Theory & Methods

Duncan Bell

by Brent Steele | May 17, 2022 | Featured, Hayseed Scholar, Theory & Methods

Professor Duncan Bell joins The Hayseed Scholar podcast. Duncan grew up in the Midlands in a rural area of England. He was interested in international politics from a fairly young age. Duncan chose to pursue a degree in war studies at King's College London, and considered joining the military thereafter. But the transition to London from a quieter area, and the experiences he had there, changed his plans. He tells Brent about getting his Master's and then PhD at Cambridge, and a momentous year...

Best Practices in Quantitative Conflict Studies

by Sooyeon Kang & Trey Billing | Apr 21, 2022 | Academia, Security, Theory & Methods

When it comes to quantitative data in conflict studies, standards for collection, reliability, ethics, and usage remain behind the curve. We discuss five things that scholars can do to address these gaps.

Was NATO expansion a mistake?

by Dan Nexon | Apr 20, 2022 | Security, Theory & Methods

Foreign Affairs ran a poll on the question. A few of us expressed skepticism about the debate itself.

Do Realists and Leftists Want the Same Thing?

by Van Jackson | Mar 30, 2022 | Theory & Methods, US Foreign Policy

Most versions of the left gain little and sacrifice much in accepting a realist epistemology. Theories of international relations are just tools for making sense of patterns and puzzles in the world; they don’t need groupies.

More Theory & Methods Posts

A Tale of Two Interviews: IR Theory and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

by Jarrod Hayes & Adam B. Lerner | Mar 22, 2022 | Academia, Security, Theory & Methods

Two recent interviews in the New Yorker have received substantial attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, taken together, they make the IR discipline look terrible. How can IR theorists demonstrate their discipline’s relevance in the face of rapidly changing historical events?

The Invasion of Ukraine is Russia’s Fault

by J. Patrick Rhamey Jr. | Mar 7, 2022 | Academia, Security, States & Regions, Theory & Methods, US Foreign Policy

For Mearsheimer “freedom” and “prosperity” are simply weapons of great power politics rather than aspirations sought by the Ukrainian people.

Conscious States in a World of Make Believe

by Adam B. Lerner | Feb 11, 2022 | Conscious States, Theory & Methods

I wrote the first draft of “What’s it Like to Be a State?” sometime in late 2017, during an unusual time in both my personal life and my research career. I was about halfway through my PhD at the University of Cambridge and was feeling both immensely homesick and quite bored—trapped in a small town that felt ripped from the Victorian era. I filled my free time watching large numbers of pre-recorded NBA games and, also, for some reason, reading philosophy of mind….

State Consciousness and Ontological Security

by Brent Steele | Feb 10, 2022 | Conscious States, Theory & Methods

I appreciate this opportunity to remark on Adam Lerner’s (hereafter, just ‘Adam’), excellent 2020 International Theory article on state consciousness. I recall first chatting with Adam about this paper when it was still in development, over a coffee in Prague at the 2018 European International Studies Association (EISA) annual meeting. Some of what I’ll mention here will be a rehashing – but also rethinking – of what I told him then. To cut to the chase, I still maintain my skepticism regarding how Adam’s article, and those like it, will be received in certain corners of International...

Someone needs to stop these violent psychopaths!

by Alexandria Innes | Feb 9, 2022 | Conscious States, Security, Theory & Methods

state takes precedence over their own lives. Focusing on states as persons distracts us from how violence travels across levels of analysis. States don’t do violence to one another. They inflict violence on actual living beings.

Awkward States

by Simon Pratt | Feb 8, 2022 | Conscious States, Theory & Methods

I have mixed feelings about Adam’s article. On the one hand, I think it does a very good job of outlining the realist metaphysical argument for treating states and other similar corporate actors as conscious, or as having minds, if you’re the sort of person who needs that. On the other hand, I am not the sort of person who needs that, and I’m not sure who is. To be clear, I think Adam has applied perspectives from the philosophy of mind in ways that critically examine...

States of Mind, Minds of States

by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | Feb 7, 2022 | Conscious States, Theory & Methods

A state of mind is a contagious thingSpread it around you never know what the future brings…Marillion, “State of Mind” n his later writings, Ludwig Wittgenstein spends quite a bit of time thinking about the problem of exactly what we are doing when we refer to the “inner” state of some entity, as juxtaposed with “outer” evidence of that entity’s behavior. We see someone grab at their arm and yell “ouch!”, and then their face contorts in a grimace, but Wittgenstein points out that this is not “outer” evidence of an “inner” mental state called “being in pain.” Rather,...

Are States Conscious? A Symposium

by Dan Nexon | Feb 7, 2022 | Conscious States, Theory & Methods

Way back in the summer I commissioned a symposium on Adam Lerner's provocative 2021 International Theory (vol. 13, no 2: 260-286) article, "What's it Like to be a State? An Argument for State Consciousness." Questions of consciousness pervade the social sciences. Yet, despite persistent tendencies to anthropomorphize states, most International Relations scholarship implicitly adopts the position that humans are conscious and states are not. Recognizing that scholarly disagreement over fundamental issues prevents answering definitively whether states are truly conscious, I instead demonstrate...

The Duck of Minerva