Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies (Cambridge Studies in International Relations) 100935518X, 9781009355186

Citation preview

Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies cambridge studies in international relations

Jack Donnelly

Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies

Inspired by recent work in evolutionary, developmental, and systems biology, Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies sketches a robust conception of systems that grounds a new conception of levels (of organization, not merely analysis). Understanding international systems as multi-level multi-actor complex adaptive systems allows explanations of important features of the world that are inaccessible to dominant causal and rationalist explanatory strategies. The book also develops a comprehensive critique of IR’s dominant conception of systems and structures; presents a novel conception of the interrelationship of the social production of continuities and the social production of change; and sketches models of spatio-political structure that cast new light on the development of international systems, including a distinctive account of the nature of globalization. Jack Donnelly is the Andrew Mellon Professor in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His book Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice is widely acknowledged as one of the preeminent works in the field of international human rights and his work in international relations theory has been published in leading journals including International Organization, European Journal of International Relations, and International Theory.

Cambridge Studies in International Relations Editors Evelyn Goh Christian Reus-Smit Nicholas J. Wheeler Editorial board Jacqueline Best, Karin Fierke, William Grimes, Yuen Foong Khong, Andrew Kydd, Lily Ling, Nicola Phillips, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Jacquie True, Leslie Vinjamuri, Alexander Wendt Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The  series aims to publish the best new scholarship in international studies, irrespective of subject matter, methodological approach or theoretical perspective. The series seeks to bring the latest theoretical work in International Relations to bear on the most important problems and issues in global politics. 165 Jason Ralph On global learning Pragmatic constructivism, international practice and the challenge of global governance 164 Barry Buzan Making global society A study of humankind across three eras 163 Brian Rathbun Right and wronged in international relations Evolutionary ethics, moral revolutions, and the nature of power politics 162 Vincent Pouliot and Jean-Philippe Thérien Global policymaking The patchwork of global governance 161 Swati Srivastava Hybrid sovereignty in world politics 160 Rohan Mukherjee Ascending order Rising powers and the politics of status in international institutions Series list continues after index

Systems, Relations, and the Structures of International Societies Jack Donnelly University of Denver

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009355186 DOI: 10.1017/9781009355193 © Jack Donnelly 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Donnelly, Jack, author. Title: Systems, relations, and the structures of international societies / Jack Donnelly. Description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023021010 | ISBN 9781009355186 (hardback) | ISBN 9781009355193 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: International organization. | Social systems. | International relations – Philosophy. Classification: LCC JZ1318 .D66 2024 | DDC 327–dc23/eng/20230821 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023021010 ISBN 978-1-009-35518-6 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Figurespage xii List of Tablesxiii Acknowledgmentsxiv Part I  Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations: Foundations for Systemic/Relational IR 1 Systems and Relations 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10

Systems Systemic and Analytic Explanations Levels of Organization Relations and Systems Relationalism Processes Mechanisms Assemblages Treating International Systems as Systems Postscript: Waltz and Jervis on Systems

2 Complex Adaptive Systems 2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

The Partial (In)separability of Systems and Their Components 2.1.1 Analysis, Reduction, Decomposition 2.1.2 The (Limited) Holism of Systemic Wholes 2.1.3 States and States Systems Emergence 2.2.1 Non-aggregativity 2.2.2 Dense Interconnections Require Systemic Explanations Complexity 2.3.1 Complex, Complicated, and Aggregated 2.3.2 Non-linearity 2.3.3 Self-Organization 2.3.4 Adaptation (Complex Adaptive Systems) 2.3.5 Modularity The Difference Systemism/Relationism Makes

3 From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization 3.1 3.2

Levels of Abstraction/Explanation Levels of Analysis in IR

3 3 5 6 7 10 13 15 17 18 19

20 20 20 23 24 26 26 27 29 29 30 31 33 34 36

38 38 39

v

vi

Contents 3.3 3.4

Levels of Analysis vs. Levels of Organization Micro and Macro 3.4.1 Triads of Levels 3.4.2 Against Micro-foundations 3.5 The Agent–Structure Problem 3.6 Biological Individuals 3.7 Individual Human Beings 3.8 Social Groups Are Individuals Too 3.9 Genidentity: A Processual Perspective on Identity 3.10 Identities and Persons 3.11 Structure

4 Systems, Causes, and Theory: Explanatory Pluralism in IR 4.1

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

4.7 4.8

4.9

Waltz on Theory 4.1.1 Causes, Independent Variables, and Structural Theory 4.1.2 “A Theory Is a Picture” 4.1.3 How Explanations 4.1.4 The Diversity of Scientific Explanations Explanation Causes, Causation, and Explanation Independent-Variable vs. Systemic Causation This-Is-a-Cause-of-That vs. How Explanations Explanation: How, What, and Why 4.6.1 Associational Explanations 4.6.2 Systemic Explanations 4.6.3 Additional Kinds of Explanations Explanatory Pluralism Theories, Models, and Explanations 4.8.1 Social-Scientific “Theory” 4.8.2 Laws and Theories vs. Mechanisms and Models 4.8.3 Schemas, Sketches, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets Descriptive Accuracy in Systemic/Structural Explanations

42 43 43 44 46 49 51 52 53 56 58

60 61 61 62 63 64 64 64 67 68 69 70 70 72 73 73 74 76 77 78

Part II  Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem 5 Structural Theory 5.1

5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9

Waltz’s Theory of International Politics 5.1.1 Systems, Structures, and Levels 5.1.2 The Elements of Political Structures 5.1.3 Structural Realism and Structural Effects A Structure and Interacting Units Structural Theory Reductive Explanations “Units” “The System” The Individualism of Waltzian Theory Systems Are Not Environments Systems of Structured Relations

85 85 85 86 86 87 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Contents

6 Anarchy 6.1

6.2 6.3

6.4

6.5

Anarchy Is Not an Ordering Principle 6.1.1 Anarchy, Government, and Hierarchy 6.1.2 Anarchy over “Anarchy” 6.1.3 Waltz’s Double Dichotomy 6.1.4 Anarchy Is Not the Ordering Principle of International Systems 6.1.5 Demarcation, Structure, and Explanation 6.1.6 What Is Anarchy? Anarchy Has No Effects: The Consequences of Anarchy Anarchy Has No Effects: The Case of Forager Societies 6.3.1 Demography and Economy 6.3.2 Politics 6.3.3 Conflict and Violence 6.3.4 Forager Warlessness 6.3.5 Binding through Sharing: A Logic of Anarchy 6.3.6 Anarchy Has No Effects The Discourse of Anarchy in IR 6.4.1 “Anarchy” in Pre-1979 IR: Quantitative Evidence 6.4.2 The Pattern of Usage in Pre-1979 IR 6.4.3 The Rise of a Discourse of Anarchy 6.4.4 Words and Concepts The Construction of Anarchy

7 The Tripartite Conception of Structure 7.1 7.2

7.3 7.4

The Distinctiveness of the Waltzian Conception Three Simple Anarchic Systems 7.2.1 The Hobbesian State of Nature and Forager Societies 7.2.2 Great Power States Systems 7.2.3 The Effects of Existential Fear 7.2.4 The Failure of the Tripartite Conception Looking Behind the Tripartite Conception Structural Theory vs. Theory of International Politics

8 Functional Differentiation and Distribution of Capabilities 8.1 8.2

International Systems Are Functionally Differentiated The Distribution of Capabilities 8.2.1 The Distribution of Capabilities in Domestic Political Systems 8.2.2 The Distribution of Capabilities in International Political Systems

9 Ordering Principles 9.1

9.2 9.3

Hierarchy 9.1.1 Hierarchy Is Not an Ordering Principle 9.1.2 The Discourse of Hierarchy in IR Political Systems Do Not Have Ordering Principles Ryan Griffiths: Two-Dimensional Ordering Principles 9.3.1 Anarchy, Hierarchy, Centralization, and Sovereignty 9.3.2 Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

vii

97 97 97 100 101 103 103 104 105 109 110 112 113 114 115 116 117 117 118 121 123 127

134 135 136 137 138 139 141 143 144

146 146 147 148 150

153 153 154 155 156 157 157 159

viii

Contents 9.3.3 9.3.4 9.4

9.5 9.6 9.7

Two-Dimensional Ordering Principles 160 “Ordering Principles” That Do Not Specify Forms of International Order 162 Albert, Buzan, and Zurn: Three Principles of Differentiation 163 9.4.1 Types of Societies and Dimensions of Differentiation 164 9.4.2 Types Are Not Defined by a Dominant Dimension of Differentiation164 9.4.3 Fitting Types to the World 166 9.4.4 Combining “Forms” of Differentiation 168 Causal Depth and Generative Structures 169 From Structure to the Structuring of Systems 171 Postscript: The Dead End of Waltzian Structuralism 172

Part III  Systems, Relations, and Processes: Reframing Systemic International Theory Part III (A)  Differentiation and Continuous (Trans)formation

177

10 Relations, Processes, and Systems: Configuring Configurations That Configure

179

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

Relations and Processes: Toward Relational Processualism Configuring Configurations That Configure The Attractions of a Relational Processual Frame Relational Processualism International Systems as Hierarchically Layered Assemblages

11 Multiple Dimensions of Differentiation in Assembled International Systems 11.1

11.2

11.3

11.4

11.5 11.6 11.7

Differentiation 11.1.1 Checklists, Toolkits, and Building Blocks 11.1.2 Vertical and Horizontal Differentiation 11.1.3 Formal and Substantive Differentiation Differentiating Actors, Activities, and Authorities 11.2.1 Segmentation (Actors) and Terminal Peer Polities 11.2.2 Functional Differentiation (Activities) 11.2.3 Stratification (Authorities) Material Differentiation: Geotechnics and Scarcity 11.3.1 Material Factors in Structural Realism 11.3.2 Geotechnics and Scarcity Additional Dimensions of Differentiation 11.4.1 Polarity 11.4.2 Levels of Organization 11.4.3 Interaction Capacity Positioned Social Persons International Systems as Ecosystems Summary

179 183 184 185 185

188 188 188 189 190 190 190 192 193 194 195 196 198 198 199 199 200 201 203

Contents

12 Continuous (Trans)formation: Producing Social Continuity and Social Change 12.1 12.2 12.3

ix

204

Systems Far from Thermodynamic Equilibrium Continuous (Trans)formation The Continuous (Trans)formation of Early Modern Militaries 12.3.1 The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe 12.3.2 The Military Revolution in Early Modern France 12.4 The Inseparability of Continuities and Transformations 12.5 Transposition and Re-functionality 12.6 Eventful History 12.7 Conclusion

204 207 209 209 210 214 215 219 221

13 Life Sciences and Social Sciences: Studying Co-evolving Complex Adaptive Systems

223

13.1

Evolution 224 13.1.1 Units and Levels of Evolution 224 13.1.2 The Process and Progress of Evolution 226 13.1.3 Co-evolution 227 13.1.4 Evolution as Modular Tinkering 229 13.2 “Evolution” in the Social World 230 13.3 Development 233 13.3.1 Cell Differentiation 233 13.3.2 Performing Processes of Development 235 13.3.3 Phenotypic Plasticity and Environmental Influences on Development236 13.4 Systems Biology and Relational/Systemic Social Science 238 13.4.1 Systems Biology: A Model for the Social Sciences 238 13.4.2 Beyond Causes and Theories: How (Not What or Why) Explanations239 13.4.3 Models and Theories 241

Part III (B)  Four Excursions in Relational/Systemic IR

245

14 Normative-Institutional Differentiation

247

14.1 14.2

Institutions and Practices Constitutional Structures 14.2.1 Principles and Practices of International Legitimacy 14.2.2 Principles and Practices of Domestic Legitimacy 14.2.3 Foundational Functional Practices 14.2.4 Hegemonic Cultural Values 14.3 Types of Security Systems 14.4 Transforming Post-World War II International Society 14.4.1 Abolishing Territorial Acquisition by War 14.4.2 Abolishing Overseas Colonial Empires 14.4.3 Norms, Causes, and Changing Social Practices 14.4.4 The Forcible Acquisition of Territory since 1945 14.4.5 The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine 14.5 Regulative Regimes and International Governance

248 249 250 252 252 254 254 259 259 260 262 263 265 267

x

Contents

15 Vertical Differentiation: Stratification and Hierarchy in International Systems 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5

15.6 15.7

15.8 15.9

Stratification, Hierarchy, and Inequality Forms of Hierarchy Single-Layer Systems: Unstratified and Autarchic Orders Multilayered (Hierarchical) Orders Single (Convergent) Hierarchies I: States Systems 15.5.1 Types of States Systems 15.5.2 Hierarchy in States Systems Single (Convergent) Hierarchies II: Imperial International Systems Multiply Ranked Orders: Heterarchies 15.7.1 Heterarchy 15.7.2 Hegemony as Heterarchy 15.7.3 Heterarchy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Conceptual Comments on Hierarchy and Heterarchy Typologies and Model-Based Explanation 15.9.1 Model-Based Explanation 15.9.2 Thinking about Change with Typologies

268 268 270 272 274 274 274 280 280 282 282 284 287 289 290 290 291

16 Levels, Centers, and Peripheries: Spatio-Political Differentiation 295 16.1

16.2 16.3 16.4

16.5 16.6

Three Conceptions of Political Centralization 16.1.1 Centralization as the Concentration of Power 16.1.2 Centralization as the Centering of Power 16.1.3 Center–Periphery Differentiation Spatio-Political Differentiation Systems of Single-Level Governance (States Systems) Systems of Single-Center Governance (States and Empires) 16.4.1 Integrated Polities (States) 16.4.2 Aggregated Polities (Empires) 16.4.3 Integrated and Aggregated Systems of Single-Center Rule Systems of Multilevel Multiactor Governance (Heterarchies) Summary: Types of Polities and International Systems

17 Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Political Systems (c. 1225 – c. 2025) 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4

High Medieval Heterarchy Late Medieval Changes New Monarchies and the Rise of a European States System Early Modern Dynastic Empire-States 17.4.1 France 17.4.2 Spain 17.4.3 England/Britain 17.4.4 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation 17.5 States, Status, Corporations, and Privileges 17.5.1 States and Status 17.5.2 Corporations, Privileges, and Estates 17.6 Agglomeration, Centralization, and Particularism 17.7 Early Modern Administration 17.7.1 Spain 17.7.2 France 17.7.3 Administering Early Modern Polities

295 295 296 297 299 301 303 303 305 305 306 309

310 310 313 314 316 317 319 320 321 324 324 326 328 329 330 331 333

Contents 17.8 17.9

17.10

17.11 17.12 17.13

17.14

17.15

The Logic of Composition in Early Modern Europe Change in Early Modern Europe 17.9.1 Crisis and Growth 17.9.2 Periodizing Early Modern Politics Baroque Absolutism and Fiscal-Military States 17.10.1 “Absolutist” States 17.10.2 Fiscal-Military States A Succession of Types of Polities Pre-modern Polities in an Early Modern States System Before (and Beyond) “International Relations” 17.13.1 Before “International Relations” 17.13.2 Beyond “National” and “International” Politics: Layered Systems of Polities Re-assembling a Globalizing World 17.14.1 From States System to Heterarchy 17.14.2 Globalization as Continuous (Trans)formation Alternative Framings

18 Afterword: Multiple Approaches to Multidimensional Systems of Relations 18.1 18.2

Multiple Models of Multidimensional Systems The Nature of Systemic/Relational Explanations

References Index

xi 334 335 335 337 337 338 340 341 342 344 344 346 347 348 349 350

353 353 354

358 452

Figures

3.1 Coleman’s boat page 45 6.1 Types of consequences of anarchy 107 9.1 Griffiths on political centralization 158 9.2 Griffiths on social differentiation 160 9.3 Two-dimensional ordering principles 161 14.1 Constitutional structure of international societies 251 15.1 A typology of hierarchical stratification 271 15.2 “Flat” orders 273 15.3 Stratification in an unpolarized states system 275 15.4 Stratification in a multipolar states system 276 15.5 Stratification in a great power states system 277 15.6 Spheres of influence and protectorates 278 15.7 Stratification in a concert system 279 15.8 Stratification in an imperial system 281 15.9 Stratification in a unipolar states system 282 15.10 Stratification in a dual hegemony system 285 15.11 Stratification in a single hegemony system 286 15.12 Stratification in turn-of-the-twentieth-century international society 288 15.13 A typology of international systems 292 16.1 Centralized (spokes-and-hub) empires 296 16.2 Centralization in a states system 297 16.3 Centered hierarchy in an imperial system 298 16.4 A three-level spatial grid 300 16.5 A Waltzian states system 301 16.6 Single-level governance by terminal peer polities (a states system) 303 16.7 Single-center governance of a unitary integrated polity (a unitary state) 304 16.8 Single-center governance of a federal integrated polity 304 16.9 Single-center governance of an aggregated political system (empire)305 16.10 Multilevel multiactor governance (heterarchy) 307 16.11 Heterarchic stratification in contemporary Europe 308 xii

Tables

6.1 Occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in selected books page 118 9.1 Uses of “hierarchy” or “hierarchical” in selected books 155 14.1 Types of international security systems 255

xiii

Acknowledgments

If this is more than an OK book, that is largely due to the efforts of the editors and reviewers at Cambridge University Press and at International Theory, European Journal of International Relations, and International Organization, where preliminary versions of more than a third of this MS first appeared. I am immensely appreciative of the prodigious quantity of thoughtful and constructive criticisms that I received from more than twenty anonymous referees and multiple editorial teams trying to drag out of me ideas and arguments that were not yet properly formulated (or, sometimes, not even apparent) in the draft in question. (If this book were to have a dedication, it would be “To Reviewer A (whoever you might be).”) And I am particularly grateful to John Haslam at CUP, who has shepherded this project through multiple proposals and drafts over (I am embarrassed to admit) five years. I also owe a considerable debt to a large group of readers and listeners, going back in some cases nearly two decades. If my records serve me correctly, these include Emanuel Adler, Dogus Aktan, Mathias Albert, Debbie Avant, Sarah Bania-Dobbins, John Barkdull, Naaz Barma, Andy Bennett, Mariano Bertucci, Ahsan Butt, Chris Brown, Barry Buzan, Andy Bennett, George Demartino, Dan Deudney, Jon Elster, Rachel Epstein, Dave Forsythe, Paige Fortna, Claudia Fuentes, David Goldfischer, Ilene Grabel, John Hobson, Barry Hughes, Ian Hurd, Raslan Ibrahim, Patrick Jackson, Pat James, Leigh Jenco, Dave Lake, Anthony Langlois, Jae Won Lee, Andrew Linklater†, Charles Lipson, Andy Moravcsik, Jonathan Moyer, Abe Newman, Dan Nexon, Nick Onuf, Lucas Paes, Louis Pascarella, M. J. Peterson, Alex Prichard, Brian Rathbun, Martin Rhodes, Randy Schweller, Jason Sharman, Chris Shay, Duncan Snidal, Jack Snyder, Hidemi Suganami, Cameron Thies, Alex Thompson, Matt Weinert, David Welch, Alex Wendt, Peter Wilson, Bill Wohlforth, Ayse Zarakol, and Michael Zurn as well as participants at seminars at American University, Columbia †

Deceased.

xiv

Acknowledgments

xv

University, Georgetown University, London School of Economics, National University of Singapore, Ohio State University, University of British Columbia, University of California at San Diego, University of Chicago, University of Denver, University of Southern California, and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. Bob Jervis, who died while I was completing the final draft, deserves special mention. He was a reviewer of an early article that helped to define this book, hosted me twice for seminars at Columbia, and made some very useful suggestions on the structure of the book. And his fine book on systems was an inspiration. Although I did not know him well, he was a kind and gracious colleague whose support I greatly appreciated. Our discipline has been diminished by his death. Finally, saving the most important for last, I thank my wife, Katy, and my son, Kurosh, who are the true lights of my life. They make me a very lucky boy indeed.

Part I

Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations Foundations for Systemic/Relational IR

This book advocates a relational processual revival of systems-based theory and research in International Relations (IR). Part I outlines the distinctive character of systemic and relational approaches. Part II comprehensively critiques Kenneth Waltz’s conception of systemic theory, which has dominated IR for the past four decades. Part III begins to plot paths forward towards new types of systemic research and explanations. In this Part, Chapters 1 and 2 establish basic terms of reference, emphasizing the importance of considering international systems as systems and the actors in international relations as parts of systems. Chapter 1 lays out the ideas of systems and relations and introduces the framings of processes, mechanisms, and assemblages. Chapter 2 looks at three central features of systems: emergence, complexity, and the partial (in)separability of systems and their components. It concludes by briefly noting some important differences that a systemic/relational perspective makes for IR. Chapters 3 and 4 identify two major metatheoretical implications of a focus on systems. Chapter 3 argues that a relational/systemic understanding of the world as a layered system of systems of systems suggests looking less at levels of analysis and more at levels of organization. Chapter 4 explores the differences between causal-effects and systems-effects explanations and argues for explanatory, not merely methodological, pluralism in IR. Because I consider a wide range of topics, some of which are likely to be of little interest to some readers, I have tried to write this book so that each chapter can be read separately, pretty much in any order. The detailed table of contents, introductions to each Part, and copious cross-references aim to help readers engage the book in ways that work well for them. I also use extensive quotations and pinpoint citations and often offer extended references and suggestions for further reading. And to cater to readers with different degrees of engagement with the material at hand, 1

2

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

I make fairly extensive use of expository footnotes. I therefore encourage you to treat the footnotes, which make up a full fifth of the manuscript, and the reference list, which makes up another fifth, as integral parts of the book. With no further ado, though, let us begin to look at systems, relations, and their place in a pluralistic social scientific IR.

1

Systems and Relations

This book explores some implications for the discipline of International Relations (IR1) of accepting the following propositions. • Some features of the world can be understood, more or less fully, through knowledge of the elements that compose them. • Other features can be understood only by also considering the organization of elements into larger systems/wholes and the structured operation of those wholes. • The biological and social worlds can be adequately understood only by combining “analytic” knowledge of components considered separately and “systemic” knowledge of the organized operations of structured wholes. I ask readers to accept, for the sake of argument, the systemic perspective sketched by these propositions – to see where it takes us. In this chapter I define systems, identify a few fundamental features of systemic explanations, and explore some alternative framings for studying “things” that have qualities that cannot be fully explained in terms of their parts. 1.1 Systems The Oxford English Dictionary defines a system as “a group or set of related or associated things perceived or thought of as a unity or complex whole.” Most definitions in the natural and social sciences similarly see a system as “an assembly of elements related in an organized whole.”2 1

As is conventional, I use IR to indicate the “discipline” of International Relations, which studies the subject matter of international relations – whether IR is understood as a discipline in its own right (which is more common in the UK), a sub-field of Political Science (as is more common in the US), or an interdisciplinary field (often in the US under the label International Studies). 2 (Flood and Carson 1993, 7).

3

4

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

“A whole which functions as a whole by virtue of the interdependence of its parts is called a system.”3 “The most fundamental act of systems theory … [is] distinguishing it [the system] from its environment.”4 A bounded set of components that share “concentrated feedback relationships” is distinguished from what lies outside the system – the environment – “with which the system shares only input and output relationships.”5 In a system “the organization of units affects their behavior and their interactions.”6 This produces “systems effects” including, most notably, “emergent” phenomena.7 “A whole can have properties (or powers) … that would not be possessed by its parts if they were not organised as a group into the form of this particular kind of whole.”8 “System” is often used in a looser sense to refer to any bounded entity. Here, however, I consider only structured wholes with emergent properties: what are often called “complex systems.”9 And I address only systems that are, to the best of our knowledge, “in the world” (not mere analytic constructs).10 I adopt the following definition. A system is a bounded set of components of particular types, arranged in definite ways, operating in a specific fashion to produce characteristic outcomes, some of which are emergent.11 This definition emphasizes the operation, not just the organization, of components.12 Some systems effects arise from arrangement alone. 3 (Rapoport 1968, xviii). 4 (Gougen and Varela 1979, 32). For Niklas Luhmann, the leading systems theorist in the social sciences in the last four decades, “a system is the difference between system and environment” (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 44. See also 52, 63, 187; 1995 [1984], 5–8, 16–18, 20–23; 2012 [1997], 43–44, 63–64, 121). 5 (Flood and Carson 1993, 8). 6 (Waltz 1979, 39). 7 See §2.2. 8 (Elder-Vass 2007a, 28). 9 See §2.3. 10 Older systems approaches often distinguished “concrete” systems from “analytic” (or “abstracted”) systems. See, for example, (Bunge 1979, 1992), (Parsons 1979), (Bailey 1983). Artificial units of investigation, however, do not (unless they happen to correspond to a concrete system) have emergent systems effects. They therefore will not be addressed here. 11 This is similar to Mario Bunge’s definition of systems in terms of “composition, structure (relations among the parts), and connections with the environment”; “composition (collection of parts), environment, and structure (set of bonds or couplings between system components and things in the environment)” (1997, 417, 416. See also 458). 12 Operations might be considered arrangement across time. The temporal and processual dimensions of operations, however, seem to me worth separate note. See also §§1.6, 10.1–10.3. I avoid the language of “structure and process,” though, because it facilitates analytically severing organization from operation and reifying arrangement/structure.

Systems and Relations

5

(Consider the allotropes of carbon – the “same” “stuff” arranged differently to produce diamond, graphite, graphene (a single layer of graphite with unusual electrical properties), char (the amorphous carbon in charcoal), and vitreous carbon (used in certain electrodes), as well as various nanocarbons (e.g., buckminsterfullerenes) and carbon nanofoam (which is ferromagnetic).) Usually, though, especially in the living and social worlds, the operation of the arranged elements is crucial. This definition also emphasizes the specificity of the components, their arrangement, and their operation. Parts of particular types are organized and operate in specific ways. Finally, systems are of special interest because of systems effects  – irreducible higher-level phenomena that emerge from the operation of complex wholes – which are essential to a comprehensive understanding of the things of the social world. For example, a state or society is more than an aggregation of individuals. The national interest is not the average of (or any other operation performed on) the interests of the individuals and groups that make up the nation. And the reason to study an international system is that it has properties that cannot be understood by even the most intensive study of its components and their interactions. 1.2

Systemic and Analytic Explanations

Systems require  – and provide  – a distinctive type of explanation. This usually is explicated by contrasting “analytic” and “systemic” explanations.13 In analytic explanations “the whole is understood by knowing the attributes and the interactions of its parts,”14 “disjoined and understood in their simplicity.”15 As Nicholas Onuf puts it, “analysis is the procedure whereby someone (the analyst) observes (or causes and then observes, or imagines) and describes the disaggregation of some (actual or hypothetical) unit.”16 This strategy of breaking things down into smaller or simpler pieces often produces epistemically powerful and pragmatically valuable knowledge. If, however, the object of inquiry has properties arising from the organization or structured operation of its elements “then one cannot predict outcomes or understand them merely by knowing the 13 In IR, Waltz’s account (1979, 39–40ff. See also 12, 37) is hegemonic. (I reject his account, however, in §§5.3–5.6.) 14 (Waltz 1979, 18). 15 (Waltz 1979, 39. See also 12, 37, 60, 68, 121). 16 (Onuf 1995, 42).

6

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

characteristics, purposes, and interactions of the system’s units.”17 “Systemic” approaches are required to comprehend “systems effects.” What this implies for IR is the central subject of this book. In the social sciences, analytic explanations typically rely on the attributes, actions, and interactions of actors. Systemic explanations, by contrast, focus on the organization and operation of structured wholes – which, I argue, require relational and processual explanations. 1.3

Levels of Organization

Systems have “multiple levels of organization … [arranged in] a rough hierarchy, with the components at each ascending level being some kind of composite made up of the entities present at the next level down.”18 In the life sciences, the standard framing is levels of organization19 or “compositional levels  – hierarchical divisions of stuff (paradigmatically but not necessarily material stuff) organized by part–whole relations, in which wholes at one level function as parts at the next (and at all higher) levels.”20 (For example, cells, tissues, organs, systems, organisms; alleles, individuals, populations, communities, ecosystems.) As Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson put it, “life is a self-replicating hierarchy of levels. Biology is the study of the levels that compose the hierarchy.”21 Levels of organization are (understood as) “in the world.” “Levels of organization are a deep, non-arbitrary, and extremely important feature of the ontological architecture of our natural world.”22 In a strong formulation, they are “levels of reality.”23 The world “is” a layered system of systems of systems in which parts at one level are wholes on “their own” lower level. Higher-level “things” are, of course, made up (and obey all the laws) of lower-level “things.” The whole, however, is not fully reducible 17

(Waltz 1979, 39). 18 (McClamrock 1991, 185). “Hierarchy” in this taxonomic sense, which is standard in the natural sciences, indicates relations of inclusion (not command or control). “Things” at higher levels encompass lower-level things in a graded series of part–whole relations: metaphorically, boxes within boxes (within boxes). 19 (Eronen and Brooks 2018), (Brooks, DiFrisco, and Wimsatt 2021a), and (Brooks 2021) are good recent overviews of levels of organization in Biology. (Brooks, DiFrisco, and Wimsatt 2021b) is an excellent recent edited volume, including (Potochnik 2021), which reviews and extends recent criticisms of the concept. 20 (Wimsatt 1994, 222 [emphasis added]). Joseph Needham’s (1937) idea of “integrative levels” is an early version of (or precursor to) this framing. And the levels ontology of a chain of being (Lovejoy 1936) was popular in the West for two millennia. 21 (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009, 7). 22 (Wimsatt 1994, 225). See also (Floridi 2008, 319). 23 (Heil 2003), (Salthe 2009), (Poli 2009), (Nicolescu 2010). See also (Grene 1967).

Systems and Relations

7

to – cannot be explained entirely in terms of – its components. Quite the contrary, its distinctive character only emerges in the higher-level whole. In this understanding – which I adopt for the purposes of this book (which addresses the implications of systemic approaches to IR) – each organizationally differentiated level, because it is ultimately irreducible, has the same ontological status.24 The world is organizationally layered but, as Manuel DeLanda nicely puts it, ontologically flat.25 The things of the world are larger and smaller, simpler and more complicated, aggregated or complex. But no one level is more real, fundamental, or foundational than any other. Understanding such a world requires not only bottom-up explanations of the large by the small or the whole by its parts but also attention to “downward causation”26 and top-down explanations. (As Kenneth Waltz puts it, systems “shape and shove.”27) “The combination of ‘top-down’ effects … and ‘bottom-up’ effects … is a pervasive feature of complex systems.”28 And one of the great attractions of systemic approaches is that they not merely allow but require us to comprehend the causal powers of both higher-level and lower-level entities, activities, and forces.29 1.4

Relations and Systems

In the social sciences, systems theories were common in the decades following World War II.30 The failure of such projects, however, led in the 1970s to a marginalization of, and in many circles a strong reaction 24

Rather than illegitimately sneaking in an important substantive claim, I intend this as a plausible hypothesis or methodological move that is unlikely to impede work on (partially) reductive explanations. (See §2.1.) Assuming that some level is ontologically primary, by contrast, not only commits one to an account that is inconsistent with most scientific practice but encourages empirically baseless “in principle” reducibility claims. Supporting evidence for this position is scattered through this book. For now I ask for a willing suspension of disbelief, in order to pursue the implications of a radically systemic view of the world. 25 (DeLanda 2006, 28. See also 13). See also (Bryant 2011, ch. 6), (Latour 2005), (Schatzki 2016), (Salter 2019). 26 The term appears to have been coined by Donald Campbell (1974). See also (Emmeche, Køppe, and Stjernfelt 1997, 2000), (Bedau 2002), (Kistler 2009), (Campbell and Bickhard 2011), (Elder-Vass 2012), (Bechtel 2017b), (Paoletti and Orilia 2017). (Eronen 2021) usefully links downward causation to compositional levels in the context of the tangled hierarchies characteristic of the biological (and I would add the social) world. 27 (Waltz 1990b, 34; 1997, 915; 2000, 24). 28 (Holland 2014, 5). 29 See §2.1. 30 The leading example in IR was (Kaplan 1957). See also (Rosecrance 1963), (Masters 1964), (McClelland 1966), (Deutsch 1968), (Banks 1969), (Thompson 1973). In Political Science, see (Easton 1953, 1965), (Deutsch 1963), (Almond and Powell 1978).

8

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

against (the excesses and abuses of), “systems theories.”31 And such an attitude remains common today.32 In IR, the publication in 1979 of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics revitalized explicitly systemic approaches – but in a very limited and peculiar way that I argue has been a mixed blessing (if not a pyrrhic victory). As I show in Part II, Waltz’s narrow structuralism is not actually systemic. And the only explicitly systemic substantive theory that is widely employed in IR is structural realism, which is extremely contentious. As a result, in much of IR today there is widespread skepticism of, and even hostility to, “systemic theory” – which is usually taken to mean Waltzian structural theory. Nonetheless, in IR,33 Sociology,34 and most other social sciences,35 a broadly systemic perspective has emerged under the label of relationalism. Relationalist approaches employ a variety of framings, including

31 32

33



34

35



In Sociology, Talcott Parsons was a leading proponent. See, for example, (Parsons 1951, 1966, 1971) and (Kroeber and Parsons 1958). More broadly, see (Buckley 1967) and (Buckley 1968). (Pickel 2011, 4–7) briefly reviews this decline. In IR, see (Weltman 1973). The principal exception is transdisciplinary complexity science, which has made limited but significant inroads in many social sciences. (Miller and Page 2007), (Holland 2014), (Miller 2015), and (Ladyman and Wiesner 2020) are useful general introductions. More briefly, see (Walby 2007). In IR, see (Bousquet and Curtis 2011), (Byrne and Callaghan 2014), (Cineda 2006), (Cudworth and Hobden 2013), (Gadinger and Peters 2016), (Gunitsky 2013), (Harrison 2006), (Jervis 1997), (Kavalski 2007), (Orsini et al. 2020), (Pickering 2019), (Scartozzi 2018), (Snyder and Jervis 1993), (Wagner 2016), (Walby 2009), (Young 2017). (Jackson and Nexon 1999) is the seminal programmatic statement in IR. (McCourt 2016) and (Jackson and Nexon 2019) are excellent brief overviews. See also (Kurki 2020, 2022). Among “relational” works published in the 2010s, a good sample might include (Adler-Nissen 2015), (Brigg 2018), (Bucher 2017), (Duque 2018), (Gazit 2019), (Joseph 2018), (Kavalski 2016, 2018), (Learoyd 2018), (Lee 2019), (MacDonald 2014), (McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon 2018), (Nordin et al. 2019), (Pratt 2016a, b), (Selg 2016). See also (Schneider 2015). (Emirbayer 1997) is the classic programmatic statement. Charles Tilly (e.g., 1995, 1998, 2001b, 2015 [2008]) and Harrison White (esp. 1992, 2008) were particularly influential. (Crossley 2011) is a good book-length introduction (useful also because it is rooted in British, rather than American, discussions). See also (Dépelteau 2018), (Donati 2011), (Powell and Dépelteau 2013). Examples of relational Anthropology include (Ingold 2004), (Jansen 2016), (Salmond 2012), (Stensrud 2016), (Streinzer 2016), (Thelen, Vetters, and von Benda-Beckmann 2018). Anthropology also has a growing substantive literature on relational ontologies (e.g., (Herva et al. 2010), (Lee 2019)). Archaeological literature explicitly using relational frames includes (Betts, Hardenberg, and Stirling 2015), (Collar et al. 2015), (Fowler 2013, 2017), (Harris 2020), (Harrison-Buck and Hendon 2018), (Hill 2011), (Hutson 2010), (Watts 2014). I have also found (Hodder 2012) especially useful for its links to assemblage thinking. In Geography, see, for example, (Bathelt and Glückler 2003), (Bathelt and Li 2014), (Boggs and Rantisi 2003), (Hesse and Mei-Ling 2020), (Malpas 2012), (Murdoch 2005), (Ward 2010), (Yeung 2005). (Gergen 2009) outlines a relational psychology with clear connections to the social sciences more broadly. On

Systems and Relations

9

• networks36 – patterns of ties between nodes in webs of relations; • fields37  – structured “spaces” that induce particular behaviors from entities of particular types; • practices38 – sets of shared expectations and opportunities that underlie action-channeling dispositions; • (con)figurations39 – long-lived patterns of social relations; • assemblages40  – complex combinations of human, institutional, and material entities and forces; and • “relational institutionalism”41 – the approach of a group of IR scholars, rooted in both network theory and historical institutionalism, focusing on causally efficacious relational forms.

36



37



38



39



40

41

relational economics, which is only beginning to emerge, see (Biggiero et al. 2022), (Wieland 2020). (Avant and Westerwinter 2016) is an excellent edited volume that suggests the range of network approaches in IR. (Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery 2009) is the standard article-length overview. See also (Borgatti et al. 2009). (Victor, Montgomery, and Lubell 2017) and (Knoke et al. 2021) are comprehensive overviews of political network approaches at varied levels of analysis. (Light and Moody 2021) is a similar extended overview of social networks. Interesting IR applications include (Acuto and Leffel 2021), (Beardsley et al. 2020), (Carpenter 2011), (Dorussen, Gartzke, and Westerwinter 2016), (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2014), (Erikson and Occhiuto 2017), (Gade et al. 2019), (Gallop and Minhas 2021), (Goddard 2009a), (Haim 2016), (Kim 2019, 2020), (Kim and Morin 2021), (Legg 2009), (Montgomery 2016), (Mueller, Schmidt, and Kuerbis 2013), (Mulich 2020), (Oatley et al. 2013), (Owen 2010), (Owen 2016), (Sazak 2020), (Sikkink 1993), (Torfing 2012). In IR, see, for example, (Adler-Nissen 2011), (Berling 2015), (Dixon and Tenove 2013), (Go 2008, 2011), (Guzzini 2013), (Kauppi and Madsen 2013), (Lim 2020), (Nexon and Neumann 2018), (Schmitz, Witte, and Gengnagel 2017), (Stampnitzky 2013), (Steinmetz 2007, 2008). (Bourdieu 1996 [1989]) is a classic empirical case study in Sociology that has had immense impact. See also (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 14–26, 94–115). (Martin 2003; 2011, ch. 7, 8) provides an excellent introduction, stressing analogies with physical fields. (Fligstein and McAdam 2012) presents a more mainstream American sociological approach. (Barman 2016, 445–452) provides a useful brief overview of field approaches in the social sciences. See also §4.6.2 at nn. 74ff. (Pouliot 2010) and (Adler and Pouliot 2011) were seminal in IR. (Bueger and Gadinger 2018) and (Lechner and Frost 2018) are good book-length overviews. See also (AdlerNissen and Pouliot 2014), (Bigo 2011), (Brown 2012), (Bueger 2014, 2016a), (Bueger and Gadinger 2015), (Côté-Boucher, Infantino, and Salter 2014), (Davies 2016), (Holthaus 2020), (Kustermans 2016), (Neumann 2002), (Pouliot 2013, 2016). This is the framing of Norbert Elias (2000 [1939], 1978). See also (Mennell 1998), (Baur and Ernst 2011), (Dépelteau and Landini 2013), (Tsekeris 2013), (Landini and Dépelteau 2014). In IR, Andrew Linklater (e.g., Linklater 2011; Linklater and Mennell 2010) was a forceful advocate for drawing on Elias. See §1.8 (esp. n. 93 for IR examples) and §10.5. This is Nexon’s label (2010, 112ff.). (Nexon and Wright 2007) is a brilliant application. (Nexon 2009, 39–65) offers a useful medium-length overview. See also (Goddard 2009b), (Jackson 2006), (MacDonald 2014), (McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon 2018). One might also include ch. 15–17 of this book.

10

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

The language of systems highlights wholes and emergence. “Relations” highlights ties between elements. But the “sense in which ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ is that the parts are, to some degree, constituted as the kinds of entities they are by their relation to the whole.”42 Conversely, relationalists see related elements as parts of larger wholes (systems). And both framings emphasize the organization or arrangement of elements. I therefore treat “relational” and “systemic” as substantially overlapping. And an important aim of this book is to emphasize the systemic character of relational work in order to bring these two styles of theory and research, which are largely unconnected in contemporary IR, into constructive dialogue.43 1.5 Relationalism Relationalism (like systemism44) is not a substantive theory or research program but an orientation to social theory and research. Relationalism focuses on “connections, ties, transactions and other kinds of relations among entities,”45 stressing the interconnections of the things of the world (rather than their separate substantiality). Relationalists see the world as made up more of configurations (of things) than of things (that stand in various relations). Relationalists typically oppose themselves to what they call “substantialism,” which “maintains that the ontological primitives of analysis are ‘things’ or entities … Relationalism, on the other hand, treats configurations of ties … between social aggregates of various sorts and their component parts as the building blocks of social analysis.”46 42

(Bertolaso and Dupré 2018, 331). 43 Natural scientists widely employ networks and fields. They almost always, though, use the language of systems to make what contemporary social scientists would call relational arguments. This, it seems to me, reflects the reaction against “systems theories” in the social sciences that I noted at the outset of this section – in sharp contrast to the normalization and naturalization of systems framings across the natural sciences (which, I am suggesting, ought to be a model for IR). 44 By “systemism” I mean an orientation to social research that emphasizes systems, parallel to established uses of “relationalism.” I am not adopting Mario Bunge’s sometimes idiosyncratic approach to systems, which he (e.g., Bunge 2000) labels “systemism.” 45 (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 583. See also 592). Relationalists typically understand relations in the ordinary-language sense of “a connection, correspondence, or contrast between different things; a particular way in which one thing or idea is connected or associated with another or others.” Oxford English Dictionary. On conceptualizing relations, see (Crossley 2013). 46 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 291–292). See also (Emirbayer 1997, 281), (McCourt 2016, 478–479), (Adler-Nissen 2015, 285–286, 288, 290–295). (Dupré 2020) offers a brief parallel critique of substantialism from a processualist (see §1.6) perspective. William

Systems and Relations

11

Substantialist approaches have predominated in the contemporary social sciences. Individualist substantialism (e.g., rational choice models) treats actors as prior to and generative of relations – or, more modestly, gives methodological priority to interests, identities, or preferences that are treated as given. Holist substantialism (e.g., world systems theory) sees large-scale formations as prior to and generative of the entities that compose them. Variable-based substantialism employs independent variables that are treated as separate from and causes of (the values of) dependent variables.47 Relationalists do not deny the reality of substances or minimize their importance. They do, however, deny that “things” are essentially substantial or exist prior to (or remain fundamentally independent of) relations. In particular, relationalism rejects the idea of “pre-given units such as the individual or society.”48 Nothing in the world is purely substantial. “Stuff” (substance) becomes things only when arranged in specific ways. The things of the world are the things that they are – are real things – not because of substance alone (or even necessarily primarily) but in part (and essentially) through their relations to other (relational) things. “Things” are other “things” arranged in particular ways. Salt is sodium and chlorine arranged in a particular way. Bureaucracies are complex assemblages of (among other things) offices, office holders, and administrative technologies. Relationalism is also anti-essentialist.49 “Every so-called essence appears as a dense bundle of relations.”50 “The question of what something is becomes one of the relational configurations within which it is embedded.”51

47

48 49

50

51

Sewell (2005, 329) makes a similar point when he argues that “a useful way to get a conceptual handle on the social is to think of it in terms of the various mediations that place people into ‘social’ relations with one another – mediations that may not make them companions but that, in one way or another, make them interdependent members of each other’s worlds.” (“Mediations,” for my tastes, is a bit too actor-centric. But Sewell’s point seems to me fundamentally relational.) (Emirbayer 1997, 286) highlights the substantialist nature of mainstream causal analysis, drawing heavily on (Abbott 1988). (Independent-variable explanations explain through the attributes, actions, and inter-actions of entities – not their relations. See §§4.3–4.5.) (Emirbayer 1997, 287). See also (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 293). For example, Stephan Fuchs (2001) frames what is usually called “relationalism” as Against Essentialism. See also (Tilly 1998, ch. 1, esp. 17–21), (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 293, 295, 300, 301, 307, 321 n. 18), (Emirbayer 1997, 282, 283, 285, 286, 292, 295 n. 34, 308). For similar arguments in processual philosophy of Biology, see (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 23–26), (DiFrisco 2018, 79–92). (Powell 2013, 205). (McCourt 2014, 36).

12

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Epistemological relationalism holds that whatever the world “really is,” only relational “things” (not their essences or pure substances) are accessible to science. Relationalism may also be understood as a methodology for understanding some aspects of the world.52 And relationalism, whether ontological, epistemological, or methodological, is sometimes embraced as a general “theory” of the world and sometimes as an account of (only) some parts. Relationalism/systemism is compatible with scientific realism,53 philosophical constructivism,54 and pragmatism,55 each of which can accept 52

Jackson and Nexon (1999, 292) argue that “the distinction between relationalism and substantialism involves ontological commitments.” That, however, need not be the case. “There is an important distinction between an analytical standpoint and an ontological standpoint” (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 320–321) – and relationalism, I am arguing, is sometimes employed (only) as a useful analytical standpoint. 53 Scientific realism holds that “mature sciences” produce knowledge that we have good reason to believe more or less approximates the way the world “really is” – or at least that over time they move in such a direction. (Chakravarty 2017) and (Lyons 2016) are good brief introductions. (Harré 1986) is dense but wide-ranging and extraordinarily insightful. In IR, (Wendt 1999, ch. 2), (Patomaki 2002), and (Wight 2006) are standard discussions. It is probably worth noting that I reject Wendt’s (1999) privileging of scientific realism. Scientific realism does provide a foundation for a pluralist social science. But it is only “a condition of possibility for the argument of the rest of the book” (Wendt 1999, 91 [emphasis added]). Philosophical constructivism and pragmatism also can assure “that everyone gets to do what they do” by “block[ing] a priori arguments against engaging in certain kinds of work” (Wendt 1999, 91). 54 Philosophical constructivism holds that knowledge is dependent on ideas, instruments, or experience; that Reality (with a big capital Germanic or Platonic R), whatever it may be, is not accessible to (and perhaps not entirely independent of) human beings. (Berger and Luckmann 1967) is an influential “classic.” Short introductions include (Luhmann 2002), (Mallon 2007), and (Sveinsdóttir 2015). At book length, (Hacking 1999) is wide-ranging and engaging. Out of the huge literature in the philosophy of science, I find (Knorr Cetina 1981, 1999) and (Kukla 2013) especially penetrating. (Hull 1988) is also interesting, reading science as a selection process for ideas. The boundaries between scientific realism and philosophical constructivism, however, are fuzzy – especially because realists accept that all scientific knowledge is theory-laden (and instrument-dependent). For example, Ronald Giere’s “scientific perspectivism” (Giere 2006b; Massimi and McCoy 2020), which he describes as realist, seems to me about equal parts constructivist and realist. And John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality (1995) is an influential work that combines realism about (knowledge of) the natural world and constructivism about the social world. 55 “Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it” (Legg and Hookway 2021, 1). (James 1904, 1907) are still-useful classic introductions. John Dewey’s Experience and Nature (1925) is a book-length overview. (Thayer 1982) is a good reader. (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2006) directly addresses pragmatism and relationalism. In IR, see (Cochran 2001, 2002, 2012), (Kratochwil 2007a, b), (Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009), (Pratt 2016a), (Pratt et al. 2021). There are no clear lines, though, between pragmatism and either scientific realism or constructivism. Individual pragmatists tend to lean in either or both directions while emphasizing the distinctively human dimensions of action in and knowledge of the world.

Systems and Relations

13

systems and relations as “real” “things” “in the world” – however much they differ in their accounts of the nature of that reality.56 But because systems and relations are not objects of sensory experience, systemic/ relational approaches are incompatible with empiricism.57 And systems and relations are, at best, difficult to reconcile with neo-positivism’s58 focus on independent and dependent variables. 1.6 Processes In the philosophy of Biology, processualism is an increasingly prominent systemic framing.59 “Essentially, every biologist is engaged in the description of processes.”60 Laura Nuño de la Rosa even argues that “following processes is a – if not the – characteristic activity of science.”61 In the social sciences, processual approaches are relatively rare.62 But processes, as we will see in §10.1, appear centrally in accounts of 56

The best-known relationalist social theorists (e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, Niklas Luhmann, Norbert Elias, Bruno Latour) are constructivists. But Margaret Archer, a leading scientificrealist social theorist, is a strong relationalist. (See (Archer 1982, 1995), (Donati and Archer 2015).) And Mustafa Emirbayer, who played an important role in popularizing relationalism in Sociology (Emirbayer 1997), draws heavily on Deweyan pragmatism. 57 Empiricism holds that justified knowledge is grounded in sensory experience. In the decades on either side of World War II, “logical empiricism” dominated the philosophy of science. ((Creath 2022) is a useful overview of a huge literature.) The leading version today is Bas Van Frassen’s (1980) “constructive empiricism,” which holds that science aims to provide true knowledge of observables (but not unobservables). (Monton and Molder 2021) is a good overview. (Churchland and Hooker 1985) presents several scientific realist critiques and van Frassen’s reply. 58 See n. 35 in §4.3. 59 (Dupré and Nicholson 2018) and (Dupré 2020) are excellent brief introductions. Contemporary processualism, especially in the philosophy of science, is very different from the “process philosophy” of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. As Dupré and Nicholson (2018, 7) put it, “for the purposes of our present project we wish to distance ourselves from the association with Whiteheadian metaphysics. …. In fact, we suspect that process philosophy has not received the attention it deserves partly because of its close association with Whitehead’s work.” (Rescher 1996, 20–23) provides a very brief overview of Whitehead’s (arcane) process metaphysics. 60 (Bapteste and Anderson 2018, 283). See also (Bechtel 2011), (Darden 2013), (Craver and Kaiser 2013, 130). 61 (Nuño de la Rosa 2018, 264). Glennan (2017, 24) quoting (Levin 1992, 1944) claims that “understanding patterns in terms of the processes that produce them is the essence of science.” Mark Bickhard (2004, 122) even argues that “every science has passed through a phase in which it considered its basic subject matter to be some sort of substance or structure. Fire was identified with phlogiston; heat with caloric; and life with vital fluid. Every science has passed beyond that phase, recognizing its subject matter as being some sort of process: combustion in the case of fire; random thermal motion in the case of heat; and certain kinds of far from thermodynamic equilibrium systems in the case of life.” 62 The classic exception that proves the rule is (Elias 2000 [1939]). Charles Tilly is the principal recent exception. See, for example, (Tilly 1984, 1995, 2001a, 2015 [2008]).

