The Sovereign State and Its Competitors

An Analysis of Systems Change

Hendrik Spruyt

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691029108, 9780691033563
• eBook ISBN: 9780691213057
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The present international system, composed for the most part of sovereign, territorial states, is often viewed as the inevitable outcome of historical development. Hendrik Spruyt argues that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the state system, however. Examining the competing institutions that arose during the decline of feudalism--among them urban leagues, independent communes, city states, and sovereign monarchies--Spruyt disposes of the familiar claim that the superior size and war-making ability of the sovereign nation-state made it the natural successor to the feudal system.


The author argues that feudalism did not give way to any single successor institution in simple linear fashion. Instead, individuals created a variety of institutional forms, such as the sovereign, territorial state in France, the Hanseatic League, and the Italian city-states, in reaction to a dramatic change in the medieval economic environment. Only in a subsequent selective phase of institutional evolution did sovereign, territorial authority prove to have significant institutional advantages over its rivals. Sovereign authority proved to be more successful in organizing domestic society and structuring external affairs. Spruyt's interdisciplinary approach not only has important implications for change in the state system in our time, but also presents a novel analysis of the general dynamics of institutional change.

PART I

Contingency, Choice, and Constraint

CHAPTER 1

Structural Change in International Relations

In a Europe without states and without boundaries the concept of “foreign affairs” had no meaning.¹

The rise and decline of various types of entities and state systems must of necessity be a fundamental concern of a comprehensive theory of international change.²

DESPITE Robert Gilpin’s exhortation, international relations theory has paid little attention to change in the types of units that constitute the international system. Gilpin himself, after having classified unit change as the most fundamental type of transformation, turns his attention to the distribution of capabilities—the standard research program for neorealists.

However, if Gilpin is correct that the change from city-state to empire, from empire to feudalism, and so on, is important for understanding international politics, then we need to seriously engage the questions of how units change and how such change affects the international system. These questions have been raised most explicitly by critics of neorealism. These critics have specifically focused on the feudal-state transformation as an example of systems change.³ How did the sovereign state emerge? How has its rise affected international relations? This chapter begins with a discussion of these questions and proceeds to argue that the constitutive type of unit in the international system is a critical facet of structure.

With the feudal-state transformation as a starting point, this chapter also explores various accounts of unit change. Most of these accounts explain institutional evolution as a unilinear process. Such a perspective is both theoretically and empirically flawed.

Because a unilinear view sees the development of units, specifically the feudal-state transformation, as a process of sequential stages, it affirms the consequent. Methodologically, the absence of any real variation on the dependent variable—one only seeks to explain the emergence of the state—makes it impossible to select among rival independent variables. Empirically, unilinear accounts fail because they neglect the multiplicity of institutional alternatives that were available during this historical change. As a consequence, the competition between different institutional arrangements is neglected, and analysis is performed solely on the internal dynamics of particular polities. International relations thus gives way to comparative politics.⁴

NEOREALISM AND ITS CRITICS: THE ORIGINS OF THE STATE AS AN ISSUE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

In Kenneth Waltz’s interpretation of Durkheim’s theory, the international system is structured according to organizing principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities.⁵ Because of the lack of organizing authority, that is, because of anarchy, the second element of the structure drops out. Under anarchy, actors will pursue self-sufficiency rather than division of labor and subsequent reliance on others. For Waltz, the international system is similar to Durkheim’s premodern society based on mechanical solidarity.⁶ Because of the absence of central authority, little or no functional differentiation is possible.⁷ Consequently, under anarchy only the distribution of capabilities matters for the structure of the system. The character of the unit and unit change are thus unimportant for understanding structure.⁸ This view, by the way, is also upheld in the literature spawned by this neorealist perspective.⁹

John Ruggie has launched a sustained critique of this view. He argues that Waltz’s view of Durkheim is mistaken. In contrast to Waltz, Ruggie suggests that functional differentiation does occur. Waltz neglects the dynamic element in Durkheim’s theory. The cause of evolutionary progress in society lies in the increase in dynamic density—the total volume of transactions and communications.¹⁰

Ruggie adduces Medieval Europe as an empirical case to demonstrate that a strict application of neorealist theory fails to capture the logic of international relations as conducted at that time. As with all forms of political organization, feudal authorities occupied a geographical space. But such authority over territorial areas was neither exclusive nor discrete. Complex networks of rival jurisdictions overlaid territorial space.¹¹ Church, lords, kings, emperor, and towns often exercised simultaneous claims to jurisdiction. Occupants of a particular territorial space were subject to a multiplicity of higher authorities.

Given such a logic or organization, it is impossible to distinguish the actors conducting “international” relations, operating under anarchy, from those conducting “domestic” politics, operating under some hierarchy. Bishops, kings, lords, and towns all signed treaties and waged war.¹² There was no one actor with a monopoly over the means of coercive force.¹³ The distinction between public and private actors was yet to be articulated.¹⁴

