224 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

gender-sensitive perspective on IR investigates the inferior position of women in the

international political and economic system and analyses how our current ways of
thinking about IR tend to disguise as well as to reproduce a gender hierarchy. We are
introducing feminist IR-scholarship in this chapter because most feminists share the
post-structural critique of positivism. But we should note that there are also liberal,
Marxist, constructivist, and critical theory varieties of feminism.
The post-positivist criticism of traditional theories is, of course, not the first time that
methodological issues have been debated in IR. The second debate, between traditional-
ists and behaviouralists, also raised the issues of theorists inside and outside the subject
and of the best ways of approaching the study of international relations (see Chapter 2).
Social constructivism (see Chapter 7) focuses on shared knowledge and understanding
rather than on material structures and capabilities. But the post-positivist approaches
go a step further in their critique of the established traditions in the discipline.
You should be aware that this chapter grapples with a number of complex ontological
and epistemological issues, and that the debate about them contains a large number of
different views that seldom agree on everything, even if the authors belong to the same
(positivist or post-positivist) camp. Several of these nuances will not be discussed here;
we simplify in order to paint the larger picture. For a detailed introduction to the philo-
sophical debates connected with positivist and post-positivist approaches, see Lebow
(2011), Smith (2016), Suganami (2013), and Jackson (2016). For a good overview of the
critique of positivism, see Smith (1996: 11–44).

8.2 Post-structuralism in IR
It can be quite difficult to identify a core set of assumptions shared by post-structur-
alists. But one minimum common understanding is that ‘they explore how the world
comes to be represented as it is’ (Zehfuss 2013: 151). All knowledge reflects the interests
of the observer. Knowledge is always biased because it is produced from the social per-
spective of the analyst. Knowledge thus discloses an inclination—conscious or uncon-
scious—towards certain interests, values, groups, parties, classes, nations, and so on.
All IR theories are in this sense biased too; Robert Cox (1981) expressed that view in a
frequently quoted remark: ‘Theory is always for someone and for some purpose.’
Cox draws a distinction between positivist or ‘problem-solving’ knowledge and critical
or ‘emancipatory’ knowledge. Problem-solving knowledge, such as, for example, neoreal-
ist theory, is conservative in that it seeks to know that which exists at present: it takes the
international system of sovereign states for granted and disregards the way this reality
has been constructed by powerful actors in order to pursue their own interests. It is there-
fore biased towards an international status quo which is based on inequality of power and
excludes many people. It cannot lead to knowledge of human progress and emancipation.
By contrast, the critical theory advocated by Cox is not confined to an examination of states
and the state system but focuses more widely on power and domination in the world. Criti-
cal theorists seek knowledge for a larger purpose: to liberate humanity from the oppressive
structures of world politics and world economics which are controlled by hegemonic pow-
ers, particularly the capitalist United States. They seek to unmask the global domination
 POST-POSITIVIST APPROACHES: POST-STRUCTURALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISM 225

