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‘Long regarded as one of the best introductions to IR theory, now updated to
reflect the latest debates and advances in the field.’
- Amitav Acharya, Distinguished Professor, American University,
Washington DC, USA

‘For over 25 years, Theories of International Relations has played a prominent role
in helping students understand International Relations theory. The sixth edition
furthers this tradition by including new chapters which address the important
approaches of postcolonialism and institutionalism. This textbook brings together
an outstanding array of scholars to offer a comprehensive outline of the main
theories of International Relations and how they relate to a changing world.’
- Steven Slaughter, Associate Professor, Deakin University, Australia

‘Few books can boast of having an enduring and long-lasting presence in their
field but without a doubt, Theories of International Relations most certainly can.
This new edition offers an authoritative survey of the discipline’s diverse and
evolving theoretical terrain, as well as nuanced analysis of the key concepts,
debates and ideas that have animated the study of International Relations. In
short, a commanding book that deserves a place on the bookshelves of every
scholar and student interested in understanding the complexities of the world of
International Relations.’
- Suwita Hani Randhawa, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International
Relations, UWE Bristol, UK

‘This book not only provides excellent coverage of a wide range of theoretical
approaches in International Relations, but its introduction situates them in a critical
historical dialogue that is instructive for students and teachers alike. The line-up of
contributors is stellar, and the treatment of approaches is nuanced and very much
up to date.’
- Luis Cabrera, Associate Professor of Political Science, Griffith University,
Australia

‘Overseen by a new editorial team, with new and updated chapters, the sixth
edition of Theories of International Relations provides a refreshing and dynamic
insight into the state of the discipline at the start of the 2020s. Chapters offer a rich
– yet systematic – discussion of core theories in International Relations, and
readers are invited to consider how these theories help us make sense of, and
respond to, our contemporary global challenges. An indispensable resource for
students and researchers alike.’
- Laura McLeod, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of
Manchester, UK

‘This textbook continues to be core reading for students of International Relations.

The inclusion of chapters on postcolonialism and institutionalism make important
contributions to the scope of this key text. A fantastic next step for this book.’
- Samantha Cooke, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics,
University of Gloucestershire, UK
Theories of
International
Relations
Sixth edition

Richard Devetak
(Ed.)
Jacqui True (Ed.) Matthew Paterson
Scott Burchill Christian Reus-
Smit
Andrew Linklater André Saramago
Jack Donnelly Toni Haastrup
Terry Nardin Alina Sajed
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Richard Devetak, Jacqui True, Scott Burchill, Andrew Linklater, Jack
Donnelly,
Terry Nardin, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit, Andrew Saramago,
Toni Haastrup and Alina Sajed, 2022

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Contents
List of Tables and Boxes
About the Editors and Authors
Preface to the 6th Edition

1 Introduction
Richard Devetak and Jacqui True
A Century of IR Theorizing
Post-War International Relations Theory
The End of Theory? Why Theory Has Never Been More
Important
What Is Theory and How Do We Theorize?
Why Theorize? From Motivation to Purpose
Evaluating Theories
Explanatory Power
Predictive Power
Interpretive Power
Intellectual Consistency and Coherence
Reflexivity
Outline of the Book
Conclusion: Next Generation of IR Theorizing?
Glossary Terms

2 Realism
Jack Donnelly
Defining Realism
Exemplary Realist Arguments
 The Hobbesian State of Nature
Waltzian Structural Realism
Characteristic Realist Propositions
Neo-classical Refinements of the Balancing Logic
Morality and Foreign Policy
Varieties of Realist Theories and Explanations
Realist ‘Theories’
Realist Explanations vs. Explanations that Employ Realist
Elements
Structural Realism: Indeterminate Predictions
Augmented Structural Realism
Neo-classical Realism
Fear, Uncertainty and the Future of Realist theories
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

3 Liberalism
Scott Burchili
After the Cold War
The Liberal View: ‘Inside Looking Out’
War, Democracy and Free Trade
Prospects for Peace
The Spirit of Commerce
Interdependence and Liberal Institutionalism
Human Rights
Globalization, the Financial System and Terrorism
Liberalism and Globalization
The Nature of ‘Free Trade’
Sovereignty and Foreign Investment
Non-State Terrorism
 Conclusion
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

4 Postcolonialism
Alina Sajed
‘The Third World Was Not a Place, It Was a Project’
Postcolonialism in IR: Colonialism, Race and Epistemic Justice
Postcolonialism and Its Critics/Critiques
Concluding Remarks
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

5 The English School

Andrew Linklater and André Saramago
A Brief Overview
Distinctive Debates in the Post-Bipolar Era
Power, Order and Humanity: Core Concepts in the English
School
Order, Justice and the ‘Standard of Civilization’ in International
Society
The Revolt Against the West
Progress and Civilization in International Society
Conclusion
Glossary
Further Reading

6 Marxism
Andrew Linklater and André Saramago
The Historical Materialist Conception of History
Class Struggles, Nature and International Relations
Imperialism and Dependency
 The Continued Relevance of Marxism for International
Relations
Conclusion
Glossary of Terms
Further Reading

7 Critical Theory
Richard Devetak
Origins of Critical Theory
The Politics of Knowledge in International Relations Theory
Problem-Solving and Critical Theories
Critical Theory’s Task as an Emancipatory Theory
Rethinking Political Community
The Normative Dimension: The Critique of Ethical
Particularism and Social Exclusion
The Sociological Dimension: States, Social Forces and
Changing World Orders
The Praxeological Dimension: Cosmopolitanism and
Discourse Ethics
Dialogue and Discourse Ethics
Conclusion
Glossary
Further Reading

8 Feminism(s)
Jacqui True
Waves of Feminisms and Generations of Feminist International
Relations
Empirical Feminism
Making Women and Gender Structures Visible
Gendering Institutional Institutions
Gendering Foreign Policy and War
 Introducing New Transnational Actors
Analytical Feminism
Gendered Divisions of Domestic and International
Feminist Revisioning of IR Levels of Analysis
Gender Bias of IR Concepts
Normative Feminism
Diverse Feminist Epistemologies
Deconstructing Gender
Conclusion
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

9 Post-Structuralism
Richard Devetak
Power and Knowledge in International Relations
Genealogy
Textual Strategies of Post-Structuralism
Deconstruction
Double Reading
Ashley’s Double Reading of the Anarchy Problématique
Problematizing Sovereign States
Violence
Boundaries
Identity
Statecraft
Beyond the Paradigm of Sovereignty: Rethinking the Political
Sovereignty and the Ethics of Exclusion
Post-Structuralist Ethics
Conclusion
Glossary Terms
Further Reading
10 Constructivism
Christian Reus-Smit
Rationalist Theory Versus Critical Theory
Constructivism
The Contribution of Constructivism
Constructivism’s Discontents and Limitations
Cutting-Edge Constructivism
Conclusion
Glossary of Terms
Further Reading

11 Institutionalism
Toni Haastrup
Introduction
The Institutionalisms: What Are They?
Rational-Choice Institutionalism
Sociological Institutionalism
Historical Institutionalism
Discursive Institutionalism
Feminist Institutionalism
The Uses of Institutionalisms
Critiques and Overlaps
Conclusion
Glossary of Terms
Further Reading

12 Green Theory
Matthew Peterson
Theorizing Environment Within International Relations
Institutionalist Accounts of Environmental Politics
Beyond IR: Green Politics and the Challenge to World Order
Bio-Environmentalism – Authority, Scale and Ecocentrism
 Social Greens – Limits to Growth and Political Economy
Social Limits to Growth
Back to the Commons
Greening Global Politics
The Anthropocene: Rethinking Green Global Politics?
Conclusions
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

13 International Political Theory

Terry Nardin
Theorizing International Politics
Justice in War
From International to Global Justice
From Global Justice to Global Order
The History of International Thought
Glossary Terms
Further Reading

References
Index
List of Tables and Boxes
Tables
11.1 New institutionalisms
11.2 Four typologies of institutional change

Boxes
2.1 Realists Responses to the Rise of China
3.1 The US Invasion of Iraq
4.1 Border Imperialism and the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis – A
Postcolonial
5.1 Environmental Stewardship and the Institutions of
International Society
6.1 The Rise of China as Passive Revolution
7.1 Post-Truth Politics and Critical Theory
8.1 Feminist Foreign Policy
9.1 9/11 and the War on Terror: The Politics of the Event
10.1 A Constructivist Interpretation of the COVID-19 Pandemic
11.1 An Institutionalist Account of Crisis: The EU and Migration
12.1 Green Global Politics in Action? The Transition Network
13.1 What Is an Atrocity?
About the Editors and Authors
Richard Devetak (ed.) is Professor at the University of Queensland,
Australia. He is the author of Critical International Theories: An
Intellectual History (Oxford University Press 2018) and a number of
publications on international intellectual history.
Jacqui True (ed.) is Professor of International Relations, Director of
the Gender, Peace and Security Centre at Monash University,
Victoria, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in
Australia. Her recent books include Violence Against Women: What
Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2021) and The
Oxford Handbook on Women, Peace and Security (Oxford University
Press 2019).
Scott Burchill is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin
University, Victoria, Australia. He has also taught at Monash
University, the University of Melbourne and the University of
Tasmania. His most recent book is Misunderstanding International
Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2020).
Jack Donnelly is the Andrew Mellon Professor in the Josef Korbel
School of International Studies and Distinguished University
Professor at the University of Denver, Colorado. He works principally
in the areas of international relations theory and international human
rights.
Toni Haastrup is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics in History,
Heritage and Politics at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Her work
seeks to understand prevailing global power hierarchies that inform
cooperation and conflict within the international system drawing on
critical feminist theorizing.
Andrew Linklater is Emeritus Professor of International Politics at
Aberystwyth University. He is a member of the Academy of Social
Science and a fellow of the British Academy and Learned Society of
Wales.
Terry Nardin is Professor of Politics at Yale-NUS College in
Singapore.
Matthew Paterson is Professor of International Politics at the
University of Manchester and Research Director of the Sustainable
Consumption Institute. His research focuses on the political
economy, global governance and cultural politics of climate change.
Christian Reus-Smit is Professor of International Relations at the
University of Queensland and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social
Sciences in Australia. His recent books include International
Relations: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2020)
and On Cultural Diversity (Cambridge University Press 2018).
Alina Sajed is Associate Professor with the Department of Political
Science at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. She is the author
of Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations. The Politics of
Transgression in the Maghreb (Routledge, 2013), and the co-editor
(with Randolph Persaud) of Race, Gender, and Culture in
International Relations (Routledge 2018).
André Saramago is Assistant Professor of International Relations at
the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He
is a Fellow of the Norbert Elias Foundation, Netherlands. His
research interests focus on critical international theory, historical
sociology and the relation between ecology and world politics.
Preface to the 6th Edition
We are grateful to Andrew Linklater and Scott Burchill who
encouraged us to take on the editorship of Theories of International
Relations after their leadership of the volume from the outset and
across five editions. It has been very rewarding for both our careers
to be part of Theories, and we remain indebted to Andrew Linklater
in particular for recruiting us early on to the project when we were
postgraduate students. Our involvement in the volume tracks both of
our careers in the field of International Relations, our respective
movements to and from the Southern and Northern hemispheres,
and attempts to grapple with the change and continuity in world
politics across the twenty-five years since the first edition was
published. While they are not representative by any means, we take
our own experiences of shifting our research focus and undertaking
new intellectual projects as reflecting the changes in the International
Relations discipline and the ongoing quest to understand the political
world in which we live.
Like earlier editions, this one presents rigorous, fair and detailed
accounts of the theories currently animating the discipline. In this
regard, we continue a twenty-five-year tradition of Theories of
International Relations while updating and refreshing the volume for
a new generation. Theories of International Relations was the first
text in the discipline to provide a systematic, cutting-edge survey of
theories, including post-positivist and critical theories. The volume
originally emanated from Australia, though with a multinational
authorship. This edition further diversifies that authorship and the
theories included, since International Relations is a dynamic field
with both new and enduring theoretical perspectives and themes.
In this edition we are very pleased to include two new chapters
and scholars, ‘Institutionalism’ by Toni Haastrup and
‘Postcolonialism’ by Alina Sajed. We are influenced by and
committed to the global IR project, as outlined by Amitav Acharya
and Barry Buzan, Antje Wiener, Arlene Tickner and Karen Smith,
and others. How could we not be, given that Theories emanated
from ‘down under’, to coin a colloquialism for Australia and New
Zealand, the settler-colonial states at the antipodes of the historical
centres of IR scholarship in Europe and North America.
Understanding the variety of contexts and perspectives in which
knowledge is formed remains a vital task of IR theory.
We are grateful also to fellow authors who have been part of the
Theories of IR project across several editions, all of whom are
eminent scholars and experienced teachers immersed in the study of
international relations. Finally, we must acknowledge the conditions
under which this edition was prepared. The COVID-19 global
pandemic generated a global health crisis the likes of which have not
been seen in over a century. If the salience of IR theory was not
already evident, the COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of the need
to think theoretically about the things that matter to humanity and the
planet, especially at the level of the international and the global.
We look forward to feedback from students and scholars in the
field, which is essential to keeping theoretical debates alive, and
motivates us to continue the tradition of theorizing in the field of
International Relations.
Richard Devetak
Jacqui True
INTRODUCTION
RICHARD DEVETAK AND
JACQUI TRUE 1

