‘History is too important to be left to the historians”.

The relationship between history, international history and international relations has never been an easy or a particularly amicable one. To talk of a cold war may be something of an exaggeration, but it does capture something about the way in which the various subjects tended to regard the other for the greater part of the post-war period. Thus practising historians and international historians appeared to have little time for each other, and together had even less for those seeking to establish the new discipline of International Relations.

This article explores the ambivalent if not hostile responses of mainstream international historians to what is generally characterized as ‘postmodernism’. It attempts to trace the roots of this antagonism in the sub-discipline's culture and historical evolution as a distinctive mode of knowledge creation with very particular links to the real worlds of politics and international relations. It then suggests that maintaining this sceptical attitude towards ‘theory’ incurs costs for international history that are too seldom recognized, and explores the potential of post-structuralist-inspired critical historiography and discourse analysis approaches to reinvigorate practice.

Sovereignty and human rights are generally considered separate, mutually contradictory regimes in international society. This article takes issue with this conventional assumption, and argues that only by treating sovereignty and human rights as two normative elements of a single, inherently contradictory modern discourse about legitimate statehood and rightful state action can we explain key moments in the expansion of the international system during the twentieth century. After developing a constructivist argument about communicative action, norm formation and sovereignty, the article focuses on post-1945 decolonization, showing how ‘first wave’ post-colonial states played a crucial role in constructing the ‘international bill of rights’, how they invoked those rights to justify the norm of self-determination, and how this norm in turn licensed the proliferation of new sovereign states in Asia and elsewhere.

This article argues that the fields of international law and organization are experiencing a legitimacy crisis relating to fundamental reconfigurations of global power and authority. Traditional Westphalian-inspired assumptions about power and authority are incapable of providing contemporary understanding, producing a growing disjunction between the theory and the practice of the global system. The actors, structures, and processes identified and theorized as determinative by the dominant approaches to the study of international law and organization have ceased to be of singular importance. Westphalian-inspired notions of state-centricity, positivist international law, and ‘public’ definitions of authority are incapable of capturing the significance of non-state actors, informal normative structures, and private, economic power in the global political economy.

The importance of technological innovation to economic growth and state power is generally acknowledged in international relations. Less attention has been paid to the state's precise role in fostering innovation. This article argues that, contrary to realism, a centralized state is ill-suited to fostering innovation, particularly for technological leaders. Centralized states are more likely to make errors in crafting policy, and those errors cannot be reversed at the regional or local level. Decentralized states are better suited for the required tasks in fostering innovation. These hypotheses are tested against the Anglo–German rivalry for technological leadership in the late nineteenth century, and the US–Japanese rivalry of the last twenty years. In both cases the more centralized regime—Great Britain and Japan—faltered after initial successes. This suggests a tension within great powers. Policymakers prefer a strong, centralized state to facilitate policymaking. However, the evidence suggests that a decentralized state structure is a necessary condition for states to sustain themselves at the technological frontier.

In July 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a controversial Advisory Opinion on the legality of nuclear use (including, threat of use). The ICJ found that ‘nuclear use would generally be contrary to the rules of international law’, but it failed to conclude that nuclear use would be unlawful in all circumstances. The major reason for this was because it recognized nuclear norms (that is, the practice of deterrence) to which many states adhered. Taking the American case, this article examines norms of nuclear non-use and nuclear targeting. It shows where these national norms came from, and how they came to be empowered in US policy and embodied in American practice. It is critical of the ICJ's conclusion because, while the norm of non-use is consistent with international law, it finds American targeting norms to be contrary to humanitarian law.

Machiavelli believed that diplomacy, unlike military service, was of no significance for civic virtue, and that in foreign policy it was no substitute for arms and money. Nevertheless, it enhanced the virtù of even the strongest prince. It was for this and other reasons that Machiavelli also believed that the good faith on which negotiation depends was generally observed. His view that promises need not outlast the conditions that produce them is an escape clause that is equally necessary. Machiavelli does not deserve the charge, laid at his door by Harold Nicolson, of corrupting the art of diplomacy.

Recent literature in International Relations has argued that the absence of ‘balancing’ behaviour by European states during the Napoleonic Wars from 1798 to 1815 calls into question current explanations for the presence or absence of such behaviour in international relations. This literature has argued that: (1) Napoleonic France presented a significant threat to the stability of the international system; (2) European states did not balance against this threat from 1798 to 1813, and subsequently balanced only after Napoleon's defeat in Russia in 1812; (3) members of the system possessed adequate power to balance successfully against this threat; and (4) since European states engaged in co-opting, rewarding, avoiding, or bandwagoning behaviour towards the French threats to the system, a new explanation for the absence of balancing behaviour is required. Each of these four points can be refuted by: taking a longer time perspective of the international system during the period in question, expanding state motives to include interests other than security, using a long cycle model of coalition leadership by a global leader, recognizing the constraints faced by European states in their choices of balancing or bandwagoning behaviour under threats from France, and taking into account the role of innovation and change in a period of global war.

