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Review of International Studies (2006), 32, 189216 Copyright British International Studies Association

doi:10.1017/S026021050600698X

Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the

concept of cause in International Relations

theoryM I L J A K U RK I *

Abstract. During the last decades causation has been a deeply divisive concept in Inter-national Relations (I R) theory. While the positivist mainstream has extolled the virtues of

causal analysis, many post-positivist theorists have rejected the aims and methods of causalexplanation in favour of constitutive theorising. It is argued here that the debates oncausation in IR have been misleading in that they havebeen premised on, and have helped toreify, a rather narrow empiricist understanding of causal analysis. It is suggested that in orderto move IR theorising forward we need to deepen and broaden our understandings of theconcept of cause. Thereby, wecan radically reinterpret thecausal-constitutivetheory divideinIR, as well as redirect the study of world politics towards more constructive multi-causal andcomplexity-sensitive analyses.

Introduction

In Explaining and Understanding International Relations M artin Hollis and SteveSmith famously argued that there are always two sorts of stories to tell1 in thediscipline of International Relations (IR): one can explain international politicsthrough causal analysis of international processes or seek to understandinternationalpolitics through inquiring into the meanings of, and the reasons for, the actions ofworld political actors.2The assumption elicited by Hollis and Smith that there is afundamental dichotomy between causal and non-causal approaches to the social

world, has come to permeatethe discipline of IR in the last decadeor so. While theso-called scientific theorists have advocated systematic causal analysis in IR3, theso-called reflectivist constitutive theorists have maintained that causal analysis isneither a necessary, nor a desirable aim in understanding world politics.4 As a

* Theauthor would like to thank A lexander Wendt, Colin Wight, J onathan J oseph, HidemiSuganami and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1 M artin Hollis and Steve Smith,Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 1.

2

Hollis and Smith,Explaining and Understanding, pp. 17.3 G. K ing, R. O. K eohaneand S. Verba, Designing Social Inquiry; Scientific Inference in QualitativeResearch (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1994).

4 David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and Politics of Identity (Manchester:M anchester University Press, 1998), p. 4.

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consequence of their disagreements the theorists in the different camps have tendedto eschew talking to each other at least constructively in providing accounts ofworld political processes.5

Curiously, despite the fact that the contentions between these camps havecentred around the concept of cause, there has been no real engagement in IR with

the source from which this dichotomisation of causal and non-causal forms oftheorising arises. This article argues that an uncritical acceptance of a so-calledHumean conception of causation is at the root of the disciplinary divisions in IR. AHumean discourse of causation a set of assumptions deeply embedded in modernphilosophy has, it is argued, deeply informed most IR theorists engagements withcausation. Theimplicit influence of Humean assumptions has brought with it manyprejudiceswith regard to theway in which causesarediscussed in IR. Thus, it is oftenassumed that causes or causal analyses imply determinism, laws and objectivism. I tis also assumed that causes refer to pushing and pulling forces.

It is suggested herethat weneed not conceptualisecausation accordingto Humeanassumptions: we can, in fact, think of causation as a common-sensical intuitivenotion with a multiplicity of different meanings, none of which entail laws ordeterminism. We can also understand social scientific causal analysis as epistemicallyreflective, methodologically pluralist and complexity-sensitive. It is seen that if wedraw on philosophies of causation with much richer and broader understandings ofthe notion of cause we can start doing away with the prejudices that the Humeandiscourse of causation has promulgated in IR. If the concept of cause is reconcep-tualised on the lines suggested here, it emerges that, not only is the empiricist formof causal analysis that dominatesin IR problematic asa model of causal analysis, butalso that causal analysis in thewider reconceptualised senseis, in fact, somethingthatall IR theorists, includingconstitutivetheorists, engagein. It is argued, then, that thedeeper and broader conception of causal analysis advanced here can, not onlyimprove causal analysis in IR, but also help forge constructive links betweentheoretical camps in the divided discipline of IR.

Thereconceptualisation of causation is advanced in fivesections. To contextualisethe discussion, the first section will trace how theHumean philosophy of causationhas cometo influencethemodern philosophy of scienceand social science. Thefocuswill then shift to the examination of Humean assumptions in IR debates oncausation. Then, the concept of cause will be reconceptualised in two interrelatedsections. First, it is argued that we need to challenge the influence of Humeanismthrough adopting a philosophically realistdeeper conception of cause. The sectionthat follows argues that this move needs to beextended through thedevelopment ofa broadermeaningfor theconcept of cause. It is suggested that IR theorising returnsto the insights of theAristotelian conception of causation. The reconfigured deeperand broader model of causal analysis has many metatheoretical, theoretical andmethodological implications for IR theorising and the disciplinary debates. Thesewill be reflected on in the final section.

5 There has been a tendency to see these approaches as mutually exclusive, incommensurable accountsas Hollis and Smith portrayed them. Hollis and Smith,Explaining and Understanding, pp. 196216.

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Thedominanceof Humeanismand thedeclineof causation

The concept of cause has been one of the central but also one of the mostcontroversial concepts in thehistory of philosophy and science. However, during thelast three hundred years a particular set of assumptions, arising from the empiricist

philosophy of David Hume, have come to dominate the way in which causes andcausal analysis havebeen understood. In order to gain a deeper understanding of IRdebates on causation, it is important to grasp thenature of theH umean legacy inmodern philosophy and science.

The rise of Humeanism: the narrowing down and emptying out of the notion of cause

In ancient Greek philosophy, which first formulated theconcept of cause, thenotion

referred to that which brought something about or contributed in any way to theexistence of objects, or to change in or between them. It was accepted that nothingin the world comes from nothing and that the notion ofaition(cause) provided anopen metaphor that referred to thoseforcesthat werebehind other things. Therearetwo aspects that are worth highlighting with regard to these early understandings ofcausation.

First, for classical ancient thinkers, notably Aristotle, causes were understood asontologically real. Although theconcept of causewas seen asa man-made conceptdesigned to help us to understand why the world works as it does, this conceptwas conceived to have an ontological reference point in the real causal powers of

nature.6 Second, the conception of causein ancient philosophy was plural. Aristotle,with his four causes account, recognised four main typesof causes: material, formal,final and efficient causes.7 M aterial and formal causes referred to the role of matterand ideas in shaping reality, efficient causes to pushing and pulling movingcauses, and final causes to ends or purposes as causes. Crucially, thesedifferent typesof causes which we will examinein moredetail in the fourth section were seen asinterlinked: any causal analysis would haveto understand, not only different types ofcauses on their own, but also their complex interplay in concrete situations.

Interestingly, in modern philosophy the Aristotelian ontologically grounded andbroad conception of cause has been sidelined in favour of a very different under-

standing of causation. During the sixteenth century important shifts took place intheorisingcausation.8Descartes initiated a narrowing down of theconcept of causeby concentrating on the mechanical meaning of the term cause: the notion ofefficient cause.9 Descartes rejected as vague and unsubstantiated thewider material,formal and final causemeanings of thenotion of causeand cameto seecausesstrictly

6 For descriptions of early accounts of cause, see for example R. J . Hankinson,Cause andExplanation in Ancient Greek Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); J onathan L ear, Aristotle;the Desire to Understand(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

7 Aristotle,Metaphysics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), p. 115.8

For an account of the historical changes in the concept of cause in the modern period see W.A.Wallace,Causality and Scientific Explanation, vol. I (Ann Arbor, M I: University of M ichigan, 1972),and K . Clatterbaugh, Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 16371739 (New Y ork, L ondon:Routledge, 1999).

9 Rene Descartes,Key Philosophical Writings (Ware: Wordsworth Classics of World L iterature, 1997).

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as pushing and pulling, so-called efficient, forces. He argued that, rather thanattributing objects unobservable occult qualities (material, formal or final causalpowers), themost useful way to think of causeswas to tracethepushingandpullingrelations between things.10

Having concurred with the Cartesian narrowing down of the meaning of

the concept of cause, David Humes eighteenth century philosophy initiated theemptying out of the notion. Hume advanced a radical empiricist critique ofmetaphysics according to which, in the search for reliable knowledge, humanperceptionsshould takeprecedenceover any speculation about thenatureof reality.Through focusingtheacquisition of knowledgeon theobservable, Humesempiricismsought to challenge the ontological reality of causes. Hume had a profounddisagreement with all the philosophers before him who tried to define causes as(ontologically) naturally necessary. He rejected all efforts to define causes on thebasis of efficacy, agency, power, force, energy, necessity, connexion, and productivequality.11Humecontended that all wecan say about causation must bebased on ourexperiences of theempirical world. This led Humeto theconclusion that, sincethereis nothing that can be observed directly about causal connections, we cannotattribute causal relations any reality beyond our observations.

