Journal of Central Asian Studies – Expanding Eurocentric Narratives of International Relations through Conservative Cooperation

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1990s, critical International Relations (IR) scholars have increasingly drawn on postcolonial studies to call for opening up IR. However, it has become a more challenging task than initially imagined. It requires insight into the reasons behind the differences between the forms of national IR and the implications of such variation for our understanding of the international. Such differences need inquiring into by treating those from outside North America and Western Europe as thinking actors and paying attention to their accounts of the international.

Eurocentrism occurs when research is designed in a way that occludes the global theory by drawing a direct line from ancient Greece to Renaissance Europe to the modern-day ‘West’ with next-to-no sociological insight into ‘connected histories’ of societies.

Over the years, methodological Eurocentrism has produced a particular narrative about Europe’s place in world history. Thus, Eurocentric narratives have allowed designing research by the persistence of concepts that have been informed by the very same narratives. The critical point is, that the very concepts through which we make sense of world politics (such as state, development, sovereignty, and security) have their limitations not only when transplanted to other parts of the world but also when studying ‘Europe’ itself.

KEYWORDS: International Relations, Western Theory, non-Western theory, post-Western Theory, Eurocentric narratives.

INTRODUCTION

In the academic field of International Relations (IR), there is the widely recognized Eurocentric biases, the issue that was addressed in recent years by the initiation of intellectual efforts toward the incorporation of non-Western world views. However, the greater assimilation of knowledge produced by non-Western scholars from local philosophical-experiential vantage points – for instance, the integration of Chinese, Russian, Indian, or Brazilian outlooks, often expressed under the rubric “non-Western IR” – cannot make IR less Eurocentric or more “Global”. Many current non-Western IR theories employ non-Western philosophical resources for involuntarily generating a derivative discourse of the same Western/ Eurocentric IR theories, thereby failing to produce fresh insights that could transcend the conjectural boundaries of Western/ Eurocentric IR.

Another problem is that many non-Western IR theories deliberately manufacture an exceptionalist discourse that is specifically applicable to the narrow experiential realities of a native time-space zone, thereby failing to put forward a universalist explanation that grants a broad-spectrum relevance to Western/Eurocentric IR.

During the last decade, the field of International Relations (IR) has witnessed the emergence of ‘non-Western IR theory’. Acharya and Buzan’s seminal work titled Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and Beyond Asia (2009) marked a watershed for the discipline. Acharya and Buzan’s book contributed to a disciplinary self-reflection, which resulted in a wide range of academic publications aimed at turning the field of IR into a more pluralistic discipline that respects the subaltern voices that have been silenced by the imperial origins of IR. For this reason, the celebration of ‘cultural diversity’ as an ontological source has become the central focus of new theoretical endeavors. Both the projects of ‘Global IR’ (Acharya, 2016; Yong-Soo, 2019) led by the prestigious scholar Amitav Acharya and the various ‘national schools of International Relations’ (Cho, 2013; Qin, 2018; Shahi, 2019; Shih et al., 2019; Yan, 2019; Zhao, 2019) are prime examples of this new phenomena. Despite the welcoming efforts of promoting ‘cultural diversity’ (Acharya, 2016; Reus-Smit, 2018; Tickner and Blaney, 2012) to produce theoretical projects that seek to transcend both the ‘Western’ and ‘imperial’ origins of the discipline, the field of IR has fallen into a dangerous dynamic that stems from the very imperial origins of discipline: the reification of culture as an essentialist construction.

THE SCOPE OF THE EUROCENTRIC INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY

The limits of “Eurocentric IR” remain a widely recognized scholarly actuality (Acharya, 2011; Capan, 2017; Grovogui, 2006; Hobson, 2012; Hoffmann, 1977; Jones, 2006; Kayaoglu, 2010; Schmidt, 2014; Wæver, 1998). Lately, the conceptualization of “Global IR” has evolved as a conscious antidote to these limits. Regarding the project of ‘Global IR’, Hurrel (2016, p.150), wisely warned us about the dangers of Global IR as it ‘can also lead to a cultural and regional inwardness that may work to reproduce the very ethnocentricities that are being challenged’. This is perhaps one of the main paradoxes that exist in IR given the massive and recent disciplinary efforts to evade such ‘essentialist’ constructions.

