The meaning of ‘civil society’ has evolved considerably since its use in the context of the 18th century European Enlightenment. Then it signified the realm of private interests, in practice the realm of the bourgeoisie, distinct from the state. While one current of thought retains that meaning and its implications, others view civil society rather as the emancipatory activity of social forces distinct from both state and capital. Antonio Gramsci's thought embraced both meanings: civil society was the ground that sustained the hegemony of the bourgeoisie but also that on which an emancipatory counterhegemony could be constructed. Is civil society today in the latter sense, a surrogate for revolution that seems a remote possibility towards the attainment of an alternative social and world order? It is useful to test this proposition by examining the potential for civil society in different parts of the world.

Basil Liddell Hart is the most influential military writer of the modern age, revered and reviled by three generations of strategists, armchair and armipotent. This article focuses on his master thesis, ‘The Indirect Approach’, in relation to another coinage of Liddell Hart's, ‘The British Way in Warfare’, a parallel gestation. Both concepts smack of the invented tradition; both continue to resonate. They are in every sense characteristic of their creator.

‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back’ takes the scholarly argument about the study, and meaning, of strategic culture to a new stage. Specifically, this article is a direct reply to recent criticisms of so-called first-generation theorists of strategic culture. The author reconsiders both the subject of strategic culture, and what he first wrote about it fifteen and more years ago. He finds that although there is noteworthy room for improvement in what he wrote then, the recent theorising by Alastair Iain Johnston, in particular, rests upon a misunderstanding of the nature, character, and ‘working’ of strategic culture. Of particular note is the insistence by Johnston on a separation of ideas from behaviour, for the dominant purpose of developing falsifiable theory. ‘Strategic Culture as Context,’ therefore, revisits in some detail questions of definition, with particular reference to the ideas-behaviour nexus. The article proceeds both to register arguments that should advance understanding of how strategic culture ‘works,’ and to suggest a better set of discriminators, different perspectives, for better consideration of evidence of strategic culture. Overall, the article suggests that strategic culture provides context for understanding, rather than explanatory causality for behaviour.

This article considers some implications of the Moldovan conflict from 1991 to the present for thinking about International Relations (IR) and conflict theory, as well as more specifically about the complexities of the conflict itself. This encompasses an examination of the roles of key external actors, and particularly of the Russian Republic and of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as well as a subjective view of the role of the internal actors and their aims. The analysis is based on an on-going involvement in a ‘problem-solving’ exercise in the area.

This paper specifies the conditions for conflict in Central Asia. Given Russian preponderance this should be an easy case for neorealism. But we demonstrate that the consequences of Russia's superior power will depend on the nature of its regime and domestic stability in Central Asia. The type of nationalism, the robustness of political institutions, and the success or failure of economic reform will be critical conditions for Central Asian stability. The paper also evaluates the prospects for conflict resolution and prevention.

They tell us that the Pharoahs built the pyramids. Well, the Pharoahs didn't lift their little fingers. The pyramids were built by thousands of anonymous slaves . . . and it's the same thing for the Second World War. There were masses of books on the subject. But what was the war like for those who lived it, who fought? I want to hear their stories.

Writing about international relations is in part a history of writing about the people. The subject sprang from a desire to prevent the horrors of the Great War once again being visited upon the masses and since then some of its main themes have been international cooperation, decolonisation, poverty and development, and more recently issues of gender.

Constructivism in the study of world politics is little more than a decade old, yet in that short time it has risen to challenge realism and liberalism as a leading approach in international relations. Its ascent has been dramatic. One prominent theorist recently suggested that constructivism has now replaced Marxism as the main paradigmatic rival to realism and liberalism. While this particular judgment might be debated—other scholars may wish to defend the continued relevance of a revived Marxist or socialist approach, for example—the fact remains that constructivism has reshaped many core debates in international relations theory.

