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IR is in search of a newer and more visionary methodological toolkit. Scenario building based on expert knowledge of historical trends and theoretically informed analysis appears to offer insights for IR scholars as well as policy-makers. This paper aims ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the scientific study of macro-social phenomena, IR is now at pains to capture and map complex causal mechanisms in these ‘big, slow-moving, and invisible processes’. Complexity Theory (CT), the scientific study of organization, change and evolution in ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has been repeatedly called ‘a civilian power’ since 1970s. The latter denotes a new type of global political actor that is without a military arm or declines out of principle to use brute force in world politics. If this was ever the case, it has become less and less so in the last ten years. The Amsterdam Treaty introduced an EU military capability in 1997. Helsinki Summit agreed on a 50-60,000 strong Rapid Reaction Force (to be replaced by battle groups decided about in 2004). A crisis management capability was created and an EU Military Staff declared operational in 2001. The EU sent troops to Bosnia and Macedonia and adopted its first Security Strategy in 2003. As a turning point, the European Defence Agency was created in 2004. The European Security Research Advisory Board was established in 2005. The EU Gendarmerie Force was launched in 2006. Finally, as increasingly significant fund (PASR) (65 millions euros as a starter) has been created to select and underwrite pan-European security research proposals since 2004. The literature explains this recent change of attitude towards ‘war as politics by other means’ by two main factors. The external factor refers to changing environment of, first, post-Cold War and second, post 9/11 international system. The internal factor means the proactive involvement of some leading European policy makers. What is largely ignored here is the role of the European military industry. This industry strives â€"with only a limited success- to gain from lucrative military market in the US. Hence, it demands more military Keynesianism in Europe in order to survive and grow. This paper aims to examine the impact of a transnational European capitalist faction on the making of the EU as a global security and defence actor. The faction consists of leading European transnational corporations such as EADS, BAE, THALES, FINMECCANICA, ERICSSON, INDRA, SIEMENS and DIEHL. It established close connection to the leading policy-makers in Brussels such as Commissioners Busquin and Verheugen, MEPs von Wogau and Brok, Council representative Javier Solana and some think-tanks like EU ISS, EPC. This closed circle has regularly met and produced a number of influential policy papers including Strategic Review for the 21st century in 2002, Research for a secure Europe in 2004, and Meeting the Challenge in 2006.The paper, methodologically speaking, focuses on the now institutionalized feedback mechanism between the economic and political actors. It explores how the economic actors self-organised themselves into a more or less coherent group with a general interest, how this group approached the policy-making circles and how it made itself listened. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) has been a pillar of the tripolar world of global capitalist economy since 1960s. It has already become the biggest economic bloc in the world. It has been actively participating in making international agreements on international trade. It has distributed significant amounts of development aid to third world countries. In short, the EU seeks to create a world economy ?on its own image? with its foreign economic policy. Given the vital impact of the EU?s foreign economic policy upon the daily lives of millions outside Europe, a firm understanding of making of the EU?s foreign economic policy is much necessary. But who makes the EU?s foreign economic policy? And what is the role of European scholars in comparison to the Brussels-based and national policy-makers in the making of the EU?s foreign economic policy? How critical or how supportive are they of/to the EU?s foreign economic policy? This paper attempts to answer these questions through an extensive survey of European policy-makers and scholars since late 1960s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations (IR) and History usually study similar topics. The North-South Divide is just one example of this. However, the vital, necessary and natural link between these two fields is at present broken. For History and IR employ distinct methodologies. On the one hand, History aims to accumulate our knowledge of the particular through ?thick description?. On the other, IR strives for transhistorical generalizations. The outcome is, therefore, either a theoretically blind or an ahistorical work. Finding how to overcome this unnecessary dichotomy and to connect fruitfully IR to History for better explanations is an urgent, important and imperative task. Ontologically atomistic and rational, epistemologically positivist theories have long hampered historically informed theoretical studies in IR. Fortunately, IR scholars have recently started to make self-conscious critiques of the ahistorical and presentist IR mainstream (Hall and Kratochwil 1993; Schoeder 1994, 1997; Puchala 1995; Gaddis 1997; Levy 1997; Haber et al. 1997; Elman and Elman 1997, 2001; Buzan and Little 2000; Hobden and Hobson 2002; Schmidt 2002; Smith 2003). They follow Hedley Bull?s (2000: 253) visionary methodological advise that ?[g]ood international relations history is informed by an awareness of theoretical considerations; good theoretical work takes place in conjunction with historical study; both are essential?. Indeed, this is exactly how the scholars of classical approach did proceed in their research (Morgenthau 1948; Aron 1966; Butterfield and Wight 1966; Reynolds 1973; Wight 1977; Bull and Watson 1984; Watson 1992). Critical Realist philosophy of (social) science (Bhaskar 1978, 1986,1989; Archer et al. 1998; Collier 1994; Sayer 1992, 2000; Danermark et al. 2002; Patomäki 2002) calls this method retroduction. ?The aim is not to cover a phenomenon under a generalisation (this metal expands when heated because all metals do) but to identify a factor responsible for it, that helped produce, or at least facilated, it. The goal is to posit a mechanism (typically at a different level to the phenomenon being explained) which, if existed and acted in the postulated manner, could account for the phenomenon singled out for explanation? (Lawson 1998: 156). It is, therefore but only in one sense, also similar to the iterative abstraction (Sayer 1981, 1992; Lawson 1989, 1995) and grounded theory (Glaser 1978; Strauss 1987; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Basically, the researcher starts an empirical problem and proceeds to abstract the necessary relation between deeper causal generative mechanisms and concrete phenomena produced. As more empirical evidence is collected, she may revise or reaffirm her theoretical abstraction so that the process of dialectical mediation between theory and practice continues until no further contradictory evidence is obtained and the alleged generative mechanisms are robust and powerful enough to explain concrete phenomena (the point of ?theoretical saturation?). The paper is composed of three parts. The first part answers what retroduction is, what it aims and how it works by using the Critical Realist literature. The second part demonstrates how the scholars of classical approach implicitly reflected on and intendedly employed it by using the Classical Approach literature. The final part calls for more reflection on and more application of retroductive analysis in the contemporary study of international relations.BibliographyArcher, Margaret et al. (eds) (1998) "Critical realism: essential readings" London: RoutledgeAron, Raymond (1966) Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations" Malabar: Robert E... ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]