The notion of cause, for Hume, arose simply from human observations ofconstant conjunctions of events. He argued that when regular successions of typesof events have been observed, the mind through custom comes to associate theseevents in such a way as to createtheillusionary belief in a causal connection. Whenwe haveobserved that billiard ball B has regularly moved after ball A has hit it, wecan say that A is the cause of Bs movement. T here is nothing more to the causalconnection between these objects, however, or wecannot say whether there is, sincewehaveno observational evidenceof deeper causal connections. It follows that forHume [causal] necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects. . . ornecessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes toeffects and from effects to causes, according to their experiencd union.12

Humes influential solution to the problem of causation entails certain importantassumptionsthat need to bedrawn out. TheHumean philosophy of causation, whichhas been deeply entwined with the empiricist tradition in modern philosophy, hasentailed the following assumptions.

1. Causal relations are tied to regularities and causal analysis to finding associations

between patterns of regularities.2. Causal relations are regularity relations of patterns ofobservables. As empiricism

dictatesthat only observableevents/thingscan bethebasis of knowledge, causalityhas been reduced to a relation of observables.

3. Causal relations are seen as regularity-deterministic.13 M ost Humeans haveassumed that, given certain regularities have been observed in the past, we canmake when A , then B statements about the relations of certain types of events(given regularities we can assume the existence of closed systems).

10

E. Chavez-Arvizo, I ntroduction, in Descartes,Key Philosophical Writings, p. ix.11 David Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 157.12 Hume,Treatise, pp. 1656.13 The term regularity-determinism was coined by Roy Bhaskar. R oy Bhaskar,A Realist Theory of

Science (Hassocks: H arvester Press, 1978), p. 69.

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4. Beyond thesestrictly empiricist assumptions, it has also been assumed that causesrefer to moving causes that push and pull, that is, so-called efficient causes.

These assumptions are referred to here as Humean assumptions. It will be seen thatthey underlie many contemporary engagements with causation in philosophy of

science, social science and IR, even if often unsystematically or inadvertently.

Humes legacy in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of social science

The most influential advocates of Humeanism in twentieth century philosophy ofscience can be found within the so-called positivist tradition. Indeed, at thebeginning of the twentieth century the so-called logical positivists transformed theHumean premisesinto a philosophy of sciencegeared around thenotion of laws. By

basing science on theanalysis of laws (based on observed event regularities), it wasbelieved that science could get rid of all metaphysical speculation.14 Poppers andHempels later deductive-nomological (DN-) model explanation followed the sameHumean line of thought: although falsification and deductive methods were priori-tised over verification and inductive methods, the basis of scientific theories wasconceived to lie in generalised patterns of observables. Without generalisations toback it up a causal account wasseen asunscientificand asmerespeculation.15 Indeed,in the course of the twentieth century causal explanation has become closely tiedup with analysis of general laws: science has come to be understood to be aboutfinding falsifiable, predictive, observation-based regularities, or generalisations.

Interestingly, Humean assumptions have become so widely accepted that they havebeen increasingly taken for granted in most philosophy of science debates.16

It is important to notethat Humean assumptionshavebeen dominant, not just inthe natural sciences, but also in the social sciences. The Humean assumptions weregiven first truly systematic guiseby thebehaviourist social scientists: causal analysisin thesocial sciences becameequated with looking for associations amongst patternsof observed behaviour.17 Since the 1960s many social scientists have criticised thestrict regularity assumptions and quantitative methods of the 1960s behaviourists.Y et, arguably the key assumptions of Humeanism still hold sway in many socialsciences through the influence of so-called post-behaviourist positivism. Social

14 Humean assumptions were accepted, however, with a distinct anti-causal twist. Logical positivistsargued that since we can only legitimately talk of regularities of events, we should refrain fromusing causal terminology. Instead, they talked of functionally determinate relations between laws.See, for example, A. J . Ayer, Logical Positivism (Glencoe, IL : The Free Press, 1959), R. Carnap,L ogical Foundations of Probability (London: Routledge & K egan Paul, 1950).

15 K .R. Popper,The Logic of Scientific Discovery (L ondon: H utchinson of L ondon, 1959), C. G.Hempel (ed.), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New

Y ork: F ree Press, 1965).16 The influential growth of knowledge debates on philosophy of science were, for example, implicitly

underpinned by Humean assumptions. Although thelogical positivist and Popperian models ofscientific progress havecome under criticism from philosophers such as Thomas K uhn, I mre

L akatos and Paul Feyerabend, these attacks havenot challenged theHumean notion of causeembedded in these accounts of scientific progress.17 For a classical logical positivist/behaviourist view of social sciences see M arie Neurath and Robert

S. Cohen (eds.), Otto Neurath: Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. ReidelPublishing, 1973).

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scientists now accept thelegitimacy of qualitativemethods and data, yet most socialscientists are still adamant that only careful observation of regularities (even if oflocalised regularities) can give us an adequate understanding of human action andsociety.18

Of course, the hermeneutic tradition in the social sciences disagrees with both

behaviourist and post-behaviourist forms of positivism and argues that meredescription of patternsof behaviour explainsnothingabout why peopledo what theydo: what weshould do is analyse morecarefully how people cometo understand themeaning of social situations. Causal descriptions of the social world have beenrejected by thehermeneutic theorists as invalid in the interpretiveunderstanding ofsubjects. Social science, as Peter Winch famously argued, is about studying thereasons, not causes, of actions.19Theinternal relations between meanings, rules,reasons and actions, it is argued, cannot betreated in the same way as the externalrelations of events. It follows that social relations do not lend themselves togeneralisation and prediction in the same way as the relations that the naturalsciences study.20 Assessing human behaviour from the point of view of generalpatterns of behaviour misses out the crucial role that rules and reasons play inconstituting the meaningful context of social action.

Thedisagreements over the legitimacy of the notion of cause have given rise to asharp dichotomisation of reasons and causes, understanding and explaining, as wellas causal and constitutive forms of inquiry in the social sciences. However, it iscrucial to noticethat thehermeneutic rule-followingaccounts of thesocial world arealso based on a Humean understanding of causation. Rejecting a causal approach tothe social world has been relatively easy for these theorists because they haveuncritically accepted the positivist Humean understanding of causation as charac-teristic of causal analysis. Winch, for example, rejects causes becauseassumptions oflawfulness and when A, then B (regularity-determinism, efficient causation) do notseemto apply in thesocial world.21 Indeed, oneof thekey problemsin thephilosophyof social sciencesis that, becauseof the(often inadvertent) acceptanceof theHumeanassumptions as the baseline for evaluating causal approaches, there has been littleengagement with alternative ways of thinking about causation. As we will see, thediscipline of IR has reproduced these problems by drawing on the terms of debatebetween positivist and interpretive approaches to justify the present divideddisciplinary self-image.

Humeanismin International Relations theory

Thegoal of this section is, first, to identify theHumean assumptions operating withincontemporary IR theory. Humean assumptions, it is seen, characterisemost contem-porary IR theorists understandings of causation. However, it is also recognised that

18 C. Frankfort-Nachmias and D. N achmias,Research Methods in the Social Sciences (London:

Edward Arnold, 1992); K ing, K eohane and Verba,Designing Social Inquiry.19 Peter Winch,The Idea of Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: R outledge, 1990).20 Charles Taylor,Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),

p. 56.21 Winch, Idea of Social Science, p. xii.

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even when Humeanassumptionsareaccepted, morecommon-sensical non-H umeancausal terminology can be detected in IR theorising. The latter sections will seek toclarify the meaning of theimplicit non-Humean causal language through openingup thenotion of cause.

