THE COLLAPSE OF ‘THE

INTERNATIONAL IMAGINATION’:

A CRITIQUE OF THE

TRANSHISTORICAL APPROACH

TO UNEVEN AND COMBINED

DEVELOPMENT

Sebastien Rioux

ABSTRACT

Recent decades have witnessed great interest in Leon Trotsky’s idea ofuneven and combined development (UCD) by Marxist scholars ofInternational Relations (IR). A burgeoning literature has argued that oneinterpretation, Justin Rosenberg’s U&CD, resolves the question of ‘theinternational’ by offering a single, non-Realist theory capable of unitingboth sociological and geopolitical factors in the explanation of socialchange across history. Evaluating this claim, this paper argues that thetranshistorical ways in which U&CD has been developed reproduce, reaf-firm and reinforce some of the more important shortcomings of Realist IR.I develop my argument through an internal critique of Rosenberg’s

Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy

Research in Political Economy, Volume 30A, 85�112

Copyright r 2015 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 0161-7230/doi:10.1108/S0161-72302015000030A011

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conception of U&CD, which, I argue, is illustrative of larger shortcomingswithin the literature. I conclude that the political and geopolitical economyof UCD and their dynamics must be grasped through the specific socialand historical relations in which they are immersed.

Keywords: Uneven and combined development; internationalrelations; geopolitical economy; Marxism; realism

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1990s, Justin Rosenberg has taken the lead in retrieving anddeveloping Leon Trotsky’s idea of uneven and combined development(UCD) as a major new theoretical departure in the study of InternationalRelations (IR) from a Marxist perspective.1 Most importantly, Rosenberghas reactivated the theoretical agenda for a unified international theorysensitive to both sociological, that is to say, domestic, and geopoliticalphenomena. While traditional Realist international relations theories havetended to theorise the coexistence of multiple societies in problematicabstraction from domestic social processes (Bull, 1966; Gilpin, 1981; Waltz,1959, 1979), Rosenberg’s historical sociology seeks to theorise the causalsignificance of the coexistence and interaction of multiple societies forsocial theory (Halliday, 1999; Hobden & Hobson, 2001; Rosenberg, 1994a;Teschke, 2003). By providing a social basis to ‘the international’, theU&CD approach, argues Rosenberg, is uniquely equipped to transcendthe abstractions of Realism.

Given its theoretical and conceptual ambition, Rosenberg’s U&CDresearch programme has gained considerable traction amongst IR scholars,sparking a burgeoning literature in the field. This is apparent in the num-ber of scholarly contributions applying the framework to historical casestudies (Allinson & Anievas, 2010; Anievas, 2013; Dufour, 2007; Glenn,2012; Green, 2012; Matin, 2006; Rosenberg, 2007, 2013a). However, therehave been debates, including objections about the spatio-temporal applic-ability of the approach.2 While some of the approach’s proponents havefollowed Rosenberg in celebrating its elevation of U&CD to the status ofa generalised, transhistorical logic of IR (Allinson & Anievas, 2009;Anievas & Nisancioglu, 2013; Barker, 2006; Cooper, 2013; Glenn, 2012;Hobson, 2011; Matin, 2007, 2013; Rosenberg, 2006, 2010, 2013a, 2013b),others have raised concerns about the dangers of transhistorical abstrac-tions and the problems associated with overstretching the conceptual and

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historical limits of UCD as originally deployed by Trotsky (Ashman, 2009;Callinicos & Rosenberg, 2008; Davidson, 2009; Desai, 2013; Rioux, 2009,2014; Teschke, 2011).

It is noteworthy here that this constitutes Rosenberg’s second majorattempt at criticising Realist IR for its abstraction from the social; the firstwas contained in his The Empire of Civil Society (1994). Whereas in thatwork he had sought to provide a historical-materialist approach to theinternational system through historically specific modes of production butwithout deploying U&CD, the new resort to U&CD has come with a com-mitment to conceive it transhistorically. In abandoning specific theorisationof concrete modes of production for the abstract formalism of a transhisto-rical approach to U&CD, Rosenberg, as we shall see, effectively forsakesMarx and Trotsky’s method and emphasis on historically specific politicaland geopolitical economy.

While recent critiques provide a wider engagement with Rosenberg’sapproach to U&CD (Ashman, 2009; Davidson, 2009; Desai, 2013; Rioux,2009, 2014; Teschke, 2011, 2014; van der Pijl, 2015), his claim that U&CDprovides a single, non-Realist theory capable of providing a unified sociolo-gical and geopolitical explanation has received virtually no systematic eva-luation. This claim begs further investigation in light of its pivotalimportance to the theoretical, conceptual and methodological developmentof the U&CD research agenda in IR. This paper argues that Rosenberg’stranshistorical approach to U&CD falls short of the promises of theU&CD framework as it reproduces, reaffirms and reinforces some of themajor shortcomings of Realism in IR.

In order to do this, I use Rosenberg’s 1994 paper ‘The InternationalImagination: IR Theory and “Classic Social Analysis”’ as a benchmark.Inspired by American sociologist C. Wright Mills’ The SociologicalImagination (1959), Rosenberg calls for an ‘international imagination’ todisplace Realism, which assumes that ‘anarchy’, rooted in nothing morethan the multiplicity of political jurisdictions, has characterised interna-tional relations since time immemorial. Hitherto, despite a series of fourpowerful charges against the Realist paradigm � (1) lack of explanatorypower; (2) unhistorical approach; (3) binary conception of the world; and(4) amoral stance � no alternative framework had emerged to displace itscentrality in the field. So Rosenberg (1994b, p. 85) asked: ‘where is it, thisalternative approach to IR which combined historical understanding, sub-stantive explanation, totalizing theory and a moral vocation of reason?’ Ifan alternative is to emerge, he reasoned, it must overcome all four majorshortcomings.

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Rosenberg’s ‘international imagination’ framework thus indicates thecriteria by which an alternative to Realism must be tested and judged, andtherefore offers a sound and powerful benchmark to assess whether or nothis U&CD approach constitutes a viable alternative to Realism. One ironicelement of this conclusion is that, though it was far from unproblematic(Campbell, 1994; Frost, 1994; Neufeld, 1994; Smith, 1994), Rosenberg’searlier attempt at producing a critique of Realist IR from a Marxist per-spective was, in some ways at least, more promising. If his intellectual jour-ney towards U&CD should be conceived of as an attempt to provide uswith such an alternative approach that is at once substantive, historicallyspecific, theoretically unified and morally driven, his failure, as I demon-strate in this paper, also appears to have been a regression.