International Relations has had a strong theoretical orientation

throughout its century-long academic study. A good understanding of
the theoretical terrain, appreciating the strengths and weaknesses,
the limitations and possibilities of a broad range of theories is
imperative for all scholars and students in the discipline. It is also
crucial to understand the changed intellectual and international
contexts in which scholars have theorized across more than a
century of study. This has been the chief purpose of Theories of
International Relations over its lifetime, and it remains the purpose of
this sixth edition.
International Relations (upper case, by convention) is the name of
the discipline or field that studies the complex phenomena we are
theorizing - international relations (lower case). The discipline has
evolved alongside theorizing about political phenomena between,
beyond and across states. Scholars often talk about - and scholarly
journals in the field are titled - variously ‘world politics’, ‘world affairs’,
‘global politics’ and ‘global political economy’ to convey the changing
and expanding subject matter that we aim to address. The study of
international relations today thus goes well beyond the exclusive
relations of states or nations: it involves, among other things,
theorizing the relationship between international politics and
economics and globalization processes, the role of non-state actors
such as corporations, social movements, armed groups and the like,
and the increasing global governance of key transnational issues
and challenges, not least race, economic development, climate
change, human rights, people movement, gender equality, health,
peace and security.
In this introduction, we first set out the historical and
contemporary disciplinary contexts of International Relations. We
then survey the competing understandings of theory and its
purposes, review how to evaluate and apply theory, while also
reflecting on some key theoretical debates throughout. Finally, we
outline the content of the volume as a whole and the chapters that
follow, highlighting what is updated and new in this edition. Above all,
we emphasize the relevance and application of theory to enduring
questions of war and peace, human conflict and cooperation. We
also stress the significant synergy and overlap between theories
similarly grappling with how to understand and/or transform the
system of international politics despite their distinctive schools and
intellectual origins.
A Century of IR Theorizing
People have been thinking and writing about international relations
for over two millennia. Since ancient writers such as the Chinese
general and military strategist Sun Tzu and Greek general and
historian Thucydides, humans have reflected on politics, war and
peace among peoples. But it was not until the 20th century that
international relations was established as an academic discipline and
taught in universities as a discrete subject. Like other modern
disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, IR is preoccupied
with its origins and development. It has constructed narratives that
serve not only to disclose past thinking about IR, but also to confirm
the discipline’s identity and existence, to advertise the rival theories
and exclude other theories.
Knowledge of the discipline’s history has not always been helped
by the preoccupation with theory. Often theories present
mythologized disciplinary histories that obscure more than they
reveal about what actually happened. This has been corrected over
the past two decades with the flourishing of historiographical studies
of the discipline, which have exposed the myths on which traditional
disciplinary narratives are based (see Schmidt 2002; Bell 2009). The
traditional histories depict a succession of phases or ‘waves of
theoretical activity’ (Bull 1972: 33; Hollis and Smith 1990: ch. 2).
Typically the story starts in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World
War (19141918) and with the establishment of the first Department
of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
(Buzan 2020).
The initial phase, so the story goes, was dominated by forms of
liberalism or idealism that were characterized by progressive
commitments to peace, international law and international
organizations. With the rise of European fascism and several
colonial military campaigns, liberalism seemed naive to many, giving
way to realism and its focus on power, conflict and the interests of
states. By the 1960s, attention turned to questions of method as
realism came under challenge for its unscientific approach to
knowledge and its preoccupation with the ‘high politics’ of states,
diplomacy and war. Developments in the 1970s (for example, the
OPEC oil crisis, calls for a New International Economic Order by the
Group of 77 states from the Global South, the US decision to float
the dollar, closer European integration and the growth of
multinational corporations) made it plain that international politics
could not be separated from the world economy. This gave rise to
theories of complex interdependence, which widened the agenda of
IR to include non-state actors as well as economic and transnational
processes (Strange 1970, 1986; Keohane and Nye 1979). This in
turn prompted a backlash in the form of neo-realism, which sought to
reassert a form of realism on the basis of theory and methods
developed in microeconomics (Waltz 1979) and the entrance of
Marxism into IR (Maclean 1981; Kubalkova and Cruikshank 1985).
This cast IR into a phase of theoretical contention between so-called
positiv-ists and post-positivists (including critical theorists and
feminists) who rejected the focus and methods of dominant theories
of IR by addressing normatively inflected questions about structures
of exclusion, domination, inequality and marginalization both in the
real world of international relations and in the academy.
The 21st century has seen the flourishing of revisionist histories
that tell a rather different story of the discipline’s Anglo and
masculine origins and development. These revisionist histories pitch
themselves as counter-histories with two main purposes: first, to
challenge 1919 as an origin myth (see De Carvalho et al. 2011); and
second, to recover the dispersed, forgotten and marginalized
contributions to the origins and development of IR as a field of
knowledge (see inter alia Schmidt 1998; Vitalis 2015; Tickner and
True 2018).
 Aberystwyth 1919 is often held up as the birthplace of IR because
it marks the establishment of the world’s first academic department
dedicated to the study of international relations, the Department of
International Politics. But as Brian Schmidt (1998) and others have
argued, the academic study of international relations was not
miraculously born at Aberystwyth in 1919 (see also Thakur et al.
2017). From the late 19th century, for example, American political
scientists such as Paul S. Reinsch and Francis Lieber began to
carve out ‘a discrete discourse about international politics’ (Schmidt
2008: 676). It is important to situate this discourse in the context of
the time. There existed no theories of international relations as we
have come to understand them. The emergent discourse of IR had
to be assembled out of concepts made available by the disciplines
that fed into it, principally politics, history and international law. At the
heart of intellectual developments in the last quarter of the 19th
century was what Schmidt (1998: ch. 2) calls ‘the theoretical
discourse of the state’. Even though this discourse encompassed
domestic and international politics, as well as the ambiguously
international relations of empire and colonial administration, it laid
the foundations of the ‘political discourse of anarchy’, in which the
international affairs of states could be studied as an analytically
distinct domain of politics (Schmidt 1998: 44-45). The concept of
anarchy - understood here to mean the absence of government
rather than chaos and disorder - became widely understood as the
defining feature of international relations, distinguishing it from
domestic politics where the presence of government is assumed.
Complementing Schmidt’s history, Robert Vitalis has argued in his
path-breaking book on the origins of American IR, White World
Order, Black Power Politics, that it was European empires that
provided the context in which IR emerged as a ‘specialized field of
knowledge’ (Vitalis 2005: 160). Given the turn-of-the-century context,
it is unsurprising that, as Vitalis (2005: 161) points out, the emergent
discipline made states, racial classification and hierarchy the central
objects of its enquiry. The focus of much of this work was on the
political and legal problems of empire, colonial administration and
‘race subjection’. While it may have dropped from view across the
discipline’s 20th-century development, race was a central
preoccupation of early American IR. As Vitalis (2005: 173) notes, the
eminent IR journal published by the New York-based Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR), Foreign Affairs, emerged in 1922 when the
CFR took over the Clark University-based Journal of International
Relations, which had been published previously under the title
Journal of Race Development between 1910 and 1919. The ‘real
institutional origins of IR’ at least in the USA, he argues, are to be
found prior to 1919 in ‘the wave of new courses, publications,
popular and scholarly journals’ that followed America’s territorial
expansion, prompting anxieties about ‘rising tides of colour’ and
threats to white civilization and world order (Vitalis 2015: ch. 3; also
Horsman 1981). Since then, IR has shared with other spheres of
American life a tendency to turn a blind eye to the role of race and
racism (Vitalis 2005: 160; Blatt 2018).
Another aspect of IR’s historiography, says Vitalis, has been the
‘norm against noticing’ the contributions of African American
scholars. Scholars and public intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois,
Alain Locke, Ralph Bunche and Merze Tate not only sought to
dismantle the intellectual edifices of racial discrimination, but also
highlighted international practices of statecraft that sustained
inequality through imperialism and colonialism (Vitalis 2015: 12).
These scholars, whom Vitalis (2015: 11) refers to collectively as ‘the
Howard School’ of IR, saw what white scholars were blind to: the
devastating political impact of the global ‘color-line’, to use Du Bois’s
(2018: 3) term.
The ‘norm of not noticing’ also applies to women’s contributions to
the study of international relations. J. Ann Tickner and Jacqui True
(2018: 222) have argued that it is not that feminism came late to IR
but rather that the discipline of IR came late to feminism,
disregarding a century of women’s activism on peace, democracy
and international institutions in the context of interstate relation.
Disciplinary histories are predominantly told as stories of men’s
contributions to the origins and development of International
Relations as a field of enquiry. As Patricia Owens (2018: 467)
observes, ‘[i]t is women’s absence, rather than presence, that is
most striking’ in these historical accounts. The absence of women in
disciplinary histories, however, should not be construed as evidence
that women were not actively contributing to the study of IR before
and after the discipline’s establishment. Rather, it is evidence of a
male-dominated field with a narrow construction of its boundaries
and history. A more historically sensitive approach is required to
‘challenge existing standards of inclusion within histories of
international thought’, and to ‘pluralize’ what counts as a contribution
to International Relations (Owens 2018: 475). Such an approach
would expand the scope of disciplinary histories to include writings
on colonial administration by the likes of Lucy Philip Mair (Owens
2018: 468) and Merze Tate (Vitalis 2015: 161-166), and the works of
women’s peace activists such as Jane Addams, the founder of
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the
second woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, after the
antiwar author Bertha von Suttner, for her work in striving towards
more peaceful international relations (Tickner and True 2018).
Intellectual history can therefore recover the contributions of women
to the story of International Relations’ origins and development by
looking beyond the parameters of conventional historiographies and
challenging the dominant construction of the IR canon.
Reflecting on the discipline’s history, therefore, should not be
seen as something outside the theorist’s purview. First, it is an
important aspect of theorizing because the construction of the
discipline informs which authors should be read and cited, what
questions should be posed and which actors, structures and
processes should be studied. In other words, appreciating
disciplinary history enables a better understanding of how the
discipline’s identity and purpose have been defined over time.
Crucially, it also enables contestation and critical challenges to
dominant constructions of the discipline’s identity and purpose.
Second, it helps to avoid repeating past mistakes or ‘reinventing the
wheel’ (Schmidt 2008: 677), serving to remind us that we are neither
the first nor the last theorists to analyse international relations and
that the terms we use have a history. But it might also lead to the
recovery of forgotten or lost ‘intellectual treasure’ (Skinner 1996:
112) that can help us see our current problems in a new or different
light. Third, disciplinary histories illuminate how thinking has changed
over time. They encourage us to reflect on the adaptability of human
thought and its changeable relationship to events in the real world.
Different concerns have found expression in theories of international
relations at different moments in history: the historiographically
informed theorist will seek to know what kinds of intellectual
frameworks or concepts were available at different times, which were
dominant and why, and what their legacy has been. Today’s theorist
will then be better placed to reflect on the intellectual tools available
to theorize international relations.
There is no need here to trace exhaustively the development of IR
over the last century, suffice to say that many such histories and
stocktaking exercises have been conducted (Schmidt 2002;
Kristensen 2016). What is important, however, is to understand how
and why IR scholars came to believe that theorizing was a vital
intellectual imperative, and how this has given rise to a discipline
characterized by great theoretical diversity. With the advent of ‘global
International Relations’ (Acharya 2014), which reflects the growth of
the field in non-Western countries and a quest to encompass a
broader range of ideas, approaches and experiences beyond the
Western academy, we can expect further revisionist histories and
also critiques of International Relations as a discipline (see Walker
1981; Shilliam 2011; Tickner and Blaney 2012; Acharya and Buzan
2019).

