Non-Western International Relations Theory
Perspectives on and beyond Asia
Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan
1. Why is there no non-Western international relations theory?
An introduction
The sources of international relations theory (IRT) fail to correspond to the global
distribution of its subjects. Today, the good life in international relations (IR) –
democratic peace, interdependence, and institutionalized orderliness – are
mostly found in the West. But the absence of non-Western IRT deserves a more
complex explanation that the simple acknowledgement of the conflictual anarchy
in the non-West. Western IRT is both too narrow in its sources and too dominant
in its influence to fully understand the world in which we live. IRT is an open
domain into which it is not unreasonable to expect non-Westerners to make a
contribution at least proportional to the degree that they are involved in its
practice.
Western dominance of IRT
Realism, with its focus on state sovereignty, military power and national interest,
is rooted in the diplomatic and political practices of modern Europe. Realism
projects onto the rest of the world their basic Europe-derived story of
international anarchy and balance of power politics as a permanent, universal
structural condition. Because of its commitment to balance of power politics,
realism ignores the great chapters of history, where empires such as the Persian,
held absolute power over their known worlds. Realism focuses mainly on the
modern history of Western powers. Realism has played a major role in defining
the mainstream subject matter of IR in state-centric terms. It that sense, it has
been an accomplice to Western hegemony by taking the political system that the
West imposed on the rest of the world and declaring it the norm for all of world
history.
Strategic Studies are rooted in the tradition of the Western way in warfare.
During the Cold War, they flourished in the pursuit of deterrence theory as a
response to the co-development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Liberalism has roots in the Western practice of political economy from the 19th
century onwards. The liberal principles of individualism and the market come out
of Western thinking yet are presented as universal truths, applicable to all
human beings. Liberalism reflects a forward-looking assessment of the European
experience: how to improve on past practice and move humankind towards a
more peaceful, prosperous and just future. Justification for this frankly imperial
perspective is found in the great relative success of the West (in terms of power,
prosperity and justice) compared with the rest of the world.
Marxism is the main reaction against the rise of an industrial economy in the
West. Marxism is the opposite of liberalism in preferring collectivism to
individualism and a command economy to a market one. Marxism sees its own
prescription as universally valid. But once the Soviet Union failed, and China kept
the name of communism, Marxism lost much of its standing as a model for the
future of industrial society.
The English School’s main contribution to world history is to show an
international society formed in Europe expanded to take over the world. The
English School has been preoccupied with the consequences of expanding a
culturally coherent European international society to a global scale that lacks a
strong common culture to underpin it.
,Constructivism and postmodernism set themselves up as alternatives to the
materialist, positivist epistemologies underpinning realism and liberalism. Both
constructivists and postmodernists see themselves as universalist in application
of methods, but as particularist in seeing social structures as being limited in
time and space, and so not ideal to compare across time and space.
Despite its universalist pretentions, Western IRT is rooted in European traditions
of social theory and practice. Occasionally, non-Western thinking or actors were
mentioned, but mainly to validate universalist claims.
Non-Western contributions
There are some non-Western contributions that fit broadly within our
understanding of IRT, though these almost never meet the criteria for hard
theory. Instead, they are more likely to fit within softer conceptions. Broadly, one
could identify 4 major types of work that could be considered as soft theory.
Asian classical traditions and the thinking of classical religious, political
and military figures on which some secondary political theory literature
exists. In this type of work is that there is not always a clear demarcation
between the boundaries of what is domestic and what is IR. The invoking of
the ideas of these writers is seldom devoid of political considerations. In the
80s and 90s, Confucian ideas about communitarianism were cited as the
basis of an Asian values perspective, as an alternative to Western
individualist liberal values.
Foreign policy approaches of Asian leaders such as Mao and Sukarno
(first president of Indonesia). They offer principles about organizing
international order which are independent of Western intellectual traditions in
response to changing local and global circumstances. An example is non-
alignment, developed by Asian and African leaders in the 50s. However, not
many scholars have taken up the challenge of theorizing the writings of Asian
leaders from the perspective of IRT. The case of Nehru (first prime minister of
independent India) is especially relevant because he was globally recognized
as a thinker in his own right, rather than simply as a political strategist. His
views were influential in shaping the initial foreign policy approaches of Asia’s
fellow nationalists. Moreover, Nehru engaged with Western realist intellectual
writings, which were seen by Nehru as a continuation of old tradition of
European power politics and led him to critique realism for refusing to
understand the hard facts of the present. For Nehru, realist solutions to the
world’s problems ignored new forces sweeping the world, including the
decline of Western colonial powers after WWII, as well as the demands for
emancipation in the former colonies. Despite their different backgrounds,
Asia’s nationalists shared the fact that they did not see any conflict between
nationalism and internationalism. They were contrary to the idea of
nationalism as the sole basis for organizing IR. This might have been driven
partly by a desire to mobilize international support for national liberation. This
open nationalism of Asia was in some respect distinct from the exclusionary
and territorial nationalism of Europe. Aung San believed that regional
cooperation could compensate for Myanmar’s weakness. The most important
aspect of this internationalism of Asia was the advocacy of Asian regionalism.