Nevertheless, a fairly erratic labeling of the research works pursuing these pathways as “non-Western” and/or “post-Western” has generated a substantial ambiguity. To a great extent, this ambiguity emanates from the haziness in developing a clear general definition of “non-Western” and “post-Western” on the one hand, and the dissonance over the particular significance of “non-Western” and “post-Western” research projects in the programmatic content of Global IR on the other. While both non-Western and post-Western discourses – as viable constituents of Global IR – claim to transcend the boundaries of Eurocentric IR, there is a lack of transparency on the “perceived motive” behind such transcendence: whether the motive behind such transcendence entails a displacement or an expansion of Eurocentric IR.

One of the fathers of alternative theories, Professor Acharya somewhat discards the “post-Western” as a viable component of Global IR on the grounds of an anticipated skepticism toward its intent to displace Eurocentric IR. However, Navnita Chadha Behera (2010) necessarily prioritizes an engagement with “post-Western,” not “non-Western,” in the desirable course of painting IR non-Eurocentric. Specifically, in the field of ‘non-Western IR theory’, these academic trends have been crystallized in (neo)-Weberian and postmodern approaches and a problematic scholarly tendency to understand the production of international theory as an independent intellectual process that is completely disjointed from a specific form of political economy or material reality.

As such, Behera’s “post-Western” comes close to Acharya’s “non-Western” in terms of its “perceived motive”, but remains distinct in terms of its “expected outcome”. The pertinent question, then, is how to include the non-derivative master-/metanarrative(s) of the Global South so as to build a Global IR theory for facilitating a global study of international relations? Comparing the relative “globality” of the non-Western and post-Western discourses in IR, Josuke Ikeda (2013) pronounces that the latter has an advantage over the former because of its “post-colonial” leanings.Ikeda’s observations, which tend to problematize the globality of post-Western IR, appear to be evasive “essentialist” in at least three ways: (1) the post-Western is compulsorily interpreted as post-colonial; (2) the post-Western is necessarily associated with the ethos of critical theory and practice; and (3) the ethos of critical theory and practice is unavoidably construed as Western.

EXCLUSIVITY OF THE EUROPEAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Elaborating on Stanley Hoffmann’s view of IR ‘as an American social science’, Ole Wæver prognosticated correctly that American IR was moving from global hegemony to national professionalization, shaped by distinct intellectual traditions. In recent years, Acharya and Buzan redirected our attention to the distinctions between non-Western and Western rather than American and European IR theory. They argued that Western IR theory is too narrow in its sources and too broad in its impact. European history is not the same as global history, while central categories of IR theory unavoidably reflect European experiences and sentiments. As scientific racism is no longer a theoretical contender in contemporary IR scholarship in any part of the world, alternative schools of IR have started to develop.

Across many international systems in history, diversity helped to constitute international order. Eurocentric institutionalism mistakes a contingent historical outcome, Europe’s post-medieval convergence on the institution of sovereign statehood, as evidence for a universal law. Phillips and Sharman argue that conventional Western exceptionalism, although widespread, is wrong. The context of contemporary IR theory construction is diverse.

The sovereign state model as the standard of legitimate international actorhood is universal in form more than in substance. It overlooks the relevance of empire and civilization as well as their legacies for the diverse institutional ecologies of contemporary world politics. With legacies of the past reconfigured and rebranded, political units in contemporary world politics are not homogeneous.

The non-European world is populated with polities and hybrid legal systems that embody many different substantive rationalities. Furthermore, international orders are patchworks of institutional arrangements and differing rationalities that often possess no more than minimal coherence. World politics is defined by persistent heterogeneity and diversity rather than homogeneity and convergence on American, European, or Western institutions, traditions, and theories. And that heterogeneity and diversity cannot be captured by the binary distinction between Western and Non-Western. It requires attention to context and process.

