Explaining International Relations: A Question-Based Approach

Paper prepared for the British International Studies Association 2011 annual conference, Manchester, 27 April 2011

Dr. Adam R. C. Humphreys Fellow in Politics, Brasenose College, Oxford adam.humphreys@politics.ox.ac.uk

Last revised 15 April 2011 15193 words inclusive

Comments welcome. Please do not cite without permission.

Explaining International Relations: A Question-Based Approach

Insofar as International Relations (IR) theorists engage with methodological questions, they are typically deployed as weapons in broader, ongoing debates about the relative merits of, and relationships between, the main existing theoretical approaches.1 Thus, for example, a characterization of rationalist approaches such as neorealism and neoliberalism as 'positivist' and a critique of positivism as irredeemably flawed are staple parts of how critical approaches to international relations are typically situated and justified (hence the frequent, if misleading, characterization of such approaches as 'postpositivist').2 Similarly, the debate about whether or not constructivism is, or should be, consistent with 'positivism' formed an important part of the battle to establish/limit the constructivist challenge to the dominant rationalist approaches (see, for example, Wendt, 1999; Dessler and Owen, 2005).3 For the most part, the purpose of those engaging in such debates is not to investigate how we in fact explain international relations and what role theory plays in that enterprise, but rather to establish the superiority of a particular theoretical (or methodological) approach. In recent years, this situation has changed for the better. Building on Wendt (1987, 1991) and Hollis and Smith (1991a, 1991b), theorists have increasingly analyzed particular positions that may be available in the philosophy of science to underpin research in IR (see Patomki & Wight, 2000; Chernoff, 2005; Wight, 2006; Joseph, 2007; Wight, 2007; Jackson, 2008; Chernoff, 2009a; Chernoff, 2009b; Michel, 2009; Monteiro & Ruby, 2009; Jackson, 2011), explored the nature of causal claims in IR (see Suganami, 1996; Kurki, 2006; Kurki, 2007; Kurki, 2008; Lebow, 2009; Lebow, 2010; Suganami, 2011), and defended particular explanatory strategies through arguments divorced from allegiance to or association with particular substantive approaches (see Kratochwil, 2007; Suganami, 2008; Friedrichs & Kratochwil, 2009; Kratochwil, 2009; Sil & Katzenstein, 2010b). These theorists have significantly added to the philosophical sophistication with which we are now able to approach methodological choice in IR. Yet something important is still missing from this

By 'methodological' questions I do not mean debates about the merits of particular techniques for facilitating and/or constructing explanatory claims (for which I reserve the term 'methods'), but rather questions about the 'logical structure and procedure' of inquiry (Sartori, 1970: 1033). Much of what is termed methodological inquiry in IR is actually debate about methods (see Jackson, 2011: 25). 2 Such characterizations are misleading because if positivism refers to logical positivism then it is philosophers of science such as Popper who are postpositivist (see Jackson, 2008: 134-5). 3 The origins of Constructivism lie in a methodological concern about 'the situation of the knower', rather than in a substantive interest in norms and identities (Jackson, 2011: 203).
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resurgence of methodological debate: viz. an exploration of the explanatory practices that are actually employed in the discipline.4 It is sometimes suggested that the social sciences should seek first to understand the scientific method and then to apply it (see Chalmers, 1999: xx). Yet the philosophy of science does not and cannot reveal the scientific method (see Jackson, 2011: 3, 15). One reason is that philosophers of science disagree. Another is that their attempt to account for the demonstrable success of the natural sciences (Jackson, 2011: 16) introduces a tension between, on the one hand, exploring (and seeking to explain) the actual history of science and, on the other hand, constructing decontextualized accounts of the explanatory strategies required to produce such success.5 This tension casts doubt on the ability of the philosophy of science to prescribe a methodological orientation for IR. It also indicates a potentially productive alternative to abstract methodological debates: investigating the actual practices of those who claim (however tentatively) to be able to explain international relations.6 That means asking what form substantive explanatory claims take, including what conceptions of causation they imply, and what contribution theory makes to them (if any). As Van Evera (1997: 3) notes, most methods texts skip over such questions: the first chapter of Theory of International Politics (Waltz, 1979) is notable not so much because of Waltz's facility with such questions, but because it is so rare for IR theorists systematically to engage with them.7 In what follows, I assume that IR theorists seek, inter alia, to explain international relations: we make explanatory claims about world politics all the time, even if those claims do not conform to the standards of explanation that predominate within IR. Insofar as Flyvbjerg (2001: 3) is right to say that social science cannot produce explanatory theory, or Brown (2006: 683) is right to say that British IR has abandoned explanatory theory, this is only true on a particular reading of what explanatory theory involves. The problem, if there is one, is not the very idea of explanation (because explanation is something that social scientists, including British IR theorists, do all the time), but the account of it that is typically given: the problem is the predominance, in IR, of what is usually termed a 'positivist' account
Sil and Katzenstein (2010b) and Jackson (2011) offer important insights, but this is not the primary purpose of their work. 5 Chalmers (1999: 143-4) argues that Lakatos, for example, is more successful at the former than at the latter. 6 The fact that IR lacks the 'obvious success' (Jackson, 2011: 16) of the natural sciences does not undermine the virtue of asking: insofar as we do claim to be able to explain international relations, how do we do it? 7 Van Evera (1997: 12) points out that although Waltz insists that theories explain laws, he is unclear about what it is to explain a law. Moreover, Waltz's position is subject to competing interpretations (see Joseph, 2010).
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of theory, causation, and explanation. It is therefore important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater: the limitations of a particular account of what explanation involves should not undermine the very idea that we can explain international relations and that theory can contribute to that enterprise in a productive manner. Jackson (2011: 42) argues that the dominant methodological approach in IR is 'a neopositivism so widely circulated and so firmly encoded into scholarly practices that it is difficult to raise systematic questions about it and receive much of a hearing' (see also Hay, 2002: 1). The associated account of the explanatory enterprise is the nomothetic ideal, according to which an episode 'is explained by subsuming it under general laws, i.e. by showing that it occurred in accordance with those laws, in virtue of the realization of certain specified antecedent conditions' (Hempel, 1965: 246).8 The dominant understanding of the function of explanatory theory in IR, therefore, is, first, that it should identify candidate causal generalizations, in the form of general laws (this to be achieved either by inferring them from clearly specified assumptions or by observing empirical regularities), and, second, that it should facilitate the deduction from those putative laws of specific explanatory claims, thereby allowing the theory to be tested against (what are said to be) the facts. The appeal of this model of explanation is that it purports to be able to tell us 'which variables or conditions we must manipulate in order to achieve results that we desire' (Moon, 1975: 134). The nomothetic ideal has been widely criticized by so-called post-positivists in IR. Yet this has done little to reduce its 'commonsensical' attraction in IR (Jackson, 2011: 43) or to generate widespread acceptance of any of the alternatives outlined in recent discussions of the philosophy of science in IR. More significant, therefore, given our concern with actual explanatory practices, is that the nomothetic ideal fails on its own terms. The first problem is that it is not explanatory. It holds that to 'explain why something occurred is to show why, given the circumstances, it had to occur' and that it is a 'generalization or law that provides the force of the "because"', transforming 'a description of a mere sequence of events into a genuinely causal account' (Moon, 1975: 135-6). This claim lies at the heart of the nomothetic ideal and hence of 'positivism' in IR (see King, Keohane and Verba, 1994; Van Evera, 1997). Yet to show that something 'always happens like that' is not to explain it (Suganami, 2008:
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I use the term 'episode' to denote any event, action, development, or state of affairs in international relations, historical or contemporary, for which an explanation is sought. I use the term 'nomothetic' to encompass approaches that are often differentiated from one another, but which share a common explanatory logic: these include inductive and deductive approaches (Hay, 2002: 30), positivist and neopositivist approaches (Jackson, 2011: 50-9), and deductive-nomological and inductive-statistical approaches (Hempel, 1965). What they have in common is the belief that we explain by subsuming particular episodes under causal generalizations.
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331).9 The second problem is that even the most committed of explanatory theorists in IR have failed to develop or identify the kind of causal generalizations that would be required to generate such explanations (see Kratochwil, 1993: 66; Ruggie, 1998: 861; Smith, 2000: 383; Hay, 2002: 38; Friedrichs and Kratochwil, 2009: 710; Humphreys, 2011). The nomothetic ideal therefore fails to account for what Waltz (1979: 6) calls 'the explanatory activity we persistently engage in'. In seeking to unpack the nature of the explanatory claims that are actually made in IR, I employ Kaplan's (1964: 10-11) distinction between 'logic-in-use' and 'reconstructed logic', where the former captures how inquiry actually proceeds in a particular field of inquiry and the latter provides a rational reconstruction of it. Noting that, in the 1960s, the most widely accepted reconstructed logic for scientific inquiry was the 'hypothetico-deductive method' (a version of the nomothetic ideal), Kaplan warned that reconstructed logics may reflect logicsin-use more or less precisely and that the degree of fit may change over time: it is therefore always important to ask 'whether the reconstruction in question continues to throw light' on the actual process of inquiry. He objected to the hypothetico-deductive model even as a reconstructed logic for behavioural science in the 1960s on the grounds that it misrepresented both how hypotheses were formed (the logic of discovery) and how they were applied (the logic of justification). He notes, in particular, that 'formal deductions in postulational systems are seldom found in science'. In other words, scientists do not judge the usefulness of theories solely (or even primarily) by deducing and testing propositions. It is often observed that, insofar as IR theorists remain committed to the nomothetic ideal, they tie themselves to an outmoded conception of scientific inquiry. It is also increasingly widely recognized that that ideal fails to capture actual explanatory practices in IR. Yet in order to comprehend these practices clearly, we need to take two further steps. The first is, unencumbered by a reconstructed logic that is no longer fit for purpose, to explore the logic(s)-in-use in IR.10 The second is to offer a new, more helpful reconstruction of what is implied by those practices about the nature of the explanatory enterprise in IR. In

