BISA-ISA Joint International Conference, Edinburgh, 20-22 June 2012

Why Decolonise International Relations Theory?

Melody Foneseca
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Ari Jerrems
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Abstract: The International Relations discipline arguably owes its existence to the
European export of a particular world view and political system based around the
Nation‐State. This model has traditionally shaped theory and defined the “reality” of
the discipline. Since decolonisation the system has remained largely intact and
unchallenged. Nevertheless, in recent times this Eurocentric “reality” of the Social
Sciences has been increasingly challenged by a plurality of approaches. It is important
to assess the impact and opportunities offered by these alternatives. This paper
explores how Decolonial thinking, an approach initiated by (mainly) Latin American
academics based in US universities, may offer a way of reconceptualising the
Eurocentric epistemology of International Relations theory. While the approach has
received little attention within the discipline it is easy to see the relevance it may have.
Its interdisciplinary scope and concepts have been employed to de‐construct the
foundations of Sociology, History and Political Science. Decolonial thinking advocates a
diverse counter epistemology that dialogues with and facilitates the participation of
those excluded and silenced by dominant discourses of modernity. Its critique
attempts to go beyond intellectual understandings offered by European philosophy
and in doing so opens itself to an intercultural democratisation of knowledge and a
diversification of its sources beyond Western texts. This paper will critically assess
whether Decolonial thinking offers a credible alternative within IR theory. We will
argue that the Decolonial perspective provides positive tools to rethink the belonging
and citizenship of those marginalised by the binary division self/other in mainstream
theory.

Keywords: Coloniality of power, Decolonial Thinking, Conversion, Containment,

Domination

1
In this paper we propose that the “coloniality of power”, a concept developed by
Decolonial Thinking, provides a useful tool for theorizing International Relations (IR).
Decolonial Thinking is a perspective that was conceived by a group of (mainly) Latin
American academics involved in the modernidad/colonialidad group1. Despite
receiving little attention in IR, we argue that this approach aids critical academics by
connecting with recent literature discussing the foundational role of colonialism. Here
we will firstly recap on the body of work that has been emerging in the discipline
before exploring how the coloniality of power allows us to conceptualize the material
and ideational residues of colonialism. We will pay particular attention to the
coloniality of historical and contemporary IR theory. Through this analysis we highlight
that despite the end of official colonization there has been a continuation of
coloniality.

Since the mid-1980s numerous critical voices have challenged traditional IR theory by
drawing on Feminist, Neo-Marxist, Poststructuralist, Postcolonial and Frankfurt School
theories. These theorisations have gained greater influence after the end of the Cold
War. Decolonial Thinking is of most relevance to these approaches and to the growing
number of theorists who, over the last decade, have focused on the “coloniality”
problem. These scholars have analysed how the Eurocentric origins of the discipline
have led, not only to the exclusion of knowledge from the non-Western world, but
also, a general amnesia and ignorance about imperialism, colonialism, and racism.

Critical researchers have sought to unearth a wide range of issues that have been
silenced. As Branwen G. Jones has pointed out, “how is it possible that IR has paid so
little attention to race, colonialism, and imperialism, to the intertwined nature of the
histories of the West and ‘the rest’?”2. Authors underline the importance of being able
to “find a way of engaging with –rather than ignoring– non-Western political thought
in a manner that is not beholden to colonial ideologies that drain the non-Western
world of all significant content for the study of a modernity that is now, and perhaps
was always, integrally global.”3 This is particularly relevant if, as we suggest, the
knowledge and imaginaries produced in the discipline are reflected in global politics:
from securitization to governability or local reproductions of violence. Scholars have
also begun to question who the subjects of IR are. Meera Sabaratnam has argued,
“[t]he notion of ‘dialogue’[…] requires that we ask questions about their identities,
1
See GROSFOGUEL, Ramón, “The Epistemic Decolonial Turn”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2007, pp.
211-223. Spanish readers can find a more complete introduction in CASTRO-GÓMEZ, Santiago and
GROSFOGUEL, Ramón (eds), El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del
capitalismo global, Siglo del hombre editores, Bogotá, 2007.
2
JONES, Branwen G., “Introduction: International Relations, Eurocentrism, and Imperialism”, in JONES,
Branwen G. (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham,
2006, p.10.
3
SHILLIAM, Robbie, “Non-Western thought and International Relations”, in SHILLIAM, Robbie (ed.),
International Relations and Non-Western Thought. Imperialism, colonialism and investigation of global
modernity, Routledge, London, 2011, p.3

2
horizons and interests, and indeed how these are situated within the world of practice
and action, rather than presuming homogeneity of interest and a common purpose to
inquiry.”4

