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The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism
Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little
New York
1993
1. Overview
Realism and Neorealism
Since the publication of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (hereafter TIP) in 1979, Neorealism has become a dominant school of thought in International Relations theory. It is no exaggeration to say that TIP shaped much of the theoretical debate during the 1980s, and that positive and negative reactions to it still reverberate in the literature of the 1990s. By developing the idea of a structural explanation for the logic of power politics, Waltz revived the flagging fortunes of the Realist tradition. In the first place, by attempting (albeit unsuccessfully as we shall show later) to place Realism on a secure scientific footing, he generated interest in the philosophical foundations of International Relations theory. It is now beginning to be recognized by analysts such as Ashley (1982), Walker (1987), Wendt (1987), and Spegele (1987) that these foundations are much more complex and eclectic than was previously thought. In the second place, Waltz provided a theoretical framework that proved sufficiently robust for others to apply some empirical cladding. One of the reasons why TIP made such an impact was that it changed the theoretical orientation of the discipline.
His book inspired a critical literature, best exemplified in Robert Keohane ed., Neorealism and its Critics (1986), Spegele "Three Forms of Political Realism" (1987), R. B. J. Walker, "Realism, Change and International Political Theory" (1987), and Alexander E. Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory" (1987). It also gave rise to some interesting attempts at application, including Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (1981), Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (1987), Michael Mandelbaum, The Fate of Nations (1988), Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (1984), and Christensen and Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity" (1990).
In the decade before the appearance of TIP, the hold of post-1945 Realism on the study of international relations had finally looked as if it were about to be broken. From the late 1960s onwards it began to be argued and accepted that the methodology and theory associated with Classical Realism were anachronistic. Cobwebs rather than billiard balls now appeared the appropriate metaphor for international politics and the theoretical foundations of Realism were coming under increasing attack (Burton 1972). At the same time, behavioralists were arguing that, in spite of their insistence on "eternal laws" of international politics, the work of Classical Realists did not satisfy the canons of scientific investigation. Waltz acknowledged that Classical Realism was indeed open to theoretical and methodological attack, but not on the grounds claimed by mainline critics. He insisted that these authors had failed to identify the basis on which international relations could be developed scientifically. Whatever might be its own shortcomings, this critical breadth would ensure that TIP caused heated controversy (Kaplan 1979; Rosecrance 1982).
But it is hard to believe that TIP would have provoked such enduring discussion had it not appeared at a moment peculiarly propitious for a restatement of Realism. At the end of the 1970s, detente gave way to a second Cold War, and advocates of interdependence and transnationalism, still confidently generating explanations premised on the progressive redundancy of force in international relations and the fragmentation of state power, were caught off balance (Keohane and Nye 1977). By contrast, Waltz's theory took the ability of the state to survive as axiomatic. Partly because of the sweeping nature of the attack on the discipline and partly because Waltz's theory resonated with the times, the ideas underpinning TIP circulated very rapidly and Waltz was soon seen to provide a serious challenge to alternative theoretical perspectives. Work emerging from those perspectives in the 1980s in many instances bore traces of theoretical and methodological reassessment deriving from Waltz's critique.
Although Waltz undoubtedly rekindled interest in Realism, he intended in TIP to distance himself from the older traditions of Classical Realism. For this reason he was happy to identify himself as a Neorealist. The older tradition had dominated the theory and practice of international relations after the Second World War when an influential group of writers including Morgenthau, Carr, Aron, Niebuhr, Kennan, Herz, Wight, and Kissinger produced major texts on the subject, with Kissinger going on to become an important decisionmaker. These writers styled themselves as Realists on the grounds that they were willing to look at things as they were rather than how they might like them to be. But TIP provoked two incompatible responses to the marked distinction it created between the Neorealism of Waltz and the Classical Realism of Morgenthau and the others. The first response was to identify a core of ideas common to Classical Realism and Neorealism. For many, Waltz was only the latest contributor to a coherent tradition of thought that could be traced back through Hobbes and Machiavelli to Thucydides. No other tradition of thought in the field of International Relations can begin to compete with the distinguished pedigree claimed for Realism. It is now also possible for specialists in International Relations to draw on an expanding literature in the history of ideas which is in the process of tracing the lineage of realist writers and exploring, for example, the links between Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes, who made the first English translation of The Pelopponesian War (Brown 1987, 1989).