of the rich North over the poor South, or the way privileged interests are wreaking havoc
with the climate in the name of mass consumption (see Chapter 11). Critical theorists are in
this regard pursuing a neo-Marxist analysis. Cox’s approach to IPE is presented in Chapter
10; here, we move to that part of post-structuralism that is focused on language and text.
This body of theory is indebted to the so-called ‘linguistic turn’, including the notion of ‘dis-
course’ and ‘speech acts’ (Fierke 2010: 184). Discourse concerns the way we assign meaning
to reality via language. It sounds innocent, but it is in fact an exercise of power because it
makes a huge difference how we label things and people: is a violent event labelled a crimi-
nal act—or even an act of terrorism—or is it rather discussed as a legitimate act of warfare
or part of a struggle for freedom? Those who can decide this, decide how we perceive the
world. A speech act is an utterance that stands instead of or might even be said to consti-
tute an action. Good examples of speech acts include promising other people something or
warning them about something. For example, in international relations, politicians per-
form a speech act when they label an issue (such as global warming or migration) as a secu-
rity problem. By doing so, the speaker claims ‘a right to handle the issue through extraordi-
nary means to break the normal political rules of the game’ (Buzan et al. 1998: 24).
The starting point is therefore that language is much more than a means of communi-
cation; it is ‘a process intrinsic to human social activity . . . to engage in a speech act is
to give meaning to the activities which make up social reality. Language thus no longer
describes some essential hidden reality; it is inseparable from the necessarily social con-
struction of that reality’ (George and Campbell 1990: 273). Here, post-structuralists are
inspired by the ideas of a series of recent French philosophers, including Foucault, Derri-
da, Lacan, Kristeva, Barthes, Bourdieu, and Baudrillard. In their view, texts are instru-
ments of power, and ‘truth’ is defined by power over text and speech. Therefore, theory
is less a ‘tool for analysis’ than it is an ‘object of analysis’; when we critically analyse the
established theories of IR, we can learn how they ‘privilege certain understandings of
global politics and marginalize and exclude others’ (George and Campbell 1990: 285).
Post-structuralists see empirical theory as a myth. Every theory, including neorealism and
neoliberalism, decides for itself what counts as ‘facts’. In other words, there is no objective
reality; everything involving human beings is subjective. The dominant theories of IR can be
seen as stories that have been told so often that they appear as ‘reality per se’ (Bleiker 2001:
38). But they are not; they are stories from a certain point of view which must be exposed
as such and contrasted with other stories from other points of view (Valbjørn 2008a). Post-
structuralists do not have the ambition of constructing a new theory of IR which would then
seek to replace competing theories. They want to critically engage with all theories, to trace
how and why they are constructed the way they are, what they shed light on and what they
keep in the dark, and they want to interrogate the relationship between knowledge and
power that is involved in this construction. Knowledge and power are intimately related:
knowledge is not at all ‘immune from the workings of power’ (Smith 1997: 181; see Box 8.2).
A seminal contribution was Ashley’s 1984 article on ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’
(Ashley 1984; 1986). Neorealism claims that only a few elements of information about
sovereign states in an anarchical international system can tell us most of the big
and important things we need to know about international relations. And the theory
even claims to validly explain international politics ‘through all the centuries we can
226 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

BOX 8.2 Key Concepts: Knowledge and power

All power requires knowledge and all knowledge relies on and reinforces existing power
relations. Thus there is no such thing as ‘truth’, existing outside of power. To paraphrase
Foucault, how can history have a truth if truth has a history? Truth is not something exter-
nal to social settings, but is instead part of them . . . Post-positivist international theo-
rists have used this insight to examine the ‘truths’ of international relations to see how the
concepts and knowledge-claims that dominate the discipline in fact are highly contingent
on specific power relations.
Smith (1997: 181)

contemplate’ (Waltz 1993: 75). Post-structuralist critique of neorealism targets the ahis-
torical bias of the theory (Ashley 1986: 189; Walker 1993: 123). Because the theory is
ahistorical, it leads to a form of reification in which historically produced social struc-
tures are presented as unchangeable constraints given by nature (see also Chapter 11).
Emphasis is on ‘continuity and repetition’ (Walker 1995: 309). Individual actors are
‘reduced in the last analysis to mere objects who must participate in reproducing the
whole or fall by the wayside of history’ (Ashley 1986: 291). It follows that neorealism
has great difficulty in confronting change in international relations. Any thought about
alternative futures remains frozen between the stark alternatives of either domestic
sovereign statehood and international anarchy or the (unlikely) abolition of sovereign
statehood and the creation of world government (see Box 8.3).
Rob Walker (1993; 2010; Ashley and Walker 1990) posits ‘sovereignty’ as another con-
ceptual prison of modernity which forces us to think in binary terms of ‘inside’ and
‘outside’. Within the state, we are part of a community of citizens with rights and aspi-
rations to the good life of peace and progress. Outsiders are excluded; our obligations
to the members of ‘humanity’ rest on a much more insecure basis. But the relevance of
the inside/outside dichotomy is increasingly challenged by processes of globalization,
of intensified relations across borders. Yet both the discipline of IR and the practice of
international relations continue to be constituted by the principle of state sovereignty.

