contributing to the possible transformation of
international relations

Rethinking political community

first to analyse the way in which inequality and domination flow from modes of political community tied
to the sovereign state, and secondly to consider alternative forms of political community which promote
human emancipation.

The normative dimension: the critique of ethical particularism and social exclusion

One of the key philosophical assumptions that has structured political and ethical thought and practice
about international relations is the idea that the modern state is the natural form of political
community. The sovereign state has been ‘fetishized ( ‫’)جس چیز کا احمقانہ طور پر احترام کیا جائے‬, to use
Marx’s term, as the normal mode of organizing political life. Critical international theorists, however,
wish to problematize this fetishization and draw attention to the ‘moral deficits’ that are created by the
state’s interaction with the capitalist world economy.

The philosophical critique of particularism was first, and most systematically, set out in Andrew
Linklater’s Men and Citizens (1990a). His main concern there was to trace how modern political thought
had constantly differentiated ethical obligations due to co-citizens from those due to the rest of
humanity. In practice, this tension between ‘men’ and ‘citizens’ has always been resolved in favour of
citizens – or, more accurately, members of a particular sovereign state.

Linklater here is strongly influenced by the thought of Kant, for whom war was undeniably related to the
separation of humankind into separate, self-regarding political units, Rousseau, who caustically
remarked that in joining a particular community individual citizens necessarily made themselves
enemies of the rest of humanity, and Marx who saw in the modern state a contradiction between
general and private interests.. The problem with the sovereign state therefore is that as a ‘limited moral
community’ it promotes exclusion, generating estrangement, injustice, insecurity and violent conflict
between self-regarding states by imposing rigid boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them.
This philosophical critique of particularism has led critical international theory to criticize the sovereign
state as one of the foremost modern forms of social exclusion and therefore as a considerable barrier to
universal justice and emancipation.

In brief Cox, and his colleague Stephen Gill, have offered extensive examinations of how the growing
global organization of production and finance is transforming Westphalian conceptions of society and
polity. At the heart of this current transformation is what Cox calls the ‘internationalization of the state’,
whereby the state becomes little more than an instrument for restructuring national economies so that
they are more responsive to the demands and disciplines of the capitalist global economy

So it is with the express purpose of analysing the potential for structural transformations in world order
that critical international theory identifies and examines ‘emancipatory counter-hegemonic’ forces.
Counter-hegemonic forces could be states, such as a coalition of ‘Third World’ states which struggles to
undo the dominance of ‘core’ countries, or the ‘counterhegemonic alliance of forces on the world scale’,
such as trade unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and new social movements, which grow
from the ‘bottom-up’ in civil society

Implicit in Andrew Linklater, and explicit in the writings of others, is the argument that the greatest
threat to world order may not be the terrorists who perpetrated such inexcusable harm, but the
reaction by the United States. By placing itself outside the rules, norms and institutions of international
society in its prosecution of the war on terrorism, the United States is not only diminishing the prospects
of a peaceful and just world order, but undermining the very principles on which it was founded

The praxeological dimension: cosmopolitanism and discourse ethics

This reflects critical international theory’s belief that while totalizing projects have been tremendously
successful, they have not been complete in colonizing modern political life. They have not been able to
‘erode the sense of moral anxiety when duties to fellow-citizens clash with duties to the rest of
humankind.

Linklater’s three volumes, Men and Citizens (1990a), Beyond Realism and Marxism (1990b) and The
Transformation of Political Community (1998), form the most sustained and extensive interrogation of
political community in International Relations. In (1998), Linklater elaborates his argument in terms of a
‘triple transformation’ affecting political community. The three transformational tendencies Linklater
identifies are: a progressive recognition that moral, political and legal principles ought to be
universalized, an insistence that material inequality ought to be reduced and greater demands for
deeper respect for cultural, ethnic and gender differences. The triple transformation identifies processes
that open the possibility of dismantling the nexus between sovereignty territory, citizenship and
nationalism and moving towards more cosmopolitan forms of governance. In this respect, the
praxeological dimension closes the circle with the normative dimension by furthering the critique of the
modern state’s particularism.

It would abandon the idea that power, authority, territory and loyalty must be focused around a single
community or monopolized by a single site of governance. The state can no longer mediate effectively
or exclusively among the many loyalties, identities and interests that exist in a globalizing world.

This requires states to establish and locate themselves in overlapping forms of international society.
Linklater (1998: 166–7) lists three forms. First, a pluralist society of states in which the principles of
coexistence work ‘to preserve respect for the freedom and equality of independent political
communities’. Second, a ‘solidarist’ society of states that have agreed to substantive moral purposes.
Third, a post-Westphalian framework where states relinquish some of their sovereign powers so as to
institutionalize shared political and moral norms.

A second contribution critical international theory makes is to rethink accounts of the modern state and
political community. Traditional theories tend to take the state for granted, but critical international
theory analyses the changing ways in which the boundaries of community are formed, maintained and
transformed. It not only provides a sociological account, it provides a sustained ethical analysis of the
practices of inclusion and exclusion. Critical international theory’s aim of achieving an alternative theory
and practice of international relations rests on the possibility of overcoming the exclusionary dynamics
associated with modern system of sovereign states and establishing a cosmopolitan set of arrangements
that will better promote freedom, justice and equality across the globe. It is thus an attempt radically to
rethink the normative foundations of global politics