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The realism of Realism: the state and the study of International Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Alan James
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Extract

On the face of it, the title of this article must look rather odd, especially to any non-specialist who happens to light upon it. For ‘Realism’ surely connotes enterprises and appraisals of a realistic kind, ones which take full account of the facts and constraints of life. Accordingly, it might well be thought clearly superfluous to assert that such things, already identified as realistic, are indeed so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 215 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. See, generally, Keohane, Robert O. (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York, 1986).Google Scholar The editor focuses on Kenneth N. Waltz as a leading neorealist (p. 15), and a number of chapters from Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass., 1979), are reproduced in the book.

2. See Vasquez, John A., The Power of Power Politics (London, 1983), p. 18.Google Scholar Compare Mansbach, Richard W. and Vasquez, John A., In Search of Theory. A New Paradigm for Global Politics (New York, 1981), p. 5.Google Scholar The ‘leading writers and their most influential work’ (p. 16) who provide the basis for Vasquez's analyses are: Schuman, Frederick, International Politics (1933);Google ScholarNicolson, Harold, Diplomacy (1939);Google ScholarCarr, E. H., The Twenty Years Crisis (1939);Google ScholarNiebuhr, Reinhold, Christianity and Power Politics (1940);Google ScholarSchwarzenberger, Georg, Power Politics (1941);Google ScholarSpykman, Nicholas, America's Strategy in World Politics (1942);Google ScholarWight, Martin, Power Politics (1946);Google ScholarMorgenthau, Hans J., Politics among Nations (1948);Google ScholarKennan, George F., American Diplomacy (1952);Google Scholar and Butterfield, Herbert, Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1953).Google Scholar

3. For a recent instance of the view that the two sets of assumptions are one set of interlinked assumptions, see Groom, A. J. R., ‘Paradigms in Conflict: the strategist, the conflict researcher and the peace researcher’, Review of International Studies, xiv, No. 2 (1988),Google Scholar who at p. 98 says that ‘The realist approach is based on the assertion that the study of international relations is primarily concerned with inter-state relations’, and at p. 101 that ‘Realists view all politics as being necessarily power polities’.

4. For an elaboration of this point, see the writer's ‘Power Polities’, Political Studies, xii, No. 3 (1964), pp. 307–326.Google Scholar

5. See Keohane, R. O. and Nye, J. S., ‘Introduction’, International Organization, xxviii, No. 4 (1974),Google Scholar where they refer in a critical vein to the two ‘powerful simplifying assumptions’ (p. 595) which are made by most analyses of world politics and international organization, one of which is that governments (used, it seems, synonymously with states) are unitary actors. Compare Merle, Marcel, The Sociology of International Relations (Leamington Spa, 1987),Google Scholar who says that the ‘reduction of international affairs to the mere relationships between identical and interchangeable states is a ludicrous over-simplification’: p. 363.

6. This reference to rationality refers to a mode of state behaviour, to a way of taking decisions. It must be distinguished from what Martin Wight called Rationalism, which is one way of looking at and understanding international relations. See, generally, Porter, Brian, ‘Patterns of Thought and Practice: Martin Wight's “International Theory”’ in Donelan, Michael (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978), pp. 64–74.Google Scholar Wight's Rationalism is an alternative to the second set of assumptions about Realism, referred to above at p. 216. For an attack on the rationality which is inherent in the Realist position, see Banks, Michael, ‘Where are we now?’ Review of international Studies, xi, No. 3 (1985), p. 224.Google Scholar

7. For an early criticism of the billiard ball approach see Wolfers, Arnold, ‘The Actors in International Polities‘, in Fox, William T. R. (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of International Relations (Notre Dame, Ind., 1959), pp. 83–106.Google Scholar See also Groom, A. J. R., British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons (London, 1974)Google Scholar who says that ‘The old view was that the study of international relations was primarily concerned with inter-state relations’; goes on to refer to the billiard ball analogy; and declares that ‘This concept has been under challenge for more than a decade, and the challenge has been successful’ (p. viii). See also Walker, R. B. J., who refers to the billiard ball approach as one of the ‘worst caricatures’ of the state: ‘The territorial state and the theme of Gulliver’, International Journal, xxxix (1984), p. 531.Google Scholar

8. See Reynolds, David, ‘A “special relationship”? America, Britain and the international order since the Second World War’, International Affairs, lxii, No. 1 (1985/6),Google Scholar where he refers to the danger of talking of states ‘as if they are “unitary, purposive actors”, without attention t o domestic politics, bureaucratic interplay and the impact of “opinion makers” and the “foreign policy public”‘. That he adopts an either/or position on this matter is made clear by his immediately going on to suggest that at the international level states might be conceived not as billiard balls ‘but as distinct, swirling masses of gas’: p. 3.