BOX 8.3 Key Quotes: Ashley on neorealism

[N]eorealism is itself an ‘orrery of errors’, a self-enclosed, self-affirming joining of stat-

ist, utilitarian, positivist, and structuralist commitments . . . What emerges is a positivist
theoretical perspective that treats the given order as the natural order, limits rather than
expands political discourse, negates or trivializes the significance of variety across time
and place, subordinates all practice to an interest in control, bows to the ideal of a social
power beyond responsibility, and thereby deprives political interaction of those practical
capacities which make social learning and creative change possible.
Ashley (1986: 258)
 POST-POSITIVIST APPROACHES: POST-STRUCTURALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISM 227

So, for Ashley and Walker, current neorealist theory and its understanding of dominant
concepts such as sovereignty are not really helpful if we are looking for a nuanced and
many-faceted understanding of international relations that views the subject from a wide
array of different social, political, and philosophical standpoints. That is because these
theories and concepts close us off from alternative viewpoints; they do so by claiming that
their way of looking at the world is universally true and valid. But that is not the case.
David Campbell, for example, argues that foreign policy is not a given activity concern-
ing relations between states. It is an ongoing process of producing boundaries between
‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘one of the boundary-producing practices central to the production and
reproduction of the identity in whose name it operates’ (Campbell 1992: 75). ‘For the state’
says Campbell, ‘identity can be understood as the outcome of exclusionary practices in
which resistant elements to a secure identity on the “inside” are linked through a dis-
course of “danger” with threats identified and located on the “outside”’ (1992: 75). That
is to say, ‘foreign policy’ is a continuing power game on many different levels of society
where the exact definition of the danger stemming from anarchy can take many differ-
ent forms, be it international terrorism, illegal immigrants, or anything else. Our focus
should then be on the discursive practice that establishes such boundaries because they
also have consequences for identities (who ‘we’ are) and the domestic social order ‘we’
entertain (Campbell 1998). It is thus these very processes that create antagonistic states
by—using a binary logic—making societies holistic entities that differ from outsiders.
It follows that security threats are not objectively given phenomena; they are discur-
sively constructed through speech acts. This is the analytical focus of the ‘Copenhagen
School’ founded by Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan (Buzan et al. 1998; Wæver 2015). ‘Secu-
ritization’ is the speech act through which state actors transform issues into matters of
‘security’, understood as a radical form of politization that enables the use of extraor-
dinary measures in the name of ‘security’. For example, following the September 2001
attack on New York and Washington (‘9/11’), political actors have managed to ‘secu-
ritize’ the threat of terrorism, which has justified political measures that have arguably
often been disproportional to the magnitude of the threat (see Chapter 11).
Post-structuralists go on to argue that current neorealist theory is not at all repre-
sentative of the rich philosophical tradition of realism. If one goes back to the original
texts of such realist scholars as Hans Morgenthau or E. H. Carr, there are many more
tensions and nuances pointing to a richer and more diversified understanding of inter-
national relations than is the case with present-day neorealism (Ashley 1981; Jackson
2016: 207). That is to say, different readings of the realist tradition that move in direc-
tions other than the dominant views are possible and urgently required.
Further, this reductionism is an act of power: if there are no alternative under-
standings, there can be no alternative futures. By questioning traditional theories
and concepts, post-structuralism represents ‘the great skepticism’ (George and Camp-
bell 1990: 280) of our time. By refusing to privilege any particular point of view, post-
structuralism aims to keep the future open and undecided and that is the only possible
road towards real freedom (see Box 8.5).
A major contribution of post-structuralism to IR is the critical examination of the dis-
cipline’s dominant theories and concepts, including the implicit exercise of power that
228 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

BOX 8.4 Key Quotes: Campbell and Bleiker on Power and Identity

There is no human nature shared by all members of the species—the nature of individu-
als, their humanity, is produced by certain power structures. . . . How have the identities
of women/men, Western/Eastern, North/South, civilized/uncivilized, developed/underde-
veloped, mad/sane, domestic/foreign, rational/irrational, and so on, been constituted over
time and in different places? All of which means that identity, subjectivism, and power are
key concepts for poststructuralism.
(Campbell and Bleiker 2020: 207)

decides who has construed these theories and concepts. Scholars have a tendency to
claim too much for their theories. Neorealism is a good example: it does not really live
up to its billing; it provides less knowledge of IR in the broadest sense than it claims to
provide. That is because neorealism and other conventional IR theories focus too much
on modern, sovereign states as they developed in Europe and elsewhere. That provides
us with less information about a host of other important issues related to global interna-
tional relations (see Box 8.4).
Post-structuralism is sceptical of the notion of universal truths that are said to be
valid for all times and places. That is typical of realism and also of much liberalism. It
follows that all theories have a history: they can be located in terms of space, time, and
cultural attachment. In that sense, theories are not separate from the world; they are
part of it. Therefore, says Steve Smith, ‘there can never be a “view from nowhere,” and
all theories make assumptions about the world, both ontological ones (what features
need explaining) and epistemological ones (what counts as explanation)’ (Smith 2010:
9). For that reason, a proliferation of different theories in IR is highly desirable; a larger
number of competing views opens up and enhances our understanding of the subject.
Critics are not convinced. Their charge against post-structuralism is that it spends
a lot of time criticizing others and very little time coming up with its own analysis of
international relations. Post-structuralists are cannibalistic: they thrive on critique but
come up with little in terms of their own view of the world. Post-structuralists need to
convince us, says Robert Keohane, that they ‘can illuminate important issues in world