One common response to this objection is to claim that causal generalizations must be supplemented by an exploration of the mechanisms that link the relevant antecedent conditions to the relevant outcomes. But insofar as a causal mechanism denotes a more detailed general law, this merely recreates the problem, whilst insofar as a causal mechanism denotes anything other than a general law, it is this that will carry the explanatory weight, rather than the general law, in which case the nomothetic model no longer captures the essence of the explanatory process. 10 Jackson (2011: 19) justifies adopting a broad definition of science by arguing that it 'allows us to focus on the knowledge-production techniques in our own field instead of focusing on what we think other fields are doing'.
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other words, we must first examine substantive explanatory claims in IR, asking what the form and scope of those claims is, how they draw on theories (if at all), and what kind of evidence (if any) is offered to support them. Just as importantly, we must juxtapose these facets of existing explanatory practices against what practitioners say about them, thereby ensuring that logics-in-use are disentangled from any purely rhetorical commitments to divergent reconstructed logics. Second, we must seek to unpack these practices, asking what they imply about the nature of the explanatory process in IR, about the kind of causal claims that are possible in IR, and about how IR theories should be developed and evaluated. I have already taken the first of these steps in regard to explanatory theorists in IR (Humphreys, 2011), showing how their actual explanatory practices typically diverge from what we might be led to expect if we took prevalent reconstructed logics seriously. I found that although most explanatory theorists maintain a rhetorical commitment to the nomothetic ideal, they neither claim to develop (or identify) determinate causal generalizations nor believe that their theories are subject to direct falsification. In fact, I found that they tend to employ their theories as heuristic resources. In practice, their theories perform three key heuristic functions: first, they help to define what kinds of questions are to be asked; second, they provide a conceptual vocabulary out of which substantive explanatory claims are, for the most part, constructed; and third, they highlight certain kinds of empirical factors that are likely to feature significantly in the resulting explanatory claims. The single more important consequence of this explanatory process is that although their substantive explanatory claims are shaped in important ways by their theories, they cannot be directly derived from them: the relationship between theory and explanation is strictly indeterminate. In what follows, I develop the counterpart to this inquiry: I offer an account of the kind of reconstructed logic that might underpin these explanatory practices. Having done so, I explore the ramifications of this reconstructed logic for how we think about the nature of the explanatory enterprise in IR, focusing, in particular, on competing conceptions of causation, on theory development, and on the methodological priorities appropriate to IR today.

A Reconstructed Logic of Explanatory Theory in IR

A reconstruction of the explanatory process followed by most explanatory theorists in IR must fulfil two basic criteria. First, it must reveal the logic that is implicit in that process. The aim of a reconstructed logic is not descriptive, but transcendental: it does not ask how

theorists actually proceed (that would be to describe their logic-in-use), but rather asks what conception of explanation (causation, etc.) might underpin those practices. A reconstructed logic is therefore potentially iconoclastic: it may undermine deeply sedimented conceptions of how explanation does and should proceed. This is particularly important for IR given the frequent contention that the discipline is dominated by a commitment to a nomothetic ideal that is no longer (if it ever was) fit for purpose: surely the most persuasive way of making this case will be to show that existing practices are better captured by an alternative methodology? Second, a reconstructed logic must fit some basic intuitions about what explanation is: it must capture Waltz's persistent explanatory activity. This is, once again, particularly important for IR because most theorists do try to explain things all the time, even if they reject prevalent accounts of what this entails (see Kurki, 2006: 190). In developing a reconstructed logic of explanatory theory in IR, the single most important aspect of predominant logics-in-use is that theory serves as a resource that is brought to particular problems, rather than as a determinant of substantive explanatory claims. This indicates that theories and explanations are different in kind. Theories are (or may be) drawn upon in the construction of substantive explanatory claims, but they do not constitute such claims: theories are not themselves explanations.11 An important corollary is that explanations are specific in a way that theories are not: theories, which are intended by their authors to be abstract and general, contribute to explanations only when applied to particular problems. This fits our basic intuitions: we do not (or should not) use the terms 'theory' and 'explanation' interchangeably. Yet it is highly significant, for it suggests that in developing a reconstructed logic of explanatory theory in IR we must start by recognizing that explanations are answers to specific questions. As will become clear, much follows from this basic thought.

The Nature of Explanation An explanation is, in its simplest sense, an answer to a question.12 It is not necessary for a question to be actively raised for an explanation to be developed, but what an explanation does is to provide an answer to a question that is, or could (or should) have been, asked. Of
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In contrast, Van Evera (1997: 9, 12) defines an explanation as the 'causal laws or hypotheses that connect the cause to the phenomenon being caused' and a theory as 'a set of connected causal laws or hypotheses'. 12 In defining a 'social science theory' as a 'reasoned and precise speculation about the answer to a research question', King, Keohane and Verba (1994: 19) conflate theories and explanations.
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course, only some kinds of questions require an explanatory response (contrast "Who is the current UN Secretary-General?" with "What does the UN do?"). Moreover, only some questions that require an explanatory response demand a causal explanation (contrast "What does the UN do?" with "Why did the UN Security Council authorize the enforcement of a nofly zone in Libya?").13 It is important to note, however, that if we start by asking what kinds of questions require a causal response we are likely to arrive at a less restrictive understanding of what a causal explanation is than if we start by seeking to define, in the abstract, what constitutes a valid causal inference (see King, Keohane and Verba, 1994). If a causal explanation is one that tells us how or why something comes about in the way that it does, then the class of causal explanations is likely to extend to explanations which incorporate background conditions, actions (including reasons), and chance, as well as mechanisms (see Suganami, 2008: 334). A prerequisite for deciding what constitutes a satisfactory causal explanation is to delimit the class of causal explanations: this is defined by the class of questions which (would) demand a causal response. Explanations, including causal explanations always respond to particular interests (regardless of whether these are explicitly expressed). For example, we never simply try to explain the end of the Cold War. Rather, we are always interested in it for some reason and, therefore, from some perspective: we are always interested in a particular aspect of it and then only to a certain extent. This interest can always be (re)formulated as a (more specific) question, such as "what contribution did dtente in Europe make to the end of the Cold War?" or "why did the Cold War end peacefully?" or "in what respects do historians agree and disagree about the end of the Cold War?". Even if our interest appears to be abstract, in the sense that we simply want to know about the end of the Cold War, there will always be (more or less implicit) limits: we want to know enough about the end of the Cold War to compare it to another case, to give a lecture about it, or such like. Of course, the precise interest at stake in any particular explanatory enterprise will often need unpacking: we may, in practice, simply ask "what caused the end of the Cold War?" even when our interest is more specific than that (as will sometimes be obvious from the context). Moreover, there will always be a point at which questions cannot be clarified any further: this occurs when the interest that lies behind the question has been fully revealed. The point, therefore, is not that we cannot ask broad questions, such as "what caused the end of the Cold War", but that we cannot ask any question in a quasi-disembodied manner which
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The fact that there may be some borderline cases does not preclude reasonable certainty that some questions are causal questions and others are not.
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expresses no perspective on it. The importance of unpacking whatever perspective is implicit in a question will be obvious to anyone who has had the experience of asking a question, receiving an unsatisfactory answer, and responding: "no, what I meant was ". In any explanatory endeavour there is always a more or less explicit process of working out what the appropriate scope and thrust of an explanation will be: this amounts to an attempt to work out precisely what question is being asked.14 Another way of thinking about this aspect of the explanatory process is to reflect on Weber's contention that it is impossible to give an exhaustive explanation. Weber (2004: 374) argues as follows:
As soon as we seek to reflect upon life as it presents itself we encounter a simply endless variety of events The sheer infinity of this variety is entirely undiminished if we isolate an individual "object" for examination and remains so if we merely seek in all seriousness an exhaustive description of this "individual" in all its parts, let alone comprehend its causal determination. All cognitive knowledge of an infinite reality by the finite human mind thus rests upon the implicit presupposition that at any one time only a finite part of this reality can be subjected to scientific scrutiny, that only this part is "material" in the sense of "worth knowing".

