‘Baleful Influence’: A Conceptual Analysis of Militarism

Militarism, broadly defined as a set of social practices that highlight the utility of organized violence, plays a central role in global security and military affairs. Yet International Relations (IR) research has long struggled with militarism. This paper considers the capacity of existing conceptual and methodological approaches to engage with the concept, in turn assessing militarism’s candidacy to become a ‘core concept’ in the field. We first highlight the diverse and evolving usage of the concept of militarism over time and across different knowledge forms. From there we move on to examine key tensions within IR accounts, suggesting that ‘historical,’ ‘scientific,’ and ‘political’ approaches stand to gain from a more rigorous engagement with each other. We conclude with an appeal for sustained attention to militarism as concept and its historical and political dimensions in particular.