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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210505006388

Review of International Studies (2005), 31, 195–209 Copyright © British International Studies Association
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210505006388

The critical social theory of the

Frankfurt School, and the
‘social turn’ in IR
M A RT I N W E B E R

Critical theory in the Frankfurt School mould has made various inroads into IR
theorising, and provided many a stimulus to attempts at redressing the ‘positivist’
imbalance in the discipline. Many of the conceptual offerings of the Frankfurt
School perspective1 have received critical attention in IR theory debates, and while
these are still ongoing, the purpose of this discussion is not to attempt to contribute
by furthering either methodological interests, or politico-philosophical inquiry.
Instead, I focus on the near omission of the social-theoretic aspect of the work
especially of Juergen Habermas. I argue that a more in-depth exploration of critical
social theory has considerable potential in the context of the ‘social turn’ in IR
theory. The lack of attention to this potential is arguably due in part to the
importance of Habermas’ contribution to cosmopolitan normative theory, and the
status held by the cosmopolitan-communitarian debate as a key site of critical IR
debate for many years throughout the 1990s.2 The productivity of the Habermasian
conception of the discourse theory of morality within this set of concerns has been
obvious, and continues.3 However, the emphasis on normative theoretic interests has
not reflected the way in which such interests are intrinsically connected for Habermas
with the continuation of the Frankfurt School’s project of critical social theory of
modernity. In this vein, his work, which explored in depth many of the sources of
social theorising now productive in IR theory, represents both a challenge to the
progression of ‘the social turn’ in IR, and an opportunity to restate the relevance of
critical theory. In particular, the engagement of functionalist social theory under-
taken in Habermas’ work is set to gain relevance in the light of more recent trends,
for instance within via media constructivism, to embrace functionalist accounts of
socialisation.4

1
Chris Brown, ‘ “Our Side”? Critical Theory and International Relations’, in Richard Wyn Jones (ed.),
Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
2
See, for instance, Chris Brown, International Relations Theory – New Normative Approaches (London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992); Mark Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations Theory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political
Community (Cambridge: Polity, 1998).
3
See Juergen Haacke in this Forum. See also Martin Weber ‘Engaging Globalization: Critical Theory
and Global Political Change’, Alternatives, 27 (2002), pp. 301–25.
4
Alexander Wendt, ‘What is International Relations for? Notes Toward a Postcritical View’, in Wyn
Jones (ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics.

195
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196 Martin Weber

Against this background, I argue for a more in-depth engagement in IR theory

with the ‘systems-lifeworld’ architecture developed by Habermas, and its critical recep-
tion within Frankfurt School circle. I trace Habermas’ development of the systems-
lifeworld dialectic, the theory of modernity associated with it, and its potential. A
brief engagement with Alexander Wendt’s arguments in favour of adopting systems-
theoretic research stratagems within constructivist research provides me with an
opportunity to restate the relevance of Critical Theory as emancipatory social
theory with greater potential for political analysis. I conclude by focusing on some of
the criticisms levelled particularly at Habermas’ conceptualisation of the lifeworld,
and their likely significance in the further development of critical IR theory.

A rounder picture: the Frankfurt School, Habermas, and beyond Habermas

If there is a ‘rhythm’ in the development of the Frankfurt School perspective, it can

perhaps be apprehended in three phases. Common to all is a concern with totalising
tendencies within the advance of instrumental reason (and is, in this sense, a critique
of utilitarianism), which is diagnosed as a characteristic of ‘modernity’, and hence
casts doubt on the progressivist narrative associated with the legacy of the enlighten-
ment. In general terms, the first generation moves from within a deconstruction and
salvage operation of Marxism/Hegelianism, oriented by the detected ‘hypostasis’ of
the dialectical method, which, to refer to Adorno, occurs in the context of a hyper-
subjectivist transformation of dialectic inquiry at the expense of its object-orient-
ation.5 The first generation remains constrained by a commitment to an ultimately
untenable philosophy of history (as decline), and the framing of its analytical horizon
in terms of the – negatively obtained – subjective philosophy of consciousness.
The second stage is characterised by the reorientation of critical theory through a
more comprehensive engagement with analytical political philosophy,6 and the
development of the transcendental-pragmatic philosopheme by Apel and Habermas.
This reorientation constitutes a shift away (albeit not comprehensively) from the
conceptual framework of Hegelian thought which had characterised the tone of the
social theory of the first generation. Simultaneously, the second generation refocuses
the thrust of critical theory onto epistemological problems, from which the first
generation had largely withdrawn by concentrating more on method (dialectic) and
ontology. The second generation thus revisits the Kantian legacy, albeit from
fundamentally transformed premises, particularly with regard to the warrants of
epistemological certainty, which, as already noted during the positivism-dispute, is
returned to the intersubjectivity of social life (signalling a comprehensive break with
the philosophy of the subject), and thus to society and social theory.
For the third generation, the advances made by the language-philosophically
advanced intersubjectivist turn in second generation critical theory serve as the
backdrop to revisiting the terrain originally staked out between Kantian deontology

5
Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectic (London: Routledge, 1973).
6
The positivism-dispute signals a preparatory stage here. Theodor W. Adorno (ed.), The Positivism
Dispute in German Sociology (London: Heinemann, 1969).
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 197

and Hegelian phenomenological dialectic in a transformed philosophical setting.

