A Reply to My Critics

First of all, thanks are due to Jonathan Havercroft for extending the invitation to discuss A Theory of Contestation at the “Author Meets Critics” panel at the American Political Science Association meeting in San Francisco in 2015, and for subsequently putting together this symposium. Needless to say, I am also incredibly thankful and humbled by the serious engagement and the exceedingly insightful and thought-provoking comments offered by the symposium’s other contributors. All critics engage with gusto in contestation themselves, a practice, Sasikumar Sundaram astutely notes, that is a sine qua non for legitimately advancing and probing academic progress. If this sensitizing effect holds for a wider readership, my small book’s goal of engaging interdisciplinary scholarship towards developing a concise research program on norm contestation is more than met. I had conceived of A Theory of Contestation as a think piece during a writing retreat in order to step back, pause, and think. This seemed important within a context of international relations theory that was set by breathless theorizing about methods that often remained somewhat detached from larger questions of global governance. For example, should academics feel a responsibility towards engaging with governance outside academia—a question that James Tully’s Public Philosophy in a New Key centrally addresses, and which Markus Kornprobst