494327

2013
EJT19310.1177/1354066113494327European Journal of International RelationsGuzzini

EJIR
Article

European Journal of
International Relations
The ends of International 19(3) 521541
The Author(s) 2013
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of reflexivity and modes of DOI: 10.1177/1354066113494327
ejt.sagepub.com
theorizing

Stefano Guzzini
Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark
Uppsala University, Sweden

Abstract
International Relations theory is being squeezed between two sides. On the one hand,
the world of practitioners and attached experts often perceive International Relations
theory as misleading if it does not correspond to practical knowledge, and redundant
when it does. The academic study of international relations can and should not be
anything beyond the capacity to provide political judgement which comes through
reflection on the historical experience of practitioners. On the other hand, and within
its disciplinary confines, International Relations theory is reduced to a particular type of
empirical theory with increasing resistance to further self-reflection. Instead, this article
argues that neither reduction is viable. Reducing theory to practical knowledge runs
into self-contradictions; reducing theorizing to its empirical mode underestimates the
constitutive function of theories, the role of concepts, and hence the variety of necessary
modes of theorizing. I present this twofold claim in steps of increasing reflexivity in
International Relations theory and propose four modes of theorizing: normative, meta-
theoretical, ontological/constitutive and empirical.

Keywords
conceptual analysis, intellectual history, methodological pluralism, nature of theory in
the social sciences, Norbert Elias, sociology of International Relations

Introduction
Scholars of International Relations (IR) theory find themselves in a paradoxical position.
On the one hand, being a theorist constitutes a core quality of the accomplished scholar,

Corresponding author:
Stefano Guzzini, Danish Institute for International Studies, stbanegade 117, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark &
Dept of Government, Uppsala University, PO Box 514, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden.
Email: sgu@diis.dk
522 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

at least to judge from our surveys. And yet, working with one of the isms has become
considered outmoded, been there, if not outright harmful (Lake, 2011). Whereas theo-
rists are tied to isms and their endless debates, research should move forward to get
things done. More fundamentally, whereas in the past great theoretical debates provided
the core of the discipline of IR, offering a common reference point in an otherwise ever-
expanding field of study, and a shared language with the world of practice (realism
idealism), this has ceased to be the case; the continuous bickering and flag-waving
having in fact become an obstacle to it. The core comes now more by stealth through
complete absorption, some say normalization, into (US) Political Science, where IR is
simply the external facet of public policy studies (for an early statement, see Milner,
1998). This article argues that this vision of theory is unwarranted and a consequence of
failing to see the multiple modes of theorizing IR. There is much more to theorizing than
isms. I will introduce four modes of theorizing: normative theorizing, meta-theorizing,
constitutive/ontological theorizing and empirical theorizing.
Those four modes of theorizing are neither unknown nor new. Yet, or so my argument
goes, they have been neglected, if not cut out by a scissor movement coming from two
opposite directions. First, it is common to hear that all the abstract language of academia
(whether meta-theory or formal modelling and mathematization) has alienated IR from
the world of practice. In its strongest version, this view claims that the real, or at least
only relevant, knowledge is what has come down to us over centuries of practical self-
reflection and political judgement. Being authorized to theorize world politics is some-
thing for which scholars have had to struggle by continuously challenging the allegedly
superior knowledge of the practitioner. Yet, showing the distinctiveness of scientific
knowledge from practical knowledge is constantly undermined by the sheer closeness to
the field of political practitioners in whose language the analysis of world politics is
authoritatively spoken, and by the socialization of analysts through (some) professional
schools, attracting students who, in the schools rite of passage to become leaders in their
society, are often encouraged to belittle, if not de facto neglect, the academic (i.e. use-
less) approach to knowledge.
Second, even within their field, theorists find themselves under attack at least some
kinds of theorists. With the professionalization of the discipline, standard measures of
quality have produced a sometimes welcome, sometimes depressing, homogenization
of research. Ever-increasing numbers of graduate students are educated (better than:
trained) according to a quantitative-followed-up-by-qualitative (meaning small-n)
research design in which all there is to theory is reached when some robust empirical
generalizations can be made under specified scope conditions.
The article will address this dual challenge to IR theory, being squeezed out between
practical knowledge and a specific version of empirical theory. To make my point, I will
present the development of IR theory as historical steps of increasing reflexivity which
cannot be undone. In the first section, I will try to show that there is no return to mere
practical knowledge as all there is to theorizing IR, although I will later also insist on the
need to understand that very practical knowledge as part of successful theorizing. I will
present my argument by theorizing on the origins of the field of international expertise,
analysing the way practical knowledge, and a specific one informed by the raison dtat,
became the habitus of Court Aristocracy and later the diplomatic community. Western
Guzzini 523

IR1 as field of study emerged not as a response to societal changes, as did other fields of
systematic inquiry. In the early days, the discipline was not there to produce knowledge;
already-existing (practical) knowledge produced its discipline. But, as my discussion of
the early writings of Morgenthau which concludes the first section demonstrates, the
resulting attempt to square the circle of practical knowledge in a scientific environment
did not work.
Although this argument supports the need to find a reflexive distance to the level of
political action, and indeed a different language from the one in which world politics is
spoken, I will then develop in the second section the need to further our understanding of
different and equally important modes of theorizing which are not reducible to empirical
generalizations. As Anna Leander (2011) so succinctly put it, we have to think of theoriz-
ing not as producing cookbooks, but instead as writing unfinished dictionaries, inside
which a growing number of terms are in need of being continuously updated, in them-
selves and in their relation to each other.
With this understanding of the different modes and ends of theorizing, the present
state of IR can also be reframed. The classical isms may indeed no longer be the natural
core of the discipline of IR, but that does not at all exclude the fact that theorizing can
still be. Rather than seeing IR increasingly absorbed into Political Science, IR is con-
ceived in terms of global politics, subsuming domestic and comparative politics. That is
again no news to many scholars in International Political Sociology or International
Political Economy (IPE). With these ends in mind, there is no end in sight for IR
theory.

Theory? No theorizing needed!

