What can the absence of anarchism tell us about the history and purpose of IR theory?
Prichard, Alex
Date: 2 September 2010
Article
Journal
Review of International Studies
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Anarchism does not feature in contemporary international relations (IR) as a
discreet approach to world politics because until very recently it was antithetical to the
traditional use-value of a discipline largely structured around the needs and intellectual
demands of providing for the world’s Foreign Offices and State Departments. ...
Anarchism does not feature in contemporary international relations (IR) as a
discreet approach to world politics because until very recently it was antithetical to the
traditional use-value of a discipline largely structured around the needs and intellectual
demands of providing for the world’s Foreign Offices and State Departments. This article
tells part of the story of how this came to be so by revisiting the historiography of the
discipline and an early debate between Harold Laski and Hans Morgenthau. What I will
show here is that Morgenthau’s Schmittian-informed theory of the nation state was
diametrically opposed to Laski’s Proudhon-informed pluralist state theory. Morgenthau’s
success and the triumph of Realism structured the subsequent evolution of the discipline.
What was to characterise the early stages of this evolution was IR’s professional and
intellectual statism. The subsequent historiography of the discipline has also played a part
in retrospectively keeping anarchism out. This article demonstrates how a return to this
early debate and the historiography of the discipline opens up a little more room for
anarchism in contemporary IR and suggests further avenues for research.
Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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