Lecture 2 -Wendt: Anarchy is what the state makes of it
- critique of the ‘rationalist’/ neo-liberalism and neo-realism approaches; especially criticizing
Waltz’ structural realism, and assumption of anarchy ➜ constructivist approach: anarchy is
not given but socially constructed
Introduction
- ‘structure’ (anarchy and relative power) does not exist away from ‘process’ (interaction and
learning) and institutions ➜ process is what leads to competitive power politics
- Neorealist & neoliberals: commitment to rationalism which treats identities and interests as
exogenously given, focuses on how the behavior of agents generates outcomes
- neoliberals are getting closer to the ideas of neorealist by accepting the states as the
dominant actors in the system & defining security in self-interested terms –become ‘weak
realists’ ➜ both fail to explain the construction of the current international system
Anarchy, self-help and intersubjective knowledge
- Neo-realists: anarchy as self-help system; Wendt: anarchy can’t be a self-help system, since
the states act toward other actors differently, and on the basis of the meanings that they
have, intersubjective factors of friends or foes, recognizing sovereignty…(e.g. US-USSR
relations after cold war; British vs. Soviet missiles)
- Actors acquire (multiple) identities by participating in such collective meanings, based on
structure of social world
- Identities are the basis of interests
- Institutions as a relatively stable set/”structure” of identities and interests, do not exist apart
from actors’ ideas about world
- Identities and collective cognitions are mutually constitutive – institutions may be
cooperative or conflictual
- Self-help is an institution, one of various structures of identity and interest that may exist
under anarchy; Processes of identity-formation under anarchy are concerned first and
foremost with preservation or "security" of the self ➜ anarchy and the distribution of power
only have meaning for state action in virtue of the understandings and expectations that
constitute institutional identities and interests
- Constitutive features of the state before interaction: organizational apparatus of
governance; desire to preserve it
Anarchy and the social construction of power politics
- anarchy did not exist until states interacted/not a fundamental part of states; self-help
emerges causally from processes ➜dynamic interactions lead to dynamic anarchic system
- meanings in terms of which action is organized arise out of interaction
,- expectations appear during interactions, this is when anarchy begins (alien example; no
aggressive response since expectations are unknown)
- through reciprocal interaction, we create and instantiate social structures defining our
identities and interests
Predator states and anarchy as permissive cause
- possibility of predation does not mean that "war may at any moment occur"
- once a predator emerges, it may condition identity-/interest-formation ➜ other states
mirror behavior or predator causes little damage due to collective security identity; also
depends on whether predator is endogenous or exogenous to system (due to prior
interaction)
Institutional transformations of power politics
- through changes in identities/interests, international politics can be reconstructed, as it is
not given (e.g. US-USSR, the identities/interests of either side changed, system also changed
accordingly)
- Realist or liberals cannot explain this since they see anarchy as absolute
- outcome of common identities and interests shared under certain institutions; e.g. wars
absent in Western European order despite constant conflicts over centuries
- three independent variables that can effect interests and identities in anarchy; (1)
sovereignty (provides social basis for individuality and security), (2) evolution of cooperation
(expectations produced by behavior affect identities/interests; process of creating
institutions is internalizing new identities of self and other; creating interdependence; but
incremental and slow and relies on positive identification of actors with each other), (3)
collective security (through positive identification)
Lecture 3 – Ayse Zarakol: Theorising Hierarchies
- hierarchy: system through which actors are organized into vertical relations through super-
and subordination
- scholarship converges on (1) hierarchies are a ubiquitous (=omnipresent) feature of
international (i.e. inter-state) politics, (2) generate social, moral and behavioral dynamics
that are different from those created by other arrangements ➜ matter for world politics
- Waltz: domestic systems centralized and hierarchic, international decentralized and anarchic
- by mid-1990s anarchy “naturalized” across discipline, but scholars still studying hierarchies
because they feature among both problems in world politics and solutions
- always having to confront the concept of anarchy as a starting point has impeded the
productivity of hierarchy research in IR
- how hierarchies have been understood in the discipline:
, 1. structures of differentiation at the core of hierarchical systems are deeply implicated
with power; hierarchical systems are thus intrinsically political
2. in world politics, hierarchies stratify, rank and organize the relations among states and
other kinds of actors
3. there are different kinds of hierarchical relations in world politics, these logics can
intersect
➜ features suggest that a focus on hierarchies can both facilitate systemic perspectives on
world politics that made anarchy-centered theories useful and, unlike anarchy-centered
theories, account for on-going globalizing processes as a part of the system
- two strains of research: focused on agentic/institutional of origins of hierarchies vs.