These scholars insist on the need to open a real debate about the imperial, colonial
and racist origins and legacies of the discipline. This means decolonising any consensus
regarding time, knowledge, and being via a thorough confrontation with these issues.
Shilliam in “The perilous but unavoidable terrain of the non-West”5 affirms that
modernity as a debate in IR is “naturalized” by certain issues such as: the problem of
continuity and change –that is assigning different temporalities to non-Western
societies–; the question of secularism –starting with the idea that certain kinds of
religiosities have disappeared with modernity–; and the topic of race –that the aim to
homogenise cultures led to the creation of “meta-racialized identities”. Sankaran
Krishna identifies what is the crux of the problem when she argues that IR theory is
quintessentially white, “not because race disappears [but because it] serves as the
crucial epistemic silence around which the discipline is written and coheres.” 6

In Decolonizing International Relations the main suggestion is that “to decolonize IR

theory is […] to decolonize all the topics, since the discipline itself is reproducing a
“modern imperial ideology”.7 As Julian Saurin argues, “the central historiographical
battle is a political battle over ownership of the means of production of memory and
the definition of progress”.8 It is necessary to question not only the “neutrality” of
history, but the selection of events, characters, epochs, what is memorable and what is
not. The control over what is to be remembered is suppressed by what Krishna calls
the abstraction of the discipline “presented as the desire of the discipline to engage on
theory building rather than on descriptive or historical analysis, is a screen that
simultaneously rationalizes and elides the details of these encounters.”9 To go beyond
that abstraction IR theory not only needs to deconstruct itself as a reproducer of
Western imperialism, colonialism, and racism, but also as a discipline that continues to
insist that “‘the rest of the world’ has benefited […] from the spread of the West’s

4
SABARTNAM, Meera, “IR in Dialogue... but Can We Change the Subjects? A Typology of Decolonising
Strategies for the Study of World Politics”, in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3,
2011, p. 782.
5
SHILLIAM, Robbie, “The perilous but unavoidable terrain of the non-West”, in SHILLIAM Robbie (ed.),
International Relations and Non-Western Thought. Imperialism, colonialism and investigation of global
modernity, Routledge, London, 2011, p.14.
6
KRISHNA, Sankaran, “Race, Amnesia, and the Education of IR”, in JONES, Branwen G. (ed.),
Decolonizing International Relations, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, 2006, p.92.
7
JONES, Branwen G., “Introduction: International Relations…”, Op. Cit., p. 5.
8
SAURIN, Julian, “International Relations and the Imperial Illusion; or, the Need to Decolonize IR”, in
JONES, Branwen G. (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers,
Lanham, 2006, p.37.
9
KRISHNA, Sankara, “Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations, in JONES, Branwen G.
(ed.), Decolonizing International Relations… Op. Cit., p. 89.

3
civilizing values and institutions[...]”10 This natural acceptance of “West’s civilizing
values and institutions” and the “socialization of international norms” is the focus of
intense criticism. Addressing Kathryn Sikkin and Martha Finnemore’s International
Organization, Robert Vitalis argues that the “acceptance” of international norms had
to hide that “[w]ithin an IR framework, white supremacy is constitutive of a set of
racist practices undertaken by states and individuals”.11 To counter this he proposes
Du Bois’ color line as an initial approach to the study of racism as an international
institution. Vitalis understands that “his views on the ‘race concept’ expressed, over
time, a growing understanding of what we now mean when we say that the idea of
race itself is a social construction”.12

In summary, the decolonisation of IR may not simply be achieved by including the

histories of others or by adding certain scholars to the mainstream. It must critique the
Western canon’s point of enunciation in order to open a space for understandings
from different comprehensions, temporalities, spaces, concepts of governance, human
rights and democracy. On one hand, it must challenge modern international
structures, while, on the other hand, claim the means to produce knowledge, to
dialogue about that which has been excluded. Decolonial Thinking offers a number of
valuable tools to build on this critique. Here we will focus on one key elements; the
coloniality of power. We will address coloniality via three guiding questions. Firstly (I),
we will discuss coloniality and ask if the involvement of the whole world in
International Relations after decolonisation led to the decolonisation of power
relations. Secondly (II), we will analyse whether decolonisation has radically changed
the objectives of IR theory. Finally (III), to conclude, we will briefly discuss how
coloniality is still found in power relations in the Post-Cold War era.

—I—

Before questioning the continuation of coloniality after decolonization, we will firstly

introduce the coloniality of power, the concept we will use to theorize it. This term
partially detaches coloniality from formal historic colonialism and thus is more
adequate to understand the complex processes of continuity and change. The term
was originally coined by Aníbal Quijano. Despite this Quijano’s definition is excessively
grounded in the structuralism of World-System theory and simply adds complexity by
suggesting that hierarchies of race and culture have been intrinsically intermingled
with capitalism since its beginning. Since Quijano the rigid structure of the term has
been rethought and more adequately theorised, not as an overdetermining whole but
as a heterarchical and heterogeneous body of relationships. Ramón Grosfoguel defined
10
JONES, Branwen G., “Introduction: International Relations…”, Op. Cit., p. 6.
11
VITALIS, Robert, “The Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture: Making Racism Invisible in American
International Relations”, en Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2000, p. 337.
12
Ibid, p. 338.