With the post-metaphysical reformulation of Kant’s transcendentalism, the path is
free to conceive of the critical project associated with his inquiry into morality in
terms other than those previously explored under the discipline of the philosophy of
the subject. Yet, insofar as, from the perspective of social and political philosophy,
the theory of morality conceived through the self-reflective exploration of the
conditions of communicative action produces a procedural account of principles, the
Hegelian critique of the ‘empty formalism’ of Kantian deontological reasoning can
be brought to bear again on behalf of substantive demands of ethical life.7
Against this backdrop, I want to explore the potential of deepening IR’s
engagement with Frankfurt School perspectives.

IR and the Frankfurt School: the omission of ‘social theory’

It is perhaps most striking, given the recent shift towards social theory in IR, that the
key theoreme upon which Habermas constructs at the outset his critical philosophy
has not generated much sustained attention: namely, the argument that ‘only as
social theory can radically critical epistemology be possible’.8 The concern with
epistemology and ontological problems, precipitates many (if not all) the moves
played out in the course of IR’s third and/or fourth debates.9 Habermas’ key insight
is that contrary to the assumptions of scientistic objectivism – which leads to
‘objectifying self-reference’10 and hence to the aporia of having to identify from an
observer’s perspective that which makes identification possible – the resources for
assessing the growth of knowledge are reflexive and can be apprehended, not in the
authority of expertise, but in the practices of ordinary language use. This is developed
for emancipatory social theory with the help of the model of psycho-analysis which,
according to Habermas, established ‘despite the scientistic self-misunderstanding of
its founder, for the first time methodical use of self-reflection’.11 In the model of the
psychoanalytical exploration and overcoming of distortions in self-experience and
action-capability, the intersubjective moment is realised in the therapeutic session,
which doesn’t correspond in a straightforward way to dyadic-interactionist assump-
tions about asymmetries of power and authority.12 The success of the session
depends crucially on sustained orientation to dialogue and understanding. The
‘patient’ cannot be told ‘what to do’. Indeed, the relationship between the analyst
and the analysand, despite its asymmetric nature, cannot be expressed in terms of

7
See, for instance, Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition (New York: SUNY, 1996).
8
Juergen Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interest) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1999), pp. 84–7.
9
Ole Weaver, ‘What Was the Inter-Paradigm Debate?’ S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds.),
International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996).
10
Habermas, Erkenntnis, p. 376.
11
Ibid., p. 300.
12
I use the term ‘dyadic-interactionist’(and variations) to mark off conceptions such as ‘clash or
convergence of interests’ between two subjects – where both, subjects and their interests are given, as
in most liberal theory – from ‘proper’ inter-subjectivist theory.
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198 Martin Weber

‘domination’. The model for ideology critique thus presented moves beyond the
grasps of theory conceived in terms of methodological individualism.
This emphasis on the intersubjective realm and its expression in ordinary
language use – which supplies simultaneously the building blocks for theory as
well as meta-theoretical justification (the reflective element) – enables the continu-
ation of the critical enlightenment project by other means. In transcendental
pragmatism, Habermas finds a way out of the ‘pessimism’13 of the first generation
of the Frankfurt School theorists, whose project ended in the diagnosis of an ever
more pervasively penetrating instrumental rationality as the pathological present
and future of the social.14 Because, fundamentally, intersubjective relations cannot
be reduced to instrumental relations, the resources for self-enlightening critical
engagement with social and political realities, as well as their links with epistemo-
logical truth regimes are always present, and always – even if unwittingly –
mobilised and reproduced.
With this break from the shackles of the diagnosis of social pathology as per-
vasive, achieved by ‘putting instrumental reason in its place’ from the perspective of
communicative reason, Habermas can re-engage the stock of modern social theory:
Thus, in Theory of Communicative Action, he revisits the major formative influences
in the study of modern society and social modernisation, particularly focusing on
Max Weber and Talcott Parsons. He wants to comprehend the contributions both
make to the study of the formation of modern societies from the vanguard of his
intersubjectivist theory of communicative action, which allows the reconstruction
of processes of social rationalisation (Weber) or functional integration (Parsons)
from the perspective of their securing and negotiation out of communicative
resources.