Humeanism and scientific causal analysis in IR

Arguably, a particular kind of orthodoxy has dominated the way in which causalanalysis has been thought about in contemporary IR theory: orthodoxy defined bythe advocates of a positivist, or as some term it, an empiricist, model of socialscience.22 It is argued here that the positivist/empiricist mainstream in IR is deeplyinformed by Humean assumptions, even though it does not necessarily advocateHumeanism in the hard form (exemplified by themore behaviourist approaches).23

It is seen that the acceptance of Humeanism creates some problems and inconsist-

encies in the mainstream approaches to causal analysis in IR.To understand how Humeanism functions in IR at present, K ing, K eohane and

Verbas methodological thesis Designing Social Inquiry will be examined here. Thisbook has not only outlined the premises of social scientific causal analysis in anadmirably systematic manner, but has also becomevery influential as a guidinglightof causal analysis in political science and IR. Indeed, most IR theorists andresearchers in the American mainstream seek to follow precepts for causal analysisthat arein linewith K ing, K eohaneand Verba: not simply therationalist neorealistand neoliberal theorists that have used an empiricist framework for some time, butalso researchers driven by more historical interests.24

K ing, K eohane and Verba attempted to bring cohesion and order into socialscientificinquiry by outlininghow weshould conduct valid causal analysis. Causalityfor K ing, K eohaneand Verba is measured in terms of the causal effect exerted byan explanatory variable on a dependent variable. They propose that wemeasurecausal effect as the difference between the systematic component of observationsmadewhen an explanatory variabletakes onevalueand thesystematic component of

22 Positivism is understood here to refer to those approaches that (1) believein a scientific methodthat is applicable across sciences and hence (2) assume naturalism, (3) empiricism, (4) believe invalue-neutrality of scientific method and (5) emphasise the importanceof instrumental (predictive)knowledge. Gerard Delanty,Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism, Concepts in Social

Sciences (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), p. 12. Empiricism is more narrowly anepistemological approach to theconstruction of knowledge (through empirical observation).However, empiricist epistemology is understood to be a crucial ingredient of a positivist approach toscience.

23 Examples of the harder Humean approach can be seen advocated explicitly in American journals,such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution. M any democratic peace theorists can be seen as examplesof hard Humeanism because of their statistical approach. See, for example, Z. M aoz and B. Russett,N ormative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace19461986,American Political ScienceReview, 87:3 (1993), pp. 62438; R . I . Rummel, Democracies Are L ess Warlike Than OtherRegimes, European Journal of International Relations, 1:4 (1995), pp. 45779; Russett,Grasping theDemocratic Peace; Principles of Post-Cold War World(Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press,1993).

24 The neo-neo contenders share a common, arguably, empiricist conception of science as highlighted

by Baldwin. D. A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (NewY ork: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 9. This conception is arguably largely compatible withK ing, K eohaneand Verbas precepts. For an application of K ing, K eohaneand Verba in a morehistorical inquiry see, for example, Randall L . Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and HitlersStrategy of World Conquest (New Y ork: Columbia University Press, 1998).

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comparable observations when theexplanatory variable takes on another value.25 Inother words, when weassess causal relations wemeasuretheaverageeffect that thechanging value of an explanatory variable has for the dependent variable. K ing,K eohane and Verba acknowledge that we can never completely securely rerunexplanatory variables against dependent variables (as if in controlled experiments)

but argue that through a careful observation of some central rules of causalinference falsifiability, consistency, careful selection of dependent variables, max-imisation of concreteness and of encompassing qualities of theories26 we canminimise disturbances in causal explanations of the social world. Importantly,K ing, K eohaneand Verbaarguethat therules and logic of causal inferencethat theyadvance apply equally to quantitative and qualitative inferences.

K ing, K eohane and Verbas model of causal analysis is steeped in Humeanassumptions, although this might not beimmediately obvious. First, causal relationsare seen as relations between observables or patterns of observables. Importantly,K ing, K eohaneand Verbawarn against utilisingconcepts that cannot beempiricallyoperationalised in testing of theories. This raises the question; what is the nature ofthe causal relation for K ing, K eohaneand Verba? These authors do not talk aboutreal (ontological) relations between things: causality for them is an epistemologicalconcept, and relations between observables (events, things) logically, rather thannaturally, necessitating relations.

As for the key Humean assumption of regularity, although strict behaviouristrequirements of quantifiability have been left behind, K ing, K eohane and Verbasaccount still works on the basis of the expectation that the qualitativevariables willbeexpressed in quantifiableterms. Also, it is argued that thelarger thesamples, evenin qualitative inquiries, the better the reliability of the inquiry.27 Further, generali-sation is prioritised over the particular: too much concentration on the complex andthe unique, it is argued, dampens theefficiency of the explanation, and accountingfor too many contributory factors lowers the mean causal effect of the keyvariable.28 Importantly, while K ing, K eohane and Verba acknowledge that socialscientists can, and sometimes do, concentrate their study on the so-called causalmechanisms of social life, it is argued that accounts of causal mechanisms mustalways be premised on the identification of appropriate empirical variables.29

The wide acceptance of K ing, K eohane and Verbas understanding of causalanalysis in the mainstream of IR, and hence the reproduction of Humean assump-tionsin thediscipline, hasthreeimportant implicationsthat must bedrawn out. First,the acceptance of Humean causal analysis has led to an empiricist form of causalanalysis being advocated as thenorm. M ethodologically, this has entailed a certaindegreeof rigidity: K ing, K eohaneand Verbas conception of causal analysis does notallow for a multiplicityof different typesof evidenceto beappreciated. Qualitativeorhistorical data, for example, are not evaluated on their own terms but are made toconform to the regularity criteria. On the other hand, methods such as discourseanalysis are sidelined as they cannot be bent to fit in with the empiricist regularity-driven assumptions. Besidesgeneratinga rather methodologically rigid conception of

25

K ing, K eohaneand Verba,Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 812.26 Ibid., pp. 99114.27 Ibid., pp. 20830.28 Ibid., pp. 104, 1823.29 Ibid., p. 86.

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causal analysis, the empiricist criteria for scientific causal analysis put forward byK ing, K eohaneand Verba also imply the epistemological superiority of this form ofgaining knowledge, an assumption that has been strongly criticised by manypost-positivists and one that is, indeed, far from straightforward.

M oreover, Humeanism has also entailed adoption of particular ontological

assumptions. The mainstream empiricists have often not been able to focus onexplaining why event-regularities come about. Crucially, because explanation isconceived to take place through the analysis of the logical relations of observablevariables, these theorists havenot been very interested in forming understandings ofthedeep ontological structures, processes and conditions(theunderlying unobserv-able causal powers), which would provide so-called depth explanations of thepatterns of observables identified. Thus, empiricist explanations of, for example,democratic peace have mostly been focused on the analysis of the observableindependent variables and their logical relations (given patterns in quantitative orqualitative data), rather than on conceptualising the complex deep ontologicalsocial relations that underlie the empirically observed sets of variables.30 Also, as aresult of prioritisingobservability, theempiricists social ontologieshavetended to beatomistic, that is geared around methodological individualism.31

Third, it is also important to notethat thereis something of a paradox within theempiricist approaches. While the empiricists claim that causation can only betalkedof when strict epistemological and methodological rules of the positivist model ofscience are employed, causal language in a much more (for want of a better word)common-sensical manner can also bedetected in most mainstreamcausal analyses.Indeed, if we start paying attention to causal terminology in a wider everydaysense to words such as because, leads to, produces, makes, enables andconstrains we can see that a great deal of broader (but only implicitly causal)terminology is at work in empiricist IR theorising. Although valid causal theorisingis seen as that backed up by observed regularities, IR theorists also make morecommon-sensical assumptions about the productive connections between things.It is seen in the latter part of this article that these common-sensical causalstatements demonstrate that causal analysis in a deeper non-Humean sense ispossible and infiltrates even theHumean frameworks. In this sense, the mainstreamscientific accounts of causal relations are not necessarily the final word oncausation, nor necessarily as internally consistent as is often thought.

Constitutive theorists: another case of Humeanism

The constitutive, sometimes also called reflectivist, theorists in IR are, as opposedto mainstream scientific causal analysts, wary of causal terminology. Causal

30 Especially evident in M aoz and Russett, N ormativeand Structural Causes, pp. 62438.31 Waltzs work, for example, is geared around methodologically individualism and, also, closed

system regularity-deterministic logic. Regularity of war is logically deduced from assumptions about

structure premised on an individualistic understanding of states as actors. K enneth Waltz,Theoryof International Politics (L ondon: M cGraw-Hill, 1979). F or an excellent critique of Waltzsindividualism see Alexander Wendt, A gent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory,International Organization, 41:3, (1987), pp. 33570, Alexander Wendt, A narchy Is What StatesM ake of It,International Organization, 46:2 (1992), pp. 391425.

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descriptionsare seen as problematic by thesetheorists becausecauses, for them, tendto imply deterministic and materialistic explanations. These theorists like to conductconstitutive theorising and research instead. The term constitutive has a range ofmeanings. It is argued, for example, that ideas constitute the meaning of materialforces. Others see rules, norms and discourses as sets of constitutive forces in that

they provide theconstitutive framework within which human actors think and act.Beyond this, it is also accepted by many constitutive theorists that our theoriesabout the world do not simply reflect the world but are also constitutive of socialreality. By opening up this new way of talking about thesocial world theconstitutivetheorists have opened up new important avenues of inquiry in IR. However, it isimportant to note that causation is rejected by these theorists on curious grounds.Reflectivists tend to favour constitutive descriptions over causal ones because theytend to associatecausal analysis with theempiricist Humean view of social inquiry.

