Introduction: complexity and the international arena

The influence of complexity theory on the study of international politics has been steadily growing ever since the first seminal accounts of the relevance of non-linear science in the works of James Rosenau (1990; 2003), Lars-Erik Cederman (1997), Robert Jervis (1997), Robert Axelrod (1997) and John Urry (2003). Originating in some of the most significant developments in the natural sciences of the last few decades, the insights, concepts and methods generated by complexity are proving increasingly attractive to scholars and policy-makers grappling with the political transformations and social dynamics of an inter-connected and stubbornly unpredictable world. Thus in 2007 Emilian Kavalski could write in the pages of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs about the emergence of a ‘fifth debate’ in international relations (IR) surrounding the advent of a nascent ‘complex international relations theory’. Our hope in putting together this special issue on ‘Complexity and the International Arena’ is to advance this debate by both engaging scholars already employing complexity in their work and drawing in readers unfamiliar with it or still uncertain of its value. As such, it is important to pre-empt two potential misconceptions that may arise among the latter audience when presented with the claim that a theory drawn from the natural sciences promises to transform the study of global politics. First of all, it is essential to dispel any notion that complexity represents a lapse intonaı̈ve scientismandan illusorydrive for certaintyandmastery.On the contrary, complexity embodies an inherently humble approach that is conscious of the limitations to predictability and control which are built into the very fabric of the world and our positions as observers and actors within it. Hence complexityinformed research seeks to work within such limitations rather than deny them. As Peter Allen argued, ‘Recognising these new “limits to knowledge”, therefore, should not depress us . . . this iswhatmakes life interesting’ (Allen 2001, 42). Nor is complexity an attempt to place the study of human societies under the tutelage of thenatural sciences, but rather it is oneof the conduits throughwhich thepernicious separationbetween these twodomainsofknowledge canbegin tobeovercomeviaa process of mutual exchange that can lay the ground for a ‘new alliance’ between them (Gulbenkian Commission 1996; Prigogine and Stengers 1984). Secondly, one should note that complexity does not constitute a single body of thought or unified theory, either in the natural or social sciences. Complexity is best thought of as the array of concepts, methods and intuitions that emerged piecemeal from an engagement with specific non-linear, adaptive, emergent and/or self-organizing phenomena/problems that revealed the limitations Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 24, Number 1, March 2011