The core of Habermas’s critical social theory

Habermas’s central claim was to the development of critical philosophy as social

theory, achieved through a robust self-reflective account of the social character of all
knowledge.15 The pragmatic core of his approach lies in the foregrounding and
prioritising of the practical orientation to life-contexts (herein a degree of continuity
with historical materialism), and the reflective account of different knowledge
constitutive interests. This insight is developed into a revision of critical social
theory. The sphere of practical (pre-scientific) reasoning contains the resources of
‘universalism’, which, it turns out, attend the very possibility of discourse. The
transcendental-pragmatic reflective conception of validity raises the possibility, for
instance, of critical conceptions of legitimacy and legitimation with cosmopolitan
scope. However, for Habermas, still informed significantly by historical materialist

13
Described in the exploration of particularly the aporias of Adorno’s thought by Honneth, ‘Critical
theory from Adorno to Habermas’; Axel Honneth, The Fragmented World of the Social – Essays in
Social and Political Philosophy (New York: SUNY Press, 1990).
14
See Honneth, The Fragmented World, pp. 115–20.
15
Habermas, Erkenntnis.
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 199

analysis,16 and committed to its conflictual model of modern social integration, the
resources provided by the immanent reproduction of the norm of universalisability
in discourse become more often indirectly efficacious.
The reasons for this become clearer when we consider Habermas’s central archi-
tectural edifice in the revision of critical social theory, the dialectic of system and
lifeworld.17
Established in the course of explicating the different modes of social integration
under investigation in his retrieval and updating of action theory, the ‘two pers-
pectives’ of systems and lifeworlds correspond to different modes of social inte-
gration, in terms of strategic social action and communicative action respectively.
This assignation of action-types must not be seen, however, as constitutive or
exhaustively confined to either one of the domains. Instead, the domains are in the
first instance to be understood purely in analytical terms, that is, as perspectives
from which society can be studied. That Habermas views these two analytical
perspectives also as substantively productive in the development of the constel-
lations of modern societies, will concern us after clarifying what is at stake for
critical theory analytically.

Habermas and systems theory from Parsons to Luhmann

Habermas’s social theory is concerned with a critical reconstruction of modern

social and political life, just as the Frankfurt School before him had taken ‘capitalist
modernity’ as the point of reference for emancipatory thought. The conceptualis-
ation of ‘modernity’ as a ‘system’ hence has reverberated in the FS project from its
inception, but Habermas’s reconstruction returns this interest more comprehensively
to the legacy of sociological theorising. Critical analysis of the modern condition
requires reconstruction, before it can turn to ‘transformation’. To achieve this,
Habermas turns to Parsons’ philosophical sociology, tracing its intellectual form-
ation, and providing an immanent critique of its aporias.
Talcott Parsons’ interest in social integration testifies to the comprehensiveness of
the structure-agency problem in social theorising.18 He studied society both, in
action-theoretic terms, and in systems-theoretic terms: in his reading, the action-
theoretic perspective focuses on socialisation as the result of the choices, preferences,
motivations, and actions of individuals. The systems-theoretic account was driven by
identifying conceptual ‘fields’ of socialisation in accordance with whose logic the
latter would proceed as a result of the interplay of the specific functions performed
by social systems for individuals as well as ‘other’ social systems.

16
At least in the context of the writings in and around The Theory of Communicative Action (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1997). Meanwhile, of course, his work has taken what some commentators have referred
to as a ‘liberal turn’, though this is perhaps understood better as a more comprehensive turn away
from ‘crisis theoretic’ premises in his social theory towards a more focused interest in tensions
between legality, legitimisation and legitimacy in ‘post-national’ liberal societies.
17
Habermas, Theory of Communication Action, pp. 153–97.
18
See, for example, Talcott Parsons, The System of Modern Societies (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1971).
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200 Martin Weber

What concerned Parsons, was how complex and increasingly differentiated socialis-
ation could be explained in such a way as to account for the stability of social orders.
His solution was to provide an account of social integration, which regarded the
systems-rational fulfilment of societal needs as the constitutive logic of order. Though
Parsons arrived at this theoretical framework by having departed from action-theoretic
premises, the systems-theoretic functionalism with which he ultimately explains
modern social integration expurgates the action-theoretic elements, despite remaining
anchored in a normativistic account of integrative resources provided by ‘culture’.19
Habermas can show, from the reflectively validated premises of communicative
rationality, that the functionalist account of systems-rationality which Parsons
advanced by stipulating the ‘co-ordination’ of social action systems relies consti-
tutively on resources provided by the ‘cultural system’, which can be explicated in
action-theoretic terms. He thus moves beyond the criticism made of Parsons as well
as Durkheimian (dyadic) interactionism, which charges both approaches with
carrying normative premises not clarified or accounted for within the theory itself.20
By connecting the possibility of ‘functionalism’ itself up with the generative capacity
of communicative rationality, Habermas constructs a position from which function-
alist systems-integration can be studied critically, that is, in relation to its capacity
to reproduce social and political crises tendencies. Parsons’ scheme is thus re-
contextualised in action-theoretic terms, providing for a perspective from which it
becomes at least possible to track and map ‘change’, which cannot be accom-
modated within the ‘conservative’ framework of systems-maintenance.
This fundamental critique of functionalist social theory, developed in ‘dialogue’
with Parsons’ work in Theory of Communicative Action, extends to subsequent
modifications and shifts in functionalist theorising, of which Luhmann’s work is the
most radical and comprehensive. In distinction to Parsons, who – in addition to his
‘culturalist premise’ – effectively remained within the analytical confines of the
traditional state-society complex, Luhmann’s radicalised modern functionalist systems
theory promises the conceptual tools for grasping social integration in terms of
‘global’ extensions. This, together with recent trends within via media constructivism
towards incorporating Luhmannian theoremes, merits an exposition of the potential
of critical theory in redressing an emerging ‘functionalist’ bias, and returning ‘social
theoretic’ IR to political analysis. Before indicating how this could work, I want to
divert into a short excursus on Luhmann’s radicalised systems theory and some of
the impulses it has set in the IR literature.