When critical theorists, for example, refer to causes they do so only whencriticising positivist causal analysis. Robert Cox, for example, argues that theconcept of cause is applicable strictly to the positivist framework and that hishistorical explanation cannot be equated with causal explanation since causalexplanation cannot capturethecomplexity of thesocial world as thehistorical modeof analysis can.32 Causal analysis is associated with the ahistorical neorealistframeworks and the scientific claims of objectivity of the mainstream. Causalanalysis, then, is understood in accordance with Humean assumptions and, as aresult, rejected altogether.

However, as wewill see, weshould resist thesimpleconclusion that Coxs accountis void of causal concerns. It should be kept in mind that Coxs account of worldpolitics seems to be based on careful outlining of forces material, ideational andinstitutional that produce and shape the world order and agents actions withinit. However, Cox describes the layered and interacting structural forces, not ascauses, but aspressures and constraints.33 It could beargued that to theextent thatthis terminology implies a productive meaning, and is drawn upon to explain whythings happen in certain waysrather than others, Cox is making common-sensicallyor implicitly causal claims. However, because Cox associates causation with positiv-ism, he does not recognise his own implicit interest in causal forces that shape theworld.

Poststructuralists also harbour a deep dislike of causation. On the basis of thepoststructuralist critique of knowledge, J enny Edkins, for example, argues that thenotions of cause and effect are untenable.34 M oreover, she argues that looking forcauses has resulted in inadequate responses in thedealing with particular problemsin world politicsand, hence, talk of causes should beavoided for practical reasons aswell as philosophical ones.

Processes of technologization and depoliticization can be seen in international politics itself,as well as in the discipline that studies it. One example of this is found in responses tofamines, humanitarian crises, or complex political emergencies. Agencies and governmentsoutside the crisis area do not take account of the political processes that are under way, of

32

Robert Cox, R ealism, Positivism and Historicism, in Robert Cox and Timothy Sinclair (eds.),Approaches to World Order (N ew Y ork: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 51.33 Cox, Social forces, states, and world orders, in Cox and Sinclair (eds.),Approaches, p. 98.34 J enny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In(London:

L ynne Rienner, 1999), p. 15.

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which the crisis is a symptom. Instead, they rely on interventions derived from abstract,technical analysis of the situation, one that looks for causes, not political reasons ormotivations.35

While Edkins voices a fair criticism of some political science approaches tohumanitarian emergencies, her statement gives an unfair portrayal of the notion of

cause. Causal analyses can, of course, have adverse consequences for the way inwhich concrete problems are dealt with. However, it must be noted that Edkinssassessment itself depends on an implicitly causal understanding of the situation:presumably the political processes of which the crisis is a symptom, and thecontextual political reasons or motivations, arein fact the(real) causes that shouldbe addressed in order to deal with the situation. Because of her seemingly positivistunderstanding of causation, Edkins rejects the concept too swiftly and, thereby,ignores her own implicit causal claims.

The same paradox characterises David Campbells work. In Writing SecurityCampbell declares that theinterpretiveposition heassociates himself with is opposedto cataloging, calculating and specifying the real causes ;36 instead, Campbellmaintains that his poststructuralist theory aims to inquire into the politicalconsequences of adopting one mode of representation over another.37 Whileappearing anti-causal, his statement evidences an implicit causal commitment:representations matter precisely because they produce certain consequences. Thisunderstanding of representations and discourses can beseen as causal, even if not ina when A, then B manner.38 Because Campbell, as other reflectivists, associatescausation with themainstream Humeanismin IR, hedoes not recognisetheimplicitcausal claims in his own work.

Constructivist oscillation

Constructivists have not rejected the notion of cause as readily as many criticaltheoristsand poststructuralists. Thereis a tendency in constructivist work to oscillatebetween reasons and causes accounts, and between causal and constitutivetheorising. However, the terms causal and constitutive seem to lack coherentmeaning for many constructivists.

Nicholas Onuf provides a good example. Onuf thinks there is something to the

notion of cause, but he also wants to resist accounting for social action in merelycausal terms. Onuf wants to give a special meaning to the intentionality, rules andconstitution of the social world that cannot, for him, be understood through acausal approach.39 However, neither the concept of causation, nor the notion of

35 Edkins,Poststructuralism, p. 910.36 Campbell, Writing Security, p. 4.37 Ibid., p. 4.38 In National Deconstruction, for example, Campbell argues that the ontopology of binding together

of territoriality, statism and mono-culturalism in Western liberal discourses has had some crucialimplications on how the West viewed and dealt with the situation in Bosnia. David Campbell,

National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (L ondon: U niversity of M innesotaPress, 1998).39 See his discussion of Bhaskars reasons as causes account. Nicholas Onuf,World of Our Making:

Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, CA : U niversity of SouthernCalifornia Press, 1989), p. 49.

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constitution, are clearly defined and causal concerns, in the end, largely drop offtheagenda as thenotion of constitutiverules is given priority in analysinghow rules andnorms work.

Similar trends can be detected in the work of other constructivists such asFriedrich K ratochwil. K ratochwil attacks the mono-causal neorealist theorising

and its inappropriate concept of causality.40 However, despite his rejection ofoutright Humeanism, what alternative assumptions about causation entail remainsunclear and, as a result, causation, again, disappears from the theoretical agenda.Norms, for example, arenot seen as causal but rather as constitutive.41Ruggie, too,despite recognising ideational causation, continually contrasts causal explanationswith the so-called constitutive non-causal explanations.42 Y et, it remains unclearwhat he finds causal about causal explanations and non-causal about constitutiveexplanations.

While they do not reject the concept of cause outright, these constructivistsarguably continue to attach certain deterministic and materialistic connotations tothe notion of cause and, as a result, remain unclear about its role in their ownexplanations. Oneof theonly openly constructivist theorists to take steps towards aclearer understanding of causation has been Alexander Wendt, whoseeffortsto builda deeper account of cause will be discussed in the next section.

The failure of many IR theorists empiricist, reflectivist and constructivist togiveadequateemphasis to theconceptualisation of thenotion of causehas had somecrucial effects on the discipline of IR. Crucially, the Humean discourse of causationhas had an overwhelmingly influential role in directing theassumptions attached tothe notion of cause. Thewide acceptance of Humean assumptions on causation hasled to theempiricist form of causal analysis being treated as theonly acceptableformof causal inquiry in the discipline. This, in turn, has resulted in the dichotomisationof scientific causal and reflectivist constitutive (non-causal) approaches in IR. A stheempiricist scientists haveinsisted on theneed for systematic causal analysis asdefined by them (on Humean terms), the post-positivist constitutive theorists haverejected the validity of causal analysis altogether in an effort to avoid being forcedinto a straightjacket conception of how to analysesocial affairs. Also, as a result ofthe acceptance of Humeanism, theorists have not given adequate attention to themanycommon-sensical assumptionsat work in their theorising. It is argued herethatthesecommon-sensical assumptions reveal that causation can, and in fact should, bethought of in a much deeper andbroader way than is recognised bythecontemporarycausal or non-causal theorists.

In order to solve the tensions and confusions that contemporary IR, with itsHumean framingof causation, is wedded to wemust rethink and open up theconceptof cause altogether. Thenext section argues that we should accept thedeeper notion

40 R. K oslowski and F. K ratochwil, Understanding Change in International Politics: The SovietEmpires Demiseand theInternational System, in T. Risse-K appen et al. (eds.),InternationalRelations Theory and the End of the Cold War (New Y ork: Columbia University Press, 1995),p. 136. See also F. K ratochwil, Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendts Social Theory ofInternational Politics and the Constructivist Challenge,Millennium, 29 (2000), pp. 73101.

41

K oslowski and K ratochwil, U nderstanding Change, p. 137.42 J . G. Ruggie,Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Organization(London:Routledge, 1998), p. 34. See also J . G. R uggie, What M akes theWorld Hang Together? TheNeo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge, in K rasner et al. (eds.),Exploration andContestation in the Study of World Politics (Cambridge, M A: M IT Press, 1999), p. 229.

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of cause advocated by the philosophical realists. It is then argued that we must alsobroaden the notion of cause away from the pushing and pulling efficient causeconception of causation. By taking these two steps we can comprehensively avoidHumean assumptions and radically reconfigure causal analysis in IR.

