Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
Biographic Data
| ID | 385375 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrick Thaddeus Jackson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrick Thaddeus |
| FAMILY NAME | Jackson |
| SIGNATURE | JACKSON P T |
| AFFILIATIONS | American University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3028-2622 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 619 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Strategy, Substance, and Context; or, It’s Not Just about the Money
Theology, order, and disenchantment
William Bain’s book does a brilliant job excavating some key conceptual underpinnings of our contemporary discussions about order, but he has perhaps underplayed the importance of nominalism in structuring our present
Indeterminate Innovation
One of my pet peeves when watching televised sports is when the commentators declare that one or another player or team “has momentum” or that “the momentum has shifted.” Typically, this statement is made shortly after a team or player does something that puts them in a better position to win the game, and the implication seems to be that this change in momentum will carry someone to victory. But there are at least two problems with this all-too-…
Working on relationalism
In this essay, we elucidate the insufficiency of a simple binary choice between substantialism and relationalism or between dualist and nondual/incarnational sensibilities. We highlight the ways that all translations of these sensibilities into the scholarly form of life encounter characteristic problems and challenges precisely because the very practice of scholarly writing is always and already inclined towards a more dualist way of going on
Pragmatism in IR: The Prospects for Substantive Theorizing
The contributors to this forum all draw significantly from pragmatist philosophy and social theory for making sense of international politics. Collectively, we affirm the value of pragmatist work beyond metatheory and methodology, both politically and epistemically—that is, as both a moral project and an explanatory one. Indeed, we are especially united on the notion that pragmatism “bridges” the divide between these things, and several contribut…
Forum Introduction
FrenchSpanish; CastilianIntroductionForum sur The World Imagined de Hendrik SpruytCe Forum porte sur l'ouvrage de Hendrik Spruyt The World Imagined (Presses universitaires de Cambridge, 2020), qui a remporté le prix du meilleur livre de l'année de la section Théorie de l'Association des études internationales (ISA).IntroducciónForo sobre The World Imagined, de Hendrik SpruytForo sobre el libro de Hendrik Spruyt The World Imagined (Cambridge: CUP,…
The dangers of interpretation: C.A.W. Manning and the “going concern” of international society
C. A. W. Manning was an important figure in the early days of what became known as the English School, and was one of the most philosophically explicit articulators of the interpretivist approach that informed that branch of scholarship. He was also a defender of the apartheid system of his native South Africa. A close examination of his work reveals both the promises and the pitfalls of a methodologically interpretive approach to explanation. An…
Introduction: Forum on Adom Getachew’s ‘Worldmaking after Empire’
Publicism, Truth-Pluralism and the Usefulness Problem in International Relations; Pluralism, Publicity, and Scholarly Practice
Reclaiming the social: Relationalism in anglophone international studies
Even in the North American and European context, relationalism comes in many flavours. We identify the common features of relational approaches, including varieties of practice theory, pragmatism and network analysis. We also identify key disagreements within relationalism, such as the relative explanatory importance of positional and process-oriented analysis. Our discussion reveals the problems that come from associating relationalism solely wi…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
The grass isn't any greener over there
The Production of Facts: Ideal-Typification and the Preservation of Politics
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Out of one prison, into another? Comments on Rosenberg
This intervention, while highlighting points of agreement with Rosenberg’s arguments, also challenges Rosenberg’s characterization of the discipline. Specifically, this short intervention takes issue with the image of the field as International Relations as a discipline and multiplicity as its proposed core notion
International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy
In the international system, every sovereign state is formally equal, but when it comes to exercising influence in international organizations, some appear to be more equal than others. How does such hierarchy persist under conditions of formal equality? Rejecting traditional materialist explanations that reduce interstate hierarchy to the military and economic capacity of different states, the author offers an alternative account grounded in int…
The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations
Causal claims and causal explanation in international studies
Explanation and Progress in Security Studies: Bridging Theoretical Divides in International Relations
