The ‘Politics of Style’ as a Means of Hierarchisation and Marginalisation: A Reclassification of the ‘IR Theory’ Canon, with a Case Discussion of the Russia-Ukraine War

This paper argues that ‘International Relations (IR) theory’, as it is commonly written about and taught, is marked by a persistent confusion concerning classification. Standard textbooks and syllabi routinely group Realism, Liberalism, Marxism, Constructivism, Critical Theory, Feminism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonial and Decolonial Thought, the English School, and green theories within one undifferentiated category of ‘IR theory’, as if all of them performed the same kind of intellectual work. Drawing on the PARISS collective intervention on the ‘politics of style’ (PARISS Collective 2020), the paper treats this flattening not only as a conceptual problem, but also as one of the forms through which disciplinary knowledge is organised and passed on to students. The result is that students encounter a broad canon before the differences among its components have been made sufficiently clear. The term ‘politics of style’ is used here in a broader sense, to refer to the classificatory and pedagogical forms through which theories are ordered and transmitted. The paper does not seek to provide a comprehensive critical evaluation of each approach, although some important shortcomings are noted where they bear directly on the classificatory argument. It argues, first, that Realism, Liberalism, and Marxism remain the principal examples of ‘causal theories’, provided that causality is understood in a broad sense, as referring not only to ‘positivist’ or variable-based models, but also to theories that identify structures, mechanisms, interests, institutions, social relations, norms, identities, or historically produced conditions through which international outcomes are generated. It then treats Critical Theory and Poststructuralism primarily as ‘meta-theoretical interventions’. Constructivism and the English School are discussed as ‘hybrid theoretical approaches’, while Feminism, Postcolonial and Decolonial Thought, together with green theories, are understood as ‘critical traditions of inquiry’ organised around dimensions of world politics that mainstream theory has often neglected or distorted. The typology is necessarily simplifying, since several approaches overlap across categories, but it is defended here as a pedagogical clarification rather than as a judgement of intellectual worth. The Russia-Ukraine war is used at the end of the article as a case discussion showing how different forms of theoretical work approach the same event, and why those differences matter.