Neorealism and Constructivism in International Relations: A Brief Comparative Analysis of Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Walt, and Alexander Wendt

Last modified on 2009-02-03 20:07:49 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Kenneth Waltz’ book, Theory of International Politics , published in 1978, is a disappointing effort.  I have never been a proponent, per se, of neorealist perspectives vis-à-vis International Relations, but Waltz, despite his near-messianic stature in the neorealist camp, spends a great many pages saying virtually nothing.  The crux of Waltz’ argument is that in order to construct a meaningful understanding of international politics, the individual state actors, or units, must be completely divorced from the international structure surrounding them, then allowing the structure itself to be analyzed and act as a predictive tool.  He bases his analysis on a fairly traditional realist understanding of international politics, namely the self-help dynamic of states acting perpetually in contest with all others to maximize their own security.  Waltz’ work was amended, in a sense, by Stephen Walt in his 1987 book The Origins of Alliances .  Walt focuses on the dynamics of “balancing” and “bandwagoning” in international politics — the process of aligning with other states against a threat (i.e. The U.K., France, Russia, and the U.S. in the Second World War), and the process of siding with the agressor (i.e. Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia in the Second World War), respectively.  Walt’s work provided a decent framework for understanding the dynamics of the Cold War era, but the system he (or Waltz) imagines has virtually no role in it for non-state actors, a system which, in the post-9/11 era, is fundamentally flawed.  Alexander Wendt’s essay “Anarchy is What States Make of It:  The Social Construction of Power Politics,” published in 1992 in International Organization, contrasts with and criticizes both prior works by articulating, essentially, what has become the constructivist approach to international politics.  Wendt argues that states act based on the nature of their self-identity and the way in which they identify other states.  These identities are formed by the repetition of actions between states.  In a vaccuum, where the state has not come into contact with any other state, Wendt argues that ideas such as national security or strictly defined territorial boundaries do not exist.  Rather, concerns such as national security, and the self-help politics, the realpolitik if you will, that persists in the international arena are not a product of the anarchic nature of the system, nor of a Hobbesean interperetation of human nature.  Conflict between states occurs when states interpret other states a threats, an interpretation built up over time through the interactions between them.  Wendt argues that such conflict is not inevitable, nor is it inherant to the anarchic structure of the international realm, and that states have the power to alter their identities and, as such, their interactions by breaking down their internal identity consensus, critically examining their existing ideas of self and of others and, by extension, their existing structures of interaction, and, finally, alter those structures of interaction by altercasting - which Wendt defines as “a technique of interactor control in which ego uses tactics of self-presentation and stage management in an attempt to frame alter’s definitions of social situations in ways that create the role which ego desires alter to play.”  (Wendt, p. 421)

I found Wendt’s criticism of Waltz’ conceptualization of international structure to be excellent and fascinating. Waltz goes to great lengths to acknowledge that political scientists have relatively little capability to predict action on the international stage, but also suggests that his conceptualization of international structure allows a certain degree of predictability because “similar structures produce similar effects,” (Waltz, p. 88) and because the structure acts as a kind of selector, limiting the avenues open to actors within the system. Wendt quite accurately points out that this structural model functionally can predict virtually nothing. While Waltz is a proponent of the study of individual actors, his structural model alone means nothing without the constituent parts and their myriad distinctions. I found Wendt’s work to act as a kind of “unified theory,” filling in the blank spaces in Wentz’ (and Walt’s) treatment of structure. Waltz seemed to dance close to Wendt’s eventual assertion with his depiction of structure as having arisen spontaneously out of the interactions of states – I would have been much more satisfied with his proposal had he taken the next step and identified the “intersubjective understanding and expectations,… the “distribution of knowledge,” that constitute [states’] conceptions of self and other.” (Wendt p. 396)

I found frustrating Waltz’ absolute demand that the properties of units within the system be completely detached from the conceptualization of the system itself, particularly given his occasionally shaky attempts at disjoining the two. “To define a structure requires ignoring how units relate with one another (how they interact) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to one another (how they are arranged or positioned)… How units stand in relation to one another, the way they are arranged or positioned, is not a property of the units. The arrangement of units is a property of the system.” (Waltz p. 80) This statement seems to me to be analogous to a game of four-square. If I take three friends, find a sidewalk, draw four squares in chalk on the ground, and we all take our places in our respective squares, do we find ourselves in the squares because the squares were there or because we drew them with the intention of using them to engage in competition, friendly or otherwise? The nature of the system is entirely dependent upon the nature of the individual units that exist within it if, as Waltz concedes, the system is a spontaneous creation of the units.