Why have some lines of inquiry in international studies exhibited consensus in their results, while others have not? Fred Chernoff hypothesizes that the use of divergent criteria of explanation may account for differing levels of consensus: if scholars researching some phenomenon do not operate with the same standards for what constitutes a good—or a better—explanation, it may be more difficult for those scholars to agree on which of several comp…
Fundamental Grounding
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Making Sense of Making Sense
This chapter argues for a methodology that respects creativity and contingency aspects of the double hermeneutic as a way of preserving agency at the most fundamental level of a research project. Methodological reflection is about designing prosthetics appropriate to the commitments that ground the researcher and her or his research community. The neopositivist explanatory approach aims at showing that the event in question was not a matter of ch…
Must International Studies Be a Science
Must international studies be a science? No. By which I mean: the investigation of the cross-boundary-encounter aspect(s) of things need not be organised so as to categorically privilege epistemic ways of knowing (even though there is a multiplicity of such ways, merely epistemic diversity is insufficient). Other flavours of knowing are equally valuable, and should be celebrated in their distinctness, rather than being forcibly assimilated to imp…
Fear of Relativism
Although scholars toss around the word “relativism” when debating the merits of various methodological approaches in international studies, there is a lack of clarity about what it might mean to have a relativist position on the production of social-scientific knowledge. As a result, a lot of the ink spilled about the potential dangers of relativism is overblown. A little philosophical and logical clarity goes a long way towards dispelling that p…
International theory in a post-paradigmatic era: From substantive wagers to scientific ontologies
Concerns about the end of International Relations theory pivot around at least three different issues: the fading of the ‘paradigm wars’ associated with the 1990s and early 2000s; the general lack of any sort of ‘great debate’ sufficient to occupy the attention of large portions of the field; and claims about the vibrancy of middle-range theorizing. None of these are terribly helpful when it comes to assessing the health of International Relation…
Preparing the Ground for a More Hospitable International Relations
In this reply, I take up three issues raised by the other contributors to this discussion of my book: the purpose of the intervention, the epistemic status of the typology and the question of progress in science
Situated Activities in a Dog Park: Identity and Conflict in Human-Animal Space
This study examines how people engage with the dynamic environment of the dog park in the face of unclear or ambiguous rules and emergent norms. Using participant observation, the analysis shows how, in the formal dog park, caretakers become “control managers” who must negotiate problems related to a variety of dog behaviors, especially mounting, aggression, and waste management. In this process, caretakers use various strategies to manage their …
Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric
While scholars of International Relations and comparative politics have usually treated rhetoric as epiphenomenal, one strand of constructivism has recently returned rhetoric to the heart of political analysis, especially through the mechanism of persuasion. We too maintain that rhetoric is central to political processes and outcomes, but we argue that persuasion is theoretically and methodologically problematic. We aver that rhetoric's role may …
Relations Before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics
In recent years, paradigmatic debates in International Relations (IR) have focused on questions of epistemology and methodology. While important in their own right, these differences have obscured the basic divide in the discipline between substantialism, which takes entities as primitives, and relationalism, which takes processes of social transaction as the basic building blocks of theory. We argue that while both approaches can be fruitful, th…
The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations
Paradigmatic Faults in International-Relations Theory
American scholars routinely characterize the study of international relations as divided between various Kuhnian “paradigms” or Lakatosian “research programmes.” Although most international relations scholars have abandoned Kuhn's account of scientific continuity and change, many utilize Lakatosian criteria to assess the “progressive” or “degenerative” character of various theories and approaches in the field. We argue that neither specific areas…
Reclaiming the social: Relationalism in anglophone international studies
Even in the North American and European context, relationalism comes in many flavours. We identify the common features of relational approaches, including varieties of practice theory, pragmatism and network analysis. We also identify key disagreements within relationalism, such as the relative explanatory importance of positional and process-oriented analysis. Our discussion reveals the problems that come from associating relationalism solely wi…
