Power in International Relations

11 Key excerpts on "Power in International Relations"

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  India's Soft Power

  A New Foreign Policy Strategy

  • Patryk Kugiel(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This chapter examines the basic features of soft power and addresses the most important controversies surrounding the term: What constitutes soft power resources? Where does soft power start and hard power end? What is the relationship between the two? How does soft power work and how can it be implemented effectively as a state policy? How can soft power be measured and how can it be made more efficient? In unravelling these questions, the chapter arrives at a broader definition of soft power that includes not only intangible resources but also tangible assets and behaviour that makes countries attractive and legitimate. In doing so it adjusts the concept to better accommodate it in India’s context.

  Concept of Power in International Relations

  The idea of soft power has evolved in opposition to the dominant discourse of realism in the theory of international relations, which emphasises the roll of a state’[s hard attributes in its pursuit of foreign policy aims. In this school of thought, which can be traced back to thinkers such as Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli or Thomas Hobbes, the international system is seen as anarchic, and the principal actors are unitary, self-interested rational states that compete with each other for survival and influence. In order to defend their security and attain other national interests, these self-help-system states tend to accumulate power. Therefore, power becomes a central notion in realism, regarded both as an objective of state policies and a means through which they can influence other actors to act in a desired way. Power is seen as a capability to coerce others to do what one wants, or to do what, in other circumstances, they would not (Dahl, 1961).

  According to realist scholars, power is understood in terms of material resources. Kenneth Waltz (1979: p.131) lists these resources as consisting of the “size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence.” According to Robert Gilpin (1981: p.13), power is “the military, economic and technological capabilities of states.” For John Mearsheimer (2001: p.55), “power is based on the particular material capabilities that a state possesses,” of which the most crucial are military assets. Although over the years more emphasis was put on economy or technology(rather than just military strength)—in determining a nation’s power, realists tend to focus on tangible and measurable resources.

  This is not to say, however, that realists have completely ignored the importance of ideas and perceptions in international affairs. Leading scholars, from E.H. Carr – one of the main representatives of classical realism, to Kenneth Waltz – the founder of the neorealist theory, recognise the role of morals and believe in foreign policy. They are aware of the material power’s limitations and agree it is not the best way to exercise power in all situations, pointing at the power of opinion. Hans Morgenthau, a renowned American foreign policy realist, writes about “the significance of a policy of prestige in an anarchic world” and claims that states should “be alert to international morality and world public opinion in order to maintain their international status” (Lee, 2010c: p.13).

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  The SAGE Handbook of Power

  • Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard, Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  21 Reconfiguring Power in a Globalizing World P h i l i p G . C e r n y INTRODUCTION The concept of power has traditionally played a central and crucial role in the analysis of International Relations and World Politics. It has been seen as the key factor, variable, driving force or ‘currency’ in relations among states. Indeed, this role has been seen by many observers since Thucydides as the defining attribute of the international system itself. This interpretation of the role of power is said to derive from the understanding that no seriously effective level of organized, authoritative or legitimate governmental or socio-political structure exists above the level of the state that does not itself emanate from and, in the last analysis, remain responsible to autonomous, sovereign states – i.e., that there is no genuinely supranational power structure or political process in world politics. Therefore in order to explain what happens in world politics – as distinct from politics within states – it is necessary to privilege (a) power-seeking actions of states (taken as structurally coherent ‘unit actors’ in and of themselves: Waltz 1979) and of ‘state actors’ (actors acting through or on behalf of states) and (b) structured, ongoing relations of power between and among states, over the claims of other potential causal variables. This interpretation is usually labelled the ‘realist’ – or, in a revised version that has become widespread in academic International Relations since the 1970s, ‘neorealist’ – paradigm, derived originally from the thought of such political theorists as Machiavelli and Hobbes and central to the nineteenth century German concept of Realpolitik . In this understanding of the world, there is no agreed, overarching political forum in which individuals, economic interests and social groups can systematically and effectively express their views and pursue their goals – in other words, engage in collective action – other

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  Power and International Relations