The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, is generally understood as a critical moment in the development of the modern international system composed of sovereign states each with exclusive authority within its own geographic boundaries. The Westphalian sovereign state model, based on the principles of autonomy, territory, mutual recognition and control, offers a simple, arresting, and elegant image. It orders the minds of policymakers. It is an analytic assumption for neo-realism and neo-liberal institutionalism. It is an empirical regularity for various sociological and constructivist theories of international politics. It is a benchmark for observers who claim an erosion of sovereignty in the contemporary world.

Thucydides is generally regarded as the founder of Realism in IR because of his vivid descriptions of war and power politics. A strong Realist account rests on sharp dichotomies between domestic and international politics, power and justice, nature and convention. Reading Thucydides through these dichotomies is not limited to IR; in fact, most classical and philosophical scholarship on the historian is informed by this vocabulary. I argue that such readings cannot hold under close scrutiny because they turn Thucydides too much into a sophist. As closer attention to how nature and convention, power and justice, domestic and international are deployed in the History reveals, Thucydides is deeply concerned with moving beyond standard sophistic oppositions. He does this by articulating a conception of how nature and convention are intimately connected to each other through proper use in the practice of excellence in a way that foreshadows Aristotle. Repositioning Thucydides in the tradition of classical political thought as a predecessor of Aristotle rather than a follower of the sophists has important implications for both theorists and practitioners of world politics. Well aware of the importance of both nature and convention for the practice of excellence, Thucydides recognizes the importance of power politics as well as institutions in human affairs, and yet endorses neither uncritically. He develops a distinctively normative theory of world politics by placing proper use and moral judgement at the centre of his account. As such, the primary message Thucydides gives, to theorists and practitioners alike, is to deplore human suffering and to struggle towards moderation and practical wisdom in politics, making the best use of tendencies in human nature as well as available institutions to that end.

The Greek intellectual Thucydides has been widely identified by scholars of international relations as prefiguring twentieth century Realist thought. This appropriation fails to locate particular aspects of Thucydides' writing within the overall narrative structure of The Peloponnesian War. The narrative structure is in the form of a tragedy. Thucydides was critical of the excessive and unrestrained nature of Athenian and Hellenic conduct during the war. By taking up specific themes including the dominance of reason by the passions, the eclipse of logos by ergon, and the decline of nomos, he expressed this critique in a tragic form. In the end, an unrestrained Athens reached for Sicily and suffered Nemesian retribution in the form of ignominious defeat. To claim Thucydides as a precursor to Realist thought, therefore, is peculiar, and has the character of enlisting a critique of excess and immoderation on behalf of an intellectual discourse altogether lacking in reasoned moderation.

Two criticisms have long been directed at the theorization of international relations (IR): ahistoricism and Eurocentrism. Westphalia, it is argued, has been so stigmatized that it has become synonymous with the beginning as well as the end of what we understand as international relations. Rationalist theorizing in general, of both the neorealist and neoliberal persuasions, has produced a set of deductive theories that aim and claim to transcend history.

The voluminous literature on recent transitions to democracy has generally lacked an analysis from the perspective of international law. This article explores four aspects of efforts to promote a normative ‘democratic entitlement’. First, it reviews the ways in which notions of democratic legitimacy have infiltrated virtually every aspect of international legal discourse. Second, it explores how a normative legitimacy standard may alter foundational doctrines of international law, such as non-intervention and the recognition of states and governments. Third, it reviews arguments against the emergence of ‘democratic entitlement’. These arguments both take issue with the sources of law relied upon by the entitlement's proponents, and ask whether the substantive and procedural aspects of democracy implicit in the democratic entitlement thesis are conceptually coherent. Finally, the article explores the ways in which a legal analysis of democratization confronts questions not addressed by the methodologies of other disciplines.

In the three decades prior to World War I, Britain's paradox was whether to cooperate with or punish an emerging Germany, Japan, France, Russia, and the United States. Based on the need for economy, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer pressed for cooperating with the contenders. Members of the services and Conservatives pushed to punish these contenders, countering that Britain could afford the rising naval expenditure needed to implement such a programme. The existing literature emphasizes the role of geopolitics, domestic constraints, and individual idiosyncrasies to explain Britain's foreign policy adjustment. I argue that the nature of the foreign commercial policy of the contenders guided Britain's response. Due to the special affinity among commercially liberal states, Britain cooperated with America and Japan, ceding regional governance to both aspiring regional hegemons. Britain did, however, punish non-liberal France, Germany, and Russia by implementing new naval construction programmes and concentrating freed-up military resources until these countries capitulated in their naval challenge.