structural understanding
Origins and Nature of Hierarchies
- (narrow) agentic understanding: understood as legitimate authority; hierarchies are
founded on exchanges in which actors trade degrees of freedom for a desired social or
political arrangement
- Hierarchies institutionalize interests in that order, which affects actors’ incentives (not) to
comply
- function as bargains in which subordinates give up rights to freedom in exchange for the
provision of a social order that is valued by the subordinate ➜ solutions to collective
problems of global governance.
- Bukovanksy et al.: hierarchies as functional bargains undertaken by international society
rather than states; allocation of responsibilities to dealt with global problems
- Trade-offs also explain creation of regional orders
- Normative power arises from social hierarchy
- Differences in scholarship on basis of hierarchy-constituting agreements: positive
consequences and/or social appropriateness
- Converge on:
1. legitimate orders of authority in which superordinate and subordinate alike have
material, functional and/or social interest
2. actors understood as purposeful agents in international life
3. bargains encoded in hierarchies are assumed to structure subsequent action, whether
through social or interest-based incentives
- (broad) structural understanding: deep structures of organized inequality that are neither
designed nor particularly open to renegotiation
- create the actors of world politics and/or their repertoires for action; produce the
boundaries that define who and what belongs where in world politics
- critique of the ‘rationalist’/ neo-liberalism and neo-realism approaches; especially criticizing
Waltz’ structural realism, and assumption of anarchy ➜ constructivist approach: anarchy is
not given but socially constructed
Introduction
- ‘structure’ (anarchy and relative power) does not exist away from ‘process’ (interaction and
learning) and institutions ➜ process is what leads to competitive power politics
- Neorealist & neoliberals: commitment to rationalism which treats identities and interests as
exogenously given, focuses on how the behavior of agents generates outcomes
- neoliberals are getting closer to the ideas of neorealist by accepting the states as the
dominant actors in the system & defining security in self-interested terms –become ‘weak
realists’ ➜ both fail to explain the construction of the current international system
Anarchy, self-help and intersubjective knowledge
- Neo-realists: anarchy as self-help system; Wendt: anarchy can’t be a self-help system, since
the states act toward other actors differently, and on the basis of the meanings that they
have, intersubjective factors of friends or foes, recognizing sovereignty…(e.g. US-USSR
relations after cold war; British vs. Soviet missiles)
- Actors acquire (multiple) identities by participating in such collective meanings, based on
structure of social world
- Identities are the basis of interests
- Institutions as a relatively stable set/”structure” of identities and interests, do not exist apart
from actors’ ideas about world
- Identities and collective cognitions are mutually constitutive – institutions may be
cooperative or conflictual
- Self-help is an institution, one of various structures of identity and interest that may exist
under anarchy; Processes of identity-formation under anarchy are concerned first and
foremost with preservation or "security" of the self ➜ anarchy and the distribution of power
only have meaning for state action in virtue of the understandings and expectations that
constitute institutional identities and interests
- Constitutive features of the state before interaction: organizational apparatus of
governance; desire to preserve it
Anarchy and the social construction of power politics
- anarchy did not exist until states interacted/not a fundamental part of states; self-help
emerges causally from processes ➜dynamic interactions lead to dynamic anarchic system
- meanings in terms of which action is organized arise out of interaction
,- expectations appear during interactions, this is when anarchy begins (alien example; no
aggressive response since expectations are unknown)
- through reciprocal interaction, we create and instantiate social structures defining our
identities and interests
Predator states and anarchy as permissive cause
- possibility of predation does not mean that "war may at any moment occur"
