A Medieval Sociology of International Relations

The plethora of different camps and schools in international relations can be intimidating to the beginning student. What with realists, liberals, constructivists, quantitative analysts, formal theorists, etc. it is often difficult to keep straight who is who, what they do, and what their relations to each other are. Careful analysis reveals, however, certain patterns within the discipline that resemble other social milieus in earlier historical eras. In particular, the social structure of medieval Europe offers a compelling template for comprehending the state of the discipline. The social groups of the period and the relations between them are almost identically replicated in the modern study of international relations. Let us examine the three orders of medieval society, the nobility or bellatores, the peasantry or laboratores, and the priesthood or oratores, and see what parallels we can find.

The Nobility

The most important function of the nobility, however, is paradigmatic war. As the nobles of old viewed armed combat as their central raison d'Ítre, the nobles of international relations view inter-paradigmatic conflict as their main calling. These modern bellatores group together in feudally organized camps, called paradigms, which typically are led by a charismatic elder peer of the realm. This Duke or Earl possesses many fiefs to distribute to loyal followers for services they render in battle, and maintains households of graduate student retainers in the castle keep that perform the necessary services needed to keep the house running.

These lucky pages also learn the use of the essential tools they will need to succeed in combat, including the Polemic, the Diatribe, the Magisterial Pronouncement, the Tendentious Case Study, the Testy Reply, the Condescending Retort, and the Sweeping Unfalsifiable Claim. The pages also learn the social graces and decencies of chivalrous conduct, including the proper use of the pipe in gesturing, and the correct color for suede elbow patches on tweed jackets.

Two of the oldest paradigms are Realism and Liberalism. These groups have done battle since time immemorial and typically focus on material factors, fighting over office space, funding, post-docs etc. While Realists emphasize the role of anarchy in preventing cooperation and leading to conflict, Liberals argue that it is possible to cooperate under anarchy,especially over the issue of fighting Realists. A more recently formed paradigm, Constructivism, emphasizes the non-material or spiritual side of combat, much as the chivalric knightly orders such as the Templars and Hospitalers rejected worldly ties to focus on fighting the Saracens.

The nobles, then, form the peak of society. Their dominance of the field is almost unchallenged. The other strata of society can only look on and envy them.

The Peasants

Given their slender means, they are constantly in danger of famine at tenure time, and even if they manage to acquire a modest holding they can be wiped out by floods of better methods or sudden shifts in market demands from journal editors. One of the few sources of pleasure for the peasants are the annual folk festivals, or conferences that specialize in quantitative IR. Here the quantitative scholar can relax among his own kind, quaff a tankard of mead, and temporarily forget the existence of nobles and their overweening privilege.

A ray of hope for the peasant is the possibility of revolution. Usually these peasant revolts are met by the nobility with merciless and successful repression, but in one corner of the map a rebellion seems to have achieved some limited success. The democratic peace literature arose in the peasant community, and matured as a folk wisdom, but was later turned into a means of mobilizing in solidarity against aristocratic oppression. The nobles fought back of course, but for once their heavy cavalry was repulsed by the Swiss pike bearing democratic peace researchers. It is still too early to tell whether this is a temporary aberration, or whether this heralds a new era when the life of the peasant will improve at the expense of the ancient feudal nobility.

The Priests

The oratores maintain and add to the sacred body of scripture and like their medieval counterparts, employ a rarefied language unavailable to the laity, Latin in the old days, formal theory today. This conveniently makes it difficult for the laity to question the guidance given or interpret the sacred texts for themselves. Also like their priestly forebears, today's oratores. depend on the patronage of the nobility for their livelihood and in turn lend legitimation to their order. While the priests justified social stratification as the will of God, rational choice scholars lend support to the nobles by taking the vague self-serving verbal utterances that pass for theory among the aristocrats and formalizing them in game theoretic terms, lending them the sanction of Holy Theory. In exchange for this service, selected priests and monastic orders are endowed with sumptuous abbeys and bishoprics at the elite universities. Of course not every man of God is so lucky, many a wandering mendicant friar ekes out a sad existence selling clumsily faked fragments of the true Theorem to credulous peasants. While there is a mutual relation of support between the bellatores and oratores, there is also some rivalry and mutual contempt.

Indeed the reluctance of the formal theorists to fight wholeheartedly for any of the paradigms only confirms the nobility in their belief that the formal theorists are cowardly and lacking in virility. For their part, the priests look on the nobility as undereducated and deficient in proper piety towards Rational Choice Theory and his ministers on earth, as well as being excessively rude and belligerent.

As these examples indicate, the medieval world is a rich source of insight into the social structure of modern international relations scholarship. The medieval bellatores, laboratores, and oratores find their counterparts in the discipline as we know it today. It will be interesting to see if the forces of change in the medieval world, fairs and the increase of trade, improvements in navigation, etc. will have a corrosive effect on the social hierarchy of IR, as they did in the medieval period. This question must be left for future research.