SESSION 4: Critiquing the Critic

In his article, International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach, Hedley Bull compares and contrasts the two approaches with which International Relations can be studied; the Classical Approach and the Scientific approach. The author then writes seven propositions explaining how the scientific approach has displaced the classical approach and is alarmingly harmful.

Hedley Bull has a position close to realism in the discipline of International Relations. The reader observes extraordinary unity of methods and of substance while reading his article. It is written in a coherent manner and continuity of concern is seen throughout the reading. There is minimum use of jargon, which makes it easier for any reader to understand the message that the author is trying to convey through his piece of writing.

However, significant tensions can also be observed. There is a note of pessimism in the entire article. Sarcasm about abstract model-building technique by Morton Kaplan, the Father of scientific approach, is discerned. Hedley Bull underestimates the practitioners of the scientific method and considers them ignorant. In his article, he has expressed his views about the scientific method in the following words: '...keeps them as remote from the substance of international politics as the inmates of a Victorian nunnery were from the study of sex.' There is a bias in his writing and it reflects intellectual sympathy for historical authors who had adopted philosophical and normative approach instead of the newly emerging quantitative approach.

Conclusively, Hedley Bull has very well explained his point of view in an unswerving manner with a set frame of mind. He has stressed on the need for rigor and precision in the theory of international politics. Nevertheless, Stanley Hoffman who is also a great supporter of Bull's ideas, said that there is an 'inevitable sense of incompleteness' in his writing. Hedley Bull grasped and approached everything in an artistic manner rather than a methodical one and has made huge contributions in developing International Relations as a discipline.