BOX 8.5 Key Theories: The politics of post-structuralism

Poststructuralism, by definition, is an emphatically political perspective. But it is one

which refuses to privilege any partisan political line, for it equates such privileging with
the grand, universal claims for unity and truth in modern theory, and the dogma of the
hermetically sealed tradition. It is in the act of not privileging that it offers emancipation
and liberation.
George and Campbell (1990: 281)
 POST-POSITIVIST APPROACHES: POST-STRUCTURALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISM 229

politics’; until that happens, ‘they will remain on the margins of the field, largely invis-
ible to the preponderance of empirical researchers, most of whom explicitly or implicitly
accept one or another version of rationalistic premises’ (Keohane 1989: 173). Thomas
Biersteker suspects that post-structuralist critique will lead us down blind alleys: ‘How
are we to ensure that post-positivist pluralism, in the absence of any alternative crite-
ria, will avoid legitimizing ignorance, intolerance, or worse?’ (Biersteker 1989).
Post-structuralists reject this critique because they see in it an act of power; those
defending established theories in IR request of the marginalized critics to ‘become like
us’—adopt a certain viewpoint, accept conventional assumptions about how the world
hangs together and from there, get on with your work. In Ashley and Walker’s for-
mulation, ‘the choice is presented as one of disciplinary authority versus a gathering
of marginal challengers of unproven legitimacy: the maturity and wisdom of elders
versus the bravado of tawdry youth’ (1990: 373). But this is exactly what post-struc-
turalists want to avoid; they refuse to be boxed into a certain standpoint ‘a position, a
subjective perspective that enables them to justify what they say and do’ (Ashley 1996:
241). The intellectual posture of a post-structuralist is a different one from that of the
agnostic critic, welcoming as many different viewpoints on international relations as
possible from different locations in terms of cultural, political, ethnic, social, and other
positions.
Nonetheless, it is worthwhile recalling Wæver’s (1996: 169) warning that post-
structuralists need to avoid placing themselves beyond the ‘boundary of negativity’
where they have little constructive to offer IR. It is encouraging that over the last few
decades a new generation of post-structuralist scholars have taken up substantial
issues of IR and analysed them with post-structuralist concepts and frameworks. This
represents a new development of post-structuralism in IR; instead of critique of oth-
ers, focus is on substantial analysis of international affairs. One major example in this
regard is Lene Hansen’s book on Western decision-making in relation to the war in Bos-
nia (Hansen 2006). Hansen argues that post-structural discourse analysis is better suit-
ed to understand the Western debate on the war in Bosnia than is a positivist approach.
The study sets forth a post-structuralist theory about the relationship between identity
and foreign policy. In this view, the formulation of foreign policy is not merely about
taking concrete measures; policy is ‘performatively linked’ to identity. Facts and events
are constituted by the discourses through which they are presented. Hansen identifies
a ‘Balkans discourse’ and a ‘Genocide discourse’ in the Western debate and traces the
role of these discourses in an American and a British setting. In this way, the study
throws new light on the ways in which discourse and the formation of national identity
are linked (for a different take on identity, see Edkins 2015).
The study by Hansen is an example of how discourse analysis can be used to further a
post-structuralist study of the ways in which our perception and understanding of secu-
rity developed in relation to the war in Bosnia. The employment of discourse analysis
presents one possible way forward for post-structural analysis (Neumann 2008); but
post-structuralists will remain careful not to favour one theory over another. A plurality
of theories will always be necessary and it is always important to ask critical questions
about the assumptions made by any theory.
230 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