The following four sections detail how Rosenberg’s approach to U&CDfalls short of meeting each of the basic requirements and, indeed, repro-duces the corresponding shortcomings of Realism: lack of explanatorypower; unhistorical approach; binary conception of the world; and amoralstance. I conclude by stressing that the failure of Rosenberg’s transhistori-cal approach to U&CD in providing an alternative paradigm to Realismdoes not invalidate the theoretical and methodological importance ofUCD, but rather, as recent interventions have emphasised (Bieler, 2013;Bruff, 2010; Desai, 2013; Morton, 2011; Rioux, 2014; Selwyn, 2014,pp. 88�93; Tansel, 2015; Teschke, 2011), highlights the need to grasp itsdynamics in a historically specific manner as a political and geopoliticaleconomy of capitalism.

LACK OF EXPLANATORY POWER

In formulating his first critique of Realism, Rosenberg had resorted toMills (1961, p. 75) for whom the main problem with grand theory, bywhich he means Parsonian structural functionalism then so much in vogue,is that, contrary to classic social analysis, it is not concerned with substan-tive problems. The level of abstraction informing grand theory seriouslyundermines its ability to relate to history, and therefore condemns it tochronic reification: theory ought to be specific enough to comprehend his-tory. Against grand sociological theories abstracted from the necessarilyhistorically specific structures of social production and reproduction, Millsargues that there can be no transhistorical or universal ‘answer to the tiredold problem of social order, taken uberhaupt’ (1961, pp. 46�47). For

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Rosenberg, the strength of classic social analysis lies in its recognition thatconcept formation is neither the result of pure theory nor the unmediatedaccumulation of ‘facts’, but rather the outcome of the dialectical relation-ship between theory and history. As a result, Rosenberg was adamant thatRealism, like all grand theory, suffered extensively from its timeless anar-chical horizon, which sealed away its ability to problematise ‘the emergenceand historical formation of a global nation-state system’ (Rosenberg,1994a, p. 6).

Rosenberg’s ‘international imagination’, like his earlier The Empire ofCivil Society, began with a rejection of ‘ahistorical questions about the gen-eral properties of states-systems sui generis’ (1994b, p. 102), and sought topull the transhistorical rug out from under orthodox IR theory through itsemphasis on the historical specificity of social relations and geopoliticalforms. However, his second attempt would be even less successful than thefirst. At root lay his growing concern with, and reactivation of, MartinWight’s question ‘Why is there no international theory?’ as the proper sub-ject of investigation for IR as a discipline (Wight, 1966). As Rosenberg(2006, p. 324) explained:

it has been the great failure of earlier critiques of Realism (my own included) that they

have generally proceeded by trying to downplay, gainsay or even wish away this strate-

gic dimension [the international], rather than by capturing and decoding its contents

within a genuinely sociological definition of the international. In this respect, the

Realists have been the keepers of the seal of the international � even if they have also,

to the enduring frustration of their critics, kept it sealed away.

Defining the international as ‘that dimension of social reality which arisesspecifically from the coexistence within it of more than one society’(Rosenberg, 2006, p. 308), Rosenberg now became increasingly dissatisfiedwith critical approaches concerned with demonstrating the historically spe-cific forms and dynamics of geopolitical orders. Accepting the view thatRealism asks the proper question in its attempt at providing an explanationof the fact (rather than the form) of geopolitical multiplicity, Rosenbergbecame anxious that ‘if we could not specify those attributes of socio-historical development which explain the existence of “the international” �then the realist arguments for a sui generis theory of geopolitics beyond thereach of social theory would resume their full force’ (2009, p. 108).

Rosenberg was not wrong, of course, to want to break the theoreticalhold of Realism over the study of IR. The problem lay in engaging battleon Realist ground: having accepted the Realist problematique, the only wayforward for Rosenberg is to beat it on its own ground and overcome the

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limits of Realism by offering a wider, more encompassing theory capableof explaining a transhistorical anarchy (Rosenberg, 2010, 2013a). This wasprecisely what Marx declined to do in relation to the ‘vulgar economists’who essentialised and eternalised capitalism by ‘proclaiming for everlastingtruths, the banal and complacent notions held by the bourgeois agents ofproduction about their own world, which is to them the best possible one’(Marx, 1977, p. 175n.). They made the market transhistorical in preciselythe way Rosenberg, moving onto realist ground, made U&CD in the inter-national system transhistorical and with the same effect: an essentialisationand eternalisation of U&CD mystifying the real historical relations of pro-duction. The alternative, to extend the analogy with Marx further, wouldhave been to construct an account of international relations on the basis ofthe historically specific capitalist social relations. This has been the burdenof Marx’s political economy and also what Mills had seen was necessary toovercome the problems of sociological grand theory. Something criticalwas lost in Rosenberg’s transition from Mills to Wight.

Since Rosenberg’s aims to offer what Kenneth Waltz sought but wasnever able to formulate, namely ‘a single theory that would comprehendboth international and domestic, both political and economic matters’(Halliday & Rosenberg, 1998, p. 379), there must be a dramatic shift in thescale at which his theory should be deployed: away from ‘historical materi-alist demonstrations of the changing forms and dynamics of geopoliticalbehaviour’ (Callinicos & Rosenberg, 2008, p. 87) and towards what Millscalled grand theory. With the transhistorical nature of ‘the international’now driving the research programme in Rosenberg’s Marxist IR, his other-wise entirely salutary turn to Trotsky and idea of UCD was bound to bemishandled. The need to explain the international in terms of UCD trans-historically required Rosenberg to construct his U&CD in a rather tenden-tious way. Though he sought licence for a transhistorical construction ofU&CD from Trotsky’s description of unevenness as ‘the most general lawof the historic process’ (1930, p. 3), he failed to understand that Trotskywas equally clear that he saw combined development as historically specificto the capitalist epoch (Desai, 2013, p. 52). As Trotsky (1930, p. 2, empha-sis added) put it:

A backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced

countries. But this does not mean that it follows them slavishly, reproduces all the

stages of their past. The theory of the repetition of historic cycles � Vico and his more

recent followers � rests upon an observation of the orbits of old pre-capitalist cultures,

and in part upon the first experiments of capitalist development. A certain repetition of

cultural stages in ever new settlements was in fact bound up with the provincial and

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episodic character of that whole process. Capitalism means, however, an overcoming of

those conditions. It prepares and in a certain sense realises the universality and perma-

nence of man’s development. By this a repetition of the forms of development by different

nations is ruled out. Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a back-

ward country does not take things in the same order.