14

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

relationalism in IR. And, I will argue, processes merit not only independent attention but emphasis in broadly systemic/relational work. A process, in ordinary language, is “a continuous and regular action or succession of actions occurring or performed in a definite manner, and having a particular result or outcome.”63 As the philosopher Nicholas Rescher puts it, a process is “an integrated series of connected developments unfolding in programmatic coordination”;64 “a coordinated group of changes in the complexion of reality, an organized family of occurrences that are systematically linked to one another either causally or functionally.”65 Processualism in effect extends the relational critique of substantialism, adding (and emphasizing) activities.66 Processes “do things. They are active and so ought to be described in terms of the activities of their entities, not merely in terms of changes in their properties.”67 Such organized productive activities are no less worthy of scientific investigation than the attributes, actions, interactions, and relations of the entities involved. Processualism,68 like relationalism, is regularly understood as an ontological,69 an epistemological,70 and a methodological stance. Strong ontological processualists hold that the world is “a matrix of process.”71 “Things” are “complex bundles of coordinated processes”;72 “precipitates of processes … what abides, as certain kinds of processes continue and develop.”73 A human being, for example, is not so much

63



64

65 66 67 68 69 70



71 72 73



See also (Baur and Ernst 2011), (Fararo 2011), (Demetriou 2012), (Mackenzie 2004), (Renault 2016), (Skalník 1978), (Van Krieken 2001). Note, though, that “process tracing,” as typically practiced in the social sciences (see n. 78), rather than treat processes as objects of investigation, examines the pathways between an independent/treatment variable and its causal effects (usually in a single case). Oxford English Dictionary. In the (now rare) sense of “that which goes on or is carried on” (Oxford English Dictionary) a process need not occur in a definite manner or have a particular result. (Anything that occurs might, in this broader sense, be considered a process.) In the (standard) sense that I employ, however, a process has a particular kind of order. (Rescher 2000, 22). See also (Glennan 2017, 26). (Rescher 1996, 38). (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 592) make a similar point in somewhat different terms. (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 5). See also (Illari and Williamson 2013, 74). (Rescher 1996, 2000) are excellent, wide-ranging, and readable introductions to process philosophy. See also (Seibt 2011) and, much more briefly, (Seibt 2017). See, for example, (Austin 2020), (Bapteste and Dupré 2013), (Bickhard 2011), (Galton 2006), (Galton and Mizoguchi 2009), (Guttinger 2018), (Seibt 2018). See, for example, (Mancilla Garcia, Hertz, and Schlüter 2020), (Pradeu 2018, 105), (Rescher 2000, 8). (Rescher 1996, 92). (Rescher 2000, 9). See also (Rescher 1996, 46 (“clusters of actual or potential processes”), 51 (“manifolds of process”)). (Simons 2018, 55). See also (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 13).

Systems and Relations

15

“a” “substantial” (or even “relational”) “thing” as a complex assemblage of physical, chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, and ecological processes. And this is true all the way down to – and is particularly striking at  – the lowest physical levels. “Instead of very small things (atoms) combining to produce standard processes (windstorms and such), modern physics envisions very small processes (quantum phenomena) combining to produce standard things (ordinary macroobjects) as a result of their modus operandi.”74 More modestly, Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver argue that an ontological dualism that sees both entities and activities as irreducibly real “capture[s] the healthy philosophical intuitions underlying both substantivalist and process ontologies.”75 Processualism is also compatible with ontological agnosticism. And one may focus on processes simply as a fruitful tool for generating useful knowledge. In all of its forms, though, processualism is broadly systemic in its focus on the operation of organized “things.” 1.7 Mechanisms Mechanisms receive special attention in the life sciences. In the social sciences we are also seeing growing attention to mechanisms in work on causal mechanisms,76 rationalist modeling,77 and process tracing78 and in multimethod research designs.79 The ordinary-language sense of a mechanism as “a system of mutually adapted parts working together in a machine or in a manner analogous to 74 (Rescher 2000, 12–13). 75 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 4. See also 8). 76 (Baird et al. 2019), (Beach 2013), (Bennett 2013), (Capano and Howlett 2021), (Checkel 2006, 2015), (Falleti and Lynch 2009), (Fortna 2004), (Friedrichs 2016),  (Gerring 2010), (Hedström and Ylikoski 2010), (James 2017), (Johnson and Ahn 2017), (Kincaid 2012), (Little 2011), (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2008), (Steel 2004). Note, however, that treating “mechanisms” as intervening variables, which is common in causal inference research designs (e.g., Mahoney 2001, 578, citing half a dozen examples; Beach 2013, 13, citing half a dozen examples; Morgan and Winship 2015, 224; Goertz 2017, 31), strips the mechanism out of “mechanisms.” See §§4.3–4.5. 77 See, for example, (Abell 2011), (Boudon 1998), (Demeulenaere 2011), (Hedström and Bearman 2009a). Rationalist “mechanisms,” though, usually are “as if” models that provide, at best, “how possibly” (not “how actually”) explanations. They do not attempt to identify and understand the productive processes that in fact produce results in the world – which are the focus of work on mechanisms in the natural sciences. 78 (Beach and Pedersen 2019), (Bengtsson and Ruonavaara 2017), (Bennett 2010), (Bennett and Checkel 2015a), (Collier 2011), (Hall 2013), (Kay and Baker 2015), (Mahoney 2012, 2016), (Saylor 2020), (Waldner 2012), (Zaks 2016). But cf. n. 62. 79 (Beach 2020), (Goemans and Spaniel 2016), (Goertz 2017), (Hesse-Biber and Johnson 2015), (Seawright 2016, 2021), (Stolz 2016).

16

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

that of a machine” or “an ordered sequence of events involved in a biological, chemical or physical process”80 is also standard in the philosophy of Biology, especially “the new mechanical philosophy.”81 Machamer, Darden, and Craver in their seminal article “Thinking about Mechanisms” define mechanisms as “entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination conditions.”82 William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen similarly define a mechanism as “a structure performing a function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization.”83 Entities and activities are the interdependent elements of mechanisms.84 Organization into productive processes makes elements parts of mechanical wholes.85 What mechanisms “do” is produce particular phenomena. (“Mechanisms are always ‘for’ something, and they are identified by what they are for.”86) The “doing” is central to the mechanism.87 And the essence of mechanismic88 research is discovering such productive processes and explicating their operation. Mechanisms are “composite hierarchical systems”89 in which “higherlevel entities and activities are … essential to the intelligibility of those at lower levels, just as much as those at lower levels are essential for 80 Oxford English Dictionary. 81 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000) was seminal. (It is widely cited not only in the philosophy of Biology but also in the social sciences. See, for example, (Hedström and Bearman 2009b, 4), (Waldner 2012, 72), (Morgan and Winship 2015, 238–239), (Stolz 2016, 258–259), (Beach and Pedersen 2019, 3, 30, 31, 38, 69, 70).) Excellent overviews include (Glennan 2017), (Glennan and Illari 2018), and, more briefly, (Craver and Tabery 2019). The label underscores the rejection of early modern mechanical philosophies (e.g., Hobbes, Descartes, Newton, Laplace). (Glennan 2017, 5–11) briefly distinguishes “new” and “old” mechanical thinking. 82 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 3). 83 (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, 423). See also (Bechtel 2016, 705–706), (Darden 2008, 965, table 1), (Glennan 2017, 1, 17, 19–20, 66), (Illari and Williamson 2012, 123), (Illari and Russo 2014, 134), (Love 2020, §1.3), (Povich and Craver 2017, 107– 111), (Steel 2008, 40–42). 84 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 3), (Machamer 2004, 28–30, 32–34), (Darden 2008, 961–964), (Illari and Williamson 2012, 125), (Glennan 2017, 20–22, 29–36). 85 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 3), (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, 430), (Illari and Williamson 2012, 127), (Bechtel 2016, 719), (Glennan 2017, 23). 86 (Glennan 2016, 789). See also (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 5), (Illari and Williamson 2012, 130). On the functional nature of mechanisms, see (Craver 2001), (Craver and Darden 2013, 23–24), (Garson 2019, ch. 10), (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 6). 87 (Machamer 2004), (Illari and Williamson 2013). See also §10.1. 88 I use “mechanismic,” following Bunge (1997, esp. 462), to underscore that “one should not think of mechanisms as exclusively mechanical (push–pull) systems” (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 2). 89 (Wright and Bechtel 2007, 45. See also 54–61). On levels of mechanisms, see (Kuorikoski 2009), (Glennan 2010), (Ylikoski 2012), (Craver and Darden 2013, 21–25).

Systems and Relations

17

understanding those at higher levels. It is the integration of different levels into productive relations that renders the phenomenon intelligible and thereby explains it.”90 “Mechanisms” and “processes” have very similar definitions and often are used interchangeably, both in ordinary language and in professional jargon. When carefully distinguished, one usually is taken as broader than the other. I am inclined to say that all mechanisms are processes but not all processes are sufficiently organized to be considered mechanisms. Charles Tilly, however, argues, no less plausibly, that “mechanisms compound into processes.”91 The key point, though, is that structured productive activities – mechanisms and processes – are modular,92 multilevel, and extend across time. They therefore need to be studied with attention to their organization and operation. 1.8 Assemblages Assemblages are a type of system of special interest for the social sciences. In assemblages, parts are related extrinsically, in the sense that they retain a certain separateness or separability.93 For example, an archaeological assemblage (“an associated set of contemporary artefacts that can be considered as a single unit”94) is the product of “extrinsic” “logics” of deposition, preservation, excavation, and analysis. The assembled whole has properties and meanings distinct from those of its constituent elements. The elements, however, although transformed by their assembly, retain some separate identity (or at least a potential to be redivided or re-assembled). They are more or less tightly linked into a stillheterogeneous entity. The parts of a living organism, by contrast, are intrinsically related to  – fundamentally inseparable from  – the whole. A human heart, for 90

(Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 23 [emphasis added]). 91 (Tilly 2010, 56). See also (Tilly 2001a, 25–26). 92 I am not sneaking in a new element here. Modularity is implicit in and central to both processes and mechanisms. On the importance of modularity in complex systems, see §2.3.5. 93 (DeLanda 2016, 2, 10, 11–12). This conception derives from “assemblage theory,” based on (Deleuze and Guattari 1987 [1980], ch. 3, 4), as developed in (DeLanda 2016, 2006). See also (Buchanan 2020) and, coming to assemblage through the arts, (Brown 2020). IR applications of varied assemblage frames include (Puar 2017 [2007]), (Sassen 2008 [2006]), (Abrahamsen and Williams 2009), (Acuto and Curtis 2014), (Schouten 2014), (Bachmann, Bell, and Holmqvist 2015), (Dittmer 2015), (Wilcox 2015, ch. 4, 5), (Bueger 2018), (Collier 2018), (Fisher 2018), (Carter and Harris 2020), (Fox and Alldred 2020), (Savage 2020), (Ankersen 2021), (Hope 2021). See also §10.5. 94 Oxford English Dictionary.

18

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

example, can be a part of only one kind of whole.95 It is a human heart; a particular kind of part of a particular kind of whole. “No [assembled] object is a seamless whole that fully absorbs its components.”96 An assemblage is both a multiplicity and a unity. Niklas Luhmann’s description of a system as a unitas multiplex97 is especially apt for assemblages. An assemblage perspective highlights the simultaneous irreducibility and inseparability of individuals and social groups; their dialectical or recursive relationship. Social groups, as systems, are not reducible to their individual parts. But as assemblages they do not reduce individuals to parts of social wholes. For example, a family is “more than” the sum of its members. Family members, however, are also “more than” just parts of a family. Because there are irreducible phenomena at all levels, one might say that most of the things of the world are assemblages. (This is indeed the view of some advocates of “assemblage theory.”98) I think, though, that (except when speaking of ontology) it is more profitable to use the term only when we want to draw attention to the act or fact of assembly, the possibility of re-division or re-assembly, or the presence of one entity in multiple assemblages – all three of which are often important in thinking about social groups and the social world more broadly. 1.9

Treating International Systems as Systems

This book emphasizes the need to study systems as systems; relational wholes with important features that cannot be explained solely in terms of their parts. I begin to sketch what that implies in the remaining chapters of this Part. In Part II I show that, superficial appearances to the contrary, the predominant “systemic” approach in IR (Waltzian structuralism) is in fact thoroughly analytic. Part III then suggests some possible paths forward toward truly systemic/relational theory and research in IR. In making these arguments, I recurrently draw parallels with Biology, which has undergone a systemic/relational transformation over the past quarter century. “Twenty-first-century biology is fundamentally different from twentieth-century biology. It is a biology of relationships rather than entities.”99 This book aims to push IR in a similar direction. 95

Although not strictly true – imagine a collage of preserved hearts (which, not coincidentally, is an assemblage) – this is close enough for our purposes here. 96 (Harman 2010, 172). 97 (Luhmann 1990b, 409–410, 418–419; 1995 [1984], 18). 98 See, for example, (DeLanda 2016). 99 (Gilbert 2018, 123).

Systems and Relations

1.10

19

Postscript: Waltz and Jervis on Systems

Isn’t this old hat in IR? Haven’t we understood the distinctive nature of systems and systemic explanation at least since Waltz’s Theory of International Politics? In a certain sense, yes. But, more fundamentally, no. Even if we accept Waltzian international political theory as genuinely systemic, which I argue in Chapter 5 it is not, its narrow two-variable structuralism differs fundamentally from systems approaches in the natural sciences – which I will argue have much to teach us about studying the social world. Waltzian structuralism has also obscured the systemic character of relational approaches  – which, I am arguing, are likely to prove especially fruitful if understood in broadly systemic terms. Jervis’ Systems Effects moved the discussion in IR forward by introducing a complexity perspective.100 His work, however, proved not to be transformative because, as we will see in Chapters 3 and 4, he retained Waltz’s levels of analysis (rather than levels of organization) approach and was inclined toward variable-based social science (which is fundamentally incompatible with the systemic/relational explanations based on the organization and operating of complex wholes). Furthermore, Jervis’ work did not encourage – and through treating Waltz as a model of systems thinking discouraged – seeing the deep and promising connections between relational and systemic approaches. Elaborating those connections, as I have begun to do in this chapter, seems to me a major justification for this book. In other words, although I have similar starting points as Waltz and Jervis, I try to push systems approaches in different directions. And I am doing this in what seems to me a more conducive disciplinary environment, given the rise of network, field, and mechanism approaches and the spread of more sophisticated and open-textured views of science. Third time’s the charm?101 100



101

I am effectively treating Waltz as the culmination of the first wave of systems theories in IR, bracketed at the front end by (Kaplan 1957). (See also n. 30 above.) This phase was rooted in a cybernetic approach to systems, which emphasizes “control and communication in machines and in living organisms” (Wiener 1948, 14). (Ashby 1956) and (Wiener 1961) are classic works in cybernetics that Waltz explicitly notes (1979, 40 n. *) as influences. Although Waltz (1979, 12) does mention Warren Weaver’s (1948) “organized complexity,” which is an early precursor of contemporary conceptions of complexity, I show in Part II that Waltz was not really interested in complexity. Jervis’ Systems Effects, taking advantage of the transformation of systems science in the late 1970s and 1980s (the Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984) moved IR away from cybernetics toward complex adaptive systems (see §2.3.4) – but, I argue below, not far enough in that direction. I say this fully aware that I am nowhere near the caliber of scholar of Waltz or Jervis. I do, however, claim to have some important things to say about systems and how to study them in IR that push the conversation in new directions.

2

Complex Adaptive Systems

This chapter addresses three interrelated features of systems: complexity, emergence, and the partial (in)separability of systems and their components. Together they suggest an understanding of living and social systems as multilevel multicomponent complex adaptive systems. The final section highlights some differences that a systemic/relational approach makes for IR. 2.1

The Partial (In)separability of Systems and Their Components

Systems cannot be fully explained in terms of the elements that compose them. The components of a system, however, cannot be fully explained by the whole of which they are a part. Systemic/relational approaches thus on the one hand reject strong forms of both reductionism and holism but on the other hand support weak forms of both.1 Systems and their components are partially (in)separable. 2.1.1

Analysis, Reduction, Decomposition

Analytic explanations, which explain the whole in terms of its parts considered separately,2 are often described as reductive. Higher-level phenomena are accounted for by (and thus epistemically “reducible to”) lower-level phenomena. Reduction, however, can be either partial or complete. Systemic/relational approaches not only acknowledge that some features of a system can be explained by its elements but emphasize that certain characteristics of a system’s elements are essential to its structure and functioning. An ant colony can only be composed of ants (of a 1

See also (Bechtel 2017c), (Kaiser 2015), (Povich and Craver 2017), (Rosenberg 2007; 2020). For a similar view in the philosophy of Physics, see (Palacios 2022). 2 See §1.2.

20

Complex Adaptive Systems

21

particular species). Different kinds of “units” will behave differently in “the same” anarchic international system. Systemic/relational approaches, however, do reject complete or eliminative reduction,3 which corresponds to the ordinary-language sense of “describing or explaining a complex (esp. mental, social, or biological) phenomenon in terms of relatively simple or fundamental concepts, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient description or explanation.”4 In eliminatively reducible wholes, “higher-level properties of a system are determined by its lower-level properties.”5 “Societies are said to have their social properties solely in virtue of the psychological properties possessed by individuals; individuals have psychological properties solely in virtue of their having various biological properties; organisms have biological properties ….”6 In eliminatively reducible wholes, “facts about composite entities are implicitly included in facts about the atoms, together with facts about the rules of composition.”7 Therefore, “there is nothing essentially new about the composite entities.”8 An eliminatively reductive vision of the unity of science (in the singular), which was popular in the twentieth century,9 still has adherents. It is conceivable that significant parts of Chemistry will be reduced to Physics within the working lives of recent PhD graduates.10 But reductionist programs in Cellular Biology and Evolutionary Biology, inspired by the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, decisively failed in the 1980s and 1990s.11 And in the life sciences and social 3 (Wimsatt 2007, 168–171, 195, 202–204, 241–242, 249–255, 274–277). See also (Ilardi and Feldman 2001), (Kim 2008, 93–94), (Elder-Vass 2014), (Sharp and Miller 2019, 23, 25). 4 Oxford English Dictionary. 5 (Sober 1999, 544). 6 (Sober 1999, 544). In principle, eliminative reduction might stop at any level. (For example, life might be reducible to Chemistry, which is not reducible to Physics.) In practice, however, eliminative reduction is usually a program of reduction to Physics. (Once one level is eliminated it is hard to stop there.) 7 (Humphreys 2016, 4). 8 (Humphreys 2016, 5). 9 See, for example, (Carnap 2013 [1934]), (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). See also (Cat 2017, §1.4), (Creath 2022, §4.3), (Symons, Pombo, and Torres 2011). 10 Michael Weisberg, Paul Needham, and Robin Hendry (2019, §7.3) note in a recent overview of the philosophy of Chemistry that “while exact solutions to the quantum mechanical descriptions of chemical phenomena have not been achieved, advances in theoretical physics, applied mathematics, and computation have made it possible to calculate the chemical properties of many molecules very accurately and with few idealizations.” For contrasting arguments on the reduction of Chemistry, see, for example, (Le Poidevin 2005) and (Hendry and Needham 2007). See also (Bunge 1982), (Drago 2020), (Hendry 2012), (Hettema 2015), (Ruthenberg and Mets 2020), (Scerri 2007). 11 See §§13.1.1, 13.3.

22

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

sciences today, nothing close to eliminative reduction is being practically pursued. Furthermore, there is often less than first meets the eye in eliminative reductionist arguments. For example, E. O. Wilson claims that “nature is organized by simple universal laws of physics to which all other laws and principles can eventually be reduced.”12 But in addition to admitting that this “could be wrong,”13 Wilson goes on to note that “at each level of organization, especially at the living cell and above, phenomena exist that require new laws and principles, which still cannot be predicted from those at more general levels.”14 Eliminative reduction, in other words, is a philosophical doctrine that has little relevance to most theory and research on living and social systems. For the foreseeable future, nearly every phenomenon that is widely investigated in IR will have a systems-effect explanation that is of both epistemic and pragmatic interest.15 I thus suggest that in IR, as in Biology, we start from the presumption that a system “has some properties that are emergent [irreducible] and others that are not.”16 Therefore, some “reductions” – or, better, decompositions17 – will be more fruitful than others. But we cannot know what will work until we try. Decompositions that “cut up nature at its joints,”18 identifying more or less modular elements of systems,19 are likely to be especially valuable. But what those joints are depends in part on what you are looking for. As Wimsatt colorfully puts it, the difference between a biophysicist and a biologist is that only the former is interested in the decompositions that result from running a frog through a blender.20 12

13 14 15

16 17

18

19 20

(Wilson 1998, 60). (Wilson 1998, 60). (Wilson 1998, 60). This claim should be read as a challenge to advocates of eliminative reduction in IR to point to just a handful of such explanations. I am unaware, though, of a single example that comes even close. Therefore, partial reductive explanations, although often fruitful foundations for entire careers, research programs, and sub-fields, merit no epistemic or methodological privilege (as they might if they could be read as steps on a path to eliminative reduction). (Wimsatt 2007, 174). At the risk of being overly fastidious, I suggest talking of decomposing complex systems but disaggregating other kinds of entities. And I try to avoid the language of reduction, both because it is often unclear whether eliminative or non-eliminative reduction is meant and because “reduction” in IR it often associated with Waltz’s idiosyncratic account (see §5.4). The idea goes back at least to Plato, Phaedrus 265d–266a. See §2.3.4. (Wimsatt 2007, 174–175). John Miller and Scott Page (2007, 233) use a frog in a blender to illustrate the difference between reduction and emergence. “If you put a frog in a blender and turn it on, there is only a macabre interest in the resulting chemical soup [unless you are a chemist]. If, however, you start with a chemical soup and run the

Complex Adaptive Systems

23

What we can know about systems through knowledge of their parts is an empirical, not a theoretical, question – except for the fact that some features of complex systems cannot be understood analytically. Systemic approaches in the social sciences only (but essentially) reject the ontological or epistemic claim that social phenomena are fully reducible to attributes and actions of individual human beings (as in Margaret Thatcher’s notorious quip that there’s no such thing as society). Systemic approaches, however, leave space for what I suggest we call strong (but not radical) reductionist programs, which aim to show that much of what is “most important” can be explained reductively. In other words, systems approaches treat the range of reductive explanations as an empirical question – as ought to be the case in a scientific discipline.21 2.1.2

The (Limited) Holism of Systemic Wholes

Systemic approaches similarly both are and are not “holist.” Strong holists in the social sciences argue that “holist explanations alone should be offered.”22 This is effectively eliminative upward reductionism. Systems approaches instead claim only that, because there are irreducible phenomena at all levels of organization, full explanations of systems must include emergent systems effects.23 Contemporary systems approaches also oppose what Mario Bunge describes as “the obsolete holism of Hegel, Comte, Marx, Durkheim, or Parsons,” which postulates “imaginary collective entities such as collective memory, national spirit, and nations that allegedly hover above individuals.”24 Vitalism in early twentieth-century Biology, which explained life in terms of a non-material substance or force, falls in the same general category.25 Contemporary systems theories, in other words, are fully naturalistic. They reject any suggestion that social, psychological, or biological systems

21

22 23

24

25



blender backward, and out of the froth pops a fully formed frog, then something rather different has happened.” But that can’t happen because such a soup is not (and cannot be) organized in a way that can make (or become) a frog. See also §2.2.2. (Zahle 2016, §1 [emphasis added]). Durkheim’s “social facts” (2013 [1895]), esp. ch. 1, 2, 5) is a classic example. This is a particular version of what Zahle (2016, §1) calls moderate holism. (Bunge 2000, 147). Although I repeatedly refer to Bunge, who has an insightful conception of systems and often clearly expresses standard understandings in the natural and social sciences, I do not adopt all of his (sometimes idiosyncratic) views on ontology and methodology. In other words, I regularly appropriate Bunge for my purposes but do not present a Bungean account. See, for example, (Allen and Starr 2017), (Nicholson and Gawne 2015), (Normandin and Wolfe 2013).

24

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

are in any way outside the world of matter-energy that is addressed by Physics and Chemistry.26 There are, however, different styles of systemic research. What we might call weak systemism recognizes the importance of systems effects but focuses principally on parts and tends to work bottom-up. Strong systemism emphasizes complexly structured wholes and gives significant attention to top-down (or middle-out) explanations. These differing orientations emphasize, respectively, the partial separability and the ultimate inseparability of systems and their components. I have thus identified five broad ranges of positions on a reductionism– holism continuum: eliminative reductionism, strong reductionism, weak systemism, strong systemism, and eliminative holism. “Systemism” is compatible with the middle three perspectives. And, by emphasizing the power of both (partial) reductionist and (partial) holist explanations – that is, the power of systemic/relational explanations – I have begun to lay the foundations for an argument for explanatory pluralism, which will be the focus of Chapter 4. 2.1.3

States and States Systems

States systems and states nicely illustrate the partial (in)separability of systems and their components. Reductive holistic arguments are rarely encountered in IR today. “The problem,” from a systemic perspective, is reductive individualism, as in extreme versions of rational choice theory. Anti-individualist arguments, however, do sometimes slide into separating international systems from their parts and giving systems/relations priority. For example, Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon, in their classic article “Relations before States,”27 rightly reject Waltz’s argument28 that states precede states systems. But they argue that states systems precede states; that “the balance-of-power regime antedates the units that engage in the balancing”29 and, more generally, that “relations precede (in a logical, if not always in a temporal, sense) the very existence of the units doing the relating.”30 26 On naturalism thus understood, see (Papineau 2020), (Giere 2006a, 2014) and, in IR, (Wight 2006, 15–17ff.). Any non-naturalistic phenomena that may exist in the social world have no special connection with (social) systems. 27 (Jackson and Nexon 1999). 28 See n. 60 in §5.6. See also §9.5 at n. 84. 29 (Waltz 1986, 337–338). 30 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 310). Similarly, David Blaney and Tamara Trownsell (2021, 54) assume that “interconnection [i]s prior to the existence of entities.”

Complex Adaptive Systems

25

Logically, however, a relation requires relata. A relation is “a connection, correspondence, or contrast between different things; a particular way in which one thing or idea is connected or associated with another or others.”31 You can’t connect or arrange (relate) nothing.32 And logical precedence is an oddly analytical framing, forcing a separation of relations and relata with no attention to how that might be possible in the world (which, I am arguing, it is not). Empirically, the modern balance of power regime did not precede modern states. (I can’t even imagine what it would mean to have a balance of power system without powers that tend to form balances.) Across the late-medieval and early modern periods, a changing international system reshaped changing polities that reshaped a changing international system ….33 Whether we date “the modern states system” to, say, 1559, 1648, 1713, 1756/1763, or 1792/1803/1815, it is no more true to say that it pre-existed its member polities than to say that it was created by pre-existing polities. Or, if either of these claims is true, both are – making them (separately) uninteresting. Neither “comes first.” States systems are neither reducible to the states that compose them nor separate from (let alone prior to) them. They are the wholes of which states are parts. A systemic perspective sees not separate states and a separate states system but a social configuration of states-in-a-states-system. This configuration is partly decomposable. But states systems and their component states are also ultimately inseparable. No states without a states system – and no states system without states. No relations without relata – and no relata that are not related. No whole without parts – and no parts without the wholes of which they are part. Comprehensive explanations of assembled social systems must address both the ways that wholes are more than the sum of their parts and the ways that parts are more than parts of a whole. Systemic/relational explanations, however, focus on the partial (in)separability of wholes and parts. International systems, I am arguing, are systems. Therefore, some important part of IR must address both international systems as systems and international actors as parts of a system. And, as I noted at the end of §1.2, a great attraction of systemic approaches is that (because neither

31

Oxford English Dictionary [emphasis added]. 32 The abstract idea of relation may “logically precede” particular related things. It does not, however, precede the abstract idea of relata. And no particular relation “logically precedes” the “things” that it relates. 33 See Chapter 17.

26

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

whole nor parts are fully reducible to the other) they require investigating the causal powers of both higher-level and lower-level entities, activities, and forces. 2.2 Emergence Irreducible systems effects are regularly described as emergent.34 Here too, though, we need to be careful and clear about what we mean by the term. 2.2.1 Non-aggregativity Although there is no agreed-upon definition of emergence,35 most accounts converge on the idea of “much coming from little;”36 that a systemic whole is “more than” – or, better, different from37 – the sum of its parts. Emergent phenomena are “properties of the system that … are collective outcomes of the whole system and have to be understood at the system level rather than at the individual level.”38 For example, individual water molecules are not wet. “Wetness emerges from the interactions of the constituent molecules.”39 Consciousness and life are classic examples. Musical chords, traffic jams, and pixelated pictures are more mundane but no-less-arresting. Balances in states systems is a well-known example in IR. Waterfalls and thunderstorms are not at all like (or predictable from) the elements that compose them. Phase transitions – for example, solid, liquid, gas – involve the identical “stuff” arranged in different ways.40 34

(Humphreys 2016) is a thorough philosophical study of emergence. (Jervis 1997, 12–17) cites much of the classic literature. Other useful discussions include (Anjum and Mumford 2017), (Bechtel and Richardson 1992), (Bedau 1997), (Boogerd et al. 2005), (Bunge 2003, ch. 1–3, 5), (Campbell and Bickhard 2011), (Craver 2015), (Holland 1998; 2014, ch. 6), (Luisi 2016, ch. 9), (Miller and Page 2007, ch. 4), (Moreno and Mossio 2015, ch. 2), (Sawyer 2005), (Sears 2017). (Bedau and Humphreys 2008) is a useful reader. (Hodgson 2000) addresses the history of ideas of emergence in the social sciences. 35 (Holland 1998, 3), (Humphreys 2016, xvii–xviii, 26), (Miller and Page 2007, 44). 36 (Holland 1998, 1, 2). 37 I follow Jervis (1997, 12–13) in drawing this distinction, both for conceptual clarity – not only are “more” and “less” not very clear notions in this context but a whole can be less than the sum of its parts (as in a poorly assembled or badly managed soccer team) – and to emphasize that systems accounts do not (see §2.1.2 at n. 26) appeal to any exotic kind of substance or force (which some might inappropriately take to be an implication of “more than”). 38 (Guisasola, §1.3). 39 (Holland 2014, 49). 40 (Solé 2011) is a wide-ranging introduction (for those willing to take on a little bit of math), addressing both biological and social systems.

Complex Adaptive Systems

27

Rayleigh–Bénard convection, in which a heated fluid develops a regular pattern of cells, is a physical analogue to flocks of birds, schools of fish, and oscillations of firefly flashes. Consider also ant colonies and beehives. In the social sciences, Thomas Schelling’s model of residential racial segregation arising from individual decisions that have nothing to do with race or prejudice41 is a standard example. The material world itself may be an emergent phenomenon. As Nicholas Rescher puts it, “modern physics envisions very small processes (quantum phenomena) combining in their modus operandi to produce standard things (ordinary macro objects).”42 Emergent features are characteristic of “integrated functional wholes.”43 “Emergence indicates dependence of a system property upon the mode of organization of parts of that system.”44 And attributions of emergence “have a logical form that is relational.”45 Those who find the language of emergence too mysterious (or imprecise) may prefer Wimsatt’s formulation of non-aggregativity,46 which draws on the contrast between (complex) systems and (mere) aggregates.47 “Aggregation can produce different values of a property already possessed by the constituents” but not different properties.48 An aggregate is the sum of its parts (and their interactions). Wimsatt thus defines a property as “aggregative” when it does not vary if you rearrange the parts, change their scale, or decompose and reaggregate them – and then treats “emergence” as non-aggregativity. However we frame it, though, almost everything in the (physical, living, and social) world has some properties that are, at “their own” level of organization, emergent/non-aggregative. Therefore, I think it worth emphasizing that there is nothing occult or odd about emergence. Emergence is a pervasive feature of the world addressed not only in Biology, Psychology, and the social sciences but in Physics and Chemistry as well. 2.2.2

Dense Interconnections Require Systemic Explanations

(Ir)reducibility is epistemic not ontological; a matter of explaining higherlevel phenomena by lower-level phenomena. “The explanatory gap” 41

42 43 44 45 46

(Schelling 1978, ch. 4). (Rescher 1996, 98). (Wimsatt 2007, 281). See also (Humphreys 2016, 26, 5). (Wimsatt 2007, 174. See also 276). (Humphreys 2016, 28). (Wimsatt 2007, 168–171, 195, 202–204, 241–242, 249–255, 274–277). See also (Mitchell 2012, 179). 47 See, for example, (Humphreys 2016, 35), (Bunge 1979, 3–5). 48 (Humphreys 2016, 35).

28

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

between a system and its components, however, may reflect “a knowledge gap that might be bridged in the indefinite future.”49 Paul Humphreys thus usefully distinguishes three types of emergence. • Ontological emergents are “objective features of the world.”50 • Inferential emergence arises from “limited abilities to make predictions”51 or “lack of derivability.”52 • Conceptual or methodological emergence employs “novel theoretical and linguistic representations to represent features that are not efficiently describable in the vocabularies of other domains or that allow for more effective predictions.”53 Social scientists rarely can determine how much of the irreducibility that they observe reflects their limited knowledge. This uncertainty, I think, explains why Robert Jervis, although arguing that “interconnections and emergent properties define systems,”54 develops an account of systems effects in which “emergent properties are less central … than is ‘interconnectedness’.”55 In IR, complicated interconnections regularly defeat analytic explanations even where we might doubt that the phenomena are ontologically emergent. “When the interconnections are dense, it may be difficult to trace the impact of any change even after the fact, let alone predict it ahead of time.”56 In fact, “when elements interact it [may be] difficult to apportion responsibility among them as the extent and even the direction of the impact depends on the status of the others.”57 This is particularly true when, as is often the case in international relations, “the fates of the units and their relations with others are strongly influenced by interactions at other places and at earlier periods of time.”58 Complicated situations59 often demand, in Humphreys’ terms, explanatory strategies employing inferential or methodological emergence. Furthermore, “a system property may be aggregative for some decompositions but not for others.”60 For example, a garbage dump is from 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60

(Humphreys 2016, xvi). (Humphreys 2016, 38). (Humphreys 2016, 38). (Humphreys 2016, 39). (Humphreys 2016, 38–39). (Jervis 1997, 28. See also 6). (Jervis 1997, 17). Jervis was also led in this direction, I think, by his leaning toward independent-variable social science. See §§4.3–4.6. (Jervis 1997, 17). (Jervis 1997, 40). (Jervis 1997, 17. See also 48). On the systems theory distinction between complicated and complex see n. 64. (Wimsatt 2007, 286).

Complex Adaptive Systems

29

one perspective a model of an aggregate. But the fact that it emergently produces methane may be of central importance to its managers and neighbors. Despite all these qualifications, though, it remains crucial to emphasize that systems can only be fully explained non-aggregatively. And in IR, reductive explanations leave much unexplained – and many things mis-explained. 2.3 Complexity Biological and social systems are, as Sandra Mitchell nicely puts it, “multilevel, multicomponent, complex systems.”61 Complexity62 involves multiple components on multiple levels organized and operating in ways that produce emergent phenomena. 2.3.1

Complex, Complicated, and Aggregated

Scientific uses of “complex” build on the ordinary-language sense of “consisting of or comprehending various parts united or connected together; formed by combination of different elements.”63 In ordinary language, though, “complex” and “complicated” usually are not sharply differentiated. And both are regularly contrasted to “simple.” In discussing systems, however, the opposite of “complex,” as we have seen, is “aggregated.” And both aggregated and complex entities may be more or less “complicated” or “simple.”64 For clarity, I will use “complicated” as a relative term, contrasted to simple, that applies to anything. “Complex,” however, I try to use as a binary term that applies only to systems. Although in ordinary language we do talk about things being more or less complex, that sense usually is 61

(Mitchell 2003, 115. See also 10, 147, 156, 161). 62 (Holland 2014), (Miller 2015), (Miller and Page 2007), and (Ladyman and Wiesner 2020) are useful general introductions to complexity science. More briefly, see (Walby 2007). (Thurner, Hanel, and Klimek 2018) is useful for those willing to take on some math. In IR, (Jervis 1997) is the classic application. (Snyder and Jervis 1993) and (Harrison 2006) are still-useful edited volumes. See also (Bousquet and Curtis 2011), (Byrne and Callaghan 2014), (Cudworth and Hobden 2013), (Gadinger and Peters 2016), (Gunitsky 2013), (Kavalski 2007), (Orsini et al. 2020), (Pickering 2019), (Scartozzi 2018), (Wagner 2016), (Walby 2009), (Young 2017). 63 Oxford English Dictionary. 64 (Holland 2014, 3–5) is a good brief discussion of the complex–complicated distinction, which he notes (2014, 3) is clear “at the extremes but there is a middle-ground where the distinction becomes unclear and arbitrary.” See also (Miller and Page 2007, 9–10, 27–29), (Grabowski and Strzalka 2008), (Glouberman and Zimmerman 2012), (Poli 2013).

30

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

well captured by complicated65 – which allows us to use “complex” only in reference to systems with emergent properties. As John Holland, one of the pioneers of complexity science, puts it “emergent behavior is an essential requirement for calling a system ‘complex’.”66 Although there is no standard definition of complexity – one account in the mid-1990s identified between 30 and 45 definitions67 – Mitchell notes that this “reflects not confusion on the part of scientists but the actual variety of ways that systems are complex.”68 And the various dimensions commonly identified do combine into a broadly coherent account. James Ladyman and Karoline Wiesner emphasize self-organization, non-linearity, robustness, nesting and modularity, and adaptation.69 Santiago Guisasola, in the Santa Fe Institute’s online course Introduction to Complexity, presents complex systems as composed of relatively simple parts that interact non-linearly, in the absence of central control, to produce emergent hierarchical organization, information processing, complex dynamics, and evolution and learning.70 John Miller and Scott Page associate complexity with “heterogeneity, adaptation, local interactions, feedback, and externalities.”71 The remainder of this section looks briefly at four features of complex systems – non-linearity, self-organization, adaptation, and modularity – leading to the formulation that living and social systems are self-organizing complex adaptive systems. 2.3.2 Non-linearity Complex systems are non-linear. (Because results are not additive, plotting values does not produce a straight line.) “The same change” has different effects at different times or in different circumstances. Feedback is at the heart of most non-linearities. Positive feedback reinforces change (as in a hurricane growing as it moves over warm water). 65

I do, however, find myself wanting to say “more complex” of a system with more dimensions of complexity. 66 (Holland 2014, 6. See also 4, 85; 2012, 113). 67 See (Mitchell 2003, 4). 68 (Mitchell 2003, 4). In other words, “complex” is a residual (whatever is not aggregated) and thus contains many different kinds of things (that are not aggregative). That something is complex is an important piece of information. How it is complex, though, usually will be much more important. 69 (Ladyman and Wiesner 2020, 65–66, 76–83). See also (Ladyman, Lambert, and Wiesner 2013). 70 (Guisasola, §1.3). 71 (Miller and Page 2007, 232). See also (Thurner, Hanel, and Klimek 2018, §1.5), (Pickel 2011, 9).

Complex Adaptive Systems

31

Negative feedback damps an intervention (as in the regulation of blood sugar levels in the human body). In either case, the impact of adding a unit of something depends on the state of the system at the time of the intervention (or the system’s subsequent operation). Familiar non-linearities include tipping points (e.g., the straw that broke the camel’s back), critical masses (e.g., for initiating nuclear chain reactions), and phase transitions (e.g., water remains liquid right up to the point that it turns to steam), as well as path dependence (responses depend on how the system reached its current state) and interaction effects (an input’s effect varies when it operates in the presence of some other “thing”). Many complex systems are chaotic, in the mathematical sense of extreme dependence on initial conditions, which makes even an entirely deterministic system unpredictable.72 (The classic example is a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causing a tornado in Texas.73) Catalysts, which alter reaction rates, create non-linearities across large parts of the chemical world. Diminishing returns is a familiar example from Economics. Public policy interventions undertaken separately often produce less impact than their proportion in a set of coordinated interventions (e.g., free meals, preschool, and access to social workers and health care in the schools) or have different impacts in different places (because of how they interact with other factors that either enhance or undermine the intended effects of the intervention). 2.3.3 Self-Organization Complex systems are self-organized;74 “produced by the system’s own operations.”75 This may sound, as my twelve-year-old son might put it, “super spooky.” Self-organization, however, was the basis of the work that earned Ilya Prigogine the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. And self-organization is a pervasive feature of the living and social worlds. In all living systems and most social systems – but not in complex mechanical systems such as clocks and automobiles – “‘order’ at a higher 72

(Gleick 2008 [1987]) is the classic “popular science” introduction. See also (Feldman 2019), (Kiel and Elliott 1996), (Lorenz 1995), (Prigogine and Stengers 1984). Much more technically, see (Skiadas and Skiadas 2017). 73 (Lorenz 1972), based on (Lorenz 1963), was the initial formulation of what soon came to be called the butterfly effect. 74 (Kauffman 1995) is probably the most useful place to begin reading on selforganization. See also (Eigen 1971), (Eigen and Schuster 1977; 1978a, b), (Jantsch 1975; 1980a, b), (Jooss 2020), (Kauffman 1993; 2000), (Levin 2005), (Luisi 2016, ch. 8), (Schieve and Allen 1982), (Solé and Bascompte 2012), (von Foerster 2007 [1959]), (Zeleny 1977). 75 (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 70).

32

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

level [is generated] from the interaction of components at a lower level without requiring the resulting structure to be coded for in genetic blueprints76 or be solely a result of centralized control structures.”77 There is “no single governing equation, or rule, that controls the system. Instead, it has many distributed, interacting parts, with little or nothing in the way of a central control.”78 Niklas Luhmann describes this as autopoiesis (self-making), in the sense that “the system state that serves as the point of departure for many further operations is determined by the operations of the very same system.”79 Autocatalysis is a standard framing in Biology and Chemistry.80 In the social sciences, John Padgett and Walter Powell conceptualize autocatalysis in network terms as “a set of nodes and transformations in which all nodes are reconstructed through transformations among nodes in the set.”81 Whatever the formulation, the key point is that no external impetus, control, or plan is required. The system is self-organizing – and selfsustaining. It “reproduces itself through time, given appropriate energy inputs.”82 Every living organism is constantly engaged in self-sustenance, selfrepair, and, ultimately, self-replacement (“re-production”). All of these processes are rooted in metabolism, “the single most important characteristic of life … [and] the basis for … autopoiesis.”83 “Metabolism encompasses the means by which organisms break down the materials they take in from their environment in order to acquire the energy they need to rebuild their constituents and maintain themselves in a steady state far from thermodynamic equilibrium.”84 76

DNA, rather than a blueprint for an organism, codes for proteins that self-organizing living systems use to produce and reproduce themselves. See §13.3.1. 77 (Mitchell 2003, 38). 78 (Holland 1992, 21). 79 (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 70). See also (Luhmann 1990a), (Luisi 2016, ch. 6), (Maturana and Varela 1980), (Meincke 2019a), (Ulrich and Probst 1984), (Zeleny 1980). (Pan´kowska 2021) is a recent collection of applications to varied kinds of research in the social sciences. But cf. (Padgett 2012a, 55–58) for a critical complexityscience perspective. 80 See (Kauffman 1986; 1993; 2000) as well as (Bachmann, Luisi, and Lang 1992), (Hordijk, Hein, and Steel 2010), (Gabora and Steel 2017), (Gatti et al. 2018), (Blokhuis, Lacoste, and Nghe 2020), (Xavier et al. 2020), (Andersen et al. 2021). 81 See (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 8). See also (Padgett and Powell 2012b, 35–36). 82 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 8). On the importance of energy inputs in “open” “selforganizing” systems, see §12.1. 83 (Nicholson 2018, 145). In §13.3 we look at self-organizing processes in embryonic development. 84 (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 16). On far from thermodynamic equilibrium systems see §12.1. “Metabolism forces us to recognize that organisms, despite their apparent

Complex Adaptive Systems

33

The results can be stunning. Consider the human body, a coral reef, or a tropical forest ecosystem. A complex whole is produced through largely local coordination among semi-autonomous components “without direction from external factors and without a plan of the order embedded in any individual component.”85 The social world is similarly characterized by a dizzying array of selfmaking, self-sustaining, self-repairing, and self-replacing entities and processes. Although social groups and organizations often do evidence intentionality, planning, and direction, intention is only one part of the story. And direction usually is more a matter of pointing toward a goal than controlling the processes of attaining it. Even the most regimented and hierarchical organizations, to the distress of “those in charge,” “have a life of their own.” And most social systems or groups – for example, families, neighborhoods, communities, countries, and international systems – are in significant measure self-organized. 2.3.4

Adaptation (Complex Adaptive Systems)

Self-organization, operating cumulatively over time, produces adaptation. The complexity science literature distinguishes complex physical systems (CPS),86 which are composed of elements that are physically the same in every token of a type – for example, a water molecule is always composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen – from complex adaptive systems (CAS).87 CAS, which have variable elements, “change and reorganize their component parts to adapt themselves to the problems posed by their surroundings.”88 And as Holland puts it in the subtitle of one of his books “adaptation builds complexity.”89 Because all living and social systems are adaptive, I will usually use “systems” to mean complex adaptive systems. (I try to use “complex systems” to refer to both CAS and CPS.) “A CAS gathers information about its surroundings and about itself and its own behavior.”90 It then formulates “rules,” “schemata,” or “internal

85

86 87

88

89 90

fixity and solidity, are not material things but fluid processes.” (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 17). (Mitchell 2003, 6). See, for example, (Holland 2014, 8, passim), (Miller and Page 2007). (Gell-Mann 1994) and (Holland 1992) are early classic statements by a founder of the Santa Fe Institute and one of its leading intellectual forces. At book length, (Miller and Page 2007) and (Holland 2012) are useful and accessible. (Holland 1992 [1975]) is seminal but, after the first chapter, highly technical. See also (Hooker 2011). (Holland 1992, 18). (Holland 1995). (Gell-Mann 1994, 18).

34

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

models” for dealing with the environment in order to realize its ends/ functions.91 Then, by testing these rules, routines, or practices and devising new ones (and testing them, in competition with others) the system alters its behavior – and sometimes even its structure or functioning.92 Processes are central in (complex adaptive) systems. As Luhmann puts it, we must “begin with operations and not with elements”93 and think of social systems “in terms of their temporal operation and not just as a network or a relational system.”94 Static accounts provide a time-slice that may or may not be representative of the multicomponent, multilevel, self-organizing, adaptive systems that populate the living and social worlds. “History and context play a critical role.”95 What a (complex adaptive) system “is” depends in part on when and where you ask. For example, every instance of a chemical element, everywhere in our universe, has the same number of protons. But there are no “things” that every family has. That, however, does not make families any less real. It simply reflects the fact that they are complex adaptive systems – which, by definition, are defined historically. They do not have a transhistorical essential character. Therefore, to take an IR example, to understand “the state” or “the international system” as a type of entity with essential characteristics falsely universalizes what is typical at one time or place. What states and international systems “are” is a matter of historical succession – much as what makes a Homo sapiens a Homo sapiens is descent from other Homo sapiens (which at some point in the past adapted in ways that distinguished them from their ancestors).96 2.3.5 Modularity Adaptation is closely connected with modularity:97 the division of a larger whole into “relatively autonomous, internally highly connected 91 92 93 94 95 96

(Gell-Mann 1994, 18–20), (Holland 1992, 20, 21–22). (Holland 1992, 23–25). (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 99). (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 199). (Holland 1992, 20). Section 3.9 presents a historical processual account of identity. Section 13.1 looks at evolutionary adaptation in living organisms. 97 (Simon 1962) is the seminal work on modularity and complexity. See also (Wimsatt 2007, 176, 184–186, 188, 195, 347, 369 n. 2), as well as (Callebaut and RasskinGutman 2005), (Darden 2002), (McClamrock 2005), (Samuels 2012). On modularity in Cellular and Evolutionary Biology, see (Hatleberg and Hinman 2021), (Hartwell et al. 1999), (Wagner, Pavlicev, and Cheverud 2007).

Complex Adaptive Systems

35

components”98 that are integrated with respect to a task, function or process but are relatively autonomous from the other parts of the whole. (Adapting is much easier if only certain modules must be rearranged, replaced, or internally reconfigured.) Modularity also, as Herbert Simon famously showed, usually is central to creating complex systems.99 If you always had to start from scratch it would be hard to build anything other than relatively simple “things.” Often, though, combining simpler things into larger wholes with emergent effects is “doable.” Research on complex systems thus often involves identifying the decomposable building blocks of a system and trying to understand how they operate, both separately and as parts of a whole. Modular adaptation regularly leads to different agents, groups, or sub-populations both developing different ways to achieve the same end/function and doing different things with “the same” elements. For example, birds have found varied ways to use their “wings” to propel themselves – in the case of penguins, through water. And in ratites (ostriches, emus, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) wings became vestigial as “the problem” of predation “solved itself” (through gigantism or isolation). One common strategy of modular assembly involves specialization and tight coupling. For example, some aphids have specialized cells that host Buchnera bacteria from which they obtain amino acids that they require to live. And those bacteria have evolved such a reduced genome that they can live nowhere else.100 Similarly, many plants have co-evolved with a single species of pollinator (e.g., yucca and yucca moths and Darwin’s Orchid and the Hawk Moth). This strategy is efficient in a stable world. But it risks catastrophe if something crucial changes. Another common strategy employs looser couplings, multifunctionality (a single agent does multiple things), variable co-action patterns (which allow different types of agents to “cover” for one another), and redundancy (multiple components are able to perform a task) to enhance robustness, the capability to operate in and respond to varied and changing contexts. 98 (Wagner, Pavlicev, and Cheverud 2007, 921). 99 (Simon 1962). See also (Craver and Tabery 2019, §4.2), (Wegner and Lüttge 2019), (Bechtel and Richardson 2010), (Darden 2002). Although Simon (1962, 473–476) describes complex modular systems as “nearly decomposable,” I think that partly decomposable is a better label (because the ways that a system can be decomposed is an empirical (and/or methodological) question). And I think that my formulation “partially (in)separable” better captures the modularity of complex systems. 100 See (Pradeu 2018, 103–104).

