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Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? Ten years on

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DOI: 10.1093/irap/lcx006

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 International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Volume 0, (2017) 1–30
doi: 10.1093/irap/lcx006

Why is there no Non-Western

International Relations
Theory? Ten years on
1 2
Amitav Acharya ,* and Barry Buzan

1
School of International Service, American University, School
of International Service, 4400, Massachusetts Avenue,
Washington, USA; and 2Department of International
Relations, London School of Economics, UK
*E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract
A decade ago in 2007 we published a forum in International Relations
of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP) on ‘Why there is no non-Western IR theory?’.
Now we revisit this project ten years on, and assess the current state of
play. What we do in this article is first, to survey and assess the relevant
literature that has come out since then; second, to set out four ways in
which our own understanding of this issue has evolved since 2007; third
to reflect on some ways in which Asian IR might contribute to the emer-
gence of what we call ‘Global IR’; and fourth to look specifically at hier-
archy as an issue on which East Asian IR scholars might have a
comparative advantage. Our aim is to renew, and perhaps refocus, the
challenge to Asian IR scholars, and our hope is that this will contribute
to the building of Global IR.

International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Vol. 0 No. 0

# The author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press in association with the Japan
Association of International Relations; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail:
[email protected]
2 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

1 Introduction
A decade ago in 2007, we published a forum in International Relations
of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP) on ‘Why is there no non-Western IR theory?’.
We focused that question on Asia, and assembled a group of authors to
set out the state of IR in various countries and sub-regions across Asia.
We posed it as a challenge to Asian IR scholars to get their voices and
their histories into the global debates on how to think about IR, both
for their sakes, and as a necessity for the balanced development of the
discipline. This challenge attracted sufficient interest for us to follow it
on with an expanded book version (Acharya and Buzan, 2010), bringing
in more case chapters, including one looking at the Islamic world.
In our framing chapters, we took a wide and pluralist view of what
counts as IR theory (IRT), and stressed the need to bring IR and
area studies together. We looked at the reasons behind the global dom-
inance of Western IRT and Western ‘world’ history, and at the possible
resources for IRT in the non-West. Our main arguments were:

 The need for IR and IRT to have a world historical framing rather
than a Western historical one, and the need for the non-West to
both challenge the Western bias and get its own histories into play
within IR.
 The need to keep aware of the Coxian injunction that theory is al-
ways for someone and for some purpose, and to apply this to all
IRT.
 The importance of history and political theory in IRT, the massive
Western bias in both, and the opportunities for the non-West to
mobilize their own historical and philosophical resources.
 That for several reasons, especially first mover advantage, the exten-
sive training of non-Western IR scholars in the United States,
and Gramscian hegemony, Western IRT was dominant in Asia.
Although there were resources for theory in parts of Asia, there
was not much indigenous IRT there despite a quite widespread feel-
ing that much of Western IRT did not fit well with either Asian his-
tory or contemporary Asian IR practices.
 That the likely main movement in Asia was toward national schools
of IR and that this offered both dangers and opportunities. Asian
IR was not just playing catch-up with the West, but it was not re-
gionally integrated either, and stood in some danger of fragmenting
the discipline, both in Asia and globally.
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 3

There is no doubt that this work had an impact. According to the

journal metrics of IRAP, as of June 2016, articles from the 2007 forum
occupy 5 of the top 10 places in the journal’s list of most-cited articles,
including first and second. As of July 2016, Google Scholar recorded
over 200 citations for the editors’ Introduction, and over 150 for the
book. On this basis, it seems justified to revisit this project 10 years on,
and assess the current state of play. Much of what we said then about
IRT, the nature and reasons for Western dominance, and the resources
available in Asia still stands. What we do in this article is first, to sur-
vey and assess the relevant literature that has come out since then; sec-
ond, to set out four ways in which our own understanding of this issue
has evolved since 2007; third to reflect on some ways in which Asian
IR might contribute to the emergence of what we call ‘Global IR’; and
fourth to look specifically at hierarchy as an issue on which particularly
Northeast Asian history and political theory might offer a comparative
advantage. Our aim is to renew, and perhaps refocus, the challenge to
Asian IR scholars, and our hope is that this will contribute to the
building of Global IR.

2 Whither IRT?
Before turning our attention to developments in IRT in Asia, we set the
context by briefly taking stock of the state of IRT in general. Looking
back at how IRT has developed in the past decade, several trends stand
out. First, the field’s mainstream, centered on the West, especially the
United States, appears to have moved past the ‘great debates’ between
paradigms (between realism and idealism, between classical and behav-
ioralist approaches, and between positivists and post-positivists), and
‘isms’ (especially featuring realism, liberalism, and constructivism)
(Jackson and Nexon, 2013: 545–48). The most recent debate, between
rationalism (realism and liberalism) on the one hand and constructivism
on the other, has given way to attempts at paradigm bridging, theoreti-
cal pluralism and analytical eclecticism (Dunne et al., 2013).
Second, the fading interest in the ‘big’ or meta-theoretical debates has
been accompanied by the growing popularity of ‘middle-range theories’.
Such work identifies research questions or ‘issue-oriented puzzles’ (Walt,
2005: 33) in international affairs and explains them with the help of IR
literature’s ‘widely accepted causal mechanisms’ (Jackson and Nexon,
4 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