Practical knowledge and the self-reflection of world
politics
Whether or not a debate between realists and idealists (or any equivalent labels) really
constituted a great debate in the early days of the field of inquiry, the dichotomy has been
constitutive for much of the self-understanding of its practitioners. The dichotomy
reflected the two fields where expertise in IR could be grounded, namely, in the military
and in diplomacy, as well as in the resources on which they relied, the study of history
and politics on the one hand, and of (international) law on the other, even if this divide
was never absolute.
This dichotomy structured much of the way international politics was to be under-
stood. The lessons of the two world wars were paradigmatic in this regard. Were deter-
rence and escalation the wrong strategy after Sarajevo, so was appeasement equally
erroneous in the 1930s (for two clear analyses of this dual lesson, see Jervis, 1976;
Wolfers, 1962). The discourse of world politics got locked into its central binary opposi-
tion which, importantly, traded on a confusion of observational theories and foreign
policy strategies. Here, hawks are the realist defenders of deterrence or containment
and doves the idealist/liberal proponents of engagement. This move had the perni-
cious effect of confusing description and explanation (Wendt, 1995): when things turned
violent, this constituted both a hawkish description and validating proof for realism;
524 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

whereas when diplomacy succeeded, doves or idealism would score. But surely, doves
had ways to explain war, just as much as hawks had ways to understand peaceful con-
flict resolution.
The confusion between theory and (foreign policy) strategy, between explanation
from a distance and maxims for action, is rarely found in other social sciences. That it
regularly happens in the expert debate on international relations has a good reason: this
binary simplification does not originate in the field of science, although it is reproduced
there. Its origin is in the discourse of world diplomacy. Its conduit is the classical debate
between political realism and idealism, and its conception of the superiority of practical
knowledge. Whereas most social sciences are born out of the attempt of societies to
reflect on and act upon their increasing differentiation and the development of the state
with all its emerging functions, there is something peculiar to the self-reflection that led
to IR as a discipline. Here, it is not with the distant view of science that social and politi-
cal practice is improved; it is rather the other way round: it is through recourse to the
lessons of practice that science is constituted. If the evolution of societies had made sci-
ence necessary for knowledge, control and for the legitimacy of rule then the late-
coming discipline of IR was to become the necessary detour to convince the new and
enlarged world diplomatic society about, and thus preserve, the already-existing practi-
cal knowledge of its diplomatic and military elite. Science did not turn against tradition;
tradition fitted itself into its science. The discipline was not there to produce knowledge;
knowledge produced its discipline.
This section will deal with the implications of this specific origin for theorizing in
IR. Since my aim is to show the squeeze from practical knowledge in which IR theoriz-
ing finds itself, I will concentrate the discussion on the diplomatic lineage in the spirit
of the raison dtat, and not on international law (although some legal positivists could
easily join here).2 In the first step, I show the sociological and ideational underpinnings,
that is, the field and epistemic habitus of that quite specific group which has come to
define what European diplomacy talks and thinks: the International of Court
Aristocracy. In the second step, it will introduce how observers have made this view
their own, how they have put this practical knowledge into the service of defining the
specificity of the human/social sciences. It will finally indicate how that first-order
reflexivity has become a crucial part of the early definition of IR, although it cannot
overcome its internal tensions. For the sake of simplicity, I will present this through the
work of Norbert Elias and a critique of Hans J. Morgenthau, respectively, passing
quickly via Friedrich Meinecke.

The remote origins of IR and the habitus of (absolutist) Court politics

Norbert Elias has retraced the field and habitus of French Court Aristocracy in a way which
sheds light on the identity of European diplomacy, its being a community in the first place,
its way of seeing and doing things, and its shared practical knowledge.3 Eliass argument is
relevant in two ways. First, that Court Aristocracy is the bearer of a certain behavioural
canon (what he calls a habitus) which survived stronger than anywhere else indeed,
almost in distilled form in the diplomatic or foreign services of the Court. Second, even
when the middle classes eventually took over those positions (by the early 20th century),
Guzzini 525

they did not import their own canon, but adopted the existing pre-revolutionary aristocratic
one, with some adaptations due to the nationalization of politics (see also the discussion
in Lebow, 2008: ch. 7).
To start with the creation of an aristocratic norm-canon of diplomacy (the sociogen-
esis of norms), Elias refers back to the establishment of a Court society, in his case,
absolutist France. In the feudal bonds the aristocracy had to their rulers, their importance
as knights and providers of armies guaranteed their autonomy. Yet, so Eliass argument
goes, rulers increasingly tried to rely on the lower classes for their armies. This change
was accelerated by the shift in military technologies, where the advent of gunpowder and
guns made the (aristocratic) cavalry an often powerless form of arms. Finally, with
increasing financial needs, the Crown was incited to raise taxes, and/or to make public
office available for money (Elias, 1969: 265272).
This development drove the old aristocracy into a dilemma between independence
and prestige. If it kept going the old way, proud and autonomous from the Sovereign, its
status was bound to decline, its privileges increasingly eroded. Worse, by being faithful
to its own normative system, the aristocracy would run into debt to uphold its prestige,
so fundamental to the habitus and hence recognition within its class, only to further pre-
cipitate impoverishment and loss of influence. If, however, they wished to uphold status
and some influence, they would become increasingly dependent on the King and his
largesse. The Court grew into a place where titles were sold, and favours offered, putting
the King at the centre of a complex figuration of forces. Part of the aristocracy moved to
the Court and stayed there permanently the Versailles Court having at its maximum
10,000 residents according to one source in Elias. A new class, the Court Aristocracy,
appeared. A new field of power was created, the Court.
Politics in such a Court society were of a special manner. Lest one wished to forgo
ones status, it was an inevitable field of social relations, both continuous in time and
finite in scope. In such a world, any action, any word, fed immediately back into the
totality of relations (Elias, 1969: 190). With no escape and high levels of interdepend-
ence, as Elias stresses, its members need advance carefully. This society taught an
extreme control of personal feelings. Thoughts needed to be impenetrable; prudence was
essential (Elias, 1969: 181 and 185, respectively).
It also directed a total attention to things allegedly external, since any act in this web
of relations could be read in terms of status, and hence even a slight shift in attention
might indicate a sudden weakness (Elias, 1969: 179). The Court Aristocracy was obsessed
with prestige, honour and status, and hence etiquette. Prestige was crucial for the very
self-definition of Court Aristocrats; a threat to their honour would strike their identity as
members of that society (Elias, 1969: 164). And so etiquette, far from being mere formal-
ity, became the self-representation of the Court society in which any shifts subtle
favours, possible slights were registered (Elias, 1969: 174).
At the Court, to employ a phrase used elsewhere, one had no friends, only interests.
And so the Court society produced a habitus (and was reproduced by it) which was thor-
oughly based on self-interested action,4 which, in turn, was understood as always pru-
dent, often duplicitous, potentially ruthless although the very finiteness of the Court
and the repetition of relations also put a break on such ruthlessness. Nothing was ever
really forgotten. Consequently, so Elias writes, the habitus was what we now call
526 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

