Mervyn Frost's restatement of his constitutive theory of international relations raises a number of crucial points which need elaboration and discussion. Discussing the issues under the key headings used by Frost in his reply to my ‘Human Rights as Settled Norms’, I wish to focus on the following claim which I take to be central to the development of any norm-oriented approach to political and international theory. The claim is simply this; we are required, as a necessary component of post-positivist and constructivist theory, to take account of ethical and political inequalities in the development of any series of ‘settled norms’ that constitute the prevailing domain of discourse. This claim, I believe, accurately captures the core concerns of my earlier article and informs those tensions that remain to be discussed here.

Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)

Robin Holt, Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights (London: LSE/Routledge, 1997)

Peter Van Ness (ed.), Debating Human Rights: Critical Essays from the United States and Asia (London: Routledge, 1999)

Questions concerning the linkage, or lack of it, between theory and practice are perennial in International Relations (IR). This is particularly acute in the case of studies of universal human rights in world politics. Problems associated with universal human rights are familiar; what are their foundations?, what are their origins?, do they exist in all cultures?, why, when it comes to implementation, do we see such failure and inconsistency across the globe and the persistence of human wrongs?, why does power seem to play such a large role in stifling ‘progress’? All these questions appear in one form or another in the books under review here and readers will, perhaps, take comfort from their familiarity as old, difficult friends.

Alexander Wendt has drawn on an exceptional range of theoretical literature in his effort to reconceptualize the nature of the international system. His discussion of scientific realism ought to be required reading for any student of international relations, or political science for that matter. He puts to rest the notion that constructivism is necessarily postmodern, devoid of an objective referent. In John Searle's felicitous formulation it is possible to have a subjective ontology but an objective epistemology. In emphasizing that all knowledge is theory laden, Wendt underscores the point that facts never simply speak for themselves. In both the social and natural sciences brute empiricism is never an adequate research strategy. Our theories shape the way we see the world but they cannot remake the world in their own image.

The paths taken by historians and political scientists intersect less frequently than their subject matter might indicate. Both sets of scholars, for example, have a mutual interest in the formation and evolution of the modern state. However, while this interest has made the ‘Westphalian system’ the common currency of exchanges among political scientists, few historians refer to the concept, and some would not recognize it—even at close range and in full sunlight. Practitioners of the two disciplines often pass like ships in the night because they are unaware of another large presence on a parallel course. In an age of intense specialization we readily become separated, like Alfred Marshall's noncompeting wage groups, from a common body of information. A more formally acceptable justification for discrete enquiries into similar problems lies in the claim that the disciplines have different purposes. The distinction is not, as is still so often said, that historians are interested in the unique and social scientists in the general; it is rather that the analytical issues forming the generalizations that necessarily accompany statements about large issues are of a different order. Political scientists assign significance to the Westphalian system mainly because they wish to generalize about the principles governing the international regime of sovereign states after 1648. Historians, on the other hand, are less interested in testing the merits of realism and its rivals than in charting changing relativities in international relations. Accordingly, they are more likely to set the Westphalian settlement in the context of already evolving state systems and of subsequent changes of equal or greater moment, such as the upheavals caused by the French and American revolutions.

A few weeks after the riot that shook Los Angeles in May 1992, I gave a lecture on racism in America to a group of students at a north London college. The audience was largely young and black. In the discussion that followed, there was a lively debate over my view that the fragmentation of American society into competing ethnic groups—African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Korean-Americans, and so on—was a fatal blow to the struggle for black rights. Almost the entire audience disagreed. ‘African-Americans’, one student explained, ‘are different. Our problems are different, our experiences are different, our history is different and our culture is different. We have to gain respect ourselves before we can unite with other people.’

It certainly has a past.For the Greek foundations, see H. C. Baldry, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). An informative recent article focusing on the Roman period (though rather misleading on Alexander the Great's importance in the history of cosmopolitan thinking) is Lisa Hill, ‘The Two Republicae of the Roman Stoics: Can a Cosmopolite be a Patriot?’, Citizenship Studies, 4 (2000), pp. 47–63. And that past, especially in its Stoic foundations, reveals a clear ethical purpose: ‘As long as I remember that I am part of such a whole [Universe],’ explained Marcus Aurelius, ‘. . . I shall . . . direct every impulse of mine to the common interest’.Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. C. R. Haines), The Communings with Himself (i.e. Meditations) (London:Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1961), X, 6. Moreover, the word ‘cosmopolitan’ derives from kosmopolites, citizen of the universe, and polites, citizen, notably in its Aristotelean definition, has a decided ethical content. Accordingly, if the citizen of a state (polis) should be possessed of civic virtue (arete), by extension, the citizen of the universe (kosmopolis) should live a life of virtue, guided by his perception and understanding of the divine, natural law. True, in non-academic parlance the word ‘cosmopolitan’ has, from the eighteenth century, acquired the vague and vulgar connotation for an individual of enjoying comfortable familiarity with a variety of geographical and cultural environments. None the less, the more precise, political–ethical sense of a kosmopolites is so much more apposite to our present purpose that this essay will be framed in the main by this meaning.

