Survival of the Disciplines: Is International Relations Fit for the New Millennium?

Abstract

Iver Neumann argues that International Relations (IR) is going to have to engage with a broader set of empirical data and wider inter-disciplinary insights, especially from evolutionary biology. I endorse the debate and extend the challenge, making four key points: (1) our empirical data must extend to the deep origins of human societies, and look more at policy successes rather than failures; (2) our scientific toolkit must integrate rather than differentiate psychology and biology, because the former is in large part a product of the latter; (3) evolution continues to be misinterpreted, especially in the condemnation of functionalism, the myth of biological determinism, the perceived lack of relevance to IR theory, and the idea that social facts cannot have biological roots; and (4) there are other issues of more genuine importance, including the levels of analysis problem (getting from the biology of individuals to the behaviour of states), and the levels of selection problem (the predictions of group selection and individual selection for human nature). I conclude that, despite big challenges of communication and collaboration, the benefits of integration with the natural sciences far outweigh the benefits of disciplinary isolation, offering new knowledge, methods, consilience, and parsimony that will help IR to flourish rather than flounder in the Age of Biology.

The evolution of war: theory and controversy

“…Third, international relations, as the natural 'home field' for the study of warfare, ought to take the lead in this interdisciplinary integration. Although there has been some movement toward integration by international relations scholars (Johnson, Wrangham and Rosen 2002;Gat 2006;Thayer and Hudson 2010;Lopez, McDermott and Petersen 2011;Johnson 2015), there is much room for gainful exchange.…”

“…Researchers outside of political science are increasingly turning to evolutionary theory to illuminate the psychological mechanisms that underlie many areas of interest to international relations and political science as a whole, such as the design of institutions (Alexander and Christia 2011;Boyer and Petersen 2011); the nature of religious belief and its relationship to political violence and extremism (Atran and Ginges 2012); political ideology (Smith et al 2012); and adaptations for warfare (Johnson, Wrangham and Rosen 2002;Choi and Bowles 2007;Wrangham and Glowacki 2012). Pessimism regarding the relevance or utility of evolutionary theory for explaining political phenomena no longer holds sway (Lopez, McDermott and Petersen 2011;Johnson 2015); instead the question is not whether, but how evolutionary theory help to explain political processes. Adaptationism is a framework for addressing this question.…”

“…Although there has been persistent disagreement about the use of evolutionary theory in the social sciences broadly and in international relations specifically (e.g. see Bell 2006;Lopez, McDermott and Petersen 2011;Lopez 2014;Johnson 2015), this paper identifies and engages four particularly prominent claims against the use of evolutionary theory for understanding warfare. These claims are:…”

Psychology and aggregation in International Relations

“…Much of these forms of social and political organization are designed to include checks and balances aimed at mitigating the effects of individual preferences. Decision-making processes in group and institutionalized settings can also be cumbersome and take time, providing further opportunities to counteract individual judgements and biases (Johnson, 2015: 760). How psychological mechanisms, which are primarily individually embodied, may operate and exercise influence within complex group and institutional environments remains a crucial and contested question.…”

“…On the face of it, aggregation appears to present a serious challenge to psychological explanations in international politics. As Johnson (2015: 760) notes, ‘the whole point of government is to ensure multiple voices and checks and balances so that rational decisions can, in theory, persist despite individual preferences and biases’. Institutions are ordinarily designed to offset the expression of individual-level bias.…”