WORLD IN REVIEW
Western Theory, Global World
Western Bias in International Theory
staff writer
ALEX YOUNG
S
cholars of international relations often operate
under the assumption that their project is to
generate the truth, to come to some objective
understanding of what the international sphere is
and how it works. Most contemporary international
relations theory, though, is tainted by a major source of bias: it
is produced in western nations by western authors for western
readers. International relations theory is skewed westward,
which impairs its ability to explain and to produce social good.
Much of this western bias is due to the historical political
and military dominance of the west; history is written by the
victors, and philosophy seems to be, too. Amitav Acharya and
Barry Buzan argue in their 2010 book Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives On and Beyond Asia
that the vast majority of schools of thought in international
relations are outgrowths of one western philosophical tradition or another: realism comes from the work of Thucydides,
in their research; this means that western researchers use
almost exclusively western subjects. The body of knowledge generated by studies in game theory and behavioral
economics, then, is considered to reveal certain universal
truths about human beings, whereas in reality it is highly
culturally specific. In 1995, then-UCLA graduate student
in anthropology Joe Henrich traveled to Peru to study the
economic behavior of indigenous peoples. Henrich found
that the subjects of his research behaved very differently in
game theoretic simulations than North American subjects
did. North Americans are generally eager to propose and to
reward fair distributionsof resources in games; Peruvian natives, on the other hand, did not seem to care nearly as much
about fairness. This is not to say that some cultural, ethnic,
or regional groups played the game more or less rationally
than others; no style of play is necessarily better or worse.
Instead, Henrich’s findings simply point to a diversity of
“There is nothing inherently biased about applied game theory,
but as it is practiced in modern academic circles, the field privileges westerners over people of other backgrounds.”
Hobbes, and Machiavelli; liberalism derives from Kant,
Locke, Smith, and others; Marx and Engels were German;
and even those constructivist and postmodern accounts of international relations that emphasize relativism and diversity
draw mostly on the ideas of French authors such as Pierre
Bordieu and Michel Foucault. Of course, non-westerners
from Sun Tzu to Amartya Sen have also made valuable
contributions to political science and international relations
theory, but on the whole, western voices have dominated
and continue to dominate international relations discourse.
The problem does not seem likely to go away, either.
The field of international relations is becoming increasingly grounded in economics and psychology. The growing
use of applied game theory to explain and predict phenomena
in international affairs means that international relations
theory has become entangled with the assumptions, ideological commitments, and empirical findings of behavioral
economics—a body of knowledge that exhibits a western
slant. There is nothing inherently biased about applied
game theory, but as it is practiced in modern academic
circles, the field privileges westerners over people of other
backgrounds. Social psychologists use convenient subjects
values across cultures that translates into different goals and
strategies. Henrich replicated this study in various countries
and cultures around the world, observing a wide range of
behaviors across cultures. These findings challenge the
common, western position that game theoretic study reveals
fundamental features of human nature. His work points to
one of the sources of bias in international relations theory:
it is built on research in behavioral economics and psychology that commonly assumes that people operate the same
way regardless of culture and that takes mainly westerners
as the subjects of its study. The concept of human nature
that informs international re-lations theory is a western one,
produced through studies of western subjects but erroneously
applied to people the world over. Despite these limitations,
applied game theory was widely employed in prominent
publications to explain Vladimir Putin’s actions and intentions after the Russian invasion of Crimea last spring.
Moreover, international relations theory is largely the
product of western thinkers at western institutions. In 2011,
the Christian Science Monitor ranked the top 25 graduate
programs in international relations worldwide; 19 were
in the US, five were in the UK, and one was in Canada.
Summer 2014 • H A R V A R D I N T E R N A T I O N A L R E V I E W
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