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Societies, states and geopolitics: challenges from historical sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Anthony Jarvis
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Extract

Many scholars in International Relations will register surprise and perhaps amusement at the recent 'discovery' of the state by sociologists. They could accurately claim, it has never been similarly neglected in their own discipline. International Relations is about states and the system of states. Classical realism relies on explicit understandings about what states are and their place in the international system.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 281 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. Ashley, Richard K., ‘The poverty of neorealism’, International Organization, xxxviii (1984), p. 224.Google Scholar

2. See particularly Gilpin, R., War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 1981);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, 1987).Google Scholar There is also a useful discussion of this problem in Vincent, R. J., ‘Change and international relations’, Review of International Studies, ix (1983), pp. 63–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Gilpin, Ibid. (1987), pp. 83–4.

4. See in particular R. Gilpin, Ibid., who argues that ‘interdependence is a phenomenon to be studied, not a ready made set of conclusions regarding the nature and dynamics of international relations’, p. 18. It is also interesting that Nye, Keohane, in ‘Power and Interdependence revisited’, International Organization, xli (1987)Google Scholar moved to an explicitly neorealist conception of the state suggesting that ironically the result of this and later work was to ‘broaden neorealism and provide it with new concepts rather than to articulate a coherent alternative theoretical framework’, p. 733.

5. See Halliday, Fred, ‘State and Society in International Relations: A Second Agenda’, Millenium, xvi (1987), pp. 215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see the critiques of this paper offered by Forbes, Palen and Suganami together with Halliday's reply in Millenium, xvii, 1988.

6. Ferguson, Y. and Mansbach, R., The State as an Obstacle to International Theory, Paper given at the XIII International Congress of the International Political Science Association, Paris, 1985.Google Scholar Their argument suggests that paradigmatic diversity is inevitable. They do not, however, seem to have considered the possibility that this is resolvable by modifying and extending the ambit of international relations and using a different conception of the state.

7. See particularly Ashley, R. K., ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, International Studies Quarterly, xxv (1982);Google ScholarCox, R., ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millenium, xvi (1983);Google Scholar and Hoffman, M., ‘Critical Theory and the Interparadigm Debate’, Millenium, xvi (1987)Google Scholar who argues that ‘critical theory represents the next stage in the development of International Relations theory’, p. 244. Linklater's, Andrew, ‘Realism, Marxism and Critical International Theory’, Review of International Studies, xii (1986)Google Scholar is useful in suggesting what such a theory looks like, an argument more extensively developed in his forthcoming Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (Basingstoke, 1989).Google Scholar

8. In particular see Cox's argument, Ibid.

9. See Linklater, ‘Realism and Marxism …’, op. cit., and F. Halliday, op. cit.

10. See Giddens, Anthony, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge, 1985).Google Scholar The introduction and first chapter in particular outline the importance of multiple locations of the state for an understanding of modernity.

11. Evans, P., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T., Bringing the State Back In, p. vii.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. viii.

13. Loc. cit.

14. Ibid., p. 5.

15. Ibid., p. 8.

16. Ibid., p. viii.

17. Ibid., p. 9.

18. Ibid., p. 9.

19. Ibid., p. 14.

20. Ibid., p. 21.

21. Ibid., p. 70.

22. Hall, John (ed.), States in History, p. 1.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., p. 9 and p. 10.

24. Skocpol, T., States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Hall, op. cit., p. 11.

26. This essay is a condensed version of his argument in Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar This book treats some of the themes pursued by Michael Mann but from a different angle. However, the analysis of the first half, concerned with the rise of the West sits, uneasily with the much more conventional treatment of recent politics in the second half.

27. Ibid., p. 304.

28. Evans et al., Ibid., pp. 347 ff.

29. Ibid., p. 349.

30. In particular see Cox's ‘Social Forces, States …’, Ibid.

31. The best formulation of this problem and its possible resolutions is to be found in Linklater, A., Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (Basingstoke, 1989).Google Scholar

32. Mann, M., ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, in J. Hall, States in History, p. 112.Google Scholar See also the discussion on p. 37 in The Sources of Social Power.

33. Ibid., p. 112.

34. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power: A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760, p. 1.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., p. 2.

36. Ibid., p. 2.

37. Ibid., see discussion p. 7 & ff.

38. Ibid., p. 8.

39. Ibid., p. 13.

40. Ibid., p. 14.

41. Ibid., p. 27.

42. Ibid., p. 28.

43. Ibid., p. 49.

44. Ibid., p. 376.

45. Ibid., p. 377.

46. See Ibid., p. 408.

47. Ibid., p. 413.

48. Ibid., p. 503.

49. See Waltz, K., Man, the State and War (New York, 1959)Google Scholar and Theory of International Relations (Reading, Mass., 1979).