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Social Revolution: the Elusive Emergence of an Agenda in International Relations

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Social Revolution: the Elusive Emergence of an Agenda in International Relations Review of International Studies (2002), 28, 271–291 Copyright © British International Studies Association Social revolution: the elusive emergence of an agenda in International Relations MARYAM H. PANAH* Abstract. This article addresses the inadequate analysis of modern social revolutions within orthodox International Relations due both to the historical context and the trajectory of the discipline. A critical review of the literature that has more recently come to acknowledge the relevance of revolutions and revolutionary states to IR reveals a number of enduring shortcomings. The present article suggests an alternative framework for the study of revolutions by conceiving them as rooted in the dynamics of the globally dominant socio- economic system, capitalism. It is argued that the uneven global expansion of this system and its peculiarity contribute to the explanation of revolutionary upheavals in the modern world. This is illustrated in the final section of the article by a case study of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which also challenges recent explanations of the revolution in terms of ‘Islam’ or ‘Islamic culture’. Introduction The history of the twentieth century is dotted with social revolutions. If in its first half the Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution and the Chinese were the significant markers, in the post-World War II period a long list can be drawn from Algeria, Cuba and Vietnam to Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Iran. It is our contention and premise here that there has been a crucial international dimension to all of these revolutions. But while revolution has been a favourite subject for historians and sociologists, particularly in the field of comparative study, international relations traditionally approached the subject at best only tangentially.1 Thus, in 1990, in the pages of the Review of International Studies, Fred Halliday noted a ‘mutual neglect’ between the study of revolutions and the discipline of international relations (IR).2 However, a retrospective examination of the period since signals the emergence of a * Special thanks are due to Fred Halliday and Benno Teschke for detailed comments on this article. I would also like to thank participants of the LSE Graduate Seminars 1995–1998 for helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions or sections of this article. 1 A comprehensive bibliography of studies of revolution by historians or sociologists would be too lengthy to reproduce here. An excellent reference list can be found in John Foran (ed.), Theorizing Revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997). For a brief survey see Nikki Keddie (ed.), Debating Revolutions (New York: New York University, 1995). 2 Fred Halliday, ‘The Sixth Great Power: Revolutions and the International System’, Review of International Studies, 16 (1990), pp. 207–221 271 272 Maryam H. Panah body of literature concerned with this subject.3 A reappraisal of the situation is therefore germane. The first part of this article presents a brief historical introduction to the study of revolutions within IR. It will be seen that clues to the traditional absence of the subject from our discipline may be uncovered in the historical context and evolution of IR and its institutional practices. We then address the more recent theorization of revolutions within an international context. We shall argue that traditional realist attempts to incorporate revolutions—whether in classical, ‘neo-’ or ‘English’ guise— remain insufficient. The post-positivist turn and, in particular, those arguments drawing on the new constructivist agenda in IR, however, also fail to provide adequate insights into the emergence of revolutions. In this article, in contrast, we put forward an alternative framework for the study of modern revolutions within IR, that focuses on the globally dominant mode of social organisation, capitalism, and the social dynamics of this socioeconomic system, as the key to understanding revolutionary social change. The final section of the article then sets out a case study of the Iranian Revolution as an instance of how such a framework may usefully inform our explanation of such an event. The peculiar history of IR and the exclusion of revolution The traditional absence of revolution from the theoretical vocabulary of IR is often accounted for by the conventional argument that the discipline arose from a convic- tion to manage the relations among states and to deal with the problem of war. This explanation remains wanting. Clearly, the centrality of classical interstate conflict to scholars of International Relations as well as the statesmen who practised them is not to be denied. However, state leaders such as Woodrow Wilson, namesake of the first Chair of International Relations at Aberystwyth, were arguably as much concerned with the international repercussions of social revolution as with the destructive consequences of war.4 Thus, proverbially ‘sweating blood over Russia’, Wilson began the outline of his post-war peace programme by discussing the situation in Revolutionary Russia and proceeded to appropriate and incorporate Bolshevik tenets of the international order into his Fourteen Point proposal.5 In 3 In addition to Halliday’s own more recent contribution, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (London: Macmillan, 1999), studies of revolutions in an international context have included David Armstrong, Revolution and World Order (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), Peter Calvert, Revolution and International Politics, 2nd edn. (London: Pinter, 1996), Stephen Chan and Andrew J. Williams (eds.), Renegade States: The Evolution of Revolutionary Foreign Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), Stephen Walt, Revolution and War (New York: Cornell, 1996), Mark N. Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves (London: Macmillan, 1997). A more recent collection of essays, published after submission and acceptance of this article, can be found in Mark Katz (ed.), Revolution: International Dimensions (CQ Press, 2000). 4 As Arno Mayer has shown, the intense interplay of domestic and international politics in the revolutionary circumstances during and after the First World War figured highly in the agenda of participants in the peacemaking negotiations which led to the Versailles Treaty. Arno Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking; Containment and Counter-Revolution at Versailles, 1918–1919 (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1967). 5 Torbjorn L.Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997), p.206. Social revolution: an emerging agenda in IR 273 similar vein, Edward Hallet Carr, read as a founding father of IR and author of a highly influential yet equally unrepresentative introduction to international relations, actually spent the predominant part of his scholarly endeavours on a fourteen- volume history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union.6 Carr’s concerns with interstate relations and the prospects for peace or war constituted part of a more comprehensive worldview which found explicit expression in a volume dedicated to the interplay of the international and domestic as pertaining to post- Revolutionary Russia.7 The initial practical and theoretical engagement of the founding figures of IR with the subject of social revolution and its international implications seems nonetheless to have been written out of our field. So, why this occlusion? Not merely the institutional setting of IR and its particular growth within the Cold War environment in the United States, but further, the knowledge-guiding interests and epistemological and ontological assumptions of IR are central to understanding the traditional deflection of the disciplinary spot- light away from revolutions and their actors. Within the dominant discourse of IR scholarship, the theoretical underpinnings of how we acquire knowledge about the world and what may be designated as the legitimate objects of our scientific endeavours were determined by a peculiar history in origins as well as subsequent trajectory. International Relations was from its inception set up as a ‘science-against- crises’ to deal with conflicts not by addressing their domestic roots, but by managing them at the international level.8 Moreover, it was born within the North Atlantic academic culture such that alternative perspectives of world politics were ‘curiously excluded’ from its discourse.9 In the aftermath of World War II, ‘arch-realists’ such as Hans Morgenthau laid the grounds for the state-oriented and power-focused dominant discourse of American IR.10 The onset of the Cold War then had a considerable impact on scholarship and the academy in the United States.11 Mean- while, American political and economic leadership of the capitalist world reinforced the domination of IR theories by the US tradition and new institutional framework. One aspect of this disciplinary evolution was the emergence of ‘area studies’ as a field geared towards ‘practical needs’. As concerning revolutionary states—specifi- cally the Soviet Union and China—political interests dictated a focus on their con- tainment and the development of institutions of ‘global governance’ aimed at the management of the international order against potential crises. 12 Specialized research institutions set up for this purpose included the Russian Institute at Columbia University, the Hoover Institute on War, Peace and Revolution, the 6 Carr’s IR classic is The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to The Study of International
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