A Conceptual History: Historical Sociological Analysis of Unipolarity in Structural Realist Literature/Bir Kavramsal Tarih: Yapisal Gercekci Literaturde Tek Kutuplulugun Tarihsel Sosyolojik Analizi.

• Author: Karademir, Burcu Sari

Introduction

Concepts with certain ontological, epistemological, and methodological truth-claims are the building blocks upon which theories are built. (1) Observation that makes theorizing possible depends on concepts of a theory, which are co-constitutive of theories as means and ends. (2) They enable the operationalization of theories. Concepts are crucial as researchers keep returning to the initial concepts "which define which fact is a fact" while theorizing and making analysis. (3) Scholars are expected to reflect on their concepts as they make their concept-driven observations. Reflecting on concepts helps scholars to understand whether there is a need for updating their concepts and theories. Scholars, however, often tend to take the particularistic concepts of their respective camps for granted. (4) They may fail to realize that their concepts do not fit the new social reality and that their theories need updates. It is, therefore, important to remember that concepts do not speak for themselves and have a history and to understand their ongoing history is not just a means but also an end of theorizing itself. (5) The study builds on the idea that there is a need for reflection and observation on the very categories taken for granted in existing knowledge so that they are not reified across time, whatever cyclical vision of history underpins them. (6) Additionally, it aims to address that failures in reflecting on the given concepts of a theory historically prevent developing, validating, and adopting new ideas, and hence impair the process of theorizing. (7)

The article argues that the concept of unipolarity presents such a case for structural realism (SR) and International Relations (IR) theory. It highlights that unipolarity has been a taken-for-granted concept such that it has not been reflected upon and theorized as a distinct structural configuration until 2009. (8) To show how unipolarity literature evolved in structural realist literature, the study mainly presents a chronological and thematic review of the literature on unipolarity and balancing, starting from the onset of the post-Cold War era to the recognition of unipolarity as a distinct structure in 2009. Additionally, it covers two subsequent books entitled Unipolarity and World Politics: A Theory and Its Implications (9) and Theory of Unipolar Politics (10) as both specifically aimed at theorizing unipolarity based on SR. Rather than judging structural realists for their predictive failures, (11) the article presents an immanent critique, (12) or critique from within, to evaluate SR on its own terms and uses an historical sociological approach (HSA) to show that it is the tempocentric use of history (13) in SR that led to the late recognition of unipolarity as a distinct structure.

The article divides the evolution of the unipolarity literature into four stages by looking at structural realists' responses to the observation of the absence of balancing while expecting recurrent counterbalancing. It defines the four stages as such: (i) denial of unipolarity due to tempocentrism of the balance of power theory (BoP) and the early predictions of multipolarity, (ii) acceptance of unipolarity with slightly relaxed tempocentrism and leaning toward the balance of threat theory (BoT) with a focus on its stability and durability, (iii) the 'great puzzle' and soft balancing (SB) as a middle ground argument to keep the relevance of the BoP and BoT theories, and (iv) recognition of the unipolarity as a distinct structural condition and the start of another cycle of tempocentric theorizing on unipolarity. This analysis reveals that it was the use of the historically contingent variables that enabled the recognition of unipolarity. (14) The article points out that the reification of concepts encumbers theorizing and the conceptual history of unipolarity enables us to see that unipolarity is equated with "U.S. unipolarity" and it is not studied on its own merits as a distinct structure. Despite the abundance of studies on U.S. unipolarity, the concept itself is understudied both theoretically and methodologically. Therefore, the article underpins that unipolarity and U.S. unipolarity should be considered as two distinct yet interdependent research agendas for IR scholarship.