8.3 Postcolonialism in IR
Postcolonialism is inspired by post-structuralism. We have noted the critical attitude
of post-structuralism towards the ways in which established approaches represent and
analyse the world. Postcolonialism adopts this critical attitude and turns it in a specific
direction: focus is on the relationship between, on the one hand, Western countries in
Europe and North America (the ‘Global North’), and, on the other hand, the areas in
Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere that were colonized or dominated by West-
ern countries (the ‘Global South’).
Since the end of the Second World War, a process of decolonization has taken place.
Previous colonies are now sovereign states and members of the international society of
states; they are formally equal with Western states. But postcolonialism argues that the
logic and ideas underpinning the relationship between the West and these areas con-
tinue to be one of hierarchy, reflecting Western concepts and understandings. Intellec-
tual strategies of ‘decolonization’ are needed in order to liberate our thinking from that
Western dominance. Postcolonialism, then, is about different ways of critically under-
taking this process of intellectual decolonization. There is a tendency to write devel-
oping countries out of the dominant narrative of international relations. The bipolar
stand-off during the Cold War, often understood as a period of ‘long peace’ with stable
hegemonies on both the Western and the Eastern side, is not a view of the world that
allows a place for the postcolonial countries of the Global South. They come into the
picture as culturally backward, deficient, and unstable areas, threatening international
order through terrorism and migration, not as states and people that deserve the same
recognition and respect that states in the Global North grant each other (Inayatullah
and Blaney 2004).
Eurocentrism, according to John Hobson, is ‘the assumption that the West lies at the
centre of all things in the world and . . . [the West] is projecting its global will-to-power
outwards through a one-way diffusionism so as to remake the world in its own image’
(2007: 93). The task for postcolonialism is to abandon this way of thinking and offer a
different analysis which treats and respects the dominated areas on their own terms
(see Box 8.6).

BOX 8.6 Key Theories: The postcolonial position

IR is constructed around the exclusionary premise of an imagined Western subject of

world politics. Decolonising strategies are those that problematise this claim and offer
alternative accounts of subjecthood as the basis for inquiry. The recognition of possible
alternative subjects of inquiry is the essential precondition for a dialogic mode of inquiry
in IR . . . without challenging the implicit and assumed universality of a particular sub-
ject, the possibility for genuine dialogue—rather than simply conversation—in the disci-
pline becomes remote.
Sabaratnam (2011: 785)
 POST-POSITIVIST APPROACHES: POST-STRUCTURALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISM 231

BOX 8.7 Key Quotes: Said on Orientalism

The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and
richest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant,
and one of its deepest and most recurrent images of the Other. In addition, the Orient
has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
experience.
Said (2003 [1978]: 1–2)

In making this argument, postcolonial IR theorists draw on studies from other dis-
ciplines including historical and literature studies. A major early contribution to the
postcolonial project was offered by Edward Said (professor of comparative literature) in
his book on Orientalism (2003 [1978]). Said argues that the intellectual dominance of the
West and the corresponding suppression of the Orient—the ‘East’ as seen from Europe,
that is the Middle East and Asia—are reflected in the ways in which the Orient is repre-
sented in Western thinking. Oriental societies are backward, traditional, and despotic.
Western societies, by contrast, are advanced, modernized, and democratic. Western
thinking is substantially uninterested in the ‘Orient’. Instead of trying to understand the
vast tapestry of different cultural, social, economic, and political traditions and prac-
tices, the Western view of the Orient is a dark counterpoint of irrationality in contrast to
the Western light of civilization and rationality. The enlightened identity of the West is
reinforced by contrast with the backward Orient; describing the Orient as a backwater
becomes a way of construing the West as a beacon of modernity (see Box 8.7).
Power and knowledge are intimately connected in this view. If the Orient is backward,
traditional, and underdeveloped, it is only logical and rational that it is subjected to
Western dominance in order to be able to progress towards modernity and civilization.
It is a view that can legitimize various kinds of power politics, from intervention in Iraq
and elsewhere, to the defence of Western borders from large groups of Oriental peoples.
Yves Winter (2011) reflects on the concept of ‘asymmetric’ war, a notion frequently
used to characterize conflicts between states and non-state actors. He argues that the
notion of asymmetry carries normative implications because powerful states are por-
trayed as vulnerable victims of ‘uncivilized warfare’. In that way, the notion of asymme-
try allows states to take extraordinary measures against civilians: ‘to selectively ration-
alize brutal tactics against non-state actors . . . and to defend manoeuvres that cause
high casualties among civilians’ (Winter 2011: 490) (see Box 8.8).
Roxanne Lynn Doty discusses the US colonization of the Philippines at the turn of the
twentieth century. Her argument is that the process of colonization was enabled by a
previous discourse which established a hierarchical relationship between the United
States and the Philippines. The former are Western peoples representing civilization,
liberty, enlightenment, and progress. The latter are uncivilized, primitive, backward,
and in need of civilized leadership; they must be ‘willingly or unwillingly brought into
the light’ as one American observer wrote in 1900 (quoted in Doty 1996: 340). The
232 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