2013: 548), that specify the relationship between variables. The vast ma-
jority of work in major IR journals in the United States fall into this
category (Jackson and Nexon 2013: 548), though that is much less true
of European IR journals, most of which maintain a broad spectrum of
epistemological approaches. The rising IR journals in Asia (The Chinese
Journal of International Politics has joined International Relations of the
Asia-Pacific) also contain a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches.
The narrow positivist approach has been criticized for being constrained
by prevailing ‘epistemological and ontological assumptions’ (Dunne
et al., 2013), for producing mostly conditional or contingent generaliza-
tions (Walt, 2005: 33), and focusing too much on ‘practically-relevant
knowledge’ (Reus-Smit, 2013), at the expense of theoretical innovation.
Hence, the talk of ‘the end of international theory’ (Dunne et al., 2013).
The rise of middle-range theories has mixed implications for those
seeking to open IRT up to the non-Western world. On the one hand,
they have expanded the use of IRT in general. They have stoked the
curiosity of Western scholars in the wider world of regions and helped
to engage the interest of non-Western scholars in IRT. On the other
hand, this type of work is also primarily, if not always, deductive. It is
more concerned with testing the empirical validity of existing concepts
than developing entirely new concepts and theories on the basis of new
or previously neglected empirical data. The concepts and causal mech-
anisms it employs for its deductive reasoning are derived mainly from
the Western history and experience. This entrenches the tradition of
Western dominance in IRT.
A third development in IRT during the past decade has been the
further rise of constructivism. In the 2014 Teaching, Research, and
Policy (TRIP) Survey (2014), Constructivism came out the top choice
of an IR paradigm 22.5%, followed by realism and liberalism. (It
should be noted, however, that the numbers of those who opted for
‘I do not use paradigm’ exceeded constructivism, attesting to the afore-
mentioned point about the declining interest in paradigm debates).
Alexander Wendt displaced Robert Keohane as ‘the scholar whose
work has had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past
20 years’.
The rise of constructivism has some positive implications for those
committed to the project of a more universal discipline of IR or
Global IR. Constructivism’s emphasis on ideational forces compared
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 5

to the material ‘powerlessness’ of the developing countries (Puchala

1998: 151) offers greater scope for capturing their normative role in
world politics, such as in contesting and localizing Western norms and
creating new ones to reform and strengthen world order.1 Second, con-
structivism has made inroads into the study of regional dynamics by
both Western and non-Western scholars (see for example, Barnett,
1995, 1998 on the Middle East; Johnston, 1998, and Hemmer and
Katzenstein, 2002 on East Asia; Acharya 2001, 2004a,b, 2009, 2011 on
Southeast Asia and Asian regionalism in general; Kacowicz, 2005, and
Sikkink, 2014 on Latin America). The influential constructivist book,
Security Communities (Adler and Barnett 1998), largely focused on re-
gions, both Europe and outside. All this literature has been invaluable
in stimulating theory-guided debates and analysis and communication
among both Western and non-Western scholars.
Third, with its emphasis on culture and identity, Constructivism has
offered a valuable bridge between the area studies tradition that is pop-
ular in the IR literature in the non-Western world and the centers of
IR in the West. As a Malaysian IR scholar (Karim 2007) writes,
‘Thinking in the constructivist vein has been about the best gift made
available to scholars and leaders in the region’.
Yet, constructivism remains largely a Western-centric enterprise.
While constructivism has moved beyond its initial privileging of
Western norms and norm protagonists, it continues to neglect issues of
race and pre-Westphalian civilizations in Asia, the Middle East and
elsewhere that might bring new insights into IRT from outside the core
sourcing areas of the West. And a recent study analyzing an extensive
journal-based data set (Bertucci et al., 2016), finds that ‘despite con-
structivism’s place as the leading theoretical alternative to rationalist
approaches to the study of international relations, in terms of its sub-
stantive and empirical scope constructivism does not look much differ-
ent than rationalist alternatives like realism and liberalism. In all cases,

1 On the normative agency of the Global South, see: Global Governance (2014) 20:3 with
contributions by Eric Helleiner (international development), Kathryn Sikkink (human
rights), Martha Finnemore and Michelle Jurovitch (universal participation), and this au-
thor (normative impact of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung on human rights,
sovereignty, disarmament, and the UN). See also the essays in Weiss and Roy, (eds.) (2016).
‘The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015: past as prelude?’ Special Issue of Third
World Quarterly, 37 (7).
6 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

scholarship primarily focuses on security processes and outcomes tak-

ing place in the North Atlantic region and Europe’. They note that
about 45% of their sampled constructivist research relates to the North
Atlantic region, followed by 13.1% on Asia, whereas ‘regions such as
Latin America, Africa and, most notably, the Middle East, have re-
ceived only scant attention’. From the other side, the relationalist work
in Northeast Asia (Qin, 2011, 2016; Shih and Yin, 2013) seems to
make only tenuous connections with work going on under the same la-
bel in the United States.
These above-mentioned trends in IRT are not necessarily irreversible.
Constructivism appears to be losing its shine in the post-theoretical
turn in IR. Scholars are already looking for clues to a possible new
great debate (Jackson and Nexon 2013: 554). But what cannot be over-
stressed is that not only the so-called great debates, but what comes af-
ter them, including the literature inspired by mid-range theories and
constructivism, have been a remarkably parochial affair. They have
made little effort to engage IR scholarship from the Global South, and
almost no attempt to recognize, not to mention explain or bemoan, the
almost total marginalization of the Global South from the mainstream
IRT. It is as if the Global South scholarship on IR, and the devel-
opments in IR during and after the great debates, exist in parallel
universes.
This leads to a fourth trend in the IRT in the past decade; the per-
sistence of American and Western dominance. Here we see a serious
disconnect between Western scholars and those from the Global South.
The increasing recognition of American and Western dominance in the
West is one thing, it is quite another for that recognition to actually
reshape the intellectual agenda of Western scholars (with the notable
exception of the new English School). This is underscored by the inclu-
sion of a lonesome article (Tickner, 2013), 1 out of 12 essays in a 2013
special issue of the European Journal of International Relations, (Wight
et al., 2013) devoted to discussing of ‘pluralism’ in IRT. Surely any dis-
cussion of a ‘pluralist turn’ in IRT in a journal known for avoiding the
dominance of American scholarship in IR–which is often cited as the
chief source of IR’s exclusionary stance toward Global South voices
and agency–could have been more concerned with the question whether
theory continues to be parochial and ethnocentric or universal and in-
clusive of the majority of people living on this planet. By contrast,
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 7

