The tripartite structure of critical international theory

Abstract The breakdown of liberal hegemony, the rise of the New Right, and the violent realignment of world order have been accompanied by a retreat from traditional humanist concerns in critical international theory, including emancipation, political subjectivity, social totality, universal history, and the anticipatory-utopian dimension of critique. Scholars have identified numerous shortcomings in first-generation and contemporary critical International Relations (IR), and our discipline still questions its purpose and object of study. This article proposes a more radical and realistic approach to critical international theory based on a reappraisal of Andrew Linklater’s oeuvre. It frames the critical project in IR as a Lakatosian research programme and calls for a progressive problem shift that foregrounds what Linklater, drawing from Kant and Marx, calls the necessarily tripartite structure of critical theory. I argue that by tracing an alternative path through classical sources of the tradition, pivoting from Hegel and the deep social relationalism that follows, while integrating a tripartite commitment with a more rigorous reflexive methodology, we can revitalise the emancipatory approach to IR and provide renewed purpose and direction to the discipline. Grounded in a left-Hegelian tradition of thought, the argument aspires to resonate with other critical theoretical traditions both within and beyond IR.