diplomatic and has survived mainly in the foreign service, but increasingly also in the
negotiation cultures of other (also private) international actors (Elias, 1969: 187). For,
although the noblesse de robe increasingly took over major state functions (as judges, for
instance), it did not touch the higher military and diplomatic services, in which part of
the old noblesse dpe was able to secure a monopoly position that kept its status intact
(Elias, 1969: 325326). Here, we find the undiluted habitus of the Court Aristocrat, the
sociological base for what scholars in IR have come to call diplomatic culture, whose
common idiom used to be French until the early 20th century.
And the special knowledge of this Aristocratic International, as Morgenthau called
it, was explicitly not reflexive or theoretical. Since the middle of the 18th century, the
forms of knowledge considered relevant for the diplomatic service are to be found in
memoirs, personal letters and correspondence, aphorisms and maxims (like
Rochefoucaults), that is, the Court societys ongoing conversation. Only with that
form of practical knowledge, typical for the habitus of the Court Aristocrat, was a person
considered suitable for the foreign service (Elias, 1969: 182, fn. 36 for the argument of
this paragraph).
With that special diplomatic community and its predispositions established, the sec-
ond step in Eliass argument is about the reproduction of its habitus. In the 19th cen-
tury, social mobility put pressure on the relatively coherent social strata from which the
diplomatic and military elite had conventionally been chosen. When the middle classes
reached the leading positions in the state, their moral canon either more strictly
utilitarian and less prestige-oriented or more idealist clashed with the aristocratic
one. But, according to Elias, in particular in international affairs in which they had the
least experience, and where the contradictions between their moral code and reigning
realpolitik were greatest, the middle classes ended up simply adopting the maxims of
the previous ruling groups. They took over the existing aristocratic habitus
(Verhaltenskanon) which, for no better word, one could call Machiavellian, and
which, in everyones unbridled pursuit of personal interests, had left over a heritage
of mistrust and fear from each other (Elias, 1989: 184). In this way the diplomatic
culture reproduced not only itself, but also the international realm to which it suppos-
edly was a practical answer. For it became a self-perpetuating mechanism: the belief
in the truth and inevitability of power politics is, according to Elias, itself one of the
chief reasons for its perpetuation (Elias, 1989: 202). As such, the field can be consid-
ered remarkably stable.
This middle classes adoption of the pre-existing maxims did, however, also lead to one
significant adaptation. Power politics was no longer applied to dynastic relations between
single sovereigns loyal to the(ir) state, but to relations in the name of sovereign collectives
loyal to the(ir) nation (Elias, 1989: 185189).5 This turned the relatively flexible postulate
that the self-interest of a state is the last and decisive reference for action in international
relations into a categorical imperative, with deep roots not only in the emotions of the
individuals, but also in their conscience, in their self- and we-image, their self- and we-
ideal (Elias, 1989: 203). The aristocratic habitus of Court society thus became the diplo-
matic culture characterized by self-interested prudence and nationalized power politics
that was to socialize newcomers and rule international affairs at least until the early 20th
century. All reflection needed was the ongoing conversation within the field.
Guzzini 527

Interlude: Practical knowledge as an attempt to fuse political thought

and history wie es wirklich gewesen
Friedrich Meineckes resurrection of the reason of state can serve as my bridge to con-
textualize the defence of practical knowledge even within a science. The tradition of
the reason of state could form an important link, because it was both a foreign policy
practice and the first-order reflection on that practice, that is, a reflection from within
the field itself. It corresponds to the first wave of reflection which sets in during the
Renaissance, in which previous social practices in foreign policy are explicitly framed,
codified and in the process also to some extent erected as a model (or anti-model)
(Elias, 1969: 408409; 1989: 155, 179). Power politics la Machiavelli was surely not
something new to his age; but with the secularization of politics, its practice was
explicitly reflected upon.
In proposing this tradition in the interwar period, Meinecke attempts to ground practi-
cal knowledge as politics and vice versa. The basis would be a particular conception of
historiography, departing from the spell of natural law and its concern with the ideal
state, and thinking Staatskunst and History in direct parallel:

Acting according to the reason of state reached relatively early a way of seeing and understanding
which was akin to modern historical cognition. Modern historical cognition, in turn, profited
also from the reason of state, from the attraction that emanated from the teaching of the interests
of states, which was used as auxiliary practical science for the art of government since the 17th
century by those involved in the latter. (Meinecke, 1957 [1924/1929]: 2223, my translation)

Making the reason of state hence the privileged partner for establishing an empirical
methodology for the history of ideas, such history also becomes the essence of and sedi-
mented knowledge for the art of government. Statesmen and modern historians blend
into each other in the quest to understand states and their interests in the motion of world
history, an understanding acquired by looking through the eyes of the practitioner. The
result is not universal knowledge, but practical maxims, which is the way Meinecke
defined the reason of state.
And since the emergence of modern diplomacy evolved in parallel with the dis-
course of the reason of state during the Renaissance (Meinecke, 1957 [1924/1929]:
176), these two discourses are of the same kind. Meinecke (1957 [1924/1929]: 100)
sees in the teachings (Lehre) of the European balance of power nothing other than a
detail of the general teachings (Lehre) of the reason of state. Yet, it is first and fore-
most that practical knowledge, and precisely not yet an attempt to turn it into a social
science. Meinecke (1957 [1924/1929]: 174175) is very explicit that a purely empir-
ical and utilitarian study of the reason of state is necessarily limited, and general
catalogues for the ideal behaviour of states are not possible. He ridicules the attempt
to understand politics like clock mechanics and reads Hobbes in this tradition
(Meinecke, 1957 [1924/1929]: 188). Indeed, Meinecke (1957 [1924/1929]: 245)
says that by its very nature, a clear definition of the concept of reason of state is not
possible. Nor is a calculus of the real interests of states always possible, since the
dilemmas of political necessity escape a clear assessment and the interests are often
528 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

ambivalent themselves (Meinecke, 1957 [1924/1929]: 275). Looking at politics as

it really is, Meinecke (1957 [1924/1929]: 165) sees the field of statesmanship like
the classical world of tragedy: only with the sense of history and the experience of
politics given by the reason of state can statesmen hope to acquire the art/craft of
statesmanship (Staatskunst). It is a reflective knowledge, but ultimately cannot (and
should not) be anything but practical.

