IR Theory and al-Qaeda: response to comments

Friday's post on the irrelevance of IR theory to understanding al-Qaeda or Islamism generated an unusually high quality of responses - indeed, I'd be happy to put it out there as a model of what an online academic peer review system could look like.    In this follow-up, let me try to respond to some of the many interesting comments and critiques;  I'll update later today as more responses come in.

To recap, Friday's post looked at 7 leading IR journals (actually 6 plus the APSR) and found that only 3% of some 800 articles even loosely touched on questions of terrorism, al-Qaeda, or Islamism.   Policy journals, by contrast, are full of such analysis - often by IR scholars.  I interpreted this as evidence for the irrelevance of IR theory to the question - whether because of the nature of the theories, the nature of the field, or something else, the highest prestige IR journals had nothing to say.

Here are some of the main criticisms, and my attempts to respond:

1. Dan Drezner, and many others, point out that I shouldn't have left out International Security, which is a high-prestige, peer-reviewed, and generally excellent journal.  I agree with all of the above, and agree that I shouldn't have left it out.  So I went and did the same thing for IS.  Since 2002, IS has published 72 articles.  Of those there are 7 which are loosely about al-Qaeda, Islamism, or terrorism (mostly the last):  one on intelligence failures and reform;  a review of the 9/11 Commission Report;  3 articles on bio-terrorism;  and 2 on the relationship between globalization and terrorism.  If I just wanted to defend my hypothesis, I would only count three of those (the two on globalization, and the review), but I'll include all 7 to be as fair as possible.  That generous coding brings the total count to 32 out of 868, or  3.7%.   
2. What about other security-centered journals?  Of the ones named by various critics, I would only count Security Studies as in the same prestige league (theoretically-oriented, peer-reviewed, etc) as the ones under review.  Not just in my opinion:  Sue Peterson and Michael Tierney's recent survey of IR professors did give us a ranking of "prestige" of IR journals.  The only ones not included in my list (other than International Security) are Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy (clearly policy journals) and the American Journal of Political Science, which I'm fairly sure would knock the number down even lower.  Anyway, I did look at Security Studies: it published 59 articles since 2002, of which zero deal with Islamism, al-Qaeda, or terrorism (although a case could be made for Ron Hassner's piece on "sacred spaces").   That would bring the count to 3.5% (32 or 33 out of 927).  Overall, the critique that including the security journals I ignored would change the picture was a valid hypothesis;  the evidence suggests that it doesn't really make a difference. 
   
3. Lag time:  one of the strongest criticisms is that it's just too soon to expect to see serious scholarship on 9/11 related themes.  Established scholars would take time, and would sacrifice serious sunk costs in terms of skills and expertise, if they retooled to deal with Islamism or terrorism.  Graduate students would only now be at the stage of completing their dissertations.  Either way, before indicting the field, I should wait another 3-4 years.  Maybe.  On the one hand, yes - other than the 'instant experts', the Middle East area experts, or the generalists, it does take time (my first article specifically about Islamism only came out at the beginning of this year, for example).  And the writing, submission, review, revise and resubmit, review, and finally get on the line for publication takes quite a long time at most journals (hello, IO).   But two points.  First, the response of the IR field to the end of the Cold War was much more rapid and intellectually productive.   The first major symposium on the end of the Cold War in International Organization was in the spring of 1994, although some articles appeared earlier; International Security was publishing important articles about it in winter 1991-92.  Depending on whether you count from 1989 or 1991 as the end of the Cold War determines how you count the lag.   More important, though, is that by 1991-92, there was already a lot of major stuff in the pipeline that the whole field was talking about.  I still remember a 1991 conference at Cornell on the end of the cold war, with many of the field's heavyweights participating.   There's not really anything like that going on right now in the field about al-Qaeda or Islamism, at least that I'm aware of - I'd be happy to be pointed to examples proving me wrong.  As Dan Drezner point out, "Take the Princeton Project on National Security's latest working paper on grand strategy for example (co-authored by Frank Fukuyama and John Ikenberry). Al Qaeda is mentioned three times; terrorism is mentioned sixteen times. China, in contrast, gets 127 mentions."    Anyway, the "pipeline" shouldn't be completely obscure - if there is a lot of stuff in the pipeline, we should be seeing it by now in the form of conference papers (I first presented my piece on Islamism at the 2003 APSA, for instance).  So I just did a quick search of the paper archives for last year's American Political Science Association annual meeting.  I only found about 25 papers about anything to do with the topics at hand (another 70 or so mention al-Qaeda in passing to explain something else);  by contrast I got 481 hits on "alliances", 365 on "Iraq", and 325 on "China" (but take that with many, many grains of salt, since I'd have to do the same exercise on those - knocking out papers not really about those topics -  to make it comparatively valid... see how methodologically accomodating I am?)
4. Okay, moving on... a number of people validly complained that other subfields do it better.  No argument there - the contentious politics literature has a lot to say about the subject, for example, and Sid Tarrow's recent book Transnational Political Activism is a good place to start.  But this actually strengthens my case:  these are generally not considered to be "IR" by those in the business of enforcing disciplinary boundaries (which, believe it or not, I'm not.)
5. Dan Nexon and others suggest that IR's neglect of terrorism and al-Qaeda is rational because it is not in fact especially significant.  That's an important point worthy of more extended discussion than I can give it here.  I will say, though, that even if that's true, it would still put the field quite at odds with the main trends in American foreign policy.   Ignoring something which objectively speaking has had a major effect in changing American foreign policy, and therefore the international system, would need more justification than "more people die in traffic accidents."   