36

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

In practice, living and social systems tend to combine both strategies. But even lock-in to a very particular way of doing things is a historical artifact. (In the case of aphids, it goes back about 200 million years.) To repeat, what a (complex adaptive) system “is” is a product of adaptation (evolution) – and subject to continuing evolution.101 2.4

The Difference Systemism/Relationism Makes

The remainder of this book illustrates the characters and contributions of a systemic/relational orientation in IR. I close this chapter by noting several “big differences” that systemism makes. • A new view of international systems and their structures. International systems, rather than things external to states/units, are the social wholes of which units are assembled parts.102 The structures of international systems, rather than relatively constant compositions of a few elements arranged in just a few ways, are multidimensional, varied, and regularly changing.103 And international structures are not entirely formal (anarchy and polarity). They are also essentially substantive, with important material, institutional, and normative dimensions.104 • Renewed attention to hierarchy. IR’s overemphasis on anarchy,105 rooted in the mistaken Waltzian idea that it is the ordering principle of international political systems, has obscured the epistemic, pragmatic, and normative significance of hierarchy. Once we realize that anarchy only tells us one way in which a system is not ordered (i.e., not by the authority of a central government) hierarchy (re)appears as a central feature of nearly all international systems.106 • A distinctive understanding of social continuity and social change. Both constancy and change are socially produced – usually interdependently. Constancy is not given but constantly (in need of) being reproduced. “Reproduction” not only regularly misfires and drifts but often requires “stabilizing” modifications just to “stay the same.” And change usually involves repurposings and recombinations of existing elements.107 • New tools for comparative historical analysis. The dominant Waltzian account of structure is useless for comparative historical analysis. 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

On evolution in living and social systems, see §§12.6, 13.1, 13.2. See §§5.2, 5.6–5.8. See Chapters 9, 11–13ff. See §§7.2, 11.3 and Chapter 13. See §§6.4, 6.5. See Chapters 15 and 16. See Chapters 12, 13, and 17.

Complex Adaptive Systems

37

(The only thing that varies is polarity – rarely, with only minor or modest impact.) Relational/systemic frameworks allow us to capture and compare both continuity and change across multiple structural dimensions.108 • A distinctive understanding of globalization. The Waltzian conception denies that globalization involves structural change. More broadly, IR tends to see globalization as an anomaly that can best be depicted through ad hoc comparisons to selected features of states systems. My systemic/relational framework, by contrast, depicts globalization as substantively distinctive but the result of transformations that are both similar in scope to and operating along the same dimensions as other structural transformations over the past two or three millennia.109 • A new view of levels. Attention is shifted from levels of analysis, which have been the near-exclusive focus of IR for more than half a century, to levels of organization. This implies, as we will see in the next chapter, new understandings of micro–macro relations, the agent–structure problem, and the nature of social actors. • A new view of theory and explanation. Systemic/relational research, rather than explain through causal inferences or as-if rational actor models, focuses on the organized operation of structured wholes. This demands both explanatory pluralism and a new understanding of the nature, functioning, and epistemic significance of theories. (This is the subject of Chapter 4, the final chapter of this Part.)

108 See Chapters 11, 14–16. 109 See §§17.15, 17.16.

3

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

A relational/systemic approach requires a new understanding of levels. The levels of analysis account introduced by Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State and War (1959) and J. David Singer’s “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations” (1961) still pervades IR, from introductory textbooks to sophisticated scholarly literature. Of special relevance here, the Waltz–Singer framing is so deeply embedded that it is almost never noted that levels of analysis are precisely that  – levels of analysis (that produce analytic/reductionist rather than systemic/relational explanations1). This chapter advocates focusing instead, or at least in addition, on systemic/relational levels of organization and applies that framing to the interrelated topics of micro–macro relations, the agent–structure problem, and the nature of social actors. 3.1

Levels of Abstraction/Explanation

Levels indicate qualitative differences between tiered or ranked sets of entities or phenomena.2 A set of levels arranges discontinuous but interlinked elements one “on top” (or “inside”) of another. Section 1.3 introduced the notion of levels of organization, to which we will return in §3.3. The natural and social sciences, however, also often address levels of abstraction, analysis, or explanation. Higher levels of abstraction, as the label indicates, abstract from  – leave out of account – information about lower levels. “The higher the level of abstraction, the more cases that will be covered but the less content the explanation will have.”3 1

On the contrast between analytic/reductionist and systemic/relational explanations, see §§1.2, 2.1.1. 2 As Mario Bunge (1960, 397) puts it, “Why use the word ‘level,’ instead of ‘degree,’ when no qualitative changes are involved in the transition among different degrees?” 3 (Moghaddam, Walker, and Harré 2003, 125).

38

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

39

Levels of abstraction are rooted in a particular purpose or perspective. Luciano Floridi offers the example of wine. To evaluate a wine, the “tasting LoA [level of abstraction]” … would be relevant. For the purpose of ordering wine, a “purchasing LoA” (containing observables like maker, region, vintage, supplier, quantity, price, and so on) would be appropriate; but here the “tasting LoA” would be irrelevant. For the purpose of storing and serving wine, the “cellaring LoA” ….4

Floridi usefully calls these levels of explanation, which are associated with “different epistemic approaches and goals.”5 In IR, Hans Mouritzen similarly speaks of explanatory levels.6 Much useful knowledge is produced by employing levels of abstraction, analysis, or explanation. That knowledge, however, is analytic. And in IR (analytic) levels of analysis are employed extensively and largely to the exclusion of (systemic) levels of organization. 3.2

Levels of Analysis in IR

In Man, the State and War, Waltz neither used the language of levels (he spoke instead of “images”) nor linked levels to systems thinking. (Those were Singer’s contributions.7) But Waltz’s central research question “Where are the major causes of war to be found?”8 set IR on the path of understanding levels as where one looks for causes; “the level at which causes are located.”9 As Barry Buzan puts it, “the ‘level of analysis problem’ is about how to identify and treat different types of location in which sources of explanation for observed phenomena can be found.”10 (In this framing, “unit of analysis” indicates the “thing” being studied, which may be explained by causes on various levels.) 4 (Floridi 2008, 309). 5 (Floridi 2008, 319). Abstraction, however, seems to me more a matter of degree than levels. Nonetheless, it has become standard to speak of “levels” of abstraction – perhaps because most uses do identify discontinuous levels even when an incremental scale or continuum is defined. A further problem, as the wine example illustrates, is that “levels” of abstraction need not be hierarchically ordered. (There can be multiple, largely unrelated, “higher” “levels” of abstraction.) 6 (Mouritzen 1980). 7 His article begins “In any area of scholarly inquiry, there are always several ways in which the phenomena under study may be sorted and arranged for purposes of systemic analysis” (Singer 1961, 77) and the two principal sections are titled “The International System as Level of Analysis” and “The National State as Level of Analysis” (which he also calls the “sub-systemic level” (1961, 89)). 8 (Waltz 1959, 12). 9 (Waltz 1979, 19). 10 (Buzan 1995, 199. See also 204–205). See also (Wendt 1999, 8) and (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 33). The principal exceptions of which I am aware are (Onuf 1995) and (Wight 2006, 102–119). See also (Jepperson and Meyer 2011).

40

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Causes, separated by levels, are looked at as independent variables. As Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little put it, levels involve “distinct elements of causality.”11 “Each level must identify a major source of impact on behavior, and thus an explanation for events, that is distinct from other major sources.”12 Explanations based on distinct elements, however, are analytic (not systemic).13 (Systemic explanations rely on related elements.) Focusing on “causes operating at the international level”14 leads to analytic theory. Waltz argued that “any approach or theory, if it is rightly termed ‘systemic,’ must show how the systems level, or structure, is distinct from the level of interacting units.”15 In this account, only structure is “on the systems level.” The parts of the system are consigned to a level that is not a system level. And “the system,” understood as a level (rather than a whole), is considered not only separately from but as an external influence on the parts that compose it.16 This framing analytically disconnects one “part” (structure, on the system level) and uses it to explain features of other parts.17 The resulting depiction, despite being labelled “systemic,” does not even attempt to address the arrangement of the parts of a system.18 Waltzian explanatory levels really are levels of analysis.19 IR, rather than look at “international systems” systemically, as Waltz said we should, has followed what Waltz did, looking at levels analytically. Consider Robert Jervis’ System Effects. In the ninety pages of the first two chapters, which broadly explore systems and systems effects, Jervis refers only once to levels.20 And his sole reference to independent and dependent variables indicates that the

11

(Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 32). 12 (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 33). See also (Buzan 1995, 204–205). 13 Jervis (1997, 107, 108) seems to me correct when he suggests that Waltz chose his “austere” definition of structure “to rigorously separate systemic from unit attributes.” But, like Waltz, Jervis fails to appreciate that such separation leads to analytic (not systemic) theory. 14 (Waltz 1979, 18). 15 (Waltz 1979, 40 [emphasis added]). 16 See also §5.6. 17 See also §§5.2, 5.3, 2.1.3. 18 See also Chapter 5, esp. §5.9. 19 Waltz did not use the language “levels of analysis” – except at (1979, 61–62) in reference to Singer’s account. This, I think, was because he disagreed with some of the details in Singer’s treatment and because he must have been uneasy with the term analysis in the context of systemic theory. I think, though, that he would have been comfortable with the framing of levels of explanation – which, I am arguing, he deployed analytically. 20 (Jervis 1997, 4). (This passage, not coincidentally I think, refers to Waltz.)

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

41

distinction is “problematic” in systems21 – as is labeling “one set of elements ‘causes’ and [the] other ‘effects’.”22 Jervis, however, in Chapter 3 (“Systems Theories of International Politics”) not only adopts Waltz’s levels language23 but “naturally” combines it with an analytic focus on independent and dependent variables,24 producing an (analytic) location-of-causes account of “systemic” theory. Despite having stressed that in systems “the impact of one variable … depends on others”25 – that variables in systems are not independent or (merely) dependent – Jervis organizes “systems theories” of international politics “by whether the dependent variables, the independent variables, or both are on the system level.”26 The organized operation of multilevel, multicomponent complex wholes is replaced by a focus on separate variables on separate levels that have separate effects. Similarly, Alexander Wendt claims that “it is important to distinguish two senses in which a theory might be considered ‘systemic’: when it makes the international system the dependent variable, and when it makes the international system the independent variable.”27 But treating the international system as a dependent variable explained by something on a lower level of analysis produces reductive/analytic (not systemic) explanations (of “international systems,” understood simply as bounded objects of investigation, not multilevel, multicomponent complex wholes28). This (mis)understanding goes back to Singer, who claimed that “for the purposes of systemic analysis … the observer may choose to focus upon the parts or upon the whole, upon the components or upon the system.”29 This confuses “systemic analysis” with “analyses of systems;” systemic theories or research with (possibly analytic) theories of or research on “international systems” (treated not as complex systems but as units of analysis or dependent variables). 21

(Jervis 1997, 58). More generally, he addresses “variables” (1997, 35–41, 58, 73, 78, 81, 83) principally to emphasize their complex interconnections and non-linear relations in systems. 22 (Jervis 1997, 48. Cf. 76–81). 23 (Jervis 1997, 92 (twice), 93, 99 (three times), 103 (twice)). 24 (Jervis 1997, 92 (three times), 93 (four times), 98, 99 (three times), 107). And where “variable” appears in none of the 22 section headings in Chapters 1 and 2, it is in four of the 11 headings in Chapter 3. 25 (Jervis 1997, 91). 26 (Jervis 1997, 92). We will return to explanations employing independent variables in §§4.1.1, 4.4, 4.5. 27 (Wendt 1999, 11). Bear Braumoeller (2012, 13) argues, even more narrowly, that systemic theories treat structure as either a dependent or an independent variable. 28 See §1.1 at nn. 9, 10. 29 (Singer 1961, 77).

42

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Across IR, levels of analysis are deployed to study the impact of separate causes located on particular levels – usually ignoring the structured relations and productive processes of entities and activities organized and operating as parts of complex structured wholes. 3.3

Levels of Analysis vs. Levels of Organization

There is, of course, nothing wrong with levels-based analytic theory and research  – except if it is presented as systemic, privileged, or the only valid form of scientific explanation or research. In fact, selecting a focal level of investigation selects a level of abstraction. In systemic/relational theory and research, however, focal levels of abstraction aim to correspond to and are chosen as focal because they are understood to be levels of organization. As we saw in §1.3, levels of organization are (understood as) “in the world.” Levels of explanation or analysis are fundamentally in the mind of the observer. They refer more to the structure of our knowledge than to the structure of the world.30 And they need not be employed in ways that respect or even acknowledge the organizational structure of the world. Waltz’s initial three-level scheme of human beings, states, and states systems might be read as a simplistic social ontology. But in Man, the State and War it was deployed simply as an epistemic accounting device. And collapsing individuals and states into a single “unit level,” as Waltz did in Theory of International Politics,31 is a pure levels of abstraction/ analysis framing.32 Waltz’s unit level is a residual; everything that is not “on the system/ structural level.” It corresponds to no organizational level in the world. And no system can be constructed out of the entirely abstract – or, alternatively, wildly diverse – entities on this level. (A system is composed of parts of particular types (organized and operating in particular ways).) Although no frame is entirely neutral – any way of studying the world is “for some purpose”33 – a levels of organization framing attempts to depict, more or less accurately,34 the organizational structure of (a part of) the world. Levels of abstraction/explanation instead facilitate addressing a 30

As Onuf (1995, 41) puts it, most discussions of levels in IR “tell us how we see, and not what we see.” 31 (Waltz 1979, 38, 44, 45, 46, 49, 56, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 79, 145, 202). 32 Much the same is true of Singer’s framings of “level of analysis or orientation” and “focus or level of analysis” (1961, 78 [emphasis added], 80 [emphasis added]). 33 (Cox 1981, 128). 34 On the necessity of descriptive accuracy in systemic explanations see §4.9.

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

43

particular concern or question for a particular analytic purpose. (Waltz’s purpose was to isolate the effects of international anarchy.) “All theories have a perspective.”35 A levels of organization frame, however, strives to maintain contact with a defensible account of how the world, to the best of our knowledge, is organized. A levels of abstraction/explanation frame employs a particular epistemic or methodological perspective to try to extract a certain kind of knowledge from the world. Finally, to repeat, levels of organization (compositional whole–parts hierarchies) are systemic. Levels of abstraction or explanation usually are employed analytically. And even when a levels-of-explanation frame mirrors the organizational structure of the world, it functions differently in explanations. 3.4

Micro and Macro

The following chapter examines differences between systemic explanations and the analytic causal explanations that are the focus of much of mainstream social science. The remainder of this chapter illustrates the value of a systemic/relational levels-of-organization framing. This section argues that the organization of the world in hierarchical compositional levels explains the widespread use of micro–macro framings across the natural and social sciences and challenges the idea of “micro-foundations.” 3.4.1

Triads of Levels

Micro and macro are relative terms that identify levels of abstraction.36 In an organizationally layered world, nearly every “thing” is both a micro-entity and a macro-entity; a part of a larger system and a system composed of smaller parts. Scientific research typically focuses on one or a few levels. Such choices of focal levels of investigation – what are taken as wholes – are in significant measure conventional. But in a world of systems of systems of systems, the choice cannot be arbitrary (or, if it is, we are dealing solely with a level of analysis/explanation). The world has an organizational structure that we ignore at the cost of incomplete, and often inaccurate, knowledge. Furthermore, once a focal level is chosen, investigation tends to operate primarily over (roughly) three levels, also looking “down” to the parts that compose that whole and “up” to the larger whole of which it is 35

(Cox 1981, 128). 36 See §3.1.

44

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

a part.37 This arresting feature of how sciences typically operate, I am arguing, reflects the fact that the world “is” an organizationally layered system of systems of systems. 3.4.2

Against Micro-foundations

Because micro and macro (and meso) are levels of abstraction (not organization), no type of entity is inherently micro or macro. The common practice in the social sciences of identifying individual human beings as “micro” and social groups as “macro” thus deserves no privilege. And the idea of micro-foundations38 is misguided (at least to the extent that there is not equal attention to macro-foundations, which in fact are rarely addressed39). Analytical Sociology40 presents a particularly clear micro-foundations argument. Consider James Coleman’s famous boat/bathtub diagram (see Figure 3.1).41 From a systems point of view, the obvious problem is that this depicts micro and macro levels as separate  – interacting rather than organizationally related42 – and accounts for the explanandum (at the top right) by the separate impacts of micro-level and macro-level causes. There is not even a hint of parts organized and operating to produce outcomes. Furthermore, although this figure depicts causes operating at both levels, Analytical Sociology privileges micro-level explanations. As Jon Elster puts it, “in principle, explanations in the social sciences should refer only to individuals and their actions.”43 Some even argue that “there exist no macro-level mechanisms,”44 making the top arrow reducible (in principle) to the bottom arrows. 37

“Foundational” “bottom-out” entities thus are fundamentally conventional. 38 (Kertzer 2017) briefly reviews discussions of micro-foundations in IR. 39 An October 2020 Google Scholar search for “microfoundations” returned almost 47,000 results. A search for “macrofoundations” returned only 2,400 (barely 5%)  – along with the question “Did you mean: micro-foundations?” (On repeating this search in November 2021 and October 2022, the proportions were the same but the question did not reappear.) Also notable is the fact that on the first ten pages of results for microfoundations, only one item (less than 1%) was from the natural sciences. The idea of the micro being foundational seems to be a common way of thinking only in the social sciences – because, I am suggesting, it is analytic/reductionist, whereas the natural sciences usually adopt an open-ended levels-of-organization framing and employ research strategies that decompose higher-level systems without privileging lower-level components or explanations. See also §2.1.1. 40 See, for example, (Hedström 2005), (Hedström and Bearman 2009a), (Demeulenaere 2011), (Manzo 2014), (Keuschnigg, Lovsjö, and Hedström 2018). 41 See (Coleman 1990, 702, Fig. 26.1). 42 See §5.2 at nn. 24, 25. 43 (Elster 2015, 7). 44 (Hedström and Swedberg 1996, 299).

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

45

Macro Level (system of action)

Micro Level (actors and resources)

Figure 3.1  Coleman’s boat

More modestly, analytical sociologists often claim that explanations ought to prioritize micro-level forces and that individual human beings are privileged (if not the sole) micro-level actors. For example, Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg argue that “intelligible social science explanations should always include explicit references to the causes and consequences of [individual actors’] action.”45 Hedström even argues that “individuals are the core entities and their actions are the core activities that bring about the social-level phenomena that one seeks to explain.”46 But treating individuals as pre-given and irreducible is, as we will see in more detail in the remainder of this chapter, merely a sometimesfruitful methodological move. It deserves no privilege in Sociology, IR, or any other social science. Quite the contrary, it is a strange conception of a science that sees a defining feature – the fact that it deals with social phenomena – as something that needs to be explained away by something “more basic.” We certainly would never as biologists claim that we should explain biological phenomena through chemical or physical entities and processes. The insistence on micro-foundations, which ignores the shaping of individuals by social relations, reflects a contentious philosophical or theological view that sees human beings as somehow outside of the layered ontology of the rest of reality – or holds, no less problematically, that social phenomena, whatever their ontological status, are best explained by the actions and interactions of individual human beings. A systemic/relational view, by contrast, sees levels as inescapably intertwined and human beings as fully embedded in (the rest of) nature. 45

(Hedström and Swedberg 1998, 11–12). This is obviously false (or stipulative)  – although it is defensible if we replace “intelligible” with “complete.” 46 (Hedström 2005, 26. See also 28).

46

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

In the social sciences no less than in the life sciences, “higher-level entities and activities are … essential to the intelligibility of those at lower levels, just as much as those at lower levels are essential for understanding those at higher levels.”47 “No phenomenon at any level can be wholly characterized without incorporating other phenomena that arise at all levels.”48 In fact, to the extent that the macro-entity is a system, no privilege attaches to lower-level entities or explanations. Deeper means lower or smaller not better or more revealing, fundamental, or foundational. And going “even deeper” is likely to produce less useful explanations. For example, having decomposed social groups into individual human beings, looking at their “underlying” biochemistry or even deeper physical “foundations” will almost always produce less illuminating knowledge about social groups. In systems, neither micro nor macro entities or processes are foundational in a strong sense of that term. Understanding sometimes requires working down, analytically, to a lower level. At other times, we must work up to emergents on a higher level. And robust understanding usually requires the sort of triadic perspective highlighted in the preceding subsection. 3.5

The Agent–Structure Problem

The remainder of this chapter addresses the interrelated issues of “the agent-structure problem” and the natures of “individual human beings” and social groups. The account of “persons” outlined here, I argue, is a central feature of a relational/systemic understanding of the social world. I therefore encourage even readers with no prior interest in such questions to at least skim the following sections. A particular type of micro–macro relation, usually called “the agent–structure problem”49  – the question of how individuals/agents are related to larger social groups or structures  – has been a central metatheoretical issue in IR and Sociology for four decades. Seeing “the things of the world” as organizationally layered systems of systems of 47 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 23). See also §1.7, where I also quoted this passage. 48 (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009, 7). “All levels” may be a considerable exaggeration, unless we emphasize “wholly.” “Neighboring levels” seems to me both more accurate and more penetrating. 49 (Wendt 1987), (Dessler 1989), and (Wight 2006) are the classic discussions in IR. (They cite most of the standard literature.) I would also draw attention to (Sewell 1992) = (Sewell 2005, ch. 4).

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

47

systems suggests a simple solution to – or, more precisely, pre-empts – the “problem.”50 “Agents” are not things in the way that rabbits and radios are; that is, entities/systems of a particular type (composed of entities/systems of particular types). “Agency” is a property possessed by a great variety of types of things (ranging from bits of computer code and individual human beings to families, firms, churches, and states).51 “Agent” is a class of extremely diverse kinds of things (that share a capacity for agency). There is no good reason to imagine that “agents” share anything beyond their capacity for agency. Similarly, as Mario Bunge nicely puts it, structure “is a property, not a thing”52 – a relational property of a system. The property of agency, however, has no intrinsic relation to the property of structure (and vice versa). And how particular agents are related to particular structures (if at all) is an empirical question. A problem arises only if one analytically separates and reifies agents and structures or sees them as substances or essences – and then further insists that one must be (onto)logically prior. Why one would do that, though, is a mystery to me. And from a relational/systemic perspective (which is the perspective being employed and examined in this book) this is an obviously counter-productive way to cut up the world. Many readers, I suspect, will find the preceding paragraphs willfully obtuse. What really is at stake, they might argue, is how individual human beings (or agents of a particular type, such as states) are related to the higher-level groups and systems of which they are parts. Thus formulated, though, there is no “problem” because levels of organization do not imply ontological (or causal or chronological) priority. Each organizationally differentiated level, because it is ultimately irreducible,53 has the same ontological status. And how entities on different levels are related is an empirical question. Furthermore, every entity, at least from the subatomic to the intergalactic levels, “is” both a whole and a part, simultaneously and essentially. The framing “whole” adopts the perspective of a particular level. “Parts” provides a view from (or looking up to) a higher level. 50

The idea that there is no real “problem” if we see agents and structures as mutually coconstitutive is common in relational social theory. See, for example, (White 2008, 15), (Powell 2013, 197–201) and in IR (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 295–296), (McCourt 2016, 481). See also (Wendt 1987, 339, 360–361), (Bucher 2017), (Braun, Schindler, and Wille 2019). My argument adds a levels of organization twist and draws attention to the systemism and relationalism implicit in the idea of mutual co-constitution. 51 “The term ‘agency’ can apply at any scale” (White 2008, 292). 52 (Bunge 1997, 415). 53 On irreducibility, see §§2.1, 2.2.

48

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Individual human beings are members (parts) of the species Homo sapiens. Although this may not be of much interest to social scientists, it may be of great importance to biologists or ecologists. (We need to be careful not to confuse interest with ontology.) Conversely, social groups such as states are no less (although differently) agents (that act in larger social systems). In addition, whether a particular social system or its components “came first” is, at best, an empirical question – and usually a question that makes little sense, especially when (as is characteristic in the social world) they co-evolve. In assembled social systems, individuals and groups mutually co-constitute and recurrently reconstitute one another (and the structures within which they operate).54 To start the story with either “agents” or “structures” is a methodological or analytic decision. As Margaret Archer emphasizes, agent–structure identifies an analytic, not ontological, dualism. Both agency and structuring are always in play.55 As John Padgett and Walter Powell put it, “in the short run, actors create relations; in the long run, relations create actors.”56 Individual human beings and human social groups stand in the intertwined micro–macro relations characteristic of all of reality. Like other layered systems of systems, individual human beings and social groups, as well as groups of lesser and greater scale (including states and states systems) are partially (in)separable entities located on irreducible but interlinked levels of organization. Nothing more. Nothing less. No “problem.” Quite the contrary, agency and structure require each other. Structure does not merely enable agency but is its precondition. Social agency only occurs in structured social contexts. Agency is impossible in an unstructured void, such as Hobbes’ state of nature (which allows only atomistic action and reaction). And, as William Sewell notes, “agents are empowered by structures.”57 Conversely, structure is not merely caused by streams of agency but is inseparable from – is an unreal abstraction if severed from – the agents whose actions it structures. 54

This suggests an account of social continuity and social change that I develop in Chapter 12. 55 (Archer 2000). Archer’s (1995; 2013) “morphogenetic” theory treats “agency” and “structure” as cyclically recurrent phases in the life history of social entities. 56 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 2). Even more radically, Padgett (2012a, 59, n. 164) argues that “the distinction between agency and structure is just a matter of time scales.” He also complains that “incantations of ‘agency’” often mean “nothing more precise than … structural indeterminacy” or are “just a label for the (admittedly large) error term” (2012a, 59, n. 164). 57 (Sewell 2005, 151).

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

49

No social structures without social agents. No social agents without social structures. No problem – when agency and structure are understood in relational/systemic terms. 3.6

Biological Individuals

Pushing a bit further on “agents,” Biology has problematized the distinction between “individual” and “collective” organisms. There are a great variety of types of biological “individuals,” understood as functionally integrated living wholes with a particular life history, corresponding to the dictionary-definition sense of “existing as a separate indivisible entity; numerically one; single, as distinct from others of the same kind; particular.”58 For example, bacteria make up about half of the cells in a human body.59 An “individual human being” is a superorganism60 or ecosystem. Conversely, an “organism” containing only human somatic cells would not be – cannot be – a living organism. Remove a human being’s microbiome (and prevent it from being replaced) and the mangled entity that remains will die as surely, although not quite as quickly, as if you cut off its head. More generally, “the entities we used to refer to as single living things (for instance termites moving around, eating, and digesting food) turn out to be less autonomous than we might have thought them to be: in order to function the way they do, they need the other elements of the symbiotic system.”61 (Compare “individual human beings.” You can’t be a human being separate from society; from families and other social groups.) Conversely, beehives are no less individuals than the bees that they house.62 Similarly, a particular elephant herd or chimpanzee band is no 58

Oxford English Dictionary. (Clarke 2010) and (Pradeu 2016) are good brief introductions to biological individuality. (Guay and Pradeu 2016a) discusses the idea of individuals across the sciences. Coming at the issue from the other side, (Gissis, Lamm, and Shavit 2018) looks at the nature of collectivities in the life sciences (with an eye to the social sciences). 59 On the human microbiome, see (Costello et al. 2012), (Gilbert et al. 2018), (Proctor et  al. 2019). (Sender, Fuchs, and Milo 2016) estimates a 1.3:1 ratio of bacterial to human somatic cells (and shows the often-reported ratio of 10:1 to be based on a problematic back-of-the-envelope estimate). 60 See, for example, (Wilson and Sober 1989), (Bouchard 2013). (Hölldobler and Wilson 2009) is a fascinating study of instinct colonies as superorganisms. 61 (Guttinger 2018, 311). 62 If forced to choose the “most real” individual, the hive (not the bee) would be the obvious choice. (If there is a case to be made for something approximating reductive holism (see §2.1.2), eusocial insects would be a leading contender.)

50

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

less an individual than particular elephants and chimpanzees. They are all persistent, integrated functional wholes composed of other entities. In “holobionts” – a unit composed of a host and associated species63 – both the whole and the separate organisms (and species) are individuals. For example, the Great Barrier Reef is as much an individual as its individual biotic components.64 And by some definitions, the reef system is as alive as are the corals, fish, and other organisms that compose it.65 “Biological individuality cannot be severed from a wider collective organization: as the individual organisation unfolds, it creates and supports a more encompassing historical and collective network, which in turn sustains and facilitates its evolution in a changeful environment.”66 “‘Individual’ does not denote a fixed level in the biological hierarchy.”67 It is “a theoretical term that can mean different, even conflicting, things in different theoretical contexts.”68 “There is a great variety of ways in which cells, sometimes genomically homogeneous, sometimes not, combine to form integrated biological wholes.”69 This can be true even within a single species. Consider “slime molds” in the genus Dictyostelium. Individual cells usually “live” separately, moving independently in search of food. But when threatened by starvation, they assemble into a multicellular entity with a stalk and fruiting body that emits spores that lie dormant until more favorable conditions appear.70 Individuals can even overlap and interpenetrate. Consider Dan Molter’s fascinating brief account of multiple forms of mushroom individuality.71 You come upon a patch of chanterelles under the fallen leaves of 63 See (Margulis 1991), (Gilbert and Tauber 2016), (Gissis, Lamm, and Shavit 2018, Pt. IV), (Gilbert 2019), (Simon et al. 2019). (Cf. (Skillings 2016) and (Bourrat and Griffiths 2018) for critical assessment of the individuality of holobionts.) In a broad sense, which includes humans as holobionts, (Kutschera 2018) advocates placing the holobiont concept at the heart of Systems Biology. The concept is also used more narrowly to refer only to a host-microbiome unit. See, for example, (Rosenberg and ZilberRosenberg 2018), (Theis et al. 2016). It seems to me, thinking as a social scientist looking for biological analogies, that it is useful to distinguish holobionts that are and are not contained within the body of one of the symbionts. 64 Much the same is true of biofilms, such as dental plagues; “assemblages of microbial cells attached to each other and/or to a surface, encased within a self-produced matrix” (Penesyan et al. 2021, 1). See (Ereshefsky and Pedroso 2013), (Pedroso 2018), (Militello, Bich, and Moreno 2021). 65 On definitions of life see n. 62 in Chapter 13. 66 (Moreno and Mossio 2015, 138). See also (Kaiser 2018). 67 (Okasha 2018, 252). 68 (Griesemer 2018, 137). 69 (Arnellos 2018, 201. See also 209). 70 (Weijer 2004), (López-Jiménez et al. 2019), (Hehmeyer 2019). 71 (Molter 2017).

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

51

an oak. You count 15 mushrooms, which are phenomenological individuals. But you also know that these are parts of a single physiological organism (a mycelium). If you are up on your knowledge of Basidiomycetes (one of the two major divisions of the subkingdom Dikarya, “the higher fungi”) you also know that the nuclei of the individual hyphae (the cell-like structures that compose a mycelium) are evolutionary individuals72 – as are certain of the fruiting bodies by which the mushroom propagates. And the oak-chanterelle pairing is a symbiotic organism that is both an evolutionary and a physiological individual. Such interpenetration of individual entities is not at all surprising in an organizationally hierarchical world. Wholes on one level are parts of larger wholes across the living world. In fact, one of life’s “most familiar characteristics [is] its hierarchical organization, in which biological individuals … are comprised of groups of cooperating individuals from lower levels.”73 (My heart and my liver are as much individuals  – an individual human heart and an individual human liver – as I am an individual (human being).) Finally, to extend the discussion in a different direction, the boundary of an organism need not be biotic. For example, J. Scott Turner argues that “extended organisms” are surprisingly common.74 How much more external is a hermit crab’s found shell than a lobster’s (periodically molted) grown shell? Is the hive really external to the bees? 3.7

Individual Human Beings

Humans beings, in addition to being individual ecosystems, are assembled social persons. As Padgett and Powell nicely put it, “individuals don’t have goals; roles have goals. Profit maximization, for example, might be the goal of a businessman. But that is not the goal of a more complicated businessman-father-political ensemble person.”75 The “individual identities” of human beings are multiple, assembled, regularly re-assembled, and complex – not given, singular, atomic, or additive. And the assembled bio-social wholes that we conventionally call individual human beings are no less essentially parts of larger individual social wholes. Human beings also extend into the abiotic world. For example, the literature on “extended cognition” understands material objects (such 72

On evolutionary individuals, understood as units of natural selection, see (Gould 2002, 595–613). See also §13.1.1. 73 (Davison and Michod 2021, 241). 74 (Turner 2000, 2004). 75 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 5).

52

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

as paper and pencil used in mathematical computations) as part of the human mind. Or consider man–machine military assemblages. The mounted man and his horse, tack, and arms was a social and military unit/individual among the Mongols (and the army/society/polity that they composed was a superorganism). “Individual human being” is a very particular construction. And “human beings” are many different kinds of things – both individual wholes and parts of various larger biological, ecological, and social systems  – in the multiple streams of being and becoming in which they are enmeshed in our hierarchically layered, constantly adapting, world. 3.8

Social Groups Are Individuals Too

Social groups are equally individuals. In a world of hierarchical compositional levels of organization, it is a mere anthropocentric prejudice to hold that human beings but not social groups are individuals. (Social groups are persons too.) Compare the biological understanding of species as individuals.76 Each species, like each organism, is “individuated on the basis of spatiotemporal location and continuity”77– and thus is unique.78 Species, like organisms and social groups, have no essence79 or intensions; “there are no properties necessary and sufficient to define their names.”80 Furthermore, “the identity of a species is not dependent upon the existence of any one organism, so a species cannot be a set of organisms defined by its extension.”81 What a species “is” is what it has, through evolution, become (which is subject to further evolution). A particular chimpanzee, of course, is a token of the type Pan troglodytes. But each actual species, like each of its actual members, is an individual (not a type or class).82 Homo sapiens is an individual (species)  – just as the Barack and Michelle Obama family is an individual (family) and Barrack and Michelle Obama are individual human beings in the dictionary-definition sense of “single, as distinct from others of the same kind.”83 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

(Ghiselin 1974), (Hull 1976, 1978). See also (Ereshefsky 1992). (Hull 1976, 176). (Hull 1976, 176). (Hull 1976, 176). (Ghiselin 1974, 537). (Molter 2017, 1118). (Hull 1976, 177–180ff.), (Ghiselin 1974, 537). Oxford English Dictionary.

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

53

(“Individual”) human beings and (“collective”) social groups are (interconnected and often interpenetrating) individuals (unique wholes) on different levels of organization. The biological, psychological, and social parts composing Donald Trump  – all his human somatic cells, the bacteria in his gut and mouth and on his skin, his historical experiences, and his multiple social roles – are parts of a complex system that is an exemplary “individual.” But the Trump Organization is every bit as much an individual.84 And so is the United States of America. Both actual human beings and actual social groups are persistent selforganized complex adaptive systems that are spatiotemporally differentiated from others of their kind. They have proper names. They have particular histories and identities. They are individuals. “Individuation is clearly a theory-relative procedure. What will count as an individual unit will depend on the formulation of the causal process of interest.”85 Therefore, whether we approach “individual human beings” and “social groups” as wholes or as parts depends largely on our epistemic or pragmatic purposes – and cultural prejudices. For example, throughout most of history in most parts of the world, families have been a far more important unit of social life that their individual members – let alone “individual human beings.” And the idea that all members of the species Homo sapiens are equally human beings is a very particular understanding that in the broad sweep of human history is a recent and unusual idea.86 Nearly all the “things” of the social world, from human beings to international systems, “are” both wholes, at one level of organization, and parts, at a higher level.87 Privileging one level or kind of social or biological entity in theory or research is, at best, a potentially fruitful methodological choice of limited applicability. 3.9

Genidentity: A Processual Perspective on Identity

What the entities of the social and biological worlds “are” becomes even more complicated when, as a processual perspective requires, we take time into account.88 “Animals, and indeed all organisms, are 84

“Species are to evolutionary theory as firms are to economic theory. … Species are individuals, and they are real. They are as real as American Motors, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors” (Ghiselin 1974, 538). 85 (Mitchell 2003, 67). 86 See (Donnelly 2015; 2013, chs. 5, 9, 10). 87 Similarly, Scott Gilbert (2018, 123) argues that “Biology is, in large part, a study of relationships between parts and wholes. An individual on one level is a part on another.” 88 For recent processual accounts of biological individuality, see (Austin 2020) and, at greater length, (Meincke and Dupré 2021).

54

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

four-dimensional things. The three dimensions of their bodies … change as they slide along the slippery and inevitable slope of time.”89 “The entities that we commonly represent or model as thing-like, such as organisms and other biological individuals, are just particular time slices of their life cycles.”90 This is especially striking in organisms that undergo dramatic morphological changes, such as frogs and butterflies.91 But even in relatively stable-appearing creatures, such as humans, often “it is surprisingly difficult to specify what stays the same throughout the life cycle of an organism.”92 “An organism’s persistence does not depend on being kept in a single state [or form] but on being maintained through numerous processes.”93 A living thing is the thing that it is by and through its history (not the persistence of some substrate, essence, or relational structuring). Philosophers of science call this genidentity.94 “A process perspective allows us to identify (i.e., specify the identity of) an individual through time, however discontinuous that individual may be.”95 Chickens and eggs and acorns and oak trees “are slices of the same genetic series connecting the selfsame biological individual along a temporal sequence”96 – selfsame being defined by that temporal sequence. “Without an identical subject that passes through each stage, one can interpret the stages as temporal parts of an extended process.”97 John Dupré and Daniel Nicholson even argue that rather than otherwisedefined organisms having life cycles “it is the life cycle that constitutes the organism.”98 Among humans, as Rescher puts it, “the unity of the person resides neither in the physical body as such”  – form and substance change  – “nor in the psychic unity of custom and memory” – which credits dubious first-person reports and ignores important parts of the human life cycle (for example, none of us remembers infancy or much of early

89

(Arthur 2004, 1). 90 (Arnellos 2018, 201). 91 Even more strikingly, the giant river fluke (Fasciola gigantica) develops through four different forms in four different environments. See (DiFrisco 2018, 79–81). 92 (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 19). See also (Godfrey-Smith 2016). 93 (Anjum and Mumford 2018a, 63). More generally, “what allows the identification of a token as being of a specific type is historical continuity” (Mitchell 2003, 100). 94 (Guay and Pradeu 2016b) and (Pradeu 2018) are useful introductions. 95 (Bouchard 2018, 194). 96 (Padovani 2013, 105). 97 (DiFrisco 2018, 82). 98 (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 19). See also (Rescher 1996, 105, 116–118). More modestly, Michael Barresi and Scott Gilbert (2020, 79) argue that “the life cycle can be considered a central unit in biology.”

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

55

childhood)  – “but in a synoptic unity of process.”99 “People are constituted as the individuals they are through their doings, their history: one is the individual that one is by nature of the macroprocess that integrates the microprocesses constituting one’s life and career.”100 As Anne Sophie Meincke argues “I am … a higher-order process relying on a manifold of lower-order processes – I am a processual form.”101 Padgett and Powell note that from the perspective of chemistry, we are just a complex set of chemical reactions. Chemicals come into us; chemicals go out of us; chemicals move around and are transformed within us. Solid as we may appear from the outside, no single atom in our body has been there for more than a few years. It is possible (and flattering) to see our physical selves as autonomous bodies exchanging food and other nutrients, but it is also possible to see ourselves as an ensemble of chemicals that flow, interpenetrate, and interact. Stability of the human body through time does not mean mechanical fixity of parts; it means organic reproduction of parts in flux.102

Or as Rani Anjum and Stephen Mumford put it, “an organism’s persistence does not depend on being kept in a single state but on being maintained through numerous processes.”103 Social actors do typically retain a persistent biographical identity. But persons, as Harrison White colorfully puts it, “have unique identities thrust upon them like the beached litter of ongoing social processes and embeddings.”104 Over time, the substance of their identity – who/ what they “are” – changes, often dramatically. This is true not only of collective agents (consider “France” at hundred-year intervals in either direction from the ascension of Francis I in 1515) but also of individual human beings. Imagine a woman who moves to a new country, adopts a new religion, enters a new profession, joins a new political party, and becomes a fanatical amateur hockey player. Or consider the fundamental changes typically associated with becoming, and then being, a father. Rescher thus argues “Heraclitus was only half right: We indeed do not step twice into the same waters, but we can certainly step twice into the same river. The unity of a particular that defines what it is consists in what it does.”105 99 (Rescher 1996, 107–108). 100 (Rescher 1996, 108). 101 (Meincke 2018, 369). See also (Meincke 2019b). (van Inwagen 2002) surveys philosophical answers to the question “What do we refer to when we say I?” 102 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 3). 103 (Anjum and Mumford 2018b, 63). 104 (White 2008, 195). 105 (Rescher 1996, 52–53). See also (Seibt 2018, 3).

56

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

The “things” of social world, however, “do” many different things. They therefore are many different things. “Persons” of greatly varied types emerge out of the varied temporal successions in the diverse and intersecting physical, biological, psychological, social, and ecological systems that comprise the world in which human beings and social groups live “their” lives. And all of these types of persons merit intensive study by social scientists. 3.10

Identities and Persons

Harrison White’s conception of persons as high-level assemblages of identities allows us to drill down even deeper. “Much theory in social science stipulates persons, takes them as preexisting atoms.”106 White argues instead that “persons develop only under special circumstances” and that “personhood is a compounding across identities.”107 At what we might call the social cellular level, we are composed of identities. (The following paragraphs contain a lot of jargon. Because of the novelty of White’s argument, though, the jargon is actually clearer and more precise than a superficially easier to read framing – or at least I have been unable to find an equally good compact ordinary-language formulation.) Identities “spring up out of efforts at control in turbulent context. … An identity emerges for each of us only out of efforts at control amid contingencies and contentions in interaction.”108 Identities are the relational results of efforts at “finding footings among other identities.”109 And in this account, persons “appear as bundles of identities.”110 Social action takes place within a great variety of “network-domains (netdoms).” Social persons, which are composed of and carry identities, regularly switch between netdoms. During these switchings, “identities trigger.”111 And as identities act and interact, both they and netdoms are (re)constructed. Identities mutually co-constitute each other through their efforts at finding footings in the structured netdoms in which (and along with which) they co-evolve.112

106 107 108 109 110 111 112

(White 2008, 127). (White 2008, 127). (White 2008, 1). (White 2008, 1). (White 2008, 2). (White 2008, 2). (White 2008, 4, xviii). Or as Gertrude Stein puts it “I am I because my little dog knows me.” (Quoted at https://quotefancy.com/quote/1019870/Gertrude-Stein-I-amI-because-my-little-dog-knows-me-but-creatively-speaking-the-little.)

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

57

One level up, White argues, identities combine into “disciplinary units.” (“Disciplines offer rules of the game that yield coordination in tasks in an otherwise messy world.”113) At a still higher level of organization, White identifies what he calls “styles,” “profiles of the commingling of network relations and discursive processes across switchings that result from and also shift situations.”114 In this account, “person[s] grow as styles.”115 “The ordinary person, so called, is a late and sophisticated product resulting from the interplay of larger social formations, of populations.”116 “Persons come into existence and are formed as the result of overlaps among identities from distinct network-populations.”117 (The same biological human being is a different person as an infant and as an adult because she has different identities rooted in the very different interactional domains she occupies and histories she has experienced. And that adult often becomes different persons as her “personal,” professional, and social relations change.) Persons are “dynamic, self-reproducing amalgam[s] across profiles of switchings.”118 Although central to social life, persons are (neither more nor less than) “one class of socially constructed actors.”119 And “‘individuals’ in the modern sense – persons – need an advanced division of labor and a high degree of social distinction to emerge.”120 Even readers who find White’s account more than a bit too much can, I hope, appreciate the power of a relational/systemic vision that sees levels of social organization below as well as above the level of “individual human beings” – which itself is just one of many levels of social organization. Individual human beings are no more given and indivisible than atoms turned out to be once physicists began examining them. Each is an important type of entity on a level of organization that is vital to the structuring of our world. For some purposes it is fruitful to consider them wholes; to cut nature there. But they also are composed of parts that are no less real and significant. And they are parts of larger wholes/ persons that also are no less real and significant. This book argues that IR needs to be able to comprehend the whole range of social levels of organization, from micro-identities to 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

(White 2008, 63). (White 2008, 113). (White 2008, 126). (White 2008, 126–127). (White 2008, 129). (White 2008, 18). (White 2008, 130). (White 2008, 127 n. 8).

58

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

international systems – and that a relational vision of a world of systems of systems of systems provides a fruitful foundation for doing that. 3.11 Structure The preceding sections have focused on actors and agency. I conclude this chapter with a few brief comments on structure that point toward Part II, which criticizes the dominant Waltzian account, and Part III, which begins to sketch alternatives. Systemic/structural theory in IR has over the past four decades been dominated by the Waltzian vision of structures as simple, fixed things that constrain actors and cause outcomes. From a relational/systemic perspective, every element of that account is wrong – including the focus on structures and structural theory (rather than systems and relational theory). Structure is not a thing. (As noted above, it is a property.) And structures do not (cannot) “do” things. (In particular, they do not constrain actors – a framing that sees neither actors nor structures as integral parts of complex wholes.) Social systems structure relations between social positions and regulate interactions of positioned social actors. Social structures are not unitary compositions of a few elements. All but the simplest societies are made up of multiple systems composed of many types of components, organized on multiple levels, operating in many institutional domains, on multiple spatial scales. Furthermore, these systems characteristically overlap and interpenetrate. The structures of social systems are not fixed. Social systems are complex adaptive systems.121 Both types (e.g., states, families, persons) and tokens (e.g., the USA, the Joneses, James Earl Jones) change over time. Although social systems and their structures can sometimes fruitfully be treated as if they were given – over short periods of time, we might even say that they “are” effectively given – that givenness is contingent, historical, and (over long periods of time) certain to change. Social structures do not cause or determine outcomes. Rather, the structured and regulated activities of positioned social actors characteristically (but not deterministically) lead to typical outcomes. So what, then, “are” social structures? I suggest that we would do better to evade that question than try to answer it. In fact, I would suggest avoiding the noun structure122 – which is too easily taken to be a thing with a fixed or essential character. 121 See §2.3.4. 122 See also §10.2.

From Levels of Analysis to Levels of Organization

59

• Systems structure. They “organize or arrange the parts or elements” of the system; “absorb or integrate [them] into a … system.”123 • Actors, activities, and relations in social systems are structured. They “hav[e] some kind of internal organization or arrangement.”124 • The structuring of social systems is inescapably intertwined with the structured actions of positioned social actors. And, I will argue, systemic/relational research and explanation should focus more on the organization and operation of the system (the whole) than its structure (a part or property of that whole).

123

Oxford English Dictionary. 124 Oxford English Dictionary.

4

Systems, Causes, and Theory



Explanatory Pluralism in IR

A relational/systemic approach also demands new understandings of theory and explanation. As Sandra Mitchell puts it, in the context of Biology, Complexity in nature … has direct implications for our scientific theories, models, and explanations. … Nature is complex and so, too, should be our representations of it. … The multilevel, multicomponent, complex systems that populate the domain of biology are ill suited to a simple, unified picture of scientific theorizing. Pluralism in this domain is … the mark of a science of complexity.1

This is in sharp contrast to Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba’s argument, in the most-used research design text in IR and Political Science, that “real explanation is always based on causal inferences”2 and that “all good [scientific] research can be understood  – indeed, is best understood – to derive from the same underlying logic of inference.”3 I suspect that most scholars in IR today would agree or allow that King, Keohane, and Verba go too far. Nonetheless, in much of mainstream social science “causal inference” explanations are treated as epistemically or scientifically privileged. One goal of this book is to help to undermine the hold of such constricted visions of scientific explanation. Explanatory pluralism, which is a long-established reality in the natural sciences,4 is, I argue, necessary 1

(Mitchell 2003, 115). 2 (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 75 n. 1). 3 (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 4). 4 The old prescriptive insistence that scientific explanation has a nomological-deductive (“covering law”) form (see (Hempel and Oppenheim 1948), (Hempel 1965), (Nagel 1961), (Woodward and Ross 2021, §2)), which was still inflicted on students of my generation, has long-since been discarded. And the idea that science has a singular demarcation criterion, which was most vociferously championed in the twentieth century by Karl Popper (esp. 1963, ch. 1, 10)  – and which remained popular in IR through the 1990s in the form of Lakatosian (Lakatos 1970; 1978) progressive scientific research programs (e.g., (Vasquez 1997), (Elman and Elman 1997), (Elman and Elman 2003)) – is endorsed by few philosophers of science under fifty. The (intentionally polemical) framing of “the disunity of science” (e.g., (Fodor 1974), (Rosenberg 1994a), (Dupré

60

Systems, Causes, and Theory

61

for a social science that is able to address the systems effects that are not merely pervasive but central, both epistemically and pragmatically, in the social world. 4.1

Waltz on Theory

I begin, though, in what might seem an odd place: Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics. Waltz was driven by a desire to produce theory of international politics. (The first words of the Preface are “theory is fundamental to science.” The first chapter is titled “Laws and Theories.”) And, as Ole Waever notes, the impact of his book “owed much to being widely accepted as setting a new standard for ‘theory’ in the discipline.”5 Laws, Waltz argues, “establish relations between variables.”6 But “a law does not say why a particular association holds.”7 “Theories show why those associations obtain;”8 they “explain laws.”9 And Waltz strongly implies that a scientific theory of international politics must take a form similar to structural realism. I argue instead that this is but one of many types of scientific theory; that such theories preclude systemic explanations; and that on careful examination Waltz has at least three different accounts of the nature of scientific explanation – which provides a compelling illustration of the need for explanatory pluralism in IR. 4.1.1

Causes, Independent Variables, and Structural Theory

Science, Waltz argues, explains with causes. “What entitles astronomy to be called a science is not the ability to predict but the ability to specify causes.”10 “A theory of international politics can succeed only if political 1995), (Galison and Stump 1996)) may go too far. It is clear today, though, that there is nothing even close to a singular way in which natural scientists engage or explain the world. ((Knorr Cetina 1999) offers a particularly vivid and compelling illustration of the radically different epistemic worlds of the cutting-edge scientific disciplines of particle physics and molecular biology.) 5 (Waever 2009, 204–205. See also 201 [abstract]). What Waever nicely calls “Waltz’s theory of theory” has received far less attention than the Waltzian conception of structure (let alone structural realism). (Jackson 2011, ch. 5), (Onuf 2009), and (Goddard and Nexon 2005) are, in my view, the other leading exceptions. 6 (Waltz 1979, 1). 7 (Waltz 1979, 6). 8 (Waltz 1979, 2). “A theory is not the occurrences seen and the associations recorded, but is instead the explanation of them” (Waltz 1979, 9). 9 (Waltz 1979, 6. See also 2). 10 (Waltz 1990b, 29).