Post-War International Relations Theory

It was not always the case that International Relations scholars
valued theory. The subject was predominantly empiricist and
institutionalist in orientation until the 1950s. But theory rapidly rose in
intellectual prestige after the Second World War (Devetak 2018: ch.
1). A major event in transforming the discipline of IR was a
conference held in Washington in 1954. Funded by the Rockefeller
Foundation, the conference brought together a number of leading IR
scholars who were uncomfortable with the absorption of IR into the
intellectual framework of American social science. The list of
participants included a number of scholars: Hans J. Morgenthau,
Reinhold Niebuhr, William T.R. Fox, Arnold Wolfers and Dorothy
Fosdick among others (Guilhot 2008: 295). It is with these thinkers,
who are usually identified with classical realism, that IR theory finds
its beginnings, according to Nicolas Guilhot (2008) and Michael
Williams (2013). It was an act of ‘intellectual irredentism’ or
resistance to the emerging hegemony of social scientific approaches
to IR (Guilhot 2008: 282; Williams 2013: 648). Resisting the
characteristic liberal vision and behavioural methods of the social
sciences, these scholars sought to define IR ‘as a separate field
based on a distinct theory of politics’ (Guilhot 2008: 281). By seeking
to develop a theoretical vision of international relations, albeit one
associated with realism, they opened a space for the development of
competing theories that would marshal different methods to
competing intellectual and normative ends.
By the late 1960s and 1970s, debate over method became a
feature of IR. This was driven by two developments. First was the
growth in behavioural social science. Efforts to apply more rigorous
scientific methods to IR were enthusiastically embraced, particularly
in the USA. Elsewhere in the Anglosphere, however, scepticism
about behaviouralism resulted in a defence of ‘classical’ approaches
(Bull 1966). The second development occurred in the world of
international relations rather than the discipline and marked a shift in
the post-war order. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods
international monetary consensus and the adoption of floating
exchange rates opened up the global economy, while the rise of
Third World states calling for a new international economic order,
European integration and new social movements (black and civil
rights, environmental and women’s/feminist) across the world
liberalized the international political sphere. These changes in the
lived experience of world politics suggested that the prevailing scope
of International Relations that was largely focused on the strategic
interests of states and the ‘embedded liberal’ order (Ruggie 1982)
was too limited and exclusive. Theorists challenged a number of
distinctions: high versus low politics, politics and economics, state
and non-state actors and so on. Together, these two developments
primed International Relations for a range of new intellectual
orientations. New theoretical perspectives and methods, and a wider
focus on transnational and international political economy issues
emerged in IR, predicated on higher levels of theoretical abstraction
and debate.
As part of that turn to theory, Critical Theory emerged in the early
1980s as a perspective on international relations (Devetak 2018: ch.
3). Critical Theory scholars challenged and exposed the ideological
and normative interests embedded in IR theories, especially realist
and liberal theories and their empiricist and non-normative
approaches to the accumulation of knowledge, support for nuclear
detente and a world order based on capitalist democracy. Debate
about the politics of knowledge became a central feature of the study
of world politics in the 1980s and 1990s, largely owing to the
interventions of critical theorists who were an important voice in
expanding the intellectual scope of International Relations as a
discipline. As a result, theory and theorizing is an increasingly vital
terrain for International Relations scholars: long gone are the days
when knowing about current events or the history of war and
diplomacy were sufficient in this field.
The End of Theory? Why Theory Has
Never Been More Important
Theory has been central to the development of the study of
international relations, yet the nature of theorizing in International
Relations continues to evolve and reshape the discipline. Some
scholars have suggested that we are at ‘the end of theory’ in terms
of grand theorizing of international relations, with many types of
theory coexisting without a single theoretical centre or agreed set of
questions or theoretical debates in which all engage (Kristensen
2012; Dunne et al. 2013; Tickner 2013; Oren 2016). Indeed, the
sense that IR no longer has a centre or agreed set of questions has
been a pervasive feature of the discipline since at least the 1980s,
when a range of new theories emerged to challenge the dominant
approaches. While some IR scholars lamented this situation as a
cause of theoretical confusion (Holsti 1985), others celebrated the
proliferation of theories as an opportunity to expand the theoretical
scope of the discipline and to reveal neglected structures and
processes, and marginalized, silenced or excluded actors (George
and Campbell 1990; Enloe 1996).
It was in the context of these reflections on the state of IR theory
that this book was first published in 1996. Conventional accounts of
IR theory were until then typically constructed around tripartite
schemas of realism, liberalism and Marxism. These ‘isms’ remain
important and meaningful, and continue to find powerful expression.
But exciting and innovative theoretical developments in IR have
arisen precisely out of challenges to the traditionally dominant
theories and their understanding of how the world of international
relations works. An account of IR theory thus has had to recognize
and accommodate the proliferation of theories; which is why this
volume has been set apart from many others for its inclusion of
postmodernism, feminism and green theory from the outset.
Different theories provide not just competing accounts of the
same international phenomena, but identify and illuminate altogether
different phenomena on the basis of alternative approaches to
knowledge formation. Often they employ different concepts, but even
when they employ the same concepts they may interpret them
differently. At a deeper level, theories assume different values,
pursue different interests in knowledge formation, make different
assumptions about the things that make up reality and how they can
be known, and hold different views about how knowledge claims can
be validated. As a consequence, they open up new worlds to the
scholar and student of international relations, offering new ways of
seeing and knowing their subject matter. Each IR theory tells us
something about international relations; but none can explain
everything. Indeed, each theory will define the very purpose and
scope of its theorizing differently. But before we go any further it is
important to pause and consider what theory is and what it means to
theorize.

What Is Theory and How Do We Theorize?