4
the coloniality of power as a heterarchical body whilst Santiago Castro-Gómez
develops it in a way that is of particular interest to us here.

Quijano’s conception revolves around the suggestions that “the model of power that is
globally hegemonic today presupposes an element of coloniality”13. Due to colonialism
the dominated peoples were situated in a natural position of inferiority that was used
to justify their subordination in power relations. Quijano states that “race and the
division of labour remained structurally linked and mutually reinforcing” 14. An
important by product of this is that “Europe’s hegemony over the new model of global
power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity, culture, and especially
knowledge and the production of knowledge under its hegemony”15. Even though it is
helpful in some regards, Quijano’s formulation of an ominous global power structure is
inadequate as it virtually denies the agency of the colonized. We believe, more in line
with recent Decolonial work, that the global system (for want of a better term) is
heterogeneous and discontinuous with logics being temporary and dependent on
territorial spaces of realization. Therefore there are simultaneously overcoding
globalizing/westernizing tendencies and undercurrents of difference. Any type of
power relation that goes global is not determinate in itself but relies on micropolitical
phenomenon, that is to say local adaptations that conjugate the local territory with
global flows. The coloniality of power is best understood as a heterarchy not a
constant and unchanging power structure. Santiago Castro-Gómez critiques Quijano by
stating that:

There are different logics that appear at different historical junctures and that at a
particular moment may be temporarily interconnected without this meaning that
any of them are subsumed in a dominant logic. For this reason the thesis that
racism is a phenomenon that originates in the 16th century with the advent of the
world economy and that this same logic is reproduced in all the different forms of
racism until the current day is the typical argument of a hierarchical theory of
power16.

What Castro-Gómez suggests instead of this continuous understanding of the

coloniality of power is that “there are lots of forms of racism and not all of them are
commensurable”17. Thus we should not think of the coloniality of power as a structure
of power rather as a body of interrelating elements and processes that through the
material and non-material relationships developed since the colonial period have

13
QUIJANO, Aníbal, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America”,in Nepantla: Views from
South, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2000, p 533.
14
ibid, p 535-536.
15
Ibid, p 540.
16
CASTRO-GÓMEZ, Santiago, “Michel Foucault y la colonialidad de poder”, Conference at Universidad
Nacional de Medellín,September, 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdlg4yepIs
17
ibid

5
generally seen the marginalization of the non-Western. We should take particular care
in emphasizing that it is not simply the imposition of Western values and the exclusion
of the Other whilst at the same time we cannot simply assume that, as colonialism has
officially come to an end, coloniality does not persist.

Santiago Castro-Gómez explores the coloniality of power in depth in the article “Michel
Foucault y la colonialidad de poder”. Here we can most clearly understand the
coloniality of power within a language of complexity, open systems, intermixed with
numerous and heterogeneous hierarchies and structuring logics18. The coloniality of
power can be considered as a transversal cut, or “tejido onírico” operating in different
dispositifs of power. It is “a network that is established between different elements”
that may include “discourses, administrative measures, scientific wording and
philosophical, moral and philanthropical propositions”19 and be understood as
“regimes that must be defined by that which is visible and that which is enunciated”20.
According to Castro-Gómez, following Foucault, the coloniality of power is composed
of multiple regimes of power that work on at least three different levels;
microphysical, mesophysical and macrophysical21. Microphysical processes occur at
the level of bodies and represent disciplinary technologies and the production of
subjects. Mesophysical processes work through the control of a population, primarily
through the modern Nation-State. Macrophysical processes refer to transnational
phenomenon such as international security dispositifs22. These relational levels do not
work as superstructure rather they are entirely composed of the human relationships
and material conditions which they are composed of and generate. In IR the coloniality
of power is reflected by what is considered desirable and undesirable practice. This is
based on Western parameters of peace, democracy, aesthetics and political
organization23.