I'm sure there are more good points out there, but I'm out of time right now.  I'll try to update later.

UPDATE 1:  I'm reminded that International Organization put together a companion journal, Dialog-IO, which published some really interesting articles on terrorism and 9/11 by Peter Katzenstein, Bob Keohane, Ron Deibert and Janice Stein, David Lake, Peter Gourevitch, and David Leheny.   Alas, this journal only published one subsequent article - a critique of a Jeff Legro article by Dan Nexon and Pat Jackson - and then disappeared into obscurity.   How to interpret this?  On the one hand, the journal IO and some major theorists did try to respond;  but their articles were cordoned off into essentially a one-shot special issue which doesn't even show up in most searches.   

UPDATE 2:  Millennium did a special issue on religion and international relations in 2000 (and published an article of mine on the "Dialogue of Civilizations" in that same year - including that journal wouldn't help the constructivists' cause in the 2002-2005 range, but does speak to some pre-9/11 interest in the topic on their partnbsp;

Comments

[David Edelstein]

Marc,

I wonder if this is the right way of thinking about this. The more interesting analysis might be to ask how many articles are being published on this subject now compared to before 9/11.

So, roughly 10% of IS's articles have been related to this subject. Is that too high or too low? There are lots of other issues--the war in Iraq, the rise of China, US hegemony--that warrant space in a journal like IS. The question is even more pertinent for a journal like APRS that has to cover the entire field of political science.

But compare that 10% now with before 9/11. Before 9/11, I'd be willing to bet you'd find very few, if any, articles in IS that deal with al-Qa'eda or Islam. The field is responding, but perhaps not as quickly as we would like.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

I'm just wondering why the spotlight is on English language scholarship alone? This is a big Western concern after all. For example, I've read former French FM Hubert Vedrine's book on hyperpower and 9-11 as well as that of geostrategist Pierre Encel, who has published a book on AQ, 9-11 and the geopolitical game played by Washington. Those scholars at the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques are first class and perhaps should have wider exposure among their Anglo-Saxon peers.

Hmmmm....And just-in-time translations by a certain French-to-English and Italian-to-English translator working in collaboration with some US academic providing commentary to the French/Italian perspectives might produce some interesting scholarly output. (Ahem.)

I find that the American "security narrative" is monopolized, perhaps even manipulated, by influential pressure groups in the USA.

[the aardvark]

David - you're right about the past: Peter Katzenstein did a review of the pre-9/11 work on terrorism, in IO I think... there really wasn't much. The thing about IS though is that the two globalization/terrorism pieces came out right after 9/11, and were pretty good, but since then there's been nothing except for the review of the 9/11 report. The bioterror and the intel pieces were all interesting, but really not about al-Qaeda, Islamism, et al.. so the trend line really isn't upward. Whether it *should* be is really another question - I agree that China, et al, are key questions that deserve sustainted attention. But the AQ stuff really does seem under-represented.