Consider the following wide-ranging definitions of theory:
Theories are general statements that describe and
explain causes or effects of classes of phenomena. (van
Evera 1997: 7–8)

Rather than being mere collections of laws, theories are

statements that explain them. (Waltz 1979: 5)

The enterprise of theoretical investigation is at its

minimum one directed towards criticism: towards
identifying, formulating, refining, and questioning the
general assumptions on which the everyday discussion of
 international politics proceeds. At its maximum the
enterprise is concerned also with theoretical construction:
with establishing that certain assumptions are true while
others are false, certain arguments are valid while others
are invalid, and so proceeding to erect a firm structure of
knowledge. (Bull 1973: 32)

[Theories] are a necessary means of bringing order to the

subject matter of International Relations. (Burchill and
Linklater 2013: 16)
[Theories are ways of] thinking about power, justice,
society, and so on. (Ackerly and True 2020: 3)

The activity of theory is, literally, about seeing. Theorein,

the Greek word from which our own derives, meant to
watch or to look at. (Elshtain 1981: 301)
[Theories] construct knowledge from marginalized and
previously not heard, unfamiliar voices and issues and
use this knowledge to challenges the core assumptions
of the IR discipline. (Tickner 1997: 617)
As the above definitions indicate, there is little agreement about
what theory is, how one ought to theorize and why we theorize. That
said, it is possible to provide an account of theory that is wide
enough to encompass the diverse conceptions of theory. In the
broadest sense, theory is a form of abstract knowledge that goes
beyond ordinary common sense. Characterized as a reflective or
contemplative reasoning of a detached observer (the vita
contemplativa), theory is often coun-terposed to the engaged activity
of practice (the vita activa). But this opposition between theory and
practice, the contemplative and active life, is hard to sustain if theory
is thought of as an intellectual practice; and particularly so for critical
theory as we explain further in due course, where theory is seen as a
form of praxis - a way of effecting social change in the world. To
theorize is to engage in acts of intellectual abstraction; it is to search
for, to test and to refine the intellectual techniques and methods that
will enable coherent analyses of a chosen subject. IR theory is
therefore the form of knowledge about international relations
achieved through intellectual acts of abstraction.
A related way of considering what theory is, is to describe what it
means to theorize. Again, theorists will differ in how they describe
the process or acts of theorizing. But any theory will do at least two
things. (There are other ways of explicating theory, but this is one
useful method.) The first act of a theory is to filter reality to select
and classify the things it takes to be relevant to its investigation. As
James Rosenau and Mary Durfee (1995: 2) helpfully explain, theory
acts as a kind of ‘sorting mechanism’, telling us which things are
important to observe and which are not; which things in the world
matter to the analysis, and by extension which don’t. Should the
theorist focus on states, and if so, which ones? Or should the
theorist focus on something else, perhaps non-state actors such as
non-governmental organizations or transnational corporations?
Alternatively, the theorist might focus instead on social classes or on
human bodies - the gendered, sexed, raced bodies that experience
international relations in different ways. This is a question of the
theory’s ontology; that is, the things taken to make up reality. You
might think of ontology, therefore, as the study of what exists in the
world or of the key elements and actors that constitute it.
How a theory filters reality will shape and be shaped by the kind
of questions posed by the theorist, questions that have an
intellectual and historical context. Some theoretical questions are
designed to reveal patterns, structures, logics or forces that are
invisible to the human eye or are not always perceived by actors,
perhaps because they are so obvious, hidden in plain sight. These
may be structures that socialize states to behave in particular ways,
such as the structure of anarchy that neo-realists theorize, or social
forces that create structures of domination, inequality and exclusion
and that disempower groups of people based on their race, class or
gender. Or they may be designed to interrogate the meaning or
significance of an action, practice or institution or to diagnose a
condition or situation. Other theoretical questions will be normative,
adopting a critical stance and enquiring into the legitimacy of an
actor or institution or the ethics of their behaviours and practices in
the international arena. Often these questions will lead to
judgements and prescriptions about courses of action. It is not
uncommon for theories to tackle both types of questions, the
empirical and diagnostic on the one hand, and the critical and
normative on the other, but they are at least analytically separable
types or moments of theory.
The second act of a theory is conceptualization. Guided by the
question posed, theories ‘abstract’ from the raw material under
observation and investigation. In a useful metaphor, Rosenau and
Durfee (1995: 3-5) describe the process of abstraction as being like
climbing a ladder. With each step up the ladder the theorist asks, ‘of
what is this an instance?’, clustering details and identifying classes
of phenomena at a given level so as to discern larger meanings or
patterns. For example, the global outbreak of COVID-19 is a
particular instance of what general phenomenon? The first act of
abstraction might be to conceptualize it as a global health pandemic.
At a higher level of abstraction, the pandemic might be
conceptualized as the product of globalization as people, goods and
disease mix and move freely across the planet. Alternatively, it might
be conceptualized as an instance of humanity’s ecologically
destructive mode of domination over nature. The higher one climbs
up the ‘ladder of abstraction’, the more general will be the
statements made or patterns identified. The particular procedures or
methods of abstraction will vary from one theory to another
depending on the ontological premises, the normative interests and
the epistemological assumptions of the theory (that is, their
assumptions about how reliable or valid knowledge is produced, or if
that is at all possible, or even the goal of knowledge).
 While IR theory by definition will be concerned with the study of
international relations (however it is named or defined), it also needs
to reflect on the enquiring subject; that is, the theorist conducting the
investigation. After all, theorists do not exist outside the world of
international relations; we live in the same world that we are trying to
understand and explain. Thus, our interpretations and explanations
of the world cannot be separated from our experience in it or from
our hopes and values. Robert W. Cox (1981: 128) captures this
paradox in the following oft-quoted passage from his classic article
‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’:
Theory is always for someone and for some purpose. All
theories have a perspective. Perspectives derive from a
position in time and space, specifically social and political
time and space. The world is seen from a standpoint
definable in terms of nation or social class [or gender or
race etc.], of dominance or subordination, of rising or
declining power, of a sense of immobility or present crisis,
of past experience, and of hopes and expectations for the
future.
There is a fundamental divide on this point, however, between
scholars who seek to define and structure theory in terms of the
methodological principles of the natural or physical sciences (often
called positivists) and those who believe that IR as a social science
cannot simply emulate the natural sciences (see Taylor 1983). The
former believe that phenomena in the social world exist
independently of the intellectual techniques and methods used by
theorists in their quest to understand and explain things. The latter
believe that phenomena in the social world consist of human self-
understandings, motives, intentions, ideas and actions that compel
the theorist to employ interpretive techniques in the quest for
theoretical understanding and explanation.
For these scholars, often referred to as post-positivists, and that
includes Cox, it is important to treat the theorist as inextricably
caught up in the world they are examining. They reject the notion
inherent to the natural or physical sciences that the enquiring subject
is a value-free onlooker, completely detached from the object or
phenomena under investigation. Instead, they recognize the subject
as a condition of knowledge. The ontological, normative and
epistemological assumptions made by the theorist should therefore
themselves be treated as facts or data worthy of analysis. The point
here is that because the world the social scientist or IR theorist
investigates is interpretively constituted by us, and theories are also
interpretations of and in that world, theories are partly constitutive of
the reality of international relations (Smith 1995: 26-27). They reflect
ideas that have a material influence on the behaviour and actions of
state and non-state actors and are articulated within - and often
reflect - a given historical and institutional context.
This division between positivism and post-positivism parallels the
distinction often made between understanding and explanation
(Hollis and Smith 1990). But, as Hidemi Suganami (1996) argues,
the distinction between explanation and understanding should not be
overplayed; it is a matter of degrees of difference rather than outright
opposition. Explanations help actors understand their situation. The
self-understandings of actors must also be part of the explanation.
For example, we should examine both the theories explaining state
behaviour and international regimes with regard to the acquisition,
control and ban on nuclear weapons as well as the perspectives of
key state actors, such as Iran, the USA and other state parties in the
acceptance and subsequent collapse of the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Why Theorize? From Motivation to Purpose

In addition to understanding what theory is and how it is conducted,
we need to appreciate why we theorize. That is, theory must have an
account of itself, one that clarifies where our theoretical inspiration
and questions come from (see Popper 1957). Theory is motivated by
something prior, by curiosity or by an interest in developing deeper
knowledge about our chosen subject. The neo-realist Kenneth Waltz
(1979) would say that IR theory is motivated by an interest in
knowing how far control can be exerted over the international
environment. Others would invoke less instrumental interests,
including practical knowledge to improve communication and
cooperation across boundaries, and interests in dismantling the
global structures and practices of domination and exclusion.
At bottom, the urge to theorize derives from the ancient classical
tradition that ‘the unexam-ined life is not worth living’, an imperative
attributed to Socrates at his Athenian trial (Plato, Apology 38a). The
same goes for IR theory. To exist in the world and not seek to
understand its key logics - in the forces, structures and practices that
shape our lives - is to be a passive subject; it is to be impacted by
external events and dynamics without being able to understand
them, let alone effectively shape or contribute to them. By following
the Socratic dictum, therefore, IR theory provides a means of
examining international life.
Theories contribute to our stock of knowledge by providing
explanations that guide what and how we see and act in the world.
We test out our theories, including our theories of international
relations, honing them to help us understand and explain the world
we live in. Scholarly acts of theorizing are intended to make our
understanding and explanations much more systematic and
rigorous. They are a self-conscious and transparent way of
accumulating, sharing and/or contesting knowledge claims among
the community of scholars we call a discipline. In International
Relations, that community is increasingly global and being expanded
to new groups and generations as well as to more parts of the world,
especially the global South. This widens the intellectual horizon of IR
as a discipline and enlarges the stock of knowledge that can be used
to guide our thought and action.
We engage in theorizing about international relations when we
make assumptions about what is a security threat, where is a safe
place to travel, the prospects for employment in a competitive global
political economy or a pandemic and so on. As we have argued,
theories allow us to generalize, to abstract broader principles from a
case in hand and use these principles to explain a particular situation
or guide a specific choice. In short, we need the conceptual
framework that theories provide to help us think logically,
consistently and critically; to defend what we claim to know; to
decide what should be studied and how it should be studied.
Many IR scholars are motivated to understand or explain ‘how the
world works’ in order to investigate the forces of both continuity and
change in world politics. Thus, these scholars have sought to
examine and explain periods of relative stability such as the century
of peace among European states from the Congress of Vienna
(1815) until the First World War or the so-called long peace after the
Second World War (e.g. Gaddis 1986). They have also sought to
explain change such as the rise of international institutions and
transnational networks in global politics (Keohane and Nye 1979;
Keck and Sikkink 1998) as well as periods of punctuated change, for
example in the global political economy, with both the 1930s Great
Depression and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 (Polanyi
1948; Helleiner 2014). However, even theories that claim their only
purpose is to explain what is happening may reflect the interests of
current institutions and hegemonic powers with stability rather than
change. Theories of the rise and fall of great powers, of neo-liberal
institutionalism and liberal internationalism, for example, tend to
betray the concerns of a particular historical time and geopolitical
order that benefits the interests of some more than others (e.g.
Keohane 1984; Kennedy 1989; Ikenberry 2011). A further purpose of
theory is to solve apparent problems in world politics. This has been
coined ‘problem-solving’ research, and can also include diagnostic
theories addressing problems of the moment in politics and policy.
The explanatory or problem-solving purpose of theory is
continually renewed by the dynamic nature of global politics, as new
issues always arise and events occur that challenge or rupture
existing understandings. For International Relations, the collapse of
communism and end of the Cold War represented such a rupture in
theoretical expectations about bipolarity and the structure of the
international system. That historical event challenged existing
theories and their assumption that change could not happen in the
international system, and definitely not from domestic sources.
Different notions of how knowledge progresses in the philosophy and
sociology of science have implications for how we think about the
purpose of theories of international relations and their response to
new or challenging empirical phenomena. Famously, Thomas Kuhn
(1962) argues that science progresses through ‘revolutions’ or
‘paradigm changes’. Normal science, in which scholars continually
add to the evidence base for a traditional theory, is ruptured when
new theories emerge that provide entirely different understandings
and surmount the old theories. Lakatos provides a contrasting view
of scientific progress based on research programmes that have core
and auxiliary theories and assumptions; the auxiliary set can be
adapted to address new phenomena or ‘anomalies’ for the theory
that emerge without threatening the validity of the core. In this view,
research programmes advance to the extent that their theories can
incorporate and explain the new phenomena, which Lakatos (1970:
135) refers to as ‘a sea of anomalies’.
Major debates in IR have questioned the positivist idea that theory
should be able to explain, solve, predict and, therefore, control social
and political life (Ashley and Walker 1990; Neufeld 1995; Ackerly et
al. 2006; Jackson 2010). Theories not only aim to understand and
explain international politics, they may also aim to transform global
politics. According to Karl Marx ([1843] 1967: 215), for instance, the
task of the scholar joins that of the world ‘to improve self-
understanding of the age concerning its struggles and wishes’, with
the purpose being to relieve these struggles and to pursue the
wishes. U2 lead singer Bono conveyed this emancipatory purpose of
theory when he said, ‘I am rebelling against the idea that the world is
the way the world is, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about
it’ (Harvard Gazette 2001).
 Normative concerns drive all International Relations theorizing,
whether consciously or not. If a theory represents itself as objective,
without bias or a perspective, and as the single theory that explains
the truth, it is, as Cox (in Cox and Sinclair 1996: 87) says, ‘all the
more important to examine it as ideology, and to lay bare its
concealed perspective’. Critical theorists of international relations
seek not only to understand how the current world order is
maintained, but also to explore how it can be changed to address the
root causes of many problems that transcend borders. Linklater
aimed to reunite the study of international relations under the
guidance of critical theory (1992a: 790). He showed how it could be
done by harnessing normative, empirical and practical analysis of
logics of power, order and emancipation in world politics. That
unification has not occurred, but we can see efforts at this synthesis
with variants of IR constructivism (see Chapter 11) and feminism
(Chapter 9) integrating normative concerns with ideas and moral
action with an empirical, methodological approach that takes into
account non-state actors - previous anomalies for traditional
theories.
Evaluating Theories
Whether or not you approach theory to explain, understand, solve a
problem or critically analyse the potential for social change, there are
a number of rival perspectives on international relations on offer to
achieve these aims. Some scholars view the proliferation of theories
in IR to be an identity crisis, an indication of fragmentation and
regression rather than progress. Is the diversity of theories a
problem? Only if you are on a quest to find a single truth is our view.
As IR expands and transcends the boundaries of the previously
Eurocentric, male-dominated and somewhat rigid discipline, and
theories proliferate, we need to be able to engage with different and
new theories. But how do we evaluate which is the best or most
appropriate among them? One response is that the theory you prefer
or adopt depends on the question you are asking. But which
questions or phenomena are the most important to study is itself a
question of theory that scholars do not always agree on. Specifically,
then, what criteria can we use to judge theories or theoretical
perspectives? Burchill and Linklater (2009) suggested the following
six criteria in a previous edition of this book:
1. A theory’s understanding of an issue or process
2. The explanatory power of a theory
3. The theory’s success in predicting events…
4. The theory’s intellectual consistency and coherence
5. The scope of the theory
6. The theory’s capacity for critical self-reflection and intellectual
engagement with contending theories
Since there is no theoretical objectivity or absolute ‘truth’, it is
good to be explicit about the criteria you are using to evaluate which
theories are preferred and to justify your theoretical choices.
Scholars differ over which of the criteria is most important in
providing a good account of any topic or issue in international
relations. These debates about whether theory should promote
consistency and coherence or scope and critical self-reflection are
sometimes as important as studying aspects of international
relations themselves. That is because they determine fundamentally
what and how we study.