Compare Gilliard, David, ‘British and Russian Relations with Asian Governments in the Nineteenth Century‘, in Bull, Hedley and Watson, Adam (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford, 1984),Google Scholar who at p. 92 assumes that to treat the state as an international actor involves ignoring the images and role s of individual decision makers.

9. For a striking instance of the failure to appreciate the significance of the state being deemed to act as a unit, see Mansbach, and Vasquez, , op. cit., ‘The only time it is possible to speak of the state-as-actor is when the active collectivity embraces the entire social collectivity’, p. 163.Google Scholar A rather similar conclusion, although it almost certainly represents an entirely different set of assumptions, is that reached by Jones, Roy: ‘The state, as such, is not an international actor because it is not itself an actor of any kind‘, Review of International Studies, xiv, No. 4 (10 1988), p. 271.Google Scholar No doubt both these positions stem, in part, from an anxiety about ‘attributing existence to something which is no real part of the social universe’ (Green, Leslie, The Authority of the State (Oxford, 1988), p. 65).Google Scholar But, as Green points out, such scepticism ‘is often held in conjunction with a view that we should replace the state with other abstract entities, such as social structures and classes’—or, he might have said, nations and governments. He agrees that it is theoretically possible for a ‘consistent methodological individualist…to have done with all such concepts and insist in talking only about individual political agents who are natural persons, together perhaps with their mental states.’ But, as he goes on to say, ‘The difficulty here is that we cannot usefully describe the simplest features of political life in this spare vocabulary’, given that ‘these individuals are only relevant when acting in their political roles’, and that ‘many of the actions of politically relevant individuals can only be described in terms which are inherently institutional and therefore abstract’ (Ibid).

10. One illustration of this is seen in a lecture given by C. A. W. Manning, who was a Realist in the sense that he saw International Relations as a subject focusing on inter-state relations. He adjured his Geneva audience that ‘To get things done in practice you must address yourself not to the world, but to the nation-states’—but this immediately followed the observation that ‘A just appreciation of a given country's acts demands a specialized awareness of the local constitutional process pertinent to the matter in hand, and especially of the sorts of sectional interests tactically best situated to influence that process’: ‘The Future of the Collective System’, in Problems of Peace. Tenth Series: Anarchy or World Order (London, 1936), p. 161.Google Scholar

11. See Wolfers, , op. cit., p. 83.Google Scholar Compare Kubálková, V. and Cruickshank, A. A., ‘Marxist perspectives and the study of international relations: a rejoinder’, Review of International Studies, vii, No. 1 (1981),Google Scholar who say ‘It has become quite obvious that international relations can no longer be defined simply in terms of interstate relations’, p. 50.

12. Marcel Merle, op. cit., proposes that International Relations should include not only inter-stat e relations (which is referred to as inter-governmental relations) ‘but also relations between individuals and public or private groups on different sides of a frontier … also … all kinds of movements (economic, ideological, demographic, sporting, cultural, tourist, etc.) which make up a network of communications between countries’, p. 80.

13. Professor Robert Jackson suggested that there is some similarity between the point I am making and Professor Karl Popper's use of the term ‘bucket’ to refer, in a critical vein, to a theory of the mind. For further advice on this aspect of Popper's thought I am indebted to Dr John Worrall, who also drew my attention to, Popper, Karl R., ‘The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge’, Appendix to Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach (Oxford, 1972).Google Scholar

14. Sir John Thomson, formerly of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (where his service included a period as UK Permanent Representative at the United Nations), said of an academic paper on The Study of British Foreign Policy: ‘Who are the principal actors on the world stage? The author of one paper is (unduly) dismissive of the state. … In my view, states are and are likely to remain for a considerable time to come the principal actors on the world's stage’: Economic and Social Research Council, ‘Britain in the world’: (as yet) unpublished papers for a conference, 12–13 November 1987, Comments of Sir John Thomson, p. 7.

