Confronting Contingency: International Politics and the Limits of Theory

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The aim of this roundtable is to bring together a group of scholars representing a wide range of theoretical perspectives in international relations to better understand how the complexity of social and political life intersects with theory building and its ambitions. More specifically, the idea is to explore how IR theory grapples with contingency in history. For example, while contingency may primarily play the role of a methodological spoiler for some, for others it is incorporated in varying degrees into the theoretical framework as a dynamic force. The state of theory in this regard raises two important issues. First, it remains an open question whether there are more systematic ways of incorporating contingency into theory or whether by its nature we face significant limits in this regard. Second, the fact of historical contingency in some form or another has a tendency to point towards the limits of the theoretical enterprise. How far can theory remove itself from historical narrative? Do all theoretical perspectives face roughly the same horizon as defined by social complexity? How would we know? Are there more or less useful ways to incorporate contingency into explanation and thereby get a handle our ability to generalize concepts and explanations? These questions touch on a host of issues such as the relationship of agency and structure, the relationship of the scholar to the object of study, the possibility of prediction, and what IR is “for.” A frank exploration of contingency and how it is handled is a useful way to address these issues in a concrete manner across the various theoretical divides in IR.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 7: Politics and History

Chair

• Sebastian M. Schmidt Johns Hopkins University

Presenters

• Rosemary Kelanic University of Notre Dame

• Richard Pell Jordan Baylor University

• Bentley B. Allan Johns Hopkins University

• Stacie E. Goddard Wellesley College

• Nicholas Anderson Yale University

• Paul Musgrave University of Massachusetts