The point that combined development is specifically capitalist is plain asday but for Rosenberg, like the purloined letter, it is ‘hidden in plain sight’because he has abandoned the historical programme of The Empire of CivilSociety and adopted the ahistorical ‘sociological’ programme of Realist IR.He forgets that not just the answers but the questions are different betweenMarxist and mainstream paradigms.

Instead of noting such historical specificities, Rosenberg (2006, p. 327)claims that ‘the international arises from an intrinsic characteristic of socialdevelopment as a transhistorical phenomenon � its inner multilinearityand interactivity’. Rosenberg concludes that it is the universal unevennessof societies � the sheer quantitative multiplicity of them � that generatesthe geopolitical dimension (Rosenberg, 2013b). As Rosenberg explains,‘Trotsky’s term ‘uneven and combined development’ … captures, at a moregeneral level, a sociological characteristic of all historical development’,which ‘accounts for the transhistorical fact of geopolitical multiplicity’(Callinicos & Rosenberg, 2008, p. 80). That Rosenberg must necessarilyevacuate Trotsky’s emphasis on the distinction between the pre-capitalistcontingency of development and its necessity under capitalism is the priceto pay to transform what was meant to be a historically specific theoreticalclaim about the capitalist world order into a transhistorical phenomenon(Desai, 2013, pp. 2�3, 10�12).

U&CD is Rosenberg’s answer to the problem of explaining the transhis-torical fact of geopolitical multiplicity. It is no wonder, then, that this ispremised upon anchoring U&CD into the same operative logic as Realism.Indeed, both approaches posit a timeless structure of the international:whereas Realists elevate anarchy to the status of universal geopoliticalstructure, Rosenberg explains transhistorical anarchy by positing U&CDas a universal structure of social development. And in the same way thatanarchy generates its own abstract logics (e.g. self-help system, the need forstates to prioritise survival, a recurring security dilemma, balance ofpower), so does U&CD through the redeployment of Trotsky’s suggestivemetaphors � the ‘whip of external necessity’, the ‘privilege of historic back-wardness’ and the ‘amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms’ �into transhistorical causal mechanisms. We shall come back to thesemechanisms in the next section. For now, suffice it to say that Rosenberg

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seeks to transcend Realism by proposing a more encompassing and univer-sal framework of U&CD.

The problem here is not Rosenberg’s concern about the causal signifi-cance of inter-societal multiplicity for social theory, but the conclusion thatthe identification of ‘the international’ as a fundamental dimension ofsocial reality requires a transhistorical, ‘grand’ theory. If Rosenberg tendsto reduce U&CD to ‘a general nomological-deductive covering law’, asTeschke (2011, p. 1102) has argued, it also carries the risk, noted by AlexCallinicos (Callinicos & Rosenberg, 2008, p. 82), of giving ‘rise to essential-isms’ and therefore subsuming concrete historical specificities to abstracttranshistorical realities. To be sure, Rosenberg is, or at least used to be,well aware of the danger of general abstractions (Callinicos & Rosenberg,2008, pp. 85�87; Rosenberg, 2010, p. 171). Yet in refusing to develop con-crete theories of U&CD in relation to its changing dynamics in time andspace, the risk of essentialism is real enough.

One important consequence of Rosenberg’s transhistorical U&CD is hiscurious omission of any engagement with postwar theorists about the natureof capitalist development (Baran, 1973; Baran & Sweezy, 1966; Brenner,2006, 2009; Dobb, 1967; Foster-Carter, 1974). Similarly, he curiously omitsany discussion of over 30 years of scholarship by geographers on geographi-cally uneven development under capitalism (Cox, 1997; Harvey, 1997,2006a, 2006b; Sheppard, Barnes, & Pavlik, 1990; Smith, 2008; Webber &Rigby, 1996), summarily discarding Neil Smith’s work, for instance, as irre-levant (Rosenberg, 2010, pp. 170�171, 2013b, p. 572, 597). While otherscholars have noted the aspatial (Hesketh & Morton, 2014) and ascalar(Davidson, 2009) nature of Rosenberg’s deployment of U&CD, Smith’s(2008, p. 3) charge against the banal, yet ‘eternal impossibility of even devel-opment’ strikes at the very core of Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach.

More fundamentally, however, Smith’s critique highlights the extent towhich Rosenberg’s general theory of U&CD cannot explain what it pre-tends to describe. For one has simply to ask why development is bothuneven and combined, what its specific dynamics are, and how they operatein time and space to bring the great transhistorical machinery of U&CD toa grinding halt. This intrinsic inability, as we shall see in greater detail inthe next section, must necessarily reproduce itself further down the logicalchain of the U&CD approach. Why, for instance, is there a ‘whip of exter-nal necessity’ to begin with? What are the dynamics within which this ‘pri-vilege of backwardness’ exists? And how is the ‘amalgam between old andnew political forms’ operating in time and space? In this context,Rosenberg faces two choices: either he substantiates his approach, in which

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case he must (i) offer a theoretical reconstruction that actually explains thehistorically and spatially specific dynamics of U&CD and (ii) engage withthe long tradition of scholars that have tackled this issue; or he continuesto develop the logical formalism contained in the transhistorical approachto U&CD, which ultimately impedes the development of the full potentialof the idea of U&CD.

The larger point, of course, is that by positing a timeless structure ofU&CD, Rosenberg has effectively cordoned the ‘international imagination’off from understanding social regularities and structures in their specifichistorical context. In The Empire of Civil Society Rosenberg could still criti-cise Morgenthau for explaining historical events ‘by unchanging “objectivelaws that have their roots in human nature”, [with the result that] theessence of international politics is unhistorical’ (1994a, p. 20). Yet the samecritique can now be levelled against Rosenberg’s U&CD. WhileMorgenthau derives the essence of IR from objective laws pertaining tohuman nature, Rosenberg derives it from an objective law pertaining to thenature of world-historical development as a whole. Transhistorical U&CDalso aligns with Wight’s view that ‘International Politics is the realm ofrecurrence and repetition’ (1966, p. 26), and Robert Gilpin’s conclusionthat ‘the nature of international relations has not changed fundamentallyover the millennia’ (1981, p. 211). Where he once criticised ‘the timelesscompulsions of anarchy’ (Rosenberg, 1994a, p. 95), readily endorsing Mills’rejection of the ‘transhistorical strait-jacket’ and condemnation of timelessdynamic or principle ‘which operates irrespective of particular historicalstructures’ (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 91), Rosenberg now abides by the timelesscompulsions of U&CD just as realist IR abides by timeless anarchy.