Nehru was the most articulate early post-war advocate of Asian unity and
interdependence, which had been violently disrupted by colonialism.
Non-Westerners who have taken up Western IRT. Many Asian IR
scholars have applied Western theory to local contexts. Most of them have
received their training in the West and have spent a considerable part of their
working life in Western institutions. Thus, they can’t really be seen as
authentic local scholars whose works represent indigenous contributions to
, non-Western IRT. However, the place of training and career-building should
be less important than the substance of their contributions in judging whether
their work might be regarded as non-Western IRT.
Work on IRT related to Asia. Such work studies Asian events and develops
concepts that can be used as tools of analysis of more general patterns in IR
and for locating Asia within the larger international system. The scholars are
not turning Asia into a mere test bed of Western theory. Rather, they are
identifying processes from an Asian setting that could be used to explain
phenomena in the outside world. An example concerns the generalizations
about Asian interdependence and regional institution building and Asian
regional practices such as the ASEAN way. These constructs are considered
exceptional, but in reality they are not. For example, consensus decision-
making is a worldwide practice of multilateral institutions. But they do acquire
a certain distinctiveness in local contexts. Hence, claims about Asia’s
distinctive regionalism has found increasing acknowledgement in IRT
literature on multilateralism and regionalism.
A stronger claim for an indigenous theory is postcolonialism which challenges
Western dominance. It has been criticized for neglecting not only European
imperialism, but also resistance to imperialism outside of Europe. Postcolonialism
also seeks to dismantle binary distinctions found in postmodern theory, such as
the distinction between First World–Third World, North–South, centre-periphery,
and reveal societies globally in the complex heterogeneity. But postcolonialism
cannot be regarded as an authentic attempt to counter Western centrism,
because it is basically framed within cultural discourses originating from the
West.
Explanations for the dominance of the West
Western IRT has discovered the right path to understanding IR
If true, IRT can claim universal standing regardless of cultural context. But this
claim cannot be defended, mainly because Western IRT is specifically drawn
from modern Western history. One consequence of this Westphalian straitjacket
is an over-emphasis on anarchy and an underemphasis on the many possibilities
for how international systems have been constructed. There can be no doubt
that Western IRT has generated significant insights. But equally, there can be no
doubt that it is rooted in a very specific history, denying space for different
perspectives from other parts of the world. Because social theory is always for
someone and for some purpose, it is to its very core a political enterprise. To
accept the world in only one specific way not only forecloses other ways of
understanding international order, but automatically puts the US in a unique and
privileged position. The acceptance would produce effects that do not reflect an
accurate description of how things are.
Western IRT has acquired hegemonic status in the Gramscian sense
A Gramscian hegemonic status operates unconsciously in the minds of others,
and regardless of whether the theory is correct or not. Here one would need to
take into account the intellectual impact of Western imperialism in imprinting
their own understandings onto the minds of the non-Western world. The process
of decolonization left a world remodelled on the lines of the European anarchical
form of IR. The price of independence was that local elites accept this structure.
Third World elites have embraced the key elements of Westphalian sovereignty
and even expanded its scope. For example, the decline of non-intervention in the
West has paralleled its rise in the Third World. If Western IRT is hegemonic
because it is right, then there is little scope for non-Western contributions. But if
it is dominant because it rode on the back of Western power, then there is
reason to develop a non-Western voice. Particularly significant here may be the
, extent to which Western imperialism cut peoples off from their own history by
drawing their self-understanding into a Western historical frame. This led
gradually to a consciousness of Western hegemony, a desire to avoid being
caged by Western hegemony.