We must then rethink common assumptions about the end of colonisation. The English
school was particularly concerned with demonstrating the importance of the historical
aspects of IR, and thus did, to an extent, take colonialism into account when discussing
the development of the International System. However, it fails to identify the
coloniality of power and instead emphasises that “decolonization [...] brought the
undisputed dominance of European powers to an end, and a new non-discriminatory

18
GROSFOGUEL, Ramón, “Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality: decolonizing political
economy and postcolonial studies” in Eurozine, www.eurozine.com, published 4/7/2008, p. 12.
19
AGAMBEN, Giorgio, “¿Qué es un dispositivo?”, Conference la Universidad Nacional de La Plata,
12/10/2005, p. 1.
20
DELEUZE, Gilles, Foucault, filósofo, Madrid, Gedisa, 1990, p 156.
21
FONSECA, Melody and JERREMS, Ari, “Pensamiento Decolonial: ¿Una “nueva” apuesta en las
Relaciones Internacionales”, Relaciones Internacionales, No. 19, February, 2012, p. 115.
22
CASTRO-GÓMEZ, Santiago, “Michel Foucault y la colonialidad del poder” in Tabula Rasa, No. 6, 2007,
p 163.
23
FONSECA and JERREMS, “Pensamiento Decolonial”, Op. Cit., p. 115.

6
global society came into being”24. It underlines how the colonized rebelled through
national liberation movements, revolutions, wars of independence and pacific
resistance in the name of self-determination and sovereignty and overlooks the
persistence of colonial aspects. Theories about the new members of the International
System tend to be limited to reproducing the dubious suggestion that the colonies
“wanted” to be part of the European State system and benefited from its superior
governing capacity.

Contrary to this, from a Decolonial perspective, we can observe how new regimes of
domination and control emerge between the former colonialists and the colonised
parallel to the superpower relations of the Cold-War. For example, the peripheral wars
devastated the development and practice of self-government in ex-colonies. They
recreated not only those spaces where colonialism operated, but also restructured the
basis of dependency and exclusion. Therefore power relations did not simply end with
decolonisation rather colonial legacies continued within ‘new’ colonial and
exclusionary imaginaries. Readings of the process of decolonization are thus
incomplete and too often reproduce Eurocentric perspectives of world organization
and power relations.

We reiterate that we cannot restrict ourselves to the continuation/end of colonialism

dichotomy. We must revisit the assumption that formal decolonisation made
sovereignty a universal value due the acceptance of its premises by the rest. As Sanjay
Seth has argued, this is a partial view that naturalises modern premises assuming
Western values as universally accepted through imposition or persuasion. This
description of the post WW2 international “reality” manipulates language in a way
that what should be understood as ‘generalized’ is being thought as ‘universalized’. On
the other hand we must not simply affirm that the West completely dominates the
rest and in doing so silence non-Western resistances. To illustrate this complex process
of continuity and change we will briefly discuss the coloniality of power in IR theory in
the following section.

—II—

Our thesis with regards to IR theory is simple. The residual influence of colonialism
remains present. IR problems continue to be read within the framework of old colonial
objectives. Whilst current coloniality has moved away, to some degree, from explicit
statements of ethnocentrism, it tends to reproduce them via sanitized neutral terms
such as modernity and development. In this section we will underline these colonial

24
WATSON, Adam, The Evolution of International Society, London, Routledge, p. 300, as quoted in SETH,
Sanjay, “Postcolonial Theory and the Critique of International Relations”, in Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, p. 170.

7
objectives before briefly comparing their presence before and after the end of the Cold
War. The idea is not to undertake an extensive historical study of IR theory, as has
already been superbly done by John Hobson25, rather to provide a theoretical
framework to think the continuation of coloniality. It is important to note that the
objectives detailed below do not refer to historical traditions. They should be thought
of as identifiable objectives. Theorization may have heterogeneous and contradictory
purposes that do not form a single line of argumentation.

In an earlier article we differentiated between two objectives; conversion and

containment26. Within traditional IR theory it is possible to find numerous similar
formulations that help to conceptualize these desires. Edward Carr speaks of “reality”
and “utopia”27 and Martin Wight of “realists”, “revolutionists” and “rationalists”28.
There are two essential differences between our understanding and these traditional
formulations. Firstly, that it is necessary to situate the existence of these current
desires within the colonial context from which they develop and not define them
unchanging “realities” found in political thinking. Secondly, as we have already
emphasized, it is not possible to limit an individual theory to one homogenous
objective. These are best understood as the dominant lines of thought that are
enclosed within the prism of coloniality, meaning they are interconnected and
interrelated. They are often expressed together.

We will argue that these lines may be divided into three main groups each with its
internal differences. These are “domination” (1), “conversion” (2) and “containment”
(3). Domination is intrinsically linked to the belief in a natural superiority and a right to
rule. Conversion is associated with certainty of the superiority of a system. It has an
important interior differentiation regarding how it conceptualizes Others, allowing us
to identify both “idealistic” and “pragmatic” conversion. Finally, containment affirms
the superiority of a particular people/system yet is contrary to its expansion as this
may put its existence in danger. Carlo Galli in his book Political Spaces and Global
War29 gives us a few interesting theoretical pointers to think about these different
tendencies. Modern thought for Galli is not homogenous rather it is laced with inner
contradictions. He identifies its birth as a response to the internal problem of religious
war and the external problem posed by the colonial Other. These problems are
conjugated with the scientific thought of the moment that influences the formulation

25
HOBSON, John, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760-
2010, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012.
26
FONSECA, Melody and JERREMS, Ari, “Pensamiento Decolonial…”Op. Cit.
27
CARR, Edward, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939: An Introduction to the study of International
Relations, Macmillan, London, 1970 [1939].
28
WIGHT, Martin, “Why there is no International Theory?”, in International Relations, 1960, Vol. 2, pp.
35-48.
29
GALLI, Carlo, Political Spaces and Global War, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2010.