62

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

structures are defined in ways that identify their causal effects.”11 And Waltz repeatedly insisted that “structures are causes.”12 Waltz further argues that “a real causal connection” involves “the relation between an independent and a dependent variable.”13 But systemic variables, as we have seen, are interdependent. Independent-variable analysis brackets or breaks the interconnections that make systems systems.14 And Waltz, unfortunately, really did end up presenting international systems and their structures as independent variables. As Robert Jervis accurately notes, “for Waltz, the crucial independent variable is the structure of the system.”15 For example, Waltz argues that “balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two, and only two, requirements are met: that the order be anarchic and that it be populated by units wishing to survive.”16 There are no emergent system effect here. Anarchy (alone) is the cause of balancing, a law-like regularity. This is not a marginal example. (“If there is any distinctively political theory of international politics, balance-of-power theory is it.”17) Neither is this passage accidentally phrased.18 Waltz, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 6, really did aim to explain international political regularities by deploying “structure” (anarchy) as an independent-variable cause. 4.1.2

“A Theory Is a Picture”

Waltz also argues that “A theory is a picture, mentally formed, of a bounded realm or domain of activity. A theory is a depiction of the organization of a domain and of the connections among its parts.”19 11

(Waltz 1979, 70. See also 4, 65, 78, 87, 90). 12 (Waltz 1979, 74. See also 73 (“in considering structures as causes …”), 87 (“structure operates as a cause”), 50, 67, 69, 78, 90, 107). Waltz also repeatedly talked of “systemic causes” (1979, 62, 69) and “structural causes” (1979, 67, 74, 90; 1986, 343; 1993, 49). And as Waever (2009, 208) notes, “large parts of chapters 4–6 [of Theory of International Politics] explain in what ways structures can be said to be causes.” Furthermore, Chapters 7 and 8 are titled “Structural Causes and Economic Effects” and “Structural Causes and Military Effects.” 13 (Waltz 1979, 2). This reflects the conjunction of his claims that theories explain laws and that “laws establish relations between variables … If a, then b, where a stands for one or more independent variables and b stands for the dependent variable” (Waltz 1979, 1). For other uses of the language of independent (and dependent) variables, see (Waltz 1979, 1, 2, 52, 68, 133; 1990b, 25, 27; 2000, 15). 14 The contrast between relational and variable-based explanations is a recurrent theme in the relationalism literature. See, for example, (Emirbayer 1997, 286), (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 293–295), (Crossley 2011, 21). 15 (Jervis 1997, 107). 16 (Waltz 1979, 121). 17 (Waltz 1979, 117). 18 See also (Waltz 1979, 58, 118, 119). 19 (Waltz 1979, 8). Waltz repeated this definition (1997, 913) in his article “Evaluating Theories.”

Systems, Causes, and Theory

63

Depicting the organization of a domain, however, does not identify what causes what. Rather, as Waltz nicely puts it, the significance of the observed is made manifest … Once the system is understood, once its principle of organization is grasped, the phenomena are explained. … “Understanding” probably means nothing more than having whatever ideas and concepts are needed to recognize that a great many different phenomena are part of a coherent whole.20

In this sense, “structurally we can describe and understand the pressures states are subject to.”21 “Theories indicate what is connected with what and how the connection is made. They convey a sense of how things work, of how they hang together, of what the structure of a realm of inquiry may be.”22 Embodying these two very different visions, Waltz writes of “relations of cause and interdependency”23 and of “connections and causes.”24 Theories, Waltz claims, ask both “What causes what?” and “How does it all hang together?”25 And although (as we will see below) connections and interdependencies dropped out of Waltz’s theory, this picture theory of theory fits systemic research well – in sharp contrast the theories-explainlaws account. 4.1.3

How Explanations

Waltz also repeatedly claims that theories show how a regularity is produced. Theories “convey a sense of how things work;”26 “help one to understand how a given system works;”27 answer the question “How does that thing work?”28 “Neorealists offer a theory that explains how structures affect behavior and outcomes.”29 Below we will see that Waltz did not – and Waltzian structural theory cannot  – show how structure does anything. (At best, he showed that anarchy and polarity are causes of certain outcomes.) Here I simply draw attention to Waltz’s identification of still another type of explanation – mechanical explanation (which I introduced in §1.7 and to which we will return in §4.5).

20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

(Waltz 1979, 9, quoting (Heisenberg 1971, 31)). (Waltz 1979, 71). (Waltz 1979, 12). (Waltz 1979, 10 [emphasis added]; 1997, 913). (Waltz 1979, 9 [emphasis added]. See also 12). (Waltz 1979, 8. See also 12). (Waltz 1979, 12. See also 3, 121, 122). (Waltz, 1990b, 31). (Waltz 1979, 8. See also 9; 1986, 344; 1990b, 23, 29). (Waltz 1990b, 37). See also (Waltz 1986, 336).

64

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

4.1.4

The Diversity of Scientific Explanations

Waltz clearly (although unintentionally) shows that there is no single kind of scientific theory or explanation. “The leap from law to theory … [involves] trying to answer questions such as these: Why does this occur? How does that thing work? What causes what? How does it all hang together?”30 Beyond the plurality of the questions, note their particulars: what causes what (causal relations between independent and dependent variables), how things work (mechanisms or processes), and how things are connected or hang together (systems). Scientific explanations address, at minimum, causal effects, mechanical and processual effects, and systems effects. 4.2 Explanation To explain is “to make plain or intelligible … to describe or give an account of in order to bring about understanding.”31 “Explanation is a matter of representing what depends upon what;”32 of showing that something we want to understand (the explanandum) depends on something else that does the explaining (the explanans). There are, however, many types of explanatory dependence. “To explain an event is to give an account of why it happened.”33 “Why?” though, has many different types of answers. Most explanations can be formulated “Because of…” Scientific explanations, however, employ different kinds of “becauses.” The remainder of this chapter thus argues for explanatory pluralism. In particular, I argue that incorporating systemic/relational explanations in IR requires rejecting the privileging of “casual inference.”34 4.3

Causes, Causation, and Explanation

Mainstream social-scientific IR, Political Science, Sociology, and Economics are dominated by a “positivist” understanding of causes as observable independent variables that have “causal effects.”35 A cause, 30

31 32 33 34

(Waltz 1979, 8). Oxford English Dictionary. (Glennan 2017, 212. See also 237). (Elster 1989, 3). But cf. §4.6. What follows abstracts from the centrality of rational actor explanations in contemporary social science. But as rationalist explanations also are not systemic (see §§4.6.3, 3.4.2) this is a useful simplification in the interest of space. 35 In Political Science and IR, the most influential positivist account is (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, esp. §§1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.6, 3.1–3.5). Waltz’s

Systems, Causes, and Theory

65

in this understanding, is separate from, prior in time to, and constantly conjoined with an effect. But for an association to be (considered) causal there must be more than mere regularity.36 In recent decades, intervention and counter-factual accounts, including manipulation and potential outcomes theories,37 along with structural models,38 have predominated.39 Causation, in such explanations, is established through “a ‘surgical’ change in A which is of such a character that if any change occurs in B, it occurs only as a result of its causal connection, if any, to A.”40 If we can change B by changing a “treatment variable” A while leaving everything else the same  – for example, through a controlled trial, thought experiment, regression modeling, or natural experiment – then we are warranted in saying that B is a causal effect of A. Such explanations claim that A is a cause of (not merely associated/ correlated with) B. I will call these this-is-a-cause-of-that explanations.41

36



37



38



39



40 41

theories-explain-laws-through-causes account also falls into this camp. (Jackson 2011, ch. 3) examines neo-positivism’s metatheoretical commitments. Positivism, however, is easier to identify than to define. And it has taken many different forms, even within a single discipline. Perhaps the most useful way to think of neo-positivism, for those familiar with twentieth-century philosophy of science, is as a descendant of logical empiricism (see n. 57 in Chapter 1), which at the time was often called logical positivism, and a commitment to a reductionist unity of science perspective (see n. 9 in Chapter 2 and n. 4 above). (Steinmetz 2005) is a thoughtful and wide-ranging overview of positivism and its alternatives in the social sciences in the second half of the twentieth century. (Smith, Booth, and Zalewski 1996) offers a similar survey for IR. Regularity theories go back to David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part iii (esp. §§2–4, 14, 15) and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §§ iii–x (esp. §iv and part ii of §vii). (Beauchamp and Rosenberg 1981) and (Beebee 2006) are good book-length philosophical discussions. More briefly, see (Bell 2008). On contemporary regularity theories of causation, which are a decidedly minority view, see (Andreas and Guenther 2021, §1). (Cartwright 2014) and (Brady 2008) provide brief discussions of alternative conceptions of causes, focusing on the social sciences. At greater length, looking at both the natural and the social sciences, see (Illari and Russo 2014). (Kurki 2008) is a wideranging discussion of causation focused on IR. (Illari and Russo 2014, ch. 8–10), (Menzies and Beebee 2019), (Woodward 2004; 2016). The work of Donald Rubin (e.g., Rubin 1974; 2005; Imbens and Rubin 2015) and Judea Pearl (e.g., Halpern and Pearl 2005; Pearl 2009a, b; Pearl, Glymour, and Jewell 2016) have been especially influential. (Morgan and Winship 2012) provides a good brief introduction focused on the social sciences. For a brief philosophical account, see (Andreas and Guenther 2021, §2.5). See, for example, (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 76–85), (Morgan and Winship 2015, ch. 2), (Seawright 2016, 32, 192), (Goertz 2017, 30, 75–78, 208, 246ff.). (Woodward 2016, 13). Note the narrow and substantialist formulation “is a cause of” (rather than the broader and processual “causes”). “Causal inferences” only identify some causes of an effect – not all the causes of that effect (or all the effects of those causes).

66

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Systemic explanations are not, in this sense, “causal.” As Jervis puts it, the causality operating in complex systems “cannot be captured by labeling one set of elements ‘causes’ and [the] other ‘effects’.”42 And in systems “we can never do merely one thing”43 – undermining the ceteris paribus assumptions that are essential to intervention and counter-factual accounts of causation. Debating what causality “really is” would serve no purpose here. Terminological clarity, however, is essential. A coherent and well-established usage understands causes as independent variables with causal effects. Therefore, I will use the noun “cause,” either in scare quotes or with the adjective independent-variable, to refer to independent variables (or “things”44) that (are reasonably held to) have causal effects. “Causes” thus understood, though, do not exhaust “causation” in the broad ordinary-language sense of “production of an effect,”45 corresponding to the sense of “to cause” as “to effect, bring about, produce, induce, make.”46 Causation or causality is not essentially, let alone simply, a matter of (the effects of) “causes.” Some phenomena are caused by (independent-variable) “causes.” Others, however, are caused (produced, brought about) in other ways. Not every “effect” is caused by a “cause” (or set of “causes”). My argument thus might be criticized as slightly off target. Causal inference directly addresses the effects of treatment variables – effects is the noun in “causal effects” – rather than the causes of an effect. (Simply seeking causes of an effect easily leads to mindless searches for associations (e.g., garbage-can regressions).) Therefore, one might argue, we should speak of this-is-an-effect-of-that explanations. That formulation, however, focuses on the inference of a causal relation  – which is indeed the focus of causal inference methods. My focus here, however, is on the causal nature of causal-inference explanations (which I contrast to systemic explanations). Rather than seek to establish methodological criteria for validating “causal inferences” between variables, I am concerned with the epistemic (or substantive) question of the nature of explanations that employ independent-variable causes to explain dependentvariable effects. Consider Rubin’s motto (1986, 962) “no causation without manipulation.” This is a purely methodological maxim. Manipulation may identify or confirm a causal effect. It does not define a cause or causal relation. Manipulation often merely triggers something else that “is” “the cause.” And most causation has nothing to do with manipulation. 42 (Jervis 1997, 48). 43 (Jervis 1997, 10 [this is the title of a subsection]. See also 65, 68, 91, 139, 291). 44 Potential outcomes causality, strictly speaking, is about relations between variables in a dataset. (King, Keohane, and Verba (1994: 80–82) are especially clear about this.) Relations between variables, though, are of explanatory interest only if tied to relations in the world. Understanding “causes” to include “things” (as well as variables) both is the harder case for my argument and avoids tying the discussion to a particular very narrow theory of causality. 45 Oxford English Dictionary. 46 Oxford English Dictionary.

Systems, Causes, and Theory

67

Systems and “causes” produce outcomes through different kinds of processes. Systems effects and causal effects are caused differently, must be explained differently, and explain differently. 4.4

Independent-Variable vs. Systemic Causation

Neo-positivist social science aims to make valid “causal inferences”47 through identifying and estimating “causal effects.” The essential separability of “causes” and effects in this enterprise is often expressed as the conditional independence of the values of the independent and dependent variables.48 The (change in the) value of the independent variable must not be in any way influenced by the dependent variable, which, in the context of the intervention – that is, ceteris paribus – must be merely dependent. For example, to say that the ball was the “cause” of the window breaking entails both that the impact of the ball was in no way caused by the window49 and that, given the state of the glass at impact, the breaking of the window was solely the result of the ball. Consider, by contrast, a classic dynamic systems example: the Lotka– Volterra predator–prey model.50 Assuming that prey have ample food and that food for predators depends on the stock of prey, the number of prey animals at any time is a function of the number of predators (and the natural birth and death rates of the prey). Conversely, the number of predators is a function of the number of prey (and the birth, death, and net emigration rates of the predators). A decline in the population of prey is, of course, produced by (the feeding of) predators. But no independent variables determine the numbers of either predators or prey. (These are interdependent systems effects.) And the emergent cyclical oscillations of the stocks of predators and prey – a shortage of prey leads to a collapse in the number of predators, 47

See, for example, (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 75), (Collier, Brady, and Seawright 2010, 3), (Waldner 2015), (Goertz 2017, 4, 5), (Beach and Pedersen 2019, 1, 2, 4, ch. 5), (Beach 2020, 163). (Seawright 2016) uses “causal inference” forty times in the seventeen pages of Chapter 1. 48 See, for example, (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 94–95), (Morgan and Winship 2007, 40–41, 48, 75, 76 n. 12), (Pearl 2009a, §4.2). For a critical discussion of the independence assumptions of linear regression models, see (Abbott 1988, 171–181). A bit more broadly, from the perspective of a historian, see (Sewell 2005, 91–101, esp. 95–96). 49 More precisely, the window exerted no physical force on the ball – although it may have had a considerable psychological attraction to the nine-year-old thrower. 50 The Wikipedia entry provides a useful brief introduction. Overfishing is an obvious application. (Tahara et al. 2018) is a relatively accessible recent work that addresses the impact of immigrants on stabilizing predator–prey systems in the wild. (Mao et al. 2020) is an interesting application to online third-party payment systems in China.

68

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

which leads to a rebound in the population of prey, which leads to growing numbers of predators …  – cannot even begin to be understood in terms of (independent-variable) “causes” and their effects. Systems, pace Waltz,51 are not “causes.” Rather than “things” that are separate from their parts, on which they exert causal effects, systems are the wholes of which their parts are parts. (A grandfather clock is not separate from its pendulum, gears, etc. and does not exert causal effects on them.) And the states of a system’s parts, processes, and outcomes do not result (simply) from the aggregated effects of independent-variable “causes.” They arise also from the structured organization and operation of a system. Part–whole and “cause”–effect are different kinds of productive/causal relations that require (and provide) different types of explanations. 4.5

This-Is-a-Cause-of-That vs. How Explanations

Mechanismic explanations are a type of systemic explanation that, as we saw in §1.7, “mak[e] intelligible the regularities being observed by specifying in detail how they were brought about;” “identify the entities, activities, and relations that jointly produce the outcome to be explained.”52 A mechanismic explanation “is explanatory precisely in virtue of its capacity to enable us to understand how the parts of some system actually conspire to produce that happening.”53 At least three interrelated differences between “causal” this-is-a-causeof-that explanations and mechanismic how explanations merit note. • Causes vs. causation. This-is-a-cause-of-that explanations identify causes; “things” responsible for an outcome. Mechanismic explanations identify processes of causation; how an outcome is produced. • Causal effects vs. causal processes. This-is-a-cause-of-that explanations identify causal effects. Mechanismic explanations identify productive causal processes. • Causal relevance vs. causal efficacy.54 This-is-a-cause-of-that explanations establish causal relevance; show that particular “things” are part of the story of causality. Mechanismic explanations establish causal efficacy; show how processes produce – actually cause – an outcome. 51

See n. 12 above. 52 (Hedström and Bearman 2009b, 5, 8). See also (Glennan 2017, 223, 228–230), (Bechtel 2011). 53 (Waskan 2011, 393). See also (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 22), (Illari and Williamson 2012, 123), (Craver and Darden 2013, 23). 54 (Machamer 2004, 36) uses this language. Glennan (2017, 150–151, 153–155) contrasts “causal relevance” to “causal production.” See also (Rescher 1996, 48), (Steel 2008, 19–28).

Systems, Causes, and Theory

69

King, Keohane, and Verba’s claim that “real explanation is always based on causal inferences”55 simply is not true if we mean (as they do) that only independent-variable “causes” really explain. As Mario Bunge puts it, “whereas every social cause has (by definition) a social effect, not every social change results from a social cause. The methodological consequence is obvious: not every correct explanation in social science is of the causal type.”56 And, as the central role of mechanical explanations in Biology57 indicates, the same is true of the natural sciences. “Causes,” of course, operate within mechanisms. Usually, though, they are of interest at a lower level of organization (or within a module of a mechanism).58 Social and biological mechanisms rarely are centrally about transmitting causal effects.59 Mechanismic effects are more than the sum of the effects of all the “causes” operating within a mechanism. And the focus of mechanismic explanations is on the organization and operation of productive wholes (not what causes what). 4.6

Explanation: How, What, and Why

It is often claimed that (scientific) explanations tell us why something happened. As Waltz puts it, “theories show why … associations obtain.”60 “What do I mean by explain? I mean explain in these senses: to say why the range of expected outcomes falls within certain limits; to say why patterns of behavior recur; to say why events repeat themselves.”61 Jon Elster similarly claims that “to explain an event is to give an account of why it happened.”62 Jason Seawright and David Collier define an explanation as “a statement about why an outcome has occurred.”63 Above, though, I talked extensively about explanation largely without reference to why. This, I now want to suggest, is because the why account of explanation is either wrong (if “why” means something different from “because of what” or “how”) or unhelpful (because there are different kinds of “whys” and it is the kind of why that really matters). 55

56 57 58 59



60

61 62 63

(King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 75 n. 1). (Bunge 1997, 434). See §1.7. As Sewell (2005, 106) puts it, in the case of historical explanations, such explanations do not “dismiss etiological factors but … specify their mode of effectuation.” The metaphor of a row of falling dominoes (e.g., (Bennett and Checkel 2015b, 6)) therefore rarely is appropriate. “Social networks don’t just pass things; they do transformational work” (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 9). (Waltz 1979, 5. See also 6, 8, 60, 72, 90; 1997, 913, 914, 916). (Waltz 1979, 69). (Elster 1989, 3). (Seawright and Collier 2010, 329. See also 325).

70

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

There are many kinds of scientific explanatia (“things” that explain)  – and thus many kinds of scientific explanations.64 4.6.1

Associational Explanations

Some explanations are associational: they tell us what depends on what (rather than why or how in any strong sense of those terms). And there are many types of associational explanatory dependence. “Universal” laws of nature, such as Newton’s Laws,65 take the form “Because (period). This is the way the world is, as stated in this law, which identifies this invariant relationship between these features of the world.” The laws of Physics tell us not why the world is as it is but that it is like “this.” (“Why is e = mc2?” is an incoherent question.) Predictive explanations also usually are associational. Such explanations  – and they are explanations; they provide (limited but real and often valuable) understanding or intelligibility  – will almost certainly grow in importance with the development of artificial intelligence and “big data.” Similarly, causal effects explanations establish causal associations that answer what questions. They tell us that B is a causal effect of A – not how A causes B or why B occurs.66 4.6.2

Systemic Explanations

Systemic explanations show outcomes to be the result of the organization and operation of a complex whole. Different kinds of systems, however, produce or explain different kinds of outcomes, differently. Mechanismic explanations take the form “because this is the way the world works.” For example, photosynthesis explains how  – not why  – glucose and oxygen are produced. If “Why?” is not an inappropriate question, it asks for a different kind of answer. (Glucose is explained functionally (it fuels life in plants) and oxygen is a byproduct.) Networks are neither (independent-variable) “causes” nor mechanisms in this sense. Network explanations abstract from the entities 64 I have adopted a “naturalistic” conception of science (see §2.1.2 at n. 26) that sees no categorical epistemic difference between the natural and the social sciences. 65 I set aside the (lively) philosophical debate about the existence and character of “universal” laws of nature. (See, for example, (Cartwright 1983), (Carroll 2016), (Cartwright and Ward 2016), (Roberts 2016).) I address instead how “things” that are regularly called physical laws explain. 66 If one insists that this is why, then “why” means nothing more than “is a cause (or a causal effect) of.” And this certainly is not what “why” means in many other contexts.

Systems, Causes, and Theory

71

involved (in favor of nodes and edges) and from the particulars of the activities.67 The “flow” through the “pipes” of the network explains the outcome.68 Consider the strength of weak ties,69 first-mover and “network” effects,70 and brokerage.71 In fields,72 outcomes arise from the presence of entities of a particular type in a field of a particular type that together produce an emergent outcome. John Levi Martin, drawing an analogy with classical electromagnetism, identifies five distinctive features of social field explanations. First, we explain changes in the states of some elements … but need not appeal to changes in states of other elements (i.e., “causes”); instead we make reference to a quality of space or position. Second, the elements have particular attributes that make them susceptible to the field effect … Third, changes in state involve an interaction between the field and the existing states of the elements …. Fourth, the field without the elements is only a potential for the creation of force, without any existent force. Finally, the field itself is organized and differential. In other words, at any position in the field we have a vector of potential force, and these vectors are neither identical nor randomly distributed.73

For example, in Pierre Bourdieu’s well-known schema of capital, habitus, and field74 “the same” social resources have different values and modes of operation in different social fields. (For example, wealth functions differently in markets and in universities.) The dispositions of actors (habitus) are shaped by the fields in which they operate. The consequences of social action reproduce and reshape social fields. And outcomes arise from actors of particular types deploying particular kinds of resources in a field of a particular type. In all these cases, understanding is rooted in recognizing that things hang together in a particular way; that parts of particular types organized into structured wholes of a particular type operate in distinctive ways. 67

(Kadushin 2012) is an accessible introduction to social network analysis. On networks in IR, see n. 36 in §1.4. 68 (Craver 2016) is a useful discussion of how networks are explained in Biology. 69 (Granovetter 1973). 70 See, for example, (Lieberman and Montgomery 1988), (Kerin, Varadarajan, and Peterson 1992), (Epstein 2008), (McIntyre and Srinivasan 2017), (Weiss 2018), (Thurner et al. 2019), (Chalmers and Young 2020), (Clarke and Kocak 2020), (Druzin 2021). 71 See (Burt 2005) and, more briefly, (Stovel and Shaw 2012). See also (Kwon et al. 2020), (Stokes et al. 2013). 72 For IR examples, see n. 37 in §1.4. 73 (Martin 2003, 4). 74 (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 14–26, 94–115, 228–232) and (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1993) are useful brief introductions.

72

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

4.6.3

Additional Kinds of Explanations

Rational-actor explanations usually claim not that actors are rational but that treating them as if they were provides a kind of understanding. For example, treating firms as rational profit maximizers allows us to predict prices. But anyone who has ever had a private-sector job knows that firms are not rational profit maximizers – and that this therefore cannot be why (or how) prices are (or become) what they are.75 As if models sometimes explain not predictively but analogically – an underappreciated style of reasoning in the social sciences.76 Analogical explanations help us to make (a certain kind of) sense of phenomena not by identifying actual causes or productive processes but by identifying “something” of explanatory significance. Intentional explanations, which are common when dealing with human behavior, are why explanations. Conversely, “unintended consequences” is often an explanation – but not a why explanation. We also regularly explain by reference to other internal states of agents, such as habits, dispositions, and instincts. But dispositions, for example, are not “causes.” They are dispositions. (They dispose rather than cause.) We also often explain things as being functional. Why does that part have that form? Because of its role in that system. Why did you do that that way? Because it works well in these circumstances. Functional explanations are, as Mitchell puts it, “challenging since they are not causal in the usual sense, they are teleological”77 – and teleological explanations are often seen as circular, spooky, or easily subject to abuse.78 Functional explanations, however, are common and important in the life sciences.79 And they are powerful when it can be shown not 75

It simply is not true, as Waltz claimed, that “microeconomic theory explains how an economy operates and why certain effects are to be expected” (1979, 90) or that “microeconomic theory describes how an order is spontaneously formed from the selfinterested acts and interactions of individual units” (1979, 89). Neoclassical microeconomics tells us what (not how or why). 76 (Hofstadter and Sander 2013) is a superb introduction with wide range. See also (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), (Hesse 1996), (Bartha 2019), (Bailer-Jones 2009, ch. 3). 77 (Mitchell 2003, 95). On teleological explanations, see (Allen and Neal 2020), (Ariew 2007), (Ayala 1970), (Moreno and Mossio 2015, ch. 3), (Walsh 2008). (On functional explanation, see n. 79 immediately below.) 78 Wendt (2003, 2005) is exceptional in IR for embracing functional and teleological explanations. 79 (Garson 2019) is a good recent discussion. (Wright 1973) and (Cummins 1975) are classic philosophical works on functional explanation. See also (Allen and Neal 2020), (Ariew, Cummins, and Perlman 2002), (Boorse 1976), (Craver 2001), (van Hateren 2017), (Krohs et al. 2009), (Lombrozo and Carey 2006), (McLaughlin 2001), (Moreno and Mossio 2015, ch. 3), (Teufel 2011), (Walsh 2008). On

Systems, Causes, and Theory

73

just that a trait “is functional but that that functionality explains its presence;”80 that “having the functional consequence in the past was responsible for the current presence of the item in question.”81 4.7

Explanatory Pluralism

In the natural and social sciences alike, there is great variation in what is explained, by what, how. It is not even close to true that “all good [scientific] research can be understood – indeed, is best understood – to derive from the same underlying logic of inference.”82 Different scientists, not just in different disciplines but in different parts of a discipline (e.g., particle physics and astrophysics) and even in different research programs in a particular field, appropriately ask different questions about different kinds of “things” that generate qualitatively different (but equally “scientific”) forms of knowledge. There is no “best” kind of explanation – because neither the world nor science speaks in a single authoritative voice. Mitchell’s argument for the life sciences holds in the social sciences as well: multiple explanatory practices “are driven by both the ontology of the biological world and the special interests of the scientific community.”83 Explanatory pluralism84 is essential to an adequate social science.85 4.8

Theories, Models, and Explanations

A careful reader may have noted that I have avoided referring to theory. Although this might seem odd, even troubling, it was intentional and surprisingly easy – and, I now want to argue, productive.

80

81 82 83 84

85



functionalist theories of mental states, which is a leading view in the philosophy of mind, see (Levin 2018). (Mitchell 2003, 97–98). (Mitchell 2003, 108). In evolutionary terms, the trait was not merely selected but selected for. (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 4). (Mitchell 2003, 112). Note that methodological pluralism, which is increasingly popular in the social sciences, need not support explanatory pluralism. And in fact much multimethod research has operated within a monistic causal inference (this-is-a-cause-of-that) explanatory framework. (Goertz 2017) is a particularly striking example. Mitchell argues for integrative pluralism. (The title of one of her books is Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism.) This might be an inspiring aspiration in the social sciences. I think, though, that explanatory eclecticism ((Sil and Katzenstein 2010a, b), but cf. (Sanderson 1987)) usually will be the most we can aspire to – leaving us with the problems of combining different approaches (which rarely produce knowledge that is simply additive).

74

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

4.8.1

Social-Scientific “Theory”

Although “theory” has a variety of relatively narrow and precise senses, those who stress theory in the social sciences typically use the broad ordinary-language sense of “an explanation of a phenomenon arrived at through examination and contemplation of the relevant facts.”86 For example, King, Keohane, and Verba define a social science theory as “a reasoned and precise speculation about the answer to a research question, including a statement about why the proposed answer is correct.”87 (Roughly, a theory is a (good) explanation.) Even more vaguely, Seawright and Collier define a theory as “the conceptual and explanatory understandings that are an essential point of departure in conducting research, and that in turn are revised in light of research.”88 (Roughly, theory and research are somehow recursively related.) A theory, in this broad sense, explains with some degree of abstraction and generality. This makes it easy to talk about explanation without mentioning theory – which means, roughly, generalizable explanation.89 Why, then, do so many social scientists give so much emphasis to “theory”? (For example, King, Keohane, and Verba not only insist that “theory and empirical research must be tightly connected” but that “every piece of information that we gather should contribute to specifying observable implications of our theory.”90) Much of the explanation, it seems to me, is that it is often difficult in the this-is-a-cause-of-that explanations that such scholars usually advocate or employ to decisively distinguish mere statistical associations from truly causal relations. Theory is one way to do that. A regularity that is nothing more than a correlation is not explanatory. Statistical associations only explain when embedded within some other more general explanatory structure – such as a theory. “A is a cause of B,”91 however, claims not that that A is merely associated with B but that A is a “cause” of B.92 And that claim is explanatory, without the need for additional “theory.” (The explanation, whatever its accuracy, takes the form of identifying a “cause.”) In “causal” social research, however, it often is difficult to establish a real or valid causal relation. (Thus the emphasis on causal inference.) Careful researchers therefore tend to be reluctant to overinterpret the 86

87 88 89 90 91 92

Oxford English Dictionary. (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 19). (Seawright and Collier 2010, 354). (Schieder and Spindler 2014, 5). (King, Keohane, and Verba, 1994, 29, 51). Or “B is a casual effect of A.” See n. 43 above. See §4.3.

Systems, Causes, and Theory

75

meaning of, say, coefficients in a regression equation. Out of appropriate epistemic caution, an identified “causal effect” is treated gingerly until we can further validate causality. This-is-a-cause-of-that explanations thus often lie in an epistemic grey area between mere associations and the sort of well-established causal relations that we are warranted in relying on (epistemically or pragmatically). For example, we often talk of hypothesized causes and then devote considerable effort to increasing our confidence in the causality of an observed association through, for example, statistical tests, datamodeling, process tracing, and identifying causal mechanisms  – and, I am arguing, “theory.” Theories – like mechanisms, networks, and fields – explain a particular causal relation by showing it to be an instance of a more general explanatory relation. Like statistical tests of significance, “theory” is a useful technique for validating a research finding; for increasing our confidence that this really “is” what is going on in the world. The fact that an explanation is theoretical, however, tells us little about its character or form (other than that it employs abstraction and generalization). And “theoretical” explanations, as I have argued above, are not privileged. In fact, most of the forms of explanation noted above explain without a theory. For example, a mechanismic explanation requires nothing beyond identifying the mechanism that is in fact responsible for an outcome. Why? Because that’s how the world works. “Biologists explain why by explaining how.”93 Laws too explain without theories. (The Second Law of Thermodynamics is regularly employed as an explanation.) Rational actor models explain without a theory (or we simply call the model a theory even though it tells us neither how nor why). Intentional and functional explanations also explain without a theory. And in causal inferences as well explanatory dependence is established without appeal to a “theory.” Theory, in other words, is but one of many scientific explanatia. I readily admit that we usually would like to be able to place our explanations, whether causal, mechanical, as if, or other, within a more comprehensive explanatory structure (“theory”). But theory, pace Waltz, is not essential to scientific research and explanation.94 Therefore, even if we agree that causal inferences in the social sciences usually should not be accepted without theoretical (in addition to statistical) support, this is a distinctive feature of social-scientific causal 93

(Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, 422. See also 421, 439). 94 See also §13.4.3.

76

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

inferences – not a general feature of scientific explanations. For example, biologists explain photosynthesis (in terms of mechanisms and functions) without a theory of photosynthesis.95 Good theories, when we have them (which is rarely is the social sciences) can be of considerable explanatory value. But appreciating that different kinds of scientific explanations explain different parts of the world differently, I am arguing, is an important step toward a more adequate understanding of what we do and do not know about how the world is and how it works  – and how we might go about developing deeper and more useful understandings. 4.8.2

Laws and Theories vs. Mechanisms and Models

Stuart Glennan helpfully contrasts “the laws and theories image of science” – which not only remains strong in much of the physical sciences but in a “causes”-and-theories variant is the norm in mainstream social science  – with a “mechanisms and models approach.”96 Mechanismic explanations employ models97 that represent/depict “real” mechanisms.98 They show us (a model of) how an outcome is produced. And the model is the explanation; what makes the outcome intelligible or understandable. In this context, recall Waltz’s claim that “a theory depicts the organization of a realm and the connections among its parts.”99 Few theories in IR even try to depict the organization of a domain of activity. (As we will see in the following chapters, Waltz did no such thing.) And it is hard to think of most explanations of law-like regularities as pictures. A depiction of the organization of a realm, however, is “naturally” understood as a model, in the ordinary-language sense of “something which accurately resembles or represents something else” or “a simplified or idealized description or conception of a particular system, situation, or process.”100 And systemic explanations, I am suggesting, “are” 95 For example, a Google Scholar search in November 2022 for “photosynthesis” produced almost 1.7 million results. Searches for “theory of photosynthesis” and “photosynthesis theory,” however, together produced barely 500 results. See also §13.4.2. 96 (Glennan 2017, 7, 8). See also (Rosenberg 1994a, 128–139). 97 See, for example, (Craver 2006), (Illari 2019). On scientific models more generally, see (Giere 2004, 2010), (Godfrey-Smith 2006), (Frigg and Hartman 2020). 98 Pictorial representations thus usually are central in reporting the results of mechanismic research. (Abrahamsen, Sheredos, and Bechtel 2017), (Bechtel 2017a), (Sheredos and Bechtel 2019), (Craver and Darden 2013, 56–59). (James 2019) offers a variant on such an argument in the context of IR. 99 (Waltz 1997, 913). 100 Oxford English Dictionary.

Systems, Causes, and Theory

77

models that explain phenomena as characteristic outcomes of the operation of an organized domain (system). Such models of mechanisms may be verbal, pictorial, or mathematical. They may provide how-actually explanations or how-possibly explanations (e.g., agent-based models101). In all of their variations, though, they focus on how outcomes are produced (not what causes what or why). 4.8.3

Schemas, Sketches, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets

The biological literature on mechanisms often distinguishes more and less fully elaborated models. For example, Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver call a simplified (abstracted) representation of a mechanism that leaves out only “unimportant” “details” a schema.102 A sketch of a mechanism, by contrast, has “missing pieces, black boxes, which we do not yet know how to fill in.”103 More subtly, Craver and Darden identify an epistemic progression from black box sketches (in which the mechanisms are largely unknown or highly speculative) to grey box sketches (which contain incomplete or contested knowledge of the mechanisms) to glass box schemas (in which the components are relatively fully specified and supported by strong evidence).104 In IR (and other social sciences) models usually have, at best, lots of black boxes. More typically, our theories/models instead involve what William Wimsatt calls “perspectives” and “causal thickets.” Perspectives are partial cuts into complex problems. “Sometimes problems appear to be big enough, or generally enough stated … that they seem to be intrinsically multi-perspectival.”105 And often our knowledge supports only multiple, and sometimes even contradictory, perspectives. (When there is agreement on a single perspective, it stops being (just) a perspective.) Causal thickets arise where boundaries between perspectives are unclear or incomplete. In causal thickets we have “an unusually large proportion [relative to Physics and Chemistry] of conceptual issues, 101 See, for example, (Epstein 2006), (Sotomayor, Pérez-Castrillo, and Castiglione 2020). 102 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 17). See also (Darden 2008, 966–967), (Darden 2013, 23). 103 (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 18). See also (Darden 2013, 23), (Bechtel 2011, 537). 104 (Craver and Darden 2013, 31). See also (Darden 2008, 966–967), (Bunge 1997, 427– 430, 460–461). (Craver and Kaplan 2020) is an interesting recent discussion of levels of detail in mechanismic explanations. 105 (Wimsatt 2007, 238).

78

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

methodological arguments, and boundary disputes. Some of these disputes are likely to indicate sources of genuine disagreement, but this can’t be determined when so many things are up for grabs.”106 This, Wimsatt suggests, is common in the social sciences.107 In fact, “on a priori grounds, considering the possible connectivities of causal networks, shouldn’t causal thickets be the norm?”108 “There are some things that are just too multiply connected” to fit neatly defined models.109 (Classical physicists have it easy, being able to deal (analytically) with relatively simple and separable entities and activities.110) “Theories” and research programs in IR often amount to what I suggest thinking of as pathways through causal thickets. They are lines of inquiry that do not involve, but can be seen to be pointing in the direction of, plausible perspectives (or perhaps even mechanism sketches). This framing, however, highlights the fact that discovering and depicting a mechanism or system, however roughly sketched, is an important epistemic achievement.111 Showing (incompletely but insightfully) how parts of a system are productively organized and operate, even if we can’t say much about the nuts and bolts of operations at lower levels of organization or within particular black-boxed modules, usually counts as a highly developed (and often valuable) understanding. 4.9

Descriptive Accuracy in Systemic/ Structural Explanations

I close this chapter with a coda that contrasts the emphasis on descriptive accuracy in relational/systemic research with the neo-positivist denigration of description. Consider Waltz’s claim that “the assumption that men behave as economic men, which is known to be false, turns out to be useful in the construction of theory.”112 106 107 108 109

110 111 112

(Wimsatt 2007, 239). (Wimsatt 2007, 239). (Wimsatt 2007, 240). (Wimsatt 2007, 240). For interesting uses of the idea of causal thickets, see, for example, (Jackson and Sax 2010), (Harris and Heathwaite 2012), (Craver et al. 2020), (Winning 2020). As Waltz (1979, 39. See also 12) noted, the analytical (reductionist) method is “preeminently the method of classical physics.” His justificatory references to Galileo and Newton (1979, 5, 6, 9, 25) thus are at best awkward. (Craver and Darden 2013) extensively explores the discovery of mechanisms in the life sciences. (Waltz 1979, 89). King, Keohane, and Verba (1994, §2.5) do recognize some value in “descriptive inference” but give it much lower epistemic (and scientific) status than “causal inference.”

Systems, Causes, and Theory

79

Theories, as Waltz notes, “are combinations of descriptive and theoretical statements.”113 Fruitful “inaccuracy” in descriptive terms, however, involves “simplifications [that] lay bare the essential elements in play and indicate the necessary relations of cause and interdependency – or suggest where to look for them.”114 Such justified-because-revealing simplifications have a certain essential accuracy. Calling them “false” is, at best, misleading. All descriptions are “inaccurate.” For example, “the book is on the table” leaves out most of what is visible in the room (and everything at the microscopic level). And descriptions must leave out most things if they are to be useful – although what is included and what is not depends largely on the purposes of the observer. Consider two extreme examples. We usually treat water as a singular thing. But at the atomic level there are eighteen types of water (arising from the existence of three isotopes of hydrogen and three stable isotopes of oxygen). And if you are interested in nuclear fusion, which requires water made with tritium (hydrogen with two neutrons), this “tiny” – literally, subatomic – difference is of immense importance. Similarly, the genomes of chimpanzees and humans differ by about one percent. We might imagine a superior class of being that considers this “essentially the same.” To us, though, this “tiny difference” seems crucial. Theoretically defensible, desirable, or necessary descriptive “inaccuracies” set aside (abstract from) “secondary” features in order to identify causal or structural relations that are relevant to a particular explanatory purpose. They do not fundamentally misdescribe what is theoretically primary. Quite the contrary, they are intended to “lay bare the essential elements [that are] in play.”115 Consider Waltz’s argument that “the survival motive is taken as the ground of action in a world where the security of the state is not assured, rather than as a realistic description of the impulse that lies behind every act of state.”116 But if survival does not in fact impel an action then to assume that it does is simply an error – or results in a predictive or analogical explanation (with no indication of why or how), not a systemic (or causal) explanation. In any case, systemic or structural explanations claim that a system is arranged in a particular way and that that arrangement explains the phenomena in question. Revealing simplifications are, of course, necessary. Systemic/structural models, however, must be fundamentally accurate. 113 114 115 116

(Waltz 1979, 10). (Waltz 1979, 10). (Waltz 1979, 10). (Waltz 1979, 92).

80

Part I: Systems, Relations, Levels, and Explanations

Systems are not merely convenient analytical constructs that allow us to predict.117 Systemic explanation is a matter of showing that (to the best of our knowledge, at the levels of organization under consideration) this part of the world is organized in this way and does operate in these ways – and, as a result, does produce those outcomes. More generally, Mitchell argues that “the function of scientific generalizations is to provide reliable expectations of the occurrence of events and patterns of properties. The tools we design and use for this are true generalizations that describe the actual structures that persist in the natural world.”118 If we read true and actual with scare quotes (of whatever size or intensity you think is necessary)119 and take reliable to mean something that we can reasonably depend on for epistemic or pragmatic purposes then this seems to me to capture what I take to be the central impulse behind the scientific study of the world in general and of systems in particular.

117 See §1.1 at n. 9. 118 (Mitchell 2003, 124). 119 Recall that systemic/relational research is compatible with (at least) scientific realism, philosophical constructivism, and pragmatism, which have very different understandings of “true” and “actual.” See the last paragraph of §1.5.

Part II

Waltzian Structural Theory A Postmortem

The five chapters of this Part argue that almost everything about the account of systemic/structural theory developed in Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, which remains the predominant understanding in IR today, is misguided or just plain wrong if we evaluate it as systemic theory. Waltzian structuralism, understood as systemic theory, not only has failed but has retarded and corrupted the development of systemic research and explanation in IR. Prior critiques of Waltz have been legion. Most, though, have focused on his substantive theory of structural realism (which I will refer to as “Waltz’s theory”). Those that have addressed what I will call “Waltzian theory,” the structural framework that Waltz introduced, have addressed particular parts. None has made the sort of detailed, coordinated, and comprehensive arguments about anarchy, structure, and systemic theory that I attempt here. In IR today, almost all theorists and researchers acknowledge that the details of Waltz’s account need to be amended, modified, elaborated, or refined.1 The predominant view in the discipline, however, remains, as Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little put it three decades ago, that Waltz “offers a solid foundation.”2 And few disagree with Robert Jervis’ claim that Waltz’s theory is “the most truly systemic of our theories of international politics.”3 The following chapters argue that these assessments are radically wrong – and that, therefore, IR needs a new understanding of international political systems and how to study them.

1

I take these descriptions from (Ruggie 1983, 273), (Keohane 1986c, 162, 193–194), (Walt 1988, 281), (James 1993), (Schweller 1997). The dates of these works (and the prominence of the authors) show that particular inadequacies were well known even as it was establishing its hegemony. My contribution is to show the comprehensive systematic failure of the Waltzian account. 2 (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 6). 3 (Jervis 1997, 124).

81

82

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

As we will see below, almost nothing actually follows from anarchy and polarity alone – which Waltz argued (see §5.1.2) are the sole elements of the structure of international political systems. Therefore, Waltz himself explained “the long Cold War peace” by the conjunction of the structural variable of bipolarity and the non-structural variable of nuclear weapons.4 Right from the beginning, no one, including Waltz, used Waltzian structural theory, in the sense of presenting explanations based on ordering principle and polarity alone. And we have long known that. Nonetheless, standard practice in IR has been (and remains) to make an apparently foundational reference to Waltz and then go about one’s business, adding (as Waltz himself did) whatever one finds necessary to address the world insightfully. Realists typically add non-structural variables such as technology, geography, and domestic politics.5 Neoliberal institutionalists, when they do not ignore structure, typically adopt what Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye call “the neorealist sense”6 and explore how institutions alter the effects of anarchy. The rare cases of more elaborated structural models are ad hoc constructions, with no relation to any general account of elements or types of political structures.7 And, more often than not, “system” and “structure” are used in loose ordinary-language senses of indeterminate import. Some might suggest that this is because systems approaches have little to contribute to IR (other than identifying some broad background conditions that we ignore at our analytic or practical peril). I argue, though, that the problem is the particular Waltzian conception. The structures of international systems are not simple and fundamentally the same. Capturing their complexity and variety requires a radically different conception of international systems. And making way for such an understanding, I am suggesting, requires a comprehensive postmortem of the Waltzian approach. To switch metaphors, we can’t just rearrange the furniture or remodel the house. We need to tear it down and start over. Only after we have bulldozed and swept away the deeply embedded Waltzian understandings of systems and structures can systemic theory in IR move productively forward. Chapter 5 is brief but essential. I show that Waltz abandoned systemic theory for an outside-in analytical theory that tried to explain the whole (the system) in terms of one of its parts (its structure). 4 (Waltz 1990a). See also (Waltz 1981). 5 See n. 2 in Chapter 10. 6 (Keohane and Nye 1987, 745). 7 See, for example, n. 2 in ch. 7 and n. 55 in ch. 9.

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

83

Chapter 6 considers anarchy, the substantive heart of the Waltzian account of international political systems. I begin by demonstrating the diversity of definitions of anarchy in contemporary IR – a troubling, even appalling, situation, given the centrality of the concept. This is rooted, I argue, in the impossible-to-fulfill desire to make anarchy both the defining feature of international relations and a master explanatory variable. I then argue that anarchy has no determinate effects. Therefore, we need to overcome now-long-naturalized understandings – which in §6.4 I show are largely due to Waltz – by de-centering anarchy in systemic international theory. Chapter 7 shows that anarchy and polarity cannot explain characteristic outcomes even in relatively simple anarchical systems. Chapter 8 argues that, pace Waltz, functional differentiation is equally characteristic of international and national political systems and that the distribution of capabilities is not an essential element of political systems. Chapter 9 considers political ordering principles, which are the heart of the Waltzian conception of political structures. I show that hierarchy, Waltz’s other political ordering principle, neither is an ordering principle nor was an established frame for IR before Waltz. I then criticize two recent efforts to vindicate Waltz’s (widely shared) intuition that most political systems come in one of few simple types. These failures, I suggest, indicate that international political systems don’t have ordering principles. Taken together, these arguments imply that rather than continue to look for a few simple types of international systems, defined by a few features, we need to develop broad, multidimensional systemic framings – which I begin to try to do in Part II. Much of this Part, I am well aware, will be of little interest to many (most?) readers. Therefore, nothing in Part III depends on anything addressed here. I do, however, think that even those inclined to jump immediately to Part III probably should read (the very short) C ­ hapter 5, to appreciate how far Waltzian structuralism diverges from systemic approaches as they are understood in all other natural and social science disciplines. As for the remaining chapters in this part, if you understand anarchy as definitional and of central explanatory importance in IR, I suggest that you look at Chapter 6. And I think that §7.2, which shows that the Waltzian account cannot explain outcomes even in great power states systems, is of relatively broad general interest.

5

Structural Theory

Much of the appeal of Theory of International Politics rests on Waltz’s claim to have developed a systemic theory. This chapter shows that, despite its systemic starting point, Waltzian structural theory is thoroughly analytic.1 Its dominance in IR thus has produced a perverse misunderstanding of the nature of systemic explanation and research. 5.1

Waltz’s Theory of International Politics

I begin with a brief summary of Theory of International Politics, for those who might want a refresher. 5.1.1

Systems, Structures, and Levels

After discussing the nature of theory in Chapter 1, Waltz devoted ­Chapters 2–4 to contrasting analytic and systemic theory and arguing for the value of systemic international political theory. Waltz presented systems as “composed of a structure and of interacting units,”2 located, respectively, on the system or structural level3 and the unit level.4 “Reductionist” theories, Waltz argued, explain outcomes in terms of attributes, actions, and interactions on the unit level (such as ideology, constitutional structure, and leadership). Structural theories explain through variables on the system or structural level. Previous “systems theories” of international politics, however, rather than explain exclusively by reference to system-level variables, relied, to a greater or lesser degree, on attributes and interactions of units.5 Waltz’s project was to develop a purely system-level theory of international politics. 1 On the distinction between systemic and analytic explanations, see §1.2. 2 (Waltz 1979, 79). 3 (Waltz 1979, 67, 68, 69, 71, 78, 79, 99, 100, passim). 4 (Waltz 1979, 18, 38, 44, 69 and passim). 5 Most of Chapters 2 and 3 of Theory of International Politics critiqued “classic” authors such as Lenin and Hobson and recent contemporaries, especially Hoffmann, Kaplan, and Rosecrance.

85

86

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

5.1.2

The Elements of Political Structures

In Chapter 5 Waltz argued that all political structures can, in a rough but exhaustive first approximation, be defined by their ordering principle, differentiation of functions, and distribution of capabilities. “In defining structures, the first question to answer is this: What is the principle by which the parts are arranged?”6 Political systems, Waltz argued, have one of two ordering principles: hierarchy, which places units in relations of super- and subordination, or anarchy, in which units stand in relations of coordination.7 National politics, Waltz argued, is hierarchical; it takes place in the presence of government. International politics, by contrast, is anarchic; it takes place in the absence of government. “The second term in the definition … specifies the functions performed by differentiated units.”8 In hierarchies, super- and subordination are associated with differentiated actors that perform different functions.9 In anarchic orders, Waltz argued, all units are fundamentally the same and thus “the second term is not needed in defining international-political structures.”10 The third element of a political structure is the distribution of capabilities among the units.11 Because all international systems are anarchic and lack functional differentiation, international systems differ only in their distribution of capabilities (which Waltz treated as a matter of polarity; the number of great powers12). 5.1.3

Structural Realism and Structural Effects

Using these understandings of structural theory and political structure, Chapter 6 developed a substantive theory of international politics that quickly came to be known as neorealism (to distinguish it from earlier realist theories) or structural realism (which identifies its central explanatory variable). “Self-help is necessarily the principle of action in an anarchic order”13 in which actors “are coupled by force and competition rather than by 6 7 8 9 10 11

(Waltz 1979, 81). (Waltz addressed ordering principles in more detail on pp. 88–92.) (Waltz 1979, 88–93, 114–116). (Waltz 1979, 93). (Waltz 1979, 88). (Waltz 1979, 93). (Waltz 1979, 82). (Waltz addressed distribution of capabilities in more detail on pp. 97–99.) 12 (Waltz 1979, 129–131ff. and 161–170). 13 (Waltz 1979, 111).