Non-Western IRTs do exist, but are hidden
There is a possibility that non-Western IRTs do exist, but they are hidden from
the Western discourse by language barriers or other entry difficulties and
therefore do not circulate in the global debates. The reasons for being hidden
may also lie in the ethnocentrism of Western scholarship, and its tendency to
view the reality of others through its own experience, and to assume the
superiority of its own cultural model over others. One would assume that English
as a lingua franca must make access easier for all. Up to a point, there is truth in
this assumption, but for those having to work in English as a second or third
language it may feel like a barrier. If non-Western theory does exist, but is
marginalized, then the ideal task would be to help this already existing theory to
get it into wider circulation. The contributions of non-Western scholars remain
hidden from view because of their inability to publish in the leading journals in
the field, nearly all of which are edited in the West. Thus, the themes of these
articles are oriented in favour of Western concerns.
Local conditions discriminate against the production of IRT
Various local conditions could explain why the academic environment outside the
West might not be conducive to the generation of IRT. On the historical side,
most stories about how Western IR got established see WWI as a watershed,
reinforced by WWII. The unexpected horror and disruption of the war filled
Western civilization with the fear that a renewal of all-out war might end
civilization. From that fear grew the need for a better understanding of peace
and war and it was around that goal that the field of IR was institutionalized. It
may well be true that this particular historical trauma is unique to the West. Yet
one might argue that for much of Asia World War II was not a wholly dissimilar
experience. And if historical trauma is necessary to trigger IRT, then the
experience of Western domination and decolonization should have been more
than adequate to serve. Although Western history has unique connections to the
development of IRT, it is far from clear that non-Western societies lack similarly
forceful mobilizing historical traumas.
There could be cultural differences between the West and the non-West that
make the former more inclined to approach issues in abstract terms. Theory in
general might be a Western way of doing things, with others more inclined to
empirical approaches related to local affairs, and without the presumption to
universalism. The culture explanation could simply be that theory, especially
universal theory, is a kind of luxury that societies struggling with the immediate
and pressing problems of development simply cannot afford to indulge. The
focus would be on short-term local problem solving and not on more grandiose
efforts to understand larger systems.
There could also be a link between culture and the hegemony explanation. One
consequence of hegemony could be to induce in the local cultures a kind of
demoralization and loss of confidence that would make it difficult to engage in
general theoretical debates.
Political factors might inhibit the development of IRT. One would not expect IRT
to flourish in states where the government has a strong political interest in
controlling how foreign policy is understood. The typical Western academic
experience is that governments could not care less about IRT, and certainly do
not consider it a threat to their authority. As a rule, it is perhaps fair to say the
more closely linked the study of IR is to government, the less theoretical it is
likely to be.
Perspectives on and beyond Asia
Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan
1. Why is there no non-Western international relations theory?
An introduction
The sources of international relations theory (IRT) fail to correspond to the global
distribution of its subjects. Today, the good life in international relations (IR) –
democratic peace, interdependence, and institutionalized orderliness – are
mostly found in the West. But the absence of non-Western IRT deserves a more
complex explanation that the simple acknowledgement of the conflictual anarchy
in the non-West. Western IRT is both too narrow in its sources and too dominant
in its influence to fully understand the world in which we live. IRT is an open
domain into which it is not unreasonable to expect non-Westerners to make a
contribution at least proportional to the degree that they are involved in its
practice.
Western dominance of IRT
Realism, with its focus on state sovereignty, military power and national interest,
is rooted in the diplomatic and political practices of modern Europe. Realism
projects onto the rest of the world their basic Europe-derived story of
international anarchy and balance of power politics as a permanent, universal
structural condition. Because of its commitment to balance of power politics,
realism ignores the great chapters of history, where empires such as the Persian,
held absolute power over their known worlds. Realism focuses mainly on the
modern history of Western powers. Realism has played a major role in defining
the mainstream subject matter of IR in state-centric terms. It that sense, it has
been an accomplice to Western hegemony by taking the political system that the
West imposed on the rest of the world and declaring it the norm for all of world
history.
Strategic Studies are rooted in the tradition of the Western way in warfare.
During the Cold War, they flourished in the pursuit of deterrence theory as a
response to the co-development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Liberalism has roots in the Western practice of political economy from the 19th
century onwards. The liberal principles of individualism and the market come out
of Western thinking yet are presented as universal truths, applicable to all
human beings. Liberalism reflects a forward-looking assessment of the European
experience: how to improve on past practice and move humankind towards a
more peaceful, prosperous and just future. Justification for this frankly imperial
perspective is found in the great relative success of the West (in terms of power,
prosperity and justice) compared with the rest of the world.
Marxism is the main reaction against the rise of an industrial economy in the
West. Marxism is the opposite of liberalism in preferring collectivism to
individualism and a command economy to a market one. Marxism sees its own
prescription as universally valid. But once the Soviet Union failed, and China kept
the name of communism, Marxism lost much of its standing as a model for the
future of industrial society.