  A Conceptual Approach

  • David A. Baldwin(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  Despite the infinite variety of means available, he added, writers on international politics have “usually given a primary weight to military force and military potential” (133–39). Inis Claude’s Power and International Relations (1962) begins by acknowledging that power may be defined broadly to include a “variety of means by which states may pursue their purposes and affect the behavior of other units” and supports this acknowledgment by citing Lasswell and Kaplan’s Power and Society but “nevertheless” confines use of the “term power to denote what is essentially military capability.” For Kenneth Waltz (1979, 113, 186), international politics is a realm in which “force serves, not only as the ultima ratio, but indeed as the first and constant one.” He declares that “the use of force and the possibility of controlling it have been the preoccupations of international-political studies” ever since “Thucydides in Greece and Kautilya in India.” Although the end of the Cold War caused many IR scholars to question the preoccupation with military power, 17 the emphasis on military force in the study of international relations remains strong. For example, a RAND Corporation study purporting to offer a “comprehensive framework for evaluating the national power of countries in the postindustrial age” focused on “the one element that is still fundamental to international politics: effective military power” (Tellis, Bially, Layne, and McPherson 2000, xi, 177). Also, a study entitled War and the State carried the subtitle The Theory of International Politics (Wagner 2007). “The central question debated by students of international politics,” the author began, “is the relation between organized violence and political order at the global level” (ix). No one objected to this continuing preoccupation with military power more strongly or more often than the Sprouts

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  Political Power

  The Development of the Field

  • Mark Haugaard, Kevin Ryan, Mark Haugaard, Kevin Ryan(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  Political power at the level of world politics is thus becoming less like old-fashioned “power politics” or Realpolitik , and more like the domestic politics of: • interest group pressure, competition and conflict; • the clash of ideologies and social values; • the construction of – and resistance to – evolving norms and rules of the game; and • an uneven but growing “civilianization” of power relations. More controversially, I argue that, paradoxically, while these crosscutting processes can be destabilizing at some levels, they are likely to be broadly stabilizing at system level. The centrality of Power in International Relations The concept of power has traditionally played a crucial role in the analysis of International Relations and World Politics. It has been seen as the key factor, variable, driving force or “currency” in relations among states. Indeed, this role has been seen by many observers since Thucydides as the defining at-tribute of the international system itself. This interpretation of the role of power is derived from the understanding that no seriously effective level of organized, authoritative or legitimate governmental or socio-political struc-ture exists above the level of the state that does not itself emanate from, and in the last analysis remain responsible to, autonomous sovereign states. In Globalization and the Transformation of Power 187 other words, there is no genuinely supranational overarching power structure or political process in world politics. Therefore, in order to explain what hap-pens in world politics – as distinct from politics within states – it is necessary to privilege (a) power-seeking actions of states (taken as structurally coherent “unit actors” in and of themselves: Waltz 1979) and of “state actors” (actors acting through or on behalf of states, mainly politicians and bureaucrats) and (b) structured, ongoing relations of power between and among states, over the claims of other potential actors or causal variables.

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  International Studies

  Interdisciplinary Approaches

  • P. Aalto, V. Harle, S. Moisio, P. Aalto, V. Harle, S. Moisio(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Part III Concepts 8 Power in International Relations: An Interdisciplinary Perspective Tuomas Forsberg 207 Introduction Power has traditionally been an extremely important notion in the study of international relations. In particular, the realist school of thought has built around it the whole theory of international relations. Hans Morgenthau (1979 [1948]) wanted to define the study of interna- tional politics through interests defined in terms of power. For Kenneth Waltz (1979), distribution of power was the key variable in determining the nature of an international system. John Mearsheimer (2001) regards power as the currency of great-power politics. Power is pivotal, however, not only for realist scholars; all IR theories have to deal with the concept. As Stefano Guzzini (2005) has noted, power is too important a concept to be left to the realists. All major IR theories have an built-in idea of power, whether explicit or not. Liberals understand power in terms of trade, or soft power; Marxists in terms of production forces and capital; constructivists in terms of norms; and post-structuralists in terms of discourses – at least, these descriptions are how the standard and somewhat stereotypical accounts of these approaches would like to have it. The very plethora of approaches to power tells us that, in IR, there is no single notion of power on which the discipline would converge. This further underlines the fact that power is a very difficult concept to define and pin down. It may, therefore, be questionable whether there is any room for an interdisciplinary approach to power reflecting the idea of international studies (IS) and whether such an approach would bring any added value to the present understanding(s) of power in IR. The existing plurality of IR theories has not enhanced the level of power analysis in world politics. By contrast, Janice Bially Mattern (2008) has argued that P.