8
of solutions. We will use Galli’s definitions as theoretical illustrations of the multiple
and contradictory tendencies of the coloniality of power.

1. Domination
Galli’s interpretation of domination is the most deficient element of his thought.
Whilst theoretically astute his thinking is excessively Eurocentric as he ties domination
to twentieth century totalitarianism and seems to overlook what Wight does not, that
“The deepest reason why the West was shocked by Hitler was his introducing of
colonial methods of power politics, their own colonial methods, into international
relations”30. Despite this oversight Galli’s thought remains useful when he infers that
logics of domination “derive from the dialects of localization; transform[ing]
themselves into regressive utopias of nature. They are regressive because they
sacrifice the present for the past, but they are also aggressive, for they are constantly
projected toward the future realization of this regressive return to the past” 31 and
“they realize truth instead of criticism”32. Domination is justified by a natural order of
things or a natural process which is particularly evident in the early work of social
Darwinists and other racist perspectives33. This desire tends to affirm that there are a
chosen people. Examples being the idea of American exceptionalism and manifest
destiny or racial superiority defined in similar terms to Hitler’s universal Aryan race34.

This objective proposes that a dominant group necessarily fulfils destiny through the
benign or malicious domination of unequal Others. The natural order of things has an
inherent unequal distribution of power and destiny. Thus if natural domination is not
fulfilled there may be catastrophic effects. In Hitler’s words “Should the Aryan be
forced to disappear a profound darkness will descend on the earth; within a few
thousand years human culture will vanish and the world will become a desert” 35.
Domination necessarily leads to an encounter with the Other which tends to have two
responses; segregation and extermination. Traces of the domination objective, prior to
the Cold War, are outlined by Hobson in his description of Neorealist Hegemonic
Stability theory. This is the case because the hegemonic institutions are considered to
be exceptional36 and their dominance necessary to maintain global security. The
hegemon is not an empire because its domination is warranted because it is a force of
good deriving from the idea of a chosen people37.

30
WIGHT, Martin, International Theory: The three traditions, Leicester University Press, London, 1996
[1991], p 61.
31
GALLI, Political Spaces, Op. Cit., p 86.
32
Ibid, p 87.
33
See HOBSON, The Eurocentric Conception …, Op. Cit.
34
Ibid, p 163.
35
Ibid, p 163.
36
Ibid, p 196.
37
Ibid, p 198.

9
In the post-Cold War era this chosen people is re-found especially in US foreign policy
circles. Jim George identifies a Straussian influence in Neoconservative thought
implying that “the cleverest and strongest should rule the weak, for the good of
society as a whole”38. When this is projected onto the global scene it means that the
USA must illustrate its exceptionalism by going beyond liberalism to impose a coherent
moral code on itself and the rest of the world for the benefit of all 39. For
Neoconservatives the USA should not shy away from domination it must be
uninhibited in its use of power40. This attitude is most clearly exemplified in the
Neoconservative text Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in America’s Foreign
Policy41 where it is affirmed that the USA “must actively ‘shape’ the international
environment to prevent threats arising anywhere in the world” 42. George concludes as
we do that domination is a particularly dangerous objective because of its
“contemptuous attitudes towards other ways of thinking and other ways of solving
complex problems”43.

2. Conversion
Domination may finally desire conversion thus we must again emphasize that these are
not mutually exclusive terms. Paradoxically, the figure that Galli uses to illustrate
conversion is Thomas Hobbes. He is able to argue this because Hobbes provides a
scientific formula to create a uniform geometric State-space. This is the utopia that
Carr talks about, a space where politics, war by other means, is absent. Politics and war
are thus theoretically externalized. Scientific methodology will similarly be put in place
on the global scene by idealist thinkers desiring to expel conflict from global space.
Hobbes’ desire to convert space on a reduced scale is thus symptomatic of this and
differentiates itself from Machiavelli who considered internal conflict as inevitable.