Defending the West: Occidentalism and the Formation of Nato
International theory in a post-paradigmatic era: From substantive wagers to scientific ontologies
Concerns about the end of International Relations theory pivot around at least three different issues: the fading of the ‘paradigm wars’ associated with the 1990s and early 2000s; the general lack of any sort of ‘great debate’ sufficient to occupy the attention of large portions of the field; and claims about the vibrancy of middle-range theorizing. None of these are terribly helpful when it comes to assessing the health of International Relation…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy: A Study in Weberian Activism
It has always been true that foreign policy debates tend to proceed on a weak evidentiary base, with clever quips or stirring oratory regularly trumping sound analysis. According to Thucydides, for example, the Athenian assembly that endorsed the Sicilian expedition during the second Peloponnesian War had only the haziest conception of the adversaries' capabilities. Contemporary politics is distinctive not in the sloganeering quality of political…
Hegel's House, or ‘People are states too’
Are states people too? Yes , they are. In this I agree with Alexander Wendt's contention that the state is an ‘emergent phenomenon which cannot be reduced to individuals’, although I disagree with the methodology (scientific realist abduction) that he uses to make his argument and the consequent implication that the state is a ‘real’ (as opposed, presumably, to a ‘fictitious’) thing. Indeed, I would rather invert the claim that states are people …
Causal claims and causal explanation in international studies
Constructivist Realism or Realist-Constructivism
In his article “Realist Constructivism,”Barkin (2003:338) described constructivism as a cluster of research methods and analytical tools: a “set of assumptions about how to study world politics” rather than a “set of assumptions about how politics work.” As such, constructivism is subject to E.H. Carr's dialectic between realism and utopianism. Barkin also argued that the problem with contemporary constructivism is that it has been dominated by l…
Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West
Politicians have long claimed that Western Civilization is the epitome of democratic values and international stability. Yet it is less than clear who is - or is not - part of the West. Germany, for example, was Western Europe's sworn enemy for much of the early twentieth century, but emerged as a staunch Western ally after World War II. Patrick Jackson's dense, penetrating political geneaology explains how the Marshall Plan re-invented the West …
Situated Activities in a Dog Park: Identity and Conflict in Human-Animal Space
This study examines how people engage with the dynamic environment of the dog park in the face of unclear or ambiguous rules and emergent norms. Using participant observation, the analysis shows how, in the formal dog park, caretakers become “control managers” who must negotiate problems related to a variety of dog behaviors, especially mounting, aggression, and waste management. In this process, caretakers use various strategies to manage their …
Bridging the Gap: Toward A Realist-Constructivist Dialogue
Editor's Note:J. Samuel Barkin's International Studies Review article “Realist Constructivism” (2003) makes the important point that the opposition between realist and constructivist schools of thought in international relations (IR) may not be as clear-cut as is commonly supposed. In doing so, he focuses on how certain classical realist notions are compatible with constructivist sensibilities about the role of norms and other intersubjective fac…
Rethinking Weber: Towards a Non-Individualist Sociology of World Politics
2002). Rethinking Weber: towards a non-individualist sociology of world politics. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 439-468
Must International Studies Be a Science
Must international studies be a science? No. By which I mean: the investigation of the cross-boundary-encounter aspect(s) of things need not be organised so as to categorically privilege epistemic ways of knowing (even though there is a multiplicity of such ways, merely epistemic diversity is insufficient). Other flavours of knowing are equally valuable, and should be celebrated in their distinctness, rather than being forcibly assimilated to imp…
Forum Introduction: Is the state a person? Why should we care
In 1959, Arnold Wolfers published an essay entitled ‘The Actors In World Politics’ in which he suggested that the importance of the state as an actor, although undeniable, needed to be submitted to ‘empirical analysis’ and clearer theorisation if its precise role was to be ascertained. Unfortunately, almost no one seems to have heeded his advice, and the question about what we might call the person-hood of the state virtually vanished from the ag…
Civilization' on Trial
Foregrounding ontology: Dualism, monism, and IR theory
