This article discusses some controversies over the relations of the academic discipline of International Relations to policy. The article argues that, while our ultimate goal may be to have some impact on the world, the immediate goals can be more abstract. International Relations consists, and should consist, of a set of Lakatosian Research Programmes, some conflicting, some complementary, which range from the abstract to the directly policy-relevant. Effective intervention in social systems depends on analyses in more than commonsense terms. The article looks sceptically on recent disciplinary history, doubting both the supposed positivist hegemony and the supposed novelty of normative debate.

From the time of the Conquistadors through to New Labour's ethical foreign policy of ‘mutual respect’, Modern Europe has found it difficult to identify the appropriate ethical framework for understanding its relationship with the non-European world, a difficulty increasingly apparent in the post-Cold War world. Some argue that late-modern or ‘postmodern’ thought can provide a better framework than the discourses of classical modernity, but a more fruitful alternative may be found in the revival of premodern ways of posing ethical questions.

This article explores the normative international relations theory of Mervyn Frost. Frost's unorthodox approach to questions of human rights offers a way through the political and philosophical morass that has often threatened to obscure the most pressing issues of our time. Significantly, Frost claims to able to ‘construct’ a background justification for international ethics that can unite the demands for sovereign autonomy with declarations of human rights. In doing so Frost attempts to offer an new understanding of universal ethics and thus of the role of human rights in international politics. Acknowledging the importance of this approach, this article examines two issues that arise from Frost's ‘constitutive theory’ and seeks to offer a signpost for the future development of human rights theory.

This article examines the debate between liberalism and communitarianism in contemporary political philosophy and considers its significance for international relations. The debate tends to pose a false dichotomy between liberalism and communitarianism, and neither position alone can provide an adequate basis for international relations theory. It is necessary to go beyond the liberal-communitarian divide in order to reconcile the valuable insights that may be rescued from both positions. There is a community which is a moral reality, which includes all individuals and maintains their moral integrity, and which can accommodate all legitimate, smaller communities. This is the community of humanity, which is recognized in traditional theories of natural law and the law of nations. The article concludes by considering whether the universal community of humanity requires and justifies world government.

This article develops emerging critical approaches to global environmental politics by starting with the question, posed by Julian Saurin: ‘If degrading practices occur as a matter of routine, how do we account for this?’. Through an analysis of the global political economy of the car, it shows that widespread social practices which systemically produce global environmental change are simultaneously deeply embedded in the reproduction of global power structures. It focuses on three interconnected aspects of this global political economy—the role of the car industry in processes of globalization, its role in reproducing capital accumulation in the twentieth century, and the promotion of the car over its alternatives by states.

The argument that environmental degradation will lead to conflict is a well established concern of international studies, and it dominates the literature on environmental security. This article critically examines theories about wars fought over scarce ‘environmental’ resources, ‘water wars’, and the argument that population growth may induce conflict. One significant research programme—the Project on Environment, Population and Security— is also discussed. The article ends with an evaluation of the theoretical merits and practical effects of the environment–conflict thesis. It argues that the environment–conflict thesis is theoretically rather than empirically driven, and is both a product and legitimation of the Northern security agenda.

Toynbee's theory of international relations was embedded in a species of grand narrative which plotted the rise and fall of all known civilizations. Both the end of nationalism and the rise of the universal state, central elements of his theory, were presented as aspects of a universal historical process evident in all previous social orders. The coming fate of Western civilization was but the most recent example of recurrence. It was also didactic: he saw his great Study of History as laying the foundations for the creation of a viable world order. Beginning with a cyclical view of history which emphasized decline, and in which the universal state was an aspect of decline, he eventually concluded that Western Civilization might evade the law of recurrence. Toynbee claimed to have detected laws of history; he also claimed to have understood what was unique about Western Civilization such that it might break the historical chain. It was not as optimistic, but it belongs generally to the tradition of liberal progressivism of which Fukuyama's recent excursion is the latest expression.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report: Five Volumes, Basingstoke and Oxford, Macmillan, 1999

On 29 October 1998 Archbishop Desmond Tutu presented the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to President Nelson Mandela. This massive report has now been published by Macmillan in a handsome, extensively illustrated five-volume set. The fine quality of the production would seem appropriate to what has been hailed as a document of lasting importance for South Africa. Indeed, it is evident that many foreign commentators see it as important not just for South Africa but for the whole world. That has been reflected in the interest shown in the TRC by commentators, such as Timothy Garton Ash and Michael Ignatieff, who have not previously written about South Africa. The report was the culmination of nearly three years of work by the TRC. President Mandela announced the names of the 17 commissioners (designating Desmond Tutu as chairperson and Alex Boraine as deputy chairperson) in November 1995. It began to function in December that year, while the first public hearings were held on 15 April 1996. However, while the report has been the most significant product of the TRC's endeavours, it is not the end of its work. In particular, the Committee on Amnesty will continue to function until it has reached decisions on all the outstanding applications for amnesty received by the deadline of 30 September 1997. When it has completed this task a further volume of the final report will be published.

The paths taken by historians and political scientists intersect less frequently than their subject matter might indicate. Both sets of scholars, for example, have a mutual interest in the formation and evolution of the modern state. However, while this interest has made the ‘Westphalian system’ the common currency of exchanges among political scientists, few historians refer to the concept, and some would not recognize it—even at close range and in full sunlight. Practitioners of the two disciplines often pass like ships in the night because they are unaware of another large presence on a parallel course. In an age of intense specialization we readily become separated, like Alfred Marshall's noncompeting wage groups, from a common body of information. A more formally acceptable justification for discrete enquiries into similar problems lies in the claim that the disciplines have different purposes. The distinction is not, as is still so often said, that historians are interested in the unique and social scientists in the general; it is rather that the analytical issues forming the generalizations that necessarily accompany statements about large issues are of a different order. Political scientists assign significance to the Westphalian system mainly because they wish to generalize about the principles governing the international regime of sovereign states after 1648. Historians, on the other hand, are less interested in testing the merits of realism and its rivals than in charting changing relativities in international relations. Accordingly, they are more likely to set the Westphalian settlement in the context of already evolving state systems and of subsequent changes of equal or greater moment, such as the upheavals caused by the French and American revolutions.

The political scientist who relies upon historiographic sources to propose and test hypotheses runs the risk of riling up not only her peers in the discipline, but also the historians upon whose work she must rely to provide the materials for these hypotheses. It was intellectually satisfying and stimulating to learn that my work has been read not only by scholars in ‘my’ discipline, but also by those in the discipline which made my own analysis possible, and I am grateful for Professor Hopkins' extensive comments. As Hopkins notes, there are differences in the orientation of the two disciplines: political science has as one of its central concerns ‘the state’, while historians are more interested ‘in charting changing relativities in international relations’. As a political scientist, I am indeed interested in identifying the factors which lead to such changes.

Scholars interested in international relations theory and history are indebted to Mark Kramer for his splendid review of new historical evidence on the role of ideas and power during the Cold War. I agree with Kramer that new evidence by itself never settles learned debates such as the one he reviews. However, the sharper the debate, the bigger the potential payoff from fresh evidence. Toward that end, I have three comments.