In IR theory how this conversion is to take place is extremely contentious. It tends to

depend on the agency attributed to the Other. Some imply that every Other has a
modern subject inside it waiting to come out44 whilst from a pragmatic perspective it is
not easy for the Other to be converted despite its desirability. Galli identifies the
modern universal subject as the internal contradiction that fuels this conflict. As we
know there has been a constant debate regarding who qualifies as this universal
subject since colonial times. Thus, for Galli the universal subject enters into conflict

38
GEORGE, Jim, “Leo Strauss, Neoconservatism and US Foreign Policy: Esoteric Nihilism and the Bush
Doctrine”, in International Politics, Vol. 43, 2005, p 176.
39
Ibid, p 181.
40
Ibid, p 188.
41
KAGAN, Robert and KRISTOL, William, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in America’s Foreign
Policy, Encounter Books, 2001.
42
George, “Leo Strauss”, Op. Cit., p 190.
43
Ibid, p 197.
44 th
JOHNSON, Jamie, “Linear Time: The ethical encounter in Afghanistan”, The 9 Aberystwth-Lancaster
Graduate Colloquium, Aberystwyth University, 2-4 June, 2011.

10
with the smooth space of the nation blurring the political boundary between inside
and outside, “the closed space of the State” is in conflict with the “universal or limitless
space of the Subject”45 From a pragmatic perspective it is difficult to jump from a
reality of inequality and contradictions to any idea of universality. It is for this reason
that they seek to find a pathway from reality towards utopia. Galli argues that
dialectical thinking emerges in an attempt to bridge the gap between “reality” and
“utopia”, the particular and the universal subject. The particular is “the necessary
“obstacle” for the universal”46. The progressive conquest and rationalization of nature
is considered to be symptomatic of the universal subject sweeping away the
problematic particularities of backwardness. This allows us to understand “the
historico-geographical linearity of the path taken by Spirit”47. Pragmatists promote the
rational conquest of reality by the universal subject through the careful application of
science.

Conversion in IR tends to emphasize that the Western model is the best model
possible and therefore, they wish that all can enjoy its benefits. In addition, they
believe that the adoption of a liberal democratic system eliminates conflict, and hence,
its universality establishes the basis for global peace. Nevertheless, in the cases where
the arrival of the liberal democratic model has not lead to the pacification/civilization
of the State in question, they maintain that this is due to the endogenous tendencies
of these societies that do not allow them to tame or overcome their immaturity.
Norman Angell assures us that “our almost completely savage unconscious can at
times want war whilst our more civilized conscious recognises that peace is more
desirable”48. The argument of Angell with respect to the failure of peace is that
humanity is not prepared to accomplish it. Civilisation depends on the possibility to
choose the superior system49. With less education, less chance there is of choosing the
correct option. Angell contrasts the capacity of the people of Great Britain, who are
more educated, with some countries in Latin America who have less of an
understanding of foreign affairs and, therefore, are less able to choose rationally 50.
Henceforth, according to Angell, it is necessary to educate (convert) them to the
benefits of the Western model in order to achieve peace.

The pragmatic approach to conversion is most clearly evident in the work of Martin
Wight and Hedley Bull. However, we may also identify it in Carr’s work. Carr critiques
early theories as overly optimistic whilst recognising that political reality may be

45
GALLI, Political Spaces, Op. Cit., p 54.
46
Ibid, p 69.
47
Ibid, p 72.
48
ANGELL, Norman, La paz y el pueblo, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1936, p. 15.
49
Ibid, p. 31.
50
Ibid, p 6.

11
changed by a desire to do so51 and thus calls for a pragmatic approach. For Bull
contemporary International Society is limited to those states where stable government
and sovereignty exist according to European standards52 whilst both Wight and Bull
seem to underline that when there is homogeneity in international models “diplomacy
acquires a certain habit of cooperation”53. Thus what they seek to do is find a way to
pragmatically achieve the adoption of international norms. The colonisation process is
celebrated in Bull and Adam Watson’s co-edited text The Expansion of International
Society54 for creating the basis for an International Society. According to Watson,
whilst expanding outwards, Europe created “an elaborate and remarkably successful
international system”55 which of course the world would later benefit from because
“the independent state was predictable, in place of the uncertainty and chaos which it
had prevailed”56.

Neoconservatism reflects simultaneously a desire for domination and conversion as it

is “primarily concerned with the survival of the culture of the West”57. Conversion is
seen as the safest road to achieve this aim. The Project for the New American Century
calls for a strong military that can purposefully spread American values throughout the
world58. Nevertheless conversion in the post-Cold War era is by no means limited to
the belligerence of the Neoconservatives. Jack Donnelly hides a desire for conversion
under the guise of the development of International Human Rights in his text “The
Social Construction of International Human Rights”59. Despite the optimism of
Donnelly about its development, what he describes is the creeping civilizational
exportation of the West which he considers to have made the World a better place.
We can interpret a kind of linear progress of Human Rights working in tandem with the
process of Westernization. Thus what he indirectly promotes is the colonisation of
those areas that are yet to succumb to these superior values.