Explanatory Power
If we think explanatory power is what makes for a rigorous theory,
then following the scientific method and its systematic use of causal
inference whether using quantitative or qualitative methods may be a
logical choice of approach (King et al. 1994). However, interpretive
methods of analysis that interrogate historical and institutional
meanings and contexts are increasingly used for explanation as well
as understanding in IR (Milliken 1999; Klotz and Lynch 2007).

Predictive Power
If we think prediction is crucial for a theory, then we may need to
invest in the methods of the natural sciences and face frequent
failure and falsification of our theories. It is near impossible to control
for all the factors affecting outcomes in the social world of
international relations. Game theory tries to do this with
mathematical formulas drawn from microeconomics. But while there
are some rules of behaviour that have evolved in world politics, there
are widely varying motivations and non-iterative strategic interactions
making the prediction of non-obvious phenomena unlikely.
Prediction based on history is also of limited utility. What
happened in the past is not a prelude or precise guide to the future
given the significant structural changes not only in the world but in
how we know it. Glyn Davis (2020) recently argued that ‘the Black
death closed permanently five of Europe’s 30 universities in the mid-
15th century’ so that ‘we might imagine destruction of similar
proportion in the [COVID-19] pandemic’. But the analogy is
misplaced. What was a university in the 15th century but small
cloisters of religious scholars? The universities of the Renaissance
are not akin to the modern university. Moreover, it is naive to think
that we could predict what will happen today in a radically changed
globalized environment where states are more invested in
universities. History or historical analysis is not a blueprint for
prediction any more than formal modelling, but both types of
theorizing can discern patterns, logics and challenges that are
common at a level of generality.

Interpretive Power
A theory’s capacity to lead us to think differently about the world -
captured in the first criterion earlier - or to open up new terrain by
generating novel and interesting questions - captured by the fifth
criterion - should probably be judged as crucial. As the tumultuous
events and new phenomena in world politics in recent years
illustrate, International Relations is a dynamic, complex and open-
ended field of study. Theories that reveal and highlight new issues
and actors or that help us to think differently about enduring issues
and actors are vital and have implications for how we individually
and collectively act in the world. Such theories may interpret novel or
unfamiliar phenomena or offer novel interpretations of familiar
phenomena. Either way, how an issue or actor is understood or
analysed will depend on how successful and persuasive are the
theorist’s acts of interpretation and abstraction.

Intellectual Consistency and Coherence

A theory’s consistency and coherence, the fourth criterion, refers to
the argumentation from initial assumptions to conclusion, rather than
the substance of a theory, and is something that all theories can
achieve. At the same time, there may be a trade-off between the
coherence and the scope of a theory. All IR theories have diverse
versions and expressions. This can be confusing. It makes it difficult
to discern what the shared assumptions of a theory are and how far
the differences within a theory can go before it becomes incoherent
and/or gives rise to another theory. However, we should appreciate
that progress in theory - which might be judged in terms of relevance
to more phenomena and people - requires conceptual development
and an ever-richer set of concepts for understanding. Many sources
for conceptual development will come from developments and
theories outside International Relations in other realms and
disciplines, such as philosophy, law, economics, psychology, as is
acknowledged by many IR scholars. IR has been quite eclectic in
drawing from these other disciplines, such as intellectual history,
political theory, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, geography,
anthropology, microeconomics and neuroscience. That syncretism
has been key to the growth and globalization of International
Relations and its sustained popularity among new generations.

Reflexivity
With regard to the sixth criterion, how crucial you think a theory’s
capacity for self-reflection and engagement with other theories is will
likely depend on how comfortable you are with the assumptions of
traditional theories. However, it should be noted that some degree of
critical self-reflection on unexamined assumptions and potential
unconscious biases can strengthen all theories, including those that
privilege hermeneutic understanding of an issue or explanatory
power and scope, by encouraging consideration of their blind spots
and of new phenomena that have yet to be theorized. As scholars
we must take up the challenge of clarifying how our values and
intellectual commitments are consistent with our theoretical
assumptions and with the scholarly vocation.
 Considering the different criteria for what constitutes a good or
rigorous theory helps us to evaluate theories but it also can inform
our theoretical critique. Criticism of a theory can take two forms: first,
as an immanent critique from within the perspective based on shared
assumptions. For example, realist criticism of traditional balance of
power theories for failing to note the diversity of state strategies -
balancing, band wagoning or buck-passing for instance - to secure
survival in the face of the military power or threat of other states.
Second, as a critique launched from outside the perspective, where
criticism of basic assumptions is often prominent. Examples are
constructivist theories that challenge the assumptions of state
identity and national interest or the condition of anarchy
underpinning any theory of the balance of power.
Regardless of which criteria for evaluating theories seem most
compelling, we would expect that on any given question IR scholars
would, at a minimum, consider the theoretical perspectives explored
in this volume by examining their strengths and weaknesses.