[the aardvark]

One of the anonymous commenters over at Drezner's place said that I wrote all this because "I hate Realism." He's wrong, of course.. the correct answer is "I hate your freedoms."

[Nick Kaufman]

Isn't the comparison with the end of the cold war a bit unnwarranted? The end of the cold war was a significant event that even though ended many of the leading assumptions and theories about the cold war, it could still be researched by a littany of scholars who had spent decades in studying it.OTOH 9/11 was more of a disruption for which little prior knowledge existed which demanded a completely new reorientation of scholarship.

[Zaoem]

Another issue with scholarship on Al Qaeda is data, or rather the absence thereof. We see a fair bit of work emerging on suicide terrorism and its logic, because we have a fair bit of data on it. There is also a lot of work on anti-Americanism, including a new high profile volume edited by Katzenstein and Keohane, which is directly concerned about islamism and terrorism. Again, we have data there. But much work on Al Qaeda remains (informed) speculation, which is why it ends up in the policy journals rather than the peer-reviewed journals.

[John Penta]

Nur: With language comes perspective. Languages lend themselves to different thought processes.

How to know that what is seen of as X in one language/culture is anywhere near comparable to what is seen of as X in some other?

Less cryptically and more practically: How many people doing IR theory actually are fluent in more than one language? AA seems to say "few". The spotlight is on English-language work because, well, those doing the studies speak English, and probably don't speak another language (fluently, if at all). It's a lot easier.

So, if they can't understand other languages, why do you expect people to look beyond their mother tongue?

And, in a side note:

Culture has a lot to do with this. Historically, most of American IR, comparative politics, etc. comes out of World War II and universities' participation in the war effort. The audience for most of it was either the GI in the field or the average politician, most of whom (in that age) had never left their hometown for very long prior to their service in government or the military, let alone left the country.

So American views on IR, comparative politics, etc. do have a bit of a self-absorbed side to them. It's a necessity, given that most of the general audience (still mostly politicians or political-types, or military officers) had probably never left the country before they entered the positions in which they need to pay attention to such things.

[alice]

I think the time lag argument while valid indicates the current information system is obsolete. All sorts of alternatives to the existing journal system can be devised which keep most of the strengths and add new ones to the current journal based system. Publications of drafts and notes, building the credible journals around already availible documents so that they get listed along with the reasons after publication, a system that also allows the rapid formation of new journals...

The problem is politics, "ownership" of ideas, a system based on mercantile order. I would suggest that this applies to the way in which funds for research are allocated and the ways it's organized. Decision making structures which better imitate markets and asdvanced management methods are possible. Note these are likely to be more decentralized and the equivalent of "bureacracy" bound that those in existence today.

The advantage of such systems is that they can allow more equal access to material and publication to all scholars, reducing the advanatges of those in prstige laden univerisities which can afford a wide selection of journals and whose scholars get more attention.

Quite simply the fact that a cumbersome system takes years to get crucial information and analysis out is not an excuse for that delay; but an indictment of that system in a rapidly changing world.

[the aardvark]

Alice - or, you could just publish it on your own blog, say!

Zaoem - I do believe I've heard of that high-profile volume on anti-Americanism... two chapters in it look at al-Qaeda/Islamism in some depth (mine and John Bowen's). On your second point, I guess it depends on what you mean by "data"... another big question.

Nick - I only brought up the end of cold war point because so many of the commenters did. It's fair to say that the post-Cold War questions were still in the general area of expertise of many IR people, unlike 9/11.. but does that really refute the claim that IR theory has been relatively irrelevant to explaining post-9/11 Islamism?

[sepoy]

If IR folks are relying on history and others to translate al-Qaeda [Bruce Lawrence just released a compilation of UBL's speechs] than this lag is quite understandable.