In this article I intend to give more attention to Pufendorf's ideas than has been the custom among international relations theorists. The main focus will be upon Pufendorf's distillation and conceptualization of the implications of Westphalia in terms of sovereignty and the integrity of states. Furthermore, his extension of the Aristotelian classification of types of state, and his attempts to go beyond Bodin's and Hobbes's theories of sovereignty, provide the vocabulary and concepts in terms of which the different international actors of the late seventeenth century could be understood. In this respect the focus is altogether different from Linklater. My emphasis upon the historical and emblematic character of the Peace of Westphalia, the personification of the state and its animation by sovereignty, which serves to facilitate Pufendorf's exploration of the idea of a system of states, and my suggestion that his ideas are not wholly redundant and may be used to explore some facets of a modern states system, serve considerably to extend Forsyth's brief analysis.

This article examines the forces driving the pursuit of military production capacity in India, including those behind the Indian nuclear and space programmes. We are mainly interested in whether symbolic motivations regularly find expression in the public discourse. We review all articles on the subject of weapons development and production appearing in India Today from May 1977 to April 1999. There are three closely interrelated yet distinguishable concerns in the public discourse that we consider symbolic: that military industrialization is a means of asserting India's autonomy in international affairs, that it is a means of establishing India's international status and prestige, and that it serves to enhance India's self-image. We contend that the symbolic motivations are a prominent force behind the military industrialization process in India. The precise form that symbolic motivations take vary—some statements seem to have more symbolic content than others—but, as a whole, such references are not rare or isolated. Our findings suggest that symbolism can be an important component of the quest for an indigenous arms-production capacity, and perhaps other elements of statebuilding as well.

This article applies a three-dimensional framework for the analysis of the role of motivation in foreign policy decision-making to the foreign policy decisions of individuals and cities in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. First, the authors briefly introduce their framework for analysis. Using the speeches in Thucydides to explicate the motives and goals of individuals and cities, the authors then trace the relationships between the motivational dispositions of foreign policy actors and their foreign policy behaviour. In so doing, they demonstrate both the relevance of a concern with individual motivation for foreign policy analysis and the usefulness of their analytical framework for studying the impact of the relevant motives. The authors also show how ideological statements can be analysed to determine the relative salience of individual motives and collective goals, suggesting a relationship between ideological reasoning and motivational imbalance which can adversely affect the policymaking process. In conclusion, they briefly assess the theoretical and normative as well as practical policy implications of their observations.

In 1987, Paul Kennedy predicted in his best-selling book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, that the Pacific region, especially Japan and China, would rise in power, while the then Soviet Union, the United States and Europe would decline in power. Except for Russia, his predictions have not fared well. Why? His realist model of international politics ignored the role of national identities. National identities involve domestic institutions and policies that motivate citizens to create and use wealth and power. Nations compete through domestic reforms as well as international military and economic rivalries. Domestic changes in the United States and Europe revitalized American and European power, while delays in domestic reforms doomed Soviet/Russian power and dramatically slowed Japanese and Asian growth.

Africa's relation to the concept and practice of ‘state’ and ‘states system’ has been problematic since its first encounters with those who were armed with the concept. In observing the collapse of authority and governance in a number of African states, some scholars have suggested that Africa presented the states system with alternative political organizations. Others argue that so long as there is a kernel of armed authority in territorially demarcated areas, a state exists. Africa's polities have often responded unconventionally, yet strategically, to interaction with the sovereign state system first elaborated by the Europeans. To comprehend the novelty, or lack of it, in the ‘state system’ of contemporary Africa, we need to know something about its pre-colonial political structures and organizations and about the imprint of empires (the construct which effectively limited the ‘international’ system of sovereign states to the West) on Africa. Did colonialism and the Western system of sovereign states rule out alternative structures for the newly independent African states? What might alternative structures have looked like? What impact did colonial rule have on the development of states in Africa? Does contemporary Africa have a ‘state system’? This article addresses these questions in the context of the Special Issue's concern with both the structure of the international system and developments among and between the units.

At the zenith of British power at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a widespread recognition that Britain's position in the emerging global industrial inter-state system was increasingly precarious and that widespread adjustments would be needed. One solution, the ‘imperial federalism’ of Seeley and Mackinder, proposed the political integration of the scattered British settler colonies into a ‘Greater Britain’. Alternatively, Wells predicted that Britain would become integated into an Anglo-American ‘greater synthesis’, and that Europe would be unified on ‘Swiss confederal’ rather than German authoritarian lines. These proposals and prophesies were based upon interpretations of the changing material context composed of technology interacting with geography, and were seriously flawed. Extensive debates on these schemes indicate that the range of grand strategic choice was broader than that conceptualized by contemporary realism. The failure of British national integration due to geographic factors and the endurance of the Anglo-American special relationship casts the roles of the nation-state and the Western liberal order in a new perspective.