Weber's point here is that a truly exhaustive explanation of anything would have to include an account of its entire history (including the history of everything that contributed to its coming about as it did), which is impossible.15 Luckily, we never have to give such an account. The explanatory enterprise is inherently limited by what the recipient of the explanation needs (or wants) to know about the episode in question. Explanations attempt to answer questions by dissolving whatever puzzle(s) someone previously had about the episode in question (see Suganami, 1996: 136): explanations make intelligible what was, in some respects, mysterious to someone. To use the terms in their everyday sense: we explain something to someone by divulging our understanding of it to them, thereby helping them to understand it more fully (see Suganami, 2008: 328). A good explanation should help someone to understand something sufficiently clearly that they can go on and explain it to someone else.16 However, in order to be able to explain something to

Shapiro (2002: 604) discusses the different kinds of explanatory directions we might be taken in if we ask different kinds of questions about the same phenomenon. 15 This is true of any explanation, not merely an explicitly historical explanation. Weber's point does, however, cast doubt on whether historical explanation is a distinctive kind (see Suganami, 2008; Humphreys, 2009). 16 I therefore follow Suganami (1999: 371-2) in rejecting Hollis and Smith's (1991) distinction between explanation and understanding. Some explanations may focus on mechanisms and others on
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someone, we need to establish precisely what they (think they) find puzzling, that is, what they need to know.17 We also need to comprehend what they (think they) know already, so that we know where to start, that is, so that we know what work needs to be done to bring them up to the required level of understanding.18 A causal explanation then fills the relevant gaps in the recipient's understanding by revealing relevant but previously unrecognized aspects of how the episode in question came about (see Suganami, 2008: 337). The fact that all explanations are non-exhaustive entails that choices have to be made not only about what to explain, but also about how to explain it. In other words, just as the impossibility of providing an exhaustive explanation entails that we explain only a particular aspect of an episode, so in explaining that aspect we must decide what factors to incorporate into the resulting explanatory claim. As Weber (2004: 379) puts it: 'We select only those causes that can, in each individual case, be attributed to the "material" components of an event'.19 We select only those causes knowledge of which will resolve whatever puzzle the recipient of the explanation had about the episode in question. It is important to note, moreover, that these two decisions (about what to explain and how) amount to the same thing: insofar as deciding what to explain entails deciding from what perspective and to what extent to explain it, then deciding what to explain is to decide which causes are relevant, that is, to decide how to explain it. What makes an explanation satisfactory, therefore, is not that it is exhaustive, or that it incorporates particular causes, but that it satisfactorily resolves whatever puzzle(s) the recipient had about the episode in question. Differing opinions about whether an explanation is satisfactory are therefore problematic only when its recipients share a common puzzle, that
reasons and meanings, but this is does not mean that the latter are not explanations. Indeed, there is no prima facie reason why an explanation should not refer to a combination of mechanisms and reasons (see Suganami, 2008: 344-6). Moreover, to reject the distinction between explanation and understanding is not to reduce Verstehen to a 'source of insightful hypotheses' (King, Keohane and Verba, 1994: 38): given an appropriate question, Verstehen is a method that may generate both explanations and (thereby) understanding. 17 The frequency with which people are mistaken about what, precisely, they find puzzling means that we can, strictly, speak only of what someone thinks they find puzzling. In practice, we often achieve understanding in a manner analogous to unpacking a Russian doll: we keep thinking we are getting there, only to realize that the puzzle was more complex than we had initially realized. In such cases, the fact that any particular explanation may not resolve the puzzle reflects not on the quality of that explanation, but on the initial failure to define the puzzle clearly. 18 Suganami (2008: 334) argues that 'we cannot explain anything to someone who understands nothing'. The key point, however, is that because no explanation can be exhaustive, all explanations must start from somewhere and that this somewhere will be dictated by what the recipient of the explanation needs to know and already knows. 19 The translation "material" is from the German "wesentlich": it means material as in essential, important, substantial, significant, relevant, not as in the counterpart to ideal/ideational.
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is, when their interest in the episode is identical. In such instances, the party who finds the explanation satisfactory may seek to persuade the other party of this and vice versa. Such debate typically proceeds along well-defined pathways and will be immediately recognizable to IR scholars. However, it is important to note how distinct this brief account of what makes an explanation satisfactory is from that offered by supporters of the nomothetic ideal. For example, Van Evera (1997: 19, 40) accepts that a good theory must satisfy our curiosity, but then insists that we assess specific explanations by asking (inter alia) whether they 'exemplify covering law[s]' (see also Moon, 1975: 135-6). It should be obvious that whilst covering laws may enable us to demonstrate that an episode is an instance of a class of episodes that always come about in the same way, its membership in such a class is far from the only thing that we might find puzzling about an episode. Van Evera's criterion therefore merely captures one way in which an explanation might resolve a puzzle: it does not at all capture (and in fact begs the question of) what it is for an explanation to be satisfactory. Two crucial aspects of the explanatory process therefore follow from the fact that an explanation is an answer to a question. First, explanations are necessarily partial: they require and reflect choices, both about what it is that we wish to explain in the first place and about what constitutes a reasonable answer to the question implicit in that choice. Second, explanations are necessarily tentative: they are satisfactory only to the extent that (including for the duration of time in which) they are considered by their recipients to resolve whatever puzzles led them to ask for an explanation in the first place. Explanations are, we might say, final for now. To paraphrase Dewey: what it means to say that we know something is not that it is established with a certainty that precludes the possibility of future revision, but that it is accepted to the extent that it can be drawn upon as a resource in further inquiry (see Isacoff, 2002: 620). Insofar as we have resolved a puzzle, we have explained something, but that does not rule out the re-emergence of the puzzle at a later date and in a revised form. It is worth reemphasizing that what has been said thus far is not merely the working out of an intuition about the nature of the explanatory process: it is a reconstruction of what is implicit in how explanatory theorists in IR in fact proceed. They do not typically begin by clarifying precisely what questions they seek to answer. Nevertheless, they do constantly make choices about what to explain. They do seek to resolve puzzles. Their substantive explanatory claims are specific in a way that their theories are not. In fact, their theories embody (often implicit) judgements about what we already know and about what we need to know in order to resolve certain puzzles. These theorists do, consequently, make choices about what causal factors to incorporate both into their theories and into their substantive
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explanatory claims. Moreover, they judge the utility of their theories and the success of their explanatory claims not according to whether they successfully develop or identify causal generalizations, but rather according to whether they have (allegedly) resolved puzzles. This often means showing, or at least claiming, that taking account of the factors that are central to their theories makes a substantial difference to our understanding of particular episodes. For example, the theory that Keohane developed in After Hegemony (2005) was designed to help resolve a particular puzzle: how regimes established by a hegemonic power (the US) might survive its relative decline. In other words, he approached regimes with a particular interest in mind, investigating only certain aspects of them. He was interested even in these aspects only to a certain extent: he did not offer (or seek to facilitate) a detailed examination of all the conditions under which any regime might survive US decline, but rather sought to make a prima facie case for the importance of understanding regimes in functional terms. His theory is therefore best understood not as an explanation in and of itself, but as a resource that may be drawn upon in substantive explanatory claims. Such claims would, in order to be persuasive, have to take all relevant factors into account. This is why, in his actual historical accounts of the regimes in money, goods and oil, Keohane included substantial discussion of US domestic politics, a factor which does not feature in his theory (see Keohane, 2005: xiii): he did so in order to demonstrate, first, that his theory could contribute to well-rounded accounts of the survival of particular regimes and, second, that it could thereby indeed help to resolve significant puzzles.