UNHISTORICAL APPROACH

The timeless structure of U&CD reproduces the separation between theoryand history typical of grand theory (Banaji, 2010; Desai, 2010). In such aframework, history is never more than the mere confirmation of what isalways already known in theory, radically impoverishing, if not entirelyeliminating any conception of ‘historical specificity’ and systemically reify-ing historical concepts and categories. The result is a starveling conceptionof social change.

Indeed, the more a theory is inclined to derive general laws of social development, the

more that social change loses its significance. Change becomes a matter of historical

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curiosity, but it is no longer deemed scientific as an object of research. Positivism thus

tends to split science and history as if they are different orders of explanation, one being

theoretical, the other descriptive. (Knafo, 2010, p. 496)

The transhistorical approach to U&CD now prosecutes the less ambitiousprogramme of verifying in history what has already been ascertained to bevalid in theory (Banaji, 2010, p. 47), forcing the logic of U&CD onto his-tory and choreographing human development according to its own prede-termined structure, suffocating empirical curiosity.

It is interesting to see how Rosenberg’s approach to dialectics representsa fixed, transhistorical method of historical investigation. Rosenberg con-tends that the first three principles of non-identity (A ≠ A) identified byTrotsky and which he ‘takes to define dialectical thought � change overtime, variation across instances, non-correspondence of concept and object� are already available within the tradition of classical social theory’(Rosenberg, 2013b, p. 579). Yet, he argues, Trotsky ‘tacitly inserted anextra philosophical premise into the inherited dialectical conception ofmotion and change’, that is, a fourth principle or philosophical premiserecognising a specifically interactive dimension of social developmentrepressed by classical sociology and speaking to the ‘quantitative multipli-city of being’ (Rosenberg, 2013b, p. 573, 581). The development of thisfourth principle of dialectics thus allows Rosenberg to strategically reposi-tion international theory within his social ontology in which the multipli-city of societies compose ‘the international’.

Notwithstanding Rosenberg’s failure to engage with any discussionabout dialectics over the last 75�80 years since Trotsky’s scattered andincomplete writings on the subject (Albritton, 1999; Arthur, 2004; Banaji,2010; Bhaskar, 1993; Capital & Class, 2015; Harvey, 1996; Lebowitz, 2005;Lewontin & Levins, 2007; Meikle, 1985; Ollman, 1980, 2003; Rees, 1998),there are at least three problems with Rosenberg’s argument. First, thefourth, distinct principle of non-identity is surely redundant. It is alreadyimplicit in the second principle of non-identity (variation across instances),which posits that no two physical or social objects are ever exactly identicaland therefore encompasses the idea of a quantitative multiplicity of being.Second, by positing a general law of development, U&CD subjects and ulti-mately negates the first three elements of non-identity. To the extent thatthis timeless logic of U&CD structurally determines the first three princi-ples of non-identity, what we have is not four principles of dialectics butone overdetermining principle of transhistorical U&CD. I shall come backto Rosenberg’s structural determinism in the next section.

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Third, and most importantly we have the development of a transhistori-cal method of historical investigation. Rosenberg accepts Trotsky’s triadicformula thesis-antithesis-synthesis as the proper method of dialecticalinquiry even though such an approach has long been abandoned by thepostwar literature on the subject. Deploying this ‘rock-ribbed triad … as anall-purpose explanation’ (Ollman, 2003, p. 12), Rosenberg then maps itonto what he perceives to be its historical equivalent, the triadic formula ofdevelopment-unevenness-combination. The result is a series of three cou-ples � development/thesis, unevenness/antithesis, combination/synthesis �constituting a three steps sequential method of historical investigation thatcan be applied across time and space (Rosenberg, 2013b, pp. 581�583).Operationalising this methodological blueprint to world-historical develop-ment through a case study of the causes of the First World War (develop-ment/thesis), Rosenberg (2013a, p. 207) notes:

we must begin by identifying the most significant structure of uneven development at

work in producing the Europe of 1914. We must then trace the particular combinations

and contradictory fusions of social forms to which this unevenness had given rise. And

finally, we must follow the threads of causality produced by this process to the point

where they connect to the proximate causes of the war.

Rosenberg’s task is therefore to identify first the most important structureof uneven development (unevenness/antithesis), and then to trace back theevolution of social forms emerging from the latter through the fixed, trans-historical causal mechanisms of combined development (combination/synthesis). Whatever historical event one tries to explain, U&CD providesa covering-law model to assemble and pigeonhole history through prede-fined boxes.

It is therefore no coincidence that Rosenberg insists that ‘we must beginby identifying the most significant structure of uneven development atwork in producing the Europe of 1914’, so it can be appropriately ‘fed’ intothe U&CD machine and processed by the fixed mechanisms of combineddevelopment. The necessary information turns out to be that ‘the centuryleading up to the War was heavily shaped by the historical unevenness ofcapitalist industrialization as a global process’ (Rosenberg, 2013a, p. 207).The latter is further specified through three intersecting planes or vectors ofunevenness: (1) a West-East plane of unevenness capturing the variegatedpatterns of interconnected industrialisations amongst European societies;(2) an Atlantic plane of unevenness through which New World industriali-sation reacts back onto the Old World and (3) a North�South Europeanplane of unevenness attending to the process of industrialisation and its

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differentiated forms of enhanced, paralysed and declining development(Rosenberg, 2013a, pp. 212, 223).

Once the main structure has been identified, it can then be processedthrough the independent and unchanging causal mechanisms of interactiv-ity associated with combined development: (1) a ‘whip of external necessity’speaking to the reality of geopolitical pressure and interconnection; (2) a‘privilege of backwardness’ enabling the skipping of intermediary stepsthrough the temporal compression of development; and (3) a contradictoryfusion of old with new political forms which, in producing sociologicallyhybridised forms, secures and indeed reinforces the universal law ofunevenness (Rosenberg, 2013a, pp. 195�198). As the fundamental differ-ences between capitalist modernity, feudal geopolitics or Roman imperial-ism disappear, only the common abstraction of transhistorical unevennessanimating them remains. While Rosenberg’s underdeveloped notion of a‘structure of unevenness’ marks a rupture with Trotsky’s emphasis on thespatio-temporal dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, his trans-historical redeployment of Trotsky’s historically specific approach to UCDnot only remains unable to provide us with the necessary conceptual appa-ratus to identify the most significant structures of unevenness across timeand space, but also to retrieve their dynamics.