Dunne and Reus-Smit, 2017 adopt a broader approach, taking into ac-
count the conversations on Global IR taking place during and after
the 2014 International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Convention.
In marked contrast to the West, scholars from the Global South,
and their collaborators and likeminded scholars from the West, have
become increasingly vocal in highlighting the persisting parochialism of
the mainstream IR scholarship (Some examples, far from exhaustive,
would include: Neuman, 1998; Ling, 2002, 2010; Tickner, 2003;
Chowdhry and Nair, 2004; Thomas and Wilkin, 2004; Smith, 2006;
Acharya and Buzan, 2007, 2010; Bilgin, 2008; Agathangelou and Ling,
2009, 2013; Tickner and Waever, 2009; Behera 2010; Shilliam 2010;
Acharya, 2011, 2014a; Tickner and Blaney, 2012). The election of
Amitav Acharya in 2014 as the first non-Western President of the ISA
hopefully made some breakthrough for their cause. His Presidential
theme, ‘Global International Relations and Regional Worlds’, which
was the basis of ISA’s 2015 Convention, served as a focal point for
highlighting the American and Western dominance of IR. Acharya’s
use of ‘Global IR’ rather than Non-Western IRT was intended to ad-
dress some of the concerns raised against the latter including from
scholars working on Global South issues. Almost a quarter of the total
number of panels and roundtables at the New Orleans Convention,
were devoted to the Convention theme. Tellingly, just before the
Convention, the 2014 TRIP Survey found that a clear majority of its
respondents believe that IR is both American dominated and Western
dominated. When asked if IR is an American-dominated discipline,
49% agree and 11% strongly agreed, for a total of 60%. When asked if
IR is a Western-dominated discipline, the result was that 53% agreed
and 22% strongly agreed. Thus an overwhelming 75% of the total num-
ber of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that IR is a Western-
dominated discipline (For details, see Wemheuer-Vogelaar et al.,
2016).2 And for the first time, at the same New Orleans Convention, a
scholar from outside the West (China), Shiping Tang, won the ISA’s
best book prize (on a shared basis), for his theoretical work,
The Social Evolution of International Politics (Tang, 2013).

2 The 2014 TRIP Survey split the sample so that respondents either received the question
with American dominance (and later countering this dominance) or Western dominance.
The term ‘Western’ triggered significantly more agreement in terms of dominance than the
term ‘American’ Further details in Acharya, 2016.
8 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

Whether this is a turning point or a passing phase remains to be

seen. At the very least, there seems to be a growing awareness cutting
across the West-Rest divide that IRT needs to be more reflective of the
Global South and take the direction of Global IR (Eun, 2016; Dunne
and Reus-Smit, 2017). Yet there is always a traditionalist resistance to
change. Objections range from the adequacy of the existing IRTs to
explain developments in the non-Western world, such as Asia, be-
cause, despite its distinctive features, the latter has been progressively
integrated into the modern Europe-derived international system
and adopted its behavioral norms and attributes (Ikenberry and
Mastanduno, 2003: 421–22); to the more dismissive claim that there is
nothing wrong with the American dominance of the field because it is
‘benign’ (Mearsheimer 2016).
In sum, there have been a few useful developments toward a more
Global IR over the past decade. Awareness worldwide of the disci-
pline’s West-centrism is more widespread than before. World class IR
journals are getting established in Northeast Asia. Some green shoots
of original IR theorizing are appearing, especially in China. But the
basic picture of a parochial United States still dominating IRT remains
in place. Perhaps the best that can be said is that whether it is
recognized in the United States or not, the global challenge to the epis-
temologically narrow and self-referential American way in IR is getting
stronger. As in the real world, the legitimacy of American hegemony is
in sharp decline even while its material power remains dominant.
Interestingly, Asia’s rising IRT is like Europe’s in often standing out-
side the American mainstream, and keeping open a wider range of the-
oretical approaches.

3 Building a Global IR
The two of us are inescapably part of the process we describe. In the
decade since we first conceptualized the IRAP forum, we have not only
received a lot of feedback from it but also become increasingly dissatis-
fied with the ongoing West-centrism of IR just described. During that
time, our work and thinking have moved in mainly separate, but none-
theless strikingly parallel tracks. Both of us have been committed to
developing global and world historical perspectives on IR, and both
have acquired a deepened awareness and understanding of the problem
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 9

of West-centrism in IR (Buzan, 2011; Acharya, 2014a; Buzan and

Lawson, 2014a,b, 2015). In that latter context, both of us have come
to appreciate some of the insights of postcolonialism, though not nec-
essarily accepting all of its political baggage. It may help readers to un-
derstand what has stimulated and motivated our growing interest in
promoting a more Global IR, if they know how our thinking got to
where it is now, and therefore why we thought it useful to revisit the
theme of the 2007 IRAP forum. In this section, we therefore highlight
four developments in our own thinking that have shaped how we now
understand the issues around developing ‘non-Western’ IRT. These are:
uneven and combined development, the relationship between theory
and history, the English School’s understanding of international soci-
ety, and the need for ‘Global IR’.

3.1 Applying uneven and combined development to IR as

a discipline
Acharya (2004a,b, 2009) has long been interested in how norms spread
internationally, and has argued that local cultural dispositions shape
not only what outside norms are locally acceptable or not but also
how outside norms get shaped and adapted to local ideas and prac-
tices. More recently, Buzan’s thinking has been influenced by the work
of Justin Rosenberg (2010, 2013, 2016) on uneven and combined devel-
opment (UCD) as a way of theorizing ‘the international’, which rein-
forces Acharya’s line.
Rosenberg (2016) argues that there is always a multiplicity of socie-
ties interacting with each other. He understands unevenness to be a
basic fact of historical development driven by three variables: first, the
diversity of geographical endowments; second, the physical separation
of political units; and third, the differential impact of ‘combination’.
‘Combination’ means the ways in which social orders trade, coerce, em-
ulate, borrow, and steal from each other, and is intrinsic to any interna-
tional order. Before the 19th century, degrees of combination varied
mainly with geography, which facilitated deep connections in some en-
vironments (most notably where there were available sea and river
routes), but obstructed it in others (particularly in the case of land bar-
riers). By contrast, degrees of combination since the 19th century have
been heavily determined by industrial technologies. Under the impact
10 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