The Qualities of Causal Claims

Causal questions are one of the kinds of questions we can ask: they concern how or why episodes occur as they do. Whether these episodes are thoughts, actions, events, phenomena, developments, or states of affairs, whether they are real or hypothetical, singular or plural, historical or contemporary, discrete or continuous, and whether they occur or notably fail to occur, the logic of a causal explanation remains the same. Causal explanations can therefore cover, inter alia, why a particular actor tends to act in particular ways, why someone failed to do something, how particular behaviours are constrained or enabled by other factors, why something occurred when and in the form that it did, how one development makes another more likely, why a particular constellation of historical developments occurred together, what the alternatives to a particular development might have been, why something is changing in a particular way, or why certain things are unlikely to happen.
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This range of possible causal questions indicates that Wendt's (1998: 103-5) distinction between causal explanations, which concern why and how things occur, and constitutive explanations, which concern what things are and how they are possible, is misleading. Wendt is right that we can explain, for example, what the UN is without thereby giving a causal explanation. However, it is hard to identify a clear boundary between causation and constitution, as he defines them. For example, Wendt would regard the question "How is it possible for a vote in the UN Security Council to legitimize the use of force?" as a constitutive question, yet it would seem reasonable to answer it by offering a causal account of how actors interpret and respond to such developments.20 Moreover, explaining what something is will often form part of a causal explanation. For example, in order to explain why a no-fly zone was imposed on Libya, we may, depending on what it is that the recipient of the explanation finds puzzling, need to explain what the UN Security Council is. In short, causal explanations may refer not only to efficient causes, but also to material, formal, and final causes (see Kurki, 2006: 206-10): they may invoke not only mechanisms, but also capacities, structures, and purposes.21 Giving a causal explanation may even involve reaching moral judgements, as when we seek to explain why a particular war started (see Suganami, 1997, 2011).22 If causal explanations reveal how and why an episode occurs as it does, then that which explains the episode's occurrence must be its causes (see Suganami, 1996: 134-5). In other words, to discover an episode's causes is to discover how it came about: its causes are whatever contributed to its occurrence. To state something's causes is, therefore, to make its occurrence more intelligible: to provide a causal explanation is to show how the world progresses from one condition (in which the episode has not occurred) to another condition (in which it has). This is why causal explanations often take a narrative form (see Suganami, 2008: 334): causes are identified by the fact that they contribute to a story that fills a gap in our understanding of how and why the episode in question occurred as it did. It is, in fact, a common-sense condition of adequacy for any causal explanation that it can be reformulated as a narrative account of how the world progressed from one condition to another.23
Patomki (1996: 126-7) points out that we can ask different kinds of "how possible?" questions. It is, however, not necessary, as Kurki (2006, 2008) does, to construe this broader conception of causal explanation in (philosophically) realist terms. I return to this point below. 22 My rejection of the constitutive-causal distinction therefore differs fundamentally from that of King, Keohane and Verba (1994: 75). 23 Philosophers of history such as Mink (1987: 77-9) argue that a narrative is not a form in which a causal explanation may be presented, but rather is the explanation: a historian's conclusions are not 'detachable' from his or her narrative, but are rather 'ingredient in the argument itself'. This is,
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The identity of providing a causal explanation with stating something's causes reveals that causal claims are subject to the same contextual qualifications as any other explanatory claim. Because an exhaustive explanation would have to incorporate every factor that contributed to an episode's occurrence (including all factors that contributed to each factor identified), we can never state all something's causes. Instead, we first seek to comprehend what it is about an episode's occurrence that the intended recipient of our explanation finds puzzling and then formulate causal claims appropriately. Of course, our decisions about what causes to incorporate are often conventional. For example, social scientific explanations often focus on mechanisms, whilst historical narratives often focus on actions (see Suganami, 2008: 338). Yet the conventionality of such decisions should not obscure the fact that they are choices. The need to decide what causes to incorporate also reveals that explanations are inherently specific in a way that theories are not. Theories are resources that may be drawn upon to help resolve an indeterminate number of specific puzzles. Substantive causal explanations are always responses to one particular puzzle. Such puzzles may, of course, be very broad (as with the question of how and why the Cold War ended when and has it did), but the causal explanations which speak to those puzzles always identify substantive causes, rather than general classes of cause. The complexity of the social world and our limited understanding of it means that our explanations often identify not necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather what Mackie (1974: 62) terms INUS conditions: 'insufficient but non-redundant part[s] of an unnecessary but sufficient condition'. In other words, we often claim not that a particular factor wholly explains the episode in question, nor even that if it were not for that factor then it would not have occurred, but rather that an adequate resolution of the puzzle with which we are confronted will have to invoke that factor (see Patomki, 1996: 112-3). Importantly, however, such claims always arise in the context of choices that have already been made about what aspect of the episode in question needs to be explained and to what extent. It is ironic that this contextuality is what makes causal explanation possible (because it removes the requirement for explanations to be exhaustive), but that it is often left implicit in actual causal arguments. One reason for this may be that the nomothetic ideal implies that by subsuming a particular episode under a causal law we explain it in its entirety. It is

however, too strong a position: whether or not we can reduce the historian's narrative to a summary argument will depend on what precisely we want to know about the episode in question and to what extent: it will depend on what is puzzling to the recipient of the explanation. The significance of Mink's argument is that causes cannot necessarily be straightforwardly enumerated.
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important to recognize, however, that generalizations (or laws) are not explanations. What may be deduced from a causal generalization is not an explanation of a particular episode, but rather its membership of a class of episodes that always occur in a particular way. Insofar as causal generalizations contribute to explanatory claims, they do so not because explanations may be deduced from them, but because they tell us where to look for the causes of whatever it is we are trying to explain (see Moon, 1975: 155; Suganami, 2008: 332). As Weber (2004: 379) puts it: 'Where the individuality of a phenomenon is concerned the question of causality does not concern laws, but rather concrete casual relationships'. Actual causes are always substantive and particular: something is not a cause in the abstract, but is only ever a cause of something particular; it is, moreover, identifiable as such only in the context of evaluative judgements which determine to what end it is identified as such.24 The contextuality of all explanations provides one reason for doubting that causal claims reveal a mind-independent reality. Our knowledge of the world is always mediated by human experience and language: causal claims seek to resolve humans' puzzles, rather than to reveal the properties of a world independent of human interpretation. This is not to deny that the world exists independently of our experience of it, but it is to insist that our causal claims are necessarily claims about the world as we interpret it.25 We must therefore be aware of the extent to which we produce the world about which we make causal claims. Yet the need for reflexivity does not rule out knowledge claims. The fact that our language and theories help to shape the world (including whatever we wish to explain) does not make it any less real to us (as revealed by our persistent explanatory activity). Rather, it forces us to accept that the plausibility of causal claims is established pragmatically: we cannot test such claims against a mind-independent reality, but must rely on intersubjectively accepted standards of evidence and reasoning. These standards ensure against a situation in which 'anything goes' (Kratochwil, 2006: 7) by requiring that causal claims either fit with relevant aspects of what we think we already know (both about the episode in question and about the world in general) or challenge what we thought we knew in a way that stimulates further inquiry.26 Insofar as causal accounts embody choices about what to explain and how, they necessarily draw on theories, even if they cannot be identified with any particular theoretical
24

