Culture, Ideology, and World Order by R B J Walker

Author:R B J Walker [Walker, R B J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9780429745614
Google: n9KpDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 52143417
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

II. The Dilemmas of International Political Theory

A tension between universalism and pluralism may be traced throughout the development of Westen political theory. It was evident in the debate between "realists" and "nominalists," between those who assigned reality to the universal, treating individual instances as a mere shadow, and those for whom the universal was merely nominal and the individual instance the only reality. It can also be examined as a response to specific historical-geopolitical developments. Classical Greek thought asserted the priority of the small unit, the importance of the perfect internal ordering of the polis, an assertion accompanied by a sharp distinction between Greek and barbarian. With the expansions of the Hellenic period, the speculations of the Cynics, Stoics and early Christians began to adopt a more cosmopolitan tone. With later Christianity, the distinction between temporal and spiritual realms tempted political thought with two competing versions of universal ism. But with the rise of the European state, particularism reasserted itself. It resulted both in a long-standing conflict between the emerging values of the secular state and the remnants of a universalist natural law, and, as with Hobbes, the conversion of natural law itself into a principle of the liberal theory of the state. It is the classical (liberal) tradition of international political theory, however, which provides what is now perhaps the clearest expression of this tension in modern social and political theory. Despite repeated assertions of the irrelevance of this tradition today, it continues to provide a clear guide to the way in which the contradictions between universalism and pluralism have been worked out in Western political theory, and of how they now confront rapidly changing circumstances. For, although it may be true that students of modern world politics have shown little concern with the metatheoretical critique of the implications of applying European or Western concepts to global phenomena, the general contradiction between universalism and pluralism has in fact been the central feature of the prevailing account of modern world politics.

Any analysis of world politics made in terms of the traditional liberal model begins with the assumption that a sharp dichotomy can and must be made between the nature of life within sovereign states and the interactions that occur between such states. It has been this assumption, more than any other, that has guided judgement on the value and legitimacy of competing theoretical positions. The dichotomy has been expressed in a number of different ways. International "anarchy" is frequently contrasted with domestic "community." International relations is similarly distinguished from foreign policy. The popularity of mechanistic images among those who seek to explain the international system contrasts with the greater influence of organic metaphors in a domestic context. Martin Wight, one of the major historians of this tradition, has argued that where domestic politics is concerned with "progress" and the "good life," international politics is a realm of "recurrence and repetition," one where the highest value is "survival."7 E. H. Carr, in a formulation which has provided a paradigmatic text for

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