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  Political Globalization

  State, Power and Social Forces

  • Morten Ougaard(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  (Gilpin 1981, p. 9) 145 The application of this general principle to the set of social arrange- ments that make up the contemporary global governance system is not as straightforward as it may seem. Power, as frequently noted, is an essentially contested concept that is subject to ongoing definitional discussions about power as capabilities, as relations, structural power, ideational and discursive power, and so on (see Baldwin 2002 for an overview). These controversies, however, are not central to the present discussion where it suffices to say that power here is defined as the capacity to influence social outcomes in accordance with interests and preferences, indicating that the concept points to capabilities as well as relations, and that it is open to a variety of power-resources. The central problem in the present context is another one, namely the referent object of power – i.e. the question of to whom or to what power is ascribed. In the international relations literature this question is addressed in at least three different ways. One answer is that states are the referent objects of power. This is a staple of international relations theory, in particular, of course, state-centred approaches like realism and neo- realism. Although there is debate about what constitutes power – mili- tary capabilities, structural economic power and various sorts of ‘soft power’ (Baldwin 2002; Nye 1990) – discussions of power in world society focus on the power of states and nations. Another possibility is to consider social forces or classes as the referent objects of power. For instance Robert Cox has suggested the existence of a powerful ‘transnational managerial class’ (Cox 1987, pp. 358–9), Kess van der Pijl argued along similar lines for the existence of an ‘Atlantic ruling class’ (Pijl 1984), whereas in a more recent and more complex argument he pointed to an ‘international of capital’ as the dominant social force (Pijl 1998, p. 133).

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  Understanding American Power

  The Changing World of US Foreign Policy

  • Bryan Mabee(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  American Power and International Relations 59 While all three sets of opposing concepts have an important role in the discourse and debate on US foreign policy, they are so entan-gled in normative meanings and with partisan politics, as well as being historically contingent, that they have lost much analytic value. However, I would further suggest that the terms are nonethe-less important in understanding debates about the relationship between the US power and the world. All the concepts continue to be used in debates about US foreign policy, and they feature signifi-cantly in the ways in which American policy-makers and commenta-tors discuss the future role of American power in the world. Therefore, recounting these debates is not just of historical interest: the debates and policies pursued have demonstrated the contours of important conceptual concerns about the shape of the international system and the US’s role within it. What remains is to broaden out our view of the US in international relations, drawing on the key insights of these debates: how can we better understand power, and what does the international system look like and what role does the US have within it? What is Power in International Relations? The most common view on Power in International Relations sees power in terms of the ability to achieve particular policy outcomes: that is, states have power when they are able to achieve specific goals, and especially when these goals conflict with the goals of other states in the international system. Such goals may be moderate or ‘revolutionary’ (or revisionist), and the amount of power required will vary in terms of the kinds of goals that are desired. However, what this means in both theory and practice is problematic, espe-cially in terms of whether or not it tests the limits of that we can conceive of as ‘power’.

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  International Law, Power, Security and Justice

  Essays on International Law and Relations

  • Serge Sur(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Hart Publishing

    (Publisher)

  It is beneficial in this respect to state its principal characters clearly (section II) before showing in any way expres-sions of power that are translated by the way states manage it (section III). I. Definition We can understand the term power in multiple ways, abstract or technical. A dictionary definition, for example, may devote three pages to the term, but it will be more a series of particular illustrations than a general defini-tion. One learns thus that it is a word used in philosophy, mathematics, mineralogy and even various games. The more general sense is provided by definition number 1: ‘the right or act by which one commands others, 4 Power as a Regulator of International Relations authority’ and definition number 10: ‘the power to do something’. It is ben-eficial here to adhere to a definition that fulfils the needs of the exercise. It must be sufficiently large to cover the range of different behaviours encoun-tered in international relations. It must cover the whole of the answers to the simple question: who can do what? It must also be precise enough to be distinguished from the neighbouring notions with which power is often unduly confused. A. Components In this essay, power is defined as a capacity—capacity to do; capacity to make someone do; capacity to prevent someone from doing; capacity to refuse to do. These different terms merit a degree of explanation, as does the chosen arrangement of the terms themselves. i. Analysis a. Capacity Capacity refers to an aptitude or a potential for action that is translated by concrete manifestations but unexhausted by any of them, retaining the same potential even after being employed. For example, legislative power defines the possibility for a legislator to adopt successive laws and to endow them with a determined authority.