This is not to deny that it may become conventional to identify certain factors as causes of certain (types of) episodes in relation to almost all explanatory ends. 25 This is, in Jackson's (2011) terminology, an analyticist position. 26 This is the process for which Lakatos (1970) offered a reconstructed account, but it involves a degree of judgement and choice that, despite Kuhn's (1996) discussion, is rarely acknowledged in IR. On the relationship between Kuhn and Lakatos see Chalmers (1999: 141-8).
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school. Theories are not themselves explanations or causal claims, but they make causal explanation possible by identifying and clarifying puzzles and by providing the conceptual equipment required to generate solutions to them. Because causal claims rely on this work having been done, they are necessarily theoretical. This entails, further, that they arise in the context of more or less explicit value claims.27 Weber (2004: 377) argues that 'the significance of cultural phenomena implies a relationship to evaluative ideas' and that we investigate 'those elements of reality rendered meaningful by this relationship'. If so, then investigation of any problem in international relations will, by necessity, draw upon evaluative judgements about why it is worth exploring and about how its boundaries should be delineated (see Carr, 2001: 4). It is these evaluative judgements which, by shaping the questions we ask, help to determine which of the infinite array of historical causes of any particular episode are relevant. It is therefore incumbent upon theorists not only to justify their causal claims, but also to explicate and justify the evaluative judgements on which they draw. Once again, it is important to emphasize that this is not merely the working out of an intuition about the nature of causal claims, but rather a reconstruction of what is implicit in actual explanatory practices. For example, although neorealism does not develop or identify causal generalizations, it does embody choices about what needs to be explained and about how explanation should proceed (see Humphreys, 2011: 9-10).28 Waltz (1997: 916) also emphasizes the distinction between what goes into a theory and what goes into a causal explanation. Although neorealism focuses on structure, this is not construed as an efficient cause, but rather as a constraint: it 'limits and moulds agents and agencies' (Waltz, 1979: 74). Moreover, substantive explanations identify substantive causes, including unit-level causes ignored in the theory, as when Waltz (1979: 175) acknowledges that an apparently stable system 'can always be disrupted by the actions of a Hitler or the reactions of a Chamberlain' (see Humphreys, 2011: 10-11; Jackson, 2011: 113). These explanations are not claimed to have identified necessary and sufficient causes, but rather to have identified whatever causes are required to tell a plausible causal story (see Humphreys, 2011: 11). This is because the task of theory is not to capture a mind-independent reality, but to paint a picture of how it fits together (see Waltz, 1979: 8; Jackson, 2011: 113).
27

The point here is not to draw a narrow distinction between causal claims and value claims, not least because some causal claims will involve value claims (see above). Rather, the point is to demonstrate that causal claims, construed in this broad manner, are necessarily situated within a context that is value-laden. 28 Waltz, however, notably fails to explore the value commitments that are implicit in his choices.
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Theory and Theory Evaluation

Existing explanatory theories in IR have specifiable heuristic functions: they tell us what questions to ask, provide a conceptual vocabulary, and highlight particular empirical foci (Humphreys, 2011). In a broader sense, however, theories embody choices about what to investigate and how: they provide the means by which those choices may be brought to bear in particular instances of practical inquiry. Theories therefore embody claims about what we already know, about what we need to find out, and about how this is best done. This suggests that in developing theories we should have in mind criteria such as relevance, consistency, productive potential, and plausibility. First, theories should be directed towards answering questions of demonstrable significance. Second, they should be internally consistent: their conceptual vocabularies should speak to the puzzles that they will be drawn upon to solve. Third, theories should be externally consistent: the choice of questions to investigate and of conceptual equipment with which to do so should make sense in light of what we claim to know already (with any deviation from it being justified). Fourth, theories should have the potential to extend our understanding of our subject matter (our stock of knowledge). Fifth, they should facilitate the development and interrogation of plausible explanatory claims. Given that scientific discoveries often occur by chance, in the course of other inquiry, and given that the history of science involves the regular over-turning of established ways of thinking (see Chalmers, 1999), we cannot be too prescriptive about what theories should look like. Moreover, any criteria we do develop can only serve as guidelines for explicit acts of theory development: many explanatory claims will arise outside the purview of our stock of more or less well-specified theories and will be no less theoretical for that. It is, nonetheless, helpful to note the difference between the vision of theory implicit in these guidelines and that defended by advocates of the nomothetic ideal. They formally define theories as 'welldeveloped, systematically related sets of propositions' that explain causal laws 'by permitting us to deduce them from basic principles' (Moon, 1975: 141-3; see also Van Evera, 1997: 7-9).29 Yet the actual role of theory in the explanatory process is better captured by a more 'informal' use of the term 'theory' to designate 'a set of basic ideas about a subject' (Moon, 1975: 141; see also Eckstein, 1975: 86). Theories provide frameworks in which causal inquiry can take place. The formal definition offered by advocates of the nomothetic ideal
29

Eckstein (1975: 88) indicates what kind of criteria might be appropriate for theory in political science given this kind of definition.
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provides little sense of how this inquiry draws on theory and no sense of what an explanation is. It cannot therefore be right to employ such a definition as grounds for rejecting the very idea of theory in the social sciences (see Flyvbjerg, 2001: 25). Theories not only embody choices about what to investigate, but also provide the conceptual vocabulary required to undertake that inquiry. Because the nomothetic ideal assumes that description itself is unproblematic, the extent of the explanatory work done by our choice of conceptual equipment is often underappreciated. For example, in order to explain NATO's role in the imposition of a no-fly-zone over Libya, we must choose between terms such as 'coalition', 'alliance', 'collective security organization', 'security community', and so on. It is implausible to suggest that these terms are neutral descriptors: they are each embedded in theoretical ideas about the nature and capacities of such organizations, ideas which will significantly shape the resulting explanatory claims. Yet it is equally implausible to suggest that these concepts denote ideal types against which we can compare NATO itself: the whole problem is that we cannot describe what NATO is like without employing such concepts. Using a particular term therefore already draws us into seeing NATO in a particular way: although we can be conscious of this, we cannot avoid it. Moreover, such terms are theoretical not because they act as placeholders for implicit explanatory claims (or causal generalizations), but because to use the terms is already to begin to explain: insofar as they shape what we see, the terms themselves are explanatory. We may, in practice, develop conventions about how and when to use such terms, but this does not diminish how much explanatory work they do.30 Nothing in what has been said so far undermines our capacity to judge one theory (including its conceptual vocabulary) preferable to another. However, theories cannot strictly be tested: all we can do is to evaluate their utility (see Puchala, 1991: 59-60). First, we can evaluate a theory's relevance, internal consistency and external consistency, asking whether the questions to which it directs us are significant, whether they make sense given what we think we already know (including whether an appropriate rationale is offered for deviations from what we think we already know), and whether the theory's conceptual vocabulary is oriented towards developing answers to those questions.31 Second, we can assess the productivity and plausibility of explanatory claims that draw on the theory, asking whether

