Max Weber And International Relations

This book offers new readings of the epistemology, methods and politics of Max Weber, a foundation thinker of modern social science and international relations theory.

Questioning many of the traditional assumptions found in discussions of ethics in international relations, Warner introduces a new way of thinking about moral responsibility and invites reflection on the nature of communities and states.

German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation is widely regarded as a masterpiece of political theory and sociology. Its central strength lies in Weber’s deployment of masterful interpretative skills to power his discussion of modern politics. Interpretation involves understanding both the meaning of evidence and the meaning of terms – questioning definitions, clarifying terms and processes, and supplying good, clear definitions of the author’s own. As a sociologist accustomed to working with historical evidence, Weber based his own work on precisely these skills, solidly backed up by analytical acuity. Politics as a Vocation, written in a Germany shocked by its crippling defeat in World War I, saw Weber turn his eye to an examination of how the modern nation state emerged, and the different ways in which it can be run – interpreting and defining the different types of rule that are possible. It is testament to Weber’s interpretative skills that Politics is famous above all in sociological circles for its clear definition of a state as an institution that claims “the monopoly of legitimate physical violence” in a given territory.

This rich and assured book is a major contribution to the growing Weber industry. It reveals Weber's theory of modernity in a new and unexpected light.

The gap between academics and practitioners in international relations has widened in recent years, according to the authors of this book. Many international relations scholars no longer try to reach beyond the ivory tower and many policymakers disdain international relations scholarship as arcane and irrelevant. Joseph Lepgold and Miroslav Nincic demonstrate how good international relations theory can inform policy choices. Globalization, ethnic conflict, and ecological threats have created a new set of issues that challenge policymakers, and cutting-edge scholarship can contribute a great deal to the diagnosis and handling of potentially explosive situations.

Theorising within the American 'discipline' of International Relations has been plagued by a rather severe intellectual crisis. Theorists have meant that they need to emulate the natural sciences of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in outlook and argumentative style. But this has destroyed much awareness for the 'nature' of modern international relations as a dynamically evolving historical process. This book seeks to overcome the vicissitudes of mainstream theorising by abandoning the discipline's scientism and by adopting a stance that is more in tune with the standards of modern social science.

First published in 1972, this book on Weber's methodological writings is today regarded as a modern classic in its field. In this new expanded edition, the author has revised and updated the original text, and translated the numerous German quotations into English. He has also added a new introduction, where he discusses major issues raised in the relevant secondary literature since 1972. The author traces the relationship between values and science in Max Weber's methodology of its central aspects: value freedom, value relation (Wertbeziehung), value analysis, the ideal type and the special problems which pertain to the sphere of politics. Weber's thought is presented and discussed on the basis of a meticulous analysis of all available, published or unpublished, original material. The book is indispensable for all serious Weber scholars and provides the general student with a clear, accessible and authoritative exposition of major aspects of Weber's methodology.