Perspectives on World Politics

Richard Little, Michael Smith, Richard Little, Michael Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415322768
• eBook ISBN: 9781134352203
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Perspectives on World Politics has been essential reading for students of international relations since the 1980s. This new edition fully updates this key text for the twenty-first century.

Focusing on the main competing analytical perspectives, the first and second editions established an authoritative sense of the conceptual tools used to study world politics, as well as reflecting on the major debates and responses to changes in the world arena.

This third edition builds on the success of its predecessors by presenting a fresh set of readings within this framework:

• power and security
• interdependence and globalization
• dominance and resistance.

It also includes a much-expanded fourth section, 'World Politics in Perspective', which reflects the methodological and normative debates that have developed since publication of the previous edition.

This is an essential text for all students and scholars of politics and international relations.

Part I
The politics of power and
security

The extracts in this section have all been written in recent years. This reflects a bias in selection because this ‘power and security’ perspective is very closely associated with the realist tradition that claims to have very long antecedents. As a consequence, contemporary realists frequently make reference to Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Hobbes’ Leviathan in an attempt to demonstrate the longevity and universality of their perspective on world politics. Although these authors were writing in very different historical contexts—Thucydides in the Greek city states, Machiavelli in the city states of Renaissance Italy, and Hobbes in the early modern European states—according to contemporary realists, they all share remarkably similar precepts about politics. In particular, they focus on the centrality of the state and the importance of power for maintaining the security of the state. We have not included extracts from these historical texts, however, because the focus in this book is on how contemporary writers analyse world politics. Nevertheless, whereas the other two perspectives are primarily concerned with exploring the forces of change in world politics, most of the extracts in this section are concerned with the continuing centrality of the state and some of the enduring features of world politics.

There is obviously a conservative element to this perspective and it is often noted when the study of world politics was established as an academic field of study, after the First World War, but more especially, after the Second World War, that those working within this perspective chose to identify themselves as realists and to contrast their own willingness to look at the unyielding features of world politics with the work of their critics, whom they identified as idealists. From the realist perspective, their opponents were overly optimistic about the potential for change in world politics. Throughout the Cold War, with the United States and the Soviet Union operating on the basis of mutual assured destruction, MAD when abbreviated, realists had little difficulty finding evidence to justify and reinforce their point of view. But the willingness of the Soviet Union, under Gorbachev, to call an end to the Cold War and to move out of Eastern Europe, followed soon after by the collapse of the Soviet Union, was seen by many critics of realism to sound the death knell of the perspective. This prophecy, however, has proved to be premature. Realists have continued to hold their own in the post-Cold War era. They point to the fact that the end of the Cold War has not led to general disarmament, and that states remain as concerned about power and security as they always have in the past. But given this position, the failure of major states to balance against the United States poses something of a puzzle for some realists. They have responded in a variety of different ways, indicating that the perspective is more diverse than is sometimes presupposed.

The items in this section of the book have been chosen to demonstrate that realist thinkers have a sophisticated assessment of world politics and that the approach is more complex and diverse than is sometimes acknowledged by its critics. The first four items focus on the continued centrality of the state in world politics and they reject the view that the state is becoming an obsolete institution. At the same time, however, it is also acknowledged that the state can take a wide variety of forms in contemporary world politics. Holsti (1.1) distinguishes states from earlier polities, such as the Greek and Italian city states, and he also argues that the ideas and norms that define states have developed across more than three centuries, and the state has simultaneously become increasingly mutifunctional across time. In the contemporary era he acknowledges that there are many weak and failed states but he dismisses the argument about the obsolesence of the state in favour of the argument that states are continuing to become more complex. Buzan (1.2) focuses in more detail than Holsti on the idea of the state, which he views as a more ambiguous component in world politics than is usual from the realist perspective. He focuses specifically on the contribution of national security to the idea of the state and explores the complex relationship that exists between the ideas of nation and state. Because the relationship between state and nation varies, however, he argues that the conception of national security will take different forms. He concludes that if the idea of the state is contested or not widely and firmly adhered to, then it is vulnerable to revolution, civil war, or disintegration.