CULTURALLY INFLUENCED CHINESE SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The Chinese School of IR is driven by China’s history and theory and unsurprisingly, Chinese experience and categories provide conceptual raw material that differs from Europe: hierarchy and unity, tribute and Tianxia, realism, Marxism and culturalism, dictatorial and collective leadership, orthopractice, and orthodoxy. During the last two decades what might be called the hierarchical, Sinocentric, tributary trade, ‘Fairbank model’ has been debated, elaborated, rejected, or refined by senior scholars in China (such as Qin Yaqing and Yan Xuetong).

They do so by incorporating regional and transnational elements into national analysis. They inform us about the nature of Chinese hegemony in the past without the pretense of being able to predict the future. Diplomacy by tribute was the defining practice in the relations among China, Korea, Japan, and the Mongols. Since power is always relational and often complex, the relationship between superior Ming and Qing China and inferior neighboring client states was not one of simple domination driven by instrumental calculations.

The smaller states maneuvered in their relations with China, and in many ways, were critical to both the character of Chinese hegemony and East Asia’s regional order. For Zhang, relationalism that combines instrumental with affective motivations is at the core of the Confucian worldview that motivates his analysis. For Lee, it is the domestic politics in smaller states. In developing this argument, Zhang and Lee do not say anything that could be attributed specifically to a Chinese style of theorizing about IR. Imbued by a deep understanding of the importance of relationalism in East Asia, they build on the theoretical power literature.

This is less a case of rebalancing a Western misunderstanding of its history as universal and more of bringing a distinctive historical and analytical sensibility to a universal concept. As was true at the outset of the 20th century, today rationalist and relational styles of analysis are the subject of theoretical debate and empirical research everywhere. This is the point of departure for Qin’s China-inflected analysis of relational and rule-based governance. He argues that Europe and East Asia are empirical cases that exhibit, to different degrees and in different ways, the coexistence of both forms of governance. Since both share a relational view of the world, binary categories of East and West give us no traction. What does vary, however, is the discursive dominance of relation- or rule-based styles of analysis in different sociocultural settings.

Some prominent scholars like Qin are committed to building a Chinese school. Others like Yan regard this as an unnecessary, even harmful exercise. In their English-language writings, Qin Yaqing appears to subscribe to an essentializing view of what constitutes unique Chinese modes of thinking, and Yan Xuetong to a unitary view of what constitutes the Chinese intellectual tradition that links ancient Chinese thought to modern Chinese power. And these disagreements are central to the world of politics and policy. In fact, they help constitute the field of IR specifically and the social sciences generally.

IR theory will not rise, eventually, in a gigantic locale called the ‘non-West’. Instead, it is unfolding now as a practice before our very eyes, as the era of religious and knowledge missionaries has long ended. We are in the midst of generating new knowledge and theories that all IR scholars will use to better understand a global world that resists understanding in terms of either universal knowledge or black-and-white distinctions.

With this in mind, I argue that, paradoxically, the current production of Chinese IR theory as mainstream ‘non-Western IR theory’ (Cho, 2013; Qin, 2018; Shahi, 2019; Shih et al., 2019; Yan, 2019; Zhao, 2019) has been informed by the antinomy between (materialist) empiricism and (religious-idealist) moral judgment, despite the influences of Daoism and Confucianism. Both Qin’s constructivist relational theory (2018) and Yan’s moral realism (2019) are a case in point.

Therefore, the distinctiveness of the production of international knowledge in the ‘non-West’ is not manifested by a cultural divergence, but a structural one. In this light, the primacy of the state over society, which is one of the main characteristics of the contender states experience, is perhaps one of the fundamental ontological foundations that has shaped the production of ‘non-Western IR Theory’ since the 18th century. For this reason, in addition to the ‘Global IR’ and the ‘national schools of IR’, the international thought produced in contender states such as 18th century France, Prussia, imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union could also be described as being produced in a non-Western setting.