Systems theory, communicative action and IR

It is not necessarily obvious what the particular contribution of sociological systems

theory might be for theorising in IR (more accurately ‘world politics’). To appreciate

19
See on this the extensive discussion of Parsons’ theoretical development in Habermas, Theory of
Communication Action, pp. 199–299. Habermas shows that Parsons’ account of systems-integration
remains open to concerns of the lifeworld-perspective, but assimilates the latter according to the
former by projecting the logic of the process of systems-differentiation onto the differentiation of the
lifeworld (p. 287).
20
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, p. 287.
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 201

this, we need to take a step away from Parsons towards the restatement of a general
systems theory of society by Niklas Luhmann. The latter’s version is couched
explicitly in terms of ‘world society’, and thus proceeds from a perspective which
suggests, at least at face value, a substantive contribution to attempts at conceptual-
ising social theory in terms of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’. The potential of
‘modern systems theory’ for IR theory in the wake of the social turn has been
explored at some length in particular by Mathias Albert, who introduced the
theoretical framework,21 and has begun to apply this in the context of empirically
oriented inquiry.22 This more methodologically oriented systematic interest in late
neo-functionalist theorising is met, so to speak, ‘from the other side’ by incorpor-
ation of elements of Parsonian thought in via media constructivism. Both versions
of social systems theory are the target of Habermas’ critical theory, but before
elaborating on the significance of this, I want to briefly reconstruct the potential of
Luhmann’s radicalised ‘modern systems theory’ itself.
Luhmann’s main modification with reference to Parsons’ systems-theoretic
functionalism, is to eradicate from it the remnants of normative theory in which the
latter inadvertently anchored his account of social differentiation in the light of the
task for stability in social order.23 The model with which Luhmann operates is thus
still, as it was with Parsons, the bio-cybernetically based account of functionalism,
but it is more consistently constructed from the observer’s perspective by stipulating,
firstly, the ‘global’ extent of ‘society’ against traditional bounded notions, and,
secondly, its constitution out of communication. ‘Society’ is no longer conceived in
terms of bounded territory as it was still with Parsons.
The kind of theory of society Luhmann has in mind is supposed to provide for an
appropriate explanation as to ‘what goes on’, to give a sufficiently dense and
differentiated social scientific account of actual social relations, and to do so reflect-
ively, that is, by implicating theory itself within the explanations advanced through
it. The focus on ‘communication’, understood as the primary mode of subsystems’
self-referential reproduction and differentiation, enables the latter objetcive.
Luhmann advances a decentred theoretical account of social differentiation,
which is partisan on behalf of a systemically circumscribed perspectivism.24 ‘Society’
as such cannot be ‘theorised’. Instead, explanations are advanced from the perspec-
tive of respective sub-systems, both in terms of their ongoing internal differ-

21
Mathias Albert, ‘Observing World Politics: Luhmann’s Systems Theory of Society and International
Relations’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 28 (1999), pp. 239–65.
22
M. Albert, ‘Governance and Democracy in European Systems: On Systems Theory and European
integration’, Review of International Studies, 28: 2 (2002), pp. 293–309.
23
Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, 2 vols (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997) is the most
comprehensive, condensed statement of Luhmann’s programme. A good overview of modern systems
theory as he advances it can be found in N. Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1995).
24
Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft (vol. II); on pp. 806–12, Luhmann considers globalisation and
regionalisation from the perspective of the functionally differentiated world society; on his reading,
unequal and non-synchronous conditioning of systems-operation reflects tendencies towards either
inhibiting or advancing functional differentiation, accounting for the persistence of, and tensions
around ‘geographical’ and territorially conceived variations. However, according to Luhmann, these
occur already within and against the background of functionally differentiated world society.
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202 Martin Weber

entiation, and their observation of their ‘environments’. In distinction to Parsons,