Outline of the Book

Reflecting the currency and evolving nature of knowledge about
world politics and the globalization of the International Relations
discipline, we have refreshed the structure and contents of this
volume. In particular, developments inside the discipline and
contemporary world politics have made it essential to include new
chapters on postcolonialism and institutionalism. There is no longer
a chapter on historical sociology, but sociological analysis is
reflected in the contents of most chapters in their thoroughly updated
versions. Historical sociology is, for instance, an integral part of the
new chapter on postcolonialism including with respect to IR theory’s
relationship to Eurocentrism and colonial thought. The revised cast
of chapters has enabled a tighter focus on distinct theoretical
perspectives as well as the overlap between and among them. The
order of the chapters somewhat reflects the conventional
arrangement of IR courses, but not too much should be read into the
order. No chapter ordering is perfect. The underlying premise of the
book is that no theory can claim a priori supremacy. While we have
not up-ended the dominant narrative of the field and its evolution, we
have unsettled it by placing postcolonialism mid-volume, reflecting
the major significance of colonialism to any theorizing of world
politics, and ensuring that critical theory and feminism come before
constructivism, recognizing their chronological antecedence in the
field. Green theory features as the last chapter not because it is the
least important theoretical addition to IR but because of its salience
to the future of international relations and the planet. We fully expect
that in future editions there will be an even greater range of theories
featured and a reordering as we collectively and perennially rethink
the field of International Relations.
In the IR discipline, most scholars do not develop or pursue
theory for its own sake - as in philosophy or theoretical physics, for
example - but rather they aim to use and apply theory with reference
to individual and collective action in the world. Politicians are
themselves prisoners not of the national interest or of particular inter-
state alliance but, as John Maynard Keynes said in 1932, of the
‘academic scribblers of a bygone era’. That is to say, while IR
theories may not always have a direct or obvious policy application,
their impact on a practical level is vast and largely unrecognized for
the way that ideas and argument developed in the academy have
shaped the thought and action of political actors. Boxed case studies
in this volume are a new feature and are intended to promote
thinking about the potential applications of theories. They aim to
illustrate how a theory can illuminate an issue or historical event in
world politics, but also inspire reflection on the theory’s limitations.
In addition, one or two key concepts used by each theoretical
perspective are explained in detail and set out in the main body of
each chapter. A glossary of key terms is provided to further clarify
the theoretical language and tools common in each theory. The
chapters include a set of further readings in addition to the volume’s
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been a wife, was left a widow. The blow overwhelmed her. All her
card castle came tumbling about her ears. Now she could never be
the partner in a brilliant and successful career, and the husband
whose virtues she recognised, and of whom she would have been
proud, was taken from her into the darkness of a desert grave, he
who in due course should have made of her one of the richest
peeresses in England. Yes, now those gay dresses must be
exchanged for a widow’s weeds. She was furious with a Fate that
had played such a trick upon her; even her tears were more those of
anger than of sorrow, though in her fashion she mourned him truly.
Dick came to console her; he came very soon. Already he had
been at the War Office and mastered the points of Abdullah’s
garbled tale, which, as though unwillingly, he told to Edith, leaving
her to put upon it what construction she chose.
“It is nonsense,” she said angrily, for in her heart she did not
believe it at all. “Poor Rupert would never have got into any silly
mess with a savage.”
“Of course it is nonsense,” he answered, taking her cue; “but it is
not a question of morality, it’s a question of wisdom. By mixing
himself up with these women he brought about the murder of the
whole lot and the utter failure of his mission. In a way, it is as well for
him that he is gone, poor dear fellow, for he had completely done for
himself. Well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“No,” she answered heavily, “it doesn’t matter now.”
Yet when Dick, as a relative, although of the other political party,
was confidentially consulted by the Secretary of State and Lord
Southwick before the former gave those answers in the House, he
talked somewhat differently, adopting the tone indeed of a tolerant
man of the world.
“Of the facts,” he said, “he knew little more than they did; but of
course poor Ullershaw had his weaknesses like other men,” and he
smiled as though at amusing recollections, “and the desert was a
lonely place, and this Abdullah described one of the women as
young and beautiful. Who could say, and what did it matter?” and so
forth.
 But the Secretary of State, an austere man who did not like to see
his schemes wrecked, and himself attacked on account of such
‘weaknesses,’ thought that it mattered a great deal. Hence the tone
of his answers in the House, for it never occurred to him, or indeed
to Lord Southwick, that a relation would have said as much as Dick
did, unless he was very sure of his ground. In fact, they were certain
that he was putting forward the best version of the truth and of
Ullershaw’s character that was possible under the circumstances.
Who would wish, they reflected, to throw a darker shade upon the
reputation of a dead man than he was absolutely forced to do by the
pressure of sure and certain knowledge?
As for Mrs. Ullershaw, when she was assured that this dreadful
news was incontrovertible, and that her only son was indeed dead,
she said merely in the ancient words: “The Lord gave and the Lord
hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” and stumbled to
the bed whence she never rose again. Here a second stroke fell
upon her, but still for many weeks she lived on in a half-conscious
state. It was during this time that Edith left the house, saying that her
room was wanted by the nurses, and went into comfortable rooms of
her own in Brook Street.
The fact was, of course, that she could no longer endure this
atmosphere of sickness. It was repugnant to her nature; the sound of
her poor mother-in-law’s stertorous breathing as she passed her
door tore her nerves, the shadow of advancing death oppressed her
spirits which already were low enough. So she went and set up a
ménage of her own as a young widow had a right to do. As for Mrs.
Ullershaw, by degrees she sank into complete insensibility and so
died, making no sign. A week before Rupert reached England she
was buried in Brompton Cemetery by the side of the husband who
had treated her so ill in life.
It was a little before this that an event occurred which indirectly
lessened Edith’s material disappointment, and consoled Lord
Devene for the death of Rupert that for his own reasons had grieved
and disappointed him much. To the astonishment of all the world, on
one fine autumn morning Tabitha presented him with a singularly
healthy son.
 “This one should do!” exclaimed the doctor in triumph, while Lord
Devene kissed it fondly.
But when they had left the room together, his wife bade the nurse
show her the child, and after she too had kissed it, said sadly:
“Ach! poor little lamb, I fear you will have no more luck than the
rest. How should you with such a father?” she added in German.
As for Dick Learmer, with the exception of the birth of this to him
inopportune child, which now stood between him and the Devene
wealth, his fortunes seemed to wax as those of his rival, Rupert,
waned and vanished. He was a clever man, with an agreeable
manner and a certain gift of shallow but rather amusing speech; the
kind of speech that entertains and even impresses for the moment,
but behind which there is neither thought nor power. These graces
soon made him acceptable to that dreary and middle-class
institution, the House of Commons, where entertainment of any sort
is so rare and precious a thing. Thus it happened that before long he
came to be considered as a rising man, one with a future.
Moreover, on one or two occasions when he addressed the House
upon some fiscal matter, he was fortunate enough to impress the
public with the idea that he possessed a business ability that in fact
was no part of his mental equipment, which impression was
strengthened by a rather clever article, mostly extracted from works
of reference, however, that he published in one of the leading
reviews. The result was that soon Dick found himself a director of
several sound and one or two speculative, but for the while
prosperous, companies, which, in the aggregate, to say nothing of
the salary that he received from Lord Devene, who also paid for his
qualifying shares, furnished him with a clear income of over £1,300 a
year.
Thus was the scapegrace and debt-haunted Dick Learmer
completely white-washed and rehabilitated in the eyes of all who
knew of his existence, and thus did he come to be regarded as a
political possibility, and therefore worthy of the attention of party
wire-pullers and of the outside world at large.
 CHAPTER XVII.
WELCOME HOME!
Dick Learmer, dressed in an irreproachable frock-coat which fitted
his elegant figure very well, and with a fine black pearl in his necktie,
an advertisement of his grief for the decease of his cousin Rupert,
was lunching tête-à-tête with his cousin’s widow on that same
Sunday and at the very same hour that Rupert was indulging in the
melancholy cogitations which have been recorded while he munched
some biscuits washed down with a bottle of stout in his dirty cabin on
board the tramp steamer. The Brook Street landlady was a good
cook, and Edith’s Chablis, not to mention a glass of port, a cup of
coffee, and a liqueur brandy that followed, were respectively
excellent. The warm fire in the pretty little sitting-room and the
