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Bringing the Critical Thinking Back in: A Critique of Andrew Linklater’s Theoretical Contributions to International Relations

Abstract Inspired by the Critical Social Theory put forth by the Frankfurt School, Andrew Linklater has dedicated part of his career to elaborating a critical and emancipatory research agenda for International Relations. However, his recent research on the restriction of violence in international society, mostly influenced by the English School and by Eliasian Sociology, has pushed Linklater away from an explicit engagement with critical epistemologies and theoretical approaches. Although there is a possibility for close dialogue between these theoretical strands, we claim that Linklater did not articulate these approaches as much as he could have done. Therefore, we make an assessment of his work to discuss some of its epistemological and theoretical inconsistencies. Based on this, we provide a way to bridge Linklater’s initial critical agenda with his most recent analyses on processes of violence restriction and regulation of global harm in the international realm. We argue that by focusing on multiple global processes that contributed to the restriction of violence, Linklater failed to consider the particularities, pitfalls and side-effects of allegedly beneficial processes of violence restriction and, as a result, his work lost critical potential. Accordingly, this article demonstrates how Linklater would benefit from going back to his initial critical agenda to address the limitations of his scholarship on global harm.