Agency, Structure and International Politics
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Agency, Structure and International Politics

Gil Friedman, Harvey Starr

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Agency, Structure and International Politics

Gil Friedman, Harvey Starr

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About This Book

The concepts of agency and structure are of increasing and defining importance to international relations and politics as fields of enquiry and knowledge. This is the first book to explore the two concepts in depth in that context.
The agent-structure problem refers to questions concerning the interrelationship of agency and structure, and to the ways in which explanations of social phenomena integrate and account for them. This is an important contribution to the study of international relations and politics.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2002
ISBN
9781134743711

Part I

1
INTRODUCTION: AGENCY, STRUCTURE, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS EXPLANATION

INTRODUCTION

Agency and structure are the defining components for the understanding of human interaction within a society and of the explanation of social phenomena. The agent-structure problem refers to the general set of questions concerning the interrelationship of these two components, and to the ways in which explanations of social phenomena integrate them.
International political systems, like all social systems, are comprised of agents and structures. What is more, agency and structure are interrelated. This basic tenet of social theory is shared by the three most widely acclaimed modern social theorists—Durkheim, Weber, and Marx. Durkheim recognizes that social facts “consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.” But concomitantly, social facts “are the beliefs, tendencies and practices of the group taken collectively” (Lukes 1982: 52, 54). For Weber, quite similarly, collectivities such as states, firms, and so on at once are “solely the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of individual persons,” and “have a meaning in the minds of individual persons, partly as of something actually existing, partly as something with normative authority
such ideas have a powerful, often a decisive, causal influence on the course of action of real individuals” (Weber 1968: 31–32). Finally, Marx’s attention to the agent-structure dialectic receives eloquent expression in his oft-cited statement: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past” (1978: 595).
If we accept this most basic of sociological premises, attention to three questions becomes imperative: What do the terms “agency” and “structure” mean? How are these concepts interrelated? How might these concepts or properties of these concepts be combined to acquire knowledge about various social phenomena? These questions comprise the core of the agent-structure problem.
The agent-structure problem is thus one of the most fundamental problems in the study of social phenomena. Suppositions concerning agency, structure, and their interrelationship bear directly upon the role of social structure in the understanding of social action, and, conversely, the role of social action in the construction, or reconstruction, of social structure. In addition, scholars have argued that such suppositions have important implications for the logic underlying the discovery and validation of knowledge concerning social phenomena. Therefore, answers to these three questions have epistemological, methodological, theoretic, and substantive implications. However implicitly or explicitly stated, suppositions concerning agency and structure are in one form or another necessarily embodied in any explanation of social action and social change. Hence, explicit attention to the logic of the agency-structure dynamic contributes to the construction, comparative analysis, and empirical application of the theory of international politics.
It is the primary aim of this book to address the three basic questions raised above. We will do so using a set of issues originally raised in the review and critique of the extant international relations literature debating the nature of the agent-structure problem (involving the work of Wendt, Dessler, Hollis and Smith, and Carlsnaes, among others). Another aim of this book derives from the premise that the value of metatheoretic deliberations is ultimately realized in their contribution to the conduct of empirical inquiry. Accordingly, this book seeks to derive implications for substantive theory of international politics from the metatheoretical arguments that it offers.