cigarettes he smoked over it, also proved acceptable upon this
particularly cold and dreary Sabbath afternoon. Lastly, the lovely
Edith, dressed in very attractive and artistic mourning, was a
pleasant object to the eye as she sat opposite to him upon a low
chair screening her face from the fire with a feather fan from the
mantel-piece.
Dick, as we know, had always admired her earnestly, and now,
whether the luncheon and the port, or the charming black dress set
off with its white collar and cuffs, or the beautiful blue eyes and
golden hair above were responsible for the result, he admired her
more than ever. There was a pause in their conversation, during
which she contemplated him reflectively.
“You are getting to look dreadfully middle-aged and respectable,
Dick,” she remarked presently. “It’s almost oppressive to those who
knew you in your youth.”
 “I am middle-aged, and certainly I am respectable, Edith. Who
wouldn’t be that had sat yesterday upon the Board of a Life
Insurance Society with five directors, none of whom were under
seventy? What interest they can take in life and its affairs, I am sure I
don’t know.”
“Probably they are only interested in other people’s lives, or other
people are interested in theirs,” answered Edith carelessly.
“By the way,” said Dick, “there was a question before us yesterday
about poor Rupert’s insurance.”
Edith winced a little at the name, but only looked up in query.
“You know,” he went on, “it was a pretty heavy one, and he only
paid a single premium, a very bad job for the office. Well, you haven’t
claimed that £10,000, and the question was whether you should be
communicated with on the matter. They settled to leave it alone, and
that old death’s-head of a chairman remarked with a grin that he had
never known money which was due to remain unasked for. Why
don’t you ask? £10,000 is always handy,” he added, looking at her
keenly.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Everybody assumes it, but I can’t
see any proof that Rupert is really dead.”
“Nonsense,” he replied, almost angrily, “he is as dead as Julius
Cæsar. He must be; that Egyptian sergeant, what’s his name, said
that he saw them all shot down, and then himself escaped.”
“It’s rather odd, Dick, that this sergeant should have escaped
under the circumstances. Why wasn’t he shot down too? His luck
must have been remarkably good, or his legs remarkably swift.”
“Can’t say; but fellows do have luck at times. I’ve met with some
myself lately. Also, men don’t live for months in a waterless desert.”
“He might have been rescued, by these women for instance. The
man Abdullah didn’t say so, but someone else did say that the sheik
Abraham, or whatever his name was, and his people were killed, for
they were seen hanging upon trees. Now who hanged them there?
Rupert and his people could not have done so if they themselves
were already dead. Besides, it was not in his line.”
 “Can’t say,” answered Dick again, “but I am sure he is gone. Ain’t
you?”
“No, not sure, Dick, though I think he must be. And yet sometimes
I feel as if he were near me—I feel it now, and the sensation isn’t
altogether pleasant.”
“Bosh!” said Dick.
“Yes, I think it’s bosh too, so let us talk of something else.”
Dick threw the end of his cigarette into the fire, and watched it
thoughtfully while it burnt away.
“You think that’s half a cigarette, don’t you, Edith?” he said,
pointing to it.
“It doesn’t look much like anything else,” she answered; “but of
course changing into smoke and ashes.”
“It is something else, though, Edith. I’ll tell you what, it is my rather
spotted past that is burning up there, turning into clean white ash
and wholesome-smelling smoke, like an offering on an altar.”
“Heavens! Dick, you are growing poetical. What can be the matter
with you?”
“Disease of the heart, I think. Edith, do you want to remain a
widow always?”
“How can I tell?” she answered uneasily. “I haven’t been one long
—yet.”
“No, but life is short and one must look forward; also, the
circumstances are unusual. Edith dear, I want you to say that after
the usual decent interval you will marry—me. No, don’t answer yet,
let me have my innings first, even if you bowl me out afterwards.
Edith, you know that I have always been in love with you from a boy.
All the queer things I did, or most of them, were really because of
you. You drove me wild, drawing me on and pushing me off, and I
went croppers to make myself forget. You remember our quarrel this
day year. I behaved badly, and I am very sorry; but the fact is I was
quite mad with jealousy. I don’t mind owning it now the poor fellow is
gone. Well, since I knew that, I have been doing my very best to
mend. I have worked like a horse down in that beastly House, which
I hate, and learned up all sorts of things that I don’t want to know
anything about. Also, I have got these directorships, thanks to
Devene, whose money was supposed to be behind me, and they are
practically for life. So I have about £1,500 a year to begin with, and
you will have nearly as much. That isn’t exactly riches, but put
together, it is enough for a start.”
“No,” said Edith, “it isn’t riches, but two people might manage on it
if they were economical.”
“Well,” he went on quietly, “the question is whether you will
consent to try in due course?” and he bent forward and looked at her
with his fine black eyes.
“I don’t know,” she answered doubtfully. “Dick, I am sorry, but I
can’t quite trust you, and if marriage is to be successful, it must be
built on other things than love and raptures; that is why I accepted
poor Rupert.”
“Why don’t you trust me?” he asked.
“Dick, is it true that you arranged this mission of Rupert’s in the
hope that what has happened—might happen?”
“Most certainly not!” he answered boldly. “I had nothing to do with
his mission, and never dreamed of such a thing. Who suggested that
to you—Lord Southwick?”
She shook her head.
“I never spoke to him on the matter; indeed, I haven’t met him
since the wedding, but it was suggested.”
“Devene, then, I suppose. It is just like one of his dirty tricks.”
But Edith only answered: “Then it is not true?”
“I have told you; it is a damnable lie!”
“I am glad to hear it, Dick, for otherwise I could never have
forgiven you. To be quite honest, I don’t think I behaved well to
Rupert in letting him go out there alone, and if I were sure that it was
through you that all this was brought about for your own ends—and
jealous men have done such things since David, you know—why
then—”
“Then what?”
 “Then, Dick, we shouldn’t talk any more about the matter. Indeed, I
am not certain that we should talk at all, for at least he was an
honest man who loved me, and his blood would be on your hands,
and through yours on mine.”
“If that’s all, they are clean enough,” replied Dick, with a laugh
which some people might have considered rather forced; “almost as
clean as your own, Edith,” and stretching forward, he laid his hand
by hers upon her dress.
She looked at it, but did not move either her dress or her hand.
“It seems clean enough, Dick,” she said, “except where those old
cigarettes have stained your thumb and fingers. Now, I never
smoked, and mine are quite white.”
He took the hand—uplifted now—and under pretence of
examining it, drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them. Edith did
not protest; it seemed that she was in a mood to be made love to by
Dick, who, consequently, like a good and experienced general,
proceeded to press his advantage. Dropping on his knees before her
—an easy movement, for his chair was close, and, like her own, not
high—he encircled her with his arm, drew down her golden head and
kissed her passionately. “Dick,” she said, “you shouldn’t do that;” but
she did not resist, nor was there anger in her voice as on a certain
previous occasion.
“Very well,” he whispered, “kiss me once and I will stop.”
She drew her head back, and looked at him with her wonderful
blue eyes that seemed to have grown strangely soft.
“If I kissed you, Dick, you know it would mean more than your
kissing me,” she murmured.
“Yes, Edith; it would mean what I want it to mean—that you love
me and will marry me. So, dearest, kiss me and let us make an end
after all these years.”
For a little while she continued to look at him, then she sighed, her
breast heaved, and her eyes grew softer and more tender still.
“I suppose it must be so,” she said, “for I never felt towards any
man as I do to you,” and bending her head, she kissed him and
gently thrust him from her. Dick sank back into his chair and
mechanically lit another cigarette. “You soon go back to your old
habits, Dick,” she said, watching him. “No, don’t throw it away, for
while you smoke you will keep still, and I have something to say.
There must be no word of this to anyone, Dick—not for another six
months, at least. Do you understand?” He nodded. “It has come
about a great deal too soon,” she went on; “but you asked yourself to
lunch—not I—and I felt lonely and tired of my own thoughts. Mrs.
Ullershaw’s funeral upset me. I hated it, but I had to go. Dick, I am
not happy as I ought to be. I feel as if something were coming
between us; no, it has always been there, only now it is thicker and
higher. Rupert used to talk a great deal about the difference between
flesh and spirit, and at the time it bored me, for I didn’t understand
him. But I think that I do now. I—the outward I—well, after what has
passed—you know, Dick, it’s yours, isn’t it? But the inner I—that
which you can’t admire or embrace, remains as far from you as ever,
and I’m not sure that it might not learn to hate you yet.”
“It’s rather difficult to separate them, Edith,” he answered
unconcernedly, for these subtleties did not greatly alarm him who
remembered that he had heard something like them before. “At any
rate,” he added, “I am quite content with your outward self,” and he
looked at her beauty admiringly, “and must live in hope that the
invisible rest of you will decide to follow its lead.”
“You are making fun of me,” she said wearily. “But I daresay you
are right for all that; I hope so. And now go away, Dick. I am not
accustomed to these emotions, and they upset me. Yes, you can
come back in a day or two—on Tuesday. No, no more affection, you
are smoking—good-bye!”
So Dick went triumphant, his luck was good indeed, and he was
really happy, for he adored Edith. She was the only thing or creature
that he did adore—except himself.

