Bridging the International Law-international Relations Divide: Taking Stock of Progress

• Citation: Vol. 41 No. 2
• Publication year: 2013

BRIDGING THE INTERNATIONAL LAW-INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS DIVIDE: TAKING STOCK OF PROGRESS

Adam Irish^* Charlotte Ku,^** and Paul F. Diehl^***

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Table of Contents

I. Introduction...............................................................................359

II. Divergence and Convergence in Disciplines........................360

III. Calling Upon Deaf Ears ? Reconciliation and Rapproachement?.......................................................................363

IV. Recent Developments—Turning the Corner?.....................365

V. Research Methodology............................................................367

A. Who is Publishing Where and When?......................................370
B. Which Topics are They Investigating and What are Their Research Goals?......................................................................371
C. How are They Conducting Their Research?............................372

VI. The Big Picture: IL-IR Scholarship in Both Political Science and Law Journals........................................................374

VII. Studying International Law in Political Science Journals.......................................................................................379

VIII. International Relations in International Law Journals.......................................................................................381

IX. Patterns in an IL-IR Interdisciplinary Journal...................383

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X. CONCLUSIONS: IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL?.........385

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I. INTRODUCTION

International law (IL) and international relations (IR) have long been considered separate academic enterprises, with their own theoretical orientations, methodologies, and publishing outlets.¹ As the late Christopher Joyner noted:

Academicians who study either international law or international politics share a dirty little secret: both groups know that the presence of international law is critical for international relations to occur, and both know that the practice of international politics is essential for international law to evolve and function. But each is still reluctant to admit the necessity of the other.²

The net effect has been that the insights and research findings of one discipline have largely been unknown or ignored in the other. This has occurred despite the commonality of focusing on many of the same substantive interests, namely international cooperation in general, issues of war and peace, environmental regulation, and trade. This has led to numerous calls over the past two decades to bridge the international law and international relations divide.³ Yet one recent work claims that the frequency of such appeals have exceeded the number of efforts to fulfill those suggestions.⁴ Others have claimed that "there are large and growing intersections between the fields."⁵ How much progress has been made in the

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last two decades toward bridging the gap between international law and international relations? Various claims have been made, but little systematic evidence has been produced. In particular, the evidence offered has not necessarily been able to document the form and depth of the international relations-international law interface.

This study examines the progress, or perhaps the lack thereof, made over the last twenty years in bringing together the disciplines of international law and international relations. In doing so, we survey two leading journals in international law and five prominent journals in international relations over the period 1990-2010, searching for cross-pollination of ideas and approaches. We also examine an interdisciplinary journal, the primary purpose of which has been to facilitate collaboration across the two disciplines. When considering the international law journals, we look at the extent to which social science methods and objectives, as well as international relations subject matter, have been reflected in the articles. In international relations journals, we consider whether international law has become a subject matter of scholarly inquiry, given that it was largely ignored for many years.⁶ The goal is to track over time the intersection of the two disciplines and describe the extent and type of their interaction.

We begin with a discussion of how the two disciplines became separated after an early period of convergence, explain the fundamental bases that led to the divide, and characterize their contemporary differences. We then examine the various pleas for integration and how these might be accomplished. We note some recent trends toward reconciliation between IL and IR. These sections serve as a prelude to our empirical analysis of published articles, where we describe our choice of journals and the dimensions of analysis. We present our findings on whether and by how much the gap between international law and international relations has been bridged. This includes an overview of the international law articles studied, specific analyses of law and political science journals respectively, and a consideration of an interdisciplinary journal. Finally, we summarize our findings and discuss their implications for the future of IL-IR research.

II. DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE IN DISCIPLINES

Serious scholarly interest in international law was a part of political science since it formed as an academic discipline distinct from history and economics in the early twentieth century.⁷ Indeed, Hans J. Morgenthau, a

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founding figure in the subfield of international relations, was by training a lawyer interested in the potential limiting role international law might play in the ongoing power struggles wrought by conflicting state interests, among other interests.⁸

Whatever synergy existed between international law and international relations, however, largely disappeared in the aftermath of World War II.⁹ Some of this reflected events in the political realm. The disenchantment with international law's normative agenda stemmed from the perceived inability of international law and international institutions to prevent World War II or to stop its brutal realities.¹⁰ Normative pronouncements or guidelines had no effect when confronted by a determined aggressor, and even leading theorists such as E.H. Carr and Morgenthau rejected international law and legal institutions as effective bases for world order.¹¹

The divorce with international law was furthered by two developments in the field of international relations. The first was the ascendancy (and later dominance) of realist thought, which viewed international law as largely epiphenomenal; merely a reflection of power interests and distribution.¹² If international law is regarded as irrelevant, there is no reason to study it, and there began a long period of study of international relations that ignored such phenomena. At the same time, international relations, and political science more generally, adopted a different epistemological basis for knowledge. As Harold Jacobson noted, disenchantment with international law coincided with the effort to move international relations away from the descriptive and prescriptive style of its early days to one more grounded in scientific rigor, with conclusions drawn from observation and empirical evidence.¹³ This not only moved international relations scholars away from international law, but also prevented legal scholars from taking part in various debates, as most had

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little or no training beyond a law degree and certainly not in advanced social science methods.¹⁴

The split between international relations and international law was based on several fundamental disagreements or different orientations.¹⁵ First, unlike their international relations colleagues, the traditional objective of international legal scholars was not to explain the behavior of states.¹⁶ Rather, the primary objective of most international law scholarship historically was to determine which rules or standards have acquired the status of law. This is not to say that international lawyers were not interested in the behavior of states or their power, because both are crucial to the formation and development of legal norms. Another important legal approach was primarily prescriptive, undertaking critique and analysis as a basis for advocating what the law should be in light of perceived inadequacies or failures, rather than describing what it is.¹⁷ Such a normative stance was largely an anathema to international relations scholars who promoted a value-free, scientific approach. Robert Keohane saw these approaches as two different "optics" on similar phenomena; the IR optic is instrumentalist—directed to the pursuit of particular objectives, while the international law optic is normative.¹⁸

Second, and in a related fashion, a theoretical perspective is an essential component of a social science research project. Theories help to identify what scholars expect to find in the empirical evidence when it is available and analyzed. The possibility of deriving hypotheses from a theoretical position that can be tested against empirical evidence is essential. For the most part, international legal study has shied away from explicit theorizing and derivation of hypotheses. Indeed, there was a tendency to confuse theory and method, with theoretical ideas merely viewed as lenses on how to interpret legal phenomena.¹⁹

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Third, the methodology of carrying out research was dramatically different, reflecting the divergent objectives of IR and IL. International relations scholars increasingly relied on mathematical modeling and advanced statistical analysis using "large N" data sets. In contrast, the predominant mode of international legal analysis was descriptive and expositive. International legal scholars typically sought to uncover what rules of international law existed, with a view to suggesting where rules might need modification in order to be effective.²⁰

These...