Logics of mind and international system: a journey with Robert Jervis

Abstract

The following exchange builds upon, and reassesses, the intellectual trajectory of Robert Jervis since The Logic of Images. It is organised around three interrelated sections that, tentatively, squeeze out the gist of Jervis' contribution to IR during his three and half decades of remarkable scholarship. The purpose, however, is not to offer a comprehensive view of Jervis' work; instead I want to set signposts that will help us get smoothly into his ‘system of thought’ and substantiate the salience of his account. In the first section, we concentrate on issues of images and (mis)perceptions. Here, Jervis reasserts that political psychology, a crucial site of relevance of actors' behaviour, is perfectly amenable to a rigorous analysis, and should thus be granted a pivotal role in understanding the dynamics of world politics. Insights of political psychology, with their various implications, are taken up into the next section, the rationale of which is to dialogically sketch out the paradoxical ethos of deterrence theory. The third section, on complexity theory, brings forward the breadth of Jervis's reorientation, characterised by a systematic integration of various ideas that have been at the centre of his endeavour since the 1980s. We use contemporary world politics as a thread that connects the aforementioned segments of the discussion and thereby gives the journey its overall coherence.