To understand such interactions as international relations under anarchy is an anachronism. Were lords subject to the king? Was the king subject to the church? Was the church subject to the emperor? The answers to those questions were inevitably contextual and intersubjective. Warring lords might subject themselves to royal jurisdiction for mediation, yet at other times rebellious lords might wage war on the king himself. Richard of England and Philip Augustus of France, at war in the later twelfth century, submitted to papal demands to end their dispute and join forces for a crusade. Yet in many instances they also acted as independent kings without recognizing higher authority. Indeed the very word international is a posterior and an anachronistic conceptualization of that era. It suggests that there was a distinct realm of national (internal) affairs which was conceptually distinguishable from a realm of international (external) affairs. In other words, we can only speak of international affairs as synomous with actions under anarchy because the feudal-state transformation defined the realms of domestic and interunit behavior. The condition of anarchy, as we apply it today, implies the existence of a particular type of unit. The neorealist view of anarchy presumes that there are discrete units with mutually exclusive spheres of jurisdiction.¹⁵ The medieval system, however, was quite different than that of the contemporary state system. Jurisdiction was neither discrete—jurisdictions overlapped—nor exclusive—different authorities might claim final jurisdiction on the same matter. The medieval case thus demonstrates how the character of the units has dramatic implications for the structure of the system. Certainly there was anarchy in the sense of a lack of world hierarchical authority. But when that condition applied, or to whom it applied, were in fact indeterminate.¹⁶

Ruggie’s analysis is partially based on structuration and poststructuralist theory. Structuration theory criticizes neorealism for not accounting for the formation of structure.¹⁷ Because of its empiricist orientation, neorealism objectifies structure as a given entity rather than as the result of interaction by agents. Anarchy is perceived as an observable, objective entity rather than as a social construct. Alternatively, structuration theory seeks to establish how interaction between agents creates a specific structure and how, in turn, structure constrains agents. Agents and structure, that is, units and system, are mutually constitutive.

Although the freedom of the individual is constrained by a given structure, this constaint is not such that the agent is determined by that structure. By redefining the nature of their interactions, individuals create a new structure which imposes constraints on others. In many ways, the agent-structure debate resembles the classic micro-macro problem.¹⁸

Poststructural theory is even more radical than structuration theory in its critique of neorealism, for the epistemological orientation of poststructural theory lies closer to that of critical theory and Foucault.¹⁹ Poststructural theory views neorealism’s particular depiction of international relations as a manifestation of a dominant conceptual framework. Neorealists understand the anarchical condition of exclusive entities as a natural and inevitable phenomenon because they have unreflectively accepted a particular way of thinking about the world. They do not recognize the state system as a social construction that has a specific historical origin. Poststructural theory, in contrast, advocates an archaeology of the state.

In short, both structuration theory and poststucturalism suggest that neorealism takes the ontological nature of the system as constant and as consisting of discrete units. As Ruggie shows, this was not always historically true. Neorealism does not acknowledge this because of its objectivist perspective which defines anarchy as a given, ahistorical condition. By contrast, Ruggie suggests that we need to account for the emergence of territorial discreteness—the exclusivity of authority over fixed space, which is typical of the modern state.

Structuration theory and poststructuralism thus wish to make the emergence of the sovereign state a fundamental issue in the study of international relations. They indicate, furthermore, that the emergence of an anarchical state system was not merely due to a reordering of the social and political map in a material sense but was equally due to the reconceptualization and rearticulation of social and political order. The sovereign state had to be invented.²⁰ Any account of state formation will have to take this notion of conceptual change into consideration.

Both structuration theory and poststructuralism, however, are not without problems of their own. Arguably, poststructuralism has, as of yet, offered little in the way of substantive theory.²¹ It is, by its own account, largely a metatheory. Structuration theory, at least in some versions in the realm of international relations theorizing, professes to use a Lakatosian research methodology. Hence, it claims additional empirical explanatory power to realism but accepts the general epistemological position of realist research.²² Consequently, one should expect its empirical focus to be more explicit than that of poststructuralism.

However, it is not entirely clear how to operationalize this program. More specifically, if one takes structure and agency as mutually constitutive in all instances, then structure must be understood in a constructivist sense as the poststructuralists do. That is to say, structure would be primarily, if not completely, a creation of individual agents. Consequently it would be difficult to specify what the constraining characteristics of a particular structure are given its amenability to continual reconstruction and reinterpretation.²³

The second problem with operationalizing a structurationist program is that agent-structure problems permeate all levels of politics. It depends on what one takes to be the agent and what the structure. The individual can be embedded in the structure of a bureaucratic organization. That organization, taken as an agent with a particular corporate identity, is in turn embedded in a larger political structure, and so on.

The research method that I propose circumvents both problems. It takes the agent-structure problem to bear on two sets of issues. First, it focuses on the interaction of individuals and the state. It takes a methodological individualist approach to explain how the state came into being but embeds these choices in the constraints of the existing political structure and relative distribution of power. On a second level, it takes the state as agent and sees it as embedded in the structure of a system that imposes constraints on it—the state system. In so doing, one stays closest to a deductive understanding of the system, in the neorealist sense, while at the same time problematizing the emergence of that system.²⁴ I argue, therefore, contra Waltz, that systems theorizing that takes the dominant type of unit into account is not reductionist.

VARIATION IN UNITS AS VARIATION IN SYSTEMS STRUCTURE

In his seminal work on neorealism, Waltz compares the international system to a market.²⁵ The distribution of capabilities between units is analogous to market share distribution. The polarity of the system is the conceptual equivalent of oligopolistic or monopolistic markets. The distribution of market share leads to expectations about individual firm behavior. One can a priori expect that firms will behave in a particular way if a given distribution of market shares occurs. The major powers in international politics are the logical analogue of price setters in the ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Princeton Studies in International History and Politics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of maps and tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Contingency, Choice, and Constraint
• Part II: The Emergence of New Modes of Organization
• Part III: Competition, Mutual Empowerment, and Choice: The Advantages of Sovereign Territoriality
• Part IV: Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index