A second and more muted response to the distinction between Classical Realism and Neorealism stressed the disparity between the two schools. Ashley was quick to point out that while the Classical Realists drew on a rich hermeneutic tradition, the Neorealists were relying on an arid and now discredited structuralist tradition. This defiant attack gave way to a much more measured and sympathetic assessment by Walker, who denied, in the first place, that there was a coherent theoretical position running through political Realism. Instead, he depicted Realism as the site for some of the most significant philosophical debates in Western political thought: more battlefield than school. The contemporary divide between Classical Realism and Neorealism appeared, in this view, to be no more than the latest stage in a continuing debate that could be traced back to arguments amongst Greek political thinkers about the relationship between identity and difference.
Walker observed how the Classical Realists had focused on the constant flux of political reality and stressed the contingent nature of political events. The Classical Realists, as a result, were regarded as predisposed to a historical approach to analysis. They accepted that the nature of social reality could undergo fundamental change and that the world could be understood only by examining the evolving practices of social actors. By contrast, Walker argued, Neorealists saw a more stable and structured reality, where social action was amenable to scientific analysis. Walker concluded that, without dismissing the importance of social structures, it was vital to give priority to the social practices responsible for bringing them into being in the first place. From this perspective, therefore, agency is privileged over structure. Walker's justification for his position needs to be more fully worked out because the complex and contentious relationship between agency and structure has now become quite a central theme in the social sciences (Cerney 1990, Clegg 1989, Layder 1989). The issue is examined in more depth in chapter 6. What is worth stressing here is that the dual response to Waltz has begun a post-Neorealist debate characterized by a three-way tension between structure, agency, and historical contingency.
Those most sensitive to the internal inconsistencies and eclectic character of Realism have stressed the need to look carefully at both Classical Realism and Neorealism. Neither is considered to provide an adequate foundation on which to build a theory of international relations. They have argued, as we will, that the foundations of Realism need to be extended (Spegele 1987; Walker 1987). But so far this has been very much a minority response. As Walker makes clear, it is much more common in the discipline simply to gloss over the tensions that exist within Realist writings, appealing to a continuing broad consensus.
As noted earlier, the agreed tenets of Realism have been articulated on many occasions during the 1980s. Often this was done to distinguish Realism from the brand of neoliberalism or new institutionalism which had become its major contender. Oversimplifying somewhat, it is usually argued that Realists focus on conflict within the international system while neoliberals stress cooperation. The next step is often to suggest the need to integrate or reconcile the two approaches (Niou and Odershook 1991), a process already visible in the work of writers such as Keohane and Gilpin. In fact, a clear distinction between the two can be sustained only by defining Realism in very narrow terms. The difficulty becomes apparent when attention is focused, for example, on the work of Hedley Bull (1977), who describes the anarchic international system in terms of a rule-governed society. The emphasis on anarchy is seen to place him in the Realist camp, whereas his emphasis on rules has meant that he is also rightly associated with the new institutionalists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the literature in International Relations at this juncture often seems confused.
This confusion may in part account for frequent complaints of lack of progress. Many International Relations theorists have claimed that the discipline has lost its sense of direction and is in a state of disarray (Holsti 1985:1-2; Ferguson and Mansbach 1988; Onuf 1989:8). Reactions to this assessment have varied. One has been to argue that the discipline has been overambitious and that the quest for rigorous theory was misguided (Ferguson and Mansbach 1988). Another has been to insist that the proliferation of contrasting approaches should be seen as a necessary and desirable consequence of the demise of positivism and the emergence of a post-positivist era. Any complex social reality, it is argued, needs to be seen from a variety of divergent perspectives. But Lapid, who has developed this argument, surely displays a closet positivism when he concludes that as epistemology advances we will move toward a better and more coherent understanding of social reality (Lapid 1989). A third response has been to argue that the loss of direction experienced in International Relations has occurred because the discipline as a whole has been working on an erroneous premise. It is denied that anarchy is the central and defining feature of international relations (Onuf 1990:14). Onuf has developed a sophisticated attack on the use made by International Relations theorists of anarchy, which he sees as an empty concept. His attack threatens the very foundations of the Neorealist framework by dissolving the distinction between International Relations and Political Science.