Structural Theory

87

authority and law.”14 This, Waltz argued, has two principal consequences. States in anarchy “must be more concerned with relative strength than with absolute advantage,”15 making cooperation extremely difficult. And because all large concentrations of external power are potentially threatening, states in anarchy respond to a rising power by balancing rather than bandwagoning.16 These effects, Waltz claimed, arise from anarchy alone. Polarity, he argued (in Chapters 7 and 8), produces additional economic and military effects. In contrast to liberal arguments that interdependence is a source of peace and cooperation, Waltz argued that it is a source of conflict. He also argued that a bipolar system will be more stable than a multipolar system.17 And in Chapter 9, which concluded Theory of International Politics, Waltz argued that bipolar systems allow for more effective great power management of international affairs. 5.2

A Structure and Interacting Units

“A system is composed of a structure and of interacting units.”18 This formulation, which Waltz employed in developing his theory, made three subtle but crucial changes to the standard understanding of systems as structured elements organized into complex wholes. First, Waltz replaced the past participle “structured” (“arranged,” “positioned,” “organized”) with the noun “a structure”19 – turning the arrangement of a system’s parts into some thing that acts upon and interacts with those parts. (“Structure [i]s a force that shapes and shoves the units.”20 “The structure of the system and its interacting units mutually affect each other.”21 A systems theory shows “how structures and units interact and affect each other.”22) But structure, in fact, “is a property, not a thing.”23 14

(Waltz 1979, 117). 15 (Waltz 1979, 106. See also 134, 195). In slightly different terms, states seek not to maximize their power but rather to maintain their position within the system (Waltz 1979, 126–127). 16 (Waltz 1979, 125–126. See also 118–119, 128). 17 (Waltz 1979, 138ff., 164–170). 18 (Waltz 1979, 79). “A system is composed of a structure and of interacting parts” (Waltz 1979, 80). 19 “Structured” was used only three times in Theory of International Politics (1979, 72 (twice), 88) and never in (Waltz 1990a, 1993, 2000). Waltz, however, used “a structure” or “the structure” repeatedly. (1979, 40, 43, 45, 46, 49, 57, 58, 69, 72, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 82, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 99, 105, 106, 108; 1990b, 29, 34, 37; 1993, 49, 50, 52, 71; 2000, 5, 8, 10, 20, 39). 20 (Waltz 1990b, 34). 21 (Waltz 1979, 58). See also nn. 26, 28. 22 (Waltz 1979, 100. See also 40). 23 (Bunge 1997, 415).

88

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Second, Waltz replaced elements of particular types with characterless “units.” Abstract analytic constructs, however, cannot be parts of systems. You can’t make a stopwatch out of a barrel of monkeys. And you can’t make a system of any sort from “thingies.” Third, Waltz replaced the organization or arrangement of elements by their interaction. Waltz rightly criticized his predecessors for “fail[ing] to distinguish the interaction of units from their arrangement.”24 “To define a structure requires ignoring how units … interact … and concentrating on how they stand in relation to one another (how they are arranged or positioned).”25 Waltz in fact, though, theorized interactions of units (with one another and with a reified structure). Systems and their structures thus became external constraints on otherwise more or less autonomous actors. “Structure designates a set of constraining conditions.”26 A systems theory “describes the constraints that arise from the system.”27 Waltz even suggested that we think of structure “as simply a constraint.”28 Systems, however, are not only – or even fundamentally – constraints. (Although families do constrain their members they are not essentially, or even primarily, constraints on the actions of individuals.) Systems also direct, enable, empower, and sometimes even constitute actors and actions. As Robert Powell accurately notes, Waltz “decomposed [systems] into units and constraints” and assumed “that we can usefully conceive of the actors or units in a system as separate and distinct from the constraints that define the strategic setting in which the units interact.”29 Everything in this account – decompose, separate, distinct, interact – screams “analytic.” Nevertheless, Powell, again nicely paraphrasing Waltz, argues that “fixing the units’ attributes and varying the constraints facing the units comprise the fundamental conceptual experiment underlying systemic explanations.”30

24

(Waltz 1979, 56. See also 18). 25 (Waltz 1979, 80 [emphasis added]. See also 98). 26 (Waltz 1979, 73). See also (Waltz 1979, 12, 52, 58, 69, 71, 76, 86, 90, 91, 92, 107, 109, 117, 122; 1990b, 36). The index to Theory of International Politics included “Structure, as set of constraining conditions” and “Behavior, patterns derived from structural constraints.” 27 (Waltz 1979, 118. See also 57). 28 (Waltz 1979, 100). On Waltz’s fundamentally individualistic (actor-centered rather than system-centered) perspective, see §5.7. 29 (Powell 1994, 317. Cf. 321). 30 (Powell 1994, 317).

Structural Theory

89

In fact, however, decomposing “units” and “constraints” and exploring the impact of constraints on assumed-to-be-fixed units can only produce analytic (not systemic) explanations. This stunning reversal was rooted in Waltz’s conception of levels. As we saw in §3.2, Waltz used levels to locate independent-variable causes. He also argued that “any approach or theory, if it is rightly termed ‘systemic,’ must show how the systems level, or structure, is distinct from the level of interacting units.”31 Only “the structure” is “on the system level.” The parts of the system have been consigned to a level that is not a system level. And “the system,” now understood as a level (rather than a whole), is considered separately from (and as an external influence on) the parts that compose it. Waltz confused systemic theory with “structural theory” “on the system level.”32 5.3

Structural Theory

The analytic nature of this approach to theory was further obscured by Waltz’s reformulation of the distinction between analytic and systemic approaches as the difference between “reductionist” and “structural” theory. Reductionist approaches, as we saw in §2.1.1, “reduce” A to x by explaining A by x, either partially or completely (eliminatively). Waltz rightly insisted that because states systems are not fully reducible to states and individuals, an eliminative reductionist program cannot succeed in IR. Waltz also used “reductionist” in a weaker sense, though, to indicate explanations of international phenomena that in any way invoke unitlevel causes.33 And he did indeed avoid explanations that were in any way “inside-out;”34 that made any reference (except by assumption35) to any attributes or actions of the units. Systemic theory, however, explains not with variables on the system level but through the organized operation of complex wholes. And it 31

(Waltz 1979, 40 [emphasis added]). 32 Buzan, Jones, and Little (1993, ch. 2, 3) powerfully critique Waltz’s confusion of systems and structures and present a usefully expanded account of the system level (1993, 12, 33–34, 66, 72, 86, 90, 233). Nonetheless, they continue to employ a levels of analysis framing that reifies structure and (analytically) separates systems and units. They therefore share many of the other problems in the Waltzian account. 33 (Waltz 1979, 18–19, 31, 37, 38, 45, 56, and passim; 1988, 617, 618, 619, 620, 624, 626–627, 628; 1990b, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37; 1993, 49; 2000, 5). 34 (Waltz 1979, 47, 63, 64, 67). Compare (Waltz 1986, 322; 1975, 67). 35 See below at nn. 45–50.

90

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

does not require avoiding all reference to all characteristics of the units. Quite the contrary, as we saw in §2.1.1, only parts of particular types can be parts of a system and the nature of those parts is essential to the character of the systems (e.g., DNA and organisms). Waltz at one point did seem to adopt this understanding: “theories of international politics that concentrate causes at the individual or national level are reductionist; theories that conceive of causes operating at the international level as well are systemic.”36 Systemic explanations include (and focus on), but are not restricted to, entities, activities, and phenomena “on the system level” (to use Waltz’s framing). In practice, though, Waltz instead tried to apportion causality between analytically walled off “units” and “the structure,” treated as independent variables.37 And from these disarticulated pieces he produced an “outside-in” theory that was “structural,” in the sense that it relied on “the structure,” but analytic (not systemic), because it did not explain through the organization and operation of the parts of a complex whole. Because a system is “more than” the sum of its parts, a systemic explanation can never explain only by the parts. Any parts. Even “the structure.” Neither inside-out nor outside-in explanations consider “the system” as a system or “units” as parts of a system. Complex wholes – systems – are nowhere to be found in Waltzian “systemic” structural theory. 5.4

Reductive Explanations

Partially reductive explanations regularly produce valuable knowledge, even about systems. In fact, comprehensive explanations of international systems must include both bottom-up and top-down explanations.38 As Waltz put it, “the weight of systems-level and of unit-level causes39 may well vary from one system to another.”40 In systems, (only) “some part of the explanation … is found in the system’s structure.”41 36 (Waltz 1979, 18 [emphasis added]). 37 Here Waltz’s repeated claim that structures are causes (Waltz 1979, 74. See also n. 12 in §4.1.1) becomes crucial, given the fundamental incompatibility of systemic and independent-variable causal explanations (see §§4.4, 4.5). 38 This arises from the partial (in)separability of systems and their components. See §2.1. 39 Note his reliance on separate causes at separate levels – rather than addressing the organized operation of complex wholes. 40 (Waltz 1979, 48. See also 39, 78, 175, 202; 1990b, 34, 36). 41 (Waltz 1979, 73). It is often claimed that for Waltz “the internal characteristics of the elements matter less than their place in the system” (Jervis 1997, 5); that he “locates the key causes of international life in the system-level” (Wendt 1999, 12); that “Waltz favored the system level as the dominant source of explanation” (Buzan 1995, 201);

Structural Theory

91

Partially reductive explanations are problematic only when (mis)represented as either systemic or as everything necessary to understand “the system.” And such misrepresentations were indeed a problem in IR in the decades before Theory of International Politics. I am suggesting, though, that Waltz, in combatting such errors, developed a virtual phobia of explanations that in any way reference a system’s elements. But just as you can’t explain an ant colony without reference to ants, you can’t explain an international system as a system without reference to certain characteristics of its parts. 5.5 “Units” It is indeed true that, as Waltz argued, in depicting the structures of international systems we should “leav[e] aside questions about the kinds of political leaders, social and economic institutions, and ideological commitments states may have.”42 The reason, though, is not that these are attributes of units/states. Rather, those attributes are “unit-level attributes” in the Waltzian sense that their causes are located “on the unit level;”43 that is, within particular states or particular individuals. Other attributes of states – most obviously, statehood itself – are “system-level attributes.” Their causes are “on the system level.” (More precisely, these attributes are matters of the organization of the system’s elements.) They therefore must be included in any systemic theory of international politics. To “abstract from every attribute of states except their c­ apabilities,”44 as Waltz claimed a systemic/structural theory must, is to treat states as if they were neither states nor parts of a system. Such radical abstraction precludes not only systemic theory but explanatory theory of any sort. “Units” without attributes are inert. They cannot even react, let alone act. that structural realism holds that “structure is the overwhelming factor of international politics” (Harknett and Yalcin 2012, 502). I have, however, been able to find no passage where Waltz advanced such strong claims. Rather, he claimed that “to explain outcomes one must look at the capabilities, the actions, and the interactions of states, as well as at the structure of their systems” (Waltz 1979, 174). (Structure (only) “tell[s] us a small number of big and important things” (Waltz 1986, 329). “The placement of states in the international system accounts for [only] a good deal of their behavior” (Waltz 1993, 45).) And the relative balance between these various elements is an empirical, not a theoretical, question. “An international political theory can explain states’ behavior only when external pressures dominate the internal disposition of states” (Waltz 2004, 3). 42 (Waltz 1979, 80 = 1975, 46). 43 §§3.2 critiques Waltz’s understanding of levels. 44 (Waltz 1979, 99. See also 79).

92

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Therefore, rather than abstract from all (other) attributes, Waltz assumed specific attributes. “A balance-of-power theory, properly stated, begins with assumptions about states: They are unitary actors who, at a minimum, seek their own preservation and, at a maximum, drive for universal domination.”45 He also assumed “that survival is the goal of states,”46 that states seek power only as a means to survival,47 and that sovereign states are the “units” in international political systems.48 Whatever the fruitfulness of such assumptions, my point (here) is that Waltz did not, because he could not, abstract from all attributes of states (other than their capabilities). As Robert Keohane notes, “the key distinguishing characteristic of a [Waltzian] systemic theory is that the internal attributes of actors are given by assumption rather than treated as variables.”49 And the particular attributes that are assumed significantly shape the substance of the theory.50 5.6

“The System”

Conversely, a systemic theory cannot refer only to “the system,” understood as something separate from the elements that compose it. Talk of “how much the system affects the units”51 and of “the effects of structure on interacting units”52 evidences an analytic perspective – and a very odd analytic perspective at that. Systems are not “things” that are separate from their parts, on which they exert causal effects.53 They are the wholes of which their parts are parts. 45

(Waltz 1979, 118). 46 (Waltz 1997, 913). 47 On this basis, Waltz argued that Randall Schweller’s work on balancing and bandwagoning rejected rather than refined structural realism. Schweller, Waltz argued, “rejects neorealism’s assumptions about power as a means and survival as the goal of states in favor of Morgenthau’s assumption that states seek ever more power” (Waltz 1997, 915). (This seems to me incompatible with the passage just quoted at n. 45 in which Waltz says that a balance of power theory assumes that states at minimum seek survival and at maximum seek universal domination.) 48 (Waltz 1979, 71, 80, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96. 99, 116; 1990b, 26; 1993, 49, 60, 80, 93). 49 (Keohane 1986c, 165). 50 For example, a Prisoners’ Dilemma arises from particular preference orderings. Change the assumptions about the (preferences of the) actors and you change the game. (For example, saints often will cooperate.) 51 (Waltz 1979, 57). 52 (Waltz 1990b, 37). Compare (Waltz 1979, 88, 162, 175). 53 To talk about a family affecting its members, in the way that Waltz’s sees an international system affecting states, decomposes the system and looks at the parts separately; analytically. In assemblages, this can produce valuable knowledge. But such knowledge is radically incomplete because it ignores the organization and operation of the system. Consider, by contrast, looking at how being a parent, child, caregiver, or breadwinner

Structural Theory

93

Furthermore, systems exist only through the organization and operation of their constituent elements. They can be separated from their parts only analytically. An “international system” that is separate from, rather than composed of, states (units) is no more an international system than a “family” without members is a family or a “human body” without organs is a human body. To imagine such a “thing” is to adopt an analytic perspective.54 In discussing both units and structure, Waltz abandoned the fundamental idea that, as he put it, “a system is composed of a structure and of interacting parts.”55 Systemic explanations must address both the character of the parts and their arrangement and operation – together. Waltz instead made arbitrary and often inaccurate assumptions about units and tried to explain solely through a reified and wildly over-abstracted structure. The organized operation of parts of a whole to produce emergent phenomena – systems and systems effects – disappeared from his theory. 5.7

The Individualism of Waltzian Theory

Waltz, despite employing systems language, viewed international systems individualistically;56 from the perspective of units/states (“actors”) – to whom international systems often do appear as external constraints. For example, Waltz retained the statist language of “internal” and “external” politics and relations in what was ostensibly a systemic theory. When he talked of “external pressures”57 Waltz meant pressures on states (not on the states system). Such “perspectival” state centrism is radically analytic.58

54 55

56 57



58



shapes the behavior of the individual human beings that occupy such positions and enact such roles. This considers family members as parts of a system – not as separate entities affected by “the system.” The explanatory work is done by positioning and relations in the system (not a reified entity separate from and outside of separate entities viewed separately). Waltz, however, as I will emphasize in §5.9, consigns such genuinely systemic effects on states and human beings to the unit level. The only systemic or structural effects he allows are causal effects of anarchy and polarity. Recall Nicholas Onuf’s (1995, 42) description of analysis as “the procedure whereby someone (the analyst) observes (or causes and then observes, or imagines) and describes the disaggregation of some (actual or hypothetical) unit.” (Waltz 1979, 80 [emphasis added]). This line of criticism goes back at least to (Ashley 1984, 240–241, 252, 254–255ff.) and (Wendt 1987). See also (Dessler 1989, 448–450), (Rosenberg 1994b, 28). (Waltz 1979, 72). Waltz similarly referred to “the external game of alignment and realignment” (1979, 118) and internal and external realms, problems, affairs, and orders (1979, 81, 96, 103, 152). As Wendt (1999, 8–10) emphasizes, though, what we might call “empirical” state centrism – the claim that states are, in fact, predominant actors in international relations – is entirely compatible with systemic theory.

94

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

A systemic perspective employs bottom-up and top-down, not insideout and outside-in, explanations. And in a systemic perspective “inside” refers to inside the system (not within one of the parts). Or consider Waltz’s argument that “nationally, relations of authority are established. Internationally, only relations of strength result.”59 In fact, though, in a states system authority is decentralized (not absent). Authority in the system is allocated to states, which have recognized rights to rule their territories and subjects as well as international rights and obligations. Waltz, however, seeing like a state, took sovereignty as given and saw only the absence of a higher government and the presence of external constraints on states. Likewise, Waltz’s claim that international political systems are “individualist in origin”60 obscures the systemic interdependence of wholes and parts. It also attempts to provide a theoretical answer to the empirical question of how systems emerge. And this individualist answer is almost always wrong. The ex nihilo creation of international systems is rare.61 A similar individualism is surprisingly common among constructivists. For example, Wendt claims that “states (individuals) are ontologically prior to the states system (society).”62 But even if this is true – which is not at all obvious63 – it does not follow that “states systems emerge from the interaction of preexisting units.”64 (This confuses ontology with chronology or causality.) Whether “units” are “pre-existing,” whether “pre-existing” units are reconstituted by membership in a states system, and how a system in fact emerged are empirical (not ontological, conceptual, or theoretical) questions. 5.8

Systems Are Not Environments

This individualistic analytic perspective ultimately led Waltz to abandon the fundamental distinction between a system and its environment, understood as what is outside the system.65 An international political system, viewed as a system, is not the environment of states. It is, to repeat (again), the whole that states are parts of.

59

(Waltz 1979, 112. See also 88, 104). 60 (Waltz 1979, 91. See also 89–90; 1990b, 29). 61 The international actors that “create” states systems usually are themselves creatures of “another” (or an earlier phase of the same) international system. Like the chicken and the egg, neither is ontologically (or chronologically) prior. See also §2.1.3. 62 (Wendt 1999, 244). 63 See §§3.5–3.10. 64 (Wendt 1999, 244). 65 See §1.1 at n. 5.

Structural Theory

95

Systems are, at best, misleadingly described as environments. For example, a family is not the environment of its members but the complex entity of which they are parts – just as a car is not the environment of car parts and an organism is not the environment of organs. Furthermore, the environment of individual human beings includes much more than the family. Nonetheless, Waltz wrote of “the environment of states’ action, or the structure of their system”66 and, using his favorite economic analogy, of “a market as the firms’ environment.”67 This fundamental error is surprisingly widespread. For example, David Dessler’s argument that “the job of structural theory is to explain the connections between the conditions of action and action itself”68 does not distinguish between systemic and environmental conditions of action; that is, between action in systems of structured relations and interactions in an unstructured environment. Powell, in passages quoted above, reframes structure as “strategic environment” and “constraints.”69 Kenneth Abbott, Jessica Green, and Robert Keohane describe the “organizational ecology” perspective as “primarily a structural theory” because “it focuses on the institutional environment in which organizations operate.”70 Looking at the world through the eyes of states, Waltz saw “the international system” as (merely) a constraining environment. Everything that is not inside the state is, indiscriminately, outside. If there are any actual systems in this story, they are national not international. 5.9

Systems of Structured Relations

In the end, Waltz lost sight of the very idea of systems of structured relations. Systems, as Waltz nicely observed, “shape and shove” actors.71 But he addressed “shaping” only through the interactional (rather than relational/systemic)72 processes of “selection” and “emulation.”73

66

(Waltz 1979, 93). Here it is not even the system but its structure that Waltz claims is the environment! 67 (Waltz 1979, 54. See also 48). 68 (Dessler 1989, 44). 69 See nn. 29, 30. 70 (Abbott, Green, and Keohane 2016, 250–251). Ecological perspectives look at ecosystems; hierarchically structured systems of relations – not mere environments. To appreciate the crucial difference between an environment and a system, compare members of an alien species that have been displaced into a new environment by a massive fire with animals occupying established niches in that ecosystem. 71 (Waltz 1990b, 34; 1997, 915; 2000, 24). 72 On the distinction between interactions and relations see §5.2 at nn. 24, 25. 73 (Waltz 1979, 76–77, 92, 127–128).

96

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Allies, for example, are not symmetrically constrained autonomous actors. Their assembly into an alliance (system) gives them particular roles, rights, and responsibilities. Their structured relations (re)constitute some of their interests and transform many of their interactions (both with one another and with some others). How allies behave and why, as well as the meaning and significance of their behavior, are shaped by their being parts of an alliance (system). But all of this, which is obviously systemic in the sense that it concerns the organized operation of a complex whole, is consigned by Waltz to the unit level. Structured relations also “shove” actors in distinctive ways. Behavior in social systems is not merely constrained but regulated, in the strong, ordinary-language sense of controlled, governed, or directed.74 For example, international systems regulate the use of force, typically by determining who can legitimately use it, when, and how. Rules and institutions govern practices for establishing and maintaining cooperation. And polities that infringe rules, norms, and expectations are subject to sanctions (of varying sorts, with varied effects). All this, too, is for Waltz unit-level or reductionist; not a matter of the structure of international political systems. What IR needs now, I am arguing, is to recover systemic theory from the analytic structural theory of Theory of International Politics. At root, this requires nothing more (but nothing less) than returning to a focus on the organization and operations of complex wholes; to what makes systems systems (and significant). What that might look like is the subject of Part III. How long it takes you to get there should be a matter of your tastes and interests – and your willingness to abandon the Waltzian conception of systems and structural theory, which the next four chapters critique, comprehensively and in considerable detail. 74

See also ch. 14, esp. §14.5.

6 Anarchy

“Virtually all scholars agree [that anarchy] … is one of the most unique, important, and enduring features of world politics”1 and is the structural ordering principle of international systems. I argue instead that anarchy, which was not a core concept in IR before Waltz (see §6.4), neither is an ordering principle nor has determinate effects – and therefore should be removed from its central place in discussions of the structures of international societies in order to open space for the kinds of truly systemic theory that I argue for in Part III. 6.1

Anarchy Is Not an Ordering Principle

Anarchy means, literally, the absence of “archy,” from arkhe ̄ (empire, realm, magistracy, primacy in power) or arkhos (leader, ruler). The concept is so entrenched in contemporary IR that most uses do not define or gloss the term, taking its sense to be obvious.2 But contrary to David Lake’s claim that “scholars of international relations do not differ in their conception of anarchy”3 there is deep definitional disarray, both in Theory of International Politics and across the discipline. 6.1.1

Anarchy, Government, and Hierarchy

Waltz began the subsection on “Ordering Principles” in Chapter 5 (“Political Structures”) of Theory of International Politics by noting that “Domestic political structures have governmental institutions and offices

1

(Lake 2009, 2). 2 For example, early in working on this book I searched all articles in International Organization and International Security published between 2000 and 2012 that used the term (international) “anarchy.” Only two of 35 articles in International Organization (Snyder 2002, 7; Donnelly 2012, 620) and one of 29 in International Security (Taliaferro 2000/2001, 128) defined it explicitly. 3 (Lake 2009, 2).

97

98

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

as their concrete counterparts.4 International politics, in contrast, has been called ‘politics in the absence of government’.”5 The next paragraph asks “If international politics is ‘politics in the absence of government,’ what are we in the presence of?”6 The answer, for Waltz, was anarchy.7 In the remainder of the chapter, however, Waltz opposed anarchy not to government but to hierarchy.8 Similarly, Waltz began Chapter 6 (“Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power”) by speaking of “anarchy, or the absence of government” and “the distinction between anarchy and government.”9 After that, though, he contrasted anarchy to hierarchy nearly a dozen times.10 Absence of government made only one additional appearance – at the beginning of the subsection on “Anarchy and Hierarchy” (which thereafter, as the title indicates, addressed absence of hierarchy).11 Government and hierarchy, however, are very different things. And although international systems (by definition) lack a government, most have hierarchical relations of super- and subordination.12 For example, great power states systems are defined by the official hierarchical superiority of states over nonstate actors and the (at least informal) rights, liberties, and responsibilities of great powers. Furthermore, Waltz’s divergent uses have a systematic bias. Anarchy is contrasted to government only when introducing a discussion. When addressing matters of substance, anarchy is always contrasted to hierarchy.13 This deeply dubious pattern, I want to suggest, was driven by Waltz’s project of theory of international politics.14 Waltz’s goal was to reveal “a small number of big and important things”15 about international systems. To do so based on anarchy, anarchy must be both a demarcation criterion (allowing him to speak 4 Note the peculiarity of the idea that political institutions, rather than essential elements of domestic political structures, are “their concrete counterparts.” (On Waltz’s separation of structures from systems and their parts, see §5.2.) 5 (Waltz 1979, 88). 6 (Waltz 1979, 89). The absence of one thing, however, need not entail the presence of one other thing. (There may be many other things – or none.) 7 The “presence” of anarchy, however, is the absence of a government (not the presence of something else). (A better answer would be something like decentralized or nongovernmental authority.) 8 (Waltz 1979, 93, 97, 100, 101). 9 (Waltz 1979, 102, 103). 10 (Waltz 1979, 104, 113, 114 [twice], 115 [five times], 116 [twice]). 11 (Waltz 1979, 114). We return to hierarchy in §9.1.1 and Chapter 15. 12 See ch. 15, 16. 13 See nn. 5, 8–11. For a similar pattern in the case of distribution of capabilities, see §8.2.2 at n. 24. 14 I am not suggesting that Waltz was intentionally duplicitous. Such a pattern, however, is, at best, suspicious – especially in a writer as careful as Waltz. 15 (Waltz 1986, 329).

Anarchy

99

about international systems in general) and a major explanatory variable (allowing him to say some big and important things). But any definition of anarchy can fulfill (at most) only one of these roles. Anarchy plausibly demarcates international relations only if defined as absence of a government (or a comparable institution or function). This, however, has few if any interesting implications. (For example, a system without a government may or may not have higher authority, rules, or enforcement.) Conversely, various other absences have analytical bite. (For example, systems without hierarchy do have a certain character (or characters).) But they identify only a subset of international systems. Waltz seems to have been seduced by the word “anarchy” into believing that he could have it both ways. In criticizing other arguments, Waltz complained that “anarchy is taken to mean not just the absence of government but also the presence of disorder and chaos.”16 Ironically, though, he took anarchy to mean not just absence of a government but also absence of hierarchy. Waltz thus illegitimately extended substantive conclusions about international systems without hierarchy, which are rare, to international systems without a government (international systems in general) – an analytical blunder that, it seems to me, would be inconceivable were it not obscured by “anarchy.” Waltz’s account, it is important to emphasize, is not an “ideal type” in the Weberian sense17 of an empirically grounded analyst-created model that may (or may not) be approximated in actual cases. Waltz claimed not merely that some actual international systems resemble this model. (Anarchy thus understood would be a feature of some, not (nearly) all, international political systems.) Waltz really did argue that, as a first approximation, (nearly all) international systems do lack both government and hierarchy. This, however, is not even close to true. As Waltz himself put it, “inequality is what much of politics is about.” And “internationally, inequality is more nearly the whole of the political story.” “The inequality of nations is … the dominant political fact of international life”18 – but, bizarrely, not (according to Waltz) a feature of the structure of international political systems. 16

(Waltz 1979, 114). 17 See Economy and Society (Weber 1978, ch. 1–4, especially pp. 19–22) and an essay on objectivity that is available in (Bruun and Whimster 2012). For brief secondary accounts, see (Swedberg and Agevall 2016, 156–158) and (Parsons 1937, 601–610). On using ideal types in social research, see (Swedberg 2018). (Jackson 2017) is a useful account oriented toward IR. A bit more broadly, see (Kedar 2007). 18 (Waltz 1979, 142, 143, 144).

100

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

6.1.2

Anarchy over “Anarchy”

Waltz, unfortunately, is just the tip of the definitional iceberg. Of the numerous definitions of anarchy encountered in contemporary IR – more than a dozen are identified in the following paragraphs – most differ only in minor ways from many others. As a set, though, they cover a very wide range of senses. Definitions of anarchy in contemporary IR fall into three broad groups that, with a bit of mnemonic license, I label absence of a ruler, absence of rule, and absence of rules. “Absence of a ruler” identifies a missing actor or institution. Standard examples are a central,19 higher,20 common,21 or overarching22 authority, an enforcer,23 or a sovereign.24 Absence of a government also falls here. “Absence of rule” identifies a missing function or kind of authority. Common examples are enforcement25 and higher,26 overarching,27 central,28 common,29 superior,30 supranational,31 or superordinate32 authority.33 19

(Jervis 1992, 717), (Mearsheimer 2001, 3), (Snyder 2002, 35), (Kegley and Raymond 2011, 26), (Zhang 2012, 91), (Havercroft and Pritchard 2017, 253–254), (Lees 2020, 404). 20 (Raymond 1997, 208; 2021, 1, 9), (Dombrowski 1998, 21), (Rosenau and Durfee 2000, 17), (Philpott 2001, 18), (Johnson 2004, 187), (Lopez and Johnson 2020, 987). 21 (Jonsson and Tallberg 1998, 379), (Lake 2003b, 308), (Goddard and Nexon 2005, 12), (Paris 2006, 435), (Jackson and Nexon 2009, 923), (Kim and Wolford 2014, 30). 22 (Elman and Elman 1997, 924), (Schmidt 2004, 430), (Goh 2008, 356), (Trachtenberg 2012, 44), (Mandel 2013, 62), (Liu 2016, 575), (Eckstein 2017, 471–472), (Posen 2017, 168). 23 (Booth 1991, 529), (Philpott 2001, 22), (Crawford 2002, 418), (Lake 2003a, 85), (Miller 2004, 240), (Blagden 2021, 258). 24 (Posen 1993, 27), (Schweller 1998, 51), (Jervis 1999, 43), (Taliaferro 2000/2001, 128), (Schwarz 2017, 145), (Wu 2018, 791). 25 (Keohane 1990, 193), (Cederman 1994, 504 n. 2), (Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal 2001, 766), (Snyder 2002, 14), (Mitzen 2013, 46). 26 (Krasner 1992, 39), (Powell 1994, 330), (Rosenau 1997, 151), (Angstrom 2000, 33), (Lake 2003a, 84), (Mansbach 2004, 20), (Friedberg 2005, 17), (Copeland 2012, 59), (Al-Otaibi 2020, 139). 27 (Buzan 1984, 112, 116), (Grieco 1988, 497), (Mandelbaum 1998–1999, 26), (Snyder 2002, 7 n. 2), (Bromley 2004, 108), (Kahler and Lake 2004, 409), (Druzin 2014, 452), (Liu 2016, 589). 28 (Bull 1977, 58), (Lynn-Jones and Miller 1995, ix), (Cronin 1999, 136), (Jakobsen 1999, 208), (Duffield 2001, 96 n. 2), (Mearsheimer 2001, 414 n. 5), (Snyder 2002, 34), (Harknett and Yalcin 2012, 508), (Bain 2019, 278, 280, 283), (Davenport 2020, 538). 29 (Keohane 1986b, 1), (Christov 2005, 564), (Goodhart 2005, 56), (Guzzini 2012b, 33), (Amstutz 2013, 13). 30 (Powell 1991, 1306), (Bartelson 1995b, 257), (Stivachtis 2000, 102), (Snyder 2002, 7 n. 2), (van Ham and Medvedev 2002, 129), (Weinert 2016, 62). 31 (Mansfield 1993, 107), (Gowa 1994, 6), (Glenn 2009, 532), (Geldenhuys 2014, 354). 32 (Haas 1991, 225), (Weinert 2007, 6), (Nardin 2008, 387), (Davenport 2013, 33), (Schieder and Spindler 2014, 6). 33 “Absence of government” appears, on its face, to fall into this second category. I suspect, though, that absence of the institution, rather than the function, usually is

Anarchy

101

Absence of an institution, however, does not entail absence of a function typically performed (or a type of authority characteristically held) by that institution. (For example, a government is but one possible locus of political authority and one mechanism to provide enforcement.) These definitions, being substantively thicker, apply to a smaller set of cases. None plausibly demarcates international systems. Finally, anarchy is also often defined as the absence of (all) authority – “absence of rules.” For example, Lake claims that “the core assumption of the discipline of international relations is that the international system is anarchic or devoid of authority.”34 Stephen Krasner contends that “the defining characteristic of international politics is anarchy, the absence of authority.”35 Waltz’s absence of hierarchy also falls here. Few international systems, however, lack authority (“rules”). For example, in states systems, authority in the system is not absent but allocated to states. These are not minor variations in detail (such as the fact that higher or superior authority need be neither supreme (or sovereign) nor centralized). Absence of an authority of a particular type, absence of a particular type of authority, and absence of all authority are quite different “things.” And as we move from (absence of) a ruler to rule to rules, the number of historical “anarchic” systems declines, precipitously. All of these definitions, however, are common in contemporary IR. The differences between them are regularly elided or ignored. And it is distressingly common to generalize claims that rely on the absence of rule or rules to “international relations” defined by the absence of a ruler. 6.1.3

Waltz’s Double Dichotomy

Multiple definitions might not pose a serious problem if a clear conception provided a widely shared common point of reference. For four

intended. (It is unfortunate that this ambiguous formulation is standard. For example, a Google Scholar search in November 2021 produced 25,000 results for “absence of government” and “international” but less than 3,000 substituting “absence of a government.”) And the important difference between these two senses is rarely noted. For example, Buzan, Jones, and Little (1993, 37) comment that “as Ruggie argues, there was government without sovereignty in the Medieval political system,” ignoring the fact that medieval “government” (in the sense of governance) was not provided by a government (a single set of authoritative political institutions). 34 (Lake 2009, ix). 35 (Krasner 1992, 48). See also (Webber 1996, 2), (Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner 1999b, 658), (Inoguchi and Bacon 2001, 5), (DeGarmo 2005, 17), (Hoddie and Hartzell 2005, 22), (Lentner 2006, 103), (Holmes 2011, 291), (Vucetic 2011, 29), (Polat 2012, 1), (Hurd 2014, 366), (Slaughter 2019, 40).

102

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

decades, Theory of International Politics has been widely seen as a sound theory-neutral account of anarchy. In fact, it is conceptually confused and substantively indefensible – even setting aside Waltz’s conflation of government and hierarchy. Waltz argued that “two, and only two, types of structures are needed to cover societies of all sorts.”36 Sometimes he contrasted anarchic and hierarchic orders.37 Other times he contrasted international and national orders.38 And he treated these distinctions as equivalent,39 creating what I call a “double dichotomy” of anarchic/international versus hierarchic/ national orders.40 In fact, however, these dichotomies overlap only partly. And Waltz’s accounts are defensible neither as depictions of national and international political orders nor as explications of hierarchy and anarchy. Waltz claimed that “national politics is the realm of authority, of administration, and of law. International politics is the realm of power, of struggle, and of accommodation.”41 Many international systems, however, have significant elements of law and authority. Conversely, simple nonstate polities often lack administration. (Some even lack offices.) And power, struggle, and accommodation not only are regular features of most national polities but sometimes are as characteristic as authority, administration, and law. National politics need not be “vertical, centralized, heterogeneous, directed, and contrived.”42 (We will see this in some detail in §6.3.) Neither is international politics necessarily “horizontal, decentralized, homogeneous, undirected, and mutually adaptive.”43 Quite the contrary, as we will see below,44 nearly all international systems are vertically differentiated and heterogeneous. For example, not only are states legally superior to nonstate actors in states systems but hierarchical relations of super- and subordination are the most striking feature of hegemonic and imperial international systems.45 36

37 38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45

(Waltz 1979, 116). (Waltz 1979, 114–116, 93). (Waltz 1979, 81–93). (Waltz 1979, 81, 88, 104, 113, 115–116). Waltz also equated international systems with segmentary orders integrated by mechanical solidarity and national systems with functionally differentiated orders integrated by organic solidarity. (1979, 114–115, 115 n. *, 95 n. *). On this move, see (Ruggie 1983, 264, 269, 281–285), (Goddard and Nexon 2005, 22–25, 39–40), (Buzan and Albert 2010, 322–326). (Waltz 1979, 113). (Waltz 1979, 113). (Waltz 1979, 113). See §§8.1, 9.4.4, 11.2.3 and ch. 15, 16. See §§14.3, 15.6, 15.7.2.

Anarchy

103

These are not modest, to-be-expected deviations from necessarily simplified representations of broad classes. Many systems fail to approximate the specified model. Some have the opposite characteristics. Waltz’s claims are simply false. It is probably worth repeating that Waltz’s model of anarchic­international orders is not an ideal type. He did not claim that some international systems are of this type. (Anarchy, in that case, would not demarcate international relations.) Waltz really did insist that, as a first approximation, nearly all international systems both are anarchic and are not hierarchic.46 But in fact anarchy (absence of a government) and hierarchy (relations of super- and subordination) stand in various relations to one another, to national and international politics, and to the additional features that Waltz associated with them. 6.1.4

Anarchy Is Not the Ordering Principle of International Systems

Across contemporary IR, anarchy is almost universally understood, even by critics of other elements of Waltz’s work, as the ordering principle of international systems. It is not. Absence of a government (or comparable institution) is not an ordering principle. (It simply tells us one way in which the system is not ordered.) Absence of hierarchy may be an ordering principle. It is not, however, the ordering principle of international systems.47 And the various other absences noted above all run up against one or the other of these problems (each of which is fatal to the Waltzian project). 6.1.5

Demarcation, Structure, and Explanation

Behind this confusion, I suspect, is the mistaken assumption that whatever demarcates international relations should be central to its structure and to substantive explanations of international behavior.48 But even if anarchy is “the defining characteristic of international politics,”49 there is no good reason to expect that all international political

46

See (Waltz 1979, 114–116) for a parallel argument that nearly all political systems are either national/hierarchical or international/anarchic. 47 Even granting that most international systems are merely “flecked with particles of government” (Waltz 1979, 114 [emphasis added]) many international systems, including great power states systems, are deeply hierarchical. See Chapters 15 and 16. 48 Such expectations, it seems to me, arises from inappropriately assuming that they must be master independent variables. (On the difference between systemic/structural and independent-variable explanations, see §4.4.) 49 (Krasner 1992, 48).

104

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

systems will share any other features of interest – let alone have the same structure. For example, mammals can be demarcated from other vertebrates as milk-producing animals with hair, three bones in their middle ear, a neocortex, and a lower jaw made of a single bone. These features, however, do not define the structure of mammals. Defining characteristics simply identify an object of inquiry; a class of phenomena that share those (demarcating) features. That A differs from B by c does not make c the structure of A. Demarcation criteria and structural ordering principles are very different “things.” In fact, demarcation criteria often have little broader analytical utility. For example, the two principal orders of dinosaurs, Saurischia and Ornithischia, are distinguished by their hipbones. This neat demarcation, however, although it has evolutionary significance, provides little insight into their structure or functioning.50 Or consider the Platonic/Aristotelian demarcation of humans as featherless bipeds. Taxonomies are useful primarily for distinguishing a limited range of similarities within and differences between taxa – not for generating explanations of the attributes or actions of members of a taxon. Demarcating features tell us something about certain similarities in systems that share that feature (and certain differences from those that don’t). Rarely, though, will such features be central to understanding the structure or functioning of systems of that type. 6.1.6

What Is Anarchy?

If anarchy – absence of a government – is not an ordering principle, what is it? Anarchy poses a problem: how to provide governance in the absence of a government. And even this may be too “realist” a formulation. “Anarchy” prioritizes certain forms of autonomy and sociability over governmentally enforced order. International anarchy persists because dominant actors “prefer” it to alternatives such as a world state. We

50

IR more generally, it seems to me, is unreasonably reluctant to acknowledge that a demarcated object of inquiry may be so diverse as to preclude powerful explanatory generalizations about its members. For example, much of the literature on “the causes of war” simply assumes that “war” is a singular kind of thing, with specific causes – rather than that “war” encompasses events of varied types with very different causes or mechanisms of generation. Similarly, Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger (1997, 6), like many in the field, assume that we can have “theories of international regimes,” understood as explanations of “the origins, stability, and consequences of international regimes.” The diversity of international regimes, though, seems to me to make this exceedingly unlikely – as the failure of all such efforts to date suggests.

Anarchy

105

might even say that “international anarchy” is a pre-emptive solution to the “problems” or threats of world (or regional) government. Absence of a government is a perennial fact of international political life that is of greatly varying explanatory significance. In the Hobbesian state of nature, it is very much in the foreground. In the European Union today it is almost always rather far in the background. And where any particular anarchic or international system lies on the continuum defined by these examples and how historical international systems are distributed along that continuum are empirical questions. 6.2

Anarchy Has No Effects: The Consequences of Anarchy

These conceptual muddles might be tolerable if anarchy in some fundamental sense(s) had determinate effects. And in contemporary IR there is considerable agreement on the “dangers”51 or “perils”52 of anarchy and the nature of its “pernicious”53 effects. As Anders Wivel puts it, summarizing Waltz, “the anarchic structure of the international system creates a strong incentive for self-help behavior characterized by relative gains seeking … and power balancing.”54 This understanding of “the effects of anarchy” has been subject to devastating criticism since the early 1990s. For example, Alexander Wendt showed that anarchic systems distinguished by role structures of enmity, rivalry, and friendship have radically different characteristic outcomes and modes of action.55 And both Duncan Snidal and Robert Powell showed that rational states in anarchy do not necessarily pursue relative gains.56 As Powell put it, “what have often been taken to be the implications of anarchy … result from other implicit and unarticulated assumptions about the states’ strategic environment.”57 51 (Keohane 1993, 275), (Wendt and Friedheim 1995, 388), (Krebs 1999, 334), (Snyder 2002, 11), (Lind 2004, 103), (Parent and Baron 2011, 207), (Baron 2013, 7, 42–43, 61), (Kelly 2020, 20). 52 (Roth 2009, 378), (Berenskoetter 2011, 649), (Kelly 2012, 407), (Phillips 2017, 43), (Rose 2019, 10). See also (Goddard and Nexon 2005, 13). A Google Scholar search in July 2022 for “perils of anarchy” and “international” yielded nearly 800 results. (About half are references to the structural realist reader The Perils of Anarchy (Brown, Lynn-Jones, and Miller 1995).) “Dangers of anarchy” and “international” produced more than 350 results. 53 (Walter 1997, 338), (Schweller 1998, 51), (Jervis 1999, 63), (Brown et al. 2000, xii), (Friedberg 2005, 13), (Levy and Thompson 2013, 415), (Knuppe 2014, 66), (Kydd 2018, 183). 54 (Wivel 2013, 161). 55 (Wendt 1992). See also (Wendt 1999, ch. 6) and below at nn. 66–68. 56 (Snidal 1991a, b), (Powell 1991). See also (Powell 1993, 1994). 57 (Powell 1994, 314. See also 330). For a particularly spirited refrain, see (Wagner 2007, 16–18, 21–29).

106

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Nonetheless, a Google Scholar search in May 2023 for “logic of anarchy” or “effects of anarchy” and “international relations” produced more than 3,400 results since 2000. And there is a kernel of truth in Michael Barnett and Kathryn Sikkink’s (exaggerated) claim that “the study of international relations has largely concerned the study of states and the effects of anarchy on their foreign policies.”58 For example, realists regularly assert that “the security dilemma is an intractable feature of anarchy;”59 that “little can be done to ameliorate the security dilemma as long as states operate in anarchy;”60 that “the systemic imperatives of anarchy require states to view their gains and losses in relative, not absolute, terms;”61 and that anarchy “forces states to be concerned primarily with maximizing their security.”62 Among non-realists, the ability of institutions to mitigate “the effects of anarchy”63 has long been a standard subject of discussion. To clarify the possible “effects of anarchy” I distinguish what I call “effects” and “outcomes.” I will say that anarchy has “determinate effects” if it regularly pushes in a particular direction or directions; if, ceteris paribus, it causes either a singular effect (or set of effects) or a few patterned (sets of) effects. Anarchy has “determinate outcomes” to the extent that its effects are not altered or overcome by other forces. “Effects,” in other words, refers to directionality. “Outcomes” depend on the relative causal force of effects. When not making this distinction, I will speak of “consequences.” Figure 6.1 maps a range of possible consequences of anarchy. The vertical axis distinguishes singular, multiple, and indeterminate effects. (The differently shaded bands represent effects as a discrete (not a continuous) variable with only a small number of possible values; namely, one, a few, and many/no sets of patterned effects. The space is more a field, in which there are qualitatively different potential forces at different places, than a homogeneous Cartesian space.) The horizontal axis identifies the intensity of anarchy’s effects as high, moderate, or low (considered as ranges of a continuum). The story begins at the top left corner, where anarchy both points in a single direction (“has singular effects”) and is of high intensity relative

58

59 60 61 62 63

(Barnett and Sikkink 2008, 62). (Schweller and Wohlforth 2002, 72). (Mearsheimer 2001, 36). (Copeland 2003, 434–435). (Taliaferro 2000/2001, 131). (Barnett 1993, 272), (Slaughter 1995, 724–725), (Deudney and Ikenberry 1999, 182), (Jervis 1999, 45; 2020, 436), (Ikenberry 2002, 6), (Mitchell and Hensel 2007, 724), (Beach 2015, 86), (Di Floristella, 2015, 17, 31), (Kennedy and Beaton 2016), (Murray 2016, 63, 87), (Weber 2019, 254).

Anarchy

Anarchy

107

operates with (relatively) HIGH

has

SINGULAR

MODERATE

LOW INTENSITY No Discernible Consequences

Singular Outcomes •x

•y

•b

Singular Effects

with (more or less) determinate outcomes

MULTIPLE

INDETERMINATE

EFFECTS

•z

Multiple Structured Effects

with (more or less) determinate outcomes

•a

Indeterminate Consequences

•c

No Consequences

Figure 6.1  Types of consequences of anarchy

to other forces, resulting in “singular outcomes” (e.g., in the neorealist story, self-help balancing and the pursuit of relative gains). The focus of Figure 6.1, however, is not on the top-left to bottom-right diagonal but across the top and down the left side. The debate between neorealists and neoliberals takes place along the top of Figure 6.1, where anarchy pushes strongly in one direction (has singular effects) but, depending on its relative intensity, produces varied outcomes. Realists concentrate on the top left, around point x.64 Liberal institutionalists focus on the top center, around point y, where the singular effects of anarchy are variably mitigated or modified. Along the top of Figure 6.1 anarchy is one of many potent causal variables. Anarchy’s singular effects may or may not be disrupted, transformed, or obliterated by the effects of other variables. Multiple patterned outcomes thus arise from different balances of causal forces. At the top right, near point b, there are no discernible consequences 64

Even realists, though, recognize the impact of “intervening variables.” For example, an advantage for defense typically “dampen[s] the effects of anarchy” (Walt 1998, 31) and “engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy” (Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth 2011, 34). Realists also “have identified a set of foreign policy strategies that states pursue to mitigate the dangers of anarchy” (Lind 2004, 103). Realists, in other words, see a (more or less) strong tendency for outcomes to fall toward x.

108

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

because anarchy’s effects have been largely overcome by other forces. (Consider the strong and effective regulatory regimes governing international postal services and diplomatic relations between states.) Wendt’s well-known models of cultures of anarchy, by contrast, draw our attention to the center-left of Figure 6.1; toward point z. These models identify multiple patterns of structured effects. There are a few different effects of anarchy, arising from the structured relations of anarchy and a small number of other variables (in Wendt’s case, roles). Point z, it should be emphasized, includes all three of Wendt’s types of anarchy – each of which has a different (anarchic) structure and different set of characteristic effects. Among enemies, anarchy typically has emergent “realist” effects: states tend to plan for worst-case outcomes, stress relative military capabilities, and fight without limits and the system tends to be characterized by endemic and unlimited warfare, the culling of “unfit” actors, relatively fragile and temporary balances, and the difficulty of neutrality or nonalignment.65 Among rivals, however, anarchy has very different but no less predictable emergent outcomes: the system tends to be characterized by regular but limited warfare, relatively stable membership, relatively stable balances, and a recognition of nonalignment and states tend to respect one another’s sovereignty, pursue absolute as well as relative gains, rely substantially on allies, and limit their resort to violence.66 Among friends, anarchy has still different (but no less structured and predictable) outcomes.67 In the middle and bottom bands of Figure 6.1, anarchy – anarchy by itself – has no effects. In particular, “the effects of anarchy” in the middle band are not effects of anarchy but of anarchy and something else (in Wendt’s case, role identities). The outcomes vary, dramatically, with the “something else” in question. And this variation is systemic; the result of different structured relations (not contingent actions and interactions).68 At z, which is roughly the same distance from the top left as y, anarchy is systematically related to other forces, creating structures (systems of relations) that shape and shove actors in particular ways. Multiple outcomes arise not from different interactions between anarchy and other variables but from different “anarchy-plus” structures or 65

(Wendt 1999, 261, 265–266). 66 (Wendt 1999, 282–285). 67 (Wendt 1999, 299–302). See §6.3 immediately below for an empirical case study of one form of anarchy among “friends.” 68 On the distinction between (unstructured) inter-actions and (structured) relations, see §5.2 at nn. 24, 25.

Anarchy

109

configurations. These are emergent systems effects69 – not, as across the top of Figure 6.1, the additive (or inter-active) result of the causal effects of separate variables. Finally, in the bottom left corner, near a, anarchy has indeterminate consequences – not because “the effects of anarchy” have been counterbalanced by other forces (as at b) but because the relations between anarchy and other forces do not produce (one or a few) structured/patterned outcomes. There either are no effects at all or so many different effects (of anarchy and other forces) that we can say that anarchy has indeterminate consequences. To summarize. Even if at x we see determinate singular outcomes like self-help balancing and the pursuit of relative gains, this is only one small part of the space of the possible consequences of anarchy. And there are at least three very different reasons why we might not see those outcomes elsewhere: the underlying effects have been mitigated (y), they have been overcome (b), or they never existed (a and c). Only along the top of Figure 6.1 are those the effects of anarchy. Around point z there are (also) other effects of anarchy. And along the bottom anarchy has no determinate effects of any sort. 6.3

Anarchy Has No Effects: The Case of Forager Societies

I turn now to an empirical example. Forager societies, the simplest type of hunter-gatherer societies, lack both government and hierarchy, both internally and externally. They have minimal functional differentiation. And men are not only equal but equally armed. In other words, they perfectly fit Waltz’s model of anarchic orders. But they experience none of IR’s standard “effects of anarchy.” Hunter-gatherer societies usually are divided into relatively simple and complicated subtypes. Lewis Binford distinguishes “foragers” (who “have high residential mobility, low-bulk inputs, and regular daily food-procurement strategies”) from “collectors” (who, facing “incongruent distributions of critical resources” “move goods to consumers with generally fewer residential moves”). James Woodburn calls these immediate-­return and delayed-return societies.70

69

See §2.2. 70 (Binford 1980, 9, 10, 15), (Woodburn 1982, 2005). These are “classic” works in Archaeology and Anthropology. In May 2023, (Binford 1980) had more than 3,600 Google Scholar citations and (Woodburn 1982) had over 1,800. See also (Meillassoux 1981 [1975], 14–17), (Leacock and Lee 1982, 7–9).