While the recent proliferation in philosophical discussions in International Relations indicates a welcome increase in the discipline’s conceptual sophistication, a central issue has gone relatively unremarked: the question of how to understand the relationship between scholarly observers and their observed objects. This classical philosophical problem has a number of implications for the conduct of inquiry in the discipline, and raises particula…
Out of one prison, into another? Comments on Rosenberg
This intervention, while highlighting points of agreement with Rosenberg’s arguments, also challenges Rosenberg’s characterization of the discipline. Specifically, this short intervention takes issue with the image of the field as International Relations as a discipline and multiplicity as its proposed core notion
Fear of Relativism
Although scholars toss around the word “relativism” when debating the merits of various methodological approaches in international studies, there is a lack of clarity about what it might mean to have a relativist position on the production of social-scientific knowledge. As a result, a lot of the ink spilled about the potential dangers of relativism is overblown. A little philosophical and logical clarity goes a long way towards dispelling that p…
Can Ethnographic Techniques Tell Us Distinctive Things About World Politics
Iver Neumann's paper on speech-writing practices in the Norwegian foreign ministry, besides presenting a fascinating glimpse of a side of official political action that we scholars don't often see, implicitly raises a broader methodological question: can ethnographic techniques tell us distinctive things about world politics? What is the benefit of pursuing an ethnographic approach to IR research? To begin with, we should distinguish between ethn…
Fundamental Grounding
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Preparing the Ground for a More Hospitable International Relations
In this reply, I take up three issues raised by the other contributors to this discussion of my book: the purpose of the intervention, the epistemic status of the typology and the question of progress in science
International Theory: To the Brink and Beyond
Journal Article International Theory: To the Brink and Beyond Get access International Theory: To the Brink and Beyond by Andrew P. Dunne. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1997. 200 pp. $55.00. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Patrick Thaddeus Jackson Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 113, Issue 4, Winter 1998, Pages 746–747, https://doi.org/10.2307/2658285 Publi…
Civilization' on Trial
Relations Before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics
In recent years, paradigmatic debates in International Relations (IR) have focused on questions of epistemology and methodology. While important in their own right, these differences have obscured the basic divide in the discipline between substantialism, which takes entities as primitives, and relationalism, which takes processes of social transaction as the basic building blocks of theory. We argue that while both approaches can be fruitful, th…
Constructing Thinking Space: Alexander Wendt and the Virtues of Engagement
Jeremy Bentham, foreign secretary; or, the opportunity costs of neo-utilitarian analyses of foreign policy
Rethinking Weber: Towards a Non-Individualist Sociology of World Politics
2002). Rethinking Weber: towards a non-individualist sociology of world politics. International Review of Sociology: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 439-468
Defending the West: Occidentalism and the Formation of Nato
The Politics of Secret Service in War, Cold War, and Imperial Retreat
1University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Bridging the Gap: Toward A Realist-Constructivist Dialogue
Editor's Note:J. Samuel Barkin's International Studies Review article “Realist Constructivism” (2003) makes the important point that the opposition between realist and constructivist schools of thought in international relations (IR) may not be as clear-cut as is commonly supposed. In doing so, he focuses on how certain classical realist notions are compatible with constructivist sensibilities about the role of norms and other intersubjective fac…
Constructivist Realism or Realist-Constructivism
In his article “Realist Constructivism,”Barkin (2003:338) described constructivism as a cluster of research methods and analytical tools: a “set of assumptions about how to study world politics” rather than a “set of assumptions about how politics work.” As such, constructivism is subject to E.H. Carr's dialectic between realism and utopianism. Barkin also argued that the problem with contemporary constructivism is that it has been dominated by l…
Forum Introduction: Is the state a person? Why should we care
In 1959, Arnold Wolfers published an essay entitled ‘The Actors In World Politics’ in which he suggested that the importance of the state as an actor, although undeniable, needed to be submitted to ‘empirical analysis’ and clearer theorisation if its precise role was to be ascertained. Unfortunately, almost no one seems to have heeded his advice, and the question about what we might call the person-hood of the state virtually vanished from the ag…
Hegel's House, or ‘People are states too’