Philosophical realismand a deeper conceptionof cause

This section argues that to escape from the problem-field that has plagued IRtheorists on all sides with regard to causal analysis, we need to first adopt a deeperontologically grounded conception of causation advanced in the philosophy ofscience, and in IR, by theso-called philosophical realists. Philosophical realists aimto put forward a new ontological framework for thinking about the objects ofscience, which in turn necessitates a reconfiguration of the epistemological and

methodological parameters of scientific causal analysis. The philosophically realistliterature has already been drawn on in IR by certain key figures such as AlexanderWendt, David Dessler, Heikki Patomaki and Colin Wight. This section seeks toexplicate why the philosophically realist turn is important in redirecting causalanalysis, while also pointing out why we need to go beyond the deepening of themeaning of causation.

Towards a deeper conception of cause

The turn towards philosophical realism has been an important development in therecent philosophy of science. It has had wide ranging implications within thephilosophy of science, social science and IR. This is because philosophical realismaims to, and by and large succeeds, in solving a number of seemingly intractableproblems and debates in modern philosophy and social science.

What does philosophical realism as a general philosophy of science contribute toour understanding of causation? First, philosophical realism has been important inthat it has allowed usto reclaiman ontological conception of causation that has beenlost for three hundred years or so. Realist philosophies of science and social science

have had as their aim the refocusing of debates in the contemporary philosophy ofscience and social science on ontological questions.43 As a result, the philosophicalrealists, importantly, advance a radically anti-Humean ontological understanding ofcausation: causes, the realists argue, can be, or indeed, must be assumed to exist asreal ontological entities, that is, they are not mere creations of our imagination, buthave real existence in the world outside our thought and observations.44 Causalanalysis, then, is about analysing causes out there (outside what we think orobserve), an assumption rejected by both Humean empiricists and many reflectivistsceptics.

43 Notethat philosophical realism should not be equated with theIR tradition of realism, which beingbased on empiricist assumptions in many cases is, in fact, largely anti-realist.

44 Rom Harre and Edward H. M adden,Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Oxford:Blackwell, 1975).

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Second, in reclaiming the ontological meaning of the concept of cause, thephilosophically realist conception of cause allows us to transcend the regularity-dependence of Humeanism. For philosophical realists, regularities, althoughaccepted as possibly indicative of underlying causal structures, are deemed neithernecessary nor sufficient for establishing a causal explanation.45 To grasp the real

underlying causes (why something happens), realists argue, weneed knowledgebasedon various types of evidence and, importantly, a conceptual framework that allowsusto conceptualisethereal (ontological) unobservablecausal powers that are behindobservableevents(or regularities of events). Thus, whileobserved regularities arenotthrown away altogether, they aregiven a radically different rolein this non-Humeanapproach to causal analysis: they are only one form of data amongst many and inthemselves cannot provide scientifically objective causal analysis.

Third, philosophical realists also challenge the regularity-determinism of theHumean empiricist model of causation. The realists emphasise that causes existoutside closed systems and that the world, in fact, consists of open systems, wheremultiple causes interact and counteract each other in complex and, importantly,unpredictable ways. Thus, the central focus of causal analysis is not the analysis ofisolated independent variables (through statistical methods), but rather understand-ing the complex interaction of a variety of different kinds of causal factors (throughthe building of conceptual frameworks).

Furthermore, causation is defined much more openly, or common-sensically, bythe philosophical realists. Causes are defined rather loosely as all those things thatbring about, produce, direct or contributeto states of affairs or changes in theworld.This allows us to reclaim the diverse pragmatic causal language in common use andreflects theubiquity of causal analysis in our everyday lives. Causal analysis, then, isnot something that is uniquely abstract and scientific: rather scientific causalanalysis is a refinement and extension of what we do in the practical functioning ofeveryday life.46

These philosophically realist arguments have important implications for theanalysis of thesocial world. Philosophical realists who concentrate on social inquiry(often called critical realists)47 reject the terms of debate in much of the philosophyof social science by arguing that the philosophy of social science has been deeplyinformed by a misleading positivist stance on science.

Thecritical realists, in line with the general philosophically realist critiques, rejectthe applicability of empiricist observation based scientific inquiry and the closedsystem model of explanation. As a result, they aim to reconfigure radicallyphilosophy of social science debates away from thepositivist vs. hermeneutic theorydichotomy. Notably, the reasons vs. causes debate is reconfigured by the criticalrealists. Thecritical realistsarguethat, when wedisentangle thenotion of causefromtheHumean regularity-deterministic model of causation, wecan accept that reasonsare, in fact, a type of cause. Critical realists argue that just because humans areintentional, meaningful and human action reasoned this does not mean that our

45

Roy Bhaskar,A Realist Theory of Science (Hassocks: H arvester Press, 1978), p. 12.46 J . L opez and G. Potter, After Postmodernism: T he M illennium, in J . L opez and G. Potter (eds.),After Postmodernism: an Introduction to Critical Realism(London: Athlore Press, 2001), p. 9.

47 Short for realist critical naturalism R oy Bhaskar,Possibility of Naturalism: A Critique of theContemporary Human Sciences, 3rd edn. (L ondon: R outledge, 1998), p. 28.

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actions, and the rules and reasons that inform our actions are non-causal (oruncaused) .48On thecontrary ideas, meanings and reasonsareimportant in thesocialworld precisely because they are causal.49

It follows that interpretive methods, far from being anti-causal or non-scientific,areseen asnecessary in order to conduct social scientific causal analysis: hermeneutic,

historical and qualitative methods are seen as fundamentally important in gettingto grips with the complex nature of social relations. Critical realists advance amethodologically pluralist approach to social science accepting the validity of bothextensive statistical methods and intensive qualitativeand interpretivemethods.50

Critical realists also avoid the epistemologically objectivist tendencies of theempiricists. Although realists accept that the world is characterised by ontologicallyreal things and processes, they accept that in coming to know those forces, we willalways be inevitably informed by the social and political context that we inhabit.Indeed, all knowledge about the world is deeply constrained and enabled by thelinguistic conventions, conceptual systems and the social-political backgrounds thatweknow within. Thismeansthat scienceis never purely objective. However, scienceis not relativistic either because our knowledge is always of something, that is, ouraccounts of the world are not merely imagined but make projections about reallyexisting ontological objects, relations and processes.51

Philosophical and critical realism allow us to deeply challenge the dominance ofthe traditional positivist model of science, and the taken-for-granted nature of theHumean model of causal analysis attached to it. They introduce a new ontologicalapproach to causal analysis and, in so doing, transcend the epistemological andmethodological deadlocks between thetraditional contenders in thesocial sciences.

Theadvancement of realist ideas in IR has been very important in redirecting IRtheory. The works of Wendt, Dessler, Patomaki and Wight haveopened importantnew theoretical and empirical avenues in IR.52 Wendt has demonstrated that thephilosophically realist logic can be used to bridge the gap between rationalist andreflectivist theorising in IR, while Dessler has demonstrated that philosophicalrealism directs us towards more integrative analysis of world political processes.Patomaki and Wight, on theother hand, havedemonstrated thedeep embeddednessof IR theoretical approaches in an anti-realist problem-field that has weakenedIR theorising ontologically, epistemologically and methodologically. Notably, allthese theorists have challenged the taken-for-granted conception of science in IRand, hence, have directed IR theorisations towards more ontologically andepistemologically reflective and methodologically pluralist frameworks.

These theorists have also made important contributions in rethinking causation:Wendt and Dessler have emphasised the analysis of causal mechanisms over

48 Paul L ewis, A gency, Structureand Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon,Politics,22:1 (2002), pp. 1723.

49 Andrew Sayer, Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach (L ondon: R outledge, 1992), p. 111.50 See, for example, Sayer, Method in Social Science.51 Heikki Patomki,After International Relations; Critical Realism and the (Re)Construction of World

Politics(L ondon: Routledge, 2002), p. 79.52

See, for example, Heikki Patomki and Colin Wight, A fter Post-Positivism? The Promises ofCritical Realism, International Studies Quarterly, 44 (2000), pp. 21337; Patomki, AfterInternational Relations; Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New Y ork:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999); David Dessler, Beyond Correlations: Towards a Causal Theoryof War, International Studies Quarterly, 35:3 (1991), pp. 33755.

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regularities in analysing world politics, and haveraised concernsabout therigidity ofthe causal-constitutive theory dividein IR. Patomaki and Wight, on theother hand,haveargued for moremulti-causal inquiries through advancing thenotion of causalcomplex. However, more could be done to develop the philosophically realistconception of causation. Indeed, the next section will point out that we should go

beyond advocating deeper analysis of causation by coherently broadening out themeaning of causation. This provides the philosophically realist approaches with asharper focus in analysing the multiplicity of social causes.

Beyond the deeper conception of cause?