The English School’s main contribution to world history is to show an
international society formed in Europe expanded to take over the world. The
English School has been preoccupied with the consequences of expanding a
culturally coherent European international society to a global scale that lacks a
strong common culture to underpin it.
,Constructivism and postmodernism set themselves up as alternatives to the
materialist, positivist epistemologies underpinning realism and liberalism. Both
constructivists and postmodernists see themselves as universalist in application
of methods, but as particularist in seeing social structures as being limited in
time and space, and so not ideal to compare across time and space.
Despite its universalist pretentions, Western IRT is rooted in European traditions
of social theory and practice. Occasionally, non-Western thinking or actors were
mentioned, but mainly to validate universalist claims.
Non-Western contributions
There are some non-Western contributions that fit broadly within our
understanding of IRT, though these almost never meet the criteria for hard
theory. Instead, they are more likely to fit within softer conceptions. Broadly, one
could identify 4 major types of work that could be considered as soft theory.
Asian classical traditions and the thinking of classical religious, political
and military figures on which some secondary political theory literature
exists. In this type of work is that there is not always a clear demarcation
between the boundaries of what is domestic and what is IR. The invoking of
the ideas of these writers is seldom devoid of political considerations. In the
80s and 90s, Confucian ideas about communitarianism were cited as the
basis of an Asian values perspective, as an alternative to Western
individualist liberal values.
Foreign policy approaches of Asian leaders such as Mao and Sukarno
(first president of Indonesia). They offer principles about organizing
international order which are independent of Western intellectual traditions in
response to changing local and global circumstances. An example is non-
alignment, developed by Asian and African leaders in the 50s. However, not
many scholars have taken up the challenge of theorizing the writings of Asian
leaders from the perspective of IRT. The case of Nehru (first prime minister of
independent India) is especially relevant because he was globally recognized
as a thinker in his own right, rather than simply as a political strategist. His
views were influential in shaping the initial foreign policy approaches of Asia’s
fellow nationalists. Moreover, Nehru engaged with Western realist intellectual
writings, which were seen by Nehru as a continuation of old tradition of
European power politics and led him to critique realism for refusing to
understand the hard facts of the present. For Nehru, realist solutions to the
world’s problems ignored new forces sweeping the world, including the
decline of Western colonial powers after WWII, as well as the demands for
emancipation in the former colonies. Despite their different backgrounds,
Asia’s nationalists shared the fact that they did not see any conflict between
nationalism and internationalism. They were contrary to the idea of
nationalism as the sole basis for organizing IR. This might have been driven
partly by a desire to mobilize international support for national liberation. This
open nationalism of Asia was in some respect distinct from the exclusionary
and territorial nationalism of Europe. Aung San believed that regional
cooperation could compensate for Myanmar’s weakness. The most important
aspect of this internationalism of Asia was the advocacy of Asian regionalism.
Nehru was the most articulate early post-war advocate of Asian unity and
interdependence, which had been violently disrupted by colonialism.
Non-Westerners who have taken up Western IRT. Many Asian IR
scholars have applied Western theory to local contexts. Most of them have
received their training in the West and have spent a considerable part of their
working life in Western institutions. Thus, they can’t really be seen as
authentic local scholars whose works represent indigenous contributions to
, non-Western IRT. However, the place of training and career-building should
be less important than the substance of their contributions in judging whether
their work might be regarded as non-Western IRT.
Work on IRT related to Asia. Such work studies Asian events and develops
concepts that can be used as tools of analysis of more general patterns in IR
and for locating Asia within the larger international system. The scholars are
not turning Asia into a mere test bed of Western theory. Rather, they are
identifying processes from an Asian setting that could be used to explain
phenomena in the outside world. An example concerns the generalizations
about Asian interdependence and regional institution building and Asian
regional practices such as the ASEAN way. These constructs are considered
exceptional, but in reality they are not. For example, consensus decision-
making is a worldwide practice of multilateral institutions. But they do acquire
a certain distinctiveness in local contexts. Hence, claims about Asia’s
distinctive regionalism has found increasing acknowledgement in IRT
literature on multilateralism and regionalism.
A stronger claim for an indigenous theory is postcolonialism which challenges
Western dominance. It has been criticized for neglecting not only European
imperialism, but also resistance to imperialism outside of Europe. Postcolonialism
also seeks to dismantle binary distinctions found in postmodern theory, such as
the distinction between First World–Third World, North–South, centre-periphery,
and reveal societies globally in the complex heterogeneity. But postcolonialism
cannot be regarded as an authentic attempt to counter Western centrism,
because it is basically framed within cultural discourses originating from the
West.