TIP as a Staarting Point for a Theory of International Relations
Given the confusion and conflicting positions in International Relations, it is necessary to explain why we have decided to use TIP as a jumping off point rather than beginning from a broader conspectus or starting from scratch. In general, we took the view that it is better to focus debate on a real representative figure, and on widely read texts, than to hack away at some amorphous composite labeled Neorealism, where private interpretations would inevitably sow the seeds of misunderstanding. Waltz filled this bill nicely. More specific motives for working thorough TIP lay partly in the attractions of some of Waltz's fundamental definitions, and partly in dissatisfaction with his theory and his critics. Like Waltz we accept that International Relations constitutes a legitimate and independent field of inquiry. Our discipline confronts the uniquely difficult question of how to theorize the totality of intersocietal relations in all their forms. Although we disagree with many of Waltz's positions on epistemology, structure, and consequence, we take the view that his basic conception of structure offers a solid foundation for this task. It is attractive both because of the penetration of Waltz's original insight into structure, and because it provides an intellectual framework that has become part of the standard equipment of the profession. For more than a decade TIP has been shot at, embellished, misunderstood, and caricatured, but never quite displaced. We think it is now time to build a new structural theory of international relations to replace TIP, but acknowledge that Waltz's work still provides some of the foundations for this enterprise.
Along with many of his critics, we are not entirely satisfied with Waltz. We find flaws in his logic, epistemology, and conceptualization of the field. We find him taking an unnecessarily narrow, static, and political perspective on what can and should be a much more comprehensive theory of international relations. We chafe at an ahistorical approach to theory. Our dissatisfaction with his critics stems from their misunderstandings of TIP, from their own very different, but equally obstructive, flaws and obscurantism in logic, epistemology, and vocabulary, and from the preponderance of destructive over constructive criticism.
As we have already noted, there have been attempts to apply Waltz's theory, attempts to debunk it, and some sympathetically critical attempts to defend it. But so far there has been surprisingly little sustained attempt to develop it. This book is not, like the 1986 Keohane volume, a collection of disparate commentaries. It is a systematic attempt to rebuild Structural Realism along much more open lines than Waltz's project, and to begin extending its logical framework outward to link up with other areas of International Relations theory. It dismantles and redesigns the philosophical framework of Waltz's analogy with economics, and opens up the historical and sociological dimensions of structuralist thinking about the international system. We want to identify the useful core of Neorealist theory, and then use it as a foundation on which to construct a more solid and wider-ranging Structural Realism.
We appreciate that "structuralism," even more than "realism" itself, is a word drained of energy by excessive use. It is possible, at one extreme, to make reference to structural functionalism as developed by Talcott Parsons in the 1950s, and, at the other, to the poststructuralism of the more recent past. There can be no question of surveying the complex history of structuralism here. Those in search of a more comprehensive introduction should turn to Lane (1970), Robey (1973), or Skinner (1985). But the thread which runs through the twentieth-century preoccupation with structure is a belief that to understand human behavior it is necessary to transcend the self-conceptions and conscious motives of the individuals under investigation. All structuralists have believed, in some way or another, that they had gained access to a level of understanding that is superior to anything offered by the human "objects" under investigation, and that offered, in addition, a causal theory of aspects of human behavior sufficient to justify some form of therapeutic intervention or social engineering. What you cannot immediately perceive in your unconscious mind might be reached by Freudian analysis; what formerly appeared to be one damned thing after another can be seen by the Marxist as the dialectical unfolding of an orderly human history based in material conditions, to be helped upon its way by conscious political action. There is, in short, a broad family resemblance between Freud, Darwin, Marx, Classical economics, and linguistics after Saussure.
For the natural scientist, the claim that there may be some order of a general nature beneath the flux of appearances is routine and relatively unproblematic. But it has long provoked fierce debate among social scientists. On one side, those working in hermeneutic and historicist traditions have believed it fallacious to search for any objective general theory of society. To do so, they insist, necessarily involves moving away from how social action is understood within a specific group. Moves of this kind are attributed to inappropriate pursuit of the style of explanation proper to the natural sciences. There it is perfectly acceptable to assume, say, that the behavior of a molecule has no intrinsic meaning. Investigators may attach whatever meaning they find useful and consistent with experience. In the search for general theory, it is argued, social behavior is necessarily treated as though it were reducible to physical movement. Its essential meaning, as intentional action, is thereby lost.