The impossibility of squaring the circle: Practical knowledge in a time

of second-order reflection
If Machiavelli stands for the self-awareness of a habitus, a first-order reflection, then the
resurgence of the reason of state in the interwar period stands for the attempt to freeze
both scientific knowledge and political practice at that level. A nascent Western disci-
pline of IR could then have followed the way of other social sciences. If international
relations had been conceived as an international society, one could have mobilized the
scientific canons of Comte, Durkheim, Marx or Weber, who offered several matrixes for
a scientific turn. But in IR, the call for the superior knowledge embedded in the practical
tradition of the raison dtat was still alive. It was alive in the habitus of practitioners and
now revived by the early epigones of the discipline.
Yet the changing criteria for validity claims undermined the status of political judge-
ment based on the sole appeal to experience and the lessons of history. This produced a
strong tension, well illustrated by the early writings of Morgenthau. Here, Morgenthau
(1946) showed himself in an uncomfortable legacy of Max Weber. But despite all his
respect, in the end, Morgenthau could not follow Webers route to science. Theorizing as
practical knowledge got stuck in a dilemma.
Just like Weber, Morgenthau was exposed to three different traditions of theorization,
one more normative, two more positive.6 They both rejected the classical normative tra-
dition, too much concerned with what politics should be, rather than with what it actually
was. In the positive tradition, they acknowledged the role of both the practical and sci-
entific tradition, nicely exemplified by Webers two famous lectures on Politics as a
Science and as a Vocation But whereas Weber ultimately saw a clear priority for sociol-
ogy as a science, even if an interpretive one, Morgenthau was stuck with a priority for the
practical tradition.
This produces a certain dilemma. Weber could move to scientific justifications for his
knowledge, Morgenthaus Scientific Man vs Power Politics could do so only with quali-
fications. A first-order reflection gave way to a second-order reflection on that very core
of knowledge that had been assembled and canonized beforehand. With the development
of the social sciences as disciplines, an appeal to historical experience is no strong argu-
ment. And so Morgenthau ended up making the central move: where Meinecke was still
arguing against the very need for a theory when claiming the superiority of practical
knowledge (for both the historian and the practitioner), Morgenthau was trying to show
that the maxims of practical knowledge are a scientific theory. From no theory needed,
Morgenthau moved to no new theory needed.
Morgenthau could declare that although Martin Wights (1966) Why is there no
international theory? was wrong (for Morgenthau, there is theory):
Guzzini 529

Its fourteen pages contain more insights into the intellectual issues posed by theoretical concern
with international relations than a whole shelf of books and articles that, following the fashion
of the day, spin out theories of international relations and embark upon esoteric methodological
studies on how to approach such theory-making. (Morgenthau, 1970 [1964]: 248)

This quote clearly shows his two theoretical targets: the attempt to fashion theory in terms
of testable models and the tendency to discuss methodology, which seems to include also
theorizing in meta-theoretical terms (what he calls theory-making). Those misconceived
theories, wrote Morgenthau, mistake politics for something fully amenable to reason
and measurement. The latter contradicts the objective character of international relations
and produces dogmas, a kind of metaphysics, regardless in what empirical or mathe-
matical garb it is clothed (Morgenthau, 1970 [1967]: 242, 243 and 246, respectively). By
not talking truth to power in any relevant way, such theoretical research only serves to
bolster the status quo (Morgenthau, 1970 [1967]: 247) and ultimately only serves the nar-
row interests and psychological self-satisfaction of scholars who do not dare to make
statements whose closer contact with political reality could disconfirm them (Morgenthau,
1970 [1964]: 261). Hence, Morgenthaus aim was twofold. Against Wight, he wished to
defend the possibility of an international theory, if redefined. Against behaviouralism
(which he connected ple-mle with economic approaches, liberalism, utopianism), he
wished to define its necessarily limited character.
But when Morgenthau sketches the nature of possible IR theory, the argument
becomes ultimately circular. For Morgenthau, it is a theory which goes beyond a philoso-
phy of history, in that it makes explicit the theoretical assumptions upon which philo-
sophically inclined historians (he refers to Thucydides and Ranke) have made their
analysis, and then uses history to demonstrate their validity (Morgenthau, 1970 [1964]:
251, referring to the same body of inspiration as Meinecke). Since politics is both con-
tingent and rational, the limited rational element in political action makes politics sus-
ceptible to theoretical analysis, whereas, to conclude on a comfortably ambivalent
position, its contingent element obviates the possibility of theoretical understanding
(Morgenthau, 1970 [1964]: 254). Within these limits, a theory of international relations
performs the function any theory performs, that is, to bring order and meaning into a
mass of unconnected material and to increase knowledge through the logical develop-
ment of certain propositions empirically established (Morgenthau, 1970 [1964]: 257).
Indeed, in a suddenly arch-positivist answer to Wights critique that whereas domestic
theory is about progress (and hence amenable to theory), IR is the realm of recurrence
and repetition, Morgenthau wrote that it is precisely this repetitive character of interna-
tional politics, that is, the configurations of the balance of power, that lends itself to theo-
retical systematisation (1970 [1964]: 251). Theory meets geopolitics here, understood as
the objectivist component of realist theorizing. To make this work, the raison dtat is
not only in historical experience, but also in the nature of things.
Hence, Morgenthau looked for regularities that can be empirically established and
historically demonstrated and found them in the classical balance of power politics. But
then why would he oppose the attempt to systematically test those regularities in con-
trolled and often quantitative studies? He did see that any historical explanation neces-
sarily relies upon theoretical assumptions which need to be made explicit. But then why
530 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