of steamships, railways, highways, aircraft, spacecraft, and electronic

means of communication from the telegraph to the internet, the impor-
tance of geography falls away, and combination intensifies rapidly, and
probably permanently (Buzan and Lawson, 2015). Combination there-
fore increases directly with development. Combination is both a ho-
mogenizing and a differentiating force.
UCD stands as an alternative to Waltz’s (1979: 76) formulation of
homogenization into ‘like units’ through ‘socialization and competi-
tion’. Both Waltz and Rosenberg see socialization and competition as
consequences of combination. But they disagree about their effects,
with Waltz favoring homogenization into ‘like units’, and Rosenberg
stressing that the particular timing and circumstances of socialization
and competition produce varied outcomes. The extreme conditions cre-
ated by macro-historical transformations such as the one that took
place during the long 19th century expose the logic of the latter with
great clarity (Buzan and Lawson, 2015). Major transformations of this
kind have a distinct point or points of origin in which a particular con-
figuration emerges and is sustained. This configuration is produced and
reproduced through inter-societal interactions. Further changes spread
outwards from this leading-edge (or edges). The pace of spread varied
according to the mediating effects of social and physical environments.
Agriculture, for example, was slow to spread to less productive soils
and climates, and some modes of social order were more receptive to
it than others. If unevenness was–and is–a basic fact of historical
development, then different peoples and places encounter macro-
transformative pressures at different times and under different circum-
stances, and with different outcomes.
Each social order that encounters the new configuration has its own
way of adapting to it. The encounter may be coercive or imitative.
Some social orders resist the new configuration, either because of inter-
nal resistance to the changes it requires (e.g. Qing China), or because
of attempts by leading-edge polities to maintain inequalities between
them by denying access to elements of the transformation (e.g. much
of the colonial world). Others succeed in developing indigenous ver-
sions of the new configuration (most strikingly Meiji Japan). ‘Late’ de-
velopers, for example, are not carbon copies of the original adopters,
but develop their own distinctive characteristics: thus the growing liter-
ature on ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Buzan and Lawson, 2014a). In this
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 11

sense, the interactions between different social orders produce not con-
vergence, but (often unstable) amalgams of new and old. Through the
analytic of UCD, it becomes clear that development is both global and
local, multilinear rather than linear, proceeds in fits and starts rather
than through smooth gradations, and contains many variations in
terms of outcomes.
The synergy between Acharya’s thinking and UCD should now be ob-
vious. Just as with development, so the spread of IR thinking will also
be uneven and combined, and the expectation should not be Waltzian
uniformity, but Rosenbergian diversity. Western dominance is the external
pressure, but as Acharya argues, local circumstances shape whether and
how these ideas are taken into local usage. We should expect a global-
izing IR to be both combined and diverse, and welcome that as a creative
process that gives real agency to the ‘late developers’ of IRT.

3.2 Rethinking the relationship between theory and history

In our Introduction to the book (2010: 4, but not to the 2007 Forum),
we drew a rather stark distinction between history and social theory, see-
ing them as ‘opposites’: ‘Where historians seek to explain each set of
events in its own terms, social theorists look for more general explana-
tions/understandings applicable to many cases distributed across space
and time’. A differentiation between theory and history along these lines
remains quite common (e.g. Elman and Elman, 2001). For most social
sciences, including IR, theory (as intellectual systems) and history (as
events, experiences, and practices) appear as distinct domains. These do-
mains are differentiated by an elemental division of labor between
theory-building social scientists and (putatively) chronicling historians
(Lawson, 2012). Although we acknowledged that this was an oversimpli-
fication, it now seems not only wrong, but unhelpful to the enterprise of
Global IR that we wish to encourage. Our argument is that the develop-
ment of a properly Global IR requires bringing its theory and world his-
tory together in a more systematic and open way.
Our view now is that:

the relationship between history and theory is better conceived as

co-constitutive. Understanding theory, and understanding history,
requires inquiry attuned to the entwinement of theory and history.
12 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

Theory is not something ‘out there,’ removed from history, even ret-
rospectively. Rather, theories are assessed and reassessed, made and
remade through ongoing encounters with history. . . . theories arise
historically, formed amid the encounters between theorists and the
events they experience and, sometimes, take part in: Marx the revo-
lutionary, Clausewitz the soldier, Freud the analyst. In this under-
standing, theory is a living archive of events and experiences. We say
‘living’ because theories are not only derived in and from history un-
derstood as ‘the past’, they are also recrafted as they encounter new
histories. In other words, theories are assessed and reassessed, made
and remade through ongoing encounters with history. Theory is
made in history, and it simultaneously helps to make history.3

That theory and history are inextricably entangled has long been evi-
dent in the roots of realist and liberal theory in European/Western his-
tory. The issue is not to deny this link, but to acknowledge it and then
move on to build a Global IRT on the foundations of world and not
just Western history.

3.3 Rethinking the English School’s understanding of

international society
There has for a long time been a strand of dissatisfaction with the clas-
sical English School’s Eurocentric account of how the present global
international society (GIS) came about top-down as a result of the ex-
pansion of what was originally a European regional international soci-
ety (Buzan and Little, 2014). While by no means wholly wrong, that
account significantly understated both the coercive element, and the in-
terplay between Europe and the rest of the world, in the making of
GIS. It denied agency to ‘the rest’, treated the non-West as something
of a blank slate, and contributed to the misleading embedding of
Western history as being world history.4
Both within and alongside the English School, there is now a grow-
ing body of recent work aimed at correcting this imbalance by locating