[David Leheny]

Marc --

Thanks for the reference to the Dialogue-IO collection. My article in there (which I wrote mostly from a fetal position underneath my desk, while still trying to process 9/11; I had been a State Dept. counterterrorism staffer just a year earlier and couldn't shake the feeling that somehow the attacks had resulted from something I had missed or done wrong) had two basic points: first, it tried to explain why terrorism, well before 2001, had been relegated to policy journals rather than IR/polisci journals, and second, suggested (as does Sid Tarrow) that social movement theory might help. But I pointed out at the time that this would likely be an unpopular shift for a lot of IR specialists. It's too bad; Sid Tarrow's work is superb, and I think that a lot of the best specialists on terrorism (e.g., Martha Crenshaw, Donatella della Porta) use the literature on social movements and contentious politics to great effect.

Great blog, by the way --

David

[David Leheny]

Incidentally, "fetal position beneath the desk" was the job that Jon Stewart said he wanted to have after 9/11:

http://www.siliconsteph.com/stewart.htm

Yeah, that was my job.

[Salamantis]

I might suggest the inclusion of two other journals: POLICY REVIEW and THE WILSON QUARTERLY. The former, particularly, contains some interesting analysis of Al Qaeda and the problems it poses.

[the aardvark]

S - Policy Review and Wilson Quarterly are both fine journals (I've published in the latter), but are both general interest policy journals, not IR theory journals. Wouldn't really fit.

[Dan Nexon]

"Dan Nexon and others suggest that IR's neglect of terrorism and al-Qaeda is rational because it is not in fact especially significant. That's an important point worthy of more extended discussion than I can give it here. I will say, though, that even if that's true, it would still put the field quite at odds with the main trends in American foreign policy. Ignoring something which objectively speaking has had a major effect in changing American foreign policy, and therefore the international system, would need more justification than 'more people die in traffic accidents.'"

To continue to play "Devil's Advocate," you're conflating two different issues. First, if general IR theories are good for anything, it is helping us to distinguish between what phenomena are and are not truly significant to international politics. Second, analyzing how 9/11 and Al-Q have impacted US foreign policy is a different matter than analyzing the movement itself. Arguably, conventional IR theories do just fine on the former count.

[Dan Nexon]

Oh, and technically the Nexon/Jackson vs. Legro debate was the first issue of Dialog-IO. You have to read it like a blog, the earlier publications appear first.

As I understand, Dialog-IO was something pushed by MIT press, who long wanted to move IO content online. The idea was that debate pieces, quick topical articles (like the 9/11 pieces), and supplemental materials for articles woudl appear online. Our piece was reviewed as an IO piece, but the editors proposed using it as the launch of the supplement. What happened wasn't their fault - MIT gave them all sorts of assurances about adequate publicity and then messed everything up (including the launch, we appear in the IO table of contents twice, if memory serves me, as a result). Afterwards, debate pieces migrated back into the journals and now my CV has this weird "accepted under IO rates and procedures" attached to the review. Patrick and I are pretty bummed about all this - we rather like the debate. Almost nobody reads it though.... which would've been very different it if had actually appeared in IO.

[AHR]

AA - I'm not sure how much IR types care about diplomatic history any more, but it might be interesting to compare disciplinary reactions in this case. Within the diplo. field, there's been increased attention given to the Middle East; a number of very good new monographs (most begun prior to 9/11) deal with U.S. Middle East policy (see Warren Bass, Salim Yaqub and Peter Hahn's recent books, as well as Robert Vitalis's forthcoming study of US-Saudi relations). Diplomatic History devoted a full issue in 2002 to historical perspectives on 9/11 (which included big names like Walter LaFeber, Bruce Kuklick, etc). None of this stuff has the immediacy of the work of political scientists, but it does lend a bit of depth to our understanding of how international relations actually work in the Middle East. It bears remembering that some of the best IR literature that emerged from the post Cold War era was written by historians - John Gaddis, Mel Leffler, Marc Trachtenberg, Ger Lundestad. Their work dealt with the early period of the Cold War, but it provided profound insights into how U.S.-Soviet relations evolved later, and which patterns and precedents were set early on. IR might not suffer from opening its ears to historians one more time.

[Dan Nexon]

AHR - I was under the impression that IR scholars were about the only people who listened to diplomatic historians these days. Certainly, other historians don't seem to care about them.