Structuralists, by contrast, insist that social science must move beyond self-conceptions and motives because individuals are constrained by structural forces over which they have no control and of which they may possess no knowledge. Language provides a classic example often used to illustrate this point. In linguistics, it is invariably accepted that no individual or group of individuals ever sat down to construct and then impose the grammatical rules that establish the structure of language. Indeed, when we apply such rules, we may not be aware that we are doing so; nevertheless, these rules constrain us at every point when we endeavor to communicate verbally. It is further argued by some that beneath the surface structure of grammar, which varies from one language to another, there is a genetically coded deep structure that ensures we can all use the grammatical rules of the language we first encounter. It would appear that the act of speech draws on the deep structure and thereby reproduces the surface structure of language.
Using language as a metaphor for society, it is often suggested that although surface rules, sometimes also denoted as structures, may diverge markedly from one society to another, there is a deeper set of structures that accounts for how these surface rules are reproduced. Surface structures may play an important role in the description of society, but to explain how these structures are reproduced it is necessary to identify the existence of deep structures which provide the "underlying generative mechanisms which give rise to certain observable manifestations" (Layder 1981:3). Briefly, international law and diplomatic procedures are seen, in a structuralist approach to international relations, as surface structures dependent for their reproduction on the bare bones of an anarchic state system.
Much more might be said about structuralism as a movement in twentieth-century social science. Part of the reason for the controversy surrounding TIP has indeed been that Waltz advanced a structuralist theory of international politics at a point when many considered structuralism to have been buried under the weight of critical literature. We remain committed to a form of structuralism that we have called Structural Realism. But it is a form of structuralism that hopes to retain the explanatory power of radical abstraction in social science while avoiding the role structuralist theories have traditionally played in extending to the therapist, the policymaker, and social engineers of every kind a spurious legitimacy for their will to power. Instead, it will be argued here that it is necessary to find some means of reconciling the hermeneutic and the structuralist traditions. Proposals for integration developed by Giddens and others will be explored and modified. It will be claimed that, in the international system, structure and agent are mutually constitutive.
At this point some clarification of terms is in order. Waltz adopts the term "Neorealism" to label his own position, preferring it to "Structural Realism" (1990:29). This usage of "Neorealism" to encapsulate Waltz's theory is widely understood and accepted as indicating both his continuity with, and distinctiveness from, the "Classical" Realism of Carr and Morgenthau (Keohane 1986:15-16). We intend to respect it. Keohane prefers "Structural Realism," but uses it merely as a synonym for "Neorealism" (1986: 17, 160). This seems wasteful. Our intention is to reserve "Neorealism" for Waltz's narrow theory of international politics but take "Structural Realism" as our label for the much more wide-ranging theory of international relations we intend to construct. "Neorealism" emphasizes backward-looking links to "Classical" antecedents: it bespeaks simply a new, or renewed, Realism. The term "Structural Realism" more accurately emphasizes the method that lies at the heart of the new theory. The distinction between Structural Realism and Neorealism can be clarified in a preliminary manner by looking at the commonly accepted tenets of Realism. Gilpin (in Keohane 1986:304-5) suggests that three assumptions about political life are common to all Realists:
Keohane (1986:164-65) identifies the following hard core assumptions of Classical (i.e. mid-twentieth century) Realism:
Waltz builds a structural approach on the primacy of conflict groups or states, and uses this to generate the other assumptions. This innovation eliminates the problematic necessity to found Realism in conservative assumptions about human nature and the nature of states ultimately rooted in early modern philosophical psychologies promoted by Descartes and Hobbes. It moderates the power motive (though not the conflict assumption) by emphasizing security, and hugely simplifies and clarifies the logic of power politics.
Both Classical and Neorealists also assert the autonomy of the political from the economic and the societal and seek to construct theories on that basis (Morgenthau 1978:5-8; Waltz 1990:24-29). Waltz is particularly insistent on this point: "Theory isolates one realm from all others in order to deal with it intellectually. To isolate a realm is a precondition to developing a theory that will explain what goes on within it. . . neorealism establishes the autonomy of international politics and thus makes a theory about it possible" (Waltz 1990:26, 29). Note the pointed title of his book: Theory of International Politics. While we would dissent from the conventionalism of this view we, too, wish to argue for the primacy of the political.