Whileprovidinga useful correctiveto thedominant positivist model of sciencein IR,and, hence, enablingtheopening up of new conceptual and methodological avenues,

the philosophically realist critiques have not gone far enough in challenging theHumean discourse of causation in philosophy of science, social science and in IR.This is because the philosophical realistsseem to have been unnecessarily wedded totheefficient causeunderstanding of causation. As will beseen, morecan and shouldbe done to open up systematically the meaning of the notion of cause beyond thepushing and pulling efficient cause metaphor.

When we examine the philosophically realist accounts more closely, we can seethat many of them retain a belief in a pushing and pulling understanding ofcausation, the so-called efficient cause understanding of causation. For example,Harre and M adden, the theorists behind the turn towards the study of ontological

causal powers, definecausation and causal powers squarely through the metaphorof efficient cause. Causation, for them, always involves a material particular whichproduces or generates something, that is, [powerful] particulars are to beconceivedascausal agents.53Thisfollows closely thepost-Cartesian assumption that, when wetalk about causes, we only talk about pushing and pulling causes: causation isdefined by the ability of objects to bring about change through agential action.Importantly, because they accept this assumption of causal powers as agentialmovers, Harreand M adden haveaccepted that in thesocial world theonly importantcausal force is the active human action by individuals.54

Some critical realists in Roy Bhaskars tradition have challenged this reduction of

social causality to activehuman action becausethis is perceived to lead to methodo-logical individualism. As a result, some Bhaskarian critical realists have started toopen up the meaning of the notion of cause away from the efficient cause connota-tions. First, these Bhaskarian critical realists have argued for a wider conception ofefficient cause, onethat encapsulates not only human action, but also ideas, rules andreasons: thesetoo cause states of affairs, although not necessarily in a when A, thenB manner.55 Second, however, the critical realists have also come to argue that theonly way in which wecan grasp thecausal natureof factorssuch as social structuresis by accepting that social structures do not necessarily push and pull, rather they

53 Harre and M adden,Causal Powers, p. 5.54 Paul L ewis, R ealism, Causality and theProblem of Social Structure,Journal for the Theory of

Social Behaviour, 30: 3 (2000), pp 2557.55 Bhaskar, Possibility of Naturalism, p. 89, Sayer, Method in Social Science, p. 111.

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constrain andenable. To conceptualisethesenon-pushingandpullingtypesof causesthe Bhaskarian critical realists have utilised the Aristotelian metaphor of materialcause. As Paul L ewis explains:

J ust as a sculptor fashions a product out of the raw materials and tools available to him, so

social actors produce their actions out of pre-existing social structure. L ike the medium inwhich the sculptor works, pre-existing social structure lacks the capacity to initiate activityand make things of its own accord social actors are the only efficient causes or primemovers in society but it does affect the course of events in the social world by influencingthe actions that people choose to undertake . . And by influencing the behaviour of socialactors, pre-existing social structure makes a difference to and hence exerts a (material)causal influence over social life.56

The opening up of the possibility that there might be other types of causes thanefficient causes in social life is important and promising. However, the broaderconception of causation has not been developed fully by the philosophical realists.The use of the Aristotelian material cause analogy, for example, is not adequately

developed as many would question the similarity of material and social structuralcauses. A lso, there is no explicit acceptance among the philosophical realists of thegeneral principle that when we talk about causation we are actually talking aboutmany different types of causes, nor real willingness to develop broader categorisa-tions of different types of causes. Thus, thedifferent ways in which ideas, discoursesand reasons, for example, cause are not examined but subsumed under the nowrather broad efficient cause heading. If there are different types of causes at work insocial life, why should we think only in terms of material and efficient causes? It isargued in the following section that it is, indeed, useful to draw on the Aristotelianaccount to develop a more pluralistic understanding of causation, but that this

broadening out should be done more consistently and holistically.Furthermore, theimplicationsof a wider conception of causeshould bedeveloped

in more detail in the IR theoretical context. While the followers of philosophicalrealism in IR have rethought causation on deeper lines, and have been sceptical ofmono-causal explanations, thesetheoristshavenot so far focused on drawing out theimplications of broadening out the notion of cause in IR context.

An interestingexception in this regard is Alexander Wendt who in hisrecent workhas shown interest in exploringthebroader conceptions of cause. Importantly, in hisarticle Why the World State is Inevitable, Alexander Wendt turned to theAristotelian notion of cause in order to elucidate a teleological logic for the

development of theworld state.57 While Wendt focused on developing the notion offinal cause, he also pointed out that parallels can be drawn between constitutiveanalyses in IR and theAristotelian causal categories.58Thus, Wendt has opened upthe possibility of broadening out the notion of cause for the purposes of IRtheorising. The following section seeks to take further Wendts reflections bysystematically exploring the import of the Aristotelian philosophy of causation forthe purposes of I R theorising.

56 L ewis, A gency, pp. 2021.57 Alexander Wendt, Why a World State is Inevitable, European Journal of International Relations,

9:4 (2003), pp. 491542.58 Wendt, Why A World State?, p. 495.

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Aristotle revisited: broadeningtheconcept of cause

Whilebeing theoldest and most famousaccount of causation, Aristotles philosophyof causation has been largely forgotten during thelast centuries. This section seeks toshow that if we revisit the broader Aristotelian logic of causal explanation we gain a

radically reconfigured understanding of causal analysis philosophically and for thepurposes of IR theorising. It is accepted here that, contrary to what Hume, theempiricists and even many philosophical realists assume, causation is not a single,monolithic concept59and, hence, causal analysis involves thecareful identification ofvarious different types of causes and understanding their complex interactions.

Aristotles four causes account

As was seen in the first section, the original meaning of the word cause, the Greekword aition, did not havea precisemeaning in thesensethat modern philosophy hastried to establish. An aition was anything that contributed in any way to theproducingor maintainingof a certain reality, or whatever onecould citeasan answerto a why-question.60 Crucially, for Aristotle, different causes material, formal,efficient and final cause in different ways. Aristotle saw efficient causes (by whichsomething is made) and final causes (for the sake of which something is made) asactive or extrinsic causes that cause by lending an influence or activity to theproducingof something. On theother hand, an intrinsic cause, for Aristotle, was thatwhich causes through constituting an object or thing.61 Within his framework of

four causes (constitutive causes of reality) could be thought to consist ofmaterialcauses (material out of which something is made) and formal causes (ideas orrelations according to which something is made). Aristotle saw the world as shapedthrough the complex interaction of all these different types of causal forces. Toexplain why any changeor thing has comeabout onewould need to refer to all thesedifferent categories of cause and the relations between them.

TheA ristotelian categoriesof thinking about themeaningof causationallow us toopen up themeaning of thenotion of causeand to explorethe plurality of meaningsof the concept, something that has been pushed aside since Descartes narrowingdown of the concept of cause. What do the categories mean and how can we use

them to understand thesocial world in better ways?Material causes, for Aristotle, were a fundamental part of any explanation in the

sense that all accounts of theworld would haveto refer to the matter out of whichthings come to be. M aterial causes simply referred to the passive potentiality ofmatter as a type of cause that enables and delimits possible ways of being orchanging. Importantly, in the Aristotelian framework the notion of material causehas different meanings in different explanatory contexts: thus, while things such asa table or a gun, can be treated as material causes in one instance, these things

59 Nancy Cartwright, Causation: One Word, M any Things,Philosophy of Science, 71 (2004), p. 805.60 L ear, Aristotle, p. 6.61 S. Waterlow,Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotles Physics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982),

p. 11.

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can also be understood to have material causes themselves in the constitution ofsubstances (wood, metal).62

What does this notion of material cause contribute to our understanding ofcausation?Thefirst contribution of theAristotelian understanding of material causesis that it points us to recognise that material causes are fundamental in any

explanation. It directs usto accept that without accounting for material potentiality,and the various forms that matter takes, any account of theworld is limited. At thesame time, the Aristotelian notion of material cause also allows us to use materialcauses as a flexible category that refers to a widerangeof material substances, thingsand resourcesand allowsusto conceptualisethesematerial resourcesasconstrainingand enabling causes, not as mechanical pushingand pulling causes often implied inmodern materialist accounts. This framing is useful in thesocial sciences as it gets usaway from complete rejection of material factors (exemplified by idealist strands ofthinking) as well as the deterministic overtones often attached to more materiallybased explanations of the social world. To givean examplefrom IR context, we canrecognise that the availability of guns in a crisis situation is an important causalfactor that conditionstheconflict, whilerealisingthat thismaterial causein itself doesnot determine outcomes, nor does it provide an adequate explanation in and ofitself. Indeed, in order to understand thenature and role of material causes we needto consider three other types of cause.