Are states people too? Yes , they are. In this I agree with Alexander Wendt's contention that the state is an ‘emergent phenomenon which cannot be reduced to individuals’, although I disagree with the methodology (scientific realist abduction) that he uses to make his argument and the consequent implication that the state is a ‘real’ (as opposed, presumably, to a ‘fictitious’) thing. Indeed, I would rather invert the claim that states are people …
Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West
Politicians have long claimed that Western Civilization is the epitome of democratic values and international stability. Yet it is less than clear who is - or is not - part of the West. Germany, for example, was Western Europe's sworn enemy for much of the early twentieth century, but emerged as a staunch Western ally after World War II. Patrick Jackson's dense, penetrating political geneaology explains how the Marshall Plan re-invented the West …
Civilizational Identity
This volume focuses on the constitutive politics of civilizational identity, examining the practices through which notions of civilizational identity are produced and reproduced in different contexts
Civilizational identity: The production and reproduction of 'civilizations' in international relations
Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy: A Study in Weberian Activism
It has always been true that foreign policy debates tend to proceed on a weak evidentiary base, with clever quips or stirring oratory regularly trumping sound analysis. According to Thucydides, for example, the Athenian assembly that endorsed the Sicilian expedition during the second Peloponnesian War had only the haziest conception of the adversaries' capabilities. Contemporary politics is distinctive not in the sloganeering quality of political…
Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric
While scholars of International Relations and comparative politics have usually treated rhetoric as epiphenomenal, one strand of constructivism has recently returned rhetoric to the heart of political analysis, especially through the mechanism of persuasion. We too maintain that rhetoric is central to political processes and outcomes, but we argue that persuasion is theoretically and methodologically problematic. We aver that rhetoric's role may …
Hunting for Fossils in International Relations
After all of the ink that has been spilled comparing international relations (IR) to either physics or economics, it is somewhat refreshing to see Douglas Van Belle (2006) turning to a novel source: paleontology, and specifically the study of the dinosaurs and their extinction.1 Van Belle argues that there is much to be learned from how paleontologists deal with problems such as fragmentary data and the impracticality of experimental techniques, …
(All Jird) Editors' note
Back-To-Back Review: Pragmatic, Not Dogmatic, Ontology: A Reply to Colin Wight
Foregrounding ontology: Dualism, monism, and IR theory
While the recent proliferation in philosophical discussions in International Relations indicates a welcome increase in the discipline’s conceptual sophistication, a central issue has gone relatively unremarked: the question of how to understand the relationship between scholarly observers and their observed objects. This classical philosophical problem has a number of implications for the conduct of inquiry in the discipline, and raises particula…
Can Ethnographic Techniques Tell Us Distinctive Things About World Politics
Iver Neumann's paper on speech-writing practices in the Norwegian foreign ministry, besides presenting a fascinating glimpse of a side of official political action that we scholars don't often see, implicitly raises a broader methodological question: can ethnographic techniques tell us distinctive things about world politics? What is the benefit of pursuing an ethnographic approach to IR research? To begin with, we should distinguish between ethn…
A faulty solution to a False(ly characterized) problem: A comment on Monteiro and Ruby
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Paradigmatic Faults in International-Relations Theory
American scholars routinely characterize the study of international relations as divided between various Kuhnian “paradigms” or Lakatosian “research programmes.” Although most international relations scholars have abandoned Kuhn's account of scientific continuity and change, many utilize Lakatosian criteria to assess the “progressive” or “degenerative” character of various theories and approaches in the field. We argue that neither specific areas…
The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics
This volume ws the winner of The International Studies Association Theory Section Book Award 2013, presented by the International Studies Association and The Yale H. Ferguson Award 2012, presented by International Studies Association-Northeast. There are many different scientifically valid ways to produce knowledge. The field of International Relations should pay closer attention to these methodological differences, and to their implications for …
Political science (42 works) · Law (33 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Epistemology (30 works) · Philosophy (30 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (26 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (24 works) · Philosophy (23 works) · International relations (15 works)