IR Theorists, the World and Fiction: Making Sense of Some Recent Criticism of Game of Thrones

Not an IR Theorist

By Péter MARTON

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A few quick notes on this recent article in Foreign Policy, about "IR Theory and the Game of Thrones", in response to some bits and pieces of it that are noteworthy mostly in a negative sense.

The author of the article is Paul Musgrave, a professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is setting out to criticise IR Theory (International Relations Theory) as well as Game of Thrones for some of the same things, including (mostly) their narrow reading and consequent misrepresentation of European history as a never-ending battle royale amongst sovereigns, the soverign-like and aspirant sovereigns.

This is an interesting undertaking, reason number one being that IR Theory is a set of largely deductive theories about the way the relationships of states might function, and if deductive sounds like a difficult word here, read autistic in its stead for shock effect: there is a loose and vague relationship between these theories and empirical reality. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, is a work of fiction about feuding contenders for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms that was partly, but only partly, inspired by George RR Martin's study of some Wars of the Roses and other history. Religion, social class, family ties, ideologies, cultural norms, institutions, individual personality traits and tactical as well as strategic choices all play a role in determining outcomes in the story beside armies, dragons and (last but not least) Martin's imagination. Musgrave's claim is, therefore, that apples are similar to oranges. No, wait, it's worse: it is rather like saying that elephants (in the plural) are similar to a particular giraffe. See, that is what I mean by interesting.

If you are intrigued as to where this monumentally flawed exercise reveals itself to be a completely and utterly derailed train of thought, consider just the following two quotes from the text.

"If I can speak against my tribe, on the whole we are pretty bad at doing history for the same reasons that we are better at doing theory than are historians."

This is an age-old and extremely arrogant claim by some IR Theorists who do not do their homework on their cases, and they use it exactly to escape having to do their homework on their cases. They rush to justify their theories with whatever they can quickly grab hold of. And this is not to deny that many historians fail to appreciate the bigger picture sometimes. No. But to say that one is "good at theory" at the slight cost of ignoring reality is akin to saying that it's alright to go crazy if you have visions. Or to saying that it is a scientific merit if one is good at making shit up. (By the way, in different words others have made this point before me -- but people discussing IR Theory often do not listen at all and my suspicion is that they do this on purpose, making a living out of this.)

"Comparatively few international relations scholars wanted to go into detail about how the show was inaccurate."

Let us repeat then that Game of Thrones is a piece of fiction. Unlike IR Theorists, George Martin never aspired to tell us a story of what happened in our past or what we should generally expect in the world of politics (there is a decent amount of political philosophy in GoT, mostly to reflect the very different worldviews of the characters, but even when its function is chiefly to develop a character, it is actually much more subtle than what is given credit for in Musgrave's piece). Saying that fiction is wrong is a little on the crazy side again. It reminds me of the discussions by some people of "how Game of Thrones treats women," in response to which a sensible user of the interwebz once pointed out that Game of Thrones treats everybody rather harshly regardless of gender. 

If I would have to supply the vocabulary and the phrases for the kind of criticism that may have been meant by Musgrave, I would simply say in more pragmatic terms that one has to take a step back after seeing (or, much better yet: reading!) Game of Thrones. People should keep in mind that as a piece of fiction GoT seeks to entertain, and so it condenses a lot of action and drama into its timeframe. So depending on whether you're interested in House Lannister or the House of Lancaster, you will need to consult very different sources offering very different contents.

Of course, saying something like this wouldn't be very polemical. Maybe it wouldn't be published in Foreign Policy then. But maybe it would make a lot more sense.

Oh, the tragedy of this world. So much is getting written simply because that is what can be published and not because that is what makes any sense. Fortunately, this is not at all true of Game of Thrones, i.e. A Song of Ice and Fire.