The outcome of Rosenberg’s formal abstractionism is predictable: ‘whenwe follow the subsequent development of this social formation in its inter-actions with the world around it, we will find that the proximate causes ofwar � which are in fact overwhelmingly dominated by German fears andambitions � arise organically within the process of U&CD we have beenreconstructing’ (Rosenberg, 2013a, p. 208). There is a clear circularity toRosenberg’s argument: 1914, like everything else in human history, isnecessarily and logically the outcome of the process of U&CD. That, onthis transhistorical highway, we have learnt absolutely nothing about thespecific nature and spatio-temporal dynamics of this global process of capi-talist industrialisation is a casualty of this method. While Rosenberg is cer-tainly correct to point out that the source of the dynamics of Germanindustrialisation lay ‘in the inter-societal unevenness of development,which … generated the compulsion to ‘follow after’ (Rosenberg, 2013a,p. 219), he fails to tell us what the dynamics underpinning ‘the inter-societalunevenness of [capitalist] development’ were and why their juxtapositiongenerated ‘the compulsion to “follow after”’. By taking for granted pre-cisely what needs to be explained, what Rosenberg’s ‘reconstruction’amounts to is not a theoretical process by which the specific dynamicsof uneven (and combined) development are internally (dialectically)

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reconstituted, but rather a descriptive account filtering history through thefixed and unchanging parameters of its transhistorical method.

The explanatory poverty of the approach is clear: one can indeed removeall references and terminology associated with U&CD from Rosenberg’scase study without impacting the argument. Indeed, his explanation of the1914 conflagration as the outcome of ‘the historical unevenness of capitalistindustrialization as a global process’ would suffer no injury were we toremove the underdeveloped theoretical jargon of U&CD within which it isframed. To the extent that Rosenberg merely formalises (rather than theo-rises) known processes of uneven capitalist industrialisation, he does notneed U&CD to make his argument (Rioux, 2014).

This is a remarkably ironic outcome for one who once lucidly criticisedthe Realist paradigm for reducing the task of IR theory to the meredescriptive exploration of the logic of anarchy. Again, it is Rosenberg’sinability to specify the dynamics of his transhistorical law that forces himinto the development of an equally transhistorical method of historicalinvestigation, which in turn reduces history to a series of undertheorisedvectors of unevenness through which human development can bepigeonholed.

BINARY CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD

The third element of Rosenberg’s international imagination, which he seesas ‘perhaps the most intellectually radical in its implications for the con-temporary social sciences’, is a conception of the social world as a totality.For the author, this ‘is profoundly subversive both of horizontal, disciplin-ary boundaries which reflect supposedly separate domains of the socialworld (economics, politics, sociology), and of any vertical division of realityinto “levels of analysis” (e.g. individual, state, states-system)’ (Rosenberg,1994b, p. 89). Rosenberg refuses the partitioning of the social world intorigid, hermetic disciplines because it encourages the reification of social andhistorical concepts and categories (Clarke, 1982). Rather he abides by whatMills called ‘the ontological unity of the different dimensions of humanagency’. This means that ‘the international imagination is committed tounderstanding the social world in genera l � and our international systemin particular � in terms of a complex and recognizable totality of real his-torical relations between individuals’ (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 90, 104).

In spite of this promising theoretical commitment to the developmentof an integrated framework, there remained an irresolvable tension in

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Rosenberg’s international imagination, a dualism between two differenttypes of societies or totalities � one involving interrelations amongst indivi-duals and speaking to the reality of a social totality, and a second inter-societal totality specifically linked to interrelations amongst societies.

The societies that make up the modern international system are linked together (in

varying degrees) by definite institutional structures. In differing ways, they are all sub-

ject to the forces that are transmitted across those structures. That their interrelations

form a whole is therefore a simple, objective fact. It may even be the founding fact of

our discipline. … For totality in the second sense—meaning the actual interrelation of

processes and forms which comprises the reality of the international system at any one

given point—is precisely what we have to find out empirically by looking at the world.

(Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 105)

So not only does Rosenberg argue for the development of an ontologicalunity subversive of disciplinary boundaries, he also maintains the existenceof a second, distinct inter-societal totality, which he perceives as ‘the found-ing fact’ of IR as a discipline. Can there be two totalities at once? How canthe ontological unity of the social world � understood as a totality ofsocial and historical relations � cohabit with an international totality?

An answer to this question must be based on an appreciation of thechanging conceptualisation of the relation between the sociological andgeopolitical totalities in Rosenberg’s works, or rather, what emerges as anunresolved tension over his intellectual and methodological commitment:did his commitment to Marxism take primacy over that to IR or vice versa?Certainly Rosenberg could not reconcile the two. In The Empire of CivilSociety, Rosenberg firmly posited the inter-societal dimension as subordi-nate to the more fundamental social reality described by classical social the-ory. Convinced that the task at hand was ‘to find ways of seeing the formof our states-system as the geopolitical expression of a wider social totality’,Rosenberg’s central argument was ‘that there is a connection between thestrategic relation of production and the social form of the geopolitical sys-tem’ (Rosenberg, 1994a, pp. 54�55, 161). In this respect, his argumentupheld Gramsci’s view that international relations logically followed ‘fun-damental social relations’. The development of the international imagina-tion framework, published the same year as The Empire of Civil Society,reinforced the priority given to social theory:

But the difficulty surely has more to do with the attempt to constitute IR as a distinct

level of analysis which should generate its own theories, rather than as a dimension of a

wider social structure in the manner of classic social analysis. Viewed from this latter

perspective, the claim that IR has no classical figures comparable to the sociological

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trio of Marx, Weber and Durkheim need no longer hold. We do have such figures—

namely Marx, Weber and Durkheim. (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 98)

Although Rosenberg’s critique of Realism ultimately relied on the viewthat social theory structurally determined international theory, as anattempt at rethinking the foundations of the discipline and the core issuesdefining it, including the form and nature of geopolitical systems,Rosenberg’s intervention represented an important contribution to thenecessity of breaking away from the conception of IR as a distinct realm ofactivity secluded from social relations and historical processes. In thisrespect, it sparked a refreshing discussion about how one might begin tothink critically about the historical specificity of the form taken by theinter-societal dimension in time and space.