110

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

I consider only immediate-return or forager societies, interchangeably using the labels “bands”71 and “foragers” (which draw attention to their principal social unit and the material basis of their way of life). More precisely, by “forager societies” I mean a type defined ostensively by three African peoples that live in desert or dry savannah environments (the !Kung (San, Ju’hoansi, Basarwa) of Botswana and Namibia, the G/wi of Botswana, and the Hadza of Tanzania) and three non-African forest dwellers (the Aché of Paraguay, the Eastern Penan of Borneo, and the Nayaka of southwestern India).72 This ecologically and geographically diverse set of societies provides an empirical test while avoiding the possibility of working with an idiosyncratic individual case. Although most forager societies today have been pushed near to or over the edge of extinction by incursions of pastoralists, agriculturalists, loggers, or miners or by government settlement schemes,73 a few bands still maintain a foraging life. And in earlier centuries, forager societies were common across much of the globe. 6.3.1

Demography and Economy

Foragers live in bands that typically number from about fifteen to several dozen individuals, composed of households of nuclear (or slightly more extended) families.74 Forager bands, however, are not kinship units. Most foragers practice “universal kinship.”75 All members of the band 71

Some broader uses of “bands” refer to all hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, I want to underscore that I restrict the term to bands of immediate-return foragers (as I try to emphasize by speaking of “forager bands”). 72 Binford (1980) uses the G/wi as his principal example and draws comparisons with the !Kung, Aché, and Penan. Woodburn (1982) focuses on the Hadza, with comparisons to the Mbuti (See also Turnbull 1961; Ichikawa 1999), !Kung, Panaram, and Batek (See also Eder 1999; Lye 2004). I have added the Nayaka based on (Bird-David 1992, 1994). Other peoples that appear to fit this model more or less closely include the Paliyan of south India (Gardner 1972, 1999), the Okiek of Kenya (Kratz 1999), the Cuiva of Colombia and Venezuela (Arcand 1999), and the Buid of the Philippines (Gibson 1985, 1986). (To my knowledge, though, no Australian hunter-gatherers have the social characteristics of forager societies as defined here. This, it seems to me, must be significant – but I do not know why or how.) 73 Nomadic/foraging Penan and Aché bands probably no longer exist. Most !Kung, G/wi, and Hadza bands have adopted sedentary or semi-sedentary lives. (Hitchcock and Ebert 1989, 53–54, 57–58). (Silberbauer 1996) looks at issues of diversity and change in Kalahari forager societies. 74 (Lee and Daly 1999, 3), (Lee 1979, 54–71), (Clastres 1998 [1972], 217), (Silberbauer 1981, 295), (Woodburn 1968), (Hitchcock and Ebert 1989, 55), (Sellato 1994 [1989], 143–144). 75 (Barnard 2002, 11–12; 1992, 280), (Lee 1984, 62–73; 1986), (Kaare and Woodburn 1999, 202), (Silberbauer 1981, 309), (Sellato 2007, 74), (Meillassoux 1981 [1975], 19). See also (Bird-David 1994, 592–595), (Needham 1971).

Anarchy

111

are kin, even in the absence of relations of descent or marriage.76 Kinship binds rather than divides individuals and groups. “The emphasis is on inclusion of individuals or families and not on the exclusiveness of their qualifications.”77 Individuals and households regularly change bands,78 following “lines of dissent rather than those of descent.”79 Forager bands are “open, flexible, and highly variable in composition.”80 Society “is constantly being reconstructed around the free movement of individuals.”81 Subsistence is “at least routine and reliable and at best surprisingly abundant.”82 Marshall Sahlins famously called foragers “the original affluent society.”83 They “are poor only in the sense that they do not accumulate property.”84 “All the people’s wants (such as they are) are generally easily satisfied.”85 Individuals and families privately possess simple tools and small personal items. “Property,” however, is minimal – more by social choice than technological or ecological necessity. Sanctions against accumulation “apply even to the lightest objects … individuals with any objects for which they appear to have no immediate need are under the greatest pressure to give them up and many possessions are given away almost as soon as they are obtained.”86 Sharing resources is central to forager life. “All individuals have an automatic right of access to ungarnered resources, [but] they are elaborately 76 Such relations are neither “fictive” nor (mere) analogies to “real” kinship. “Kinship as it is studied by social anthropologists is not a set of genealogical relationships; it is a set of social relationships” (Beattie 1964, 101). See also (Sahlins 2013). 77 (Silberbauer 1982, 24). 78 (Lee and DeVore 1968, 7), (Woodburn 1968, 103; 1982, 435), (Silberbauer 1982, 24–26), (Bird-David 1994, 591). Most !Kung individuals do not live in the band into which they were born (Lee 1979, 54, 338–39). 79 (Turnbull 1968, 137). 80 (Woodburn 1968, 103). See also (Silberbauer 1982, 24), (Bird-David 1994, 591), (Tanaka and Sugawara 1999, 196), (Sellato 2007, 74, 145). 81 (Meillassoux 1981 [1975], 18). 82 (Lee 1968, 30). See also (Silberbauer 1982, 24), (Bird-David 1992, 32), (Gowdy 1999, 392). 83 (Sahlins 1968). 84 (Woodburn 1988, 39). 85 (Sahlins 1968, 89). See also (Lee 1984, 51–53), (Tanaka and Sugawara 1999, 196), (Clastres 1977 [1974], 164). (Kaplan 2000), however, emphasizes issues of food quality and vulnerability to climatic stress. 86 (Woodburn 1982, 442). See also (Lee 1982, 54), (Clastres 1972, 140–149). Some bands also have distinctive mechanisms to assure that goods circulate. On the !Kung gift-exchange practice of hxaro, see (Wiessner 1982, 66–74; 1986), (Lee 1984, 97–102). The Hadza gamble, in a game of pure chance, for hours a day and weeks on end, with only one’s bow, leather bag, and unpoisoned arrows exempt from relentless social pressure to wager. (Woodburn 1998, 52–53; 1982, 442–443).

112

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

constrained about how they can use them. Garnered resources have to be shared and used immediately.”87 Plant products and small animals may be consumed individually, often while foraging. Large game, though, the most prized resource in many forager societies, is shared by everyone.88 Although hunting takes place individually or in small groups, the meat and its distribution belong to the community. Forager bands have “elaborate formal rules dissociating the hunter from his kill.”89 Among the Aché, everyone in the band except the hunter and his parents gets a share.90 Food “is, above all, a good that circulates.”91 6.3.2 Politics In forager bands, authority, like resources, is dispersed rather than concentrated. “The essence of this way of life is … communal sharing of food resources and of power.”92 “Foragers are characterized by minimal social differentiation and a strong ethos of equality and sharing”93 and by the “virtual absence of laws and social hierarchy.”94 “Families are not dominated by larger organizational structures.”95 “Social actors come together as autonomous agents to pursue a common goal.”96 Equality, which “does not have to be earned … but is intrinsically present as an entitlement of all,”97 “is actively promoted and inequality is actively resisted through a set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing institutional procedures.”98 “Relative age is one of the few status distinctions that can be made.”99 Among the Hadza, “principles of equality apply even between … father and son.”100 Even gender inequality is limited. Men monopolize hunting101 but have neither political nor domestic control over their wives or daughters, 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

(Woodburn 2005, 23). (Kaare and Woodburn 1999, 202), (Lee 1984, 45; 1979, 336), (Wiessner 1982, 62–63). (Woodburn 1982, 440). See also (Lee 1984, 50). (Clastres 1972, 170–172), (Hill and Hurtado 1999, 93–94). (Clastres 1972, 171). (Lee 1982, 54–55). See also (Barnard 2002, 7), (Woodburn 2005, 23), (Bird-David 1992, 31). (Johnson and Earle 2000, 89). (Sugawara 2005, 107). See also (Woodburn 1982, 434), (Leacock and Lee 1982, 8–9). (Bird-David 1994, 583). See also (Sellato 1994 [1989], 152). (Gibson 1985, 392). (Woodburn 1982, 446). See also (Wiessner 1986, 31). (Woodburn 2005, 21). See also (Boehm 1999, 60), (Kelly 1995, 296), (Lee 1982, 53), (Flanagan and Rayner 1988, 2). (Lee 1984, 63). (Kaare and Woodburn 1999, 202). The Hadza also have exclusively male ritual associations. (Woodburn 2005, 26).

Anarchy

113

even in matters of marriage and divorce. Heike Becker, in an article on Kalahari foragers, suggests an affirmative answer to her title question, “The Least Sexist Society?”102 Leaders, who vary with time and topic, “aid in group decision-making, but … do not hold power.”103 Forager bands have no political offices. All adults may participate in discussions leading to a decision, which typically is reached by consensus.104 And decisions are neither formally binding nor centrally enforced105 (although informal social pressures106 do produce high levels of compliance). Foragers highly value autonomy.107 They seek it, however, cooperatively rather than competitively. Generalized interdependence not only prevents dependence on any particular individual, family, or band but provides autonomy for all – in contrast to the competitive and individualistic strategy of self-help balancing, which provides autonomy only to those capable of successfully deploying the resources necessary to help themselves. 6.3.3

Conflict and Violence

Flexible band composition, minimal property, and consensual decisionmaking mitigate conflict. Foragers also emphasize “early detection of conflict and its treatment by means of a number of tension-relieving processes which reinforce cooperation and harmony.”108 Exit is a last resort, restoring harmony in the band and providing dissatisfied individuals a fresh start at little cost. Foragers, of course, experience violent crime.109 But despite the absence of hierarchy and formal sanctions, they suffer no internal security

102



103 104 105 106 107 108 109

(Becker 2003). See also (Endicott 1999), (Lee 1979, 447–454 and ch. 9, 11), (Turnbull 1981), (Biesele and Royal-/o/oo 1999, 207), (Tanaka and Sugawara 1999, 197), (Woodburn 2005, 23; 1982, 434; 1968, 51–52). (Barnard 2002, 9). See also (Hill and Hurtado 1999, 94), (Clastres 1998 [1972], 105– 108), (Sellato 1994 [1989], 150–151), (Lee 1982, 45–49), (Silberbauer 1982, 29). (Needham 1972, 180), (Silberbauer 1981, 169, 188; 1982, 26–34), (Hofffman, 1986, 36), (Barnard 1992, 108), (Endicott 1999, 416), (Hill and Hurtado 1999, 94), (Tanaka and Sugawara 1999, 197–198). (Clastres 1977 [1974], ch. 7; 1998 [1972], 106–108), (Lee 1979, 343–348; 1982, 45–52), (Silberbauer 1981, 273–274, 316), (Sellato 1994 [1989], 144), (Barnard 2002, 9–10). (Boehm 1999, 72–86) surveys sanctioning in egalitarian societies. (Ingold 1999, 405, 407–408), (Kaare and Woodburn 1999, 202), (Kelly 1995, 296), (Bird-David 1994, 586), (Sellato 1994 [1989], 145, 152). (Silberbauer 1981, 318). See also (Lee 1979, 371–87ff.). (Lee 1979, 376–97), (Woodburn 1979, 252), (Clastres 1998, 269–72). Although the !Kung do have a high murder rate (Lee 1979, 370–71, 387–97) – given the small size of bands, any murder produces a rate comparable to the most violent countries in the world today – they “do not fight much, but they do talk a great deal” (Lee 1979, 372).

114

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

dilemma.110 If informal sanctions and reintegrative conflict resolution fail, exit is the standard solution, even for murder.111 Amity and sharing, not fear and balancing, characterize relations within the band. Self-help is not the norm. Feuding is unknown. Revenge killing is rare. Even enmity is atypical and usually short-lived. 6.3.4

Forager Warlessness

“Internationally,” foragers are “warless societies.”112 In relations between and across bands, foragers neither experience security dilemmas nor engage in “warfare,” broadly understood as organized violent intergroup conflict (including not only “war” with “armies” but also organized raiding and violent feuding). Warfare simply does not exist among the !Kung, Hadza, G/wi, Penan, and Nayaka. One cannot say much more about such a negative existential fact – except to challenge others to present contrary evidence. But in examining nearly two hundred sources, some sixty of which are cited here, I could not find a single documented instance of warfare among these five peoples. Aché bands do fight – but only in accidental encounters, and even then only when flight is impossible.113 They do not go to war, set out on raids, or in any other way intentionally attack one another. Even inter-group enmity is largely unknown114 – and not because bands lack regular contact. Seasonal aggregations and periodic gatherings are common, as are interactions with neighbors. Individuals and groups regularly move between bands, both temporarily and permanently. In addition, marriage partners are typically found outside the band. Sharing is much less intense between bands than within them. The alternative to sharing, however, is a sort of amicable neutrality, not competition. And inter-band relations, contrary to IR’s standard expectations, are less violent than relations within bands. (Forager societies do have murders but don’t have warfare.) Relations with sedentary peoples follow different rules. Fear and uncertainty, however, provoke hiding rather than balancing. The Hadza,

110 (Woodburn 1979, 252), (Silberbauer 1981, 318). 111 Informal but socially sanctioned executions, however, do occur in exceptional circumstances. (Lee 1979, 392–95), (Clastres 1998, 259–260). 112 (Kelly 2000). 113 (Clastres 1972, 161–163; 1998 [1972], 218, 237). 114 The Aché, again, are the exception. (Clastres 1972, 161–163; 1998 [1972], 218, 237).

Anarchy

115

for example, practice defense by “avoidance. They protect themselves by scattering … [They] can and do avoid most serious inter-group conflict with enviable ease.”115 6.3.5

Binding through Sharing: A Logic of Anarchy

Foragers perfectly fit the Waltzian model of anarchic orders. Seeking survival and autonomy, they interact without central, overarching, or superordinate authority and without a government or any other formal mechanism to make or enforce rules or agreements. Furthermore, functional differentiation is minimal. All men – and all bands – are equal (and equally armed). Forager bands and their members, however, seek (and generally achieve) both security and autonomy by circulating (rather than accumulating) goods and authority and by binding themselves to (rather than balancing against) other individuals, families, and bands. Security and autonomy are achieved through the interdependence of all members of the band, backstopped by the option of easy exit. Foragers pursue neither relative gains nor absolute gains. Rather, they seek sufficiency and guaranteed access to whatever is socially available. I suggest that we call this strategy “binding through sharing.” It simply is not true, as Waltz claimed, that “self-help is necessarily the principle of action in an anarchic order.”116 Self-help balancing is a reasonable strategy for competitive and fearful actors pursing security and autonomy in a world of scarcity and weak norms and institutions. Binding through sharing, however, is a reasonable strategy for individuals and families seeking autonomy and security in a relatively tightly integrated and normatively robust world of abundance. In contemporary international relations, pluralistic security communities117 practice a similar sort of mutual binding that creates a common shared fate. In Wendt’s terms, forager bands and members of pluralistic 115 (Woodburn 1979, 250). See also (Woodburn 1988, 35). Although violent conflict is documented between foragers and intruding pastoralists in southern Africa (Keeley 1997, 132–137), hiding is the preferred security strategy. 116 (Waltz 1979, 111). “A self-help system is one in which those who do not help themselves, or who do so less effectively than others, will fail to prosper, will lay themselves open to dangers, will suffer” (Waltz 1979, 118). Although this may be a good description of a self-help system, it is simply wrong as an account of (the effects of anarchy in) forager societies. And if balancing is “the behavior [rationally] required of parties in self-help systems” (Waltz 1979, 163) then foragers show that not all anarchic orders are self-help systems. 117 (Deutsch 1957) formulated the concept. (Adler and Barnett 1998) reintroduced it into the mainstream of the discipline. See also §14.3.

116

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

security communities are “friends” that practice not just nonviolence but also mutual aid.118 Sharing should not be romanticized. “Acts of sharing come no more naturally to hunter-gatherers than to members of industrial society.”119 Sharing does not reflect generosity.120 It is “imposed on the donor by the community,” much like our practice of taxation121 – and despite (or because) of the absence of coercive or official enforcement, it works more smoothly and more effectively than most tax systems. Nonetheless, sharing is an “ordering principle.” Interests, rationality, and even needs122 have particular characters in sharing societies.123 Sharing even helps to explain the absence of coercive enforcement of collective decisions. “Coercion, the attempt to extract by force, represents a betrayal of the trust that underwrites the willingness to give.”124 6.3.6

Anarchy Has No Effects

Foragers show, empirically, that anarchy is not a master explanatory variable. It simply is not true, as Waltz claimed, that “the logic of anarchy does not vary with its content.”125 “Effects of anarchy,” wherever we find them, in whatever form, are socially constructed and variable. The effects of anarchy in forager societies are amity and sharing. The effects of anarchy in Hobbesian states of nature are a war of all against all. The effects of anarchy in great power states systems are self-help balancing and the pursuit of relative gains.126 And in all these cases, the system of social relations, rather than the absence of government, does the explanatory work. Anarchy (alone) has no effects. Anarchy is not (cannot be) either the principal element of the structure of international systems or the heart of a theory of international politics.

118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125 126

(Wendt 1999, 298–299). (Kelly 1995, 164). See also (Woodburn 1998, 55), (Lee 1984, 55), (Peterson 1993). (Peterson 1993, 860), (Wiessner 1986, 106), (Kishigami 2004, 345). (Woodburn 1982, 441). The Nayaka “culturally construct their needs as the want of a share” (Bird-David 1992, 31). And the “abundance” of forager societies is largely a function of limited needs and desires. (Sugawara 2012) even argues that the unusual conversational pattern of sustained simultaneous discourse among the G/wi is explained by their sharing (“egalitarian”) social structure. (Ingold 1992, 42). See also (Needham 1971, 204). (Waltz 1990b, 37). See also §7.2.2.

Anarchy

6.4

117

The Discourse of Anarchy in IR

Assuming that my arguments above are correct, there is a fundamental flaw in the very constitution of the discipline if, as it is usually believed today, “the field of international relations has, from its earliest years, been structured by a discourse about anarchy.”127 However, this section shows that anarchy became central in IR only following the publication (in 1979) of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics – and thus is a remediable, although now deeply embedded, problem. (If you find this section overkill, or simply boring, I encourage you, before moving on to Chapter 7 (or Part III), to look at the following section (§6.5), which concludes this chapter by stepping back to consider the constructed character of the concept of anarchy in IR.) 6.4.1

“Anarchy” in Pre-1979 IR: Quantitative Evidence

I begin by counting the occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in more than two hundred books: 93 published between 1895 and 1945, 54 published between 1946 and 1978, and 75 published between 1979 and 2020. (Appendices 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 list the books.) This sample, I believe, comprises a relatively unbiased (although not at all random) set of “significant” works in the field.128 Table 6.1 shows a sharp transition around the publication of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics. Prior to 1979 the median number of uses of “anarchy” or “anarchic” is 2. After 1978 the median jumps to 22. Prior to 1979 three-fifths of the books use “anarchy” or “anarchic” three or fewer times. After 1978 only a quarter use these terms ten or fewer times. And the pattern is essentially the same for 1895–1945 and 1946–1978. This transition is nicely illustrated in “handbooks” of the discipline. The IR volume of Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby’s 1975 Handbook of Political Science129 contains 11 occurrences of “anarchy” or “anarchic,” six of which are in the chapter by Waltz, with a seventh in the index (which references only pages in the Waltz chapter). The Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth Simmons,130 contains 86 occurrences in both its 2002 and 2013 127 (Schmidt 1998, 41). 128 In selecting pre-1979 sources I relied heavily on (Schmidt 1998), (Olson and Onuf 1985), and (Long and Wilson 1995). The choice of later works is based entirely on my own judgment. 129 (Greenstein and Polsby 1975). 130 (Carlsnaes, Risse, and Simmons 2002, 2013).

118

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem Table 6.1  Occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in selected books

1895–1978 (n = 147) 1895–1945 (n = 93) 1946–1978 (n = 54) 1979–2020 (n = 75) 1895–1978 (n = 147) 1979–2020 (n = 75)

Mean 6.8 7.2 6.3 32.5 Three or fewer 60% 12%

Median 2 2 2 22 Ten or fewer 79% 27%

editions. Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal’s 2008 The Oxford Handbook of International Relations131 has over a hundred.132 “Anarchy” was not even widely employed by pre-Waltzian realists. For example, the term occurs only twice, in passing, in E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, in George Kennan’s American Diplomacy, and in Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored.133 None of the seven editions of Hans Morgenthau’s Politics among Nations contains an index entry for anarchy.134 Scientific Man versus Power Politics uses “anarchy” only once – referring not to international relations in general but to “the international anarchy of our age.”135 6.4.2

The Pattern of Usage in Pre-1979 IR

A quarter (26%) of my pre-1979 books do not use “anarchy” or “anarchic” at all. Another quarter use these terms once (12%) or twice (17%). We can therefore safely assume that in more than half of these pre-1979 works anarchy is not a term of art but an ordinary-language concept. When anarchy is used, the ordinary-language sense of extreme disorder is, by far, most common: “anarchy and disorder,”136 “chaos and 131 (Reus-Smit and Snidal 2008). 132 A similar pattern is evident in James Dougherty and William Pfaltzgraff’s IR Theory textbook Contending Theories of International Relations (1971, 1981, 1990, 1997). The 1971 and 1981 editions use “anarchy” or “anarchic” five and seven times respectively. This jumps to 23 in 1990 and 56 in 1997. 133 (Carr 1964 [1946], 28, 162), (Kennan 1951, 33, 149), (Kissinger 1957, 17, 25). 134 Furthermore, all the passages in the first edition associate anarchy with disorder and violence. (Morgenthau 1948, 138, 174, 210, 310, 311, 361, 378, 431). 135 (Morgenthau 1946, 117). In Defense of the National Interest uses “anarchy” twice, both times indicating disorder (Morgenthau 1951, 102, 203). 136 (Moore 1898, II, 1503), (Grant et al. 1916, 160), (Bowman 1921, 616). See also (Leacock 1906, 114–115), (Hill 1911, 26), (Lawrence 1919, 143), (Morgenthau 1948, 208), (Kennan 1951, 33).

Anarchy

119

anarchy,”137 “confusion and anarchy,”138 “discord and anarchy,”139 “violence and anarchy.”140 More than a third of my pre-1979 books use “anarchy” or “anarchic” in this sense in half or more of their total uses.141 In other words, in more than 70 percent (104142 of 147) of my pre1979 books “anarchy” indicates lawlessness and political disorder. This largely explains its infrequent use. Because “anarchy” neither had a wellestablished technical sense nor was understood as a defining feature of international relations there was little reason to use it often. In the remaining works, there is no pattern to the usage. Sometimes anarchy is understood as the external juridical consequence of state sovereignty – and thus a characteristic of states systems (not of international systems generally).143 But anarchy also is presented as the condition that exists in the absence of sovereignty, which in this usage establishes mutual legal recognition and restraints that put an end 137



138 139 140 141

142 143

(Trueblood 1899, 145), (Barnes 1930, 5), (Middlebush and Hill 1940, 15). See also (Angell 1921, 98), (Grant et al. 1916, 160), (Laski 1932, 28), (Sharp and Kirk 1940, 236). (Lawrence 1898 [1895], 205), (Walsh 1922, 221), (Zimmern 1922, 22). See also (Russell 1936, 20). (Hill 1911, 18), (Buell 1925, 306). (Bowman 1921, 211), (Niebuhr 1932, 139), (Sprout and Sprout 1945, 408). See also (Morgenthau 1948, 210), (Herz 1959, 35), (Claude 1962, 260). (Lawrence 1898 [1895], 56, 60, 205), (Moore 1898, vol. II, 1503, 1975, vol. III, 2929), (Trueblood 1899, 145), (Leacock 1906, 101, 112, 114–115, 289), (Angell 1910, 6), (Hill 1911, 26, 66, 137, 154–155, 173), (Mahan 1912, 114), (Brailsford 1917 [1914], 158), (Lippmann 1915, 151, 152), (Woolf 1916, xv), (Smuts 1918, 8), (Lawrence 1919, 143), (Mackinder 1919, 223), (Dickinson 1920b, 27), (Hicks 1920, 7), (Keynes 1920, 255), (Angell 1921, 60, 98, 99, 181, 199, 237, 298, 301), (Bowman 1921, 2, 12, 34, 25, 44, 45, 47, 211, 219, 289, 385, 548), (Laski 1921, 13, 45, 72, 290), (Bryce 1922, 58, 71), (Gibbons 1922, 19, 109, 126, 135, 179, 180, 182, 212, 214, 246, 270, 350, 479), (Hobson 1922, 67, 199, 228, 252), (Walsh 1922, 57, 88, 123, 221), (Zimmern 1922, 22, 80), (Brown 1923, 159, 161), (Hall 1924, 18, 21), (Buell 1925, 46, 306), (Moon 1926, 395, 536), (Politis 1926, 6, 10), (Delaisi 1927, 62, 77), (Potter and West 1927, 267), (Potter 1929, 25), (Niebuhr 1932, 16, 18, 19, 21, 33, 129, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 175), (Muir 1932, 113, 122), (Lauterpacht 1933, 393, 438), (Russell 1936, 20, 198), (Wolfers 1940, 216), (Carr 1964 [1946], 28, 162), (Earle, Craig, and Gilbert 1943, 33, 236, 332), (Butterfield 1950, 34, 63), (Friedmann 1951, 191, 248, 273), (Kennan 1951, 33, 149), (Morgenthau 1951, 102, 203), (Kaplan 1957, 49, 147), (Kissinger 1957, 17, 25), (Schelling 1960, 74), (Boulding 1962, 187), (Wolfers 1962, 21, 53), (Aron 2003 [1966], 65, 122, 128, 199, 273, 327, 376, 377, 720), (Wallerstein 2011 [1976], 38, 177, 233). This number (104) represents the 79 books that use anarchy less than three times plus the 25 (of the 49 works in the preceding note) that use it more often but principally in the sense of disorder. In addition to the works cited in the following notes, see (Willoughby 1896, 196), (Leacock 1906, 89, 95), (Hill 1911, 15, 140), (Mahan 1912, 2), (Woolf 1916, 125), (Dickinson 1917 [1916], 13), (Politis 1926, 6), (Mitrany 1933, 165), (Fenwick 1934, 47), (Simonds and Emeny 1935, 28, 563), (Russell 1936, 540), (Hinsley 1963, 326, 327).

120

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

to “anarchic” lawlessness and disorder.144 For example, John Herz contrasts sovereignty, which provides “agreed upon standards and rules,” with “real ‘anarchy’”.145 Although anarchy is occasionally presented as a defining feature of international relations – “the only alternative to anarchy is government;”146 “the power which prevents anarchy in intra-group relations encourages anarchy in intergroup relations”147 – most such passages148 are isolated occurrences. And they are swamped by a wide range of disparate passages that contrast sharply with contemporary IR’s usage. Quincy Wright claims that “universal empire or anarchy has usually followed balance-of-power periods” and that when defense predominates “international anarchy has sometimes resulted.”149 Morton Kaplan argues that bipolar war leads to “a hierarchical international system if one side wins or international anarchy if both sides are exhausted. Almost any kind of system may replace this state of anarchy.”150 Both Alfred Zimmern and F. H. Hinsley contrast the rise of international conferences in the nineteenth century to the anarchy of the eighteenth century.151 Nationalism,152 the will to power,153 and “the backwardness of weak states”154 are presented as sources of anarchy. For Mary Parker Follett “anarchy means unorganized, unrelated difference.”155 For Frederick Hicks “international anarchy … implies absolute disrespect for law on the part of all states.”156 Prior to 1979, such passages157 comprise a significant percentage of total uses that do not simply indicate disorder. Earlier authors certainly did address issues that today are considered to involve anarchy. They rarely, though, viewed them through the lens (or as manifestations) of anarchy. And when “anarchy” was used, it was in several very different, even conflicting, senses, almost all of which

144 145 146 147 148

149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157

(Hill 1911, 140, 173), (Walsh 1922, 123, 221), (Herz 1959, 59–60). (Herz 1959, 59–60). (Woolf 1916, 312). (Niebuhr 1932, 16). See also (Lawrence 1898 [1895], 19), (Hobson 1902, 174), (Mackinder 1919, 6), (Hicks 1920, 117), (Mowat 1931, 13), (Simonds and Emeny 1935, 138), (Sharp and Kirk 1940, 397), (Burton 1965, 45–46), (Osgood and Tucker 1967, 13). (Wright 1964 [1942], 127, 63). See also (Follett 1920, 307). (Kaplan 1957, 49). Anarchy, for Kaplan, is not an ordering principle but the absence of order. (Zimmern 1936, 40, 62), (Hinsley 1963, 220). (Angell 1921, 98), (Woolf 1940, 76), (Morgenthau 1962, 181, 197). (Niebuhr 1932, 18). (Lippmann 1915, 127. Cf. 114). (Follett 1920, 35. Cf. 305). (Hicks 1920, 7). See also nn. 178, 180.

Anarchy

121

differ from contemporary usage. In particular, anarchy neither defined international relations nor explained behavior in international systems in general. 6.4.3

The Rise of a Discourse of Anarchy

“Anarchy,” of course, did not spring, full-grown, from the head of Waltz. Precursors in my sample includes Martin Wight’s Power Politics (1946), Waltz’s Man, the State and War (1959), and Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight’s edited volume Diplomatic Investigations (1966) – along with Robert Jervis’ Perception and Misperception in International Politics (1976),158 Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical Society (1977),159 and Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing’s Conflict among Nations (1977). These books suggest three sources of contemporary IR’s discourse of anarchy: Waltz, social-scientific rationalism, and the English School. What follows tells the American side of the story – partly for reasons of space but also because of the rapid embrace, and the continuing predominance, of a particular discourse of anarchy in American IR. Waltz, who (as we saw in Chapter 4) endorsed a vision of social-­scientific theory that was in the early stages of establishing its hegemony in the mainstream of the American discipline, not only aspired to general theory (of international politics) but employed anarchy at the heart of a seemingly elegant and powerful substantive theory that appeared to identify and explain some important features of international systems. That this theory breathed new life into realism (and systems approaches) probably also was significant. The spread of anarchy was further facilitated by the fact that Waltz presented it not as a substantive assumption of neorealism but as an analytically neutral demarcation criterion and structural ordering principle. Rational choice analysts picked up on anarchy at roughly the same time.160 The October 1985 special issue of World Politics, published in

158



159 160

(Jervis 1976, 20, 62, 63, 67, 68, 75, 76, 83, 273, 340) is the first book I know of by an American author that makes central use of “anarchy” in the Waltzian sense. In private correspondence, he recalled first encountering anarchy through the teaching of Glenn Snyder at Berkeley (who was strongly influenced by Waltz, who had not yet moved to Berkeley). Jervis was also the co-editor (with Robert Art) of the reader International Politics: Anarchy, Force, Imperialism (1973), which stresses anarchy and includes readings from Waltz and Bull. And his 1978 article “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma” is a classic application of what would soon come to be described as the logic of anarchy. This continues a line of work outlined in Diplomatic Investigations. As far as I am aware, it was not influenced by Waltz. (Taylor 1976) was influential, explicitly linking anarchy to the question of cooperation (although not in the context of international relations). This trend, which built on (Snyder and Diesing 1977) and (Jervis 1978), intensified following Robert Axelrod’s

122

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

1986 as Cooperation under Anarchy,161 placed the fusion of anarchy and rationalism at the heart of the American discipline. Neoliberal institutionalism, the other leading substantive research program of the era, also adopted the Waltzian account of the anarchic structure of international relations.162 And the publication in 1986 of Robert Keohane’s edited volume Neorealism and Its Critics163 signaled a reorientation of American IR Theory around a Waltzian discourse of anarchy. These changes are evident in the spread of the language of “the effects of anarchy.” A Google Scholar search in December 2020 for “effects of anarchy” or “effects of international anarchy” and “international relations” yielded only four results from 1900 to 1974. There is one result for 1975–1979: Jervis’ influential 1978 article “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma.”164 In the 1980s, “effects of (international) anarchy” appears in ten works, including major articles by John Ruggie, Harrison Wagner, Michael Doyle, and Joseph Grieco.165 We then see nearly 150 results in the 1990s, over 300 in the 2000s, and more than more than 450 for 2010s.166 Early constructivists, who were focused on other issues, tended to leave Waltz’s anarchy-centric conception of international relations untouched even as they rejected his neorealist account of the effects of anarchy. For example, Friedrich Kratochwil’s Rules, Norms, and Decisions (1989) limits its criticism to the idea that anarchy implies the absence of norms.167 And Alexander Wendt’s classic 1992 article “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” rather than challenge anarchy’s central place, argues only that enmity, not anarchy, does the explanatory work in the Waltzian/Hobbesian account.168 Although some critics did take on anarchy more fully and more directly,169 Kratochwil and Wendt were typical

161 162 163 164 165 166

167 168 169

(1981, 1984) work on the Prisoners’ Dilemma. (Axelrod and Keohane 1985) is a classic neo-liberal institutionalist expression. (Oye 1986). For example, Keohane and Nye (1987, 745) explicitly adopt “the neorealist sense” of structure. (Keohane 1986a). (Jervis 1978, 173). (Ruggie 1983, 284), (Wagner 1983, 385), (Doyle 1983, 232), (Grieco 1988, 502). To control for different sizes of the annual database, which can be significant when comparing pre- and post-internet periods, I compared the ratio of uses of “effects of anarchy” to all works that use both “international relations” and “anarchy.” In a Google Scholar search in December 2020, the ratio jumped from one in a thousand (4 of 3,850) for the period before 1975 to more than fifty per thousand (900 of 46,000) for the period 1990–2019. (Kratochwil 1989, ch. 2). (Wendt 1992). See, for example, (Ashley 1988), (Onuf 1989, ch. 5), (Walker 1993, 33–43, 63–74, 150–152, 172–176).

Anarchy

123

in focusing on the (alleged) effects of anarchy rather than the anarchycentric conception of international systems and their structures. By the mid-1990s, anarchy had become “normalized” across IR. And this “naturalization” of anarchy – its taken-for-granted character – has facilitated ignoring issues of conceptual clarity and causal mechanism. With everyone agreeing that anarchy was central, the specifics of how to define it and how it produces its effects could be treated as “mere details” to be resolved by further analysis (if that ever really became necessary or if someone really wanted to bother with such mundane conceptual housekeeping). This has not only facilitated the definitional disarray that I documented above but, by focusing on (seemingly remediable) problems in the details of the Waltzian account, has obscured the fundamental problems of an anarchy-centric conception of the structure of international relations. 6.4.4

Words and Concepts

One might argue that I have focused on the word “anarchy” but ignored “the concept.”170 Although the underlying account of the relationship between words and concepts is suspect – anarchy is not a naturally defined “thing” to which a variety of labels can be more or less arbitrarily attached – this argument merits attention.

Searching (Electronically) for the Concept of Anarchy

We can begin by employing a modified version of my initial search strategy. For the pre-1979 books that are available in full text,171 which is necessary for such extensive searches, I searched for “government,” to capture references to the lack of government that did not use the word “absence.” To avoid an overly narrow focus on the word “government,” I also searched for “central authority” and “higher authority.” Based on the importance of state sovereignty in early works that did refer to anarchy, I searched as well for “sovereign,” “sovereignty,” and “state.” Finally, on hunches, I searched for “state of nature,” “lawless,” and “lawlessness.” This procedure, for all its limitations, should reveal any substantial discourse of anarchy. The broad sweep of these searches, though, makes 170



171

(Lechner 2017) makes such an argument. Schmidt and others have also made this suggestion in private conversations. Although this includes only a little more than a third (52 of 146) of my pre-1979 books, with two thirds of those being published before 1923 (see Appendices 6.1, 6.2), I know of no argument that usage changed significantly anywhere between 1923 and 1978. (1923 is an artifact of US copyright law when I performed these searches.)

124

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

simple counts of little interest. I can only report my qualitative assessment of the results. Fortunately, a striking pattern is evident. In books that do not make significant use of “anarchy,” searches for government and central or higher authority produced only scattered uses like contemporary IR’s account.172 Conversely, the few books that do make significant reference to “anarchy” produced numerous hits.173 This strongly suggests that the concept of anarchy was not regularly referenced independent of the word. Several authors did argue for the possibility or necessity of international government.174 This, though, is no more evidence of a discourse of anarchy than talk about the possibility or desirability of peace is a discourse of war. Furthermore, such arguments treat anarchy not as defining international relations but as a contingent and alterable feature of some international systems. Furthermore, several authors argue that twentieth-century international relations is characterized by the presence of international government.175 As Frederic Schuman puts it, “the net result of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been the emergence and development of habits and institutions of cooperation between States to which it is now customary to apply the terms ‘international organization’ or ‘international government’.”176 In other words, even the “fact” of anarchy was sometimes denied, even by some realists. The other searches likewise provided no evidence of a concept of anarchy expressed in other terms. And it seems to me exceedingly unlikely that other words were used but not these. I thus conclude that there is no evidence of an analytically central concept of anarchy in pre-Waltzian IR.177 172



173 174 175 176 177

See, for example, (Lawrence 1898 [1895], 159), (Leacock 1906, 103, 104), (Haas 1964, 69). And even those passages, on closer examination, involve uses very different from those of contemporary IR. For example, (Spykman 1942, 16, 18, 446), (Gulick 1943, 6, 12), (Wight 1978 [1946], 101, 105, 184), (Waltz 1959, 5, 11, 35, 96, 188), (Bull 1977, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 57, 59, 62, 69, 110, 125, 126, 129, 182). In addition to the passages in the following two notes, see (Hicks 1920, 117), (Potter 1922, 12–14, 23, 269, 369, 381), (Kerr 1935). (Trueblood 1899, 138, 142), (Hobson 1915), (Lippmann 1915, 130–131, 145), (Woolf 1916, 141–143, 149, 153–155, 267, 312), (Smuts 1918), (Mitrany 1933). (Schuman 1933, 231). The one work in my pre-1946 sample that does use “anarchy” much as contemporary IR does is, ironically, Philip Henry Kerr’s (Lord Lothian’s) Pacifism in Not Enough (1935). Like Waltz, Lord Lothian sees anarchy and government as binary terms that exhaust the range of political possibilities (Kerr 1935, 40–42). But he emphasizes the connection of absence of international government with war, lawlessness, and disorder. (Kerr 1935, 8, 10, 11, 18, 23, 24, 26, 34–35, 37–38, 41, 48–49). In fact, he uses the

Anarchy

125

An Early Political Discourse of Anarchy? I come to the same conclusion by critically examining Schmidt’s The Political Discourse of Anarchy, the leading example of an argument of continuity. Schmidt insists that “the concept of anarchy employed in this book is not an externally or retrospectively imposed theme … but instead represents an indigenous construct around which discussions about the subject matter of international relations have continuously evolved.”178 But in his three principal chapters, which cover more than a hundred pages, Schmidt quotes only eight passages from authors other than G. Lowes Dickinson that employ the language of anarchy.179 He thus must be implicitly advancing a concept-without-the-word argument.180

178 179

180

term “anarchy” largely for its negative connotations. Anarchy arises from the absence of international government but means avertible violent disorder – a conception that standard textbook discussions in contemporary IR usually go out of their way to reject. (Schmidt 1998, 1–2. Cf. 16). (Schmidt 1998, 94, 113, 172, 182, 186, 204, 208, 210). Dickinson is not only Schmidt’s principal source but Mearsheimer (2006, 234) claims that Dickinson “invented the concept of international anarchy” and Andreas Osiander (1998, 413) notes that “whether or not [Dickinson] actually coined the term, he contributed greatly to its popularity.” See also (Long 1995, 314), (Ashworth 2017, 312). Dickinson, however, analyzes the “general situation” that results from “the juxtaposition of a number of states, independent and armed. This was the condition of civilization in the three periods of European history that are most studied – ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, and modern Europe; and under that condition war is not an accident” (1926, 3–4 [emphasis added]). In other words, Dickinson addresses not international relations in general but states systems – and, more particularly, “the European anarchy” that produced World War I. His book by that name begins “in the great and tragic history of Europe there is a turning-point that marks … the definite acceptance of international anarchy. That turning-point is the emergence of the sovereign State at the end of the fifteenth century” (Dickinson 1917 [1916], 13). The final sentence concludes that “the European anarchy is the real cause of European wars” (Dickinson 1917 [1916], 144). (Note the definite article and the adjective.) Especially problematic for the Mearsheimer-Schmidt reading is the fact that Dickinson’s Causes of International War, published in 1920, between his two anarchy books, does not identify anarchy as a cause of war. (There is only one passing reference to “the long anarchy” following the collapse of Rome (Dickinson 1920b, 27).) And all the causes of war that Dickinson does identify are, in Waltz’s terms, “unit level”: patriotism, the pursuit of economic and military power, leaders who by training and position “are incapacitated from believing in peace,” a coalition of social, military, and economic elites, crowd dynamics, and secret diplomacy (1920b, 34–36, 17, 49–52, 67–68, 63–81, 82. See also 1917 [1916], 46). Dickinson even insists that “we cannot deny the possibility of such a change in human motives as may put an end to international war” (1920b, 62–63). Anarchy, for Dickinson, is neither a general feature of international relations nor a general cause of war. “The international anarchy” is but one very particular (and particularly perverse) type of international system. Similarly, (Schmidt 2002) uses anarchy in its title but quotes only one passage using the term.

126

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

For example, Schmidt argues that Stephen “Leacock articulated the theoretical limits of the concept of sovereignty for examining the external relations of states and, in doing so, outlined one of the main props of the political discourse of anarchy” and that Westel Woodbury Willoughby’s “reference to the international milieu as being analogous to a state of nature is a major component of the political discourse of anarchy.”181 As Schmidt’s further discussions clearly indicate, though, Leacock and Willoughby addressed not anarchy but sovereignty, independence, authority, the state, and the state of nature182 – which have standard and common meanings, significance, and uses independent of any connection to anarchy. (That a and b both refer to c does not indicate that a and b have the same meaning – let alone that they mean c.) Willoughby examines the nature of the state, with little attention to international relations. When he does address international relations, briefly, near the end of his book,183 he does not even note the absence of international government (or any other marker of “anarchy”). Quite the contrary, he begins by claiming that “the most obvious fact is the increasing inter-nationality of interests that attends advancing civilization” and argues that “the principles of international conduct that are generally accepted by all civilized peoples already constitute a very considerable body of procedure” and “in many cases common administrative procedures have been established.”184 Leacock does devote a chapter to “Relation [sic] of States to One Another,” which begins by noting that “theoretical isolation is the prime condition of existence as a state” and that “viewed in a purely theoretical light, every state is an absolutely independent unit. Its sovereignty is unlimited, and it renders political obedience to no outside authority.” Immediately, though, he goes on to argue that “it is nevertheless the case that in actual fact different states stand in close contact with one another in a variety of ways … bring[ing] separate states into permanent relations demanding some sort of regulation”185 and that “the action of modern states shows an increasing tendency to conform to a generally recognized usage.”186 And Leacock explicitly presents Westphalia as putting an end to “the anarchy of the state of nature” to which “the 181 (Schmidt 1998, 84, 90). 182 Each uses “anarchy” or “anarchic” six times, indicating disorder (except for two references by Willoughby to anarchism). (Willoughby 1896, 71, 85, 90, 318, 320, 340), (Leacock 1906, 93, 101, 112, 114–115, 289, 374). 183 (Willoughby 1896, 404–406ff). 184 (Willoughby 1896, 404). 185 (Leacock 1906, 89). 186 (Leacock 1906, 90).

Anarchy

127

savagery of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” had reduced Europe.187 In other words, both Leacock and Willoughby actually draw attention away from a discourse of anarchy and toward nongovernmental forms of law and regulation. The absence of an international government is a background condition that sets a context for analyses that focus on the presence of international governance. A discourse of anarchy is Schmidt’s anachronistic imposition. 6.5

The Construction of Anarchy

I suspect that some readers remain unconvinced. Anarchy, they might say – the absence of an international government – is not merely a fact but an obvious and important, even defining, fact of international relations. Therefore, earlier authors must have engaged it, centrally – and so must we today. “Anarchy,” however, is not a pre-given “thing” lying “out there,” waiting for us to stub our toe against or dis-cover and then come to grips with. As Schmidt argues, “the concept of anarchy is more a function of internal disciplinary debate than a self-referential empirical fact of the external world.”188 And as Waltz noted, “even descriptive terms acquire different meanings as theories change.”189 The “fact” of the absence of a government can just as plausibly be understood as governance without a government, order in the absence of an orderer, or a decentralized allocation of authority. “Something” is out there that IR “must” grapple with. But anarchy is a very particular construction of that “thing.” And there is a huge difference between, for example, attempting to mitigate the effects of anarchy and providing international governance. Centering IR on anarchy defines international relations by something that states have but international societies lack. (Compare defining Physics as a science that deals with non-living stuff.) Governance in the absence of government, by contrast, positively describes a particular kind (or kinds) of political order; distinctive (not defective) kinds of political systems. In addition, as we saw earlier in this chapter, many authors before Waltz emphasized the advance of governance (rather than the persisting

187 (Leacock 1906, 93). 188 (Schmidt 1998b, 231). 189 (Waltz 1979, 12. See also 10).

128

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

absence of an international government). This is even more striking in contemporary discussions of “global governance.” Whether such accounts are factually correct or analytically fruitful should be addressed as empirical questions – not ignored or pre-empted. Or consider thinking not of anarchic international orders but of states systems, as was the norm in IR prior to Waltz. States systems are a particular kind of international system that prioritizes the autonomy of its members by radically decentralizing authority. States, however, also have many interests that can only be realized through coexistence, coordination, or cooperation. International rules and institutions in this understanding are neither a puzzle to be explained nor a mechanism to mitigate the effects of anarchy. They are the expected result of a particular distribution of authority in an international system populated by polities with mixed motives. More broadly, de-centering anarchy shifts our attention to variability and change in international systems. Defining the structure of international systems primarily by anarchy means that all international systems are fundamentally the same (they are all (equally) anarchic) and that they change only in secondary ways – and even then only rarely (in the Waltzian account, only when the number of great powers changes between one, two, and a few). Such a construction, whatever analytical and practical purposes it might serve, is fundamentally misleading as a general account of international relations. For example, in the standard (Waltzian) story, Eurocentric “international relations” remained the same from, if not the fall of Rome, then, say Charlemagne, until World War II. (The system remained anarchic and multipolar.190) Then, in half a century, the structure of the system changed twice (to bipolar and then back to multipolar). This reading is, at best, stunningly obtuse. Even if anarchy has singular determinate effects (which I have argued it does not), we need to be able to capture no less fundamental (and, in the ordinary-language sense of the term, no less structural) changes such as the rise and fall of the papacy (and of the Holy Roman Empire), the rise of kings (then national polities, then territorial polities), and the changing scale and interaction capacity of the system – or, on somewhat more modest time frames, changes such as the abolition of overseas colonial empires, the development of a global division of labor, and the 190 Almost as remarkable as the constancy of anarchy in the Waltzian construction is the constancy of multipolarity – which, because it is defined as a distribution of capabilities and operationalized as bipolar or multipolar, does not vary as the identities of the great powers change (so long as they remain more than two). See further §11.4.1.

Anarchy

129

international renaissance of “nonstate actors.” Furthermore, we need to acknowledge that stories of fundamental change and variety are, at the very least, no less central to an insightful and useful discipline as examples of “the striking sameness of the quality of international life through the millennia” that, Waltz argued, “the anarchic character of international politics accounts for.”191 Waltz, rather than investigate how international systems are structured, used a system-level variable to explain a few important transhistorical patterns across international systems. This simply is not systemic theory or research. It abstracts from, rather than investigates, how parts of a complex whole are arranged and how the operation of a system explains certain features of the world. And IR has, most unfortunately, taken Waltz’s false pretense as the epitome of systemic theory.

191



(Waltz 1979, 66)

130

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem



Appendix 6.1



“Anarchy” in Early IR (1895–1945)

Occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in selected books published between 1895 and 1945.

Book

Uses

Book

Uses

(Lawrence 1898 [1895])*° (Willoughby 1896)*°

5

(Bryce 1922)*°

2

6

13

(Moore 1898)

3

(Trueblood 1899)*° (Reinsch 1900)*°

1 1

(Gibbons 1922)*° (Hobson 1922)*° (Potter 1922)*° (Walsh 1922)*°

(Hobson 1902)*°

2

(Leacock 1906)*° (Hull 1908)* (Angell 1910)*° (Hill 1911)*° (Reinsch 1911)*

6 0 1 11 0

(Butler 1912)*° (Mahan 1912)*° (Angell 1914)*° (Brailsford 1917 [1914])

0 1 0 1

(Hobson 1915)*°

0

(Lippmann 1915)*°

4

(Dickinson 1917 [1916])*° (Grant et al. 1916)*° (Woolf 1916)*° (Smuts 1918)*° (Heatley 1919) (Lawrence 1919)*° (Mackinder 1919)*° (Dickinson 1920b) (Follett 1920)*°

4 13 4

(Zimmern 2 1922)*° (Brown 1923)° 2 (Hall 1924) 4 (Buell 1925)° 2 (Moon 1925) 1 (Dickinson 100+ 1926) (Moon 1926) 2 (Politis 1926) 3 (Delaisi 1927) 2 (Noel-Baker 1 1928)° (Potter and West 2 1927) (Mowat 1929)° 4

100+ (Potter 1929)

2

11 1 2 0 2 2 1

(Shotwell 1929) 14 (Barnes 1930)° 20 (Bowman 1930) 0 (Wright 1930)° 2 (Hodges 1931)° 5 (Mowat 1931) 4 (Manning 1932) 0

11

(Muir 1932)

2

Book

Uses

(Fenwick 1934)°

12

(Ware 1934)

1

(Lasswell 1935)°

0

(Kerr 1935)*° 26 (Simonds and Emeny 14 1935) (Russell 1936) 14 (Zimmern 1936)° (Dunn 1937)° (Manning 1937) (Bailey 1938) (Friedrich 1938)

2 0 0 0 9

(de Madariaga 1938) 21 (Carr 1964 [1946])° 2 (Maxwell 1939) 7 (Whittlesey 1939) 0 (Davies 1940) (Middlebush and Hill 1940) (Sharp and Kirk 1940)° (Wolfers 1940) (Woolf 1940) (Kerr 1941) (Mander 1941) (Spykman 1942)*° (Strausz-Hupé 1942) (Wright 1964 [1942])*° (Earle, Craig, and Gilbert 1943)

15 6 10 1 8 12 13 8 0 18 3

Anarchy

131

(cont.) Book

Uses

(Hicks 1920)*°

2

(Keynes 1920)*°

1

(Angell 1921)*° (Bowman 1921)*° (Laski 1921)*°

12 13 5

Book

Uses

(Niebuhr 16 1932)*° (Lauterpacht 2 1933) (Mitrany 1933)° 7 (Schuman 16 1933)° (Bernard and 0 Bernard 1934)

Book

Uses

(Gulick 1943)*°

8

(Lippmann 1943)

0

(Mitrany 1944)° (Fox 1944)°

0 0

(Sprout and Sprout 1945)

0

*

  = used in subset in §6.4.4.   = used in §9.1.2.

°

Appendix 6.2

“Anarchy” in Post-World War II IR (1946–1978)

Occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in selected books published between 1946 and 1978.