Waltz goes on to insist: “Although capabilities are attributes of units, the distribution of capabilities across units is not. The distribution of capabilities is not a unit attribute, but rather a system-wide concept… Variation of structure is introduced, not through differences in the character and function of units, but only through distinctions made among them according to their capabilities.” (Waltz, p. 98) It seems to me that Waltz is forced to exert considerable effort to dance a very fine line around his own rules in order to flesh his proposed structure out to anything beyond a simple statement that there are multiple units and there is also a structure of which they are a part. In this instance, isn’t the distribution of capabilities, or even Walt’s balance of threats, a direct result of the actions that the unit has taken? Those distinctions, even as a function of socially constructed perceptions of threats or capability gaps, exist because of the actions of the unit and, as such, the unique properties of that unit (ideology, defense spending, etc.). Thus, these distributions aren’t a function of the structure actively arranging things to fit together appropriately, but rather the structure passively allowing these changes to take place, which certainly can’t be described as a salient feature of what makes a structure unique and apart from the units within it.

It is my opinion that had Waltz not clung so stubbornly to his rejection of any form of reductionist analysis his book would have been much more cohesive. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate his thorough dismantling of what seem to have been very widespread analytical malpractices in political science research and theorizing, or that his ideas are entirely without merit. I am merely disappointed that he has dedicated so many pages to a somewhat flimsy and skin-and-bones depiction of a systemic theory.

Works Cited:
Waltz, Kenneth N. Theory of International Politics . McGraw-Hill. New York: 1979.
Walt, Stephen M. The Origins of Alliances . Cornell University Press. Ithaca: 1987
Wendt, Alexander. “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization , Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring, 1992) pp. 391-425

A Very Spiteful Review of “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”

Last modified on 2008-10-17 02:44:13 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

For reasons I cannot understand, this book is treated as canonical in high school economics classrooms across the country. Friedman presents an argument that is not only exceedingly hypocritical but asserted almost entirely through a jungle of personal anecdotes. The Lexus and the Olive Tree is not so much an explanation of globalization as it is a laundry list of interesting people that Friedman knows and you do not. Methodology aside, the arguments Friedman makes are more often than not deeply flawed.

Many of the ideas Friedman babbles about are considered debatable (the “Electronic Herd”) at best, or flat-out absurd (the “Golden Straitjacket”) at worst. This “straitjacket” is the focal point of his argument, and it takes him a few hundred pages to get around to the crux of it. To summarize: Having spoken to 50 or 60 of his friends, Friedman declares that economic growth, specifically in emerging markets, demands a paring down of any form of social safety net, open arms to foreign investment, and a deregulatory fiscal policy on the part of the government in question. Friedman disregards the fact that heavily subsidized agricultural exports from the United States, for example, undercut domestic prices in many of these emerging markets and bankrupt local agricultural industries. The United States’ own tariffs and quotas were what allowed U.S. industry and agriculture to flourish in the first place, but present-day emerging markets are somehow expected to open their borders and allow their markets to be flooded with development-stifling imports from first world economies and subsidy driven low prices.

All of this aside, perhaps the most grating element of The Lexus and the Olive Tree is Friedman’s penchant for creating ridiculous names for existing and well-defined economic and political phenomena. The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention stands in as the fat sister of Democratic Peace Theory (Heard of Israel and Lebanon, Thomas? Give Russia and Georgia a few more months, perhaps.). DOScapital (a witticism perhaps overheard in a middle-school remedial English program) is a ridiculous way of describing what most have deemed the global economy; i.e. capitalism. The Electronic Herd? Capitol investors. Microchip Immune Deficiency? Insufficient decentralization and technophobia. In summation, The Lexus and the Olive Tree attempts to explain the nature and processes of globalization by combining a long list of people with whom Thomas Friedman has had lunch, kitschy jargon, five or six thousand poorly-chosen metaphors, a smattering of jingoism, a dedication to the unregulated free market that would make Lady Thatcher blush, and no formal education in economics whatsoever. I would highly recommend this book to aspiring Robber Barons, but for anyone else it’s only good for a laugh or two.