Reus-Smit, Christian. "The Strange Death of Liberal International Theory". European Journal of International Law, Vol.12, No.3 (2001): 573-594.

Reus-Smit, Christian. "The Strange Death of Liberal International Theory". European Journal of International Law, Vol.12, No.3 (2001): 573-594.

• The study of international relations which emerged in the Interwar Period was both empirical and normative, attempting to simultaneously understand the dynamics of IR and reform that system to result in better outcomes (573, 577, 591). The IR which emerged after WWII, however, was stripped of earlier normative questions and reformatory aims. Scholars since the 1940s have actively attempted to remove politics from IR theory (574).
• The author argues that the adoption of rationalism and apolitical principles by the liberal school of IR, led by Andrew Moravcsik, has undermined the ability of liberal IR theory to produce the normative claims necessary to function as a theory of international law (574).
• E. H. Carr, one of the founders of the realist school of IR, is typically, but incorrectly, discussed as a scientific realist. On the contrary, Dr. Carr believed in a deeply political IR, and hoped that a better understanding of IR could allow politicians to make the political decisions to prevent future catastrophe like WWI (577-578).
• The founder of the liberal school of IR, Norman Angell, also believed in a deeply political vision of IR scholarship. Dr. Angell believed firmly in the liberal ideals set out in the League of Nations, and sought to use IR to change the ideological hegemony to one compatible with new liberal ideals. His primary disagreement with Dr. Carr is that Dr. Angell believed that the ideas of the League of Nations should be upheld, whereas Dr. Carr believed the League to be a failed project not based an informed understand of state interaction (579-580).
• The author argues that politics, as distinct from other social, philosophical, or economic fields, is defined by the combination of practical and moral goals and arguments. Politics is a set of discussions about how much morals should affect the methods for achieving goals (575).
• The author considers that politics can be broken down into four questions: the identity question, who are we?; the purposive question, what do we want?; the strategic-instrumental question, how do we get what we want?; and the material-instrumental question, what resources are needed to get what we want? (575-576).
• The first two of these questions deal with moral issues of a polity, whereas the last two deal with purely practical issues. Politics deals with both moral and practical issues simultaneously (576).
• Contemporary IR scholars assume that politics is either a struggle for materially quantifiable resources, or maximizing utility. The reasons for these assumptions are almost never clarified in academic literature. This makes the limits of political science very unclear (575).
• According to the author, the essential issue with contemporary IR scholarship is that these assumptions ignore the moral arguments essential to politics. They only focus on the strategic-instrumental and material-instrumental questions. However, without a firm moral basis, actual politics cannot be studied (576-577, 581).
• Hans Morgenthau, a major figure in the school of realist IR, represents the first major break from the Interwar conception of IR as a blend of the practical and the moral. Dr. Morgenthau adopts the view that the goal of politics -- the answer to the identity and purposive questions -- is always the accumulation of power. Accordingly, IR could focus entirely on instrumentalist questions (581).
• While Dr. Morgenthau's work still had some elements of human decision-making in its conceptions of IR, the neorealist school of IR established by Kenneth Waltz did not. Dr. Waltz built on Dr. Morgenthau's instrumentalist view of politics, arguing that these questions could be best answered through rational scientific inquiry (581-582).
• Responding to the conception of IR as a struggle for power in an anarchic world, Robert Keohane established the neoliberal institutionalist school of IR theory, asserting that international cooperation through institutions was still possible within the rational and instrumentalist view of IR. Dr. Keohane's work marked a turning point within the field of IR, as the both major schools of thought now adopted a limited, instrumentalist, and amoral view of IR (582).
• Even new IR scholarship, like that of Dr. Moravcsik, follows these rationalist and instrumentalist models. While Dr. Moravcsik actual pays attention to how states may have different goals, his theory still does not seriously consider how those states may then pursue those goals in different ways nor how those political preferences are formed. His actual theory remains entirely focused on instrumentalist questions (583-584).
• The concept of IR as a scientific, rational, and amoral field of study has been so entrenched in mainstream American circles, that any IR theory which does not meet these criteria is considered illegitimate. Likewise, a theory's similarity to empirical scientific inquiry is taken as a measure of its merit (582-583).
• International law is essentially and irreducibly normative, as it deals with the creation of laws to govern state interactions and proscriptions of that behavior. Unlike political science, international law cannot have its normative elements removed, meaning that contemporary non-normative IR theory cannot suitable inform international legal practice (585-586).
• Anne Marie Slaughter proposes a new system of international law to match the new liberal model of IR proposed by Dr. Moravcsik. Recognizing the primacy of individuals and voluntary organizations both nationally and internationally, Dr. Slaughter recommends a system of international law with set rules for the relationships between states and individuals, with these human rights law taking precedence over laws governing interactions between states (586).
• The issue with Dr. Slaughter's work is that it makes normative claims while only drawing from empirical resources on IR theory. Her claims lack any logical backing or justification, because there is no other normative thought in IR to support them (587-589).
• The abandonment of normative arguments in the liberal school of IR has made its claims untenable and sapped it of its unique contributions to the field. Additionally, this rationalist transformation has made the theory unsuitable for use in informing international law (592-593).