Formal causes, for Aristotle, referred to that which shapes or defines matter. ForAristotle, a formal cause is that which makes or defines a given thing, its structure,its qualities and its properties. In modern discourse formal causes are oftenunderstood ideationally (in thePlatonic sense), that is, a formis taken to refer to theidea of a thing. Whilethis is, indeed, a valid interpretation, it is useful to rememberthat A ristotelian formal causes were not defined by ideationality alone, but ratherby relationality (which ideas can reflect): formal causes describe and definethe structure or internal relations that give meaning and being to things. If thematerial cause of a table is the wood it is made of, the formal cause of it is thestructure (embodied in the idea of a table) that defines the relationship betweenpieces of wood to make it into a table.

Why are formal causes useful for our understanding of causal relations? Firstand foremost, because it seems that in the social world, ideas, rules, norms anddiscourses often interpreted as non-causal constitutive forces can usefully beunderstood through the notion of formal cause. Rules, norms and discourses, arecauses, then: as formal causes, they define and structuresocial relations, that is, theyrelateagentsto each other, their social rolesand themeaningsof their practices. Theydescribe the rules and relations that define social positions and relationships, andhence can be seen as that according to which social reality works. Crucially, theAristotelian conception of formal cause allows us to understand rules, norms anddiscourses as constraining and enabling causes, and gets usaway from thepushingand pulling model of framing the causal role of ideas, rules, norms and discourses themodel that thereflectivist constitutivetheorists in IR havealwaysbeen wary of.

Crucially, both material and formal causes break the mould of modern causal

analysis in the sense that they do not conform to the commonly elicited assumption

62 F. A. L ewis, Aristotleon the Relation between a Thing and its M atter, in M . L . Gill (ed.),Unity,Identity and Explanation in Aristotles Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 248.

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that causes should temporally precede and be independent of effects. It could beargued that these two criteria often advanced by Humeans, as well as by somephilosophical realists,63 confuse more than they clarify in the light of the analysisadvanced here. This is because these criteria, which arguably have their origins inHumean qualificationsfor how to distinguish between causes and effects,64 restrict us

from accepting as causal certain important conditioning or constitutive causalpowers. The key contribution of the A ristotelian notion of constitutive causes,exemplified by material and formal causes, is that it directs us to accept theconstraining and enabling conditions of social life as real and as causal, thusexposing a deeper level of causality in the social world than is often recognised,especially by those focused on analysing merely observable patterns of behaviour.

However, there is also place for the traditional active causes within thisframework. The active causes, as opposed to conditioning causes, for Aristotle,were efficient and final causes, as these causes, through their activity, go towardsproducing change. Aristotelian notion ofefficient causerefers to a so-called primarymover, or a source of change, for example, a carpenter as the maker of a table.Importantly, Aristotelian efficient causality does not have modern mechanisticovertones asefficient causes, for Aristotle, werefundamentally embedded within, andin relation to, other types of causes and could not in and of themselves explainanything.

Conceiving of the causal actions and causal conditions of agency in theAristotelian manner is useful in that the Aristotelian conceptualisation of efficientcauses gets us away from themechanistic waysof thinking of agency as well as fromthe individualist tendencies to isolate agents as the only type of cause in the socialworld (agency is conceived as embedded in a complex causal social environment,material and formal). Also, it is useful because it allows us to link efficient causesclosely with so-called final causes.

Final causes, for Aristotle, referred to the ends and purposes that go towardsmaking thingshappen, to that for thesakeof which somethinghappensor is done.Final form of causality was, for Aristotle, an irreducible form of causality in thesocial as well as thenatural world.65M any would doubt theapplicability of teleologyin natural sciences. One might also doubt the kind of teleological explanations ofsocial processes as outlined, for example, by Wendt.66 However, whether oneacceptsthese forms of final causality or not, in one simple sense final causes seem like aninherently important type of cause in the social world. Social action, even whenunplanned and spontaneous, is inevitably premised on the intentionality of humanagency, which in turn can beseen as a form of final causality.67 When we talk of theintentions, motivationsor, in certain contextsreasons, that direct actors, wearein factreferring to the final causes because of which certain (efficient) actions are taken.

63 Wendt,Social Theory, pp. 7788.64 For Hume, causes had to be observed independently from effects, and causes were identified as

defining them as those observables that were observed before the effects.65 E. Gilson,From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and

Evolution(Indiana, I N: N otre Dame Press, 1984), p. 5.66

Wendt, Why the World State is Inevitable.67 D. V. Porpora, On the Post-Wittgenstein Critiqueof the Concept of A ction in Sociology,Journalfor the Theory of Social Behaviour, 13 (1983), pp. 12946. F or a similar account of reasons as finalcauses see Ruth Groff, Critical Realism, Postpositivism and the Possibility of Knowledge (London:Routledge, 2004).

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Crucially, acceptance of the Aristotelian conception of final causality does notnecessitatea mechanistic or deterministic understandingof causality. Intentions andreasons should not be conceived to push and pull in the same sense as efficientcauses: instead, they are causal in the sense that they signify a contributory cause,that for the sake of which something is done. It must also be noted that, against

common misconceptions, acceptingthenotion of final causality in this sensedoesnotdowngradeother types of causality. Final causality presupposes material causality ofthe mind as well as a material world to act upon. It presupposes a formal relationalsocial context (rules, norms, discourses) that constrains and enables theforming ofintentions. An (efficient) agent and actionsare also required to actualise intentions/purposes/goals.

Towards causal holism and explanatory pragmatism

The Aristotelian categories, arguably, provide us with interesting new ways todescribe and analyse causes. Importantly, the rethought conception of causeadvanced hereallowsusto get away fromHumean and pushingand pulling modernconceptions of causation by outlining different ways of causing (constitutive as wellas active). They also allow us to position and assess causes as complex andinteracting. Indeed, Aristotle importantly stresses that in inquiring into any changeor thing, wemust alwaysask manydifferent kindsof why-questions: inquiringmerelyinto singular causes tells us little in most cases, since causes never exist in isolationfrom each other. It follows that the broadening of our understanding of causation

allows us to advance an ontologically holistic framework for causation. By allowingus to look into a variety of different kindsof causal factorsthisrethought frameworkof causal analysis allows us to ask much more open and plural questions about thesocial world and about theinteraction of different kindsof actors, objects, discoursesand structures.

The Aristotelian system also allows us to advocate explanatory pragmatism.Social life, as well as natural life, can, first, beconceived as workingthrough multiplecycles of causes. Second, the Aristotelian system recognises that the multiplecycles of causes can betreated from different angles depending on ones explanatoryinterests: what we assign as causes, and which types of causes, can be seen as a

question tied to our pragmatic explanatory interests. Thus, onemight beinterested inexplainingtheformation of a norm, which would entail inquiry into thespeech actsof actors in a particular social (material and formal) context, but the samenorm canin a different context be treated as the formal cause (of an action, for example).68

It can also beaccepted that even though causes arereal and ubiquitous, our causalaccounts do not need to be treated as objective or fixed. This fits in with therequirements of philosophical realism according to which we must accept that all

68 However, importantly, simply because weassign certain things as causes for our explanatory interest

does not make factors outside our accounts non-causal. We merely designate them as unimportantbackground causes for our explanatory interests. This is similar to what the manipulabilitytheorists argue. See R. G. Collingwood,Essay in Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940). Foran interesting manipulability account of causation in IR, see Suganami, On the Causes of War(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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knowledge claims are socially embedded and dependent on the conceptual andlinguistic categories we inherit. It can, then, beaccepted that claims to epistemologi-cal objectivity aremisleading. However, if weaccept philosophical realism, weneednot accept relativist conclusions: we do not have to accept that all accounts areequally valid since we have to, and do, make evaluations between different

conceptual/theoretical systems on the basis of their ability to account for evidenceand to put forward plausible ontological projections.

Also, theaccount advanced here is commensurate with methodological pluralismas emphasised by philosophical realists. The methodological tools used in socialscience should remain non-specified: we need many different ways of studying theontologically complex social world. It is accepted that quantitative methods canpoint to someinteresting patterns of observabledata. However, in order to explainthesepatternsof data, qualitativeanalysis is necessary as this data allows usto accessthe actual causal processes that take place in more nuanced ways.

The emphasis of the rethought deeper and broader account of cause is on askingmany types of causal questions and refusing to delimit methods and epistemologicalapproaches a priori. This points causal theorising in IR towards a new direc-tion which, in turn, has important implications for the disciplinary self-imagesreproduced in IR.

Implications for IR: beyond Humeanism, beyond thecausal-constitutivedivide

The simultaneous deepening and broadening of the notion of cause has importantimplications for the discipline of I R. F irst, it allows us to rethink the way in whichwethink about, and conduct, causal analysis in IR. It also deeply challenges thelogicof the causal-constitutive theory divide in IR. Furthermore, in so doing, rethinkingcausation can help direct IR theorisations away from theoretical reductionismtowards more constructive holistic understandings of concrete world politicalprocesses.