would he believe theoretical critiques of other theories to be useless, when they perform
precisely that exposition and discussion of underlying assumptions? If empirical regu-
larities cannot be established in a quantitative way because no historical case is really
like any other, then also his own theory be established or justified, since the nature, nay,
the existence, of the alleged regularities is then at stake. If, on the other hand, making
theoretical assumptions explicit is the work of theorizing, then it is an unavoidable and
fundamental part of IR theory, not idle self-centred talk. By denying a stronger role to
theory, by not going the whole Weberian way, his approach falls back on positivist posi-
tions malgr lui and cannot defend itself well against the behaviouralist attack.
As a result, and as shown elsewhere (Guzzini, 1998; 2004: 534535, 546548), prac-
tical knowledge when moving from a first- to a second-order reflexivity remains caught
in the conservative or justification/tradition dilemma, so named after Kissingers (1957:
ch. XI) analysis of Metternich. Its classical defence no longer applies: it cannot just refer
to the world as it is and rely on its practical understanding by the responsible elites. But
if it then defends itself in a theoretical, that is, an objective, systematic manner
(Morgenthau, 1970 [1967]: 254), practical knowledge at this level of reflexivity has no
choice but to engage the scientific canon of the day, which it had left to others to define.
Not redefining the core of theorizing itself, it ends up in a no-win situation: being con-
sistent with itself, it should avoid a scientific defence, but that will no longer do; by
attempting that scientific defence in positive and positivistic language (as it is), practi-
cal knowledge does not, however, stay consistent with itself.
This position always comes back to say that, although theory is needed, there is
really nothing new under the sun; some amendments and systematization of the existing
first-level reflection of the reason of state will do, as exemplified by the different devel-
opments of balance of power theory. It is a remarkable logical circle: since international
relations are all recurrence and repetition, as Wight said, so are our theories; and so they
must be according to theory as geopolitics, because so is reality. The logic of reality
is said to impose practical knowledge, when it is practical knowledge that constructs
this logic of reality in the first place without allowing a reflective distance to its own
construction.
In this circular move, the end(s) of theorizing are also the end of it, since no knowl-
edge which goes beyond and against the nature of international politics, as asserted by
Morgenthau, is tenable. In this view, any theory beyond is but the personification of the
liberal rationalist hubris, any further debate about theory-making only irresponsible
scholastic narcissism. But however well this still resonates in policy circles within and
outside academia, it gives no good reason to halt further theorizing.

Which theory? Which theorizing?

Scientific knowledge and the self-reflection of world
political observation
The role of IR theory can only be appreciated if we rid ourselves of two reductionisms.
The first, mentioned above, concerns the confusion between practical and scientific
knowledge. The second, and theme of this section, is the reduction of scientific
knowledge to a narrow version of empirical theory. This section will argue that both
Guzzini 531

movements together crowd out most of what theorizing is all about. Theory is not only
the result of knowledge, but also the condition for the possibility of knowledge.
Theorizing must cover both aspects, and the fact that not all knowledge is empirically
determined.
In fact, this section argues that it is better to confront and analyse the ubiquity of theo-
retical presuppositions than to exogenize them. In many contemporary research designs,
theory is either the result of the study (the empirical generalization) or its given and
external starting point (if that generalization informs a proposition put to a test). Theory,
thus, is external to research design and divorced from methodology. But theory is not
there only before or after it never leaves us, as seen also by positivist philosophers of
science.
The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I will try to rescue an understanding of
the Inter-Paradigm Debate (IPD) which, although shared by its proponents in the 1980s
and later, seems to have been forgotten or reinterpreted, at least in parts of our field.
Indeed, the IPD does not necessarily have to stand for stale debates, or for increasingly
bitter turf wars, between realism, idealism and whatever other ism. It opened a stage not
only for a second-order reflection on world politics at the level of the observer, but for
its self-reflection and theoretical control by probing the assumptions of such world
political observations. Reminding us of that space opened by the IPD, but unpacking the
bundled paradigms, I propose four modes of theorizing which characterize our, and I
guess any, field in the social sciences. Taking these modes of theorizing seriously asks,
in turn, that we conceive of our core scientific communication as organized around
concepts used for updating our knowledge in ever unfinished dictionaries of the
international.

Revisiting the Third Debate7

In many corners of the discipline, the IPD has been shelved and is relegated to standard
textbook presentations. But in my understanding, this follows from a narrow and impov-
erished form of the debate in which we simply throw isms at each other. Worse, the isms
have been at times read in terms of ideologies, where IR theories would have to fit into
conservatism, liberalism and whatever stood for radicalism.
This move to reduce paradigms to ideologies is, however, telling. In a scientific field
attuned to the idea that there can ultimately be only one truth, a plurality of equally jus-
tifiable theories is not easy to accept. In this understanding, an IPD, wherever it occurred,
could only be a passing moment, eventually resolved by having a winner.8 If it dragged
on, some scholars had to be either of inferior intellect or possibly dogmatic due to some
normative commitment. When reason could not decide, it had to be the fault of values
and the longer the pluralism of theories lasted, the more bitter the fight, the more
fenced the turf. Quite understandably, scholars would ask for a kind of truce in the form
of eclecticism (Sil and Katzenstein, 2010) to move beyond such theory wars.
Yet, this is not at all how the IPD (Banks, 1985; Holsti, 1985) or also the Third
Debate (Lapid, 1989a, 1989b) was seen by its proponents. They saw in it a liberating
movement and an invitation to a healthy pluralism. Theorizing in IR had reached a dead-
lock, because the existing ways to conceive world politics both the nature of politics
532 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

and what counts as the world needed to come to terms with social and historical
changes. For instance, there had been attempts to subsume IR within a larger subject
matter, namely, IPE (Cox, 1987; Gilpin, 1987; Strange, 1988). Moreover, the impossibil-
ity of finding a single winning theory was not due to the dogmatic ill-will of scholars, but
to the fact that our theories are potentially underdetermined by evidence. In this context,
the Third Debate argued that the deadlock could only be managed and made fruitful for
research if IR started a second-order theorizing on the underlying assumptions of theo-
ries and how they structure the understanding of the research subject, problematiques
and techniques. Hence, when Jeff Checkel recently assessed pluralism in the discipline
and admonished that bridge-building had mainly produced middle-range theorizing
which disregarded meta-theory and epistemology, as well as the macro-level where
material power and social discourse say fundamentally shape and predetermine the
mechanisms playing out at lower levels (Checkel, 2013: 234ff.), then, oddly, the IPD is
not over, but, in some parts of our field at least, has yet to begin.
This does not mean that the IPD was or is unproblematic for reasons already exposed
in the 1990s, as, for instance, for its conservative bias in the use of incommensurability
or for the risk of a shallow eclecticism picking out of menus for choice without control
for meta-theoretical consistency (Guzzini, 1992: ch. 10; 1993; 1998: ch. 8; Wver, 1996;
Wight, 1996). But that historical critique of the IPD concentrated not on the need to
reflect on theoretical assumptions, which it easily agreed with. It aimed at the ways those
assumptions were bundled, and how the relation between those packages was, in turn,
understood. For, as can be imagined, by having unleashed debates on all possible types
of assumptions ontological, epistemological and normative and by trying to tie
them together in triads that would be recognizable to political debates, the IPD, just like
the earlier English School formulation, packaged too much into this. In Hedley Bulls
critique, he writes that Wight was too ambitious in attributing to the Machiavellians, the
Grotians and the Kantians distinctive views not only about war, peace, diplomacy, inter-
vention and other matters of International Relations but about human psychology, about
irony and tragedy, about methodology and epistemology (Bull, 1976: 111). Hence, the
problem is not the awareness and the theorization of these different levels of assump-
tions, but their ready-made packaging and superimpositions. If applied correctly, there is
nothing wrong with comparing three different approaches even on a level of assump-
tions, as long as a narrow theoretical focus is used (see, e.g., Hasenclever et al., 1997).
And, of course, probing those assumptions opens up the field to a plethora of other isms
(e.g. rationalism, constructivism, naturalism, materialism, idealism) and ologies that are
probably fundamental to all (social) sciences and humanities.
Hence, although the isms debates may no longer constitute the core debates of the
discipline, they are always there in the background even if we may now concentrate on
the discussion of specific problematiques, rather than those isms as such (and they remain
in the foreground in the discourse shared by practitioners and surrounding experts). More
importantly, the focus on isms as testable explanatory theories was not all that the IPD
was about, let alone being its most important aspect. The central contribution of that
debate was to take the constitutive function of theories seriously, that is, looking at theo-
ries as conditions for the possibility of knowledge. It therefore moved beyond the first
behaviouralist attempt to turn practical knowledge into a science by proposing
Guzzini 533