Book

Uses

Book

Uses

(Morgenthau 1946) (Wight 1978 [1946])*° (Kirk 1947) (Morgenthau 1948) (Butterfield 1950)° (Dunn 1950) (Friedmann 1951) (Kennan 1951)° (Morgenthau 1951)° (Perkins 1952)° (Deutsch 1953) (Tannenbaum 1955) (Deutsch 1957)° (Kaplan 1957)° (Kissinger 1957)° (Organski 1958)° (Brodie 1959) (Fox 1959) (Herz 1959)° (Waltz 1959)*

1 11 0 10 2 0 3 2 2 0 0 0 1 2 2 0 0 4 11 39

(Wolfers 1962) (Hinsley 1963)* (Haas 1964)*° (Burton 1965) (Hoffmann 1965)° (Sprout and Sprout 1965) (Aron 2003 [1966])*° (Butterfield and Wight 1966) (McClelland 1966) (Osgood and Tucker 1967)° (Singer 1968) (Morgenthau 1970)° (Rosenau 1971)° (Burton 1972)* (Keohane and Nye 1972) (Porter 1972) (Brodie 1973)° (Weltman 1973) (Falk 1975) (Gilpin 1975)°

4 9 0 7 2 0 11 31 0 2 0 6 0 0 1 13 0 1 2 0

132

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

(cont.) Book

Uses

Book

Uses

(Rapoport 1960)* (Richardson 1960) (Schelling 1960)* (Rosenau 1961) (Snyder 1961)° (Boulding 1962) (Claude 1962)°

0 0 1 8 0 1 16

(Greenstein and Polsby 1975) (Jervis 1976)*° (Wallerstein 2011 [1976])*° (Bull 1977)*° (Keohane and Nye 1977) (Snyder and Diesing 1977) (Krasner 1978)*°

11 10 3 100+ 0 7 2

*

  = used in subset in §6.4.4   = used in §9.1.2.

°

Appendix 6.3

“Anarchy” in Contemporary IR (1979–2020)

Occurrences of “anarchy” and “anarchic” in selected books published between 1979 and 2020. Book

Uses Book

(Waltz 1979) 48 (Bueno de Mesquita 0 1981) (Gilpin 1981) 13 (Krasner 1983) 29

(Keohane 1984) (Keohane 1986a) (Oye 1986)

Uses

Book

(Finnemore 1996) (Frankel 1996)

7 100+

(Wight 2006) (Booth 2007)

(Huntington 1996) (Katzenstein 1996)

5 59

6 (Jervis 1997) 93 (Rosenau 1997) 100+ (Snyder 1997)

12 17 39

(Walt 1987) 2 (Ferguson and 74 Mansbach 1988) (Enloe 2001 [1989]) 0

(Campbell 1998) (Barnett 1998)

5 23

(Buzan, Waever, and Wilde 1998)

25

(Kratochwil 1989)

27

(Onuf 1989)

48

(Jackson 1990) (Holsti 1991)

3 18

(Dunne, Cox, and 39 Booth 1998) (Keck and Sikkink 3 1998) (Ruggie 1998) 33 (Katzenstein, Keohane, 30 and Krasner 1999a)

Uses 11 23

(Deudney 2007) 100+ (Kaufman, Little, 57 and Wohlforth 2007) (Little 2007) 53 (Lebow 2008) 27 (Reus-Smit and 100+ Snidal 2008) (Nexon 2009) 51 (Simmons 2009) 2 (Avant, 4 Finnemore, and Sell 2010) (Glaser 2010) 54 (Adler and Pouliot 4 2011) (Linklater 2011) 16 (Carlsnaes, Risse, 86 and Simmons 2013)

Anarchy

133

(cont.) Book

Uses Book

(Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993) (Gill 1993)

100+ (Krasner 1999)

Uses

Book

Uses

12

(Tickner 2014)

10

(Buzan and 6 Lawson 2015) (Albert 2016) 5 (Dunne and Reus- 19 Smit 2017) (Zarakol 2017a) 47 (Katzenstein and 2 Seybert 2018) (Gheciu and 42 Wohlforth 2018) (Zürn 2018) 20 (Adler 2019) 5

18

(Reus-Smit 1999)

25

(Vasquez 1993) (Walker 1993)

21 39

(Wendt 1999) (Ikenberry 2001)

97 17

(Rosenberg 1994b) (Spruyt 1994)

45 15

(Mearsheimer 2001) 46 (Carlsnaes, Risse, and 86 Simmons 2002) (Sterling-Folker 2002) 100+

(Young 1994) (Bartelson 1995a) (Chayes and Chayes 1995) (Alker 1996) (Cox 1996)

5 23 5 58 2

(Teschke 2003) (Barnett and Duvall 2005) (Hui 2005)

53 9 19

(Schweller 2006)

11

(Davies and True 0 2019) (Spruyt 2020) 29

7

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

One of Waltz’s major contributions was the idea that political structures can, in first approximation, be specified by ordering principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities.1 I call this the tripartite conception of the elements of political structures. The tripartite conception was quickly adopted across most of IR. Even today it grounds structural realism and is a starting point for both neoclassical realists and neoliberals (who explore forces that alter “the effects of anarchy”). And although constructivists (and others) often add further features, such as norms, institutions, and identity, they typically do so in an ad hoc fashion (rather than as elements of a general structural framework).2 Other than historical materialism, which is largely ignored by those working outside of that tradition, contemporary IR has no other widely endorsed comprehensive account of the nature and content of international political structures. Waltz’s particular implementation of the tripartite conception also remains influential. He argued that there are only two political ordering principles, anarchy and hierarchy,3 which order, respectively,

1 (Waltz 1979, ch. 5, esp. 88–99). 2 For example, Wendt’s famous discussion of cultures of anarchy (1992, 1999, ch. 6) looks at “role structure” but (because it is not necessary for his purposes) never addresses “structure” more generally. Similarly, Daniel Deudney’s model of “structural negarchy” (a system that is “more than a confederation of states in anarchy, and less than a state with extensive devolution” (1995, 208)) is tied to no clear conception of structure. (For example, Deudney argues that the system’s “highly articulated structures combined familiar forms of popular sovereignty, formal state equality, balance of power, and division of power on the basis of a distinct structural principle [negarchy]” (1995, 193). And, without any broader context, he refers to “another structural variable, hegemony” (1995, 213).) Consider also, Deudney and John Ikenberry’s (1999) insightful but ad hoc model of liberal international order. See further n. 56 in §9.4. Although one need not root an account of a particular structure or element in a general structural framework, developing a more adequate general framework seems to me an obviously worthwhile project that has been largely ignored in IR. 3 (Waltz 1979, 88–93, 100, 114–116).

134

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

135

international and national political systems.4 In hierarchical/national systems actors are functionally differentiated. In anarchic/international systems, however, Waltz claimed that because all units are fundamentally the same, functional differentiation “drops out.”5 The structures of international political systems therefore vary only in their distributions of capabilities.6 Although the tripartite conception can, in principle, be implemented in other ways – for example, by identifying additional ordering principles7  – no alternative has been seriously pursued.8 Therefore, I often focus on Waltz’s particular implementation. Most of my arguments, however, apply to the tripartite conception in general. And my ultimate aim is to show that the structures of most international political systems cannot be adequately depicted in terms of a few combinations of a few standard elements. 7.1

The Distinctiveness of the Waltzian Conception

Before working on this book, I had assumed that Waltz must have been following, or at least combining elements from, prior accounts. For example, Waltz noted that he “found the following works bearing on systems theory and cybernetics especially useful: (Angyal 1939), (Ashby 1956), (Von Bertalanffy 1968), (Buckley 1968), (Nadel 1957), (Smith 1956, 1966), (Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson 1967), and (Wiener 1961).”9 But when I examined these sources I could find nothing even close to the Waltzian tripartite conception – or even a single use of the crucial term “ordering principle.”10 Waltz appears to have combined his novel notion of ordering principles with polarity, which prior work had convinced him was of decisive

4 5 6 7 8

See §6.1.3. (Waltz 1979, 93–97, 101 (“drops out”)). (Waltz 1979, 97–99, 101). See §§9.3, 9.4. The partial exception is a recurrent unease, going back to Ruggie (1983, 273–274ff.), with the idea that functional differentiation drops out. I know of no sustained effort, though, to incorporate functional differentiation into a tripartite account of international systems – largely, I suspect, because that would conflict with Waltz’s understandings of “the unit level” (see §5.5) and structural/non-reductionist theory (see §5.3). 9 (Waltz 1979, 40 n. * = 1975, 78 n. 40). 10 I searched electronically (separately) for “order,” “ordering,” and “principle” in all these works. Some, though, were searchable on Google Books only in “snippet view,” so I cannot be certain that I did not miss a few uses. I did, however, manually examine paper copies of those books and was not able to find any uses.

136

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

structural significance in international systems,11 and vaguely Durkheimian ideas about differentiation.12 The tripartite conception, in other words, was largely without precedent.13 Furthermore, it has had no impact outside of IR. Early in my work on this book I searched electronically for uses of the Waltzian concept. I could find none in Sociology, Anthropology, Archaeology, or other fields in Political Science. For example, in the first 300 results of a Google Scholar search in September 2013 for “ordering principle” and “structure,” ordering principle was presented as a defining component of structure only in works by or citing Waltz. The same was true of the first 100 results of a search for “ordering principle” and “social structure.” And semi-systematic JSTOR searches of all journals in these disciplines, in both 2013 and 2021, were similarly fruitless. This, I will argue, is because the Waltzian account is fundamentally misguided and, as I suggest in §7.4, provides a plausible foundation for no substantive theory other that structural realism. 7.2

Three Simple Anarchic Systems

This section assesses the tripartite conception by looking at the structures of three simple anarchic systems. To the well-known examples of Hobbesian states of nature and great power states systems I add forager societies (which I discussed in §6.3). IR’s standard Waltzian account depicts these systems as having the same structure: they are anarchic and multipolar. In fact, though, they are organized and operate in very different ways.

11 See §8.2.2. Waltz expressed his debt to Durkheim in (1979, 111 n. *; 1986, 323). See also (Waltz 2007, 107–108) and (Waltz and Kreisler 2003, p. 1 of 7). That influence, though, it seems to me, came primarily through structural functionalism (e.g., (Nadel 1957) and (Smith 1956, 1966)). (Goddard and Nexon 2005, 11–25) addresses Waltz’s relations with structural functionalism. 13 I have, however, been convinced by Aaron Sampson’s clever argument (2002, 437– 440) that Waltz was inspired by S. F. Nadel’s The Theory of Social Structure (1957), which he cited three times (1979, 40 n. *, 80, 120–121). Nadel’s terminology, however, is not even close to Waltz’s. Therefore, despite having read Nadel with Waltz in mind, I did not see the parallels that Sampson elucidates by creatively re-reading Nadel through Waltz. The parallels are further obscured by the fact that Waltz took his account in a completely different direction. For example, Sampson observes (2002, 438) that Nadel’s “theory of structure depends on his theory of role. It is impossible to have one without the other.” Waltz, however, created an asocial, role-less conception of structure. 12

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

7.2.1

137

The Hobbesian State of Nature and Forager Societies

In Hobbes’ ideal-type state of nature, men live without government or any other “common power to keep them all in awe.”14 There is no functional differentiation. And capabilities are distributed equally.15 In forager societies as well, materially equal and minimally differentiated actors interact in the absence of both government and hierarchy.16 Foragers, however, as we saw in §6.3.4, are warless societies. Hobbes’ world, in sharp contrast, is characterized by a “war of every man against every man.”17 It would be a great surprise if systems that operate so differently had the same structure.18 And in fact they don’t. Hobbes draws attention to three additional features of his state of nature. Actors are driven by competition, diffidence, and glory (which generate conflict for gain, safety, and reputation).19 Conflict is intensified by an “equality of hope in the attaining of our ends”20 that is frustrated by scarcity, greed, and vanity. And “notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place;”21 there are neither normative constraints on nor justifications for behavior. Hobbes’ war of all against all arises where equal, competitive, fearful, and vain egoists with equal hopes of attaining their ends interact in a world in which goods and respect are scarce and where rules do not exist (and could not be enforced if they did). In forager societies, by contrast, equal actors in a world of material sufficiency governed by egalitarian customary practices enjoy sharing social relations.22 14

Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 8. 15 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 1. 16 See §6.3. Briefly, “foragers,” the simplest type of hunter-gatherers, live in bands composed usually of dozens of individuals. Although their material life is extremely simple, they experience abundance, in the sense that their needs and principal desires are relatively easily satisfied. They have no social hierarchy and almost no functional differentiation. Political decisions typically are made by open discussion leading to consensus and are not subject to official coercive enforcement. But foragers do not balance or pursue relative gains. They do not experience security dilemmas. And relations between bands are warless. 17 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 12. 18 Or, if they did, structure would be of little or no explanatory value. See also §6.1.5. 19 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 6, 7. Note that these are not contingent features of particular actors but a structural feature of the system. All actors are competitive, fearful, and vain. (This also underscores the fact that characteristics of the parts are essential to any systemic theory.) 20 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 3. 21 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 12. See also ch. 14, par. 4. 22 §6.3.5 sketches the logic of what I call binding through sharing in forager societies.

138

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

If structure means the organization or arrangement of the parts of a system, as it does both in ordinary language and in Waltz’s account,23 then these systems are structured differently. Different kinds of parts are arranged and operate in different ways to produce different characteristic behaviors and outcomes. 7.2.2

Great Power States Systems

Great power states systems, which also are anarchic and (usually) multipolar, are arranged/structured in still another fashion. They are composed of unequal and functionally differentiated actors.24 States are legally superior to and perform different functions than nonstate actors. Furthermore, great powers are (at least unofficially) superior to lesser states and, as Waltz himself put it, “take on special responsibilities” as “specialists in managing system-wide affairs.”25 Great power states systems (like forager societies but unlike states of nature) are rule-governed. For example, structural realists assume that the “units” are sovereign states26 – which have different rights and responsibilities than non-sovereign actors. Sovereignty is also essential to the stratification of great power systems. And the normative and institutional resources of states are important elements of their capabilities. All three types of systems are structured around a particular kind of dominant actor. Great powers, however, are very different from both Hobbesian individuals and forager bands – and thus behave in different ways. Finally, because different types of actors are differently situated, there is no single behavioral logic in great power states systems. Great powers balance among themselves, exercise sovereign rights and prerogatives in relations with other states and nonstate actors, and regularly establish (unofficial and sometimes even official) hierarchical privileges over lesser powers. Weak states bandwagon (or hide). Nonstate actors have highly restricted options for self-help. (Most are precluded from using force and have a limited (or no) international legal personality.) 23 (Waltz 1979, 39). 24 In §7.2.4 I consider Waltz’s explicit denial of these structural facts about great power states systems. 25 (Waltz 1979, 198, 197). 26 (Mearsheimer 2001, 30–31), (Waltz 1979, 95–96, 116). Waltz later (1990b, 37 n. 37) refined his account, holding that units in anarchy are autonomous (and that sovereignty is only one form that autonomy may take). Autonomy, however, is also a normative status (not simply a matter of capabilities).

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

7.2.3

139

The Effects of Existential Fear

Because anarchy is the heart of Waltz’s account of international political structures, it may be useful to return briefly to “the effects of anarchy”27 with these cases in mind. Hobbes explicitly argues that anarchy (alone) does not have singular effects. Though there had never been any time wherein particular men were in a condition of war one against another, yet in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another … which is a posture of war. But because they uphold thereby the industry of their subjects, there does not follow from it that misery which accompanies the liberty of particular men.28

Sovereigns and individuals behave differently “in anarchy,” which is structured differently “internationally” and in the state of nature29 – as is evident from the fact that in states systems the lives of neither individuals nor states are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”30 The explanatory work in Hobbes’ account is done not by the mere absence of a government but by the “continual fear, and danger of violent death”31 that results from the conjunction of actors of a particular type in the formless void of the state of nature. Foragers clearly show that it is not true, as Waltz claimed, that “­balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two, and only two, requirements are met: that the order be anarchic and that it be populated by units wishing to survive.”32 Balancing in anarchy arises not from the mere desire to survive but from an existential fear that largely pre-empts other concerns – which is not a universal feature of anarchic systems. Similarly, John Mearsheimer emphasizes “the importance of fear as a motivating force in world politics”33 and argues that three features of the international system combine to cause states to fear one another: 1) the absence of a central authority that sits above states and can protect them from each other, 2) the fact that states always have some offensive

27

See §6.2. 28 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 12 [emphasis added]. 29 Note that Wendt’s “Hobbesian” anarchy of enemies models not Hobbes’ state of nature among individuals but “anarchy” among sovereigns – which has a very different structure and consequences. See also (Christov 2017). 30 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 9. 31 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 9. 32 (Waltz 1979, 121). Even here, anarchy alone explains nothing. 33 (Mearsheimer 2001, 32).

140

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

military capability, and 3) the fact that states can never be certain about other states’ intentions. Given this fear – which can never be wholly eliminated – states recognize that the more powerful they are relative to their rivals, the better their chances of survival.34

Such fear, however, is entirely absent in (equally anarchic) forager societies. Foragers faced with “the same” anarchic situation behave completely differently – because binding through sharing pre-empts fear of others by linking people’s lives to one another.35 Self-help balancing is only one possible security strategy “in anarchy;” one of multiple ways that societies have grappled with the problems posed by the absence of an international government.36 Mearsheimer’s account does not, as he claims, arise simply from the fact that states “are merely concerned with their survival.”37 (Foragers too are concerned with their survival.) It just is not true that in anarchic systems “survival mandates aggressive behavior.”38 Neither is it true that, defining structure as anarchy and distribution of capabilities, “the structure of the international system forces states which seek only to be secure nonetheless to act aggressively toward each other.”39 Finally, it is worth repeating that we cannot array Hobbes’ state of nature, great power states systems, Wendt’s anarchy among rivals, and forager societies across the top of Figure 6.1 (which charts different kinds of consequences of anarchy). That would mistakenly suggest that Hobbes captures the essence of anarchy, which is mitigated in great power states systems (and Wendtian systems of rivals) and overcome in forager societies (and systems of friends). Balancing in great power states systems is not a moderated form of the war of all against all. (It is an emergent property of a system of competitive and fearful sovereign states operating in an institutionally thin states system.) Anarchy among rivals is not a less extreme form of anarchy among enemies. And binding through sharing (or anarchy among friends) is not a modified form of any of these (or any other) structures.

34

(Mearsheimer 2001, 3. See also 32: “three general patterns of behavior emerge: fear, self-help, and power maximization”). 35 See §6.3.5. 36 See also §14.3. 37 (Mearsheimer 2001, 3). 38 (Mearsheimer 2001, 21). 39 (Mearsheimer 2001, 3). Although Mearsheimer does not define structure – oddly for someone who relies so heavily on structural arguments – he gives no indication that he understands it differently than Waltz. (If one argues that these claims are restricted to states in a states system (not “units”) then anarchy alone is not doing the explanatory work – and the account does not apply to international systems in general.)

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

7.2.4

141

The Failure of the Tripartite Conception

The tripartite conception does not explain the characteristic behaviors of any of these anarchic societies. (That the same features are associated with often opposed behaviors indicates that they (alone) explain none of those behaviors.) It leaves out vital elements of the structure of all three types of systems. And, most troublingly, Waltz’s depiction of the structure of great power states systems, his implicit model of a generic international system, is wildly inaccurate on all three of his dimensions of structure.40 Anarchic/international orders, Waltz claimed, lack hierarchy.41 Great power states systems, however, are defined by the double stratification of states over nonstate actors and great powers over lesser states. (Waltz’s error is like arguing that armies lack hierarchy because generals are roughly equal in rank.) Waltz also claimed that units in anarchic orders are functionally undifferentiated.42 This confuses the similarity of the dominant actors with the absence of functional differentiation in the system.43 States and nonstate actors clearly perform different political functions. And Waltz devoted Chapter 9 of Theory of International Politics to the managerial functions of great powers. Finally, treating the distribution of capabilities as a matter of polarity44 misdescribes the actual distribution of capabilities. Waltz considered only great powers – which is as misguided as depicting the distribution of wealth in a society by the number of billionaires.45 Waltz got everything wrong – and most of it backward – in depicting the structure of his exemplary international system. It is hard to imagine a more devastating indictment of the tripartite conception.46 Two explanations seem to me likely.47 First, Waltz implicitly incorporated taken-for-granted features of contemporary international relations. For example, as we saw in §5.5,

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

On the importance of essential descriptive accuracy in structural models, see §4.9. (Waltz 1979, 88). See also §6.1.1. (Waltz 1979, 93, 97). See §8.1. (Waltz 1979, 98–99, 129–131). See also §11.4.1. This is an indictment of the tripartite conception in general, not just Waltz’s particular implementation. The only other plausible tripartite interpretation – that great power states systems are hierarchical and functionally differentiated – is, at best, uninformative. 47 When one identifies a gross and systematic analytical blunder in the work of a smart and well-respected scholar, one should be reluctant to accept that reading if one cannot specify why or how she ended up there.

142

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

rather than “abstract from every attribute of states except their capabilities”48 he assumed particular attributes such as sovereignty, territoriality, acquisitiveness, and an overriding desire for autonomy.49 And, as we saw earlier in this section, he (falsely) assumed that anarchy (alone) generates an overwhelming fear for survival. At best, Waltz (misre)presented one type of international system as the general form of international relations. Second, Waltz got the structure of great power states systems wrong because he was not actually interested in structure. His goal was parsimonious causal explanations of law-like regularities; theory of international politics.50 “Knowing” that great powers are the causally most efficacious international actors, Waltz adopted a “simplifying” focus on their actions. For example, Waltz claimed that “concern with international politics as a system requires concentration on the states that make the most difference.”51 This confuses what is necessary for a good “causal” explanation with what is necessary to depict a structure.52 The structure of a great power states system can no more be defined in terms of great powers than the structure of a family can be defined in terms of parents or the structure of a domestic political system can be defined by relations among ruling elites. The tripartite conception either is simply wrong – it misdescribes the arrangement of the parts of international systems53 – or tells us almost nothing of explanatory significance. The specified explanatia cannot account for the effects in question. In explaining the behavior of unequal and differentiated actors in great power states systems, it is worse than irrelevant to say, as Waltz did, that equal and undifferentiated actors “in anarchy” can be expected to behave in certain ways. Compare “explaining” death from a brain tumor by reference to a hemorrhagic stroke or a gunshot wound. Such an “explanation” is either wrong or a non sequitur. 48 (Waltz 1979, 99). 49 Similarly, Waltz, despite acknowledging that in markets “the self-help principle applies within governmentally contrived limits … [including] laws against shooting a competitor” (1979, 91), claimed that “a market is not an institution” and that “the structure of the market is defined by the number of firms competing” (1979, 90, 93). In other words, he both took for granted the hierarchical institutions that structure markets and denied that they shape the system’s structure. See also (1979, 77–78). 50 See §§4.1.1, 4.4. 51 (Waltz 1979, 94. See also 93, 73). 52 See also §6.1.5. 53 On the importance of fundamental descriptive accuracy in systemic/structural explanations, see §4.9.

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

143

This point, I think, bears repeating. Because the actors in great power states systems are differentiated and unequal, referring to how equal and undifferentiated actors can be expected to behave “in anarchy” is either the wrong explanation or no explanation at all.54 Even if behavior proves to be “as predicted,” mis-specifying the cause leaves us with, at best, a correlation that not only tells us nothing about how or why the outcome arose but actively misdirects our attention.55 Finally, I would note that if all international systems are anarchic then anarchy is correlated with any (all) behavioral patterns in international systems – and thus (alone) explains none. 7.3

Looking Behind the Tripartite Conception

If the tripartite conception is anywhere close to as confused as I am suggesting, why was it so widely accepted in IR? More importantly, why does it remain the default understanding? Part of the explanation is a tendency in IR to treat problems in the Waltzian account of political structures as matters of detail that can be corrected piecemeal, as needed. The tripartite conception thus is typically taken for granted – but not too seriously. And the fact that no actual research in IR has restricted analysis to Waltzian structure alone has meant that we have not been compelled to confront the profound inadequacies of the tripartite conception. The acceptance of the tripartite conception has also been facilitated by the fact that it was built on the obvious but nonetheless important insight that both legal authority and material power are central to the structure of political systems. Ordering principle and functional differentiation seem to address authority. Distribution of capabilities seems to address material power. The basic terms of reference thus seem “right.” Furthermore, the tripartite conception appears to “work” in states systems – if we are willing to set aside the (in fact essential) initial hierarchical distribution of authority and political functions to states.56 Waltz starts his story with pre-given “units” that have supreme legal authority within their territories and are free of obligations to any higher authority. Variations in their material power thus may profitably be 54

Looking at great powers and their relations would analytically address only a part of the system (not its structure) – or the great power subsystem (not the international political system of which it is a part). 55 On the importance of fundamental descriptive accuracy in systemic and structural explanations, see §4.9. 56 How these “states” could be constituted as states with neither authority nor differentiated functions – or even what that might mean – is, to me at least, a mystery.

144

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

approached as sharply separated from their legal authority (which they all have equally). The tripartite conception collapses, though, when we introduce hierarchy into the account, as in great power states systems.57 “Hierarchy” tells us only that authority is not equally distributed. “Ordering principle” therefore does not specify the distribution of authority.58 In addition, in hierarchies the interconnections between legal authority and material power make some overall measure of the distribution of capabilities of little interest.59 In depicting political structures, we should indeed give central attention to authorities, functions, and material capabilities. But ordering principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities are, superficial impressions to the contrary, utterly inadequate to this task – especially when they are understood not as mutually co-constitutive dimensions of structural differentiation but as separate elements of “the structure” (that are to be deployed separately in structural explanations). 7.4

Structural Theory vs. Theory of International Politics

Waltz’s clearly announced project was “theory of international politics.” A useful theory of international politics, however, cannot be a structural theory (in the Waltzian sense of a theory that appeals solely to structural (system-level) variables60). A purely structural theory of international politics (in general) requires reducing “structure” to the few features that (almost all) international systems share. Waltz in effect suggested – not unreasonably – that this includes little beyond the lack of a government and the presence of some sort of distribution of capabilities (plus some limited functional differentiation). As we have seen, though, these features cannot fruitfully depict the structure of any international system. Waltz, in other words, sacrificed systemic or structural explanation to “theory of international politics.” Furthermore, Waltz’s account of structure almost demands a theory like structural realism. (It is hard to construct anything else out of anarchy and polarity alone.) But even most realists agree that structural theory, thus understood, has only a small part to play in the discipline. As 57

I pursue this point in more detail in §§8.1 and 9.1. 58 “All have equal authority” does specify a particular type of distribution of authority. “Different actors have different authorities” does not. (Although the absence of hierarchy may be an ordering principle, the presence of hierarchy is not.) 59 See §8.2.1. 60 See §5.3.

The Tripartite Conception of Structure

145

Waltz put it, structural realism (only) “tell[s] us a small number of big and important things.”61 Or, in more deflationary terms, the only real issue of contention is how much we should emphasize the fact that the insights of Waltzian structural theory are few. If, though, as I have argued, international structures are complex, multidimensional, and varied then a more adequate conception of systems and their structures might reinvigorate systemic theory in IR. Part III of this book suggests some steps in that direction. First, though, I consider the individual elements of the tripartite conception, to see if there is anything that might be worth salvaging.

61

(Waltz 1986, 329).

8

Functional Differentiation and Distribution of Capabilities

Even if the tripartite conception as a whole is inadequate there may be value in its individual elements. This very brief chapter looks at functional differentiation and the distribution of capabilities. The next chapter considers ordering principles. 8.1

International Systems Are Functionally Differentiated

Waltz claimed that although functional differentiation is inherently structural “the units of an anarchic system are functionally undifferentiated.”1 This misrepresents both functional differentiation and the structures of international political systems. “To call states ‘like units’ … is another way of saying that states are sovereign.”2 This is also, though, another way to say that nonstate actors are not sovereign – and therefore perform different political functions. “States set the scene in which they, along with nonstate actors, stage their dramas or carry on their humdrum affairs. … [states] set the terms of the intercourse … [and] when the crunch comes, states remake the rules by which other actors operate.”3 This too is an account of functional differentiation (and superordination). Furthermore, in great power states systems, the differentiation of great powers is at least as important as the similarity of states. As Waltz put it, with characteristic exaggeration, “students of international politics make 1 (Waltz 1979, 97). “National politics consists of differentiated units performing specified functions. International politics consists of like units duplicating one another’s activities” (Waltz 1979, 97). 2 (Waltz 1979, 95). This, of course, is not true. “Units” are not states. And similarity and sovereignty are unrelated notions. “Each state, like every other state, is a sovereign political entity” (Waltz 1979, 96) because they are sovereign states – not because they are “like units.” 3 (Waltz 1979, 94).

146

Functional Differentiation and Distribution of Capabilities

147

distinctions between international-political systems only according to the number of their great powers.”4 It would indeed be “ridiculous to construct a theory of international politics based on Malaysia and Costa Rica.”5 It is no less ridiculous, though, to insist, as Waltz did, that in the international political system the United States and Malaysia are “like units” that perform similar functions – and that the only structurally relevant fact about them is their sovereign equality.6 Functional differentiation refers not (as Waltz would have it) to whether actors are similar or different7 but to however functions are differentiated and allocated to social positions. And which functions which positioned actors (do and do not) perform is central to a system’s structure. For example, an economy in which most economic activity is in the hands of largely unconstrained “private” actors is structured very differently than a command economy. Functional differentiation is a feature of the system. Even where all actors are of one type and perform the same functions, functional differentiation is not absent but takes a particular form. These (and not other) functions are allocated to those (rather than other) social positions or actors. (Even if all As are x it is no less important that not all actors are As and that As are not y or z.) Waltz was also misled by focusing on differences between national and international political systems (rather than trying to understand international systems). Even if it is true that “the division of labor across nations … is slight in comparison with the highly articulated division of labor within them,”8 a simpler differentiation of functions is precisely that – not, as Waltz claimed, the absence of functional differentiation. 8.2

The Distribution of Capabilities

“Structures are defined … [also] by the distribution of capabilities across units”9 – which, Waltz argued, in international relations means polarity;

4

(Waltz 1979, 97). However, I am aware of no student of international relations who made such a claim before Waltz (who, characteristically, provided no supporting evidence). See also n. 22. 5 (Waltz 1979, 72). 6 The capabilities of states (and differences in capabilities) are not, in Waltz’s account, structural. 7 “Anarchy entails relations of coordination among a system’s units, and that implies their sameness” (Waltz 1979, 93). 8 (Waltz 1979, 105). 9 (Waltz 1979, 101).

148

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

the number of poles of power (great powers) in the system. “Market structure is defined by counting firms; international-political structure by counting states.”10 Market structure, however, is not reducible to the number of firms. In addition to the obvious fact that a market with five equal firms and a market with one huge firm and four tiny firms have very different structures, even Waltz noted that markets are shaped by things like “pure food and drug standards, antitrust laws, securities and exchange regulations, laws against shooting a competitor, and rules forbidding false claims in advertising.”11 And he went on to note that “international politics is structurally similar to a market economy insofar as the self-help principle is allowed to operate in the latter”12 – underscoring that such features, which restrict the operation of the self-help principle, alter the structure of the market.13 In this section I ague that Waltz’s account of the distribution of capabilities, although rarely questioned, is fatally flawed. 8.2.1

The Distribution of Capabilities in Domestic Political Systems

Here is Waltz’s entire theoretical discussion of “the distribution of capabilities” in domestic political systems (which he considered before international political systems for ease of exposition14). The placement of units in relation to one another is not fully defined by a system’s ordering principle and by the formal differentiation of its parts. The standing of the units also changes with changes in their relative capabilities. In the performance of their functions, agencies may gain capabilities or lose them. The relation of Prime Minister to Parliament and of President to Congress depends on, and varies with, their relative capabilities. The third part of the definition of structure acknowledges that even while specified functions remain unchanged, units come to stand in different relation to each other through changes in relative capability.15

Waltz, as he clearly indicated, actually addressed the relative (dyadic) capabilities of differentiated actors – not the distribution of capabilities in the system. And neither the relative capabilities of actors nor the systemwide distribution of capabilities proves to be an essential third element of the structure of domestic political systems. 10

11 12 13 14 15

(Waltz 1979, 98–99). (Waltz 1979, 91). (Waltz 1979, 91 [emphasis added]). See also n. 49 in §7.2.4. (Waltz 1979, 81). (Waltz 1979, 82 [emphasis added]).

Functional Differentiation and Distribution of Capabilities

149

In hierarchical political systems “capabilities” are a mix of official and unofficial “power resources,” including (very prominently) legal authority and the powers associated with offices. Legal authority in the Waltzian scheme, however, is allocated through ordering principle and functional differentiation. Therefore, “relative capabilities” is not (cannot be) a separate third element of structure. In addition, despite having addressed (only) relative dyadic capabilities, Waltz went on to identify the third element of structure as “the distribution of capabilities across … units;”16 the system-wide (rather than dyadic) distribution of absolute (rather than relative) capabilities. This is both logically unfounded – the distribution of capabilities in the system is not the average of (or any other mathematical operation performed on) dyadic relative capabilities – and substantively misguided. If “in anarchy” all units have both the same legal powers and the same functions then differences in “capabilities” will be largely differences in material power. But in hierarchical political systems, capabilities also differ qualitatively and provide different capabilities in different domains of activity. This makes it hard to even comprehend the idea of a systemwide distribution. Not surprisingly, then, Waltz did not even attempt to illustrate what “the distribution of capabilities” might look like in domestic political systems. (To repeat, Waltz addressed dyadic relative capabilities not the system-wide distribution.) In fact, in his extended comparison of the American presidential and British parliamentary systems,17 to which he devoted as much space as his entire discussion of ordering principles in international systems,18 Waltz never even used the term “capabilities,” let alone addressed their distribution19 – because, I am suggesting, in hierarchical political systems the distribution of capabilities, even if we could specify it, has no structural significance. In developing his US–UK example Waltz did talk of “power” and “powers.”20 This, however, referenced, as it must in hierarchical political systems, a mixture of legal powers and material power, mediated through systems of official and unofficial rights, responsibilities, and roles associated with differentiated social positions – which are very different “things” from, not alternative terms for, “the distribution of capabilities.” 16

17 18 19

(Waltz 1979, 82). (Waltz 1979, 82–88). (Waltz 1979, 88–93). Nonetheless, “distribution of capabilities” is referred to both in the paragraph before and the paragraph after this example (Waltz 1979, 82, 88), creating the (false) impression that it is addressed there. See also below at nn. 24, 25. 20 (Waltz 1979, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87).

150

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

At this point, readers might complain that I am missing the point. “Raw power” certainly needs to be part of the account of the structure of domestic political systems! Certainly. The way to capture that, though, is not through an abstract distribution of merely material “capabilities” that makes no reference to any feature of the actors – not even their capabilities – and is understood as separate from ordering principle (authority) and functional differentiation (activities). And this unquestionably is not one of the few things we need in order to understand the structure of domestic political systems. 8.2.2

The Distribution of Capabilities in International Political Systems

Distribution of capabilities is not even an essential feature of international political systems – as indicated by the fact that Waltz did not actually address the distribution of capabilities in international systems. He instead examined polarity; the number of great powers (poles of power) in the system21 – which, as I noted above, is no more a useful measure of the distribution of capabilities than the number of billionaires is a useful measure of the distribution of wealth.22 The distribution of some “thing” is a matter of how it is distributed – not just where the largest quantities of it can be found. And because power is inherently relative, the places where capabilities are not is of great structural importance. Furthermore, from a systemic point of view, what is essential is the relations between parts – which measures of concentration do not address. 21

See nn. 10 and 4. 22 Furthermore, Goedele De Keersmaeker (2017, 12) notes that “a striking feature of the debate on Waltz’s legacy is that one of the most central concepts in his theory, namely, the idea of polarity as such, is seldom questioned.” Most criticisms – (Mansfield 1993) and (Wagner 1993) are partial exceptions – focus on problems in defining or operationalizing the notion, not its importance in general or Waltz’s use of polarity as a measure of the distribution of capabilities. De Keersmaeker (2017, 12) also notes that “describing international relations in terms of polarity (i.e. the number of great powers) is a rather recent phenomenon, with no earlier historical roots than the end of World War II.” More precisely, she argues (2017, 13–14, 17–18) that Waltz, building on work by William T. R. Fox (under whom Waltz studied) and Morton Kaplan, largely shaped contemporary IR’s discourse of polarity. This parallels my argument about Waltz and anarchy in §6.4. (In private communication, De Keersmaeker has noted that her dissertation (2014), in Flemish, documents the limited use of polarity in pre-Waltzian IR.)

Functional Differentiation and Distribution of Capabilities

151

Waltz ended up in this confused place, it seems to me, out of his participation in debates in the 1960s over the relative stability of bipolar and multipolar systems.23 He “knew” that polarity was a structural feature of great power states systems (his implicit model of international political systems). But as we just saw, polarity in hierarchical political systems, even if measurable, is structurally irrelevant. Nonetheless, Waltz was committed to a conception of the elements of political structure that applied to both national and international political systems. He therefore in effect used “distribution of capabilities” and “relative capabilities” as placeholders in his “preliminary” discussion of domestic political systems. And when he turned to international systems – which was his real interest, despite his pretense of providing a general structural framework – he just jumped over the distribution of capabilities, in which he had no interest, to polarity. This repeated Waltz’s bait-and-switch treatment of ordering principles.24 In both cases, Waltz brought readers in with one thing (absence of a government and the distribution of capabilities) then “sold” them something different (absence of hierarchy and polarity). For both of his elements of international political structure Waltz presented relatively appealing introductions that he elaborated in very different and much more problematic ways – shaped, I suggest, by the goal of ending up at structural realism.25 Polarity is a structural feature of great power states systems. Waltz put polarity to good use in discussing economic and military effects of structure26 and great power management of international affairs.27 And, combined with anarchy, polarity seemed to provide all that he needed for structural realism; that is, not just any “theory of international politics” but his preferred theory. Our concern here, however, is with the (alleged) underlying conception of structure. Knowing how normative powers and material power are distributed is indeed essential to understanding the structure of a political system. But Waltzian ordering principles and

23

See especially (Waltz 1964), (Deutsch and Singer 1964), (Rosecrance 1966). 24 See §6.1.1 at n. 14. See also n. 19 above. 25 See also §6.1.1 at n. 15. Although I am not suggesting that Waltz did this consciously, I do think that his desire to end up with a structural theory that highlighted the virtues of bipolarity did shape his account of these logically prior elements (in which he had little intrinsic interest). 26 (Waltz 1979, 129–130ff., 163–176). 27 (Waltz 1979, 195, 197–198, 199–204).

152

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

functional differentiation do not even begin to depict the distribution of normative powers – especially in Waltz’s understanding of international political systems as lacking authority. And polarity provides a woefully inadequate account of the distribution of material power resources.28

28

I think that this argument can be taken even a step further. Waltz never seriously considered the logic of unipolarity; did not distinguish tripolar systems, despite their obviously distinctive logic (see Schweller 1993; 1998); and failed to distinguish unpolarized systems (systems with no great powers, such as Hobbes’ state of nature). This suggests to me that Waltz was not even particularly interested in polarity as a general structural feature. His goal was to establish “the virtues of bipolarity” (1979, 168. See also 161, 176).

9

Ordering Principles

Waltz regularly reduced structure to ordering principle. “Two, and only two, types of structures are needed to cover societies of all sorts.”1 The index of Theory of International Politics under “structure” included the entry “anarchy and hierarchy as the only two types.” In a later work Waltz described anarchy as “a distinct structure.”2 And in IR talk of the “structure of anarchy”3 is surprisingly frequent. If ordering principles are indeed the essence of political structures – “once the system is understood, once its principle of organization is grasped, the phenomena are explained”4 – then the core of the Waltzian account might be salvageable. Therefore, we need to consider ordering principles carefully. Chapter 6 extensively critiqued IR’s Waltzian treatment of anarchy, the (alleged) ordering principle of international systems. This chapter begins by looking at Waltz’s other political ordering principle, h ­ ierarchy – which, like anarchy, is not in fact an ordering principle. I then argue that international political systems do not have ordering principles, as I illustrate by looking at two recent alternative conceptions. 9.1 Hierarchy Hierarchy, like anarchy, neither is an ordering principle nor was an established focus of IR before Waltz.

1 (Waltz 1979, 116). 2 (Waltz 1990b, 36). 3 For example, John Ruggie (1983, 281) talks of “the deep structure of anarchy” and Robert Keohane (1986b, 27) refers to “the basic structure of anarchy.” A Google Scholar search in May 2023 for “structure of anarchy” and “international” produced more than 600 results, more than 500 since 2010. The more common framing “the anarchic structure of international relations” indicates only that anarchy is one structural feature to which attention is being drawn. I suspect, though, that this distinction often is not appreciated. 4 (Waltz 1979, 9).

153

154

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

9.1.1

Hierarchy Is Not an Ordering Principle

Hierarchy, Waltz argued, involves structured relations of super- and subordination among differentiated actors. (“Hierarchy entails relations of super- and subordination among a system’s parts, and that implies their differentiation.”5) This tracks the ordinary-language conception of “a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.”6 In a social hierarchy, ranked positions are associated with particular rights, responsibilities, and roles. (Differently ranked actors do different things.) For example, “some are entitled to command; others are required to obey.”7 Saying that a system “is hierarchical,” however, merely indicates that it has some unspecified set of relations of stratification and functional differentiation; that, in Waltzian terms, the system is not anarchic. “Hierarchy,” rather than a structural ordering principle, is a residual category of non-anarchic orders (that, like most residuals, obscures the diversity of the “things” lumped together). Furthermore, as noted above, hierarchy – super- and subordination combined with functional differentiation – is essential to many kinds of international systems, including great power states systems, hegemonic systems, and imperial systems. Papering over the centrality of inequalities of power in international relations is both analytically and morally perverse. The Waltzian account cannot be rescued by acknowledging that most international systems are both anarchic (lack a government) and hierarchic. (That would destroy the dichotomous opposition of anarchy and hierarchy that is at the heart of Waltz’s account of political ordering principles.8) Neither can the Waltzian account be rescued by turning the dichotomy into a continuum. Setting aside the fact that Waltz explicitly rejected this move,9 anarchy and hierarchy are qualitatively different things, not opposite ends of a series of points plotting quantitative changes in the value of a single variable. In ordinary language we may call systems with more levels or where authority is concentrated at higher levels “more hierarchical.” Differently hierarchical, however, is a more useful description. And the crucial structural question is not “how hierarchical” a system is but “how it is hierarchical” – how it differentiates and ranks actors, authorities, and activities. 5

(Waltz 1979, 93. See also 80, 97). 6 Oxford English Dictionary. 7 (Waltz 1979, 88). 8 (Waltz 1979, 115). 9 Waltz (1979, 114).

Ordering Principles

155

Table 9.1 Uses of “hierarchy” or “hierarchical” in selected books 1895–1978 (n = 79)

1980–2015 (n = 65)

1.0

median

13.0

3.5

mean

17.6

1895–1945 (n = 51)

1946–1978 (n = 28)

1.0

2.0

1.5

*

7.2

use anarchy 10 times (n = 50)

median

5.0

16.0

mean

6.8

21.4

*

 xcluding one book (Kaplan 1957), which uses the terms more than 100 times E (or almost half of the total uses in the 28 books), the mean drops to 3.7.

9.1.2

The Discourse of Hierarchy in IR

Waltz is largely responsible for contemporary IR taking hierarchy to be a political ordering principle. Table 9.1 summarizes uses of “hierarchy” and “hierarchical” in a selection of 79 books published between 1895 and 197810 and 65 books published between 1980 and 2015.11 Before 1979, the median is 1 and the mean is 3.5. After 1979, the median jumps to 13 and the mean to 18. Furthermore, underscoring Waltz’s impact, post-1979 works that use “anarchy” or “anarchic” ten or more times use “hierarchy” and “hierarchical” three times more frequently than those that refer to anarchy less frequently. A similar picture emerges from exemplary pre-Waltzian books. For example, Dickinson’s The European Anarchy, Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, and Kennan’s American Diplomacy use neither “hierarchy” nor “hierarchical.”12 Both Kissinger’s A World Restored and Morgenthau’s In Defense of the National Interest use “hierarchical” once and “hierarchy” not at all.13 Waltz in Man, the State and War used “hierarchy” only twice 10 This includes about half of the books in Appendices 6.1 and 6.2, selected based on their availability in 2016 for full-text searches (Preview) in Google Books. 11 The 1980–2015 sample is drawn from Appendix 6.3. I stop at 2015 because my focus is on Waltz’s impact. Adding more recent books would include works reflecting an independent rise in interest in hierarchy in recent years. 12 (Dickinson 1917 [1916]), (Carr 1964 [1946]), (Kennan 1951). 13 (Kissinger 1957, 209) (in reference to a possible “hierarchical arrangement of the Parliaments of different nations”). (Morgenthau 1951, 118) (in reference to “an order of priorities”). Similarly, the first edition of Politics among Nations uses the terms twice

156

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

(in reference to “the hierarchy of human motivations” and “the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party”14). The substance of pre-1979 usage is also interesting. In addition to repeated references to “the social hierarchy,” the most common uses refer to medieval, feudal, or ecclesiastical hierarchies,15 a hierarchy of values or national interests,16 bureaucracies, offices, or officeholders,17 or the diplomatic hierarchy.18 I did not find a single passage that contrasted hierarchy to anarchy (or lack of government), used hierarchy to define domestic politics,19 or treated hierarchy as anything like a structural ordering principle. And I found no passage that denied hierarchy in international relations. Quite the contrary, several authors noted that international relations often is hierarchically stratified.20 Morton Kaplan even developed a model of “the hierarchical international system.”21 Pre-Waltzian IR did, of course, address phenomena such as inequality and stratification. They were not, though, seen as hierarchy (much as before Waltz the absence of an international government usually was not seen as anarchy22). Anarchy and hierarchy were not understood as incompatible. And hierarchy was not considered a political ordering principle. 9.2

Political Systems Do Not Have Ordering Principles

Waltz’s fundamental problem, however, was not erroneously identifying anarchy and hierarchy as political ordering principles. It was the very

14 15

16

17 18



19

20 21

22

(Morgenthau 1948, 227, 220), referring to national governments and to the fact that international law lacks a “hierarchy of judicial decisions.” (Waltz 1959, 22, 112). (Hill 1911, 16), (Potter 1922, 38, 47), (Walsh 1922, 64), (Barnes 1930, 15, 16), (Mitrany 1933, 22), (Sharp and Kirk 1940, 17, 100), (Spykman 1942, 240), (Wright 1964 [1942], 26), (Herz 1959, 43), (Wallerstein 2011 [1976], 58, 90, 156, 161). (Woolf 1916, 305), (Hobson 1922, 54), (Niebuhr 1932, 265), (Lasswell 1935, 36), (Sharp and Kirk 1940, 105), (Wright 1964 [1942], 214, 245), (Morgenthau 1951, 118), (Aron 2003 [1966], 104, 236, 288, 323), (Brodie 1973, 481), (Gilpin 1975, 224), (Bull 1977, 21, 74), (Krasner 1978, 286, 341). (Reinsch 1900, 53), (Leacock 1906, 196, 197, 378), (Wright 1964 [1942], 357), (Organski 1958, 167), (Haas 1964, 88, 105, 109, 110, 112, 534). (Lawrence 1898 [1895], 263), (Potter 1922, 73), (Hodges 1931, 256, 533), (Schuman 1933, 181, 182), (Zimmern 1936, 481). Harold Laski does observe (1921, 80, 217, 240, 241) that contemporary governments are “hierarchical.” But rather than see this as a defining feature of domestic politics in general, he argues (1921, 241) for the possibility and desirability of “coordinate” national politics. (Organski 1958, 90, 213, 349), (Aron 2003 [1966], 69, 441, 652), (Osgood and Tucker 1967, 48), (Gilpin 1975, 24), (Bull 1977, 31, 36). (Kaplan 1957, 55–57). See §§6.4, 6.5.

Ordering Principles

157

idea of structural ordering principles – which, it bears repeating, was Waltz’s original creation.23 Once we stop pretending that vacuous generalities like absence of a government or presence of a hierarchy are good first approximations of the structure of political systems, it becomes obvious that all international systems do not have the same ordering principle. In fact, there is no good reason to believe that there are only a small number of political ordering principles – or even that each system has one ordering principle. Waltz’s intuition that most international systems take one of a few forms, however, remains immensely appealing and continues to inspire new taxonomies. The following two sections critically examine recent efforts by Ryan Griffiths24 and Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn.25 (Those convinced that most political systems do not have one of a few ordering principles may want to skim or skip these sections.) 9.3

Ryan Griffiths: Two-Dimensional Ordering Principles

Griffiths argues that “the Waltzian model can be expanded in a simple and parsimonious way”26 by treating functional differentiation and anarchy/hierarchy as separate dimensions of (more robustly conceptualized) “ordering principles.” His clever and clearly presented argument, however, does not rescue the idea of political ordering principles. 9.3.1

Anarchy, Hierarchy, Centralization, and Sovereignty

Griffiths’ first move is to transform Waltz’s anarchy–hierarchy dichotomy into a continuum. Figure 9.1 (which is Griffiths’ Figure 1) charts “the concentration of power in a given space,”27 ranging from what he calls hierarchy, in which a single polity rules everything in the entire space,28 to what he calls anarchy, in which “units exist in an uncentralized political space.”29

23

See §7.1. 24 (Griffiths 2018). 25 (Buzan and Albert 2010), (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013), (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013). I have chosen what I consider the strongest and most interesting recent alternatives – both because this is good academic practice and because my argument that the fundamental problem is the assumption that there are only a few types requires that I not ignore any “strong” cases. 26 (Griffiths 2018, 134). 27 (Griffiths 2018, 137). 28 “Full hierarchy would be one completely centralized polity” (Griffiths 2018, 134). This conception of hierarchy, which has no connection to ordinary language, was developed by David Lake. See §15.1 at n.12 and the following paragraph. 29 (Griffiths 2018, 134).

158

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Hierarchy (centralized)

Union

Federation

Confederation

Sovereignty Line League

Anarchy (uncentralized) Figure 9.1  Griffiths on political centralization Source: (Griffiths 2018, Figure 1)

Hierarchy, however, is ordinarily understood not as the concentration/ centralization of power but as a structure of relations of super- and subordination. Hierarchy indicates not just where most power lies but who has which rights and obligations with respect to whom. Centralization is more like polarity than an ordering principle. And it is structurally nowhere near as important as stratification (layered relations of super- and subordination).