3 For the full argument behind this paragraph, see Buzan and Lawson (forthcoming).
4 By GIS we mean the society of states that includes all of the states-members of the interna-
tional system. This distinguishes from both regional international societies, such as that in
Europe or the Middle East, and subglobal ones, such as Western.
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 13

the story of GIS more firmly in world history. Among others,

Kacowicz (2005), Schulz (2014), Suzuki et al. (2014), Phillips and
Sharman (2015), and Pella (2014, 2015) have made substantial contri-
butions toward filling in the stories of the pre-existing international so-
cieties into which the Europeans expanded. They show that from the
16th to the 18th centuries, while the Europeans had a significant mili-
tary superiority in sea power, in much of Asia they were militarily
weak on land, and had few trading advantages other than access to
American silver. Not until the 19th century did the small modernizing
core of Western states have a generalized military, economic, and polit-
ical superiority over what rapidly became the global periphery. Before
that, the Europeans encountered others on equal or even inferior
terms, and these encounters fed into the processes of the making of
global modernity. In one sense, Europe did impose its form of politics
(the sovereign, territorial, nation-state) and international relations
(Westphalian international society) onto the rest of the world. But as it
was doing so, its own processes of development were being shaped by
encounters with the rest. The contemporary GIS should not be viewed
only as a formation of Waltzian ‘like units’ sharing a thin veneer of
primary and secondary institutions. It needs also to be seen as differen-
tiated along several cross-cutting lines: by type of state, by geography
(regions), by hierarchy (core-periphery, great powers, race, gender, etc.)
and up to a point functionally (economic, legal, political etc.) (Buzan
and Schouenborg, forthcoming).
By rebalancing the story of how the global international society was
made, and taking a more differentiated view of how contemporary GIS
is structured in the light of that historical legacy, the English School
has strengthened its position of as part of the necessary foundations
for developing a more Global IRT.

3.4 Shifting from a focus on the ‘Non-West’ to Global IR

Thinking about GIS in this more integrated and balanced way, brings
us back to the idea of Global IR. If contemporary GIS is indeed a
product of world historical dynamics, and not just Western ones, then
IR also needs to become more global in both its historical and theoret-
ical sources. The label ‘non-Western IRT’ which we coined in 2007 gen-
erated interest beyond our expectations. It served a crucial purpose in
14 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

generating debate that drew a good deal of attention to the parochial-

ism of IR. One of the criticisms, which we had taken into consider-
ation in the 2007 IRAP special issue, but has since become even more
salient, is that globalization and income convergence make the catego-
ries West and non-West, and the distinction between core and periph-
ery, less and less meaningful, especially in an era of rising powers such
as China and India. These distinctions still have some utility. The term
West remains politically useful to both the rising powers in defining
their identity and the Western nations (in dealing not only with non-
Europeans, but also, as seen in the Ukraine crisis, with Russia and
Eastern European societies). What IR now needs is a single global con-
versation about the state of IRT and of the discipline.
This thinking undergirded the idea of Global IR, (Acharya 2014a). The
idea of Global IR is an extension of our notion of non-Western IR, but
goes beyond it for both normative and instrumental reasons. The project
of making IR inclusive cannot be a conversation among the likeminded.
And it is more likely to fail if it does not draw in the broadest group of
scholars, including those in the Western mainstream. In this context, the
idea of a ‘post-Western IR’, with a more radical agenda to disavow and
displace the existing knowledge of Western IR, is highly problematic. The
problem is how to both invent a Global IR and still engage with those
schooled in the existing IR traditions in a meaningful two-way dialogue?
(Acharya 2011). Labels matter. Global IR does not reject the terms ‘non-
Western’ or ‘post-Western’, but views them ‘as part of a broader challenge
of reimagining IR as a global discipline’ (Acharya 2014a).

. . . the main elements of the Global IR approach are: a commitment

to pluralistic universalism (one that does not impose any particular
idea or approach on others, but respects diversity while seeking
common ground), grounding in world history, theoretical pluralism, a
close nexus with the study of regions, regionalisms and area studies,
avoidance of cultural exceptionalism, and recognition of multiple forms
of agency, including the agency of non-Western actors (Acharya 2016).

Global IR is not a theory but a way of understanding and reshaping

the discipline of IR. It does not seek to displace existing Western-
dominated IR knowledge. Unlike some critical theories and postcolo-
nial scholarship, Global IR does not reject the mainstream theories,
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 15

such as realism, liberalism, the English School and constructivism, but

challenges their parochialism and urges them to accept the ideas, expe-
riences and insights from the non-Western world. All paradigms and
isms have their place in Global IR. But this is not pluralism as under-
stood in recent writings on IRT (for a survey of the literature on plu-
ralism, see: Dunne et al., 2013, Eun, 2016). Pluralism in Global IR
does not mean relativism, or accepting a variety of theories to co-exist
or seeking unity or synthesis among theories or pursuing ‘analytic
eclecticism’. Nor is it what Dunne et al., (2013: 416) call ‘integrative
pluralism’ that ‘accepts and preserves the validity of a wide range of
theoretical perspectives and embraces theoretical diversity as a means
of providing more comprehensive and multi-dimensional accounts of
complex phenomena’. Pluralism in Global IR does not accept and pre-
serve existing theories as is, but expects them to give due recognition
to the places, roles, and contributions of non-Western peoples and soci-
eties. In this sense, Global IR is really more about pluralization within
theories, rather than just between them. IR is still largely rooted in
Western history and political theory. Although it has pretensions to be
about all times and all places, in fact it is a rather parochial expression
of the short period in world history when the West was dominant. The
discipline would look very different if it had been invented in China,
India or the Islamic world. As the period of Western dominance begins
to ebb, IR needs now to break away from this parochial bias by incor-
porating perspectives not only from other histories and political theo-
ries, but also from world history. It is time for a Global IR.

4 How Asia fits into Global IR

What are the implications of Global IR for the study of IR in Asia? It
is useful here to examine some recent developments in theoretical work
on Asian IR. But in doing so, we urge that what and who is Asian
should be defined broadly. One should take into consideration not only
writings by Asian scholars based in Asia, but also the contribution of
anyone writing theoretically on the international relations of Asia. We
also take a broader view of IRT (Acharya and Buzan, 2007, 2010;
Alagappa, 2011) and what constitutes theoretical advances than
Johnston (2012) who is skeptical of the value of theoretical work on
Asia. His standard for judging this is whether it can ‘resolve major
16 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

controversies, lead to breakthroughs, and drive theory development’.