a self-reflection of world political observation. Throwing the isms out of the core is
understandable in the one-truth gladiatorial world, since such a context renders the
debate almost inevitably dogmatic. Well understood, however, the IPD requires both a
search for coherence, auto-critique and tolerance. The IPDs plea for reflexive theorizing
is needed now just as much as then. In the following section, I will suggest ways to
unpack the different modes of theorizing that informed the IPD.

Four modes of theorizing

This section introduces four modes of theorizing: normative, meta-theoretical, ontologi-
cal/constitutive and empirical. While presenting these traditions of theorizing in turn,
the basic thrust of my argument is that no science can afford to leave one of them out,
since they are connected and their connections are significant for each form of theoriz-
ing. The following distinctions are crucial for the second main claim of the article,
namely, that one may see a decline in IR theory or plead for getting rid of all isms only
because one, again, misconstrues the very nature of theory, thereby neglecting many
types of theorizing. Moreover, this unpacking of the IPD in modes of theorizing allows
us to see more combinations and possibilities for cross-paradigmatic collaboration and
mutual learning, therefore rejoining the spirit of Sil and Katzensteins (2010) plea for
eclecticism, but keeping the requirement of wider theoretical coherence and open
reflexivity.
Normative theorizing consists in applying the scientific criteria of moral and political
philosophy to issues of international relations. As such, it is not just an analysis of ethical
issues in world politics, but one which is done according to the rules of philosophical
argument. This ensures that the accumulated knowledge on ethical (and ideological)
issues is taken into account, limiting the reinvention of wheels. That does not imply that
normative questions can be answered philosophically in this sense; but it imposes some
discipline in the way substantive moral argument is conducted.9 The significance of nor-
mative theorizing is self-evident for political analysis (since all politics is about values).
Our research problems need to be or are informed ultimately by major ethical and/or
political value issues.
Meta-theoretical theorizing provides the building blocks and fundaments upon which
all theories are built. This includes: ontology, the assumptions of what there is; episte-
mology, the assumptions of what we can know; and methodology, the assumptions of
how the former constitutive components of theories can meet the empirical. Besides this
usual meta-theoretical triad, this includes also assumptions about the nature of time (lin-
ear or layered) or the understanding of history, which, in turn can have implications for
methodology. Meta-theorizing usually takes a critical form when it checks out the con-
sistency of those assumptions upon which existing theories are built. Such meta-theoret-
ical checks can show where assumptions clash, and where theory formation is
consequently incoherent (see in IR, Kratochwil and Ruggie, 1986). But meta-theorizing
is also used in a positive form when scholars need to formulate their theories in the first
place, in particular, for ontological theorizing (see below). For instance, despite all the
interest Alexander Wendt may have in the meta-theoretical level as such, I think that his
work (in particular, Wendt, 1999) is better understood as driven by an attempt to
534 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

construct a coherent theory of IR, for which he has no choice but to engage with the
philosophy of science and social theorizing.
A third type of theorizing I call ontological for lack of a better word. One could
call it also constitutive since it is mainly about theorizing the central phenomena that
constitute the field of inquiry (power, sovereignty, state, etc.). The term ontological
theorizing is inspired by the way some of our major theoretical texts are constructed.
For instance, Hedley Bulls Anarchical Society: A Study of Order [sic!] in World
Politics is a relentless analysis of What is ? (Bull, 1977: 3, 101, 127, 162, 184,
200, respectively). Also, recent, more positivist concept analysts takes account of the
ontological view of concepts because it focuses on what constitutes a phenomenon
(Goertz, 2006: 5).
Ontological theorizing is (as all theorizing) in some sense normative but differs from
normative theorizing in its mode. The actual purpose of theorizing is not to establish
theories of the common good; nor is it necessarily connected to the study of values. In
fact, it constitutes exactly that type of theorizing which saw the day when social theories
shed moral philosophy. In that regard, it is part of the positive turn that is typical of
(Western) social sciences. It just does not, and cannot, leave philosophy and history out
of thinking the empirics. Its focus on central concepts, as in Bull, is typical because they
stand for the greater issues for which we do science in the first place. This would cru-
cially involve the very understanding of the international, with all the concepts around
anarchy, hierarchy, heteronomy, society, community and so forth, as well as fundamental
and secondary institutions, such as sovereignty (for the variety of takes, see, e.g., Adler-
Nissen and Gammeltoft-Hansen, 2008; Bartelson, 1995; Krasner, 1999; Walker, 1993)
or, indeed, the state.
Theorizing such building blocks of more general understanding is obviously con-
nected to empirical analysis. As in Max Webers Economy and Society (Weber, 1980
[19211922]: 130), the fundamental sociological concepts with which the book opens
are the very possibility of the sociological analysis which follows in the later chapters, as
well as constituting the conceptual results of the empirical analyses he has been conduct-
ing (and all the others on which he relied) for much of his career and which defined the
terms within which empirical theorizing can take place. Concepts are about ontology.
To develop a concept is more than providing a definition: it is deciding what is important
about an entity (Goertz, 2006: 27, original emphasis). The content and relationship of
these concepts to each other is then checked by meta-theorizing for their consistency, and
assessed, in ontological theorizing, both for their historical and conceptual congruence
and according to the research findings they are able to conceive of.
It conceives of the relationship to the empirics in a different manner though. In fact,
and contrary to Goertzs use, ontological theorizing is not reducible to the empirical
level. For Goertz, we decide on this basic ontological level of concepts in view of the
causal powers of its constituents. This leads him to think of ontological theorizing as
something akin to Wendts (1998) constitutive (instead of causal) relations (Goertz,
2006: 62). But that mixes the levels of observation. Constitutive relations are on the level
of empirical theorizing when factors do not relate to each other in a causal but constitu-
tive way (by reference to the structures in virtue of which they exist) as, for instance, in
empirical analyses of identity formation. Ontological theorizing is at another level,
Guzzini 535