BOX 8.8 Key Quotes: Barkawi and Laffey on Eurocentrism in

security studies

Eurocentric security studies regard the weak and the powerless as marginal or deriva-
tive elements of world politics, as at best the site of liberal good intentions or at worst
a potential source of threats. Missed are the multiple and integral relations between the
weak and the strong. Across diverse fields of social inquiry, it is taken for granted that
the weak and the strong must be placed in a common analytic frame, as together consti-
tutive of events, processes and structures. In contrast IR, and security studies in particu-
lar, mainly proceed by attending to the powerful only.
Barkawi and Laffey (2006: 332–3)

whole process of colonization is facilitated by this construction of different identities.

By contrast, the US never considered colonizing Spain after the Spanish–American War,
although it had the capabilities of doing so. The colonial discourse created a social con-
text that was decisive in paving the way for actual colonization; ‘if we want to under-
stand possibilities for international relations more generally, it is important to examine
the processes that construct the “reality” upon which such relations are based’ (Doty
1996: 343).
Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes (2008) adopt a ‘decolonizing’ strategy to reanalyse
the Cuban missile crisis. The vast majority of IR scholars look at the crisis as a major
confrontation between two superpowers, involving decision-making, deterrence, and
nuclear proliferation. In this way, a ‘heroic missile crisis myth’ is created where the Unit-
ed States and the Soviet Union stood ‘eyeball to eyeball’. Laffey and Weldes argue that
the Cuban position on the crisis has been almost entirely ignored in this view. The mar-
ginalization of Cuba ‘obscures the pre-1961 origins of the crisis in a persistent pattern
of US aggression and subversion of the Cuban revolution’ (Laffey and Weldes 2008: 564).
A full understanding of the missile crisis is only possible when the Cuban position is
considered, in particular as concerns its historically subordinate position to the United
States. The American interpretation emphasizes how ‘Cuba had vacated its sovereignty
by aligning itself with the Soviet Union’; in that sense, the United States ‘constructed a
Cuba whose concerns could be ignored’ (Laffey and Weldes 2008: 562). In other words,
taking the Cuban viewpoint seriously puts a larger responsibility on the US and throws
light on Cuba’s subordinate position in the hierarchy of states (see also Tickner 2003).
Another aspect of postcolonialism’s critique of Eurocentrism involves turning a criti-
cal eye towards the West. One does not have to go too far back in history in order to
discover that Europe was not a repository of potential modernity, enlightenment, and
progressive development. European state-building history is one of massive violent con-
flict and extermination (Tilly 1990; Mann 2005); a number of areas failed to develop for
a considerable period of time and were ‘peripheral’ rather than ‘core’ economies (Seng-
haas 1982). Moreover, the Europe we know was created by an internal colonization of
frontier zones such as the Iberian Peninsula and the areas east of the Elbe that began
 POST-POSITIVIST APPROACHES: POST-STRUCTURALISM, POSTCOLONIALISM, FEMINISM 233

around 1000. This process of conquest and colonization was carried out by military and
cultural means by actors hailing from the areas that had been part of the Carolingian
Empire (present-day France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Northern Italy, North-
ern Spain, and the Low Countries), with the Normans playing a particularly important
role. It resulted in the Germanification of large swathes of areas east of the Elbe, the
Christianization of hitherto pagan Baltic people, and the forced expulsion or conversion
of Muslims in today’s Spain, Portugal, and Sicily. As British historian Robert Bartlett
(1993: 314) sums up in his magisterial The Making of Europe:

The European Christians who sailed to the coasts of the Americas, Asia and Africa in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries came from a society that was already a colonizing society.
Europe, the initiator of one of the world’s major processes of conquest, colonization and cul-
tural transformation, was also the product of one.

