International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

particular mode of production found in the large empires in China and India 
was not consistent with the idea of the linear progression of capitalist devel-
opment. The debate questioned the idea of inevitable stages of development 
and therefore developmentalism as an analytical framework and form of poli-
cy advice.
The third source for Wallerstein’s work was the controversy among West 
European historians regarding the transition from feudalism to capitalism. At 
its core was the question of the origins of modern capitalism and how to 
study them: can the transition from feudalism to capitalism be explained by 
studying countries or larger units? 
Finally, Wallerstein’s work is strongly influenced by the so-called An-
nales School of historiography, which emerged in the 1920s in France and 
became influential after 1945. Scholars of the Annales School shared the per-
spective of a “total” historiography, i.e. viewing historical developments in 
terms of an “integrated picture” with a strong emphasis on the economic and 
social underpinnings of historical development. For Annales scholars, long-
term generalizations of historical phenomena are both possible and desirable.

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For Wallerstein, the synthesis of these four separate debates is a funda-
mental critique of the existing structures of knowledge. This view was im-
posed in the 1970s by the 1968 revolutions and the epistemological discus-
sions of the social sciences (Wallerstein 2004: 16-17). The intention behind 
the formulation of world-systems analysis was to address questions on the 
unit of analysis for social science and social “temporality” and to remove the 
barriers between the different social science disciplines. 
However, Wallerstein still denounces the dialogue with positivist ac-
counts of social sciences as a “dialogue of the deaf” (Wallerstein 2004: 19). 
Indeed, world-systems analysis is noticeably missing in most books on IR 
theory. This is a regrettable neglect of a complex and insightful theoretical 
approach to international politics that is well worthy of discussion. 
Step 1: 
World-systems analysis: ontological, epistemological and 
methodological claims 
In Part 1, it was noted that those who reject positivist IR theory do not neces-
sarily oppose systematic inquiry. The understanding of the term “science” 
distinguishes these views. Few theories of IR are “anti-science” or actually 
reject the idea that scientific knowledge is possible. Indeed, most different 
approaches to IR are united in an understanding of science as a systematic 
process of inquiry that employs methods.
This understanding also holds true for world-systems analysis. Waller-
stein demonstrates a clear commitment to science, but not to positivist sci-
ence. “(I)t is on the basis of scientific claims, that is, on the basis of claims 
related to the possibilities of systematic knowledge about social reality, that 
world-systems analysis challenges the prevailing mode of inquiry” (Waller-
stein 1987/2000: 129).
For Wallerstein, a “real world” exists and is the object of scholarly obser-
vation (Wallerstein 2000: xx). However, this social reality is socially con-
structed. A construction that is social is by implication therefore collective 
(not individual). 
He also criticizes the “prevailing mode of inquiry”, i.e. theories of IR 
based on a positivist philosophy of science, for several reasons (Wallerstein 
1987/2000: 130-148): 
Firstly, Wallerstein is fundamentally critical of the division of social sci-
ence into a number of different “disciplines” such as sociology, political sci-

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179 
ence, economics and history. He sees the split as originating in the 19
th
centu-
ry when the then-dominant liberal ideology defined “modernity” by differen-
tiating three separate social spheres with different logics: the market, the state 
and civil society. These spheres were then studied in different fields: eco-
nomics for the market, politics for the state, and sociology for civil society 
(Wallerstein 2004: 6). For Wallerstein, our contemporary departmental/dis-
ciplinary university structures still reflect this division, which has become a 
defining feature of an expanded world university system. In contrast, Waller-
stein sees the individual disciplines in the social sciences as one single disci-
pline because the “spheres” of collective human action (the economic, the po-
litical and the social/sociocultural) are not separate domains of social action. 
As these spheres have no separate logics, “no useful research model can iso-
late ‘factors’ according to the categories of economic, political, and social 
and treat only one kind of variable, implicitly holding the others constant” 
(Wallerstein 1987/2000: 134). Overcoming the “divorce” of the social sci-
ence disciplines means, for world-systems analysis, that “(a)ll the presumed 
criteria – level of analysis, subject-matter, methods, theoretical assumptions – 
either are no longer true in practice or, if sustained, are barriers to further 
knowledge rather than stimuli to its creation.” (Wallerstein 2000: 133). Be-
cause it does not recognize the legitimacy of the separate disciplines, world-
system analysis is therefore unidisciplinary and not multidisciplinary (Wal-
lerstein 2004: 19). 
Through Wallerstein we become aware that the categories used to under-
stand history and our accounts of social reality are themselves historically 
formed, and must therefore be examined critically (Wallerstein 1987/2000: 
145). 
Second, Wallerstein challenges the common distinction between idio-
graphic (as in historical disciplines that describe the unique and the particu-
lar) and nomothetic (the theoretical search for universal laws governing so-
cial reality) modes of analysis, which also originated in the 19
th
century. The 
dominant view of the social sciences was that “objective” knowledge of the 
world is possible and must be formulated by law-like generalizations based 
on empirical analysis and inductive reasoning (Wallerstein 2004: 6). Waller-
stein also questions the superiority of science over philosophy, i.e. the split 
between the “search for the good” and the search for “knowledge” (Waller-
stein 1997/2000: 195). He views social science as being the basis for a “reu-
nited world of knowledge” (Wallerstein 1997/2000: 203). 
Third, Wallerstein denies that the sovereign state is the basic social entity 
(and hence “unit of analysis”). He sees neither the state nor the inter-state 
system of sovereign states as being the appropriate unit of analysis. He intro-

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180 
duces the “historical system” as a new perspective of social reality and, there-
fore, unit of analysis (Wallerstein 1987/2000: 139). 
Fourth, Wallerstein introduces another perspective to contrast with a 
nomothetic social science that emulates the natural sciences. In his view, the 
method of going from the particular to the universal, from the concrete to the 
abstract, should be inverted (Wallerstein 1987/2000: 148). A historical social