Beyond Humean causal analysis in IR

First of all, the rethinking of causation advanced here reminds usthat the empiricistmode of causal analysis is not the only way to frame causal analysis and, in fact, ismethodologically, epistemologically and ontologically problematic in importantways.

The approach defended here maintains that the essence of causal explanation isnot the gathering of regularities, but conceptual explanation of the variety of forcesthat bring about regularities of observables. It follows that analysis of data ismethodologically pluralist, not geared aroundspecific observation-based methods, or

identification of regularities. Emphasis is on combining empirical data sets ofvarious kinds and, through them, the development of reflective complexity-sensitiveconceptual (ontological) frameworks. It also follows that more holistic integrativecausal explanations can beprovided. Whereas variables were isolated and compared

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against each other in theempiricist Humean models of causal analysis, now they canbe brought together into integrative explanatory frameworks.

In many ways the model of causal analysis advanced here is commensurate withthe more common-sensical causal explanations and descriptions we give. Sincecausal analysis is not defined by certain types of systematic observation and

generalisation but rather through reflexiveuseof a variety of data, it is accepted thatwords such as produce, enable, constrain, bring about, push and directusefully describe the many different kinds of causal connections that there are in theworld. Hence, to reducecausal explanation to mechanistic metaphors or relations ofindependent and dependent variables is to overly restrict our understanding of thecomplex social reality around us.

It also follows that causal explanations in IR cannot simply rely on an empiricistconception of scientific methods to deliver an objective scientific truth on causalrelations. We haveto besceptical of theepistemological confidence of theempiricistcausal theorists in the superior objectivity of observational methods and, indeed,recognise that the positivist model of social science is in itself limited in itsontological, epistemological and methodological scope. Crucially, the approach tocausal analysis advanced hereallowsusto accept that all causal accountsof theworldare, as Cox and thepost-positivists would haveit, alwaysfor someoneand for somepurpose.69

Also, the approach advanced here is important because it challenges the tradi-tional ontological framings of world political processes. Against the mainstreamfollowers of K ing, K eohaneand Verba, observability is not the only, nor necessarilya useful, benchmark for what matters in causal analysis in IR: as the reflectivistshave pointed out, only so much can be explained through the study of measurablevariables. On the basis of the discussion here it can be accepted that unobservableobjects are real and causal and can be got at through careful conceptualisation.Reasons and motivations as well as rules, norms and discourses can be conceptual-ised as real and as causal within this framework and, hence, can be accepted aslegitimateobjects of social scienceinquiry, even if they are not directly observableorstable in terms of empirical outcomes. Theapproach here, then, challenges not justthe empiricist approach but also reflectivism. It emphasises that when Humeancriteria for causal explanation arerejected, wecan seethat thereflectivistsare, in fact,involved in making a number of causal claims.

Beyond the causal-constitutive theory divide

It can beargued on thebasis of thereconceptualised conception of cause advancedhere that thecausal-constitutivetheory dichotomy that many IR theorists havecometo accept is misleading and could, in fact, be radically reinterpreted. Constitutivetheorising can, in the light of the present analysis, be interpreted as a form ofcausal theorising. It follows that it is not useful for IR theorists to reify thetraditional causal vs. constitutive theory logic in understanding different approaches

to I R theory.

69 Robert Cox, Social F orces, in Cox and Sinclair (eds.),Approaches, p. 87.

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If weaccept that causes, not only push andpull, but condition or constrain andenable, we need to start recognising that there are some serious problems in thecausal vs. constitutive theory self-image in IR. This is because we have to startrecognising that constitutiveanalysis is, moreoften than not, engaged in thestudy ofthe(formal) conditioning causes of social life. When, for example, theconstructiv-

ists talk of the constitutive norms and rules because of which shifts take place inworld politics, they areengagingin causal analysis in that they arecontextualisingtheagents actions within a formal causal context which shapes the agents perceptionsand thinking processes.70 Equally, when poststructuralists highlight the role ofdiscourse or theories in constituting social life, they do so because these discoursesor theories, through constituting agents perceptions and reasoning, have conse-quences for how agents perceive the world, themselves, others and, hence, theiractions. When Campbell, for example, studies the Bosnian war, the constitutivediscourses referred to (for exampleterritorial discourse) do not merely matter in thesenseof defining meanings but in thesensethat they constrain and enable coursesof action71 constitutive discourses are, in fact, causal. As Campbell himself admits,discursive systems have political consequences.72

In the view of the model of causal analysis advanced here, causal relations andcausal analysis should not, in fact, be separated from constitutive relations orconstitutiveanalysis at all. It follows from our reconceptualisation of causation thatwe would bebetter placed to deal with the social world and its complex causes andcausal conditioning if we saw constitutive theorising as an inseparable part of causaltheorising.

Reflectivist criticsmay find this argument disturbing. After all, for them, inquiringinto constitutive relations is very different from causal analysis because it inquiresinto relations of meaning not relations of change. On one level this criticism iscorrect. Of course we can say that when concepts define each others meaning theyare non-causally related. Also, we can, of course, ask non-causal questions ofmeaning (such as what does X mean?). However, in the view of the approachaccepted here, we need to recognise that the study of these non-causal conceptualrelations is never really an end in itself:73 conceptual relations that make up rules,discourses and norms matter ultimately precisely because they are causal, that isbecausethey produce, contributeto, direct or constrain and enableontological socialrealities. In thefinal analysis it seems that theconstitutive relations matter becauseconceptual relations causally condition thoughts, actions and relations. It followsthat we must recognise that our inquiries are never limited to mere non-causalunderstanding of meanings: most theorists, including thepoststructuralists, want to,and inevitably do, account for how thosemeanings weremade, reproduced or reifiedand how they shape, influence and condition other meanings/discourses/ideas andsocial life more widely.

The unique contribution of the Aristotelian framework is that it allows us toaccept that constitutive claims are essentially inseparable from causal claims. Thisalso means that the causal-constitutive theory divide in IR no longer stands as afundamental divide as both sides of the divide can, in the light of this analysis, be

70 K oslowski and K ratochwil, U nderstanding Change, p. 127.71 D. Campbell,National Deconstruction, p. 84.72 Campbell, Writing Security, p. 4.73 Wendt,Social Theory, p. 86.

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interpreted as being engaged in causal analysis even if causal analysis conceived ofin a very different sense. The traditional causal theorists must be recognised to beengaged with in a particular, in someways limited, formof empiricist causal analysis(focused on patterns of observables), whereas the constitutive theorists can beunderstood to beengaged in deeper and broader realist causal analysis (often focused

on the analysis of discursive/ideational causes).The Aristotelian account builds bridges in another sense too. It is important to

notethat constitutive conditioning causes concern, not only constitutivetheorists,but also those explicitly interested in the role of material conditions. In IR realisttheorists have traditionally explained world politics through resort to materialfactors. However, often thewrong kind of causal logic has been applied to materialforces, just as to ideational forces. Instead of framing material forces as akin toefficient pushing and pulling causes, as has arguably been thecase in many realistexplanations,74 it is implied here that they should be seen as forms of conditioningcauses in social life, whose role needs to beunderstood in relation to other types ofcauses in any given context. Of course material resources matter, for they conditionmuch of international politics, but material resources must be recognised to beconstituted through social processes involving social actors and socialising principles(formal causes) and, indeed, to lend their influence differently in different causalcontexts. M any realists havebeen unwillingto examinetherole of material resourcesas causally complex. As a result, they have failed to account for how the materialcauses are determiningof outcomes (how they influenceideas, rules and norms). TheAristotelian framework that sees material resources as important and as causal, butas causally conditioning (constitutive) and as intertwined with other causalfactors, can beused to overcomesomeof thereductionist materialist tendenciesin IRtheorising.

Towards new kinds of causal explanations of world politics?

The conceptualisation of causation advanced here radically opens up how weshould think about causal analysis and the role of constitutive factors in ouranalysis. This insight poses a deep challenge to the divisive causal vs. constitutivetheory self-image perpetuated by many empiricists, reflectivistsand constructivist in

IR, as well as theontologically, epistemologically and methodologically reductionisttendencieswithin thesetheoretical approaches. Theimpact of thereconceptualisationof causation is not merely metatheoretical, however. This is because meta-theoretical framings of explanatory frameworks have direct effects on the kinds ofexplanations we advance for concrete world political processes: indeed, theoreticaland conceptual lenses constrain and enable (causally direct) the kinds ofexplanations wecan construct. The conceptual lenses advanced here are more openand holistic than manyof thoseadvance