The pragmatic approach is forwarded by Roland Paris in his book At War’s End:
Building Peace after conflict. Before idealism, he argues, we firstly need order as was
argued by Wight and Bull. In the Global era it is particularly important to enforce order

51
CARR, Twenty Years’, Op. Cit., p 4.
52
Ibid, p 9.
53
WIGHT, “Why there…”, Op. Cit., p 45.
54
BULL, Hedley and WATSON, Adam, The Expansion of International Society, Clarendon Press, Oxford,
1984.
55
WATSON, Adam, “European International Society and its Expansion” BULL, Hedley and WATSON,
Adam, The Expansion of International Society, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984. p 23.
56
Ibid, p 24.
57
Ibid, p 184
58
Ibid, p 189.
59
DONNELLY, Jack, “La Construcción Social de los derechos humanos”, (translated by Virginia
Rodríguez), Relaciones Internacionales, No. 17, 2011, pp. 153-184.
http://www.relacionesinternacionales.info/ojs/index.php?journal=Relaciones_Internacionales&page=in
dex

12
because, in the words of ex-British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, “When we let a
government fail, Warlords, drug traffickers or terrorists fill the gap… Terrorists are
strongest where States are weak”60. It is thus necessary to pragmatically strengthen
weak states, being cautious of overly optimistic liberalism which may put order in
danger. Paris is critical of overly optimistic liberalisation and the implementation of the
Western model out of context however what he proposes in its place is
“institutionalization before liberalization”61 that is to say a strong autocratic Western
style state that can properly control liberalisation. It is a more gradual movement
towards the Western model. The population is firstly educated in how the superior
model works. Despite his pragmatism the aim continues to be the spread of Western
market democracies62. Another example of the pragmatic approach can be found in
Christian Reus-Smit’s The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity and
Rationality in International Relations63. What Reus-Smit does in this text is reaffirm the
idea that it is necessary to have a common series of values between States by
analysing three historic moments. Reus-Smit implies that order, as was done with Bull,
is synonymous with a series of common values and in doing so he indirectly promotes
the exportation of Western order throughout the world, with pragmatic concessions of
course, to attain a stable system.

3. Containment
The objective that most contrasts with the universalization underlying conversion is
containment. Containment tends to be founded in Carr’s “reality”, that is, the way
things really are, as opposed to “utopia”, how things should be. In Galli’s work the idea
of a concrete natural reality is a characteristic of pre-modern thought. In this thought
human relations are composed of an organic plurality which is simply the way things
are. For Galli, “[t]his system, in Christian Europe, founds its own hierarchical interior
not only on differences of birth, but also, in the last resort, on a God who is creator
and guarantor of this “stereomatic” spatiality and organized plurality”64. Notions of an
unchangeable reality and the innate qualities of things are persistent throughout
modernity. In such thinking it is of upmost importance to maintain the status quo and
find the correct natural balances.

The containment objective does not differ with regards to the superiority of Western
modes of being. Despite this they doubt the possibility that the Western model can be
exported. In addition, they often emphasise the need to maintain the local culture

60
Cited in PARIS, Roland, “Introducción de “At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict” (translation
Ari Jerrems), in Relaciones Internacionales, No. 16, 2011, p 167.
61
Ibid
62
Ibid
63
REUS-SMIT, Christian, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity and Rationality in
International Relations, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999.
64
GALLI, Political Space, Op. Cit., p 14.

13
within national space. Friedrich Meinecke affirms that in order to achieve a stable
State hard work and rationality are necessary65. From this statement we can deduce
that where rationality is absent, trying to build something can put our own stability in
danger. Carr for example doubts the dream of a secular march of humanity towards a
better world66. The main concern of both Carr67 and Hans Morgenthau68, is how to
sure up an effective democracy within a reduced space. Morgenthau emphasises that
if democracies are not protected in this space, they will not be able to survive. Whilst,
Carr is concerned about social coherence and common responsibilities that are
necessary in order to achieve an effective democracy69. Finding this equilibrium is the
responsibility of every sovereign unit. In the case of marginalised countries their innate
irrational characteristics are reasons for doubt. Carr assures us that in non-Western
countries nationalist sentiment was much less developed70; whilst Morgenthau
underlines the role of the permanent factors of peoples, such as national character
and tradition71. In this way, the world beyond the West is conceptualised as if it was in
a constant state of war72. Similarly, for these authors the Western political model
“made no sense at all somewhere else”73.