For instance, ontologically speaking, Prussian political realism which is always regarded as the quintessential IR theory of the ‘universal’ West, has more in common with the Qin’s Confucian relational IR project (Qin, 2018) than with Anglo-Saxon liberalism. Both theoretical projects are shaped by the same ontological premise of the primacy of the state over society. For this reason, in the context of the production of IR theory in China, the reactivation of Confucianism as an ontological source to build the ‘Chinese school of IR’ is not a sole consequence of its eternal existence within the Chinese civilization but also due its political meaning within the wider structural position of China. Put it differently, Confucianism is indeed a political tradition that gives primacy to the state over society and can rationalize best the structural contender posture of contemporary China.

COMPARING THE WESTERN AND CHINESE SCHOOLS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Cultural multiplicity plays a fundamental role in shaping theoretical knowledge and the diverse cosmovisions that enable communities to make sense of the world. the reference to Anglophone and Sinophone versions of the relational turn in IR also acknowledges that the contributors to these strands tend to identify with (and often assert such) division as a marker of the different cultural resources on which they draw.

Both the Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism of IR’s atomistic outlook are unreceptive to the flexibilities, contingencies, and transformative possibilities engendered by the encounter with another worldview. Striving to overcome ‘the ontologies of separation and metaphysical individualism’ that dominate IR, the proponents of CT suggest that the ‘“realities” informing both the materiality of the world and by extension the realms of IR are intrinsically relational, permeable, shifting, open-ended, and always historically and geographically situated properties’ (Kavalski, Hobden & Cudworth 2018, 280).

It appears that mainstream Western IR theory would not turn to culture for its sources or theoretical construction. Often, it is informed by and draws on theories in other fields. Structural realism is informed very much by microeconomics, neoliberal institutionalism by institutional economics, and constructivism by sociology. Most often, it claims universality. As Katzenstein has pointed out in his article on this issue, it is common to equate the West with the human community (Katzenstein, 2018). Although Hoffmann’s question has warned us that IR is an American social science, and even though certain others have continued to reveal this phenomenon through criticism, perfect universality has nevertheless become a belief rampant in the field of our discipline (Hoffman, 2001). It has already become common practice to equate the West with the human community and to equate knowledge produced in the West with universal knowledge. As a result, the reliance on cultural resources has become implicit. By taking for granted that they produce universal knowledge, theorists tend to forget the fact that culture provides the background that influences their subconscious mind on a highly abstract and metaphysical level.

The theoretical hard core has been formed through the background knowledge gained from the practice of European IR since the establishment of the Westphalian system, especially since the Congress of Vienna. Different international systems that existed in other regions outside the West, especially outside Europe where the IR discipline was initiated, have been rendered largely irrelevant in the study of world politics. Only the practice of Westphalian IR should matter, and only the background knowledge wherefrom should count.

It is this reliance on cultural sources for social theory development that may inspire non-Western scholars to develop IR theory. However, it is necessary to repeat that Western social theory draws on cultural resources in a highly implicit way and on a highly abstract level, as if far removed from its cultural background.

Because social theory was first developed in the West, and bearing in mind the establishment of its discursive domination, it has more often than not been taken for granted that both social theory and Western social theory are universal. It is necessary, therefore, to see how culture influences the development of social theory, which is itself a social and cultural construct. Such influence is actually clear once the take-it-for-granted mindset is removed. Since non-Western IR theory is definitely a latecomer, it may well be inspired by the development of Western IR theory.

Concerning efforts toward developing Chinese IR theories, there are three major examples: Yan Xuetong’s moral realism, Zhao Tingyang’s Tianxia (all under heaven) system, and Qin Yaqing’s relational theory. All three have turned to Chinese culture and philosophy for inspiration. However, in this study, only Yan Xuetong’s ‘moral realism’ will be discussed in detail. Like Carr, Morgenthau, and Waltz, Yan places particular emphasis on power. His moral realism takes power as its central concept and accepts the basic assumptions of realism, recognizing that anarchy is the nature of the international system, that national interest is the prime mover of state action, and that the struggle for power and world leadership is the inevitable reality of world politics. At the same time, however, it argues that morality plays an important role in both constituting and exercising power.

