As the chair, I’m going to live-tweet this All-Star panel, featuring Judith Goldstein, Daniel Deudney, Michael Mastanduno, @ProfKMcNamara, and Jonathan Kirshner.
Judy Goldstein points out the way that Gilpin in many ways was the intellectually author of the different paradigmatic perspectives in international relations theory.
Goldstein also points out that much of Gilpin’s work would not get past peer review today because of a lack of methodological sophistication, which suggests that IR theory has lost something because of it.
Now up: Daniel Deudney.
Deudney notes that a Gilpin was a remarkably catholic intellectual, not sectarian at all. Enjoyed being in the company of those with whom he disagreed.
Deudney notes that Gilpin might have been defined as IPE, but his early work was rather different. Wrote on nuclear weapons & expertise, and how nuclear expertise did not translate into expertise on policy. Preemptively critiqued the epistemic communityies argument.
Deudney notes how Gilpin’s realism was more of a human nature realism than the structural variety that is so common today. Applied to domestic as well as international politics.
Deudney argues that Gilpin’s dispassionate writing on appeasement has been overlooked and should be re-read these days.
Deudney agrees with Goldstein that Gilpin might not have gotten tenure at Princeton even after his first three books, and that fact is a highly problematic assessment of today’s state of academic international relations.
Now up: Michael Mastanduno. Both Mastanduno and Deudney were Gilpin’s doctoral students.
Mastanduno notes that Gilpin read so widely that his graduate students used to play a game called “Find Something Bob Hasn’t Read.” They never won.
Mastanduno says Gilpin gave him the War and Change in World Politics MS, and then asked him if it was good enough to publish or whether he should just give up (??!!).
Echoing Goldstein & Deudney, Mastanduno says Gilpin thought the big question as a social scientist was whether one should study narrow questions using exacting precision or big questions with necessary imprecision. Gilpin chose the latter. Modern poli sci forces the former.
Mastanduno says Gilpin believed in paradigms, but not paradigm wars. He believed paradigms taught you what to ask, but not necessarily what answers you’d find.
Mastanduno: Gilpin’s central animating question was about wrestling with peaceful change in world politics. He didn’t arrive at a clear answer, but contributed way more than anyone before him.
Now up: @ProfKMcNamara!
.@ProfKMcNamara argues that what stands out about Gilpin is that when everyone else was talking about globalization dominating politics, he maintained that markets were a political construction that rested on power.
Ooh... @ProfKMcNamara slyly suggests that War and Change in World Politics is a key intellectual precursor for constructivism, due to his emphasis on social prestige.
Now up: Jonathan Kirshner!
Kirshner notes that Gilpin was present at the creation of the International Political Economy subfield. What Gilpin brought to the table was pointing out the centrality of politics to the global economy. A radical notion in the early 1970s — dismissed as Marxist claptrap.
Kirshner notes that whereas economists believed in rational egoistic behavior, Gilpin thought people naturally joined a group and suspected other groups.
Kirshner: Gilpin did not want IPE to become economics. Rather, he wanted IPE scholars to immerse themselves into how economics worked to be able to make better arguments.
Gilpin disliked the mid-1990s debate over whether institutions mattered, according to Kirshner. He said, “of course institutions matter.” That speaks to Gilpin’s more sophisticated variant of realism than his paradigmatic colleagues.
We’re heading to the Q&A, and you can bet Bob Keohane is gonna ask a question.
Great interventions by Keohane, Dan Lindley, Henry Nau, Arie Kaciowicz, and Peter Katzenstein. And that’s the end of the Gilpin panel! #fin.