visible often in the establishment of frameworks of analysis or typologies which are

mainly concerned with the constitutive function of theorizing.
Last but not least, there is empirical theorizing, by which I mean more inductively
driven research agendas. These can involve large-n correlational analyses (which also
lead to deductive hypothesis-testing), small-n comparisons, single case studies and the
generalizations which these allow (and this includes also hypothesis generation; see
George and Bennett, 2005). But empirical theorizing can also feature smaller units which
can travel from very case-oriented studies to others, namely, social/causal mechanisms.
Although causal mechanisms are often conceived as the causal link to explain an estab-
lished correlation, they can also be used outside a positivist framework. Following Jon
Elsters (1998, 2007) and others lead to think of such mechanisms outside a correla-
tional logic, indeed, outside a Humean understanding of causality in general (Hedstrm
and Ylikovski, 2010), one can conceive of such mechanisms, duly redefined, as part of
interpretivist process tracing with a limited (because contextually open) capacity to
travel to other cases (Guzzini, 2012b: ch. 11). Finally, such empirical analysis can feature
the very relationship between the way we conceive of the social world and the social
world itself, where, so to speak, our theories or basic concepts become themselves the
object of empirical analysis. This performative analysis can be applied to IR theories
like the democratic peace (Ish-Shalom, 2006), to analytical models and their interaction
with social reality (for financial models and financial markets, see MacKenzie, 2006), or
to the ways certain categories (such as pariah), if applied by the international commu-
nity, interact with the foreign policy identity of international actors. It prompts the need
for theorizing this reflexive relationship.
As this discussion shows, there are indeed different modes of theorizing with their
various ends of theories. But they are also clearly connected, often conditioning each
other. Indeed, our understanding of world politics would be impaired if any of those log-
ics of theorizing were allowed to lapse, and if we did not, although perhaps not continu-
ously, try to overcome our normal (and necessary) specialization in order to follow the
links between their respective findings.

The unfinished dictionary of the international

In my understanding, taking the constitutive function of theories seriously and allowing
for the different modes of theorizing in our field of inquiry puts concepts and their analy-
sis at centre-stage for our scientific communication. Just as terms are co-constitutive of
language, concepts are co-constitutive of theories; they are the words in which, but also
for which, our theorizing is done. Not only are concepts the means to achieve theorizing,
but theorizing is also a means to redefine our concepts. We constantly rewrite our
dictionary.
Such a view implies a wider understanding of conceptual analysis than usually
offered. Recently, the role of conceptual analysis has been more widely acknowledged
(Gerring, 2001), in particular, in a renewed reception of the work of Giovanni Sartori
(Collier and Gerring (2009) includes some of Sartoris main statements on the matter).
But there has been a tendency to concentrate on the technical side, on the definitional
side so to speak, neglecting the social-historical and semantic self-reflection which needs
536 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

to accompany any analysis of concepts. Just like data, concepts do not speak for them-
selves; they have a history. Understanding their ongoing history is not just a means but
also an end of our theoretical conversation, since it is a depository of our accumulated
knowledge. Indeed, in a section entitled the loss of historical anchorage, Sartori writes:

our understandings of meanings are not arbitrary stipulations but reminders of historical
experience and experimentation. Most of our political concepts were shaped and acquired their
meaning out of a survival of the fittest process. Thus, political scientists and sociologists
let alone the layman ignoring the authors of the past have freed themselves not only from the
constraints of etymology, but equally from the learning process of history. (Sartori, 2009
[1975]: 62, original italics)

Asking for such a wider understanding of the role of concepts would also, in turn, affect
the way conceptual analysis is done. In my reading, by resolutely embedding conceptual
analysis in intellectual history, Sartoris point should be extended to oppose both instru-
mentalism and essentialism. Sartoris quote is clear about the former. Despite the inevi-
table fact that any concept is a construction of the observer, not any construction goes.
We cannot just instrumentally define our terms as we feel best for coding, with no con-
cern for their historical and wider purpose. Besides the technical requirements (about
extension and intension, the risk of conceptual stretching, etc.), there are the historical
legacies and roles of a term. Taking them seriously means that we cannot play around the
semantic field as we like: we would end up with a clean definition which simply misses
the entire point of the research. Our concepts are living memory.
But opposing instrumentalism does not make conceptual analysis go essentialist,
either. It is not because we dig into the history of meanings and functions of a concept
that we find their essence. Concepts cannot be really thought independently of their
semantic context and their pragmatic use. They are part of semantic relations. Their
analysis is inevitably part of an interpretation within that semantic web. Just as much as
we need the individual concepts to decipher these relations, the opposite applies.
Concepts may have a tradition, several traditions indeed, but no essence. In a sense,
instrumentalism and essentialism are the two flip sides of the same coin. They both avoid
keeping the tension open in the development of data, the tension which is the result of
the interaction of the observers constitutive theorizing and the historical development
within which it takes place. The essentialist resolves the tension by assuming an ulti-
mately purely external anchoring point; the instrumentalist by pretending that the purist
conceptual definition and the formalization of research permits getting rid of the
interaction.
This also affects our way of working with definitions. If they are part of our ever-
expanding and updated dictionary, if concepts are at the meeting point between the
observer and the observed, their definition may often gain from being conceived in an
open way so that the empirics can also feed back to it. In qualitative (interpretivist)
studies, but not alone here, our understanding of the issue should improve over the
analysis. But this almost inevitably implies that the definition of what makes the issue
significant also shifts, its meaning shifts. One cannot start the analysis without a first
definition, and many of Sartoris precepts (plus more conceptual history and historical
Guzzini 537