To some extent, this is an unfair question because the controversies
and debates that Asia is expected to resolve in order to meet
Johnston’s standard originated in Western contexts with limited rele-
vance for Asia. Applying Western IR concepts and theories is only a
first, very small, step toward breaking the Western parochialism of IR
as a discipline. More important is to expand the histories and cultural
resources on which IRT generally is based. This might lead to both lo-
cal theories [like those about the European Union (EU)] or to reconfi-
gurations of existing mainstream ones (like the developments in the
English School described above). Our interest in non-Western IRT
emerged over a growing dissatisfaction with the applicability of main-
stream IRTs to Asia. But its real contribution was to encourage explo-
rations into alternative sources of IRT, such as indigenous histories,
classical philosophy and religious traditions, the ideas of national lead-
ers, the writings of contemporary scholars, and the foreign policy prac-
tices of modern states and the norms and process dynamics of regional
interactions (such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations).
With this in mind, we can make a number of ‘ten-years on’ observa-
tions about the development of theoretical work on Asian IR. First,
overall interest in theory seems to be growing among the academic
community studying Asian IR. This is encouraging news for Global
IR, which is contingent on the greater engagement of scholars outside
the West in IRT–not only theoretical approaches to the study of world
politics at large but also to the study of the international relations of
their respective nations and regions. There is no systematic survey to
confirm this. We can only say this from anecdotal evidence, including
our attendance at conferences held in Asia and outside, the participa-
tion by Asian scholars in international conferences such as those orga-
nized by the International Studies Association (ISA), and the World
International Studies Conference (WISC), and the growing number of
conferences organized by such associations in Asia (In 2015, for exam-
ple, ISA held its first ever regional Convention in Southeast Asia).
Some of the reasons for a rising interest in theory may have to do with
changes in the conditions that we had identified as impediments to the de-
velopment of IRT in Asia (Acharya and Buzan, 2007). These included the
paucity of resources, shortage of publishing outlets, language barriers, offi-
cial frowning on theoretical work, and relatedly, the pull of policy relevant
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 17

work that offers greater prestige and financial rewards to IR scholars in

many parts of Asia. Some of these barriers remain, especially the entrap-
ment of IR scholars in policy research. But there have been improvements
in other areas. Asian universities are increasingly well endowed. There has
been a marked shift in this regard in China. In India, there have emerged
a number of private and public universities, such as the multilaterally
sponsored South Asia University and the privately endowed O.P. Jindal
Global University. These have added to the resource base of the Indian
IR community. The theoretical turn in Asian IR is also due to the role of
Asian IR-focused journals, such as The Pacific Review (published from
UK and celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2017), International Relations
of the Asia-Pacific (based in Japan and launched in 2000), and the newer
Chinese Journal of International Politics (based at Tsinghua university and
launched in 2006). The oldest IR journal in Asia, International Studies,
published since 1959 by the oldest IR School in Asia, has also shown a
growing interest in IRT.
Our second observation about theoretical work on Asia is that its
most important contribution has been to challenge existing IRTs, espe-
cially their applicability to Asia. Two examples from the literature on
regional security in Asia make this point, although one can also find
examples of such challenges in the study of the political economy of
the region (especially those concerning the challenge posed by Asia’s
state-led capitalism to neoclassical theories of international develop-
ment). One of the two challenges is to realist/neorealist predictions that
the end of the Cold War would produce a breakdown of order in Asia
due to multipolarity, the rise of new powers, and the relative absence
of mitigating factors such as strong regional institutions or economic
interdependence (Kang, 2003, Acharya 2004a,b). This may yet turn out
to be a false optimism, especially in view of recent growth of maritime
tensions in Asia, but the nearly three decades that have elapsed since
predictions about Asia’s multipolar instability were first voiced is a
long enough period to justify skepticism about theoretical suppositions
derived from Europe’s past that multipolar orders are inherently unsta-
ble. A better explanation might be the drift toward ‘hypermasculine’ re-
gimes and foreign policy behaviors in Northeast Asia (Sjoberg, 2012).
Another area in which theoretical writings on Asian IR have chal-
lenged the Western theoretical mainstream concerns West European-
derived theories of regional institutions, especially the rationalistic,
18 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

interest-driven, formal, legalistic and bureaucratic approach epitomized

by the EU. Writings on Asian regionalism have highlighted the relevance
of more informal, consensual, and process-centric approaches to regional
cooperation. Thanks to theoretical work on Asian regionalism, there has
been a growing acceptance in the wider IR community, well before
Brexit happened, that the EU should not be considered to be a universal
model for judging the performance of regional institutions elsewhere.
Aside from these two examples, on which much evidence already ex-
ists, Asia is also shaping to be a crucial area for challenging the
Liberal view that the emerging powers of the world can be coopted
into the American-made and -led world order, and by implication the
system of global governance it has promoted and defended since
World War II. According to this view, the emerging powers have bene-
fitted so much from the American-led order that they would have little
reason to seek its replacement. With China, India, and Indonesia, Asia
could really be crucial to assessing whether the Liberal claims prove
valid. China’s initiatives in developing parallel institutions such as the
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and its and India’s par-
ticipation in the BRICS’-organized development and financial organi-
zations, suggest not outright co-option, but a demand for reform and
reorientation of the existing international order (Stuenkel, 2016).
Our third observation is that theoretical work on Asia is seldom at
the metatheoretical level or taking on the ‘great debates’ frontally.
There have been notable exceptions, such as Tang’s (2013) ‘Social
Evolution Paradigm’ (SEP), which argues that no single theory is valid
across all time, and that IRTs, especially realism and liberalism, ‘are
appropriate to different phases of history’ (see the discussion of ‘theo-
retical pluralism’ by Eun 2016). Most theoretical work on Asian IR
has involved middle-range theories, such as those related to balance of
power, interdependence, institutions, or norm diffusion, thus reflecting,
as mentioned earlier, the general trend in IRT in recent years. Some of
the best examples of such work can be found in the Stanford
University Press’ series, Studies in Asian Security. There has also been
a proliferation of specialized book series on Asian IR from other pub-
lishing houses, including Routledge (which has several imprints on
Asian IR and security), Palgrave Macmillan, Edward Elgar, Sage,
Georgetown, Columbia, etc.
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 19