Robert Cox (in Keohane 1986:211-14) sees Neorealism as an American phenomenon reflecting the particular conditions of the Cold War. He argues that Neorealism uses the power, rationality, and structural assumptions to construct an ahistorical mode of thought. By doing this it commits the error of "taking a form of thought derived from a particular phase of history (and thus from a particular structure of social relations) and assuming it to be universally valid." Similar objections to Waltz's delinking of structure and history are made by Walker (1987). How does Structural Realism differ from this, and what continuities remain to justify the continued association with Realism?
Three elements mark Structural Realism as an extension of the Realist tradition. First is a continued insistence on the primacy of the political sphere. By this we mean that the anarchic political structure of the international system is to be regarded, in terms that will be developed in Section III, as a necessary rather than a contingent anarchy. Primacy, however is not privilege. We do not say that anarchy is ineradicable or that politics trumps economics, ideology, or any other facet of society. Quite the contrary. Section III argues that the primacy of the international-political can best be developed and humanized by dropping older Realist claims for the superiority of political over economic competition or rival systems of belief, realms every bit as anarchic as the world of international politics. This approach retains the possibility of meaningful argument by analogy between different social sciences, and hence facilitates the formulation of a theory of international relations that avoids isolationism and confinement to the political. However, it does draw attention to the ultimate need to ground such analogies in real structural resemblance rather than notions of supposed theoretical maturity or superiority, and it suggests that the safest way to proceed toward this goal is to accept rather than suppress the rhetoric of the social sciences, the necessarily rhetorical character of any analogy, and the influence of such rhetorical devices upon policymakers. Very much in the tradition of Carr, we allow "power over opinion" back in. Very much at odds with Waltz, we deny the reducibility of all forms of power to political power.
The second feature which places Structural Realism in the broad Realist tradition is its focus on the state as the most important defining unit of the international system. Once again we want to emphasize that this neither closes the theory to other units nor constitutes a privileging of the political. States, contrary to the purest ideals of liberalism, have always exerted power in manifold forms.
Third is the acceptance of Waltz's basic definitional framework for international structure, albeit with very substantial changes to his specific formulation. These three elements are closely interlinked. The Waltzian notion of structure is, as has often been pointed out, derived from the units. It is not, as in some of the more metaphysical versions of structuralism in linguistics, a preexisting force that generates the units and interactions. Rather it is generated by the interaction and arrangement of the units. This close linkage between units and structure not only defines the continuity between Structural Realism and the traditional Realist assumptions, but also opens the way to a much more fully systemic and multisectoral theory than that offered by Neorealism.
There are three key differences between Structural Realism and Neorealism. First is that a much more comprehensive and more open definition of structure is deployed, and one that can be applied well beyond the confines of the political sector. Second is that structure is not seen as the only systemic-level factor in play. Key elements of interaction also have a systemic quality, and one that radically affects the development and consequence of structure. These arguments are elaborated in Sections I and II. They affirm the centrality of anarchic structure and security motives, but they do not always or necessarily generate a dominating logic of power politics. Pursuit of their logic involves a multisectoral approach to the nature of international interactions. Third is that Structural Realism does not rest on the positivistic analogy with microeconomics that informs Waltz's theory. It uses instead a more linguistic approach to analogy, developed in Section III.
The combined effect of these differences opens four possibilities not available to Neorealism. First is that structure becomes a way of addressing history, and not something detached from it. We aim to meet both of Cox's charges by presenting a structuralism that is neither slave to nor master of a particular historical period, and can engage with all of human history. Crucial to this is the second possibility, which allows the explicit linkage of units and structure through the logic of structuration. The redefinition of deep structure undertaken in Section I and unfolded in Section II leads to the third possibility, which is to break out of the narrow logic of political interaction that dominates Neorealism and to look at the whole range of interactions (economic, societal, environmental, as well as military and political) that have shaped both the units and the structures of the international system. A fourth possibility, arising out of our revision of the philosophical posture of Realism, is to facilitate a clearer understanding of the relationship between the study and the practice of international relations by exposing the rhetorical character of discourse, academic as well as official, which can then be seen to be action as much as or more than knowledge. We will argue in Section III that a position of this kind can be maintained in conjunction with a philosophically realist methodological position which mitigates the binds of relativism and reflexivity that have restricted so much self-proclaimed postmodernist and poststructuralist work.