Although the binary between social theory and international theory sur-vived Rosenberg’s transition to U&CD, the causal relationship between thetwo was reversed. In subjecting the social whole to the eternal logic ofU&CD, social structures and dynamics become a mere dimension of awider international structure or totality. The shift from having a social the-ory for the international to having an international theory for the socialunderpins the tension in Rosenberg’s attempt to bridge sociological knowl-edge and geopolitical concerns within U&CD. Moreover, given thatRosenberg’s transhistorical theorisation of U&CD is at the core of anemerging ‘third wave’ of historical sociology in international relations(HSIR), also referred to as international historical sociology (IHS)(Hobson & Lawson, 2008; Hobson, Lawson, & Rosenberg, 2010;Rosenberg, 2006), this tension is also, more widely, at play in HSIR. Asthree of the field’s most prominent scholars recently argued:

As a branch of historical sociology, HSIR is fundamentally concerned with operationa-

lizing Mills’ vision of classical social analysis in the field of International Relations. In

doing so, however, it also modifies Mills’ original [sociological] formula: in effect, the

triangulation of structure-history-biography becomes instead structure-history-

international. The purpose of this modification is not, of course, to expunge the dimen-

sion of human agency (which can, in fact, be studied from all three angles); it is rather

to adjust the focus of “the sociological imagination” in line with the subject matter of

IR. And what results from the new triangulation is the intellectual agenda of HSIR

itself. (Hobson et al., 2010, p. 3. See also: Lawson, 2006; Rosenberg, 2006)

There are two main problems here. First, the view that ‘the international’constitutes the proper subject matter of IR as a discipline does little toadvance specifically Marxist IR, reproducing as it does orthodoxapproaches within the field. It constitutes an important methodologicalsetback which, in fact, betrays the inability of Rosenberg’s transhistorical

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framework to overcome the fragmented disciplinary knowledge thatis IR.

While the shift towards ‘the international’ as what constitutes ‘the sub-ject matter of IR’ is difficult to reconcile with Rosenberg’s insistence,mentioned at the beginning of this section, that ‘the international imagi-nation is committed to understanding the social world […] in terms of acomplex and recognizable totality of real historical relations between indi-viduals’ (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 104, emphasis added), it also stresses theextent to which this research agenda is constituted through the mainte-nance of rigid disciplinary boundaries that are antithetical to Trotsky’sdialectical approach and method (Knei-Paz, 1978; Lowy, 2010; Rees,1998). Despite paying lip service to the idea that the social and inter-social are co-constitutive, this renewed interest for international theorynot only fails to break away with the classical dualism of the disciplinebut also embraces it as essential to safeguard HSIR as a sub-field of IR.As Hobson et al. (2010, p. 4) recently put it, this new research agendaconceptualises:

the international as the simultaneously differentiated and interactive dynamics of his-

torical development, it examines the substantive and methodological implications of the

international for our conceptualizations of social structure and historical process,

thereby advancing the distinctive contribution of IR to the social sciences as a whole.

This move, we suggest, contains the potential for a historical sociological enterprise

which can tackle issues of core concern to both IR and Sociology, serving as the “com-

mon denominator” for research in both.

This passage is interesting not only because it defines IR as an objectdomain anchored within the traditional parameters of orthodox IR, butalso because it identifies an intellectual domain justifying the relevance ofthe discipline to the social sciences more largely. Yet what good to thesocial sciences is a discipline that posits its object of study as a timelessstructure of U&CD without ever specifying its historical dynamics inrelation to social theory? Whereas Waltz maintained that the interna-tional was a disconnected realm with its own specific logic of anarchy,thus tacitly endorsing (if only temporally) disciplinary pluralism,Rosenberg’s conception fulfils Waltz’s dream of a general theory bypositing a social whole already determined by its wider international rea-lity. What we have then is not a ‘common denominator’ for research, butthe effective repositioning of IR as a super-discipline presiding over socialtheory itself. Whereas Rosenberg deployed a bottom-up approach to IRin The Empire of Civil Society by deriving geopolitical systems from ‘fun-damental social relations’, he now develops a top-down approach

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whereby ‘the international’ becomes an all-encompassing, determiningstructure for social relations.

The second major problem is the evacuation of agency, which hadhitherto been central to Rosenberg’s international imagination. To besure, one wonders how coherent and sustainable the sociological turn inIR is if it is ultimately premised upon the substitution of an abstractsphere of ‘the international’ for the concrete dimension of human agency.To the extent that HSIR is founded upon discarding what is arguablythe most fundamental premise of any sociology, one will be forgiven forthinking that HSIR is a dramatically impoverished ‘branch of historicalsociology’. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to reconcile Rosenberg’sapproach with his call for a ‘social ontology of the international’ (2007,p. 454). A social ontology that first substitutes a timeless structure ofU&CD for real and active social agents, only to reintegrate the latterthrough the determining logic of the former, is a poor social ontologyindeed.

In this regard, the problem is not Rosenberg’s claim that U&CD consti-tutes a sociological theory ‘because that multiplicity [the coexistence ofmore than one society] itself is seen as an expression of the intrinsic uneven-ness of historical development and change’ (Rosenberg, 2013a, p. 225), butrather that at no point does his claim go further than a mere descriptivegeneralisation. The poverty of Rosenberg’s sociological theory is thereforecontained both in that he takes for granted what needs to be explained �indeed continuously failing to provide a theoretical explanation of this‘intrinsic unevenness of historical development and change’ � and in theperennial evacuation of the real subjects of history (Rioux, 2009, 2014).This contrasts with the international imagination framework where heargued that ‘the constitutive agency of individuals … must remain ourbasic explanans’ (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 92). Rosenberg once argued thatWaltz’s approach did not qualify as a social theory because it was not ‘anexplanation of social phenomena which shows how their substance is madeup of individual and collective human agency, constituted in particular his-torical forms’ (Rosenberg, 1994a, p. 93n.). As long as the idea of U&CDremains problematised at a transhistorical level, it will not be able to liveby this definition either.

The result of this all-encompassing framework is therefore less its abilityto overcome the binary between sociological and international spheres thanthe rearrangement of their causal relationship through the reconceptualisa-tion of ‘the international’ as ontologically prior. The poverty of totality istherefore contained in the theoretical subordination of the social whole to a

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wider and structurally determinant international dimension, and the subjec-tion of real and concrete human agency to an abstract, general law ofU&CD. Far from offering an integrated approach that bridges sociologyand geopolitics within a coherent theoretical framework sensitive to thespecific dynamics of uneven (and combined) development in time andspace, the transhistorical approach to U&CD reproduces precisely what itwas mobilised to overcome.

The poverty of Rosenberg’s conception of the social whole is rooted inhis abstract, transhistorical quest for a theory of ‘the international’,which not only repudiates his previous commitment to historically specificconceptualisations of sociological and geopolitical categories, but alsoreproduces the segmented and reified knowledge of bourgeois theories,which arose historically as a reaction to classical political economy(Desai, 2015, 2016). ‘Though an ambition to make UCD the basis of aMarxist understanding of geopolitics was announced by Rosenberg earlyon (1996)’, Radhika Desai aptly notes, ‘his attempts to realize it went intrans-historical directions which had little immediate relevance to under-standing geopolitics in a specifically capitalist era’ (Desai, 2010, p. 465).In accepting ‘the international’ as the proper ‘subject matter of IR’ andembracing an unhelpfully abstract, formalistic conception of history,Rosenberg’s approach to U&CD not only reproduces the positivist seg-mentation of the social whole into reified disciplines, but also participatesin the dismemberment of Marxism by upholding a social scientific divi-sion of labour typical of bourgeois knowledge (Clarke, 1982).