It is our general impression that works by Asian scholars using

middle-range theory tend to be contextually grounded and lean more
toward inductive, rather than deductive approaches (Acharya, 2009).
Despite the aforementioned limitations, work employing middle-range
theories and empirically grounded in Asia, can lead to the refinement
of paradigms and debates within as well as between them. They can
produce new theoretical concepts and explanations with broader cross-
regional and global applicability, such as Shih’s (1990; Shih and Yin,
2013) and Qin’s (2011, 2016), concept of ‘relationality’. Qin, a key pro-
moter of the Chinese School, claims that his ‘relational theory of world
politics’, not only resonates within Chinese culture deeply but also has
a universal relevance. Western actors also behave relationally, even
though this may be hidden from view because of the emphasis on ra-
tionality in Western culture. Qin’s relationality argument echoes
Constructivism, but this is consistent with a core element of Global IR
that it does not displaces existing IRTs but seeks to enrich them with
the infusion of ideas and practices from the non-Western world. We ar-
gued in 2007 that theoretical work on Asia (or any region) should not
simply apply Western theories in the local context to assess their valid-
ity, but should generalize from the local context on its own terms to
offer new concepts and approaches that have analytical value beyond
the region. This is an important requirement of Global IR that Asia is
beginning to address, although it has a long way to go.
Our fourth observation is that although still limited, there is also
some indication of growing attempts by scholars drawing on classical
traditions and civilizations to challenge Western IRT and propose alter-
native or indigenous concepts and theories (See Yan, 2011, 2013;
Chong, Milner, 2016; Shahi and Ascione, 2016). This approach is an
important step toward a Global IR. It has been foundational for the
aspirations for a Chinese School, and could potentially contribute to
the theory development, if not a ‘school’ in India.
Fifth, we note that developments in Asian IR during the past de-
cade vindicate our conclusion in 2007 that an ‘Asian school of IR’ of
region-wide scope was highly unlikely.5 Obstacles to a regional school
include the distinctive local conditions and intellectual predispositions,

5 Indeed, given the theoretical diversity in Chinese IR, there will not even be a single
‘Chinese School’ (Wang and Buzan, 2014).
20 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

often shaped by national ideologies and foreign policy frameworks, of

scholars in the various parts of the region, especially Japan, China,
and India (Alagappa 2011). Institutional support mechanisms for the
study of IR also vary widely among Asian countries. To be sure, these
differences should not be overstated and may be blurring now, with
some shared themes emerging across sub-regions such as the role of
rising powers in the existing international order, economic interdepend-
ence, and regional institutions. But another constraint on the develop-
ment of an Asian School of IR is the rather limited nature of exchange
and interaction among scholars from the different subregions of Asia.
One limited exception here is the Asian Political and International
Studies Association (APISA), founded in 2003, and the regional con-
ferences organized by the International Studies Association (ISA) in
various Asian locations including Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Sixth, in 2007 we had also argued that ‘schools’ that reflect distinc-
tive national themes, trajectories and foreign policy approaches are
more likely to emerge in Asia. Since then, a ‘Chinese school of IR’ has
been much mooted, though what in fact has emerged are several differ-
ent approaches drawing on various aspects of Chinese history, culture
and political theory (Wang and Buzan, 2014). Chinese IR thinking is
hardly a monolith. Unlike Qin, who has led the call for a Chinese
School, Yan (2011: 255–59), urges fellow Chinese scholars to ‘enrich
IRTs with traditional Chinese thought’ to build a more universal disci-
pline, rather than develop a distinctive Chinese School of IR.
There is some talk of Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese IR schools,
but not yet much of substance to back them up. It is perhaps a good
bet that as in China, and indeed as for the English School, any na-
tional schools that do emerge will simply operate alongside an array of
different theoretical approaches. In India, as in China, there is a grow-
ing interest among scholars to draw upon classical Indian texts such as
the epic Mahabharata (Narlikar and Narlikar, 2014; Datta-Ray 2015)
and the secular treatise Arthasastra (Gautam, 2015) traditions to ex-
plain Indian foreign policy and strategic choices. This raises the possi-
bility that Indian scholars might one day develop such a school by fo-
cusing on the rise of India, including the distinctive concerns and
status that comes with it. But such talk is yet to grow into a self-
conscious attempt to develop an Indian School of IR (Acharya, 2013).
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 21

While the development of national schools can contribute to the

goal of a Global IR, there are also risks and limitations, some of which
are especially visible in authoritarian states, where proximity to and
identification with the centers of national power and security, includ-
ing state and regime security, is a significant pressure. Politics
aside, our key concern about any national school is whether it can
‘deprovincialize’ (Acharya 2014c), i.e. travel beyond the national or re-
gional context from which it is derived in the first place, as the English
School and the Copenhagen School (‘securitization’ theory) have done.
If ‘schools’ are only useful for explaining developments with regard to
a specific country or region, then their proliferation carries a greater
risk of the fragmentation of the discipline This is indeed a major chal-
lenge from developing a Global IR from local thinking and sources.