In our view, structural logic leads much more naturally to the discussion of history, including contemporary history, than to the detailed discussion of current policy. By definition, structural logic is at a higher and more abstract level of analysis than specific policy questions. Structural logic can certainly be used to shape and inform the analysis of foreign and domestic policy, as we try to show, but it is mostly too abstract and large scale to be used prescriptively. Between history, especially grand history, and structural analysis, the levels are much better matched. Our Structural Realism offers a synthetic method in which structure can be used to interpret history, and in which history is necessary to understanding the consequences of structure.
The task of developing a theory of Structural Realism needs itself to be set into context. Both the historical and the intellectual milieus for this enterprise are strikingly different from those prevailing when Waltz wrote during the late 1970s. The historical context for TIP was a confrontational world, dominated by the Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, and heavily shaped by configurations of opposed ideology and military power. It was a world fixed by the historically unusual bipolar structure. Despite worries about American decline, this structure had enjoyed a remarkable continuity, and looked set to continue for the forseeable future. It did indeed roll on largely undisturbed for another decade. Its end in 1989-90 came swiftly, and took most observers by surprise.
The historical context for Logic of Anarchy (hereafter LoA) is much more open. The collapsing power, ideology, and political framework of the Soviet Union, and the growing cohesion of the European Community, have opened the way, not toward a unipolar system but toward the more traditional multipolar structure. This time, however, multipolarity is occurring on a truly planetary scale, and there are strong signs that the substantial ideological harmony among the major powers will serve as the foundation for something like a global concert. Military power has lost prominence as the key shaper of international relations among most of the great powers, though as the second Gulf War illustrated, not among the states of the periphery, or between them and the core powers. Economic, environmental and societal factors have risen in importance. The United States is worried less about its military and more about its economic competitiveness, and the ideological landscape is dominated by the relative success of market economics and pluralist politics.
TIP thus spoke to a world whose problem was how to manage a continuing Cold War. LoA speaks to a world whose problem is how to manage a twenty-first century and third millennium international system in which there is more change than continuity, and in which there is a lack of clear vision about both structure and direction.
As noted above, the intellectual context of TIP was set by a vigorous academic assault on the Classical Realism of Morgenthau coming from those concerned with interdependence, political economy, and transnational relations. A brief recapitulation of that story is necessary to contrast the contexts in which TIP and LoA were written. The assault included an attack on the centrality of the state and military power in Realist thinking, accused Realism of being unable to deal with either the issues or the character of international politics in an interdependent world, and denounced the logic and the morality of its normative bias toward conflictual assumptions. Among other things, all of this was in part aimed at reducing the status of American power, adding to Realist worries about the loss of American nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. There was also a pervasive fashion for "science" in the form of positivist methods left over from the behavioral "revolution" of the 1960s.
TIP was the most successful of the Realist counterattacks in this intellectual joust. It reasserted the logic of power politics on firmer foundations than Morgenthau's resort to human nature, and it exposed the partiality of the interdependence view of international relations. It also reaffirmed the primacy of American power in the international system. Indeed, almost the entire last third of TIP is taken up with these rather polemical issues. Chapter 7 is preoccupied with rebuffing the thesis of rising interdependence, while chapters 8 and 9 are largely concerned with the virtues of the United States' role in a bipolar system. These concerns go some way to explaining both the wide interest in Waltz's theory and why its operational side, which is ostensibly what these chapters are about, seems relatively poorly developed and eccentric.
By contrast, the intellectual context of LoA is considerably less burdened. The advocates of power and interdependence have by and large made their peace, so that the two concepts are now generally seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. It is no longer odd to talk of writers such as Gilpin, Keohane, and Strange in terms of a Realist International Political Economy. The epistemological straitjacket of empiricism has been loosened, and the field is now informed as well by more philosophically open tendencies. Neorealism has established a secure place despite continuing dissatisfactions with it, and a fair measure of downright hostility. Its preoccupation with anarchy as the central political condition of international relations has been widely taken up in writings about cooperation theory, game theory, regimes, and international society.