Far from a positive development, therefore, U&CD and HSIR scholars’growing obsession with ‘the international’ represents a theoretical dead endas well as an important setback in Marxist thinking, not least because iteffectively marks the acceptance of the intellectual and academic para-meters set by mainstream approaches to IR. Perhaps more importantly,however, this unfathomable attraction of ‘the international’ is also theTrojan horse by which the Marxist foundations lying at the core ofTrotsky’s idea of UCD are being discarded. The irony is most certainlythat it is Rosenberg’s sanitised approach to U&CD that paved the way toits appropriation by non-Marxist scholars (Buzan & Lawson, 2015;Hobson, 2011). Emptied out of its Marxist content, Rosenberg has effec-tively presided over the transformation of his U&CD into an empty theore-tical shell whose universal formal-abstractionist method can nowaccommodate bourgeois social scientific forms of knowledge in general andRealist questions and method in particular.

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AMORAL STANCE

‘Any adequate “answer” to a problem’, said Mills (1961, p. 131), ‘in turn,will contain a view of the strategic points of intervention—of the “levers”by which the structure may be maintained or changed; and an assessmentof those who are in a position to intervene but are not doing so’. ForRosenberg, any international imagination worth the name would have touphold political principles � it ‘does not eschew ethical judgment; yet nordoes it suppose that an intellectual method exists which can itself resolvemoral dilemmas. Its principal contribution is the illumination of the objec-tive, structural responsibility of individuals and groups for particular out-comes’ (Rosenberg, 1994b, p. 105). The task of uncovering the structuresunderpinning specific geopolitical systems is also the process by which wedenaturalise specific structures of domination and power actively engagedin the production and reproduction of the current order.

Rosenberg’s approach to U&CD, as well as the positivist methodologyunderpinning his transhistorical method of historical investigation, how-ever, stand in tension with this political dimension and emancipatoryvocation of theoretical practice. How is it possible to identify political‘levers’ or ‘strategic points of intervention’ in a framework based on acovering law pertaining to world-historical development as a whole? Andwho is to blame when the very meaning of ‘objective, structural responsi-bility’ is itself ultimately reducible to vectors of unevenness? In thisrespect, Rosenberg’s approach to U&CD marks a shift away from Mills’emphasis on the social and political struggle around the maintenance of,and the challenge to, historically specific structures of power and domina-tion. His commitment to U&CD as a general theory thus tends to under-mine his otherwise long and rich contribution to normative theories inIR (Rosenberg, 1994a, 1994b). As Knafo (2010, p. 496) explains:

They [structures] set out the fundamental laws that govern society. Because they operate

at a general level, they appear impervious to the specific politics that are played out

‘below’ them. These structural laws are thus often seen as being generated indepen-

dently from power dynamics and, while they set the terrain for social struggles, they are

not directly linked to any specific interest or worldview. It is as if structural conditions

apply equally to all actors.

For the same reason that social change remains a matter of historicalcuriosity in a general framework, so does the issue of power. This is oneimportant reason why Mills criticised grand theory for its lack of concern

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with substantive problems. Unable to delineate the specific dynamics ofuneven (and combined) development in time and space, and stuck with theview that development is a differentiated and interactive totality,Rosenberg has locked himself into the political poverty of a transhistoricallaw of human development.

This is no small problem for an approach that seeks to provide analternative to the Realist paradigm. Be it a timeless structure of anarchyor a universal logic of U&CD, both approaches are theoretical closuresat the level of emancipatory politics. This is cantilevered to Rosenberg’sinternational imagination and his previous appreciation for Marx’s under-standing of theory as a consciousness-raising intervention into reality.For Marx, the denaturalisation of the social order through criticalinquiry is not simply a process of defetishisation by which previous con-cepts and categories are broken down, but also and at the same time thecreation of a political moment in which we can articulate social changeand challenge power relations. Under the general laws of developmentposited by Rosenberg, however, the task of verifying in history what hasalready been ascertained to be true transhistorically becomes the principlevocation of social sciences. It constitutes the worst sort of scholastic exer-cise plaguing modern academic work, disconnected as it is from socialconstituencies through the objectification of the real subject of history(Teschke, 2011, p. 1102). Rosenberg’s transhistorical method of historicalinvestigation undermines any theorisation of U&CD in time and space,that is, according to specific epochs or modes of production.

The net result is a tendency towards what Robert W. Cox calledproblem-solving theory according to which ‘it is possible to arrive atstatements of laws or regularities which appear to have general validitybut which imply, of course, the institutional and relational parametersassumed in the problem-solving approach’ (Cox, 1981, p. 129). For Cox(1981, p. 129), problem-solving theory is both ahistorical because itwrongly ‘posits a fixed order as its point of reference … [and] conserva-tive, since it aims to solve the problems arising in various parts of a com-plex whole in order to smooth the functioning of the whole’. Thegrowing problem-solving tendency within the U&CD literature is obviousin the recent ‘historical turn’ that the latter has undergone, with scholarsincreasingly ‘applying’ the framework to vastly different case studies,including the Mongol invasions, pre-Modern Iran, the Meiji Restoration,hunter-gatherer bands and Chinese nationalism, to name but a few(Allinson & Anievas, 2010; Anievas & Nisancioglu, 2013; Cooper, 2015;Matin, 2006, 2007; Rosenberg, 2010). Their generalised inability to

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theorise the specific dynamics of U&CD in time and space is further rein-forced by the descriptive nature of their works.

In this respect, U&CD marks an important shift from Rosenberg’s pre-vious project, which sought to denaturalise the institutional order and thesocial and power relations animating the historically specific dynamics ofthe emergence and reproduction of the modern geopolitical system.Rosenberg’s first critique of Realism was a case in point of what Cox calledcritical theory.

It [critical theory] is critical in the sense that it stands apart from the prevailing order of

the world and asks how that order came about. Critical theory, unlike problem-solving

theory, does not take institutions and social power relations for granted but calls them

into question by concerning itself with their origins and how and whether they might be

in the process of changing. … Critical theory allows for a normative choice in favour of

a social and political order different from the prevailing order, but it limits the range of

choice to alternative orders which are feasible transformations of the existing world.