Explanations for the dominance of the West
Western IRT has discovered the right path to understanding IR
If true, IRT can claim universal standing regardless of cultural context. But this
claim cannot be defended, mainly because Western IRT is specifically drawn
from modern Western history. One consequence of this Westphalian straitjacket
is an over-emphasis on anarchy and an underemphasis on the many possibilities
for how international systems have been constructed. There can be no doubt
that Western IRT has generated significant insights. But equally, there can be no
doubt that it is rooted in a very specific history, denying space for different
perspectives from other parts of the world. Because social theory is always for
someone and for some purpose, it is to its very core a political enterprise. To
accept the world in only one specific way not only forecloses other ways of
understanding international order, but automatically puts the US in a unique and
privileged position. The acceptance would produce effects that do not reflect an
accurate description of how things are.
Western IRT has acquired hegemonic status in the Gramscian sense
A Gramscian hegemonic status operates unconsciously in the minds of others,
and regardless of whether the theory is correct or not. Here one would need to
take into account the intellectual impact of Western imperialism in imprinting
their own understandings onto the minds of the non-Western world. The process
of decolonization left a world remodelled on the lines of the European anarchical
form of IR. The price of independence was that local elites accept this structure.
Third World elites have embraced the key elements of Westphalian sovereignty
and even expanded its scope. For example, the decline of non-intervention in the
West has paralleled its rise in the Third World. If Western IRT is hegemonic
because it is right, then there is little scope for non-Western contributions. But if
it is dominant because it rode on the back of Western power, then there is
reason to develop a non-Western voice. Particularly significant here may be the
, extent to which Western imperialism cut peoples off from their own history by
drawing their self-understanding into a Western historical frame. This led
gradually to a consciousness of Western hegemony, a desire to avoid being
caged by Western hegemony.
Non-Western IRTs do exist, but are hidden
There is a possibility that non-Western IRTs do exist, but they are hidden from
the Western discourse by language barriers or other entry difficulties and
therefore do not circulate in the global debates. The reasons for being hidden
may also lie in the ethnocentrism of Western scholarship, and its tendency to
view the reality of others through its own experience, and to assume the
superiority of its own cultural model over others. One would assume that English
as a lingua franca must make access easier for all. Up to a point, there is truth in
this assumption, but for those having to work in English as a second or third
language it may feel like a barrier. If non-Western theory does exist, but is
marginalized, then the ideal task would be to help this already existing theory to
get it into wider circulation. The contributions of non-Western scholars remain
hidden from view because of their inability to publish in the leading journals in
the field, nearly all of which are edited in the West. Thus, the themes of these
articles are oriented in favour of Western concerns.
Local conditions discriminate against the production of IRT
Various local conditions could explain why the academic environment outside the
West might not be conducive to the generation of IRT. On the historical side,
most stories about how Western IR got established see WWI as a watershed,
reinforced by WWII. The unexpected horror and disruption of the war filled
Western civilization with the fear that a renewal of all-out war might end
civilization. From that fear grew the need for a better understanding of peace
and war and it was around that goal that the field of IR was institutionalized. It
may well be true that this particular historical trauma is unique to the West. Yet
one might argue that for much of Asia World War II was not a wholly dissimilar
experience. And if historical trauma is necessary to trigger IRT, then the
experience of Western domination and decolonization should have been more
than adequate to serve. Although Western history has unique connections to the
development of IRT, it is far from clear that non-Western societies lack similarly
forceful mobilizing historical traumas.
There could be cultural differences between the West and the non-West that
make the former more inclined to approach issues in abstract terms. Theory in
general might be a Western way of doing things, with others more inclined to
empirical approaches related to local affairs, and without the presumption to
universalism. The culture explanation could simply be that theory, especially
universal theory, is a kind of luxury that societies struggling with the immediate
and pressing problems of development simply cannot afford to indulge. The
focus would be on short-term local problem solving and not on more grandiose
efforts to understand larger systems.
There could also be a link between culture and the hegemony explanation. One
consequence of hegemony could be to induce in the local cultures a kind of
demoralization and loss of confidence that would make it difficult to engage in
general theoretical debates.
Political factors might inhibit the development of IRT. One would not expect IRT
to flourish in states where the government has a strong political interest in
controlling how foreign policy is understood. The typical Western academic
experience is that governments could not care less about IRT, and certainly do
not consider it a threat to their authority. As a rule, it is perhaps fair to say the
more closely linked the study of IR is to government, the less theoretical it is
likely to be.