The propagation of liberal values of freedom and equality was a rather late occur-
rence, taking place in hard struggles against elites that supported hierarchy and
imperialism (Jahn 2005). Non-liberal ideologies, such as fascism and Nazism, played
important roles in Europe in the twentieth century. In short, ‘the West’ needs to be
deconstructed as ‘the primary subject of world history’ (Sabaratnam 2011: 787).
Overall, postcolonialism is critical of established, Western views, because where
these views rule supreme, genuine dialogue is not possible. A new situation can only be
created by making different voices heard in world politics, in particular the marginal-
ized voices from the developing world who have not so far received any representation.
At the same time, the call for dialogue also means that postcolonialism does not aim at
entering a ‘win-or-lose’ battle with existing theories. Rather than ‘ships passing in the
night’, the idea is that established IR theories and postcolonialism can both benefit from
engaging with each other (see Box 8.9).
In recent years, an influential new body of scholarship has called for the establish-
ment of a genuine ‘Global IR’ which is enriched by a diversity of voices, rather than sole-
ly listening to those emanating from the Western research environments which have

BOX 8.9 Key Arguments: Postcolonialism and established IR theories

[We contend] that there should be an engagement between postcolonialism and interna-
tional relations; that each approach would benefit from being situated in relation to the
other; that the opening up of differences would spark rethinking and perhaps suggest new
avenues of inquiry . . . Dialogue should proceed on terms that acknowledge that the two
have different strengths that are intrinsic to their intellectual formations. In the case of
postcolonialism this would involve recognition that its imaginative and critical capacities
are tied to its free-floating character . . . That is to say, postcolonialism cannot of itself be
the principal repository of scholarly understanding of the North–South relationship and
the architect of Third World futures.
Darby and Paolini (1994: 371)
234 MAJOR IR THEORIES AND APPROACHES

BOX 8.10 Key Quotes: On a Global IR

IR has been quite focused on questions of importance to the great powers of the Eurocen-
tric Westphalian system. Curiously, missing from IR’s central concerns have been issues
of race and empire. The effects of centuries of colonial domination are having huge con-
sequences for the instability of today’s global order, something that makes this omission
quite surprising. . . . I believe that if we are to advance a truly global IR, questions of race
and empire need to be brought more centrally onto the agenda.
(Tickner 2016 : 158)

[I]t is the universities, scholars, and publishing outlets in the West that dominate and set
the agenda. IR scholarship has tended to view the non-Western world as being of inter-
est mainly to area specialists, and hence a place for ‘cameras’ rather than of ‘thinkers’
(Shea 1997), for fieldwork and theory-testing, rather than for discovery of new ideas and
approaches. As a discipline, IR has neither fully accounted for, nor come to terms with,
colonialism and its legacy. Thus, the IR community is complicit in the marginalization of
the postcolonial world in developing the discipline.
(Acharya 2014: 648)

traditionally dominated the discipline (see Box 8.10). While this new research agenda
transcends postcolonialism in the narrower sense, it clearly draws on the insight pre-
sented by several generations of postcolonial research.
In an attempt to rebalance the ‘Western bias’ of IR, Arlene Tickner and Karen
Smith (2020) have helped promote the debate by bringing together a collection of how
IR is studied in sixteen different areas of the world. The book provides a compre-
hensive introduction to the alternatives that exist for understanding world politics
differently from the dominant Western view (see also Hobson 2012 and Tickner and
Wæver 2009).
In what way should the move towards Global IR take place? We can identify three
major positions in the debate on that question (Wæver 2018: 566); they are the ‘trad-
itionalists’, the ‘moderates’ and the ‘radicals’ (Gelardi 2019: 51–3). The traditional group
points to the demand for more diversity, both in terms of scholars taking part in the
debate, and in terms of the subjects they study. That is, more scholars from the Global
South undertaking more analyses of issues concerning the Global South. Mainstream
theories are not under direct attack, but they are requested to address Global South
issues in a more diverse manner (see, for example, Goh (2019)). The ‘moderates’ go one
step further. They argue for the revision of existing theories and the inclusion of new
perspectives. The Global South should be a place for ‘the discovery of new ideas and
approaches’ (Acharya 2014: 648). This will strengthen IR ‘with the infusion of ideas and
practices of the non-Western world’ (Acharya 2017: 823).
Finally, the ‘radicals’ want to abandon the straitjacket of existing Western scholar-
ship because it is so infused with Western values and ways of thinking. In the words