Towards Understanding South African-Malaysian Relations
3. A Synopsis of IR Theory
International Relations (IR), which became an academic discipline in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, has been a discipline that has been in a constant state of theoretical flux, and this has led scholars such as Chan and Mandaville (2000) to describe
it as a 'crude discipline.' From the very inception of IR and for much of the 20th century, Neuman (1998: 13) pointed out that mainstream IR theory such as Idealism, Realism, Neo-Realism, and Liberalism was and is still essentially Eurocentric theory. Most of which had, however, been manufactured in and exported from the USA (cf. Dougherty &
Pfaltzgraff 1996: 11; Paolini 1997: 34) and because of these developments, Tickner (2003: 297) preferred to describe the USA theorists as the gatekeepers of IR and which has ultimately resulted in an 'Amerocentric representation of global politics.'
When it was developed in the early 1900s it was molded and shaped along the notion that the state was and remained the sole actor in the world of politics and international relations. The sovereignty of the state was paramount and as such all socio-political and economic affairs are connected to the state and in the hands of its leadership who represents the state and its citizens; in other words, actors such as the president or prime minister of a state were the secondary actors whilst the state was viewed as the primary actor. As time moved on towards the 1960s and beyond there were many critical IR scholars who began to question the dogmatic view of the classical IR scholars who considered the state as sacrosanct and a non-negotiable political entity. These scholars forcefully argued that whilst the nation-state might have been identified by earlier IR classical scholars as the only actor, there are new actors such as Transnational Corporations (TNCs), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Non-State Actors (NSAs) that play a greater role in international affairs. And because of this, they will have to forfeit that special position and allow space for the other actors to take their rightful place next to the state as key political players in the IR arena. Examples of TNCs and NGOs abound: Coca Cola (www.cocacola.com) and MacDonalds (www.mcdonalds.com) belong to those TNCs that have spread their tentacles to almost all corners of the world, and Amnesty International (AI www.ai.org) and the World Trade Organization (WTO www.wto.org) are NGOs that have made their mark in the IR arena and have thus become significant players in global affairs.
And as a consequence of the interventions of many of these transnational institutions, their concrete contributions have in some cases overshadowed the position of the nation-
state and forced the governments of these nation-states to accept them as important (and equal) international political players. When Strange (1996: 199) undertook a survey of world affairs, she proved that the state's position as a political actor has weakened as a result of the integration of national economies into a single global market economy. She thus concluded that we come across 'a ramshackle assembly of conflicting sources of authority' because when business dealings are executed or commercial ties forged then these are either with the government of a state, a TNC such as Barclays, or with a social movement such as Jubilee 2000; from this random selection of institutions, we deal with a variety of persons who represent their specific institution.
The impact of the TNCs and NGOs gave rise to the eventual emergence of IR scholars who proposed alternative theories such as Liberalism and Structuralism (George 1994;
Jackson & Sorenson 1999; Burchill et al 2001; Steams & Pettiford 2001) that interpreted world events and developments very differently from their colleagues who still held on to the idealist and realist notions of the sovereignty of the state as espoused by the classical theorists. A synopsis of the theoretical developments over the many decades during the 20th century will provide an insight into the types of theories that have been proposed, debated, discussed and applied. IR scholars have however classified them into three broad 'debates'. The one group is referred to as the First Debate theories, namely
‘Idealism’ and ‘Realism’ during the 1940s and 1950s (cf. Swatuk 1991; Quirk &
Vigneswaran 2005). This was naturally succeeded by the Second Debate theories which centered around the confrontations and conflicts between ‘history’ and ‘science’ and that took place during the 1960s and into the1970s (cf. Knorr & Rosenau 1969). And since the 1980s, the Third Debate came to life; this debate has been characterized as the
‘discipline defining’ debate because of the variety of concerns raised by theorists such as Holsti, Kauppi, Little, Cox and an array of others (cf. Lapid 1989; Neufeld 1995).