In the current context a desire for containment is explored in detail by Wendy Brown
in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. In this text she explains the proliferation of
border walls in relation to a desire to have a visual assurance that Otherness is being
kept out74. The divisions that most clearly explains the way that IR is characterised in
the Post-Cold War era is via the dichotomies of integration/fragmentation, global
system/chaos, civilization/barbarianism, rationality/irrationality. The walls attempt to
divide these spheres. Paradoxically, we believe that this separation is most clearly
represented in Francis Fukuyama’s The end of History and the Last Man75. His
conception of an end of history allows for the global split between rational and
irrational action, thus a global concern for the irrational Other not to be let in. John
Lewis Gaddis is concerned about fragmentation and how it affects order76, similarly
Samuel Huntington affirms that in the new world order there are zones of peace and

65
MEINECKE, Friedrich, La idea de la razón de estado en la Edad Moderna, Centro de Estudios
Constitucionales, Madrid, 1983, p. 7.
66
CARR, Edward Hallet, Las condiciones de paz, Edit. Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1943, p. 12.
67
Ibid, p. 57.
68
MORGENTHAU, Hans, Scientific Man vs. Power politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974, p.
55.
69
CARR, Las condiciones, Op. Cit., p 69.
70
Ibid, p 88.
71
MORGENTHAU, Scientific Man, Op. Cit., p 66.
72
OWENS, Patricia, Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah
Arendt, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p. 69.
73
CARR, Las condiciones, Op. Cit., p 89.
74
See BROWN, Wendy, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Zone Books, New York, 2010.
75
FUKUYAMA, Francis, El fin de la historia y el último hombre, Planeta, Barcelona, 1992.
76
GADDIS, John Lewis, “Toward the Post-Cold War World”, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, 1991, pp. 102-122.

14
zones of disorder77. Robert Kaplan gives the starkest picture seeing developed nations
as a limousine passing through a poor neighbourhood that splits civilisation from the
state of nature78. Paul Kennedy underlines the necessity to keep out sources of
irrationality inherent to the Third World such as a lack of population control,
emotionality, radical thought and conflict79. Facing this Kaplan promotes a strong
nation to resist these global forces and Kennedy calls for cultural centralization and
cohesion between all social groups including schools, companies and governments80.

Through these brief comparisons we may conclude that IR theory has not undergone a
thorough decolonization. To answer the original question, why decolonize IR theory?
We may state that it is necessary because some of the key objectives of colonial
thought remain firmly entrenched in contemporary theory. This coloniality is
particularly problematic due to its inadequate accommodation of Otherness within
International affairs.

—II—

To conclude we will briefly consider the continuation of the coloniality of power in

current practices. In the post-Cold War era, a new problem, globalization, has become
central to IR theory. Despite this novelty, the answers given do not break with colonial
logics rather they repeat them. On one hand the globalization problem causes a crisis
for political modernity. Modern thinking based itself around closed spaces such as the
Nation-State that opposed itself to the anarchy beyond its borders. However, as can be
seen through the work of Didier Bigo this has now changed and security professionals
no longer consider security threats to be clearly divisible between the inside/outside
dichotomy of modernity rather they identify an undifferentiated global field of
(in)security81. Considering this we may state that in popular discourse, we not only
witness the globalisation of order through international organisation, we also witness
the globalisation of anarchy. Additionally we witness the globalisation of the
aforementioned colonial tendencies.

This has become evident through our brief study of contemporary IR theory. We can
observe how there is a continuing desire to colonise global space. However, due to the
believed interconnectedness of space, or the blurring of borders, these tactics of
domination, conversion and containment may be implemented both along traditional

77
HUNTINGTON, Samuel, El choque de las civilizaciones y la reconfiguración del orden mundial, Paidós
Ibérica, Barcelona, 2005, p 36.
78
KAPLAN, Robert, “The Coming Anarchy”, in The Atlantic, February, 1994.
79
KENNEDY, Paul, Hacia el siglo XXI, Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1993, p 436.
80
Ibid, p 437.
81
BIGO, Didier, “Globalized (in)security: the field and the Ban-opticon”, Illiberal Practices of Liberal
Regimes, The (in)security games, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2006.

15
state lines or indifferent to these same borders. Efforts to convert uncivilized Others
have proliferated since the end of the Cold War with varying degrees of
success/disaster. Conversion now includes areas that are not necessarily external to
Nation-States but more generally zones where the irrational underclass of
globalisation may prosper. In the new context governments often exercise conversion
in tandem with containment. Containment is reflected by the support for certain
oppressive yet friendly regimes, novel pre-emptive bordering techniques, gated
communities securing the rich from poor within the same city and the construction of
walls dividing the civilized world, at least visually, from the threats associated with
globalisation (most notably the border fences separating Ceuta and Melilla from
Morocco, USA and Mexico, Israel and Palestine).

In summary, formal decolonisation and the global proliferation of sovereign states did
not decolonise power relations. Coloniality reinvented and created ‘new’ discourses
that whilst portraying an image of an inclusionary International system, produced
multiple colonialities and zones of exclusion.

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