The science of world order

“The science of international politics is in its infancy.” E.H. Carr opened The Twenty Years’ Crisis with a tone both hopeful and lamenting. He looked forward to scholarship that would identify the driving forces behind peace, war, and disorder and help policymakers avoid the mistakes of the past. Today, the scientific study of international order thrives among scholars who share Carr's faith that behind the complexity in world politics lie consistent mechanical forces that generate macro outcomes. The scientific literature on the causes of world order searches for evidence of this machinery in the patterns of international history. I explore this literature and find that the operationalization of order as a dependent variable leads to a depoliticized conception of order. When order is seen as a contested proposition rather than an objective, mechanical arrangement, then the scientific approach quickly hits a dead-end. In this domain of inquiry, the methods of science impede the substantive study of politics. The contradiction between concept and methods leads me to suggest an alternative research agenda that centers world-order scholarship on contestation and politics rather than mechanical relations.