THE ECOLOGICAL TRIAD AND OPPORTUNITY AND WILLINGNESS

It is useful to contextualize the content of this book within a “natural history” of explicit attention to the agent-structure problem by contemporary scholars of international politics. Towards this effort, we may consider the Sprouts and Starr as the first generation of international politics agent-structure theorists. The work of Harold and Margaret Sprout (1956, 1965, 1968, 1969)—especially as refined and applied by Starr (1978) and Most and Starr (1983, 1984, 1989)—has been used explicitly to address the agent-structure problem, and in so doing has made significant contributions to our understanding of the study and substance of international politics. The Sprouts’ (1968: 11–21; 1956: 17–19; 1969: 42) notion of the “ecological triad”—i.e., entity, its environment, and entity-environment relationships—addresses the relationship between agency and structure. The Sprouts provide three useful ways to address the ecological triad: environmental possibil-ism, cognitive behaviorism, and environmental probabilism. Environmental pos-sibilism refers to structure and is defined as “a number of factors which limit human opportunities, which constrain the type of action that can be taken as well as the consequences of that action” (Most and Starr 1989: 27). Cognitive behaviorism represents “the simple and familiar principle that a person reacts to his milieu as he apperceives it—that is, as he perceives and interprets it in light of past experience” (Sprout and Sprout 1969: 45; cited in Most and Starr 1989: 28). Environmental probabilism is a third way to look at the entity-environment relationship. It represents both the core concept of uncertainty in political behavior (Cioffi-Revilla and Starr 1995: 451) and what may be viewed as a synthesis of these first two relationships. Environmental probabilism refers to “explanation or prediction by means of a generalized model, of the average or typical person’s reaction to a given milieu” (Sprout and Sprout 1956: 50). In other words, the attributes of an agent’s environment “provide cues as to the probability of certain outcomes” (Most and Starr 1989: 27).
The Sproutian alternatives concerning the relationship between entity and environment—i.e., environmental possibilism, environmental probabilism, and cognitive behaviorism—were developed by the Sprouts “as alternatives to environmental determinism, where, by definition, decision makers are incapable of choice given the characteristics of the environment, or ‘milieu’ (Sprout and Sprout 1969: 44)” (Most and Starr 1989: 27).1 Most and Starr’s (1989: 27, 29) discussion of the virtues of the ecological triad can itself be viewed as a statement of the agent-structure problem:
The advantages of this framework
derive from its applicability to any number of levels of analysis. That is
the concept of the ecological triad argues that we need to look at the ongoing policy/choice processes within that entity [the unit of analysis], its context or environment, and then the interaction between the entity and the environment
. It should be clear that the ecological triad calls for the study of both entity and environment, and most importantly, how the two are related. The ultimate entities— single decision makers or small groups of decision makers—are surrounded by factors that structure the nature of the decision, the options available, the consequences, costs, and benefits of those options. Individuals, then, make choices within a complex set of incentive structures. This can be captured only by looking at all three parts of the ecological triad.
The opportunity and willingness framework as developed in Starr (1978) and Most and Starr (1989) represents a reformulation of the Sproutian discussion of the agent-structure problem. “Opportunity,” based on environmental possibil-ism, refers primarily to the “possibility of interaction.” In other words, “it closely parallels the idea that what humans do is constrained by the actual possibilities in the ‘objective’ environment.” Important sources of possibility include geopolitical factors such as proximity and borders (see Starr and Most 1976; Most and Starr 1989; Starr 1991c), as well as the various means by which humans manipulate this environment—technology (see also Most and Starr 1989: 30–31). Opportunity, following environmental possibilism, also refers to “the existence of capabilities that permit the creation of opportunities
. Capabilities, then, not only may promote, but actually permit interaction” (Most and Starr 1989: 30).Willingness, closely related to cognitive behaviorism, refers to “the choice (and process of choice) that is related to the selection of some behavioral option from a range of alternatives. Willingness thus refers to the willingness to choose (even if the choice is no action), and to employ available capabilities to further some policy option over others” (Most and Starr 1989: 23).
Most and Starr demonstrate that these two pretheoretic concepts can serve as organizing concepts for the international relations literature. In other words, Most and Starr demonstrate that the various explanations of international conflict can be categorized according to opportunity and willingness. This endeavor is valuable not only because it demonstrates the pedagogic utility of the opportunity and willingness framework but also because it highlights the notion that all independent variables explaining social phenomena can be characterized as either agentic or structural variables.
Moreover, Starr and his collaborators depict the interrelationship between agency and structure in the terms of Russett’s menu metaphor (Russett 1972: 112–113; see also Russett and Starr 1996: 22–23). The menu “provides a number of behavioral/choice possibilities, not determining the diner’s choice, but limiting it” (Most and Starr 1989: 28). First, the agent must be able to “read” the menu (cognitive behaviorism). This also reflects the Sprouts’ insistence that agents must be aware of the possibilities made available by the environment. The menu presents such possibilities to the agent (environmental possibilism). Factors based in both the agent (values, preferences, resources, etc.) and the structure (prices, size of portion, reputation for certain dishes, etc.) will make certain choices more or less likely (environmental probabilism).
The menu is also useful for thinking about the relationships between opportunity and willingness. Most and Starr (1989) as well as Cioffi-Revilla and Starr (1995) demonstrate how opportunities (the menu) create the incentive structures for willingness (the food orders actually chosen). Indeed, a common theme in those works (as well as Siverson and Starr 1991) is how opportunity can generate greater levels of willingness; but they also treat how willingness can lead to different levels of opportunity. The latter idea reflects the notion that an agent can ask for something that is not on the menu.2 By so doing, the agent may also change the menu itself. As noted in Siverson and Starr (1991) and Starr (1991c), technological innovation both changes the meaning of the geopolitical context (see also Goertz 1994) as well as the available set of environmental possibilities. Similarly, all human innovation, including the creation of new ideas, ideologies, modes of organization, or production, changes the “menu.” Many of these changes are unintended, but others, such as weapons development, are clearly aimed at revising environmental possibilities.
A fundamental premise of the opportunity and willingness framework is that “both the environmental/structural level and the decision-making/choice level are required for a full description and explanation of international relations phenomena” (Most and Starr 1989: 23).3 This pretheoretic hypothesis itself might be viewed as a statement of the agent-structure problem, and as such, represents acentral prescription for theories of international politics. But Starr and some of his collaborators have additionally derived significant methodological, theoretical, and metatheoretical implications from a synthesis of this pretheoretic agent-structure hypothesis with the conceptualization of international political outcomes such as war as the spatio-temporal intersection of agency choice.4
The first such implication concerns what Thomas Cook and Donald T. Campbell (1979: 39–41) subsume under the term statistical conclusion validity. Specifically, since all parties to an outcome must have opportunity and willingness for particular decisions constituting the components of an international outcome, research designs which do not account for the joint necessity of opportunity and willingness for all actors involved may commit the error of concluding in favor of the null hypothesis. Most and Starr (1989: 82–83) state this research design problem in the context of the explanation of war:
Even if the hypothesis of an intranational interactive effect between opportunity and willingness is valid to the extent that having high levels of both is sufficient for being war ready, the consensual definition of war suggests another series of interactive relationships at the international level that involve characteristics or attributes of each of the opposing parties in such a conflict. As a result, it is not at all clear, and certainly not logical to expect, that attributes of individual countries
should be sufficient for, or covary with, such states’ degrees of war involvement. The only world in which such covariations would exist would be one in which each and every war-ready actor is counterposed with at least one other war-ready party. Short of such a world, the occurrence of war should not be expected to covary with individual states’ level of opportunity or capacity or even with the outcome or product of individual states’ levels of opportunity and willingness.
This means, of course, that scholars would be likely to be led astray if they were to test any of the following hypotheses:

  1. if Oi, then war
  2. if Wi, then war
  3. if Oi or Wi, then war
  4. if Oi and Wi, then war

While all four of these hypotheses are of the “If
, then
“variety in which one or more attributes is posited as a sufficient condition for the occurrence of war and together they constitute the standard way in which scholars probe for underlying relationships, none of them would be supported by the empirical evidence. Scholars examining the ith actor’s capacities, its willingness, or even the interaction of those two factors with a view toward discovering whether or not they are sufficient for war would be led to the conclusion that such variables are not important for determining that actor’s war participation. Because they would be searching for sufficient relationships and for covariations that are consistent with that type of logical connective, they would be likely either to abandon a focus on capacity, willingness, and their interaction, or to conclude that such factors are at best only marginally important.
(Most and Starr 1989: 82–83)
Another contribution concerns the logical structure of the opportunity and willingness hypothesis and implications of this structure for the frequency of international political outcomes (Cioffi-Revilla and Starr 1995). Drawing on the menu analogy, Most and Starr (1989: ch. 5) note that opportunity or willingness can operationally occur or be made available in a number of alternative, non-unique ways. Alternative possibilities or bases for choice produce “substitutability,” which Most and Starr see as crucial for understanding the logic of causality, and thus, research design.
Looking at opportunity and willingness and substitutability, Cioffi-Revilla and Starr (1995) distinguish between a first-order causality of world politics (willingness and opportunity) at the analytical level, and a deeper second-order causality of substitutability at the operational level. The first order (necessary) elements of opportunity and willingness are linked by the Boolean AND, while the range of possible modes of (sufficient) second order substitutability are connected by the Boolean OR. Cioffi-Revilla and Starr then formalize and analyze political uncertainty of international behavior, along with willingness, opportunity, and their substitutability, at both the analytical and operational levels. In so doing, they mathematically derive a number of interesting insights into the agent-structure problem, especially in regard to the relationship between agency and structure.
For example, they demonstrate that “the basic laws” that govern the occurrence of political events in real world politics are nonlinear and often counterintuitive. On the one hand, regarding first-order causality, “international behavior is always less likely than the necessary conditions (willingness and opportunity) that bring it about” (1995...

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