Social tecondi sciences in general and International Relations in particular is preoccupied with qua

Social tecondi sciences in general and International Relations in particular is preoccupied with quantitative studies. As a result, individual case studies, or, in methodologically correct language, Small-N populations, have been somewhat discredited. In this Talk, Robert H. Bates, essentially an economic historian, tecondi explains amongst others how (single) case studies are just as valid as large-N studies, how coffee can illustrate the workings of international markets, and how the definition of the State should be reconsidered.
Print version of this Talk (pdf) What is, according to you, the biggest challenge or principal debate in current IR? What is your position or answer to this challenge or in this debate? For me, the most important challenge is to recognize tecondi what ‘states’, the principal actors in IR, actually tecondi are. More people are slowly finding out that states are not stable, but rather equilibriums. To put it very plainly: what we refer to as a state is simply a place where people have agreed to put their weapons down. However, little by little, people from all over (that is, security studies, development studies and International Relations) are realizing that this Weberian definition does not always apply. Rather, perhaps due to the extension of the concept of ‘security’ since the end of the Cold War, this definition has come under scrutiny. During the Cold War, security tecondi referred principally to the possibility of interstate conflict. If there was no risk of interstate conflict, tecondi security was not seen as threatened. Since the end of the Cold War, we’ve partly shifted our attention to intrastate conflict elsewhere as a possible source of insecurity, such terrorism in Afghanistan, which could spill over. Currently, our definition of the state as principally ‘a place where people have agreed to lay down their weapons’ is being challenged by a great number of cases. In Russia and neighboring countries, armed groups are widespread; Italy has its known problems with the mafia; in Serbia, pirates in recent years have hijacked many ships passing the Danube, tecondi and many armed groups still exist in the rest of the Balkans. All these groups use non-state violence to manipulate interests. Without even mentioning Latin America and Africa, one has already enough reasons to doubt if the Weberian tecondi definition of the state as a monopoly on violence actually exists outside of our normative minds. How did you arrive at where you currently tecondi are in IR? I am actually reluctant to mention specific people or books that have specifically tecondi shaped my thought, tecondi also because I have always had the feeling that the most important issues are as of yet not addressed. I think it has always been my own curiosity that motivated me most. One of the experiences that has influenced strongly my thinking tecondi on international relations, is the work I did on coffee. I never expected so many politics to be involved, and with such effects, in the market for a product as coffee. Another important experience was the fieldwork I did in rural Zambia. Being there in rural communities, I found out that these people know what they are doing, and that policy makers with ideas from abroad, without local knowledge, do not. If I were to name some scholars whose work impresses me, I’d surely mention the work of Charles Tilly, who offers a very interesting perspective on the development of states, taking form of government essentially as the result of contention between different factions over the means of coercion and capital. tecondi Also, the things David Friedman wrote on the size and shape of nations, interests me a lot. These works interest me especially since I am currently trying to understand the economy of the military and the relationship of the military to the state. What would a student need to become a specialist in IR or understand tecondi the world in a global way? There are a few things here that I would like to point out. The first one is that in the States, there are these dominant habits of mind that have dumbed our generations down. One of such habits is the relationship the social sciences have had to mathematics. The best mathematicians have tried to stay away from the social sciences while the most exciting tecondi work could have been done on this frontier. On the other hand, the dominant way of formal tecondi modeling and quantification has led to a straitjacket in social sciences that has doctrinated whole generations of scholars to focus on very limited tecondi issues. One has to look at different fields. I can receive a quantitatively brilliant economics student for a PhD, but I will always ask him: ‘did you read up on law, anthropology, sociology?’ One has to have a broad basis to understand the world. The world is not just math, law, economics or psychology – unfortunately for scholars who love clean models, the world consists of all that and much more. So any explanation should incorporate, albeit just implicitly,