Although concern with American decline is still on the academic agenda, it is not on ours. We write from outside the United States, and we have no interest in becoming part of an Anglo-Saxon tradition that stretches from E.H. Carr to Kenneth Waltz, in which theoretical discourse is used to mask prescriptive arguments about the contemporary policy problems of hegemonic powers, respectively Britain and the United States. To the extent that it is possible, our aim is to use this period of relative historical openness and intellectual calm to push forward the development of Structural Realism as a coherent theory of the international system. Any hidden policy agenda in this book is hidden as much or more from its authors as from its readers. We try to make explicit the extent that advocacy of any form of Realism is in itself a political position.
The Structure of the Book
The book consists of three main sections and a conclusion. The main sections are closely interlinked, but they do not form a cumulative linear progression of argument. Instead they form a series of complementary excursions, each spiraling outward from the same core. Each Section uses Waltz's text as a starting point, demolishing, rebuilding, and adding as necessary, and then building outward from the new core in such a way as to integrate other areas of International Relations theory into Structural Realism. It is the common critical relationship to TIP, and the common purpose of constructing a more comprehensive and better founded structural theory that unites them. Because the three sections start from different parts of Waltz's theory, and are aimed at different areas of International Relations theory, they necessarily differ markedly in style and approach. Their purpose is to construct a series of widenings each developing from a different part of a common center, and connecting to diverse areas of theory.
Section I begins with a detailed exegesis of Waltz's structural theory (principally chapters 5 and 6 of TIP). Buzan reconstructs the central logic and vocabulary, examines flaws and criticisms within the theory, and misunderstandings of it, and develops some key reformulations and extensions. In particular, he argues for a major revision to the definition of deep structure, the refurbishment and reintegration of the unit level, and the addition of a wholly new interaction component to the theory. With these additions, Neorealism becomes Structural Realism, making connections with the literatures of international political economy, interdependence, international history, international society/regimes and strategic studies.
Section II takes off from the revised definition of deep structure in Section I, and pursues the logic of the Ruggie/Buzan amendment to Waltz's second tier of structure. The two Sections are thus closely connected, but in Section II Little moves considerably further away from Neorealism. He reconstructs the theory not only in the light of international history and world system theory, but more particularly in terms of the agent-structure debate, and recent literature on the structuration approach to social systems. This approach exposes an implicit theory of the state in TIP, and demonstrates, in line with structuration thinking, that the state and the international system are mutually constitutive. This insight makes it possible to overcome Waltz's ahistorical assessment of the anarchic system, and to establish the historical credentials of Structural--or possibly Structurational 1 --Realism. It also opens the way to a systematic linking of the unit and structure levels of analysis, revising the structural framework so as to expand its potential for interpreting both continuity and transformation in the international system. The expansion and contraction of the Roman Empire is used as a case study to illustrate the circumstances under which system transformation takes place, and to exemplify the historico-structural method of analysis.
Section III starts not from Waltz's theory as such, but from the methodological prologue offered in chapters 1-4, and less directly 7, of TIP. It might logically have been placed as the first Section, but this would have forgone the benefits of opening with an exegesis, and thrown readers straight in at the deep end. Coming last, its purposes are to investigate the alleged positivism of Neorealist theory and to criticize the analogy between balance of power and microeconomic theory that informs Waltz's approach. Jones then proceeds from this critique to reconstruct on firmer ground the philosophical foundations on which Structural Realism stands, and on which the arguments in Sections I and II ultimately rest. He seeks a more open and plausible basis for relating economic theory to international relations by way of metaphor and postmodern methods of analysis. He offers a restatement of international political economy in Structural Realist terms, focusing particularly on the implications of a distinction drawn between necessary and contingent anarchies, and on the disaggregation of power.
The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments, and sets out the implication of these discussions for the application and further development of a Structural Realist theory of International Relations. We outline research programs suggested by the arguments in the three main Sections, drawing particular attention to the need for further thinking about: how systems are defined; how functional differentiation can be operationalized; and how the full dynamics of a system can affect the relationship between units and structure. We do not pretend to be offering a fully developed theory of international relations. What we hope we have accomplished is to have laid the foundations for such a theory, to have built, and in a few cases occupied, some of the lower floors, and to have indicated the main lines along which the construction transformation takes place, and to exemplifmight be continued.
Note 1: We are grateful to Morten Kelstrup for this idea. Back.
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