Shapiro (2002: 614-5) points out that descriptions not only facilitate particular empirical stories, but may also imply particular normative judgements, something we often fail to notice. 31 Insofar as this involves us in weighing the merits of asking different kinds of questions, rooted in different evaluative judgements, this is very much an evaluation (rather than an assessment).
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they enhance our understanding in relevant ways and whether they fit with other things we think we know (or justify deviations from them). Theory evaluation therefore always occurs partly by proxy: because theories are not themselves explanations, but are resources employed in constructing explanations, they are always evaluated partly in terms of the substantive explanatory claims associated with them. However, because theories and explanations are only indeterminately related, we must also assess the extent to which a theory is implicated in particular explanatory claims.32 Theory evaluation is therefore pragmatic in a dual sense. First, it involves stipulation of what the purpose of the theory is (that is, what puzzles it should be able to help us solve): assessment of the theory's consistency and of the productivity and plausibility of associated explanatory claims takes place against this standard. Second, it involves judgement: because we cannot compare theories or explanations against how things really are, we have to make conventional decisions about which explanatory claims are most plausible (see Kuhn, 1996). The merits of particular explanatory claims can be debated on empirical grounds, but such debates cannot be resolved except through the decision of the relevant intellectual community: there is no ultimate fact of the matter about the validity of explanatory claims, if by this we mean a standard outside of human language and experience. Even those "truths" which seem most common-sensical seem so only, or rather precisely, because the intellectual community has reached a settled judgement. Intellectual communities do, of course, generate standards for assessing the plausibility of explanatory claims. These include, first, standards about what constitutes good reasoning; second, requirements that explanatory claims should fit with what we think we already know, or justify deviations from it; and third, requirements that putative explanatory claims should offer insight into other relevantly similar episodes, or justify why this is not the case.33 The content of debates about whether particular explanatory claims meet these standards may be empirical, but our judgements are ultimately pragmatic.34 It is, once more, important to emphasize that this reconstructed logic captures what is implicit in actual explanatory practices in IR. For example, Risse-Kappen (1996: 358-9, 364)
In IR, this is reflected in debates about the scope of particular theoretical approaches (see, for example, Legro and Moravcsik, 1999; Rathbun, 2010). 33 Intellectual communities also develop procedures for policing these requirements, including peer review, professional qualifications, and the like. 34 A pragmatic approach to the evaluation of explanatory claims is often claimed to have relativist implications. This is true, but only up to a point. The pragmatic case militates against the idea of a single universal method of assessment, but not against the very idea of standards (see Chalmers, 1999: 161-73). As Suganami (2008: 329) puts it: explanatory claims 'have to withstand tests of congruence with our beliefs about the world justified by evidence', but 'there is no algorithm that integrates different assessment criteria for "good" narrative accounts into a single formula'.
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offers a 'social constructivist interpretation of republican liberalism'. Although he does not express the theory as a means of resolving a specific puzzle, he does criticize realism's indeterminacy in regard to individual states' behavioural choices and he also emphasizes the need to link 'domestic politics systematically to foreign policy' by focusing on 'collective identities and norms of appropriate behaviour'. Furthermore, he advances a substantive explanatory claim: that we can best understand NATO's origins and evolution by thinking of it as having institutionalized a community of states united by a collective democratic identity. There is a specific and substantial puzzle here and it is clear that much of the explanatory work is done by our choice of conceptual vocabulary. Neither the theory nor the substantive explanatory claim can strictly be tested, but we can ask whether the theory is internally and externally consistent and we can also ask whether Risse-Kappen offers a plausible account of NATO's evolution. It is therefore notable that Risse-Kappen (1996: 371-2) makes his case primarily through a historical analysis whose persuasiveness rests on the plausibility of particular substantive claims, for example that the Soviet threat 'did not create the community in the first place'. We can assess the plausibility of such claims by asking, for example, whether the idea that a pluralistic transatlantic security community already existed in 1949 fits with other things we think we know about this period and about security communities. Any evaluation ultimately rests on judgements of this sort (see Humphreys, 2011: 14-15).

Rethinking Explanatory Theory in IR

Adopting a question-based approach to the explanatory process in IR involves three core claims. First, explanations are answers to specific questions: they resolve puzzles by making the object of inquiry more intelligible. Causal explanations resolve puzzles about how and why particular episodes occur as they do. Second, that which explains a specific episode's occurrence are its causes: causes are therefore substantive and particular. Insofar as laws or generalizations contribute to causal explanations, they do so by indicating where to look for the substantive causes of particular episodes. Third, theories are not themselves explanations, but are resources on which substantive explanatory claims draw: they embody judgements about what we already know and about what we need to know in order to resolve certain kinds of puzzles. From these core claims, three further implications may be derived. First, we always have to decide what to (try to) explain: all explanations arise in the context of more or less explicit evaluative judgements about what puzzles are worth trying to resolve.

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Explanations therefore always embody value commitments. Second, no explanation can be exhaustive: we always have to start from somewhere. This means that we always have to decide what we need to include in a causal explanation in order to resolve the relevant puzzle. Third, theory evaluation is inherently pragmatic: we cannot test theories, but can only ask whether they facilitate the construction of plausible explanatory claims. This plausibility may be debated on empirical grounds, but is ultimately a matter of judgement. These claims, and the implications derived from them, are the heart of a reconstructed logic of explanatory theory: they reveal what is implicit in existing explanatory practices in IR. At present, however, most explanatory theorists' methodological convictions reflect the hold of a nomothetic ideal which is demonstrably unfit for purpose as a reconstructed logic. There is therefore an urgent need to rethink explanatory theory in IR. The challenge is substantial, for explanatory theory is usually identified by its commitment to the nomothetic ideal (see Smith, 2000: 383). The first step is therefore to recognize that 'explanatory theory' should not be defined in this way, but should encompass all more or less well developed theoretical orientations which facilitate the development of explanatory claims in IR. In seeking to rethink 'explanatory theory' in IR, my aim is therefore to lay out methodological principles which are consistent with the practices of explanatory theorists (narrowly defined), but which also open up the domain of explanatory theory to those many scholars who do make explanatory claims, but who at the same time (and for a variety of reasons) reject the methodological guidelines most commonly associated with explanatory theory in IR (that is, the nomothetic ideal). To that end, I reflect on how we might understand causation in IR, on the appropriate aims of theory development in IR, and on methodological priorities for IR.

Conceptions of Causation

The nomothetic ideal employs what Kurki (2006: 192-3) terms a 'Humean' conception of causation, in which causes are efficient (they 'push and pull') and the task of causal analysis is to identify 'regularity relations of patterns of observables' which can be stated in the form 'when A, then B'. A question-based approach to the explanatory process in IR is consistent with, and points towards, a broader conception of causation. First, causes are substantive and particular. In contrast to King, Keohane and Verba's (1994) focus on identifying causal effects and constructing valid causal inferences, the task of causal analysis is to identify the causes of specific episodes, thereby resolving puzzles about how and why they occurred. Although generalizations may indicate where to look for such causes, the identification of
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regularities is not a necessary feature of causal analysis. Second, causes do not merely push and pull: the causes of an episode include everything and anything that contributes to how and why it occurs as it does (see Kurki, 2006: 191). Thus, for example, the conditions which make an episode possible, the nature of relevant institutions, and the reasons of key actors are all potential ingredients of causal explanations. This variety of types of cause broadly reflects the Aristotelian framework of material, formal, final, and efficient causes (see Kurki, 2006: 206-9).35 This broader conception of causation is reflected in the everyday use of quasi-causal language (phrases such as "because", "leads to" and "produces") to encompass a wider range of claims that can be reduced to a Humean understanding of causal effects (Kurki, 2006: 197). However, these practices do not necessarily point towards the deeper understanding of causation advocated by critical realists, in which causes are 'real ontological entities' and causal analysis captures 'causes "out there" (outside what we think or observe)' (Kurki, 2006: 201). In practice, causal claims are construed as referring to a world that exists independently of our experience of it, but they do not reveal features (or properties) of a world independent of experience: rather, causal claims are about the world as experienced and interpreted by us. One reason for this is that all causal explanations embody a human perspective: because we can never provide a complete explanation, all causal claims represent a particular aspect of the world in a manner designed to illuminate a puzzle. The aim of a causal explanation is to resolve a puzzle in a way that allows us to move on. This is reflected in the fact that theories in IR are often described as 'perspectives' or 'approaches' (Humphreys, 2011: 4): rather than capturing how the world really is (in a sense that goes beyond human experience), they offer a lens on the world (see Nau, 2007). There is, however, another way in which the reconstructed logic outlined above points towards a deeper (or at least fuller) understanding of causation than that associated with the nomothetic ideal. This concerns how deeply we look for the causes of any particular episode. Lebow (2009: 214) argues that, at 'the deepest levels, causation is cognitive and works by opening and directing thought to some pathways while closing or foreclosing others'. In other words, many of the sorts of episodes we seek to explain in IR are rooted in, or made possible by, identities and frames of reference which limit and mould the range of options that seem to be available to actors. Conventional patterns of behaviour and ways of seeing
35