- once a predator emerges, it may condition identity-/interest-formation ➜ other states
mirror behavior or predator causes little damage due to collective security identity; also
depends on whether predator is endogenous or exogenous to system (due to prior
interaction)
Institutional transformations of power politics
- through changes in identities/interests, international politics can be reconstructed, as it is
not given (e.g. US-USSR, the identities/interests of either side changed, system also changed
accordingly)
- Realist or liberals cannot explain this since they see anarchy as absolute
- outcome of common identities and interests shared under certain institutions; e.g. wars
absent in Western European order despite constant conflicts over centuries
- three independent variables that can effect interests and identities in anarchy; (1)
sovereignty (provides social basis for individuality and security), (2) evolution of cooperation
(expectations produced by behavior affect identities/interests; process of creating
institutions is internalizing new identities of self and other; creating interdependence; but
incremental and slow and relies on positive identification of actors with each other), (3)
collective security (through positive identification)
Lecture 3 – Ayse Zarakol: Theorising Hierarchies
- hierarchy: system through which actors are organized into vertical relations through super-
and subordination
- scholarship converges on (1) hierarchies are a ubiquitous (=omnipresent) feature of
international (i.e. inter-state) politics, (2) generate social, moral and behavioral dynamics
that are different from those created by other arrangements ➜ matter for world politics
- Waltz: domestic systems centralized and hierarchic, international decentralized and anarchic
- by mid-1990s anarchy “naturalized” across discipline, but scholars still studying hierarchies
because they feature among both problems in world politics and solutions
- always having to confront the concept of anarchy as a starting point has impeded the
productivity of hierarchy research in IR
- how hierarchies have been understood in the discipline:
, 1. structures of differentiation at the core of hierarchical systems are deeply implicated
with power; hierarchical systems are thus intrinsically political
2. in world politics, hierarchies stratify, rank and organize the relations among states and
other kinds of actors
3. there are different kinds of hierarchical relations in world politics, these logics can
intersect
➜ features suggest that a focus on hierarchies can both facilitate systemic perspectives on
world politics that made anarchy-centered theories useful and, unlike anarchy-centered
theories, account for on-going globalizing processes as a part of the system
- two strains of research: focused on agentic/institutional of origins of hierarchies vs.
structural understanding
Origins and Nature of Hierarchies
- (narrow) agentic understanding: understood as legitimate authority; hierarchies are
founded on exchanges in which actors trade degrees of freedom for a desired social or
political arrangement
- Hierarchies institutionalize interests in that order, which affects actors’ incentives (not) to
comply
- function as bargains in which subordinates give up rights to freedom in exchange for the
provision of a social order that is valued by the subordinate ➜ solutions to collective
problems of global governance.
- Bukovanksy et al.: hierarchies as functional bargains undertaken by international society
rather than states; allocation of responsibilities to dealt with global problems
- Trade-offs also explain creation of regional orders
- Normative power arises from social hierarchy
- Differences in scholarship on basis of hierarchy-constituting agreements: positive
consequences and/or social appropriateness
- Converge on:
1. legitimate orders of authority in which superordinate and subordinate alike have
material, functional and/or social interest
2. actors understood as purposeful agents in international life
3. bargains encoded in hierarchies are assumed to structure subsequent action, whether
through social or interest-based incentives
- (broad) structural understanding: deep structures of organized inequality that are neither
designed nor particularly open to renegotiation
- create the actors of world politics and/or their repertoires for action; produce the
boundaries that define who and what belongs where in world politics
