International Relations — The ‘Higher Bullshit’: A Reply to the Globalization Theory Debate Justin Rosenberg Department of IR and Politics, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK. E-mail: J.P.Rosenberg@sussex.ac.uk This article replies to an earlier forum (International Politics (42.3) on ‘Globalization Theory: a Post Mortem’. Whereas the ’Post Mortem’ had criticized Globalization Theory largely for its neglect of Classical Social Theory’s achievements, the current paper emphasizes its reproduction of one of Classical Social Theory’s greatest limitations: the failure to incorporate ‘the international’ into its theorization of historical development. This limitation, it is argued, may be overcome using the idea of ’uneven and combined development’, an idea which is first reformulated (in order to re-connect the premises of social and international theory), and then used as a vantage point from which to respond to criticisms of the ‘Post Mortem’. ‘The international’, it turns out, is not the fading reality postulated by Globalization Theory but rather a fundamental dimension of social existence that IR, uniquely among the social sciences, encounters as its core subject matter. InternationalPolitics (2007) 44, 450–482. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800200 Keywords: globalization theory; uneven and combined development; the interna- tional; historical sociology Introduction Some years ago, when I began teaching at LSE, the Master’s level international theory lectures were in the capable hands of the late Philip Windsor. Eager to learn the ropes, I asked him one day whether I might attend. To my surprise, he told me that, as a matter of courtesy among colleagues, such mutual surveillance was not encouraged. Undeterred, I asked whether, in that case, he could at least tell me something of what was in the lectures, for I was curious to know how he framed the subject. ‘Oh, you know’, came the laconic reply: ‘it’s the higher bullshit.’ There the conversation ended. Yet in my memory it gradually took on an intellectual life of its own. For despite Windsor’s self-deprecating irony, the phrase ‘higher bullshit’ had conjured up in my mind a prospect which has, over time, preoccupied me more and more: the idea that there exists a level of reflection at which the particular theoretical categories of International Relations (IR) can be resolved into a more general, ‘supradisciplinary’ idiom, International Politics, 2007, 44, (450–482) r 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1384-5748/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/ip