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  Superpowers in the Post-Cold War Era

  • K. Aldred, Martin A. Smith(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1 Power Power: what it is, who has it, and how it is used, are questions which lie at the heart of international relations. This book is con- cerned with the nature and uses of power by leading countries or groups of countries. Because it is such an important concept, this first chapter will focus on defining power and the ways in which it can be exercised in international affairs. The authors are interested in the kind of power which enables those which possess it to aspire to a leading or dominant status and role. POWER DEFINED A very common basic definition of power sees it being exercised when A gets B to do something which B might not otherwise do. Because two or more actors are involved in a situation in which it is exercised, it is usually argued that power is relative. If only one actor existed, or if individual actors had no contact with each other, there would be no opportunity (or need) for one to exercise power over the other. As John Rothgeb has put it: ‘power is found only when members of the international system interact with one another’. 1 A further important point here is the extent to which power can be either active or passive. Klaus Knorr, a well-known academic writer of the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, wrote that ‘the active side [of power], is concerned with what a country can do to other countries; the other, passive side, concerns a country’s ability to limit what other countries do to it’. 2 Thus, one can say that the most powerful countries are those which are able to maximise their influence on others whilst minimising the ability of others to influ- ence them. In short, the leading powers are likely to be the most active ones. This view has been popular amongst political scientists. Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, for example, has written that ‘international primacy means that a government is able to exercise more influence on the behaviour of more actors, with respect to more issues than any other government can’.

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  International Relations

  A Handbook of Current Theory

  • Margot Light, A.J.R. Groom(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  Part Two: Partial Theories 8 Power, Influence and Authority A VS. de Rueck University of Surrey and CAC It has been held that as wealth is to economics, so power is to politics, and Morgenthau expressed the classical view that 'International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Nevertheless, power has proved as difficult to conceptualize as it is to quantify. Power Politics in International Relations (IR) The 'realist' school of thought developed the use of power as the key explanatory concept in the study of IR, and many scholars accepted power as the organizing principle for the whole discipline of political science. The most comprehensive and systematic treatment of international studies within this framework is by Morgenthau [30]. To this one should add the works of Aron [1], Schwarzenberger [38], and the Sprouts [44,45] and Wight [48] as well as the penetratingly critical assessment of the whole 'power polities' school of inter-national theorists carried out by Claude in his well-known study [13]. The classical concept of the 'balance of power has been subjected to systems analysis by Kaplan [22] and Rosecrance [35], and to game theory analysis by Schelling [37], while Singer has made a sustained attempt both to establish an historical quantitative data bank and to test empirically the propositions derived from balance of power theory, with inconclusive results [43]. He finds, for example, that during the nineteenth century peace depended on parity between coalitions, whereas in the twentieth century, preponderance of the leading coalition was the condition for international stability [40,41]. For those interested in reviewing the range of power approaches in IR, a number of useful surveys exist [7, 8, 31, 46]. The recent litera-ture on the modern doctrine of nuclear deterrence is reviewed in Chapter 10. 113

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  War and Reason

  Domestic and International Imperatives

  • Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Lalman(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 6 International Power Relations and War What king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand. Or else, while the other is still far away he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace. —Luke 14:31 We have emphasized the roles of power and preference in forging war or peace. These two prongs of political life have nowhere been more important or received more attention than in the investigation of wars of enduring consequence. Here we focus on prospective constraints on preferences and on the distribution of power that may shape the size and effects of conflict. A central debate in the study of conflict and cooperation highlights the role of balanced power or power preponderance in promoting peaceful or violent resolutions of disputes. Variants of a balance-of-power theory have been central to the thinking of policymakers and at the core of much postwar analysis. A perspective that emphasizes peace through power preponderance has been the principal alternative theory, gaining eminence in the past decade of speculation about the possibly declining hegemony of the United States (Keohane 1984; Russett 1985; Kugler and Organski 1989; Kennedy 1987). These ap-parently competing theories of international politics have generally been viewed as positing irreconcilable approaches to international interactions. One—the balance-of-power theory—implies that state ac-tions are dictated by a universal preference and insatiable national appetite for power. The other—the theory of power transition or he-181 182 Power and Foreign Policy gemonic war—contemplates states that vie for control over the rules and norms of international intercourse, for control over the values by which nations live and interact. Here we propose to investigate these contending theories with the international interaction game.

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