Luhmann’s systems theory requires no ‘meaning-bestowing’ categories, which enter
social subsystems from ‘outside’ (culture, consensus and so on). The functionally
circumscribed social subsystems are instead understood as ‘autopoetic’, capable of
developing and internally differentiating in line with their social function, expressed
in terms of basal codes. These codes, which constitute the basic matrix which is
reproduced in the subsystems internal differentiation, are digital: for instance,
‘pay/not pay’ in the economic subsystem, legal/illegal in the legal subsystem. While
these subsystems are operationally closed and self-reproducing, they can interact
through ‘structural coupling’. Thus, constitutional law connects political and legal
subsystems by triggering internal communications within both.25
The upshot of the Luhmannian ‘systemic ontology’ of the social is summarised in
Minger’s incisive article on ‘autopoesis’ in the following way:
Society is essentially centreless – there is no core or fundamental division driving it, and there
is no privileged position from which a rational overall view can be developed. Instead, we
have self-defined autonomous sub-systems in a constant process of renewal and redefinition,
locked together in a fragile balancing act, resonating amongst themselves but relatively
unresponsive to society’s external environment. 26
For IR theory, and especially in the context of the social turn27, the attractiveness of
this theory-model lies in its capacity to slice right through the problematic heritage
of methodological territorialism, the identification of ‘society’ with bounded terri-
tories. Modern systems theory offers the prospect of accounting for aspects of social
integration, which clearly outstrip the capacity of methodological territorialist
analysis (for instance, economic integration), without having to abstract unduly from
the persistence of territorial fragmentation in the realms of other subsystems. At the
same time, the theory offers an account of social action which is purposive-rational
and oriented towards success, framed by the constitutive ‘basal codes’, and capable
of coordinating social action via steering media (‘money’ and ‘power’).28 The picture
of ‘systems-rationality’29 which emerges offers an explanation of complex social
coordination which can be obtained without recourse to normativistic accounts of
coordination achieved communicatively, for example, through struggle, consensus
and common decision-making. The orientation towards action-success expressed
through abstract media such as money and power supplies the motivation-frame-
work without burdening social action with the requirements of developing shared
meaning. The effect of media-steered interaction, as opposed to consensus-steered
types, is one of ‘un-burdening’, as social actors are relieved from explication inten-
tions, preferences, motivations, or justifications for their actions.

25
Albert, ‘Governance and Democracy’, p. 299.
26
John Mingers, ‘Can Social System be Autopoetic ? Assessing Luhmann’s social theory’, The
Sociological Review (2002), p. 289.
27
See Dietrich Jung, ‘The Political Sociology of World Society’, European Journal of International
Relations, 7: 4 (2003) pp. 443–74, at 446.
28
Honneth, The Fragmented World, p. 89.
29
Karl-Otto Apel,’Die Vernunftfunktion der kommunikativen Rationalitaet’, K. O. Apel and M.
Kettner (eds.), Die Eine Vernunft und die vielen Rationalitaeten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996).
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 203

Habermas’s critique of systems theory: lifeworld and action theory

Habermas identifies as the core of the evolution of social life the counter-tendencies
implied in functional differentiation on the one hand, and normative integration on
the other. The objectified world of ‘autopoetic’30 social systems guarantees the
routinised execution of tasks associated with social reproduction (the organisation
of production and distribution through the economic systems, the organisation of
right, might and duty through the political and administrative systems), whose scope
and complexity make their public organisation by will and communal decision
impossible and implausible.
The implicit communicative conception of social integration which characterises
the domain of the lifeworld is, in principle, obtainable by all participants in com-
municative practices, and serves to explicate the conditions under which action can be
coordinated or become meaningful from the perspective of participant practitioners
in mutual recognition – this is the experience of social integration based in mutual
understanding.31
While the ‘media’ through which integration or coordination are achieved in the
domain of systems are money and power, in the domain of the lifeworld ‘steering’ is
anchored in solidarity. From the analytical perspective offered by Habermas, the
relationship between systems and lifeworlds is characterised by the methodological
primacy of the latter: systems-integration analysis relies on resources, which can
only be supplied from the perspective of communicative action.
If one switches from the analytical stance of describing society from the two
different perspectives to the substantive inquiry into society as being constituted in
terms of the two different, and countervailing modes, the implications of this
theoretical architecture become clearer. Now, the systems-lifeworld dynamic appears
in a historical context, and can be understood as both the ‘social construction’ of
the second nature of media-steered systems integration, and its problematisation
from the perspective of social experiences alive in communication (face-to-face)
which defy subsumption under the terms of the logics of either exchange or domin-
ation. This retrieves the plausibility of the notion of a critical distance between
social actors, and the social realities they produce and reproduce, but at the same
time introduces a caveat against any conception of ‘radical constructionism’, the
idea of a self-transparent political autonomy, which has been discredited by the
legacy of totalitarianism. Instead, Habermas can treat the progressive logic of systems
integration as, in part, welcome developments, insofar as the necessity – from the
perspective of a strict moral theory of society based on thick autonomy – to
constantly procure normative agreement is reduced by the coordination of certain
technical tasks in terms of exchange or administrative directive. At the same time,
the critical element can then be apprehended in crisis tendencies which may be
reproduced either, from the systems-theoretic perspective, in the subsystem’s
‘environment, or, from the perspective of the lifeworld, in the realm of the symbolic
reproduction of social integration.

30
Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft.
31
Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, Social Action and Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), pp. 252–3.
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204 Martin Weber

For the latter, Habermas introduces the diagnostic term of the ‘colonization’ of
the lifeworld, the occurrence of which registers when the alien steering-media of
money or power intrude into the domain of communicative action, where their
capacity to substitute for actual communication runs against the limits of their
constitutive logics. These ‘intrusions’ are thus potentially experienced as crises, and
become the subject of communicatively advanced problematisation (for instance,
politicisation, if one uses a less restrictive conception of the political than Habermas
himself). Conversely, the mediation in communicative terms in the domain of the
lifeworld of the growing complexities registering as progressive differentiation can, as
it were, from the outside thematise the deficient tendencies immanent to the
functionally circumscribed communications within social subsystems.32 By defending
the idea of ‘transforming into one another’ the ‘dual perspectives’ of Luhmannian
systems theory on the one hand, where the subsystems are communications restricted
by their reproductive core basal code (yes/no codes, like pay/not pay in the economic
subsystem), and the interactionist communicative resources of the lifeworld,
Habermas can account for the ‘rationalisation’ of the latter, and the problematis-
ation of the former.33

The ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ in the theory of communicative action

The critical element in this analysis emerges for the first time, when Habermas appre-
hends in the actual historical process of differentiation and lifeworld-rationalisation
a trend towards what he terms the ‘un-coupling’ of systems and lifeworlds.
Habermas theorises this as the ‘transfer of action-coordination from language over
to steering media’34, expressed concretely for instance in the way in which the
medium of money can aportion strategic influence and reward without relying on
coordination conceived in communicative terms as in the lifeworld. With this
conception in view, Habermas can sum up the crisis potential within the dialectical
relationship between systems and lifeworlds in the following manner:
The rationalization of the lifeworld makes possible the emergence and growth of subsystems
whose independent imperatives turn back destructively upon the lifeworld itself.
The reconfiguration of the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ which is advanced under
this hypothesis relativises on the one hand the first generation’s identification of
‘reason’ with ‘instrumental reason’ along the advancement of the technico-practical
control first over nature (proper) and then second nature (society). Communicative
reason is identified as defying the logic of ‘instrumentalisation’, and at the same time
located intersubjectively in distinction to the earlier reliance on the philosophy of

32
On the concepts, analysis, and plausibility of autopoetic neo-funtional systems theory more generally,
see Mingers, ‘Can Social Systems be Autopoetic?’. On the specific point, p. 291.
33
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action; p.155. Habermas gives a robust account of the loss to
social theory which arises from system-theory’s foreclosure of the critical interest in social pathologies
from the perspective of action-orientation on p. 377.
34
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, p. 182.
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 205

consciousness.35 On the other hand, however, the critique of the destructive side of
instrumental reason re-occurs in a recalibrated form with reference to the tensions
created by ‘mediatized’ social coordinations, which simultaneously remain parasitic
on the meaning creating paradigm of the lifeworld conceived in communicative
terms, and threaten to empty, curtail and destroy it.
The defence of key values of modernity leads, with reference to the emancipatory
intent of Critical Theory, to a rejection of revolutionary transformation, which, in
accordance with both the diagnosis of social complexity, and the recognition of the
normative desirability of value-pluralism (in the domain of ‘the good life’) would
appear to be anachronistic. Insofar as the dialectical conception of the relation
between systems- and lifeworld-integration warrants the analysis of the rationalis-
ation of the lifeworld, an analysis which discerns this rationalisation in terms of a
progressive opening towards a universalism oriented through communication towards
generalisable interests, Habermas advances a (qualified) defence of the enlighten-
ment ideal of progress.
For IR theory, this basic architecture of Habermas’s social theory has yet to be
explored. A crucial question in this context is the one of the conceptualisation of the
lifeworld. Habermas’s own explorations of the concept raise objections to overly
‘sociological’ versions of this. In part due to his conception of the lifeworld as a
domain of communicative reason, limitations to the universalist scope of the
lifeworld by tying it to specific sets of social actors are problematic. Thomas Risse’s
exploration of the potential of Habermas’ thought for IR demonstrates this tension:36
By settling for the shared institutional arena of diplomatic interchanges as a possible
realisation of an ‘international lifeworld’, he gains, on the one hand, the possibility
of inquiring into the practices of diplomatic exchange in terms of the ‘types’ of
communications (strategic, or argumentative) which go on, and the effect they have
on the quality of interaction among participants. On the other hand, however, this
approach pays for such gains with a significant loss in the critical thrust with which
Habermas invests the lifeworld: the ‘global lifeworld’ would have to be a domain in
which constitutional requirements (principles) are settled on the basis of their non-
coercively established acceptability to all, insofar as the practices of international
diplomacy – leading, as they may, to enhanced systems-integration (for instance,
international trade negotiations) – are open to criticism with regards to constitutive
normative categories such as ‘representation’ and ‘legitimacy’. A systematic engage-
ment with Habermas’ work thus promises at least a new impetus for investigations
into the nature of the ‘social turn’ in IR theory, one in which both criteriology and
the social-theoretic potentials of the diagnostic of the ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’
could yield interesting analytical and practical possibilities.
Taking a cue from this migration of Habermas’ social-theoretical inventory into
constructivist IR, I want to briefly comment on what I identify as a plausible
functionalist turn in via media constructivism, in order to highlight the potential for
critical theoretical work inspired by Habermas’ discussion of systems-lifeworld.
Wendt has recently embraced Luhmannian concepts more openly in his pursuit of a

