Martin Wight and Revolutionism in International Relations Theory

• In Event: Paradigms: What Are They Good For?

Abstract

Martin Wight (1913-1972) is a foundational intellectual in the early development of the English School of international relations. Wight’s pioneering analyses of three alternative traditions or ideal types of theory included Realism, Rationalism, and Revolutionism. These traditions are at once pedagogical (for organizing debate and paradigms) and sociological, linking ideas and action (much like contemporary social constructivism). But Wight’s analysis of Revolutionism is a puzzling, weak point in his otherwise influential legacy. Some scholars refer to it as an “embarrassment” because it conflates a bewildering array of divergent and inconsistent ideas, thinkers, doctrines, and events. Indeed, Wight’s Revolutionism brings together Calvin, Kant, Gandhi, Woodrow Wilson, Hitler, and Stalin, among others.

This paper first disputes the adequacy of two different explanations for these apparently false equivalences. The first is a contextualist account of how Wight and other mid-20th century British IR scholars were amateurs or poorly trained in philosophy and methods, who nonetheless tried to fortify their policy analyzes through dubious readings of the history of ideas and events. The second account focuses on idiosyncratic reasons for Wight’s views, and in particular his religious convictions as the basis for an anti-progressivist stance.

This paper shows how these two accounts are inadequate because they do not accord with the textual evidence of his theoretical intentions and choices, neither of which are reducible to contextual and idiosyncratic factors. Second, this paper advances an alternative argument about the puzzling shape of Wight’s Revolutionism, and an account of why – despite Wight’s failings to properly conceptualize the term – some version of the concept is relevant both the intellectual history of IR, and to contemporary IR theory. I argue that Wight’s failure to explicitly identify Revolutionism’s key properties – viz., modernist tendencies to reduce diversity and historical narrative to ideational monism and a triumphalist historicism – leads to a flawed theoretical concept. Yet his grappling with the effects of doctrines of global uniformity and a single historic destiny is worth re-examination in today’s context. Wight cared about the challenges of a global order in which a clash of universalist claims disrupts the possibility of political restraints within international society. It is not clear that existing IR theories have developed a way to theorize this reality, and learning from earlier attempts is worthwhile.

Author

• Antonio Franceschet, University of Calgary