This point is picked up by Jackson (1.3) who views the state from the perspective of the states system. Jackson defines the system in terms of a society of states that is regulated by rules of the game. The central rule relates to sovereignty or statehood which is firmly established and reinforced by the norm of non-intervention. The major consequence of these inter-related rules is that although there was an enormous proliferation of small and weak states in the twentieth century that would not have survived in earlier periods, almost all have persisted. The norms that establish territorial legitimacy are now worldwide, with the result that even states that have collapsed internally, because of ethnic conflict or the like, persist as juridical entities. Jackson acknowledges the growth of regionalism and focuses, in particular, on the development of the European Union, but he insists that the idea of statehood is so firmly entrenched that it is unlikely that the states system will give way to an alternative form of world organization in the near future. Gilpin (1.4) develops the same line of argument in the context of economics and globalization. He argues that many of the developments associated with globalization have, in practice, been implemented by states. He accepts that these developments have made macroeconomic decision making more difficult for the state, but that most states still maintain a good deal of control over their own economies. Too often, according to Holsti, advocates of the globalization thesis fail to appreciate that states have never had unfettered control over their own economies.

The next five items focus on factors and processes that relate to the interaction between states. From a realist perspective, one of the primary concerns for states is the need to achieve security. But realists have always acknowledged that the existence of a security dilemma lies at the heart of world politics. The nature of this dilemma is examined by Jervi (1.5). He argues that because states operate in an anarchy, they tend to assume the worst of each other and rely on armaments to increase their sense of security. Such a strategy, however, inevitably increases the insecurity of their neighbours, who respond in a similar fashion, thereby generating a spiral of insecurity. The next item is an extract by Mearsheimer (1.6) from his theory of great power behaviour. Like Jervis, he also assumes that world politics have always been characterized by chronic insecurity. He argues that uncertainty about the intentions of other states pushes great powers to expand their power base in an attempt to achieve regional hegemony, maximum wealth, preeminent land power and, in recent times, nuclear superiority. No European state ever achieved regional hegemony because of the balance of power, although in the contemporary world it is accepted that the United States has achieved the status of a regional, although not a global hegemon. Mearsheimer then goes on to explore the strategies that Great Powers have used across history to increase their power capabilities. Although he identifies war as a key Great Power strategy, the other strategies that he puts forward suggest that Great Powers will avoid war whenever possible.

Although the tendency in this perespective is to focus on the relationship between power and security, there is a recognition that the international distribution of power also has a significant impact on international economic structures. Krasner (1.7) draws on empirical evidence from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to demonstrate that the degree of ‘openness’ in the international economy is related to the concentration of international power. There is a link between the maintenance of free trade that necessarily requires mutual cooperation among states and the emergence of Britain and the United States as hegemons. In other words, a hegemon can help to overcome the inhibitions to cooperation that anarchy sets up. Krasner, however, is forced to shift his level of analysis from the system to the state in order to explain why Britain’s commitment to free trade lasted after its power had started to decline and it was some time after the United States became a hegemonic power that it began to promote an open international economy. Keohane (1.8) extends this argument and insists that a hegemon is not, in theory or practice, necessary for cooperation to take place in an anarchic arena. Keohane argues that mutual interests can be sufficient to allow states to overcome the mutual suspicions that realists insist are an inevitable product of anarchy.

The final three items in this section provide very different responses to what is happening in world politics in the aftermath of the Cold War. Waltz (1.9) directly confronts the argument that critical developments that have taken place in world politics since the end of the Cold War have completely undermined realist thinking. He looks specifically at the growth of democracy, interdependence, and international institutions. All three developments have been closely associated with the establishment of a more peaceful and stable world. Waltz endeavours to show that the arguments supporting this conclusion are fundamentally flawed and that realist concepts and assumptions remain as relevant as they ever were. He illustrates this position through an exploration of the balance of power theory. According to the theory, a unipolar world is highly unstable and any dominant power will quickly come to be challenged by rivals. From Waltz’s perspective, these rivals are already on the horizon. Wohlforth (1.10), by contrast, argues that the twenty-first century is very different from the previous two centuries, when the balance of power theory did apply. He insists that we are operating in a system where there is no rival state to the United States and that if this country pursues wise strategies, then there is no reason why the future should not be both stable and peaceful.

