the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

the theoretical status of the driving forces framework 47which they play into each other an empirically open question, and whichfurthermore provides us with a more fine-grained set of analytical toolsthan ‘internal’ and ‘external’. External factors are usually discussed as onebroad category where ‘events’ are presumably the most significant, butother external factors include great power politics and the evolution inkey technologies. The resources and political agendas of foundations andthink-tanks may be both an internal (to the extent that these institutionsare part of ISS) and an external influence (to the extent that they grantmoney to ISS). We will discuss which specific driving forces to include inthe next section and lay out the interplay between them.The theoretical status of the driving forces frameworkMoving now to the question of how a concrete analytical frameworkshould be designed, we start from the assumption that it is the interplaybetween a set of internal and external forces that explains the evolutionof ISS. We cannot think of a way of meaningfully testing the influence ofeach force and our proposed five forces framework is thus a ‘theory’ inthe European sense, where the term is used for something that organisesa field systematically, structures questions and establishes a coherent andrigorous set of inter-related concepts and categories, but not in the dominantAmerican positivist sense of the term (which requires cause–effectpropositions). Our dual methodology of working simultaneously fromthe sociology of science literature, particularly in IR, and from an inductivereading of the ISS debates themselves brought us to a frameworkof five forces: great power politics, technology, key events, the internaldynamics of academic debates, and institutionalisation. Several of thesefactors comprise both internal and external aspects, which reinforces ourcommitment to focus on their interplay.Looking to the existing sociology of science literature in IR – therebyapplying a more deductive methodology – those who have provided moredetailed frameworks have done so with the purpose of explaining particularnational approaches or, more generally, the divide between Europeanor Continental approaches on the one hand and the American one onthe other (Wæver, 1998; Jørgensen, 2000; Breitenbauch and Wivel, 2004;Wæver, 2007; Wæver and Buzan, 2007). Since what is to be explainedare national (or regional) variations, there is – as in most foreign policyanalysis – a logical move to emphasise explanations located at thenational/regional level. The most controversial aspect of our frameworkmay thus be that we do not include a domestic societal variable. This