The International Relations of Middle-earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings

3. Middle-earth and Three Great Debates in International Relations

—chapter 3— Middle-earth and Three Great Debates in International Relations This chapter uses LOTR characters to illustrate ideal typical perspectives of major approaches within the three “Great Debates” of twentieth-century IR, all of which in›uence discussion today. It is important to note here that, although in this book we use the giant spider Shelob to illustrate one “prowoman” approach and the Orcs to illustrate one realist approach , feminists are not blood-sucking monsters, and realists are not genocidal maniacs! As discussed in the introduction, our use of LOTR characters is meant to illustrate different ways of seeing the world, not to malign scholars of different perspectives. Each involves its own kind of colored glasses. Although our world and Middle-earth are clearly different in many ways, LOTR can still provide illustrations to which we can relate . Thus Middle-earth can clarify different IR perspectives on politics. We conclude by setting the stage for the next chapter, which focuses on the long-standing problem of war. great debates in ir theory: clashing paradigms The discipline of IR often has been mythologized by IR scholars as being de‹ned by three Great Debates. Telling a story about the history of IR in this way can be useful because it focuses on abstract versions of more historically diverse dialogues in order to highlight differences and create 43 abstract ideal types. However, it becomes problematic if such ideal types are understood as being what “really” happened—especially since, as Woodrow Wilson noted, it is often the case that “history is written by the victors.” In the mythology of IR, each of the Great Debates features a different point of contention: over visions of the future in the 1920s and 1930s, the means of obtaining knowledge (referred to as “method” in short form) in the 1950s through the 1980s, and what counts as knowledge in the 1980s and 1990s (Lapid 1989).1 In the new millennium debate continues over worldviews, methods, and how to learn about IR but with less of a ‹rm sense of a main axis of con›ict. Examining IR’s stories about the major dialogues of the past, which provide a sense of the ‹eld’s evolution , is a good way to move toward grasping where IR is now and how it can inform the world around us. Table 1 displays approaches to IR in terms of these three Great Debates of the twentieth century in the context of races and characters from LOTR. The ‹rst column lists the debate, its focus, and its time period ; the second column names the major approaches included in the debate; the third column notes the race of beings we use to illustrate this approach in LOTR; and the fourth column names the speci‹c male character who best illustrates this worldview. Of course, neither table 1 nor the others in this volume convey exhaustive sets of categories but instead are simply “cuts” at using LOTR to inform IR.2 44 • the international relations of middle-earth 1. Those who know the ‹eld of IR well will recognize that the dates assigned to respective Great Debates do not match those in Lapid’s (1989) highly informative exposition . The reason is the present volume’s emphasis on the second Great Debate as a very extended referendum on instrumental rationality. (Instrumental rationality refers to assessment of the expected value of a policy based on information available at the time of a decision, allowing for the cost of obtaining additional knowledge about the situation; a highly accessible presentation of this perspective appears in Bueno de Mesquita 2009: 15–18.) Hence the range of dates is longer than the span over which scholars in IR and throughout the social disciplines argued over the merits of behavioral—generally meaning quantitative (i.e., statistical)—methods. 2. For example, the rational choice tradition is included as a main heading in the summary of the second Great Debate, with the rationalist neorealist and neoliberal institutionalist approaches that competed with each other appearing as subheadings. In addition, although the approaches listed under the Third Debate are more critical leaning, they can be considered with respect to the dominant neorealist-neoliberal debate (but see also Waever 1996) as exempli‹ed by the neorealists and neoliberalists listed under the second Great Debate row. Problems with mythologizing history in this manner are further discussed later in the volume. For purposes of clarity in introducing paradigms, the table also does not elaborate on the various...