15. A recent example of the assumption that International Relations is the same subject as world politics, and that subject has an ambit which goes beyond the relations of states, is to be found in the following sentence (with which the article in question begins): ‘It is rather surprising to note how slow the discipline of international relations was to recognize the importance of ethnic groups as a significant factor in world polities’, Ryan, Stephen, ‘Explaining ethnic conflict: the neglected international dimension’, Review of International Studies, xiv, No. 3 (07 1988), p. 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar What the present writer is saying is not that ethnic relations are never the concern of the student of International Relations, but that they are his concern only when they bear on the relations of states. (And, furthermore, that they are only the concern of the student of foreign policy when they affect foreign policy.) In other words, they are not automatically to be included within the International Relations ambit. Of course, on the basis of a certain definition of world politics, they may fall automatically within that area.

16. For an exposition along these lines see Smith, M., Little, R. and Shackleton, M. (eds.), Perspectives in World Politics (London, 1981), Introduction, pp. 11–22.Google Scholar

17. Halliday, Fred, ‘State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, xvi, No. 2 (1987), p. 216.Google Scholar See also Hidemi Suganami's reply to Halliday, ‘Halliday's Two Concepts of State’, Ibid., xvii, No. 1 (1988), pp. 71–76.Google Scholar

18. See generally, Halliday, op. cit., pp. 215–29.

19. For a recent example of scholars trying to develop ideas which are designed to promote change, see the article by the United Nations University's Core Group on Peace and Conflict Resolution, ‘Is there a way out?’ Work in Progress, x, No. 3 (1987)Google Scholar in which they observe that many ‘new movements from below … find themselves engaged in an unequal struggle against the state’; go on to say that such movements are ‘the new historical force for the transformation of the state’; and conclude by saying that the purpose of the Core Group is to help in the ‘discovery and articulation of … a theory … which could serve as a guide and frame in [the new movement's] daily struggles’, p. 2. The article is an excerpt from the introduction to a volume called Towards a Liberating Peace. On this last point, compare the claim by Hoffman, Mark, ‘Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm Debate’, Millennium: A Journal of International Studies, xvi, No. 2 (1987)Google Scholar that ‘the point of International Relations theory is not simply to alter the way we look at the world, but to alter the world’, p. 244. This will surprise not a few theorists. And, generally, compare Banks, Michael, ‘Bucking the System: A Peace Researcher's Perspective on the Study of International Relations’, Ibid., pp. 337–343.Google Scholar Banks claims that ‘every act of orthodox scholarship tends to rationalise, reinforce and extend the self-fulfilling nature of the system’, p. 342. In the writer's view, Banks both greatly over-emphasizes the political influence of International Relations' scholarship, as well as mis-stating its intellectual consequences.

20. The contrary argument is one of the main themes of Ferguson, Yale H. and Mansbach, Richard W., The Elusive Quest: Theory and International Politics (Columbia, SC, 1988).Google Scholar They say, for example, that realism, like other approaches, is a ‘normatively inspired prism’ (p. 77); that realists are ‘fundamentally conservative’ (p. 81); and that changed emphasis in scholars' work signifies a ‘change in normative commitment’ (p. 192; italics in original). This last remark appears to the writer to overlook the possibility that a change of emphasis might simply reflect a change in the issues which are currently of concern to states. It might also, of course, reflect other considerations, including the one referred to in the quotation.

21. For this reason there is little ground for the apprehension expressed by Wolfers, , op. cit., that if the nation state is seen as the sole international actor, ‘one may lose sight of the human beings for whom and by whom the game is supposed to be played’, p. 83.Google Scholar

22. Given all that has been written above, this might seem obvious. But it is not so in logic and neither is it necessarily so in practice. This defence of the study of inter-state relations (the states being seen as unitary actors), and the argument that the related academic subject may properly be termed International Relations, could equally well have been written by someone of a different predilection. Whether such a person would have been disposed to write an article of this nature is another matter.