The Middle East in International Relations

International Relations theory and the Middle East

Analysing the IR of the Middle East: five approaches

 

Theories are like mushrooms: they can be classified into three categories -‘edible’, ‘poisonous5 and ‘indifferent5. The criteria for good or sound theory are evident enough: it should be conceptually clear and rigorous, historically aware, able to yield substantive analysis and research agenda, and, where appropriate, able to engage with ethical issues. Theory is a necessary part of all human understanding, from the numbers of mathematics or divisions into colours we use in everyday life to the abstractions of Hegel, or of the sociologist Talcott Parsons. This is not the issue. The issue, not least in an academic and policy climate where institutional interests, epistemological fashion and sheer competitive ambition all hold sway, is as with mushrooms to discern and hold to the difference between good, bad and harmless theory. Some is edible, some is indifferent, but some is definitely poisonous. Of all of this the study of the Middle East is far from being irrelevant.1

 

As noted, International Relations theory, any more than any other branch of social science, is not about prediction, though like all human activitiesdt may speculate, nor is it about the assertion of timeless, if sometimes nice, banalities about state behaviour. ItjTs a discipline concerned with explanation, of historical events and processes, and with the examination, imdEorctTcnTndmomparative vem^oftEe Concepts underlying ouTun3erstandingTEgiobal"TffairETtIs^based on a set of concepts that help to explain and understand relations between states and societies. IR is conventionally divided into ‘analytic5 theory, sets of concepts designed to explain how international relations work, and ‘normative5 theory, concepts about norms, and ethical issues within the international sphere. /

1 I have gone further into this in Rethinking International Relations, London'. Macmillan., 1994, where among other things 1 express reservations about the ‘post-modern’ turn (pp. 37-46); and ‘The Future of International Relations. Fears and Hopes1, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski, International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

While ethical issues, for example, with regard to war, and the claims of national and religious ‘community5, receive some attention, discussion of IR theory here is largely confined to the first, ‘analytic5, category: it is concerned with how states relate to each other, how their foreign policy is formed, and the role of global structures and social movements in the international realm and in the Middle East region. Such an approach throws up a two-sided challenge: on one side, that of how far concepts and insights (‘unscientific5 as they may be) from IR can illuminate our understanding of the Middle “East; on the other, that of seeing how far the example of the Middle East can convey the scope of theories and categories within IR^/lR theory has to meet the terms of any social science, those of conceptual precision, theoretical range and historical sensibility. But the opposite also applies: one can indeed ask of any theory of international relations what it can contribute to the study of a region: in this case of the Middle East, if it cannot help to explain the region, it cannot fly as an IR theory of general scope.2 The impact of such a two-sided challenge is that of showing how the study of the Middle East itself can be enriched and changed by the categories of International Relations. Not just IR theory but assumptions about the states, societies, ideologies of the region — many of them, it has to be said, espoused by more local nationalist and other social movements — may be altered by an IR analysis.

Social theory, like religion, is marked by paradigmatic pluralism, and pluralism sometimes creative, sometimes sterile. The field of International Relations in general has been dominated over recent decades by a set of debates concerning analytic frameworks.3 These debates have, in varying degree, affected the study of the Middle East and have produced a body of literature that seeks to explain, through the application of theory or at least broad analytic framework, the practice of Middle East states. History itself is not enough. The following study itself seeks to give an account of the region’s international history, but to combine this with, and subject the history to, a set of analytic questions derived from the contemporary discussions in International Relations. The conceptual argument of this book, for an approach based on an international and historical 

sociology, is one answer to this challenge. It is an approach I have tried to develop elsewhere, and which draws on the work of many others within the field of International Relations.4 It cannot explain everything; the hope is that it does what any social theory worth its salt should do: generate one, open, research agenda.5 This approach is, however, far from being the only possible way of analysing the International Relations of the Middle East as the following summary overview of writing on the region will demonstrate.

For the sake of argument, and at the risk of simplification, it is possible to divide this IR literature on the Middle East into five broad categories.