It is also consistent with Veyne's idea that a historical narrative (which provides a causal account of how and why a particular episode occurred as it did) incorporates background conditions, chance, mechanisms, and volition (see Suganami, 1996: 142-4).
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things may be so deeply embedded in these identities and frames of reference that we are largely unaware of their influence.36 Lebow therefore calls for the development of 'layered accounts of human behaviour' in which human interactions are situated in relation to social processes which are themselves situated in relation to underlying cognitive frameworks. It is, he demonstrates, often important to ask what makes possible the conditions in which the efficient causes that typically dominate causal analyses in IR arise. If such causes arise in a context which already precludes some outcomes and enables others, then this greatly increases the potential scope of a causal analysis. We always have to decide how far (or how deep) to push causal analyses: any such analysis necessarily involves a choice (though not necessarily a conscious one) about what to accept as an adequate answer to a causal question. The nomothetic ideal implies that this is a non-issue: causal analysis simply involves the search for regularities. Yet if generalizations only help to identify causes, and if exhaustive explanation is impossible, then every putative causal account involves a choice as to how deep to probe. If causal analyses are restricted to examining efficient causes, then we cannot interrogate the conditions which make particular types of episodes possible. It is therefore important that the range of causal questions we are able to ask includes questions about why we are where we are in terms of the kinds of options that are open to us.37 Far from negating the issue of what to accept as an adequate answer, the nomothetic ideal offers a conventional solution: it tell us that it is not necessary to explore anything other than the efficient causes of a particular episode. This is why it is claimed to serve the interests of the status quo (see Cox, 1981: 129-30).38

Lebow recognizes the need to devise new strategies for detecting such influence. What I am advocating here is substantially similar to what is advocated by critical realists (see Patomki, 1996: 127; Kurki, 2006: 213-5). This raises the question of how significant the 'realism' in critical realism is, as compared to the 'critical' aspect which requires us to situate complexes of efficient causes in relation to the conditions which make them possible in the first place. There is a trivial sense in which we are all realists: we all (or nearly all of us) believe that there is a world which exists independently of our experience and understanding of it. There is also a trivial sense in which we are all anti-realists (see Chalmers, 1999: 228): even critical realists do not believe that we can ever 'tell it like it is' (Wight, 2007: 390), whilst empiricists are strictly anti-realist (see Hollis, 1996: 303-4). Patomki and Wight (2000: 229) thus accept that explanations are 'interpretative (narrative) attempts to make explanandum [sic] intelligible to us', but insist that they 'must include existential and causal hypotheses about the real world'. Yet if explanations are always embedded in the world as interpreted and experienced by human beings, then this commitment to the 'real world' is simply a shibboleth which has little impact on research practices: the importance of critical realism lies in its insistence that we think in terms of causal complexes and in the light it thus sheds on the political implications of alternative conceptions of causation (see Kurki, 2009). 38 The ideological bias implicit in the nomothetic ideal is doubly exposed if what we think of as "laws" in fact express claims about how things "normally" are (see Scriven, 1959; Dray, 1978).
37

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To insist that we have to make choices about what to accept as an adequate causal explanation is not to deny the possibility of generating substantive explanatory claims which amount to more than the expression of individual preferences. It is, however, to demand that the politics of causal analysis be brought to the surface. Choices about what to explain (and how) necessarily arise in the context of particular value orientations: we seek to explain one thing and not another (and to explain that thing to a particular extent) because we consider it to be important in some way. When their implications are fully clarified, these choices also amount to choices about what to accept as an adequate answer. The value orientations which underpin such choices may, of course, be of a second-order kind: we investigate something because we consider it important and we only consider it important because of how it relates to a broad range of further issues which themselves reflect commitments about, for example, the qualities of the current international order. Yet this does not diminish the importance of clarifying the underlying value commitments, not least because the questions we ask may not only reflect, but also generate such commitments. Insofar as the nomothetic ideal diminishes the significance of questions about the historical origins of the current international order, it also invites us to treat that order as given, not only for the purposes of inquiry, but also as a substantive (albeit implicit) evaluation of that order (see Cox, 1981: 129-30). One way in which the value commitments implicit in causal analyses are manifested is in our treatment of chance. King, Keohane and Verba (1994: 56) emphasize the need to distinguish the systematic from the nonsystematic components of the phenomena we study, Roberts (2006: 709-10) insists that we must decide whether we see history 'as primarily a realm of necessity or contingency', and Suganami (1996: 142) argues that the principal ingredients of a narrative explanation are mechanisms, agency and chance. Yet nothing is strictly speaking uncaused. What we regard as chance is therefore chance only from a certain point of view. Suganami (2008: 334-5) recognizes that a '"chance coincidence" is not an uncaused event', but rather the 'simultaneous occurrence of two or more events which are causally unrelated'. Yet given the impossibility of exhaustive explanation, any judgement that two events are causally unrelated will be shaped by our perspective on the question, that is, by our judgement as to what constitutes an adequate resolution of a particular puzzle. We must therefore be cautious about what is implicit in categorizing particular factors as chance coincidences. Was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand a chance occurrence, from the point of view of someone seeking to explain the origins of WW1, or did the war take place partly because of (disagreements about how to deal with) nationalist agitation in the Balkans? The position taken on this question is of great significance for substantive explanations of
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WW1, but may also significantly shape our search for the causes of other wars.39 Chance arises as a factor only in causal explanations that are already directed towards particular ends.

The Development of Theory

The nomothetic ideal suggests that theories are repositories of causal generalizations from which specific explanatory claims are derived: a theory is a generalized form of explanation. Yet theories in IR do not operate in this way. Moreover, the nomothetic ideal fails to capture how theory contributes to substantive explanatory claims. We therefore require a broader conception of theory, in which it is construed as whatever resources may be drawn upon in the construction of substantive explanatory claims. However, not all theoretical ideas will be explicitly formulated as theories: we therefore need to distinguish between theory, on which all explanatory claims draw, and those explicitly formulated theories which are drawn upon in a subset of those claims. We can then ask what functions particular theories perform in relation to the specific explanatory claims associated with them, functions which justify labelling those claims as realist, liberal, etc. Explanatory theories in IR principally fulfil three such functions (Humphreys, 2011): first, they offer a rationale for investigating certain types of problems in particular ways; second, they provide a conceptual vocabulary; and third, they direct our attention towards particular causal factors. Of course, explanatory theorists in IR often present their theories in the form of quasideductive, quasi-causal arguments which rationalize why certain kinds of outcomes might be expected in certain conditions. However, these are merely '"just so" stories' (Shapiro, 2002: 602-3): debatably plausible accounts of how particular kinds of phenomena occur. They are unlikely to persuade anyone other than fellow advocates of the theory in question until and unless some attempt is made to demonstrate that they can in fact be drawn upon to generate explanations of substantive phenomena that are more persuasive than whatever explanations may be developed by drawing on other debatably plausible accounts. Moreover, these stories are not, in themselves, explanations. They are typically presented in abstract terms and are not considered to be subject to direct testing: they operate as guides to the kinds of processes and circumstances that we might expect to find in particular kinds of cases, rather than as

Another example of the influence of judgements about what constitutes chance is the (alleged) willingness of defensive realists to treat domestic politics as an ad hoc factor (see Rose, 1998).
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hypotheses.40 These stories are therefore best construed as presenting a prima facie case for investigating certain types of episodes in certain ways: in so doing, they provide the basis of a conceptual vocabulary and highlight particular causal factors. It follows from this that in developing theories it cannot be right to focus primarily on formulating candidate causal generalizations and deriving testable hypotheses from them. A question-based approach to the explanatory process suggests that, in practice, it is a theory's conceptual vocabulary that gives it much of its explanatory power: this is what, above all, is drawn upon in the substantive explanatory claims associated with any theory. Developing a conceptual vocabulary is not, however, merely a question of defining concepts clearly. They also need to be situated in relation to alternatives, so that it is clear what choice we are making by employing them. Moreover, a vocabulary must be situated in relation to whatever rationale is offered for investigating particular kinds of episodes in particular ways. This rationale needs to encompass the identification of a particular kind of episode, the value commitments which underpin an interest in those kinds, what we think we already know about such episodes, why particular concepts are to be employed, why it is appropriate to focus on particular kinds of causes, and how proceeding in this way is likely to generate adequate answers to the sorts of puzzles that typically arise in relation to such episodes. It goes without saying that such rationales are at best underdeveloped in, and at worst entirely absent from, most existing theories in IR. The inadequacy of current theories, in the absence of well developed rationales of this kind, indicates the dangers of thinking in terms of competing theoretical paradigms in IR.41 First, it is unclear in what sense existing theoretical approaches do compete and, if they do, what they compete over (see Wight, 1996). Second, the very idea of competing paradigms is likely to encourage a belief that theories should be tested against one another and hence that theory development should focus on deriving testable hypotheses from putative causal generalizations. Third, it encourages theory-driven research, for it suggests that explanatory claims that are associated with a theory deserve priority over those that are focused purely on resolving a particular puzzle. This is not only problematic in itself, but also has an insidious consequence: it distracts attention from precisely the issues that existing theories should deal with but invariably do not, viz. what kind of puzzles we should investigate in the first place
40