35
Honneth, The Fragmented World, p. 101.
36
Thomas Risse, ‘ “Let’s Argue”: Communicative Action in World Politics’, International Organization,
54: 1 (2000), pp. 1–39.
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206 Martin Weber

more social-scientifically embellished research project based on his reworked ‘social

ontology’ of international politics.37

IR theory and influences from modern systems theory

There have now been numerous explorations of the potential of ‘modern systems
theory’ to provide a more appropriate framework for the study of world society
within IR.38 The central attraction is a theoretical framework based on a clear set of
analytical propositions, which is nevertheless quite flexible, and moreover, dynamic.39
The counter-intuitive abstraction from ‘action-theoretic’ precepts, which allows a
screening out of personality/subjectivity, intentionality and normative theory for the
study of social integration, makes robust empirical research possible without
forgoing theoretical sophistication. Because society as such is always already ‘global
society’ from the perspective of Luhmann’s systems theory, the study of social sub-
systems can be undertaken in a coherent manner in a way which cuts across the
boundary problem left for IR by its traditional commitment to methodological
territorialism. While these insights are adopted in a systematic fashion in some
studies,40 their appearance in Wendt’s work signals, despite his idiosyncratic appropri-
ation strategy, a plausible ‘neo-functionalist’ twist in the construction of constructi-
vist orthodoxy.41 Focusing on the question of ‘steering’, Wendt suggests that an
emancipatory approach in IR requires an instrumental-rational programme for the
transformation of international politics. Steering, to Wendt, is inextricably bound up
with agency, and the agents most capable of steering in world politics are ‘states’, an
assertion which Wendt justifies ultimately pragmatically, by playing off ‘viable’

37
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999). His embrace of modern systems theory is manifest in his ‘What is International Relations For ?
Notes Towards a Post-Critical View’, in Wyn Jones, Critical Theory, pp. 203–5. While Wendt’s
position clearly cannot be identified with the range of constructivist outlooks in IR theory (see
International Studies Review Forum), his role in reframing the reflectivist-rationalist controversy
makes his work central to concerns over ‘new orthodoxies’ in IR theory (see Friedrich Kratochvil,
‘Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s “Social Theory of International Politics” and the
Constructivist Challenge’, Millennium, 29: 1, pp. 73–101).
38
Chris Brown considered Luhmannian systems-theoretic accounts of world society with the resources
provided by the English School in ‘World Society and the English School: An International Society
Perspective on World Society’ European Journal of International Relations, 7: 4 (2001), pp. 436–7.
Albert, ‘Observing World Politics’ and ‘Governance and Democracy’.
39
Mingers, ‘Can Social Systems be Autopoetic?’ .
40
Albert, ‘Observing World Politics’; the approach together with Habermas’ systems-lifeworld
distinction in Dietrich Jung, ‘The Political Sociology of World Society’, pp. 443–74.
41
Such a diagnosis links up with the critique of Giddens’ structuration theory by Justin Rosenberg, The
Follies of Globalisation Theory (London: Verso, 2000), pp. 185–7. Drawing on Alan Sica, Rosenberg
traces the concealed commitment to Parsonian functionalism in Giddens’ thought. Insofar as
Giddens has been a source of constant inspiration to Wendt’s constructivist project, the latter’s
interest in systems theory seems cogent. From a different angle, Mingers (‘Can Social Systems be
Autopoetic?’) confirms the cogency of structurationist and autopoetic systems-functionalist research
concerns. Wendt’s idiosyncrasy lies in conceptualising steering media as media at the disposal of
actors (in his case states), utilisable for conscious deployment in directing complex social integration
towards desired goals. Of course, this is anathema to Luhmann’s conception of the steering functions
of intersystemically available media.
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 207

against ‘accountable’ conceptions of steering (strong ‘democratic’ provisions run

against practical limits and are thus not ‘viable’). If we, for the moment, suspend
any objections to the way in which Wendt combines rather superficially the systems-
theoretic account with the idea that systems can be made to respond to purposefully
designed stratagems in accordance with pre-established goals, there remains in the
tension between ‘viable’ and ‘accountable’, a version of the core argument levelled
by Habermas against the subordination of ‘lifeworld’ to systems-rationality: on the
critical theory reading, decisions can’t be ‘viable’ unless they are ultimately account-
able.
A further– and related – criticism of Wendtian constructivism which can be made
from the perspective of the theoretical inventory explored above, concerns the claims
Wendt makes about identity and ‘social learning’ within his own conception of the
‘social theory of International Politics’. From the perspective outlined above,
Wendt’s social theory remains within a pre-intersubjectivist paradigm (irrespective of
the contentious representation of states as ‘unitary actors’). His commitment to a
dyadic-interactionist framework exhibits a version of social theory within the
confines of the philosophy of the subject (in his case, however plausibly, states),
whose ‘social learning’ can be described in terms of the respective expansion of their
notion of ‘self-interest’ (Hobbesian/survival, Lockean/proprietory, Kantian/trust).
If critical theory has contributions to make in these debates, there are, however,
some limitations to Habermas’ argument, which ought to be considered. I turn to
signalling some of these in the final section.