(Cox, 1981, pp. 129�130)

Rosenberg’s eagerness to transform Trotsky’s laws of history into a fullyfledged theory of history, however, creates a fixed abstraction whose levelof generality defies even the Realist framework. From the perspective ofcritical theory, therefore, the privileging of a general theory cannot consti-tute an emancipatory project for at least three reasons. First, U&CD doesnot, and simply cannot, stand ‘apart from the prevailing order of theworld’ because it in fact pretends to capture the mechanics of that order.As a positivist theoretical endeavour, U&CD is the prevailing order.Second, Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach to U&CD must necessarilyevacuate the question of the origins of that order. It therefore signals anapproach to the social world that is poorly equipped to theorise how farand in what ways the inter-societal dimension of human development pro-duces and reproduces historically specific social and power relations.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly for the present argument, thesocial and political outcomes of Rosenberg’s theoretical argument for atranshistorical approach to U&CD contradict Trotsky’s revolutionaryagenda. What remains of political and normative choices in a general the-ory that is, by definition, true of all time? If the centrality of human agencyfor Trotsky is evidenced in his commitment to revolutionary politics, it isalso exposed in his understanding of history itself, as The History of theRussian Revolution testifies. With Rosenberg, however, Trotsky stands onhis head. Whereas Trotsky saw the ‘development of scientific thought … asa scientific support for human praxis’ and revolutionary politics undercapitalism (Trotsky, 1986, p. 97), Rosenberg sees human praxis as the

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historical laboratory confirming the universal validity of his general theoryof human development. In short, if Trotsky, like Marx and Mills, saw theprocess of theory formation as a historically specific critical endeavour pro-viding us with knowledge enabling political possibilities, such political pos-sibilities are sealed away from the theoretical closure that represents thetranshistorical approach to U&CD and the reactivation of ‘the interna-tional’ as ‘the object matter of IR’.

Rosenberg’s conceptualisation of U&CD as a general theory, his trans-historical method of historical investigation and his shift to internationaltheory coalesced into a positivist approach to U&CD where ethics andmorality have very little room to breathe. In this transhistorical ballet ofalternating structures of unevenness, themselves operating through fixed,universal mechanisms of combined development, the impossibility of trans-formative politics is rooted in what Rosenberg has identified as universallaws. Within the parameters set by U&CD, politics can neither expect norhope to change an otherwise timeless structure of U&CD. Like Realism,therefore, Rosenberg’s positivist approach is also the lynchpin aroundwhich the amoral stance of his framework revolves.

CONCLUSION

This paper has argued that Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach to U&CDin IR has not been successful at overcoming the four main shortcomings ofthe Realist paradigm. First, the lack of explanatory power is intimatelyconnected with Rosenberg’s deployment of U&CD as a transhistorical,‘grand’ theory, with the result that Rosenberg continuously eschews thetask of theorising U&CD in relation to its historically specific dynamics.Second, Rosenberg’s transhistorical method of historical investigation isbased on a fixed and unchanging form of dialectics that seals the poverty ofhistory by forcing it into predetermined, transhistorical boxes imperviousto social change and historical specificity. Third, the shift from having asocial theory for the international to having an international theory for thesocial signals the failure to provide an integrated theorisation of totality.Finally, Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach undermines any attempt tocapture the specific contribution of ‘the international’ as an undertheorisedfield of causality in producing and reproducing power relations. Takentogether, the collapse of all four pillars of Rosenberg’s international imagi-nation framework under the weight of his transhistorical approach to

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U&CD demonstrates the extent to which the latter reproduces all four ofthe main shortcomings of the Realist paradigm, and therefore fails to offera substantive alternative to it.

This is a foundational problem for which there can be no solutionswithin the limits of the paradigm as currently developed in IR.Consequently, the issue is a fundamental flaw arising from the approach’sacceptance � contra Trotsky’s social and political economic thought � ofbourgeois fragmented knowledge and the disciplinary sterile ‘object’ that is‘the international’. The first step towards a reconstructed theory of U&CDthat does not reproduce all four shortcomings of the Realist paradigm isthe recognition that the current intellectual drift towards general theoryand methodology must be abandoned, which means coming back toTrotsky’s understanding of UCD as a resolutely Marxist framework.Similarly, the current obsession with ‘the international’ as an abstractdimension of social life has yielded very little (if any) theoretical progressand must be abandoned too. Indeed, we are still awaiting any specific con-ceptualisations of the spatio-temporal dynamics of U&CD (Rioux, 2014).

In this respect, Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach to world-historicaldevelopment underlines the strength of his earlier critique againstGlobalization Theory. For the problem with Rosenberg’s approach is pre-cisely that it posits U&CD as explanans rather than explanandum. Whatneeds to be explained � U&CD as the spatio-temporal outcome of specificsocial and historical processes � becomes the explanation itself, with theresult that explanatory power is conferred to a transhistorical abstractionthat is never itself problematised. Hence Rosenberg’s ultimate chargeagainst Globalization Theory can also be raised against U&CD:

The wild, speculative debut of this discourse cannot go on forever. At some point, the

normal rules of intellectual coherence must re-assert themselves. And when they do, the

message for [U&CD] will be the same as for every other grand theory which has

strutted and turned on the stage of social science: substance, soon, or silence.

(Rosenberg, 2000, p. 165)

It is no coincidence that Rosenberg’s transhistorical approach to U&CDand its failure to overcome the main shortcomings of the Realist paradigmhas been accomplished through Rosenberg’s gradual yet continuous distan-cing from historical materialism, which was at the core of Trotsky’s idea ofUCD. If anything, Rosenberg’s own intellectual journey speaks loud to thecontinuing problem that Marxism faces, under the hegemony of bourgeoissocial science, of avoiding getting trapped in functionalist and reductionistways of thought.3

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NOTES

1. Whenever I refer to Trotsky’s historically specific conceptualisation of unevenand combined development, I use UCD. Whenever I use Rosenberg’s transhistoricalrendition of it, I use U&CD. The purpose is to make a clear distinction betweenthem.2. In addition, there is some debate about whether or not the framework repre-

sents an antidote to Eurocentrism in IR: Anievas and Nisancioglu (2013), Bhambra(2011), Hobson (2011), Matin (2013), Shilliam (2009), Tansel (2015).3. I am thankful for the perceptive comment of one of the reviewers in this

regard.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank Ian Bruff, Samuel Knafo, Frantz Gheller, GenevieveLeBaron, Ben Selwyn, Cemal Burak Tansel, Marcus Taylor and Kees vander Pijl for their insightful comments. Special thanks to Radhika Desai forher constructive suggestions and keen editorial skills. This research wasfunded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada.

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