5 Conclusion: hierarchical traditions and models

The challenge for Asian IR is how to contribute to the building of
Global IR. Asian exceptionalism, or generalizing from the unique at-
tributes of Asian history, culture and identity, while valuable, will not
suffice. One needs to look at alternative and multiple pathways to
bring Asia in and enrich IRT with ideas, concepts and theories that
have meaning and applicability beyond Asia or its individual countries.
This idea of ‘deprovincializing’ Asia (Acharya 2014c), and building a
pathway toward a ‘pluralistic univeralism’ (Acharya, 2014a) in IRT out
of Asia is, in our view, the central intellectual challenge facing Asian
scholars of IR. Building IRTs that cover specific times and places is
certainly part of what needs to be done. There are many historical
gaps in the coverage of IRT, and it is just as legitimate to theorize
about the Chinese tribute system as it is to theorize about the EU. But
the larger goal should be to make conceptual and theoretical contribu-
tions that reach beyond local times and places.
We conclude by looking more closely at one specific example of the
kind of theorizing from Asia that might have wider application: the hi-
erarchical traditions and models of Confucian Northeast Asia. There
may well be other hierarchical traditions from Asia that can be used in
this way. As Neumann (2011) notes most of those who entered Western
international society came from suzerain systems of one sort or an-
other. But the Confucian case is at this point the best developed and
22 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

most widely known. When we wrote in 2007 it was still reasonable to

see China and Japan as exceptions to the realist rules of statehood
(290). China was still attempting to rise peacefully, and Japan was still
mainly content with being a trading state with major constraints on its
right to use force. Now both look, in realist terms, more ‘normal’.
China has spent the last few years increasing its military strength, be-
ing increasingly assertive toward its neighbors, and throwing its newly
acquired weight around. Japan has turned toward reacquiring the char-
acteristics of a ‘normal’ state. Both are ruled by nationalist-minded
parties, and their relationship has deteriorated over the festering his-
tory problems between them. In some ways, this matters to what we
said above about national schools of IR and the role of Asia in making
Global IR. It perhaps matters less to what we have to say about hierar-
chy and relationalism as possible Asian contributions to IRT, though it
does put them into sharper relief as factors shaping the contemporary
practice of international relations in Asia.
We have argued that if IR had developed elsewhere than in the West
it would almost certainly not look like it does now. This argument is
based on the close linking between IRT and the anarchic practices and
political theories that have dominated Western international history.
East Asia provides the clearest historical counterfactual, because its in-
ternational history has been mainly dominated by hierarchical practices
and political theories. There is no shortage of observers of East Asian
societies and international relations who think that hierarchy remains a
powerful factor in all levels of political relations in these societies
(Shih, 1990; Fei, 1992; Harris, 2014: locs. 362–74, 1289; Chen, 2015).
Confucianism is widely held to provide the philosophical foundations
for hierarchical thinking and practice in East Asia, and to the extent
that this observation is correct, East Asia’s history and political theory
point to hierarchy as one key area in which this region can mobilize its
intellectual resources to make a distinctive contribution to IRT.
Mainstream Western IRT has for long been subject to the critiques of
anarchophilia and Eurocentrism, and is increasingly open to the need to
think about hegemony and hierarchy as essential elements of the inter-
national system/society (Watson,1992; Simpson, 2004; Lake, 2009;
Clark, 2011; Zarakol, 2011; Bukovansky et al., 2012). Waltz (1979) was
not wrong in his argument that hierarchy is a fundamentally different
principle of social order from anarchy/sovereign equality. Among other
 Why is there no Non-Western International Relations Theory? 23

things, hierarchical structures, with their focus on relative status, gener-

ate quite different logics of securitization from anarchical ones, with
their focus on the absolute status of sovereign equality.
The basic Confucian model of society is rooted in a hierarchical
family structure similar to that in many traditional agrarian civiliza-
tions (Hwang, 2011: 109–10, 199). For traditional Chinese ‘foreign pol-
icy’ (not a wholly appropriate term) during the Ming dynasty, it was
about a benevolent and morally superior emperor expecting loyal sub-
ordination from others, and reserving the right to punish them if they
disturbed China’s peace or good order (Zhang, 2015: 202–5). This
model can be, and is, extended to the political and international
realms, as it was under the principle of Tianxia which applied
Confucian relational logic to ‘all under heaven’. There is support in the
literature for the view that this still applies in modern foreign policy
terms, with Confucian cultures being more inclined to hierarchy and
bandwagoning than to sovereign equality and balance of power
(Fairbank, 1968; Kang, 2003-4; Kissinger, 2011: 1–3; Harris, 2014: locs.
362–74. For a critique, see Acharya, 2003–4).
Traditionally in East Asia, Confucianism operated mainly on the ba-
sis of a hierarchy rooted in the existence of a central culture. Power
considerations were of course relevant to establishing and maintaining
hierarchical relations, but they were not its main foundation (Zhang,
2001; Suzuki, 2009: 34–55; Zhang, 2009, 2014; Zhang and Buzan,
2012). After 1911, the Chinese imperial system was abandoned. By
then Japan was already strongly in contention for the mantle of
‘Middle Kingdom’, having defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905.
Japan’s attempt at regional empire lasted until 1945, and since then,
the US has had hegemonic status in East Asia (Goh, 2013). China’s
rise now puts the question of hierarchy back onto the agenda for
NEA. China has no strong claim to either political or cultural central-
ity or superiority, so any claim for hierarchy will be based mainly on
its relative power and wealth. The current neo-Confucian discourse
from the Chinese party/state about a harmonious society, both domes-
tically and internationally, and about Tianxia as a structuring concept
for international relations, suggests that China is reclaiming these tradi-
tions to legitimize its foreign policy. As Callahan (2009) notes, this
linkage gives a worryingly imperial/hierarchical implication to China’s
discourse about harmony. This certainly fits both with China’s
24 Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan

keenness to deny equal status to Japan, and its undiplomatic assertions

in Southeast Asia about big versus small countries. In Confucian
thinking, social harmony necessarily rests on the precondition of stable
hierarchy. But almost nothing is said about the hierarchy side of this
equation in China’s contemporary foreign policy rhetoric. At least in
China, therefore, political sensitivity might constrain the development
of IRT along these lines. But that inconvenience does not disguize the
fact that East Asia commands the historical and philosophical re-
sources to address an IRT issue on which Western theorizing has been
relatively thin. The fact that China is promoting hierarchical rhetoric
at the same time as it also plays as one of the strongest defenders of
sovereign equality and non-intervention, makes this topic important
not just to policymakers in Asia and beyond, but also to the develop-
ment of Global IR.

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