This is not to deny that some theorists do attempt to develop testable hypotheses, but it is to affirm, first, that in the formulation of such hypotheses the theory in question typically functions as a heuristic resource and, second, that such hypotheses are not themselves explanations. 41 In fact, the very language of competing paradigms is problematic (see Jackson and Nexon, 2009; Walker, 2010).
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and what constitutes adequate resolution of them.42 This consequence also points towards the dangers inherent in construing IR as a science, especially where this is interpreted in a way which excludes from the scope of scientific activity the kind of value clarification that must lie at the heart of theory development in IR (see Jackson, 2011: 15-16). The kind of theory development I am calling for here is sympathetic to, but differs in important respects from, Sil and Katzenstein's (2010a: 412) call for 'analytical eclecticism', that is, the generation of 'complex causal stories that forgo parsimony in order to capture the interactions among different types of causal mechanisms normally analyzed in isolation from each other within separate research traditions'. The problem with this approach is its reliance upon existing theoretical perspectives in IR: Sil and Katzenstein (2010a: 414-5) accept that 'the value added by eclectic scholarship depends to a large extent on the continued success of existing research traditions'. This, they explain, is because 'scholarship that is inattentive to [existing] theories runs the risk of missing important insights, reinventing the wheel, or producing analyses that appear idiosyncratic or unintelligible to other scholars'. This would be a reasonable concern if the problem with existing theoretical approaches were merely that their focus on particular causal mechanisms militated against the construction of complex causal stories. Whilst this is true, the deeper problem with existing approaches is that their design reflects a misleading vision of how theories contribute to substantive explanatory claims. Analytical eclecticism fails to challenge this vision. The claim that a particular causal mechanism contributes to a certain kind of outcome is a narrative device the function of which is to help resolve a puzzle about such outcomes. A causal mechanism that is identified within an existing theoretical approach will therefore be embedded within a particular orientation to this kind of problem. Whether or not this causal mechanism (or, more accurately, the narrative which identifies it) can be transposed to a different kind of problem is an open question: it will depend on the plausibility of the answer that is generated to whatever puzzle is being investigated. Solving this puzzle will require identification of whichever causes are relevant and there is no prima facie reason to suppose that all potentially relevant factors have already been identified in an existing theory. In fact, there is reason to suppose otherwise, for existing theories tend to focus on efficient causes and to prioritize the formulation of candidate causal generalizations and hypotheses over the

42

A defence of theory-driven research as indicative of Kuhnian normal science will not suffice, for IR is demonstrably not characterized by Kuhnian paradigms: in fact, it is more plausible characterized as being in a pre-paradigmatic (or pre-scientific) state (see Kuhn, 1996: x; Chalmers, 1999: 110-11; Jackson and Nexon, 2009; Walker, 2010).
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search for a wide range of causal factors.43 Sil and Katzenstein (2010a: 414) wish to avoid being drawn into a search for 'all imaginable causal factors that can influence world politics'. Yet the answer is not an eclecticism that draws only on existing approaches, but rather an eclecticism which, whilst open to all kinds of causal factors, is actively oriented to explaining why focusing on a subset of those factors is appropriate for resolving particular substantive puzzles. We need to move away from a misleading vision of theory in which causes are identified by deriving testable hypotheses from causal generalizations. Theory is whatever resources are drawn upon (explicitly or implicitly) in substantive explanatory claims. This includes, most importantly, a rationale for investigating certain types of problems in certain ways and a conceptual vocabulary. Sil and Katzenstein are surely right that we must not be restricted to grounding explanations only in the array of causal factors indicated by any one existing approach. However, we cannot even begin to evaluate the 'success of existing research traditions' until we understand what contribution they actually make to substantive explanatory claims. In order to do that, we need to abandon the vision of the explanatory process implicit in analytical eclecticism and move towards a broader conception of theory.

Methodological Priorities

A question-based approach to the explanatory process indicates two methodological priorities for IR. The first is to reconceive of methodological inquiry itself. Rather than engaging in abstract arguments about which conception of theory, causation, or explanation is superior, methodological inquiry should focus on practices. We should ask: insofar as we do seek to explain things, how do we do it? How do we use theories? What are our criteria of adequacy for explanatory claims? What conception of causation is implicit in those claims? Asking such questions has the benefit not only of providing reliable insight into how explanatory claims can be constructed (after all, we do construct such claims, and we do believe that some of them are persuasive), but also of encouraging reflection on how our practices might be improved, and of how advocates of different approaches might learn from one another. Methodologists too often tend to advance their preferred account of how things should be done and then call for an end to methodological wrangling and a focus on substantive
Part of what makes Sil and Katzenstein's version of analytical eclecticism compatible with existing theoretical approaches in IR is their focus on causal mechanisms which, although broadly defined (see Sil and Katzenstein, 2010a: 419), indicates a focus on efficient causes.
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problems (see, for example, Wendt, 1998: 115). I maintain, by contrast, that methodological inquiry, in the form of scrutiny of and reflection on actual practices, forms an essential part of substantive inquiry: we always need to be asking what puzzle we are trying to solve, what we will accept as an adequate answer, and why.44 The second methodological priority for IR is therefore to be more reflective about precisely these issues. This means scrutinizing why we choose to ask some questions rather than others and why we accept the kinds of answers that we do. It means accepting that explanatory claims are always embedded in more or less explicit value commitments and that the role of an explainer should not only be to provide an explanation, but also to explain what kind of explanation it is. Failure to reflect on what values drive our choice of questions may close our minds to the alternative questions we could ask and therefore to alternative political possibilities. Failure to reflect on our judgements about what constitutes a satisfactory answer to certain puzzles risks privileging certain kinds of causal factors in IR, viz. those that commonly arise in explanatory claims. These problems are exacerbated when we engage in theory-driven rather than question- (or puzzle-) driven research: this encourages conventional choices about what kinds of questions to ask and about what kinds of answers to accept. It is implausible to suggest that certain political values are not served by such conventional decisions, even if this is not the intention of those conducting such inquiry. This is not to suggest that the values served are necessarily undesirable, or that we can necessarily do any more than bring them out into the open, but it is to suggest that where there is choice there is politics, and this is something we should acknowledge.45 For example, we can ask a whole host of causal questions about the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya and we can accept a wide range of answers as adequately resolving these puzzles. Thus we can ask why the no-fly zone was relatively easy to implement, how allied powers were able to represent their actions as legitimate, why the West seemed to have a greater emotional involvement in events in Libya than those in Cte d'Ivoire, or why the use of force is differently regulated in the domestic and international realms. In relation to any of these questions we can accept different kinds of answers. Thus we can explain ease of implementation in terms of the differential military hardware, intelligence, and command and control facilities available to the West and to Gaddafi or in terms of the history of Western

44 45

In a sense, theory development should take the form of methodological reflection. Of course, this call for openness, debate, and methodological pluralism is itself value-laden. But I believe that the values which drive research should be recognized and debated and that this is an appropriate requirement for a scientific community to impose on itself.
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colonialism. We can explain legitimacy in terms of the role of the UN Security Council or in terms the rightness of the action. We can explain the difference in attitudes to Libya and Cte d'Ivoire in terms of the capacity of the international community to deal with multiple problems or in terms of the historical pursuit of oil in the Near and Middle East. We can explain the division between the domestic and the international in terms of nationhood or in terms of cognitive frames with roots in the Enlightenment. No one kind of answer to any one kind of question is intrinsically better than any other (though we can debate the persuasiveness of each substantive answer), but they certainly reflect and serve very different kinds of interests. To the extent that we build theories around certain kinds of questions and kinds of answers it is therefore surely incumbent on us to constantly reflect both on what we are doing, why we do it, and on what else we may also be doing thereby.

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