Diplomatic History and IR
Social scientist and eminent IR scholar Robert Jervis gave an interesting keynote speech to the H-Diplo Conference on the relationship between diplomatic history and IR.
“International Politics and Diplomatic History: Fruitful Differences” (PDF)
….We both want to explain international history. When I said this at Williams, Randy Schweller objected that IR scholars seek to develop and test theories rather than to explain events. I do not entirely disagree with him, but would reply that although we have differences in our stance towards facts and generalizations, IR scholars want to develop theories that are not only parsimonious and rooted in general social science, but that shed light on (i.e., explain at least in part) events and patterns in international history.
There are important differences in style, aesthetics, and approaches, and my brief remarks can hardly do justice to allof them. But a minor point may be worth making at the start. It seems to many of us in IR that historians are gluttons for punishment, and we marvel at their linguistic competence and ability to penetrate and synthesize enormous amounts of material. Years ago I was talking to my good friend Bob Dallek about whether he was going to take a break now that he had finished the enormous effort of producing his two-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. He said he had originally planned to, “but I just learned that they are opening a million new pages of material on Kennedy and I just can’t resist.” Most of us in IR would have a quite a different reaction, but we are very glad that Bob and his colleague produce such books.
There is a perhaps associated difference between the scholars in their stance toward facts. I do not want to get into the difficult and important question of what exactly we mean by facts, whether they can exist independently of our interpretations, and related issues of epistemology and ontology. But for all the debate, everyone agrees both that facts do not speak for themselves and that not all interpretations have equal claims on our beliefs. That said, Schweller’s point is relevant here. IR scholars generally seek theories of some generality and in pursuit of them the field has provided license to do some but not unlimited injustice to facts and individual cases. There is no easy way to sum up community norms here, and I will just say that while IR scholars cannot give the facts the third degree to get them to tell us what we need for our theories, we can rough them up a bit. We should be aware of what we are doing, however, and alert our readers of this, taking special care to point them to alternative interpretations. Since we are often painting in broader strokes and looking for ways to explain a great deal with a relatively few factors and relationships, we can utilize understandings of history that simplify and trim it. In this way, IR scholars have something in common with postmodernists in our willingness to draw on interpretations that we know are partial and contested…
Read the rest here.
I am no IR or polisci guy but my intellectual predispositions have always been more speculative or predictive than most historians are comfortable with, while being too historical in my argumentation to be even close to IR. Therefore, any effort to close the gap between these cognate fields is welcome from my perspective.
June 2nd, 2009 at 11:18 am
Jervis was always the IR scholar I most wanted to model myself after. Mostly because of my fascination with signaling, reputation, perception, and bargaining but also because of the fact that he had some of the most interesting and stimulating ideas in the field. His books certainly won’t make anyone’s top 10 from a methodology standpoint, but the quality and amount of ideas one finds there is unmatched in my opinion. And while I’ve abandoned the Ivory Tower I still read and re-read Jervis as his work still informs my thinking.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
It has always seemed to me (a physical scientist) that history makes up the data for IR and political science. Not as clean as the data of physical science, but it’s all we have.
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Theory without data is meaningless. So I have serious questions about the over-quantitative approach to IR and political science that some have adopted. And cherry-picking the data is worse.
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So the statement that "IR scholars seek to develop and test theories rather than to explain events" is an impoverishment of IR.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I really don’t know how you can "develop and test theories" in any field of social science other than through the analysis of historical data. Unfortunately, much historical writing continues to be impressionistic and profoundly unscientific, leading to this continuing dichotomy between the disciplines of history and the various social sciences. In my opinion, this is artificial and very unproductive, as we often get historical writing that is merely the regurgitation of so-called historical "facts" but that are in reality myths and propaganda passed down and repeated over the years. These shortcomings in the work of historians cripples all of the social sciences, because without reliable historical data, social science cannot accomplish anything. I recommend the writings of my college mentor, Lee Benson, specifically, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy and Toward the Scientific Study of History.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I’m not sure about that DC, it depends on the subfield of history. Ancient/classical history and micro/social history will have heavy impressionistic bias; economic history will look very different, much more quantitative and "hard" in terms of data. So will the portion of military history that deals with logistical questions and strategic issues rather than leadership in battle. Other fields will be in the middle and it will depend in part on the methodology of the particular historian.
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Agree with Cheryl though that theory needs data, real world data, to be meaningful and that quant only IR/polisci misses out on the rich tradition of political philosophy that polisci inherited.
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It is interesting to me, following on Bill’s remark on Jervis, that many of the most influential scholars tend to transcend their fields – E.O. Wilson, Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman – intellectual curiousity and horizontal thinking are very enriching qualities.
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
I frequently find political history to be among the worst offenders, as many political histories are written to serve political/ideological ends (e.g., Schlesinger Jr.), and not to unearth or analyze reliable data. However, the Balkanization of the discipline of history that you describe is itself a major part of the problem. Economic history divorced from political history is of only limited usefulness. Certainly, this approach to history is not conducive to "horizontal thinking", and has left us with very little in the way of any grand theory that could give direction to social science.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Most economic history is very dry and very narrow. Having cut my archival research teeth on it I can attest that I found it to be about as fun to research as filling out the 1040 long form. That said, econ history monographs are like bricks that can be used to contruct deeper explanations for political history by revealing the structural changes beneath the surface, if political historians care to do the reading.
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Re: synthesis and econ history. I agree that is hard to do well but when it is, think Charles and Mary Beard, Niall Ferguson, Walter Russell Meade, the resulting argument tends to be powerfully persuasive or at least thought-provoking.
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Agree with you that the field is balkanized and too many political historians are doing advocacy rather than history, far too often.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Thomas Cochran was another great economic historian, and a great teacher.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Finally got around to reading the paper. Good paper, thanks for the link, Mark!
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:36 am
Anytime Cheryl – thanks for the insights on quants!
June 10th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Good paper