How Retroduction Reconnects International Relations to History: Learning from the Classical Approach and Critical Realism.

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]