Alex Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics demonstrates perhaps more long and hard thought about social theory and its implications for international relations theory than most international relations scholars have dared to venture into. He admirably attempts to do in an explicit manner what most scholars in the discipline do only implicitly and often accidentally: suggest a social theory to serve as the foundation for theorizing about international relations. However, there are problems with his approach, a hint of which can be found in the epigraph he has chosen: ‘No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics, which tacitly it presupposes’. Because metaphysics cannot ultimately be proven or disproved, it is inherently insecure. The insecurity and instability of the metaphysical presuppositions present in Social Theory are not difficult to find, and what Wendt ends up demonstrating, despite his objective not to, is the absence of any secure, stable, and unambiguous metaphysical foundation upon which IR theory could be firmly anchored. Indeed, what Social Theory does illustrate is that there is no such ultimate centre within the discipline except the powerful desire to maintain the illusion of first principles and the essential nature of things. If I may paraphrase Wendt, this is a ‘desire all the way down’ in that it permeates his relentless quest for the essence of international relations. Two goals characterize this desire: on the one hand, to take a critical stance toward more conventional international relations theory such as neorealism and neoliberalism; on the other, to maintain unity, stability, and order within the discipline. Social Theory oscillates between these two goals and in doing so deconstructs the very foundations it seeks to lay.

The political scientist who relies upon historiographic sources to propose and test hypotheses runs the risk of riling up not only her peers in the discipline, but also the historians upon whose work she must rely to provide the materials for these hypotheses. It was intellectually satisfying and stimulating to learn that my work has been read not only by scholars in ‘my’ discipline, but also by those in the discipline which made my own analysis possible, and I am grateful for Professor Hopkins' extensive comments. As Hopkins notes, there are differences in the orientation of the two disciplines: political science has as one of its central concerns ‘the state’, while historians are more interested ‘in charting changing relativities in international relations’. As a political scientist, I am indeed interested in identifying the factors which lead to such changes.

Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics is so impressive an achievement that it has a good chance to become a standard text of the mainline, American-oriented, professional International Relations literature. Composing what Morgenthau and Carr provided for my teachers, Morton Kaplan's System and Process in International Politics was for my peers, and Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (especially in Robert Keohane's reader, Neorealism and its Critics) has been for many North Americans a bit younger than myself, is a remarkable achievement. It suggests a disciplinary mode of review.

The two global norms that are most widely recognized in our world are human rights and the principle of national self-determination. Sometimes these norms are presented as complementary, sometimes as rivals. Of the two, national self-determination seems to have secured more widespread acceptance. No doubt the uncertain meaning of national self-determination has aided its widespread popularity. Quite what sort of entity (or ‘self’) does the adjective ‘national’ describe? What sort of arrangements does ‘self-determination’ demand? Those who apparently share a common commitment to the principle of national self-determination can nevertheless give markedly different answers to these questions. Moreover, whatever meaning we give to national self-determination, its reality has long been questioned and is increasingly challenged by the forces of globalization.

Scholars interested in international relations theory and history are indebted to Mark Kramer for his splendid review of new historical evidence on the role of ideas and power during the Cold War. I agree with Kramer that new evidence by itself never settles learned debates such as the one he reviews. However, the sharper the debate, the bigger the potential payoff from fresh evidence. Toward that end, I have three comments.

Alexander Wendt's book, Social Theory of International Politics, is published twenty years after Kenneth Waltz's enormously influential Theory of International Politics. The similarity in their titles is no coincidence, since Wendt wants to build on the insights of Waltz's realism and construct an idealist and holist account of international politics (not, note, international relations). In my view, Wendt's book is likely to be as influential as Waltz's. It is a superbly written and sophisticated book, one that has clearly been drafted and redrafted so as to refine the argument and anticipate many of the likely objections. I think that although I can anticipate the objections of both his rationalist and his reflectivist critics. I am also aware that he makes life difficult for them by defining his ground very precisely, and by trying to define the terms of any debate in which he might be engaged. Criticism of the book is not an easy task. The book is likely to become the standard account for those working within the social constructivist literature of International Politics. It is a book that has been eagerly awaited, and it will not disappoint those who have been waiting for Wendt to publish his definitive statement on constructivism.

The word ‘civilization’—in the singular but also in the plural—has become common of late in the mouths of politicians and in the writings of international relations academics. Samuel Huntington stirred up a storm in political studies by his vision of the future world as a ‘clash’ of civilizations (in the plural);Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72:3, 1993; the article was expanded into a book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). and the war in Yugoslavia generated an increased frequency in political rhetoric of the word ‘civilization’ (in the singular). Indeed, as I shall argue later, conflict in the Balkans revealed more clearly than before the meaning of civilizations and of civilization (in both plural and singular) for our time.

Can the study of ideas in international politics be made scientifically respectable? The question is central to the Third Debate, yet the dominant voices in the ‘debate’ seem oddly to agree. ‘Positivists’ are sceptical because ideas seem ephemeral, difficult to measure, and generally resistant to hard science. As a result, positivist theories of international politics tend to favour seemingly more objective material factors like military and economic capabilities, and only bring in ideas as a last resort. In this way positivist epistemology shapes international ontology. Against this tendency, ‘post-positivists’ argue that it is simply a mistake to think that ideas can or should be studied in the same way we study physical objects. Ontology should determine epistemology, not vice versa. However, in developing this important insight many post-positivists have gone further, to efface any connection between their subsequent work and science—Understanding versus Explanation. The ironic result is to echo the positivist feeling that the study of ideas cannot be made scientifically respectable.