sociology) are a necessary start. But on its unfolding, the analysis will keep returning
to those definitions.
Hence, our dictionaries are more than mere tools for analysis. The concepts therein
can be of different types. Illustrative of the four modes of theorizing, this could include
a reference to specific phenomena in their evolution (e.g. rights for normative theoriz-
ing or the state for ontological theorizing), meta-theoretical categories (e.g. individual-
ism), operational concepts (e.g. Standard Operating Procedures), empirical mechanisms
(e.g. socialization) or even miniature theories or ideal-types (e.g. democratic peace). In
my view, if we stay problem-oriented in our field, they are the main stuff of our com-
munication. Although isms may no longer be the core, such theorizing inevitably is.
These concepts and their discussion then also constitute what the dictionary is about.
Any discussion about a fields core will be about what is important for understanding the
entity IR. The dictionary is about the ontology of the international. To me, it seems that
this is not the reserved turf of the international practitioner (and many realists, but not
them alone), which resurrects an internalexternal divide hard to defend. Nor is it empiri-
cal Political Science writ large, where the divide is overcome by denying any signifi-
cant specificity to the historical development of international practices. There are and
will be different ways to read and contribute to the dictionary. In my own research, the
international in IR is about global politics, which uses and rewrites the dictionary
with a focus on power and governance, including impersonal rule (Guzzini, 2012a,
2013).

Conclusion
IR theory has to defend itself on two fronts. One front consists of the alleged superiority
of practical knowledge that gave rise to the discipline of IR in the first place. The other
front consists in a narrow understanding of the ends of theory, indeed, of theorizing.
This article has argued that boxing theory in either a practical or narrowly scientific
mould does no justice to the substance and ends of IR theorizing. The former errs by
limiting the capacity to observe practice. Indeed, the very categories taken for granted
in the already-existing practical knowledge need permanent reflection. They cannot be
reified across time, whatever cyclical vision of history usually underpins such attempts.
There is a need for controlled and distant observation. But if that means that scientific
knowledge is needed, theorizing has to take into account the constitutive and instrumen-
tal function of theories, and hence the different modes of theorizing. The article sug-
gests distinguishing between four modes of theorizing, all needed and all connected:
normative, meta-theoretical, ontological/constitutive and empirical. The respective
knowledge is checked according to different and specific criteria and logics in each of
them. Concepts play a special role by linking up these different modes of theorizing,
providing the common language (and translations) within which our progress in knowl-
edge can take place.
I have pursued this argument in two steps which were meant also to provide the dif-
ferent steps of reflexivity IR theory went through. And that leads me to a final and per-
haps somewhat unexpected remark. In my first section, I characterized professional
schools in IR as being very theory-adverse, at least in my own personal experience. This
538 European Journal of International Relations 19(3)

is surely still often the case. But it is not necessarily so, and one can see some interesting
shifts. In fact, some of those schools may want to combine the best of both worlds by
being self-reflexive with practical and scientific knowledge at the same time. This is
perhaps not so astonishing. If these programmes take their function of educating future
elites seriously, they need to provide not only factual knowledge, but also the capacity to
think and hence be self-reflexive and adaptive when facing new decision situations. Such
capacity is often best acquired through theoretical courses focusing on the constitutive
function of theories (and historical courses which provide another form of distance to
ones present-day assumptions). They increase the independence and autonomy of think-
ing. By definition, these programmes need to reflect on the ongoing changes in actual
international practices and in the official language in which this is bundled into practi-
cal knowledge. As such, the ideal is to see the future elite become bilingual, able to
understand the language of practice and science from the inside, as it were, and self-
reflective on both. Taking seriously the difference between practical and scientific
knowledge and the richer pedigree of modes of theorizing may not only make the cen-
trality of theory more visible, but contribute to rethinking the relation to international
practice and practices.

Acknowledgements
This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 53rd annual convention of the International
Studies Association, San Diego, 14 April 2012, in the context of the panel series on The end of
IR theory? An earlier version of the first section was written and presented at the conference The
Sociology of the Social Sciences 19452010, Copenhagen, 910 June 2011. I wish to thank the
Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin for granting me a fellowship during which I carried out all the
revisions. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge comments, help and criticisms from Emanuel Adler,
Alexander Astrov, Jens Bartelson, Andreas Behnke, Jeffrey Checkel, Petr Drulk, Karin Fierke, Jef
Huysmans, Peter Katzenstein, Audie Klotz, Anna Leander, Richard Ned Lebow, Iver Neumann,
Nick Onuf, Hidemi Suganami, Alexander Wendt, two referees and the editors of EJIR. The usual
disclaimers apply.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. The first section is indeed very Euro-centric, which is justifiable when analysing the evolution
of what today is called the discipline of IR. But it does not claim that it covers the history of the
inquiry into international affairs or politics understood globally, or that Western IR is all that
there is to the present discipline, even if it did its best to colonize it.
2. As Alexander Astrov and Nick Onuf insisted, this is a major qualifier if one wanted to provide
a more comprehensive genealogy of IR.
3. For an earlier use of Eliass argument for IR, see Krippendorff (1985).
4. Elias (1969: 181) insists that this therefore precedes the bourgeois-economic self-understand-
ing of self-interest as rational. This is a logical corollary to the position that rationality cannot
be understood independently of the social configuration in which it is realized; doing otherwise
would reify the concept (Elias, 1969: 190).
Guzzini 539

5. This shift, also visible in the aristocratic elites loyalty away from their peers (whatever their
origin) to the nation, is perhaps most remarkably illustrated in Jean Renoirs movie La grande
illusion (1937).
6. The excursus on Weber is dealt with in much more detail in Guzzini (2007a). The analysis of
Morgenthau is adapted from Guzzini (2007b).
7. This section has profited from correspondence with Scott Hamilton and Patrick Jackson.
8. A point I borrow from Patrick Jackson, personal communication.
9. I am indebted to Hidemi Suganami for insisting on this distinction.

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Author biography
Stefano Guzzini is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and Professor
of Government at Uppsala University, Sweden. His recent publications include The Return of
Geopolitics in Europe? Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises (Cambridge
University Press, 2012), The Diffusion of Power in Global Governance: International Political
Economy meets Foucault (Palgrave, 2012, co-edited with Iver Neumann) and Power, Realism and
Constructivism (Routledge, 2013).