Historical Sociological Approach: Tempocentric Use of History and Unipolarity

Structural realists were criticized for missing the end of the Cold War and for the defects in their "crystal balls" (15) in identifying the change in the system. The critiques argued that the theory's incapacity to understand change stemmed from ignoring the unit-level factors to refrain from reductionism. (16) However, in social sciences, change may emanate from multiple causes and can have unit-level and system-level causes. (17) The failures of prediction are, therefore, the most tolerable kinds of failures. (18) Yet, the failure to define structural change even after it happened is a more fundamental flaw to ponder. Structural realists, who failed to define unipolarity as a distinct configuration of power, were not criticized for their failure in the conceptualization of polarity and theorizing. The failure did not even receive immediate attention from structural realists who rushed to attest to the theory's strengths and relevance. (19)

The Hegelian concept of immanent critique helps researchers judge a theory by its own standards and focus on where the theory's proponents claim superiority over its alternatives. (20) Also, the immanent critique allows for asking the fundamental question of whether structural realists were able to define "changes in the system" (21) by looking at the alterations in the distribution of power. For this reason, to restate Pinar Bilgin, the study brings an immanent critique to the study of unipolarity and aims at providing an understanding of the limitations of SR in fulfilling its own standards by revealing its inconsistencies, shortcomings, and missing parts in general and its approach to unipolarity in particular. (22)

Historical sociological approach (HSA) enables critique from within by drawing attention to the use of history in structural realist theorizing. According to Stephen Hobden, HSA aims to open a dialogue between historical sociology and different schools for developing an empirically aware, theoretically rigorous, and methodologically diligent research agenda. (23) HSA does not require scholars to abandon their traditionally preferred topics like hegemony, polarity, and balance of power or make their accumulated knowledge obsolete or irrelevant in any way. (24) It promises a means for covering the nuance, subtleties, and complexities of world politics; it does not impair the goal of finding meaningful causal flows, patterns, and trends. (25) HSA maintains that the study of the IR "in" history rather than "outside" of history enriches theoretical understanding by giving depth to different theories and their concepts. (26) Barry Buzan and George Lawson also point out the significance of history for theorizing by stating that "theories are assessed and reassessed, made and remade through ongoing encounters with history". (27) Moreover, as Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan highlight, bringing theory and history together in a more systematic helps to reconsider the artificial division of labor between the theory-building IR scholars and historians. (28) In this regard, failures to evaluate the implications of encounters with history lead scholars to be trapped in ahistorical theorizing, and miss the chance to test, assess, and refine their theories and key concepts.

HSA points out two types of ahistoricism dominant in IR. (29) The first is chronofetishism, which is defined as the sealing of the present such that it appears as an autonomous, natural, and immutable entity. (30) The second is tempocentricism, which is defined as a methodology in which theorists look at history with a chronofetishist lens and project the chronofetishized present backward through time for smoothing irregularities and obscuring differences between historical periods and state systems. (31) By doing so, theorists are able to study IR as homologous, which makes their theories transhistorical. (32) As its critics state, structural realists use history "as a field of data to be mined, for cases to be shoehorned in the pursuit of grand-theory building and for evidence of the cycles of history that realists used to mark historical time." (33) The purposes of this positivist "history-as-a-dataset" (34) approach or "history without historicism" (35) are practical, for example drawing lessons from the past and making predictions and universal propositions. (36) However, it creates blindness to curtail the possibility of refining the theory and its key concepts.

Additionally, such an approach impairs the historical view, as it allows us to define systemic change only in terms of a 'breakpoint' or a radical discontinuity that is starkly different from the previous order. (37) This view of history prevents the recognition of processual change (38) and the uniqueness of the present structure, as it simultaneously obscures some of its fundamental and/or constitutive features. (39) Similarly, Joseph MacKay and Christopher LaRoche argue that historical-theoretical commitments permit and constrain the conclusions that IR theorists draw about the past and shape the link between the present and the future. (40) In this regard, Hobson asserts that the tempocentric view does "not only disservice to the past, but, more importantly, does serious injustice to understanding the present" as the construction of transhistorical states system fails theorists to "recognize the uniqueness of the present system and simultaneously obscures some of its most fundamental or constitutive features." (41)

Tempocentric ahistoricism is exemplified by structural realists' depiction of history as repetition...