Bobbitt (1.11) offers a much more radical thesis than is presented by Waltz or Wohlforth and it is developed at length in the book from which this extract is taken. In essence, he argues that if we examine the history of Europe, what we observe is a cycle of system-wide wars; during each cycle, the nature of the state is transformed and at the end of the cycle there is a system wide peace treaty where the Great Powers establish a new constitutional order for the international society of states. During the ‘long war’ of the twentieth century—1914 to 1990—the nation state has been transformed into a market state. But what we are still waiting for is a new constitutional order. His concern is that there is insufficient awareness that the nature of world politics has been transformed. In the extract, he argues that the strategic calculus that operated during the long war is now redundant because the world no longer faces the kind of state-centred threats that have undermined their security in the past. The book was written before 11 September 2001, but the attack by Al Qaeda certainly gave Bobbitt’s book additional resonance.

The extracts in this section provide an overview of a realist perspective that is often associated with a conservative, state-centric and essentially pessimistic view of world politics. Although Mearsheimer does unquestionably paint a very bleak view of how great powers behave, and Bobbitt opens up the possibility of a distopian future, he, like most of the other authors, still assumes that some kind of world order is possible. The other two perspectives, however, although coming from very different positions, are much more open to the potential for reform or even radical change.

1.1
States and statehood
K.F.Holsti

Source: Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), pp. 28–72.

Holsti identifies the sovereign state as the foundational actor of international relations. Having outlined its essential features, he traces how the practices, ideas, and norms that help to define the state have evolved from the seventeenth century through to the present day. Although now the prevailing form of political authority, Holsti accepts that not all states are successful. But he challenges the widely accepted view that states are becoming obsolete and argues instead that states are becoming more complex.

Societies and smaller groups throughout history have formed organizations that provide and sustain them with security, access to resources, social rules, and means of continuity. Frequently they also devised, embodied, or sought more ephemeral objectives or qualities such as identity, glory, renown, and reputation. The institutional forms they have taken have varied greatly. Even terms we commonly use to designate polities—tribes, clans, empires, principalities, city-states, protectorates, sultanates, or duchies—would not begin to cover the actual diversity of political forms. […]

Our concern, however, is with states, the only contemporary political organizations that enjoy a unique legal status—sovereignty—and that, unlike other types of polities, have created and modified enduring public international institutions. They are thereby the foundational actors of international relations. Other types of polities may ultimately become states but until they have transformed themselves into public bodies—moral agents representing some sort of community—they do not have the legal standing of states. […]

Polities that had many but not all the features of states include the Han Empire, the Greek city-states, the Roman state, the Aztec and Inca empires, the Byzantine Empire, and the Italian city-states. We would not include in this list thousands of polities that once may have been politically and militarily formidable but otherwise lacked most of the critical attributes of statehood. The Visigoths, Lombards, Franks, Vandals, and Huns, for example, are better known for their depredations than for political continuity and the creation of international institutions. Others such as the Cimbri, Knights Templars, Samnites, Taurisci, Tigurini, Carbo, or Frisians, have disappeared into the mists of history. They lacked the essential qualities of statehood that provide polities with both legitimacy and longevity. What are these? A non-inclusive list would contain at least the following: (1) fixed position in space (territoriality); (2) the politics of a public realm (differentiation between private and public realms); (3) institutionalized political organizations (continuity independent from specific leaders or other individuals); (4) and a multiplicity of governmental tasks and activities (multifunctionalism), based on (5) legitimizing authority structures. […]

The late seventeenth-century Westphalian state

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Europe remained dotted with hundreds of different polities, overlapping jurisdictions, a low degree of differentiation between private and public realms, and divided loyalties. No prince could predictably prevail over his feudal barons, independent towns, or even church authorities. To muster military strength he had to rely on purchasing armies or making alliances with subordinates who had their own—though seasonal—military capacities. By 1700, in contrast, most princ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: The Politics of Power and Security
• Part II: The Politics of Interdependence and Globalization
• Part III: The Politics of Dominance and Resistance
• Part IV: Perspectives and World Politics