In joining together to become citizens of particularist communities, we have made ourselves the enemy of humankind. This thought, which Rousseau intimated two centuries ago, forms the backdrop to Andrew Linklater's new book. It opens with a description of the Westphalian international system as one in which force and domination have been the regular condition of international relations. In contrast to exponents of the realist tradition, Linklater argues that there are good reasons for thinking these patterns will not be reproduced in the future. To support this contention, he points to the zones of cooperation which exist in world politics today, where new and more inclusive forms of community and citizenship are emerging.

The main body of The Transformation of Political Community draws on the work of critical theorists—from Kant and Marx to Habermas—to consider the possibilities of a ‘triple transformation’ in international relations. By this, Linklater means pursuing greater moral and economic equality whilst remaining sensitive to cultural difference. Crucial to this transformation is the idea of an inclusive inter-cultural dialogue which, it is hoped, will provide a foundation for a new cosmopolitan community of humankind.

It seems almost churlish to criticize a book as well-intentioned and clearly argued as The Transformation of Political Community. There is much in the volume to admire and to endorse. But there are also problems—there always are—and I will move to address these shortly. First, however, I want to point to some of the book's undeniable strengths. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Linklater's argument is the manner in which he takes on board a number of the perduring vexations of political and moral theory and addresses these within the context of international relations. For too long political theory and ‘IR’ have occupied separate niches, as if these two enterprises had little to do with one another. The result of the separation has been an impoverishment of both realms. ‘IR’ could move along as if questions of war and peace, security, order, power, engagement, citizen and soldier were not inescapably political and ethical issues impossible to deal with adequately in a manner that models sophisticatedly but falls flat conceptually. Too many underlying presuppositions in such undertakings are not brought to the surface and dealt with as is painfully evident in rational choice accounts with their impoverished views of what makes human beings tick.

I applaud Linklater for dreaming the impossible dream: a triple transformation of political community, whereby social relations become more universalistic, less unequal, and more sensitive to cultural differences. The primary mechanism posited for this change is the expansion of dialogic communities, in which insiders and outsiders recognise one another as moral equals and the special ties and ‘harmony of dispositions’ inherent in bounded communities do not preclude membership within a universal communication community or the right of free movement in a global society. Linklater offers sophisticated and original analysis of a possible post-Westphalian international order centred on this ‘thin conception of cosmopolitanism’ that should provoke wide debate. Unfortunately, I am not persuaded in the least by his thesis, despite its being repeated like a mantra throughout the volume.

To respond to Andrew Linklater's The Transformation of Political Community is to walk a very fine line between admiration and perplexity. I have admiration especially for his willingness to confront some of the most important and difficult questions of contemporary political theory. To pursue the claim that we need to rethink the accounts of political community that anyone with credibility as a political analyst would much prefer to leave as a constitutive assumption of almost everything they want to say, takes some courage. And this is certainly a bold book, both in its sweep and its ambitions. It is one of the very few books in the contemporary theory of international relations that provokes more than passive surrender to the tediously familiar and the three-fold typology. Even so, I remain perplexed at the way Linklater manages to keep retying himself up in all the knots he tries so vigorously to disentangle.

In The Transformation of Political Community Andrew Linklater has given us a most impressive synthesis of critical normative thinking about international relations theory, and I might as well begin by emphasizing that I will not be able to do justice to the rich detail of its content in the space here allotted to me, and so I shall not try. I offer just an individual response to Linklater's book, addressed to its core theoretical assumptions. I shall propose a critique of it in two particulars. These relate to a central ambiguity in its underwriting of discourse ethics on the one hand, and to a certain too ready levelling, so to say, vis-à-vis modes of social oppression and exclusion on the other.

My first task is to thank the editors for creating a forum in which four authors from very different branches of social and political theory discuss my recent book on the transformation of political community. I am no less indebted to the authors involved for their participation in this debate. I hope this short reply does justice to their insightful comments and searching criticisms.

Randall L. Schweller is most sharply at odds with my position and I begin by responding to his criticisms. I then turn to the comments made by R. B. J. Walker and Jean Bethke Elshtain who subscribe to the critical project, broadly conceived, though not to my version of it. This essay ends with some responses to Norman Geras who shares my commitment to building on the Kantian and Marxian tradition but who has a rather different method of taking it further.