According to Neufeld (1995), three contending paradigms that describe the present state of IR have been proposed; they are ‘realism,’ ‘pluralism,’ and ‘structuralism.’ According to this proposition, Realists appropriate the ‘billiard-ball’ model, which reflect the view how states intermittently collide. Pluralists deal with the ‘cob-web’ relationships where
there is constant crisscrossing of activities, and Structuralists face a ‘multi-legged octopus’ sucking up the wealth from the peripheries ‘to feed’ the centre. Whilst these may be viewed as complementary paradigms, there are however contradictory categories that are accommodated by these theoretical schools. Among these are (a) actors (states), (b) dynamics (primary force, complex social movements, economics), (c) dependent variables (IR explaining what states do and identifying the major events), (d) subject boundaries (state centric and world society), and (e) specific concepts (deterrence and alliance, ethnicity and interdependence, dependence and exploitation) (cf. Neufeld 1995:
48-49). On the one hand, the Third Debate brought to a close all the traditionally mainstream theories within the IR discipline, and on the other, it sparked off a string of new and vibrant debates that fired up the discussions from various dimensions. These debates were, in fact, affected and influenced by theoretical models that have been devised, advocated and applied in fields such as literature and linguistics etc. In fact, many contemporary IR scholars have responded critically towards the mainstream theories arguing that most of these theories ignore cultural varieties and are 'suspect' (Neuman 1998: 6). Another shortcoming, according to Ayoob (1998: 32), was that they '... do not concern themselves with the behaviour of the large majority of members of the international system.'
Figure 2.1:
Stages of IR Theory
Traditional Theories: pre- 1980s
Non-Traditional Theories: post- 1980s
Liberalism
Realism
Idealism
Green Theory Green Theory
Feminist Theory Feminist Theory
Postmodernism Postmodernism
Critical Theory Critical Theory
Beyond the Third Debate, which Jackson & Sorenson (1999: 59-61) described as the Fourth Debate, there emerged a number of very vibrant and challenging theories. All of these theories have prised open new debates and discussions that critically questioned the ontological and epistemological foundations of the mainstream theories. The advocates of these theories have interrogated the philosophical foundations of the earlier theories to demonstrate how inadequate they were to comprehend the nature of the contemporary society and state. And since the classical theories failed to provide any satisfactory answers to the developments in the international system, the new coined and proposed theories could provide some positive responses. The theories that entered the IR arena were: Critical Theory, Postmodernism, Post-Colonial Theory, Feminist Theory and the Green Theory. With the invasion of these theories, the IR discipline provided new understandings and insights into IR. Figure 2.1 above gives a synopsis of some of the different theories that have been operating throughout the 20th Century.
In mapping out a theoretical framework for this thesis, which draws upon, at least, one particular theory, I am consciously mindful of Holsti's (1990: 12) desideratum when he said that the researcher/scholar should be ‘employing concepts, categories and typologies that foster rather than hinder comparative analysis’ and when Halliday (1995: 745) intoned that 'the philosophy of the social sciences' should always be kept in mind for theory to avoid the pitfalls. More importantly I take heed of Burchill's (1996: 14-15) remarks when he discussed the constitutive international theory, which is different from the explanatory international theory; he noted that generally every scholar comes to IR with preconceptions, experiences and beliefs which affect the way the person understands the subject. In other words, the scholar comes with his/her historical baggage such as language, culture, religion, ethnicity and ideology and thus frames his/her study with these factors impinging upon his/her interpretation.
These remarks are crucial when reflecting upon the relationship between South Africa and Malaysia from the standpoint of the observer who comes from a specific - or for that matter any - community within the broad-based South African society and someone who
belongs to a particular religio-cultural group within that society. Based upon these observations, the thesis is thus a reflection of my cognitive interests and normative assumptions. And since - reformulating using Edward Said's (1984) words - 'no writing is neutral or innocent', I have adopted a bias in terms of my choice of theories, variables and indeed interpretations. Let me now turn our attention towards the theory that has been appropriated for and applied throughout this thesis.