By specifically using this key concept of morality and forcing it into the realist narrative, Yan expands the horizon of both classical and structural realism alike. Yan holds that the international system is hierarchical and that major powers naturally struggle for world leadership in such a hierarchical order. Leadership, however, is not composed of mere material elements. Although economic and military capabilities are important, the power of and for leadership should contain strong nonmaterial or ideational elements. Morality is, thus, the key to the power of leadership. As Yan interprets Guanzi, ‘... to maintain a stable international order both material power and moral thought are necessary’ (Xuetong, 2011). In other words, material power is important but can be significant only when paired with morality if political leadership is involved and to be sustained.

Yan tries to interpret the relationship between power and leadership to answer a key question in politics–what power is most effective in the successful competition for and sustainable maintenance of world leadership. For him, ideal power is both material and moral, and ideal leadership is Wangdao or humane authority, which combines power and morality.

Key concepts in Chinese cultural traditions, such as morality (daode), non-exclusivity (wuwai), and relationality (guanxi) have been exploited in all these works, albeit with purposeful modification and tailored to suit these scholars’ respective theories. These concepts are more human-related than those developed in Western mainstream IR theories. One of the reasons why is perhaps because traditional Chinese culture places greater emphasis on the management of human affairs.

Morality, non-exclusivity, and relationality are, largely concerned with being human among humans. With due respect to the material, Chinese scholars tend to show particular concern for humanness and humanity, and this constitutes a distinct feature of their development of IR theory.

Therefore, to enrich the discipline, it is necessary to encourage development of IR theory in less developed, generally ‘non-Western’ areas. As globalization spreads and the progression of a truly global IR represents a tendency, non-Western IR development is a positive phenomenon for the enhancement and evolution of the existing IR knowledge.

CONCLUSION

This article has argued that the uncritical engagement with ‘cultural diversity’ in the discipline of IR, which has been epitomized by the development of ‘non-Western IR theory’, has not succeeded in transcending the ‘exclusivity’ of the ‘Western’ origins of the discipline. For this reason, the form in which ‘non-Western IR theory’ has materialized should be understood as a form of disciplinary ‘identity politics’, a struggle for the representation of abstract and reified cultural entities.

On the contrary, to overcome this problem, this article has argued that it is important to reflect on what constitutes as ‘non-Western IR theory’. By doing so, the boundaries between what is ‘Western IR theory’ and ‘Non-Western IR theory’ are blurred. Subsequently, ontological commonalities can be found in the production of international thought in 18th-century France, Prussia, imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, South Korea, Taiwan, or China.

The rationalist, reflectivist, and constructivist frames of Eurocentric IR remain bounded by the theoretical presumptions of epistemological dualism, ontological priority, and methodological compartmentalization. These theoretical presumptions, in turn, breed naturalized strategic responses while actually conducting international relations between human groups scattered across the globe: the epistemological, ontological, and methodological gaps between human groups located in different parts of the world (which create an illusion of living in many worlds) are rationally mobilized for pushing naturalized strategic hierarchies. Against this backdrop, the alternative imagination of a non-Eurocentric post-Western Global IR can become achievable by way of surpassing these identified Eurocentric theoretical presumptions and strategic responses.

While epistemological monism expands Eurocentric IR by promoting an alternative presumption of the “oneness of reality,” ontological immaterialism investigates the exteriors of Eurocentric IR by ideationally blending the plural visible strands of this oneness – that is, the seemingly clashing pluralities of an otherwise “connected” global politics – into an unknown melting point of “nothingness.” Furthermore, methodological eclecticism permits an unusual mixture of rationalism, reflectivism, and extra-rationalism (read emotionalism), thereby potentially enabling an alternative explanation of recognized practices of IR, and proposing an unexplored generative ground for fresh universalist theoretical inquiries of IR.