Once Rupert’s steamer had come safe to dock, which happened a

little after two o’clock, it took him but a short while to bid her farewell.
Nor was the examination of his luggage a lengthy process,
consisting as this did of nothing but a rough carpet-bag, in which
were stuffed his Arab garments and a few necessaries that, like the
clothes he wore, he had purchased from or through sailors on the
ship. The officials, who could not quite place him, for his appearance
puzzled them, thought well to turn out the bag whereof the contents
puzzled them still more, but as there was nothing dutiable in it they
were soon thrust back again. Then with some difficulty he found a
hansom cab, and crawling into it, bade the man drive to his mother’s
house in Regent’s Park, a journey that seemed longer to Rupert than
all those days upon the sea.
At length they were there, and having paid the cabman, he took
his carpet-bag and turned to enter the little iron gate. He could not
see the house as yet, for the dusk was gathering and the fog
obscured it. Still it struck him as strangely silent and unfriendly.
There was no light in the drawing-room window as there should have
been, for he remembered that even when the curtains were drawn,
they did not fit close, as he had often noticed when returning home
at night.
Some premonition of evil struck Rupert’s heart, but he repelled it,
and hobbling up the little walk and the steps beyond, found the bell
and rang. There was a long pause, until at last he heard somebody
shuffling down the passage, heard, too, the door being unlocked and
the chain unhooked. Then he grew terribly afraid until he
remembered of a sudden that it was quite possible that Edith and his
mother were again spending the New Year at Devene. Well, it would
be a great disappointment, but on the other hand, he would have a
few hours to make himself more presentable.
The door opened, and before him stood a stout, heavy-faced
woman who held a greasy tin candlestick in her hand.
“What do you want?” she said, surveying this rough figure and his
crutch and carpet-bag doubtfully, for her mind ran on tramps.
“I want to see Mrs. Ullershaw,” he answered, and his voice
reassured her somewhat.
“Mrs. Ullershaw? Which Mrs. Ullershaw?—for I’ve heard there was
a young ’un as well as an old ’un. I ain’t the regular caretaker, you
know, only a friend what’s took her place while she spends New
Year’s Day in the country with her husband’s people.”
“Yes, quite so,” said Rupert. “I meant the old Mrs. Ullershaw—”
 “Well, then, you had better go and call on her in Brompton
Cemetery, for I’m told she was buried there last week. My gracious!
what’s the matter with the man?” she added, for Rupert had dropped
his carpet-bag and fallen back against the doorway.
“Nothing,” he said faintly. “If I might have a glass of water?”
She shook her fat head wisely.
“No, you don’t go to play that glass-of-water trick upon me. I know;
I goes to fetch it, and you prigs the things for which I am responsible.
But you can come into this room and sit down if you like, if you feel
queer, for I ain’t afraid of no one-legged man;” and she opened the
door of the dining-room.
Rupert followed her into it and sank into his own chair, for the
place was still furnished. Indeed, there in the frame of the looking-
glass some of his invitation-cards remained, and on the sideboard
stood the bronze Osiris which he had given to Edith. In the turmoil of
his dazed mind, it brought back to him a memory of the crypt of the
temple at Tama and the great statue of that same god, which
presided there over the place of death. Well, it seemed that this also
was a place of death.
“When did Mrs. Ullershaw die?” he asked, with an effort.
“About five days before she was buried. That’s the usual time, ain’t
it?”
He paused, then asked again: “Do you know where the young
Mrs. Ullershaw is?”
“No, I don’t; but my friend said that’s her address on the bit of
paper on the mantel-piece in case any letters came to forward.”
Rupert raised himself and took the paper. It was an envelope; that,
indeed, in which his last letter to Edith had been posted from Abu-
Simbel, and beneath her name, Mrs. Rupert Ullershaw, the Regent’s
Park address was scratched out, and that of the Brook Street rooms
written instead, in his wife’s own handwriting.
“Thank you,” he said, retaining the paper; “that is all I wanted to
know. I will go now.”
Next instant he was on the steps and heard the door being locked
behind him.
 His cab was still standing a few yards off, as the man wished to
breathe his horse after the long drive. Rupert re-entered it, and told
him to go to Brook Street. There, in the cab, the first shock passed
away, and his natural grief overcame him, causing the tears to
course down his cheeks. It was all so dreadful and so sad—if only
his mother had lived a little longer!
Very soon they reached the number written on the old envelope,
and once more Rupert, carpet-bag in hand, rang the bell, or rather
pushed the button, for this one was electric, wondering in a vague
way what awaited him behind that door. It was answered by a little
underling, a child fresh from the country, for the head servant had
gone for a Sunday jaunt in the company of Edith’s own maid.
“Is Mrs. Ullershaw in?” asked Rupert.
“Yes, sir, I believe so,” she answered, curtseying to this great, dim
apparition, and striving to hide her dirty little hands under her apron.
Rupert entered the hall, and asked which was her room.
“Upstairs, sir, and the first door to the right;” for remembering the
scolding she had recently received from Edith when she showed up
Sir Somebody Something with her sleeves tucked above her thin
elbows, as they were just now, the girl did not wish to repeat that
unforgiveable offence. So having explained and shut the door, she
promptly vanished.
Still carrying his carpet-bag, Rupert climbed the stairs till he came
to the room indicated. Placing his bag upon a butler’s tray outside,
which had not been removed since luncheon, he knocked.
“Come in,” said a voice—the voice of Edith, who thought that it
was a maid with some hot water which she had forgotten when she
brought up the tea.
He turned the handle and entered. Edith was standing on the other
side of the room near the fire with her back towards him, for she was
engaged in pouring herself out a cup of tea. Presently, hearing the
clump clump of his wooden crutch upon the floor—for he advanced
towards her before speaking—she turned round wondering what
could be causing that unusual noise. By the light of a standard lamp,
she perceived a tall figure clad in a sailor’s pea jacket and mustard-
coloured trousers, who seemed to be leaning on a great rough stick,
and to have a gigantic red beard and long, unkempt hair which
tumbled all over his forehead.
“Who on earth are you?” she exclaimed, “and what are you doing
here?”
“Edith,” he answered, in a reproachful tone, “Edith?”
She snatched a candle from the tea-tray, and running rather than
walking to him, held it towards his face and looked. Next moment it
was rolling on the floor, while she staggered back towards the fire.
“Oh, my God!” she gasped. “Oh, my God! is it you, or your ghost?”
“It is I—Rupert,” he replied heavily, “no ghost. I almost wish I
were.”
She collected herself; she stood upright.
“You have been dead for months; at least, they said that you were
dead. Welcome home, Rupert!” and with a kind of despairing gesture
she stretched out her hand.
Again he hobbled forward, again the rough-hewn thornwood
crutch, made by himself with a pocket-knife, clumped upon the
carpeted floor. Edith looked down at the sound, and saw that one leg
of the mustard-coloured trousers swung loose. Then she looked up
and perceived for certain what at first she had only half grasped, that
where the left eye should have been was only a sunken hollow,
scarlet-rimmed and inflamed with scars as of burning beneath it, and
that the right eye also was inflamed and bloodshot as though with
weeping, as indeed was the case.
“What has happened to you?” she asked, in a whisper, for she
could find no voice to speak aloud, and the hand that she had
outstretched dropped to her side. “Oh, your foot and eye—what has
happened to them?”
“Torture,” he answered, in a kind of groan. “I fell into the hands of
savages who mutilated me. I am sorry. I see it shocks you,” and he
stood still, leaning heavily on the crutch, his whole attitude one of
despair with which hope still struggled faintly.
If it existed, it was destined to swift doom.
 Edith made no movement, only said, pointing to a chair by him, the
same in which Dick had smoked his cigarettes:
“Won’t you sit down?”
He fell on to, rather than sat in the chair, his heavy crutch
clattering to the floor beside him.
“Will you have some tea?” she went on distractedly. “Oh, there is
no other cup, take mine.”
“Thank you,” he answered, waving his hand in refusal. “I am
drinking from a cup of my own, and I find it bitter.”
For a few seconds there was silence between them, which she
broke, for she felt that it was driving her mad.
“Tell me,” she said—“tell me—dear—” the word stuck in her throat
and came out with a kind of gasp, “what does all this mean? You see
I am quite ignorant. I thought you dead; look at my dress.”
“Only what I have told you. I am an unfortunate man. I was set
upon by an overwhelming force. I fought as best I could, until nearly
all my people were killed, but unluckily I was stunned and taken
prisoner. Afterwards they offered me the choice of Islam or death. I
chose death; but they tortured me first, hacking off my foot and
putting out my eye with hot irons, and in the end, when they were
about to hang me, I was rescued.”
“Islam?” she broke in, shivering. “What is Islam?”
“In other words, the Mahommedan religion, which they wished me
to accept.”
“And you let them do—those dreadful things to you rather than
pretend to be a Mahommedan for a few days?”
“Of course,” he answered, with a kind of sullen pride. “What did
you expect of me, Edith?”
“I? Oh, I don’t know; but it seems so terrible. Well, and who
rescued you?”
“Some women in authority whom I had befriended. They came at
the head of their tribesmen and killed the Arabs, and took me to their
home and nursed me back to life.”
She looked up quickly.
 “We heard about them,” she said; “one was young and beautiful; if
a savage can be beautiful, was she not?”
“Yes,” he answered indifferently, “I suppose that Mea was
beautiful, but she is not a savage, she is of much more ancient race
and higher rank than ours—the lady Tama. I will tell you all about her
some time.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Edith, “but I don’t know that she interests me.”
“She ought to,” he replied, “as she saved my life.”
Then that subject dropped.
“Do you know,” she asked, “oh! do you know about your mother?”
“Yes, Edith, I drove to the house when I landed from the ship and
heard. It was there I got your address,” and thrusting his hand into
the side-pocket of the pea-coat, he produced the crumpled envelope.
“I suppose that you were with her?” he added.
“No, not at the last.”
“Who was, then?”
“No one except the nurse, I think. She had another stroke and
became insensible, you know. I had left a fortnight before, as I could
do no good and they wanted my room.”
Now for the first time resentment began to rise in Rupert’s patient
heart, stirred up there by the knowledge that his beloved mother had
been left to die in utter loneliness.
“Indeed,” he said, and there was a stern ring in his voice, “It might
have been kinder had you stayed, which, as my wife, it was your
place to do.”
“I thought that I was no longer your wife, Rupert, only your widow.
Also, it’s not my fault, but I cannot bear sickness and all those
horrors, I never could,” and she looked at his mutilated form and
shuddered.
“Pray then that it may not be your lot to suffer them some day,” he
said, in the same stern voice.
It frightened her, and she plunged into a new subject, asking:
“Have you heard that things have gone very badly for you? First,
Lord Devene has an heir, a strong and healthy boy, so you will not
succeed.”
“I am heartily glad to hear it,” he said, “may the child live and
prosper.”
She stared at this amazing man, but finding nothing to say upon
the point that would sound decent, went on:
“Then you are almost disgraced, or rather your memory is. They
say that you caused your mission to fail by mixing yourself up with
women.”
“I read it in the papers,” he replied, “and it will not be necessary for
me to assure you that it is a falsehood. I admit, however, that I made
a mistake in giving escort to those two women, partly because they
were in difficulties and implored my help, and partly because there
are generally some women in such a caravan as mine pretended to
be, and I believed that their presence would make it look more like
the true thing. Also, I am of opinion that the sheik Ibrahim, who had
an old grudge against me, would have attacked me whether the
women were there or not. However this may be, my hands are
clean,” (it was the second time this day that Edith had heard those
words, and she shivered at them), “I have done my duty like an
honest man as best I could, and if I am called upon to suffer in body
or in mind,” and he glanced at his empty trouser-leg, “as I am, well, it
is God’s will, and I must bear it.”
“How can you bear it?” she asked, almost fiercely. “To be
mutilated; to be made horrible to look at; to have your character as
an officer ruined; to know that your career is utterly at an end; to be
beggared, and to see your prospects destroyed by the birth of this
brat—oh, how can you bear all these things? They drive me mad.”
“We have still each other,” he answered sadly.
She turned on him with a desperate gesture. She had never loved
him, had always shrunk from him; and now—the kiss of another man
still tingling upon her lips—oh! she loathed him—this one-eyed,
hideous creature who had nothing left to give her but a tarnished
name. She could never be his wife, it would kill her—and then the
shame of it all, the triumph of the women who had been jealous of
her beauty and her luck in marrying the distinguished heir of Lord
Devene. She could not face it, and she must make that clear at
once.
“No, no,” she gasped. “It sounds hard, but I must tell you. I can’t, I
can’t—be your wife.”
He quivered a little, then sat still as stone.
“Why not, Edith?” he asked, in a cold, unnatural voice.
“Oh! look in the glass and you will see—that horrible red hole, and
the other all red also.”
“I was totally blind for a while, and I’m ashamed to say it, but grief
for my mother has brought back inflammation. It may pass. Perhaps
they can do something for my looks.”
“But they cannot give you back your foot, and I hate a cripple. You
know I always did. Also, the thing is impossible now; we should be
beggars.”
“What, then, do you wish me to do?” he asked.
“Rupert,” she replied, in an intense whisper, flinging herself upon
her knees before him, and looking up at him with wild, appealing
eyes, “Rupert, be merciful, you are dead, remain dead, and let me
be.”
“Tell me one thing, Edith,” he said. “Did you ever love me?”
“No, I suppose not quite.”
“Then why did you marry me? For my position and prospects?”
“Yes, to some extent; also, I respected and admired you, and Lord
Devene forced me to it, I don’t know why.”
Again that slight shiver went through Rupert’s frame, and he
opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Evidently she did not
know the facts, and why should he tell her of her own disgrace; he
who had no wish for vengeance?
“Thank you for being so plain with me,” he said heavily. “I am glad
that you have told me the truth, as I wish you well, and it may save
you some future misery, that of being the wife of a man whom you
find hideous and whom you never loved. Only, for your own sake,
Edith, think a minute; it is your last chance. Things change in this
world, don’t they? I have found that out. Well, they might change
again, and then you might be sorry. Also, your position as the wife of
a man who is only supposed to be dead will, in fact, be a false one,
since at some future time he might be found to be alive.”
“I have thought,” she answered. “I must take the risks. You will not
betray me, Rupert.”
“No,” he answered, in tones of awful and withering contempt. “I
shall not follow your example, I shall not betray you. Take what little
is mine, by inheritance or otherwise; it will prove to the world that I
am really dead. But henceforth, Edith, I hate you, not with a hate that
desires revenge, for I remember that we are still man and wife, and I
will never lift a finger to harm you any more than I will break the bond
that is and must remain until the death of one of us. Still, I tell you
that all my nature and my spirit rise up against you. Did you swear to
me that you loved me as much as once you said you did, I would not
touch your beauty with my finger-tips, and never will I willingly speak
to you again in this world or the next. Go your own way, Edith, as I
go mine,” and heaving himself out of the low chair, Rupert lifted his
crutch from the ground, and leaning on it heavily, limped from the
room.
As he fumbled at the door-handle, Edith rose from her knees,
where she had remained all this time, and running after him, cried:
“Rupert!”
He took no heed, the veil of separation had fallen between them, a
wall of silence had been built; she might as well have spoken to the
air.
She saw him lift the carpet-bag from the butler’s tray, then down
the stairs went that single, heavy footfall, and the clumping of the
crutch. The front door opened and closed again. It was done.

For a while Edith remained almost fainting, then she roused

herself, thought a little, and rang the bell. It was answered by the
parlour-maid, who had returned.
“Jane,” she said, “when you are out in future, will you be so good
as to tell that girl Eliza never to show a stranger up here again
without asking if I wish to see him? This afternoon she let in some
kind of a madman, who brought a bag of smuggled silks which he
wished to sell me. I could not get rid of him for nearly half an hour,
and he has frightened me almost out of my wits. No; I don’t want to
hear any more about it. Take away the things.”
 CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HAPPY, HAPPY LIFE
When Rupert left the house in Brook Street, he walked on
aimlessly down it, down Bond Street, across Piccadilly, where in the
mist he was nearly knocked over by a cab, down St. James’ Street to
Pall Mall, and along it till he came to the Army and Navy Club, of
which he was a member. Here he paused in front of the portico
whither he had unconsciously directed his steps, then remembering
that he was dead and that it would never do for him to enter there,
turned round hurriedly and butted into a portly general under whom
he had served, who was about to go up the steps of the club. The
general, a choleric person, cursed him, then concluding from his
crutch and wretched appearance that he was a poor, homeless
cripple, felt ashamed of himself, and with some words of regret,
thrust sixpence into his hand.
“Pray don’t apologise, General,” said Rupert, “it was my
awkwardness.” Then he looked at the sixpence, and adding: “With
your permission I will pass it on,” he gave it to a hungry-looking
crossing-sweeper who waited hard by, and limped forward.
The general stood amazed, for he knew the voice, but could not
put a name to it.
“Hi!” he shouted, after the retreating figure, but Rupert realising his
danger, went on quickly towards the Athenaeum and was soon lost
in the mist.
“Devilish odd thing,” said the General, as he strolled up the steps.
“Whose voice was it? I know—Rupert Ullershaw’s!”