Will you be making a non-gated version available on the WWW??? (since Jim is a blogger himself, I suspect that he is less likely to object than some other editors might be).
Being the devil's advocate here -- why is realism (since Waltz) inconsistent with theories that offer primacy to communication? I mean, Waltz says that his theory only goes to the structural qualities and tendencies of the international system; he cannot explain foreign policy and an additional theory would be needed to offer that explanation. Mersheimer and Walt have offered theories about communication (not good ones) in their Israeli lobby article and book. Maybe the question is not why have they abandoned their projects in political practice, but why have they lacked any imagination to add good complementary theories.
Same issue of PoP happens to carry a review of PTJ's book (p.662).
Henry, the PoP contributor agreement seems to allow authors to post a pdf on a personal webpage. I'll try to do that ASAP and note it here.
Matt: As I demonstrate in the article, the neorealists themselves have attacked communicative approaches and pointed out fundamentally different ontologies. The article surveys and quotes extensively from Mearsheimer's published works.
And I do offer the explanation that these realists are talking "out of school" so to speak when addressing foreign policy concerns. That alone doesn't resolve the puzzle, as explained in the article.
I'll try to post a link to the piece, you read it, and we'll continue this discussion. OK?
Thanks for the reply. I know that in the past and in the present realists have attacked communicative theories (I know this from your class, reading realist articles, and the article you just wrote that I read eons ago), but it seems like MW's piece signals a turn, a rather poor turn. I read the piece. I largely agree with you, if we take the cannon as everything outside the MW piece. If we take the MW piece as part of the cannon, the homogenity of scholarship seems problematic and self contradicting. How will the contradiction and homogenity be resolved? Two distinct paths: putting MW on the margins of realist scholarship, or more communicative theories from realists that evolve towards being more consistent with their already existant cannon.
Hey, here's to shameless self-promotion!
And I'll second Henry's point on the pdf - can you get that up here so I can read your Perspectives piece?
Thanks for the interest. The addendum to the original post now has a link to the article on my website.
Is there really anyone left who does not think that communication and discourse matter in IR? Even Krasner implicitly concedes that the lip service states pay to the sovereingty norm supports the current organization of the state system.
Neorealists have exhausted the range of explanations they can offer without including new variables. If they are not yet willing to accept discourse among states, your article suggests that they may be ready to include communication within the state. After all, states routinely miscalculate the distribution of power--get ready for neorealists to argue that this happens when leaders don't listen to them.
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