The narrowed lifeworld, and Habermas’s modernisation theory

Habermas operates with communicative action as the paradigmatic element of the

lifeworld because this move allows him to understand, in at least to some degree
dialectical fashion, the development of human history in terms of a progressive
process of ‘self-education’. With this reformulated ‘weak’ teleology, Habermas’s
theory remains within the paradigm of progressive thinking along the general lines
of modernisation theory. The gains in rationality afforded as a result of the ongoing
process of knowledge-gathering and reflective self-clarification, on this reading, pave
the way for a gradually increasing acceptance of universalist moral discourse, and
high degrees of tolerance or even active accommodation of different conceptions of
the ethical life. However, the latter remains, on this analysis, tied substantively to the
‘private sphere’, blocking the way for an encroachment of particularist conceptions
of the ethical life to seek political (constitutional) hegemony. It is clear that
Habermas considers this to be a merit of his critical theory, but equally clear that it
constitutes a juncture in his thinking, which has attracted much criticism.42 Thus,
while Habermas can mobilise his proceduralist account of the procurement of
legitimacy out of the reflective resource of communicative reason in order to
develop and justify a formal notion of solidarity as the third and also normatively

42
Bernstein, Recovering Ethical Life ( London: Routledge, 1995). S. Ashenden and D. Owen, Foucault
contra Habermas (London: SAGE, 1999).
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208 Martin Weber

privileged steering medium vis-à-vis the ‘delinguistified’ ones of money and power,
the price for this is paid for by significant limitations to his conception of the
political, as well as to the reach of critical social theory. By conceiving the task of
the latter, at least implicitly, as to be able to provide a normative framework capable
of negotiating appropriately the reflective ‘re-apprehension’ of the social complexity
of internally highly differentiated and ‘autonomised’ subsystems with supra-
territorial reach, the impression is given that the ‘lifeworld’ can only be conceived
‘reactively’; that is, as a sphere in which principled objectives are formed in the light
of experiences of crises induced by the contradictions of expanding systems-
rationalities (Apel) and the colonisation of the capacity for solidarity immanent to
the lifeworld by the intrusion of the steering media of ‘money’ and ‘power’. Because
Habermas does not regard the gains in social differentiation and complexity in a
negative fashion, the principle of ‘autonomy’, which remains at the core of norma-
tive critique insofar as the latter is concerned with the emancipation from heterono-
mous experience, loses its appeal to substantive political projects, and operates only
at the level of the procurement of general normative consensus. The scope of critical
social theory, in this setup, is significantly reduced.43
This has raised the question as to whether Habermas is not involved in a
hypostatisation of systems-theory at the expense of a more thorough inquiry into the
concept of the lifeworld.44 Productively, such a line animates for instance the work of
Axel Honneth (discussed and outlined by Haacke above), whose re-orientation of
critical social theory towards questions of identity can be seen as an attempt to
‘thicken’ the conception of the lifeworld left by Habermas. Through a series of critical
explorations, Honneth has, since the publication of The Struggle for Recognition,
engaged the potential and limitations of his own conception of a normative theory
advanced in the field of the politics of identity. A more inclusive conception of
political agency emerges from these inquiries, even though a better grasp on the
relationship between the growth of systems-rational incursions into lifeworlds, and a
(to be developed) conception of ‘politics of the lifeworld’, remain tentative.
These themes move us along a path, where Habermas’ own thinking would see the
limits of his critical social theory, but where, for instance, Linklater clearly sees
further potential.45 A praxeological supplement to the achievements in normative
theory would clearly move critical IR theory inspired by Habermas’s thought
towards more explicitly political analysis. Habermas’s own verdict in this context is
that such theories run the danger of ‘adhering to the untenable premise that it must
be possible to conceive of the autonomous self-steering of a complex society as self-
consciousness on a large scale’.46 Whether there are ultimately compelling reasons
for following his advice cannot be the subject of further discussion here.
I hope to have outlined some of the potential of Habermas’s social theoretic work
for IR theory. In particular, the diagnostic potential of the systems-lifeworld

43
See, on this point, Graeme Kirkpatrick, ‘Evolution or Progress ? A (Critical) Defence of Habermas’
Theory of Social Development’, Thesis Eleven, 72:3 (2003), pp. 108–9.
44
See, for instance, Thomas MacCarthy, ‘Complexity and Democracy: Or The Seducements of Systems
Theory’, in Axel Honneth and Hans Joas, Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991),
pp. 119–39.
45
Linklater, The Transformation of Poliical Community (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 181–3.
46
Habermas, ‘A Reply’, in Honneth and Joas, Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), p. 261.
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The ‘social turn’ in IR 209

architecture at the heart of his theory offers rich possibilities for continuing the
critical project in IR, as well as for the debate with a constructivist research project,
which seems to drift towards functionalism at the expense of normative theory. The
brief exposition of the problem of the conceptualisation of the lifeworld was also
supposed to signal that a critical reception of Habermas’s achievements in social
theory is both necessary, and in large parts already developed, in the non-IR
literature. The boundary between ‘systems’-perspectives and ‘lifeworld’ ones may not
be where Habermas locates them, the account of the growth of complexity and the
need of communicative action to keep up with it less compelling than he presents it,
and the linguistic turn not the sole defining feature of the need to further develop
social and political theory in intersubjectivist terms.
But irrespective of such limitations, there is a tremendous resource in Habermas’s
social theory, and one which IR is only beginning to explore as the ‘social’ slowly
and finally takes its turn.