Prioritize epistemological interrogation---theory at every level is necessary to establish political relevance and drive effective political engagement

In the modern context, the intimate linkage between politics and knowledge is established and reproduced through separation. Only by distancing itself from the particularities of politics and developing the language of universal reason can science establish its political relevance. This paradoxical relationship turns on its head the widely shared assumption that increasing levels of abstraction—from empirical to theoretical and metatheoretical work—undermine political relevance. Instead, with every step away from concrete policies, academic studies address broader questions, speak to wider audiences, and play a more foundational role for politics (Eriksson 2014, 102). Each of these levels of abstraction, moreover, constitutes an integral part of modern science and therefore also of its political relevance. “Practically relevant knowledge” is therefore not possible without “metatheoretical reflection” (Reus-Smit 2013, 605), and vice versa.¶ Locating the discipline of IR within the context of this relationship between politics and knowledge also illuminates the nature and function of some of its core features. It shows that the poverty of its subject matter, its fragmentation, and its immaturity arise from the ultimate limitation of modern knowledge—its inability to provide an account of totality—and is therefore common to all modern sciences. Within this context, however, fragmentation does not function as a barrier to scientific progress. Instead, it drives it in the form of greater theoretical pluralism. And far from indicating an “end of theory,” the waxing and waning of metatheoretical debates results from the political implications and limitations of scientific knowledge.¶ These dynamics of modern scientific development, in turn, carry with them political implications. Despite its universalist aspirations, modern knowledge is always partial and can only illuminate norms already embodied in given practices rather than generating guiding principles for practice (Weber 1948, 147). For this reason, the role of IR scholars interested in improving politics cannot be reduced to the “heroic” one “of providing scientifically derived knowledge by which foreign policy may be guided,” but must fundamentally include “the ‘ironic’ one of ensuring that rival explanations can be heard” (Zambernardi 2016, 4–5).¶ Theory, in sum, plays a pivotal role for the constitution, reproduction, and progressive development of IR as a modern science. What is more, theory at every level of abstraction plays a constitutive role for the political relevance of modern science in general. And theory, at every level of abstraction, also plays a directly political role. Theory, in short, is both indispensable and highly practical.¶ Finally, the implications of the present study apply also to its own findings. By focusing on the common epistemic basis of the modern sciences and modern politics, I established connections between politics and knowledge, and between IR and other disciplines. This highlights the political relevance of abstract and concrete, good and bad quality, and accessible and inaccessible studies. Yet, by focusing on the modern episteme, this study necessarily abstracts from the ontological dimension—from the specificities of politics and knowledge, the differences between IR and other modern sciences, between abstract and concrete, critical and mainstream, good- and bad-quality work. The source of the confusion over the relevance of IR, however, has always lain in the epistemic basis of the relation between modern politics and the sciences.