Ordering Principles

159

In addition, there is no more-or-less-straight line between Hobbes’ right of every one to every thing and the complete monopolization of all power over everything – let alone a line along which one moves by incrementally adding “more centralization.” For example, a league, rather than some percentage of the way to a federation (or hierarchy), is a particular way for autonomous polities to jointly manage some of their activities. Griffiths then adds what he calls “the sovereignty line. Above that line, a geographic space is composed of a single sovereign polity.”30 But sovereignty is not a matter of a particular degree of centralization. (For example, the United States was more centralized in the late twentieth century than in the early nineteenth century but not more sovereign.) And this conceptualization re-establishes the Waltzian binary,31 effectively taking back the idea of an anarchy–hierarchy continuum. These problems, it seems to me, arise because Griffiths addresses “political associations;”32 more or less centralized aggregations of polities. He does not address centralization in international systems.33 And I at least cannot conceive of what that would look like (or what we might expect to learn from it). 9.3.2

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

Griffiths’ second move is to reconceptualize Waltzian functional differentiation as a matter of the balance between segmentary differentiation (or mechanical solidarity) and functional differentiation (or organic solidarity). Figure 9.2 (Griffiths’ Figure 2) “depicts a continuum of social differentiation separating the pure forms of mechanical and organic solidarity,”34 which he illustrates with types of international economic organizations. As Griffiths explains it, “groups or units in a mechanical solidarity … are distinctive but alike, segmentally differentiated, replications of one another. In contrast, an organic solidarity is ‘constituted, not by the replication of similar homogenous elements, but by a system of different organs, each one of which has a special role and which themselves are

30

31 32 33

(Griffiths 2018, 135). “This is the theoretical line separating hierarchy from anarchy” (Griffiths 2018, 135). (Griffiths 2018, 135). He looks one level up from states, to associations of states, but not to the international system that both states and political associations are parts of. See also §11.2.1. 34 (Griffiths 2018, 136). On its face, the shift from differentiation to solidarity is problematic.

160

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem Free Trade Area

Economic Union Organic

Mechanical Customs Union

Figure 9.2  Griffiths on social differentiation Source: (Griffiths 2018, Figure 2)

formed from differentiated parts’.”35 I cannot, however, comprehend how this can be understood as a continuum. Mechanical solidarity, in which all the units are fundamentally alike,36 is more a point than a range on a continuum.37 (For example, although band societies, tribal societies, and unpolarized states systems have different types of mechanical solidarity, none has “more” than the others.) Either all the segments are fundamentally the same or they are not. Different types differ in how they are segmented not how much segmentation they have. Furthermore, “units” may be dissimilar in a great variety of ways. There thus are many directions and paths away from mechanical solidarity. And there is no single point to which they are moving – let alone moving by incremental additions of some “thing.” Different societies are differentiated by the differential allocation of different functions (and different authorities) to particular social positions – not by their percentages of mechanical and organic solidarity. 9.3.3

Two-Dimensional Ordering Principles

Whatever the separate problems with each scale, they might still prove useful when combined. Figure 9.3 (Griffiths’ Figure 3) presents the resulting typology, which he argues “reveals important patterns in international order.”38 Rather than four two-dimensional models of international orders, though, only the bottom two are international. 35

(Griffiths 2018, 135, quoting Durkheim 1984 [The Division of Labor in Society], 132). 36 More precisely, a society is considered to be integrated mechanically if all the largest or top-tier segments are fundamentally similar. (For example, families and bands are different, but band societies are typically understood as segmentary.) Why we should ignore differences between larger and smaller segments, though, is not clear to me (especially in a layered world of systems of systems of systems). 37 Alternatively, it is a region of a space that does not vary continuously. See the second paragraph of §9.3.4. 38 (Griffiths 2018, 137).

Ordering Principles

161 Hierarchy Organic Hierarchy

Mechanical Hierarchy

Mechanical

Organic

Organic Anarchy

Mechanical Anarchy

Anarchy

Figure 9.3  Two-dimensional ordering principles Source: (Griffiths 2018, Figure 3)

“Mechanical anarchy,” in the bottom left corner, is “an uncentralized system with no division of labour, where each unit is a replication of the others.”39 Griffiths, however, immediately adds “this is an ideal-type and it is therefore difficult to point to real-world examples.”40 But the purpose of an ideal type is to illuminate actual cases.41 Its analytical value depends almost entirely on its applicability. For example, a biological ideal type of a jackalope has no application not because it is an ideal type but because there are no jackalopes in nature. Conversely, the Weberian ideal types of legal-rational bureaucracies and patrimonial rule remain regularly employed because they do (in an idealized form) illuminate cases of interest. The lack of real-world examples means that a type has little analytic utility. The only mechanically anarchic international systems that I know 39

(Griffiths 2018, 139). 40 (Griffiths 2018, 139). 41 For introductory literature on ideal types, see n. 18 in §6.1.1.

162

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

are in band and tribal societies – which have been, at best, a marginal concern of IR. “Organic anarchy,” Griffiths’ other type of international system, is “a politically uncentralized society that is completely functionally differentiated.”42 Griffiths, however, (rightly) observes that “it is unlikely for this ideal-type to occur given that high levels of functional differentiation ought to create pressure for political centralization.”43 Similarly, “mechanical hierarchy,” which involves hierarchy without functional differentiation, is an empirically empty category. (Centralization requires division of labor – at a minimum, some are in charge of those who do (other) things – which the type precludes.) And I know of no international system that approximates the model of “organic hierarchy.” (For example, even if the contemporary EU falls above Griffiths’ “sovereignty line” it is only a regional and functional subsystem within a larger system that is not at all close to “organic hierarchy.”) 9.3.4

“Ordering Principles” That Do Not Specify Forms of International Order

Nearly all international systems thus lie somewhere toward the center of Griffiths’ Figure 3. But these spaces are not defined. We only know how they are not ordered. And Griffiths does not even attempt to investigate such systems – which, to repeat, include nearly all actual international systems. That we can create ideal types at the corners of a two-by-two diagram does not mean that the resulting types are of empirical interest. And (as a systems perspective would emphasize) there is no reason to presume that the resulting space is homogeneous or continuous. Movement along each axis need not be linear. And it is quite possible that emergent systems effects arise from particular combinations of particular amounts (or types) of “centralization” and “solidarity.” In fact, rather than see each point as “part way” to one or more corners, we should expect, as in the distinction between leagues and federations, qualitative variation between systems in this central space – which is not homogeneous.44 The structures of international systems cannot be specified by a few simple types defined along a couple dimensions. The fundamental problems with the Waltzian conception of structure lie in the basic terms of 42

(Griffiths 2018, 142). 43 (Griffiths 2018, 142). 44 Figure 6.1 provides an example of a noncontinuous representation of a 2 x 2 space.

Ordering Principles

163

reference (not in Waltz’s particular implementation). No matter how much one tweaks those terms, the result will be unfruitful for understanding the structures of international systems – or at least that is the generalization I would encourage readers to draw from the examples of Waltz and Griffiths. 9.4

Albert, Buzan, and Zurn: Three Principles of Differentiation

Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn, who I will refer to collectively as ABZ,45 seek not to revise Waltz’s account of ordering principles but to replace it with a simple but comprehensive typology of forms of differentiation.46 1. “Segmentary (or egalitarian) differentiation is where every social subsystem is the equal of, and functionally similar to, every other social subsystem.” 2. “Stratificatory differentiation is where some persons or groups raise themselves above others, creating a hierarchical social order.”47 3. “Functional differentiation is where the subsystems are defined by the coherence of particular types of activity and their differentiation from other types of activity, and those differences do not stem simply from rank.”48 Echoing Waltz, ABZ talk of “the ordering principles which go along with” these types of differentiation,49 each of which, they claim, has a distinct “structuring principle.”50 And, like Waltz, they present their typology as exhaustive. “All other variants vary within these three principles.”51 45 Although Zurn was not involved in Buzan and Albert’s initial (2010) statement, their later accounts incorporate much of that article, including the basic framework. Furthermore, it seems to me illuminating to see these three works as having been produced by an assembled collective author with a character different from its parts (and their sum). 46 On differentiation see Chapter 11. 47 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1–2). 48 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 2). 49 (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013, 234. Cf. 233). 50 (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1, 2). 51 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 317). Although they do at one point say that “we can discriminate at least three forms” (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1), they treat center–periphery differentiation, the only other form that they mention (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 4 n. 4), as a subtype of stratificatory differentiation. And their clear focus is on “the three basic types of differentiation” (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 7 [emphasis added]. See also 6).

164

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

9.4.1

Types of Societies and Dimensions of Differentiation

ABZ, however, use the terms “forms” or “types” of differentiation to refer not only to types of society (or “types of social order”52) but also to what I will call dimensions of differentiation. This distinction is crucial. Understood as a type of society, “segmentary differentiation” identifies an egalitarian society composed of like units. Segmentation, however, creates social “segments,” which are a universal feature of societies. Similarly, all societies are stratified53 (and functionally differentiated). “Stratificatory differentiation,” however, understood as a type of society, refers to a fundamentally hierarchical social order. Both dimensions and types are useful and therefore commonly employed.54 It can be confusing, though, when the same word is used to identify both a type of society and a dimension of differentiation (as ABZ do). Therefore, I will use quotes around types of societies (but not dimensions of differentiation). For example, “functional differentiation” refers to a type of society. Functional differentiation [no quotes] refers to a particular dimension or process of differentiation. I agree with ABZ that segmentation, stratification, and functional differentiation help to structure all societies, including international societies.55 I only criticize their types and the associated idea of ordering principles.56 9.4.2

Types Are Not Defined by a Dominant Dimension of Differentiation

“Segmentary differentiation” in ABZ’s account is not defined by segmentation. All societies are segmented. Neither stratification nor functional 52

(Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 7. See also 10 (“forms of society”)), (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013, 229). 53 See n. 58. 54 For example, The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology identifies two senses of social differentiation: “[1] the tendency of social systems to become increasingly complex as they develop, in particular through specialization … [2] the general social process of distinguishing among people according to the social statuses they occupy’” (Johnson 2000, 88–89). ABZ’s types get at growing complexity. My dimensions decompose processes of differentiation. 55 See §11.2. 56 Also, I do not mean to criticize either models of individual types or typologies that do not claim to be (close to) comprehensive. Well-known examples include (Ikenberry 2001, 2011) and (Nexon and Wright 2007). See also n. 2 in Chapter 7. Such accounts, which hold only that some cases more or less fit particular ideal types, do not make the strong claims about ordering principles that are my concern here. I also do not mean to criticize Buzan’s later work (e.g., Buzan and Schouenborg 2018), which employs not types of differentiation but “models” of international societies that apply to (only) some significant cases.

Ordering Principles

165

differentiation is possible without differentiated positions or actors (“segments”) to which rank and function are assigned. Conversely, no social segments lack rank and function. “Segmentary differentiation” as a type is defined by the equality and the similarity of the segments. (“Every social subsystem is equal, and functionally similar, to every other social subsystem.”57) And this arises from particular forms of stratification and functional differentiation: all segments have the same status (are equal)58 and perform the same functions (are similar).59 In “functionally differentiated” and “stratificatory” societies as well, all three dimensions are not merely present but essential. (Hierarchy almost always involves functional differentiation. Functionally dissimilar actors rarely are all equal. And authority and functions are assigned to social segments.) Furthermore, despite appealing to ordering principles, all three of ABZ’s types of societies are actually defined by two binary variables: whether the components are equal or unequal and similar or different. As they put it, the crucial question is “Are all the components essentially the same, or are they distinguishable by status or function?”60 Each “type” is in fact a diverse collection of social forms with very different combinations of different kinds of (in)equalities and (dis)similarities. ABZ’s (anti-systemic/actor-centric) definition of types in terms of the character of the parts (rather than their arrangement) creates further

57

(Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1). In fact, however, except in imaginary states of nature, not every subsystem is (more or less) equal and (more or less) similar. For example, even in highly egalitarian forager societies, bands are equal and similar but families, although equal and similar to one another, have different functions and status than bands. 58 One might argue, consistent with ordinary language, that a single-layer society is not stratified; that stratification involves multiple strata. Equality, however, means that each segment has the same authority. And that is not a natural default situation. (In a state of nature there is no authority (not equal authority). It is a particular kind of constructed order.) Thus we can also say – also consistent with ordinary language – that egalitarian societies are societies in which all the segments are ranked equally (have the same status). In this sense, although “hierarchy” exists only when there are two or more levels, rank and status can be assigned equally to all – creating what can usefully be described as a flat, egalitarian, or single-level system of stratification. See also §15.3. (If one still rejects this argument, the fact that stratification is not restricted to “stratificatory societies” is sufficient for the broader point I am making here.) 59 To argue that the dimension of segmentation predominates in (the type of) “segmentary differentiation” because these societies are neither stratified nor functionally differentiated assumes that it is somehow “natural” for segments to be equal and similar – and that inequality and dissimilarity are changes from that pre-given default condition. In fact, however, equality and similarity are as much social constructs as inequality and dissimilarity. Equal status is a status. The assignment of similar functions to all segments is an assignment of functions. 60 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 315).

166

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

problems. Differentiation, ABZ argue, is “about how to distinguish and analyse the components that make up any social whole;”61 how “the main units within a social system (or subsystem) [are] defined and distinguished from one another”62 – not how they are organized or arranged. And they categorize their models by whether “all the components [are] essentially the same” or are “distinguishable by status or function”63 – not by how components are structured, organized, or arranged into (and within) a system. Furthermore, underscoring the analytic (not systemic) character of their approach, ABZ insist that differentiation is a “logic of division.”64 If “types” could be constructed by just adding together pieces then ABZ’s approach might work (assuming that they identify the right kinds of pieces). But types defined by the character of the components cannot adequately depict the structure of a system (because they do not consider its organization and operation).65 9.4.3

Fitting Types to the World

The test of a typology is how it illuminates the world. ABZ’s, like Griffiths’, sheds little light on actual international systems. ABZ present Waltzian states systems as examples of (the type of) “segmentary differentiation:” “anarchic systems of states as ‘like units’.”66 But in few if any literate international societies has it been even close to true that “every social subsystem is the equal of, and functionally similar to, every other social subsystem.”67 Like Waltz, ABZ address the legal equality of states but ignore the legal superiority and functional differentiation of states in states systems. An odd decision to look only at the (similar and equal) dominant actors hides from view the fundamental stratification and functional differentiation of the system. The type of “stratificatory differentiation,” ABZ argue, “in IR … points to … conquest and empire, hegemony, a privileged position for great powers,68 and a division of the world into core and periphery, or

61

62 63 64 65 66

(Buzan and Albert 2010, 316 [emphasis added]). (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1 [emphasis added]). (Buzan and Albert 2010, 315 [emphasis added]). (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 7), (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013, 229). See also §§5.9, 3.2. (Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert and Buzan 2013, 12, 14). Waltz (1979, 76, 95 n. *) makes a similar suggestion. 67 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 1). 68 This means that to the extent that Waltz models great power systems – which, despite the language of “units” is what he clearly has in mind – even Waltzian systems turn out to be systems of “stratificatory differentiation” (not “segmentary differentiation”).

Ordering Principles

167

first and third worlds.”69 To this we must add a privileged position for states (in states systems). Therefore, nearly all actual literate70 international systems have been systems of “stratificatory differentiation.” The problem here is not that actual systems only more or less closely approximate these types. (That is true of all ideal types.) Rather, one type applies to very few cases and the other to almost all. The typology does not identify significant empirical variation. The conceptual contrast between “segmentary differentiation” and “stratificatory differentiation” just has little application in IR. What, though, about “functional differentiation?” If, as ABZ argue, medieval Europe was “both stratified (popes, emperors, the nobility), and up to a point functionally differentiated (churches, guilds)”71 – that is, primarily stratified and secondarily functionally differentiated – then there have been few if any “functionally differentiated” international societies (especially if we insist that every system has one dominant principle of differentiation). Alternatively, if “functional differentiation” “points, inter alia, to international political economy (IPE), international law, world (or global civil) society, transnational actors and … deterritorialization”72 – if the presence of a separate international political or legal sector, significant transnational actors, or nonterritorial forms of organization make a system one of “functional differentiation” – then almost all historical international systems have been systems of “functional differentiation.” This type too, because it applies to almost none or to almost all literate international systems, contributes little or nothing to understanding any particular system(s).

69

(Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 4 (“the stratificatory differentiation of great powers and hegemons”)). 70 I am using literacy as a marker for societies that share a cluster of characteristics including cities, writing, an extensive division of labor and associated social stratification, and states (or at least differentiated governmental institutions) – which have emergent systems effects that make such societies, in ABZ’s terms, “stratificatory” or “functionally differentiated.” Most “segmentary” societies, which have “segmentary” international systems (e.g., relations between nomadic Mongol tribes/clans or confederations before they were unified by Temujin (later Genghis Khan)), have not been literate. IR, however, typically focuses on literate “stratified” or “functionally differentiated” societies not oral “segmentary” societies. 71 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 332. Cf. 318, 334 n. 3). I admit to a certain unease in relying here entirely on Buzan and Albert’s initial (2010) presentation. However, I suspect that ABZ accept Lora Viola’s claim (2013, 112), in her chapter in their edited volume, that “it is conventionally accepted that the major development of the modern international system is that the unity and hierarchy of medieval Europe was replaced with a system characterized by, in Luhmann’s terms, segmentary differentiation.” They also (2013, 231) favorably cite Stephan Stetter’s (2013, 134–136, 139) similar reading. 72 (Buzan and Albert 2010, 318). See also (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 4, 5).

168

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

9.4.4

Combining “Forms” of Differentiation

The solution to this problem is not to pretend that real world cases are combinations of these types. An ad hoc combination of “ordering principles” (or types) is not an ordering principle (or type). Rather, it underscores the absence of an ordering principle (or type). ABZ’s approach essentializes or reifies types, pretends that a multidimensional whole is a hybrid73 of types, and, because hybrids come in a great variety of forms, tells us little of significance. Consider an analogy. A group of tall people is composed of tall people. A group of short people is composed of short people. A group of tall and short people, however, is not a combination of a group of tall people and a group of short people. It is a group composed of both tall and short people. In any case, ABZ do not in fact combine types of societies. “Segmentary” society cannot combine with the other types of societies because the presence of substantial stratification or functional differentiation makes any resulting society not-“segmentary.” (“The whole notion of segmentary differentiation between states is undermined if they stand in a stratificatory relationship.”74) And, as we saw above, “stratificatory” and “functionally differentiated” societies themselves combine essential elements of the other dimensions of differentiation. In addition, because there are a great variety of ways to be unequal or dissimilar (as well as a great variety of ways in which “secondary” dimensions can be included) such combinations come in a myriad of forms. Rather than imagine simple combinations of simple types of structures, we need to get down to the serious work of determining how a society is segmented, stratified, and functionally differentiated. And then we need to consider how the resulting social positions are arranged into wholes of particular types; the particular forms that (the dimensions of) segmentation, stratification, and functional differentiation take. For example, it is not very illuminating to say that globalization involves “more” (and “more important”) functional differentiation – both because there are so many different forms that “more” might take and because differently structured combinations of similar components might produce fundamentally different results (“systems 73

Although ABZ do not use the language of hybrids, this seems to me implied by formulations such as “the coexistence and interaction of different types of differentiation” (Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 22. See also 4) and “the interplay of different forms of differentiation” (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013, 233, Fig. 11.1). And combinations of types, it seems to me, are well described as hybrids. 74 (Zurn, Buzan, and Albert 2013, 234).

Ordering Principles

169

effects”). At minimum, we need to know what kinds of segments have which functions and authorities – and how these parts are structured into wholes. Or consider ABZ’s claim that today “while no one would dispute that segmentation continues to play a very important role … [w]orld politics is stratified … [and also] is functionally differentiated.”75 Virtually all historical international systems, however, have been segmented, stratified, and functionally differentiated – making this profoundly uninteresting. Only if we (mistakenly) assume that the preceding great power states system lacked substantial stratification and functional differentiation would these facts even be worth noting.76 And in any case, ABZ’s account says nothing about how contemporary international society is differentiated – how particular sets of social positions are related to form a whole of a particular type. I thus conclude that ordering principles, in the hands of Waltz, Griffiths, and ABZ alike, give us little understanding of the kind of order that exists within a system. And, I suggest, we should expect the same result from other schemes. Systems approaches in IR should not aim to identify a few types defined by a few elements. We need instead models of how international systems are structured – which almost always will involve multiple dimensions of differentiation combined in particular ways. 9.5

Causal Depth and Generative Structures

Waltzian structural ordering principles are sometimes presented as resting on a conception of social and political structures as hierarchically layered. A “deep structure,” provided by an ordering principle, sets basic relations and general parameters within which successively “shallower” layers (that have increasingly constrained causal powers) further structure the system. Although Waltz never used these terms, his emphasis on ordering principles77 can reasonably be understood in this way. And such a reading has been adopted both by John Ruggie78 and by Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little79 in their insightful efforts to refine Waltz’s account. Ruggie was the first, as far as I am aware, to advance this interpretation.

75

76 77 78 79

(Albert, Buzan, and Zurn 2013, 6). Even ABZ explicitly identify great power systems as stratificatory. See n. 69. See the first paragraph of §9.1. (Ruggie 1983, 266). (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 36–37ff.).

170

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

Waltz strives for a “generative” formulation of structure. He means for the three (or, internationally, two) components of structure to be thought of as successive causal depth levels. Ordering principles constitute the “deep structure” of a system, shaping its fundamental social quality. … [Functional d]ifferentiation, where it exists as a structural property, mediates the social effects of the deep structure, but within a context that has already been circumscribed by the deep structure. … The distribution of capabilities comes closest to the surface level of visible phenomena, but its impact on outcomes is simply to magnify or modify the opportunities and constraints generated by the other (two) structural level(s).80

A distribution of authority sets the basic shape of a political system and establishes the parameters within which a distribution of functions develops. The distribution of capabilities then modifies or magnifies outcomes that are largely shaped at deeper levels. There are several serious problems with this (levels of analysis rather than levels of organization) account. First, understanding depth as a matter of causal priority – “the deeper structural levels have causal priority”81 – produces analytic, rather than systemic, explanations. Variable 1 (ordering principle) exerts its effects. Then, variable 2 (functional differentiation). Then variable 3 (distribution of capabilities). There is no interaction between variables, which are treated as independent.82 Causation is linear and restricted to independent-­variable “causes.” Second, rather than a depth account of structure, this is an account of the differential causal impact of separate elements of “the structure.” Third, although Waltz did at one point claim that “in systems theory, structure is a generative notion,”83 in practice he treated structure as generated. The passage that I just quoted continues “and the structure of a system is generated by the interactions of its principal parts.”84 In the Waltzian account, “deeper” elements do not generate more superficial structural features. And structure does not generate units. It merely influences their behavior.85 In fact, as we saw in §§5.2 and 5.7, Waltz argued that we should think of structure “as simply a constraint.”86 80

81 82 83 84

(Ruggie 1983, 266). See also (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 36–37ff.). (Ruggie 1983, 283). On the problems this poses for systemic theory, see §4.4. (Waltz 1979, 72). (Waltz 1979, 72). And, as we saw above, Waltz argued (1979, 91. See also 76, 79, 90, 93, 94, 132) that “international-political systems, like economic markets, are individualist in origin, spontaneously generated, and unintended.” 85 See also §§5.7–5.9. 86 (Waltz 1979, 100).

Ordering Principles

171

Fourth, the claim of causal priority for ordering principles inappropriately treats as theoretical the empirical question of how authority, functions, and capabilities are produced, reproduced, and transformed. (For example, a distribution of capabilities often transforms, and sometimes generates, a distribution of authority.) And it is an odd kind of legal formalism that insists that the distribution of authority (ordering principle) is not only causally (and thus chronologically) prior but the unproblematic self-generating starting point for structural explanations. (Structures are thought of as operating on entities that have already been constituted (in some unspecified way).) Fifth, authority cannot exist independent of, let alone before, its subjects and objects. (Authority involves particular rights and responsibilities over particular activities with respect to particular actors.) An ordering principle (distribution of authority) is only analytically separable from the differentiation of actors and activities – which are “equally deep” features of hierarchical social and political structures. Sixth, Waltz’s minimalist conception of structure makes “deep” and “shallow” misleading, both where (as in his original formulation) functional differentiation “drops out”87 and in Buzan, Jones, and Little’s modified version in which ordering principle and functional differentiation together make up the deep structure of the system.88 The tripartite conception becomes almost a monistic vision of structure – which the passages quoted at the outset of this chapter suggest was indeed Waltz’s understanding. And anarchy becomes less an ordering principle than a master independent variable – which, as we saw in Chapter 6, is how contemporary IR, following Waltz, treats it. Finally, this account misdescribes the structure of states systems. Political authority in states systems is allocated both “vertically” to states and “horizontally” among them.89 An anarchy-as-ordering-principle account ignores the hierarchy (stratification and functional differentiation) that structures the system – which is at least as “deep” a feature as the absence of an international government. 9.6

From Structure to the Structuring of Systems

We have always known that national political systems come in many different forms with different structures that are not at all described by “hierarchy” (indeterminate differences of rank and function) and 87

(Waltz 1979, 101). 88 (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, 38). 89 See §§7.2.2, 7.2.4. See also §15.5.

172

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

distribution of capabilities. (No one who studies domestic political systems uses anything even vaguely like the tripartite conception.) Here we have seen that international systems also do not have just one, or even only a few, basic structures. Therefore, we need to stop talking about “the structure” of international systems and focus instead on different types of international systems, in the plural, and how they are (differently) structured. What that might look like is the subject of the remainder of this book. 9.7

Postscript: The Dead End of Waltzian Structuralism

In an earlier draft I framed Waltzian structuralism as a dead end. An insightful and helpful anonymous reviewer, however, argued that this depiction was (a) disrespectful, (b) difficult to justify, given the epistemic and substantive diversity of the discipline, and (c) likely to needlessly put off some readers. Taking (c) to heart, I reframed the discussion. In concluding this Part, however, I want to argue that that the dead end metaphor is accurate and illuminating. Waltzian structuralism, as a basis for systemic international theory, has in fact proved a dead end. Rather than generate a variety of robust research programs, it has led only to structural realism.90 And no student of international relations, including Waltz, has in fact explained anything of significance by reference to anarchy and polarity alone91 – because, as I have argued,92 alone they explain nothing. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the need for modifications,93 there have been few attempts to refine Waltz’s account.94 And no revised understanding of systems and structures has received significant endorsement – because almost all substantively fruitful modifications are incompatible with systemic/structural theory as Waltz formulated it. This has left “systemic” theory in IR in a worst-of-both-worlds situation. Ad hoc modifications are regularly made, because they are necessary to actually explain anything of interest. But the resulting explanations are not structural/systemic in the Waltz sense. And the ad hoc, case-specific 90 I am not arguing here that structural realism (“Waltz’s theory”) is a dead end. My argument is that Waltzian structuralism is a dead end for systemic theory and research. And part of the evidence for that is that only one very narrow research program has emerged from it. 91 See §§5.5 and 11.3.1 and n. 2 in Chapter 10. 92 See §§7.2, 6.2, 6.3. 93 See the third paragraph of the introduction to Part II. 94 (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, ch. 2, 3) is the leading, but very limited, exception.

Ordering Principles

173

nature of the modifications make these explanations look suspiciously like we are dealing with a theory that is “devised ‘in the wake of facts’ and that lack[s] the power to anticipate other facts”95 – which Waltz rightly criticized. Furthermore, by confusing systemic explanations (which explain by the organization and operation of complex wholes) with explanations that employ only systems-level variables, Waltzian structuralism has actively obscured the character of systemic research and explanation – and thus misdirected and retarded its development in IR (or, at best, left it in the hands of relational theorists and researchers that often understand their work as anti-systemic). Therefore, rather than continue down this path, pretending that Waltzian structuralism is a sound foundation for systemic theory that requires only minor modifications, we need to turn ourselves around and work our way back out into the world of complex adaptive systems and relational social science. Although stinging, this assessment is no more severe than Waltz’s assessment of earlier systems theories.96 And rather than disrespectful, it seems to me a huge sign of respect to examine a forty-year-old work in the belief that its ideas are of central importance today.97 In fact, given the impact of Theory of International Politics I think that it would be disrespectful not to approach it with the same sort of unflinching critical eye that Waltz brought to the theorists who preceded him. Taking a scientific theory seriously requires submitting it to intensive critical rational scrutiny.98 And there is no shame or disrespect in rejecting a promising conjecture after further consideration. This simply is the way that science ought to work. As Waltz did with his predecessors, I have engaged Theory of International Politics extensively and in detail. I have used the same criterion of evaluation: compatibility with systemic theory and research, properly

95

(Waltz 1979, 29, quoting Lakatos 1970, 175–176). 96 For example, he argued that “by pushing neocolonial theory to its logical end, Galtung unwittingly exposes its absurdity” (1979, 31) and that in Hoffmann’s work “all distinct meaning is lost” and “any glimmerings of theory remain crude and confused” (1979, 43, 49). 97 For what it is worth, I would note that I was a student of Waltz’s – he was not on my dissertation committee but I took three courses from him – and that I believe that while Ken undoubtedly would have rejected nearly all of my arguments he would have found some of them engaging and none disrespectful. 98 I am implicitly endorsing Karl Popper’s (1963) method of conjectures and refutations. See also n. 4 in Chapter 4. (I want to be clear, though, that I reject falsificationism in any form as a demarcation criterion for science – which, as I argued in Chapter 4, should be understood in multidimensional and pluralistic terms.)

174

Part II: Waltzian Structural Theory: A Postmortem

understood.99 And I have come to a similar conclusion, namely, that it is time to move on in radically different ways. I suspect, though, that many readers with a less argumentative nature will continue to remain uncomfortable with the dead end depiction. Therefore, let me close by reformulating my argument as a criticism of the narrowness of the Waltzian approach. This shifts the metaphor to seeing Waltzian structuralism as having confined systemic theory and research to going up and down a single street in a large town. Waltz set systemic international theory onto a path that has led  – because it only can lead – to just one very limited kind of research program. (There is not much you can do with anarchy and polarity alone.)100 The following chapters attempt to redirect the attention of the discipline to the wide range of possibilities for systemic/relational IR that (re)appear when we (re)turn our focus to bounded sets of components of particular types, arranged in definite ways, operating in a specific fashion to produce characteristic outcomes, some of which are emergent.

99 I have, it is true, used a different definition of what makes an approach systemic. But Waltz’s criticisms of Hoffmann and Kaplan depended on his idiosyncratic redefinition of systems theory as theory that explains by reference to systems-level variables alone. And I have employed an understanding of systems that not only is widely shared in both the natural and social sciences but was Waltz’s starting point as well. 100 See §7.4.

Part III

Systems, Relations, and Processes Reframing Systemic International Theory

We are now ready – finally – to lay out some preliminary ideas about moving towards truly systemic understandings of international societies. The chapters in this Part, taken together, aim to provide “proof of concept” for a multidimensional relational conception of international systems. They are divided into two sub-parts. Chapters 10–13 continue the work of Part I of laying out terms of reference and begin to offer substantive orienting framings. Chapter 10 returns to the intersection of systemism and relationalism and adds an emphasis on processes. Chapter 11 introduces the idea of social differentiation and begins to stock a toolkit of dimensions of differentiation. Chapters 12 and 13 introduce a relational processual perspective on social continuity and social change. Chapters 14–17 offer illustrative substantive applications of the value of relational/systemic perspectives. Chapter 14 emphasizes the importance of normative-institutional differentiation; the rights, liberties, obligations, and expectations of positioned social actors and the practices that structure and sustain their relations and govern their actions and interactions. Chapter 15 discusses stratification, an especially important formal dimension of social differentiation. Chapter 16 uses the idea of levels of organization to address what I call spatio-political structure and develops a simple typology of polities and systems of polities. Chapter 17 applies that typology, along with the frame of continuous (trans)formation, to the Eurocentric political world of the past eight centuries. “Chapter” 18 briefly returns to the distinctive character of systemic/ relational research and its place in a pluralistic IR.

175

Part III (A) DIFFERENTIATION AND CONTINUOUS (TRANS)FORMATION

The four chapters in this sub-part highlight two fundamental differences between a relational/systemic approach and IR’s dominant Waltzian structural approach. First, rather than imagine that international systems come in only a few types, defined by a few elements, I argue that international systems are multilevel multicomponent complex systems with a wide range of dimensions of differentiation. Models of types of systems thus must focus on a few selected dimensions of the system’s structure – not the structure (which, even if it were not too complex to comprehend in a single model, would not be of much epistemic or pragmatic value). Second, rather than look for a few transhistorical patterns across international systems, I focus on developing tools to grasp ongoing, interlinked processes of production, reproduction, and transformation. Social systems are constantly adapting – modularly. Across relatively short time periods, most of the system remains “the same.” But there are always some parts that are changing. Therefore, over time frames of a human generation or two, international systems usually reveal complex combinations of continuities and transformations. Chapter 10 restates the linkage between systemism and relationalism and draws attention to processes, which often are not adequately comprehended in relational and systemic approaches. It also suggests thinking about the structures of social systems as configuring configurations that configure. Chapter 11 sketches some alternatives to the Waltzian tripartite conception of the elements of international political structures, focusing on the overarching idea of social differentiation, “the process by which the different roles and functions of the members of a society become institutionalized.”1 International systems are differentiated on a wide range of dimensions. This chapter draws attention to several dimensions and argues for developing a disciplined but wide-ranging checklist or toolbox 1

Oxford English Dictionary.

177

178

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

of dimensions of differentiation from which we can construct (partial but insightful) models of the structures of international societies. Chapters 12 and 13 look at the complex relations between continuity and change, both of which, in the living and social worlds, are produced. Chapter 12 introduces the framings of continuous (trans)formation and transposition and re-functionality, which are rooted in the fact that social systems are multilevel multicomponent complex adaptive systems. Chapter 13 looks at how reproduction and change are handled in Developmental Biology and Evolutionary Biology, which I argue ought to serve as models for relational/systemic social science. Because I am the kind of person who likes to be immersed in theory before taking on applications, I have put these chapters first. But if you feel as if Part I was enough metatheory for now, or if you just want to get to applications, you might want to skim all or parts of these chapters (or even jump to the next sub-part and come back to these chapters as you see fit). I encourage you to trust your instincts and take advantage of the fact that each chapter can be read separately and in pretty much any order.

10

Relations, Processes, and Systems



Configuring Configurations That Configure

Systemic theory in IR is in the doldrums. Structural realism is now seen, even by most realists, as played out.1 Liberal institutionalist arguments about mitigating the effects of anarchy have largely lost their interest. (Institutions do so much more that is so much more interesting!) And most of the rest of the discipline operates with little more than passing references to systems and structures. This may be all that there is; systemic international theory may have run up against its (quite severe) inherent limits. I have argued, however, that the problem lies instead in IR’s mistaken Waltzian understandings – and that seeing international systems as multidimensional networks of social positions and processes promises a productive new approach to international theory and research. This very brief chapter highlights the importance of processes and argues for understanding social systems as configuring configurations that configure. 10.1

Relations and Processes: Toward Relational Processualism

Most systemic work in IR today, as noted in §1.4, employs either the frame of relationalism or a particular systemic/relational frame such as networks or fields. Relationalists reject “substantialism,” the view that “the ontological primitives of analysis are ‘things’ or entities,” in favor of 1

Even Waltz (see §§5.5 and 11.3.1) employed nonstructural amendments. Balance of power then quickly became balance of threat (Walt 1987), in which the crucial explanatory variable is perceptual and “unit-level.” And structural realism has yielded nothing new in at least thirty years. Today neoclassical realism, which focuses on nonstructural variables (see, for example, (Schweller 2003), (Rathbun 2008), (Kitchen 2010), (Toje and Kunz 2012), (Ripsman, Taliaferro, and Lobell 2016), (Sears 2017), (Götz 2021), (Meibauer et al. 2021)) has, in practice, replaced structural realism – which usually is pursued in what Patrick James (2002) aptly calls “elaborated” forms. Realists actually explain nothing by anarchy and polarity alone because (as we saw in Part II) alone – really alone – they explain nothing.

179

180

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

“treat[ing] configurations of ties … between social aggregates of various sorts and their component parts as the building blocks of social analysis.”2 Relationalists see the world as made up more of configurations (of things) than of things (that stand in various relations). IR’s “standard” conception of relationalism is rooted in Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon’s prescient call, more than two decades ago, for a relational IR.3 Their understanding has predominated because it is admirably catholic, encompassing the wide range of self-consciously relational work. Although they come out of the “New York School” of relational Sociology, which that developed in the 1990s around the works and networks of Harrison White and Charles Tilly,4 their conception encompasses both Pierre Bourdieu’s relational Sociology, which has been immensely influential across the social sciences, and Norbert Elias’ (con)figurational Sociology.5 And in both Sociology and IR, these (and other) strands have not merely comfortably coexisted but enriched one another.6 Here I want to focus on the place of processes in “relationalism” – which is obscure in most accounts, including Jackson and Nexon’s. Processes are so central to “relationalism” that Jackson and Nexon not only initially labeled their perspective “processual relationalism”7 but claimed that “relationalism … takes processes of social transactions as the basic building blocks of theory”8 and that a “a p/r [processual/relational] approach holds that processes are the most fundamental e­ lements of reality.”9 This, it seems to me, is, if not correct, then at least a fruitful framing for relational/systemic work. But it clearly calls for an overarching frame of processualism. Processes, not relations, are primary – and thus 2

(Jackson and Nexon 1999, 291–292). 3 (Jackson and Nexon 1999). (Jackson and Nexon 2019) revisits relationalism in light of the substantial body of relational research over the intervening two decades. 4 (Mische 2011, 80–85). 5 See n. 39 in §1.4. 6 For example, (Paulle, van Heerikhuizen, and Emirbayer 2012) discusses affinities and complementarities in the work of Bourdieu and Elias. See also (Dépelteau 2013). White (2008, xvi, 114, 145, 241–242) draws attention to affinities between his work and Bourdieu’s. (Elder-Vass 2007b) seeks to combine Bourdieu with Margaret Archer’s critical-realist relationalism. 7 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 292, 301, 318). Likewise, Emirbayer (1997, 282, 281) initially formulated “the choice between substantialism and relationalism” as a choice between “conceiv[ing] of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or in processes” and regularly reverts to this contrast (e.g., 1997, 290, 295, 301, 304). Similarly, Andrew Abbott (2007 [1996], 3, 2) refers to “the processual/relational tradition” that “focuses on the processual and relational character of social life.” 8 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 291). 9 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 314 [emphasis in original]).

Relations, Processes, and Systems

181

should be the noun.10 Therefore, I suggest that we should understand the broad relational/systemic enterprise as “relational processualism;” processual research with a relational emphasis. Or, at the very least, we must not confuse processes and relations. And we should give central and independent attention to processes – which are rarely addressed in mainstream IR.11 Processes, as we saw in §1.6, are “integrated series of connected developments unfolding in programmatic coordination.”12 Many “things” (e.g., waterfalls, laser beams, and tornadoes) are processes. Many “things” that appear stable (e.g., animals, lakes, and stars) are stabilized by extensive regenerative and reproductive processes. And every “thing” is subject to processes of decay and “death” (although at extraordinarily varying rates and time frames). Even strong ontological processualists, however, may have good empirical, theoretical, or methodological reasons to focus on relations narrowly conceived. (For example, we often black-box mechanisms and processes, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes as a fruitful simplification.) “Relationalists” thus will continue to talk about both processes and relations. Therefore, it is important to appreciate their differences. Relations (connections) and processes (“goings on”) clearly are different. For example, Jackson and Nexon note that social network analysis has often been “relational but not processual.”13 Nevertheless, despite repeatedly using variants of the formula ­“processes and relations,”14 Jackson and Nexon never clarify how they differ. Their shorthand formula “p/r”15 suggests that “processual” and 10 Similarly, Christopher Powell (2013, 188, 194–195), in advocating “radical relationalism,” argues that we should “treat relations as processes” – which clearly suggests radical processualism. 11 Standard research design texts give no attention to processes as objects of investigation. (For example, (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994), (Brady and Collier 2010), and (Goertz 2017) do not have index entries for “process(es).”) And “process tracing” typically looks at single cases of a causal relation between independent and dependent variables (rather than cases of the operation of a process). As Daniel Steel (2004, 68) notes, process tracing is “often found in regions of social science in which one is interested in questions about what causes what [not how a result is produced] but in which good statistical data are unavailable.” The goal is not to understand a process but to provide support from outside the dataset being used for a claimed causal relation between independent and dependent variables. 12 (Rescher 2000, 22). See also (Glennan 2017, 26). 13 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 305). I am skeptical, though, of their claim (1999, 319 n. 3) that “it is logically possible to be a processualist without being a relationalist.” I cannot think of a social process that is not about organized relations (operating over time). 14 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 298, 299, 300, 301, 304, 306). 15 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 292, 297, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308, 312, 314, 316, 317, 318).

182

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

“relational” are largely substitutable terms16 – which they are not. And the formulation “processual-relational”17 is either obscure or, reading the hyphen as “and/or,” unhelpful (because the two terms have not been clearly distinguished). Recently, Jackson and Nexon have distinguished “positional” and “processual” approaches within relationalism.18 A process, however, is something different from (not a type of) a relation. All processes involve relations. But not all relations involve or are parts of processes. And no process is merely a matter of relations.19 Processes involve activity over time. Stuart Glennan may exaggerate in claiming that “the language of relations is a static language.”20 Relations, however, are not necessarily dynamic. In this sense, relations are more like substances than processes. Both substance-ism and relation-ism suffer from “entity bias.”21 Like materialists and idealists, both substantialists and relationalists focus on what “things” are made of. Neither directly addresses what they do – or the productive nature of structured activities. And the unfolding of entities and activities over time (“becoming”) is not readily comprehended by studying either relations or substances (“being”). If relationalism is a progressive negation of substantialism then processualism is their synthesis. Processes integrate substances and relations with activities. No matter how intensively we investigate the connections between or the arrangements of “things” we will never understand how the world works. Relation-ism, like substance-ism, provides “what” or “why,” not “how,” explanations.22 16

That, it seems to me, is the “natural” reading of the slash/virgule. See also n. 8 above. 17 (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 9). (Goddard, MacDonald, and Nexon 2019, 304, 306, 311) use the formula “relational-processual” (which they seem to take as equivalent to “processual-relational”). Similarly obscure is Emirbayer’s (1997, 309) reference to “a processual, relational view of the world.” (I can’t figure out how to interpret the comma.) These formulas point toward the importance of both relations and processes but do not address their similarities, differences, and interconnections. And the insistent use of both terms clearly indicates that they are not equivalent or substitutable. 18 (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 582 [abstract], 584, 592–595). 19 The distinction between static (“positional”) and dynamic (“processual”) representations of systems is indeed important. I am arguing, though, that it is not effectively addressed as a matter of different kinds of relations – and that this also obscures the relationship between processes and relations. 20 (Glennan 2017, 50). 21 I take this phrase from (Illari and Williamson 2012, 126–127). A variant of this problem, which Glennan (2017, 53) calls “property bias,” is evident in contemporary quantitative social science, which focuses on properties of “things” understood as independent variables. 22 See also §§4.5ff.

Relations, Processes, and Systems

183

Most relationalists do not intend entity bias. Quite the contrary, they regularly conflate (possibly static) relations and (dynamic) processes.23 For example, Jackson and Nexon claim that “ties are not static ‘things’, but ongoing processes.”24 In fact, though, ties need not be dynamic. Social entities arise not simply from the “configurations of ties”25 but also from the activities of configured/related “things.” And to the extent that by ties we mean processes – for example, Jackson and Nexon argue that “relational approaches to world politics specify processes and mechanisms”26 – we should call them that and study them as processes not as relations (which they are not). 10.2

Configuring Configurations That Configure

Taking a cue from Bourdieu’s famous account of habitus as “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures,”27 I suggest that we think of systems as configuring configurations that configure (or structuring structures that structure28). And we should understand such configurations as always “in process.” Verbs (and adverbs and verbal nouns) usually capture processes better than nouns.29 For example, above I argued that social scientists should, in addition to looking for causes, study causation30 (the productive processes of causally efficacious entities and activities) and see social action not as constrained by “structures” but as “structured”31 (by structuring structures that structure). I also argued32 that rather than thinking of personal identity as an essential set of defining attributes we should explore the varied identification processes that produce “persons,” understood as contingently stabilized, multiplex configurations of identifying relations and histories. 23

Similarly, Amaya Querejazu (2022, 877. See also 880, 889) writes “by relations relating I mean the constant and ongoing interaction of co-constitutive and transformative processes that create realities.” See also (Kurki 2022), who like Jackson and Nexon, sometimes pairs “relations” and “processes,” suggesting that they are different, and sometimes uses them interchangeably. 24 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 291–292). 25 (Jackson and Nexon 1999, 291 [emphasis added]). 26 (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 584–585). Similarly, David McCourt (2016, 475) claims that “relationalism sees them [entities] as constituted by ongoing processes ….” 27 (Bourdieu 1977 [1972], 72). 28 I prefer “configurations” to “structures” because of the Waltzian tendencies in IR to reify structures and to separate structure and agency. 29 See also (Rescher 1996, 29), (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000, 4), (Glennan 2017, 20). 30 See §4.3. 31 See §§5.2, 5.9. 32 See §§3.5–3.10.

184

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

The noun configuration, especially when used alone, draws attention away from the flow of configuring and reconfiguring processes – much as the noun relations draws attention away from the processes that create, sustain, and transform them. Tellingly, Norbert Elias, the father of (con) figurational Sociology, “grew to dislike the term ‘figurational sociology’ and ended up preferring ‘process sociology’ as a label.”33 Therefore, even when we do talk about relations or configurations, we should understand them as both the results and sources of configuring processes. Social configurations are productive processes that configure. Things hang together in configurations34 because they have been configured (into that configuration); they have been made to hang together. And that making typically (re)configures the things configured. For example, in the configuration states-in-a-states-system, “states” and “states systems” are neither separate “things” nor “things” (units) and “relations” (structures) but intertwined dimensions, causes, and consequences of ongoing configuring processes. None of this is intended to criticize studying static relations – or substances, entities, or properties. Such research, however, is not conceptually, logically, ontologically, or scientifically privileged. And processes, which the label relationalism encompass awkwardly, need to be an essential part of relational/systemic IR. 10.3

The Attractions of a Relational Processual Frame

A relational processual approach to international systems has at least three major attractions. Seeing relations “as preeminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, ongoing processes”35 can help to guard against both reification and misplaced essentialism. In IR, consider the “Copenhagen School” of security studies, which rejects the idea of fixed or given security interests, stressing instead processes of securitization, which create the objects of security policy.36 By taking history and context seriously, relational processualism draws attention to the contingent conditions within which “causal” “law-like regularities” operate. It also shifts the burden of argument to those who 33

34 35 36

(Van Krieken 2001, 353–354). Recall Waltz’s (1979, 8) question “How does it all hang together?” See §4.1.2. (Emirbayer 1997, 289). See also (Powell 2013, 194). (Buzan, Wæver, and Wilde 1998), (Waever 1998), (McDonald 2008), (Hansen 2012). Although not originally formulated in explicitly relational terms, a relational framing is becoming more common. See, e.g., (Balzacq 2011, 2, 22, 28; 2019), (Cavelty and Jaeger 2015), (Bueger 2016b).

Relations, Processes, and Systems

185

claim transhistorical law-like knowledge. And it can help to guard against smuggling unspecified background conditions into a theory (as, for example, Waltz does by treating “units” as sovereign territorial states). Relational processualism also focuses attention on structured agency exercised within webs of social institutions and practices. As Christopher Powell puts it, programmatically, “Treat the concepts of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ as opposed but equivalent…. Treat all structures as generated through agency. … Treat all agential action as produced through the operation of structures.”37 Or, to requote John Padgett and Walter Powell’s formulation, “in the short run, actors create relations; in the long run, relations create actors.”38 10.4

Relational Processualism

But even if “the whole story” is one of (relational) processual things, there often are good epistemic or pragmatic reasons to tell different parts of the story at different times and for different purposes. For example, arrangement (relations) often is of considerable importance in itself. And relations are sometimes easier to identify, study, or generalize about than processes.39 In relational/systemic research, however, processes need to be understood as not merely lurking in the background or unseen beneath. Attention to processes should both shape the research and be a standard for evaluating it. We should be suspicious of a systemic/relational account that cannot be tied to a likely (not merely possible or even just probable) productive process. And discovering and depicting structurally important relations should be taken not as an explanatory end but as a call for investigating the processes that produce and are associated with them.40 We ultimately need to know not only what happened, why, but how. 10.5

International Systems as Hierarchically Layered Assemblages

A relational/systemic/processual framing is particularly attractive when combined with the framings of assemblages and levels of organization. 37

(Powell 2013, 188). See also §4.9. 38 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 2). See also (Archer 1982; 1995), (Archer 2013). Alternatively, we might say that in the short run both actors and relations usually appear as largely given but in the long run both actors and relations are variable and mutually co-constituted. (See Chapter 12 and §§3.5–3.10.) 39 Compare my argument at the end of §4.8.3 about the value of even black-boxed depictions of mechanisms. 40 The same is true, I would argue, of “causal” explanations. Identifying causal effects should trigger research on causal processes and mechanisms. See §§4.3–4.5.

186

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

As this book is written so that it can be read à la carte, though, I need to briefly reintroduce these notions. Levels of organization, as I use that term, are (to the best of our knowledge) “in the world.” That world is understood as composed of smaller or less complex “things” that make up larger or more complex “things” – that make up even larger or more complex “things” …41 And each level of organization contains emergent phenomena that cannot be fully explained by entities and activities on lower levels. In assembled systems, the parts are related extrinsically, in the sense that they remain at least partially separate or separable42 (as in artistic, archeological, and paleontological assemblages). The assembled parts are more or less tightly linked into a still heterogeneous and only contingently stabilized entity. And the fact of assemblage, as well as the possibility of disassembly or re-assembly, highlights the continuing processual nature of assemblages.43 This framing, which highlights the partial (in)separability of individuals and social groups, seems to me an immensely fruitful way to approach social systems, including international systems. Social groups, as systems, are not reducible to their individual parts. As assemblages, though, they do not reduce individuals to parts of social wholes.44 We are who we are and act as we act as parts of changing and intersecting networks of social assemblages. Those assemblages are composed of, among other things, individual persons. But “personal identity” is an assemblage of identifications generated in multiple social assemblages. And identity is inescapably and recursively related to social action. An assemblage frame also presents social systems as more or less coherently nested (rather than tightly integrated). This, it seems to me, is not only descriptively accurate but suggests a penetrating u ­ nderstanding of change.

41

See §§1.3, 3.3. 42 See §1.8. 43 If there is a basic level beneath which we cannot penetrate, it would appear to be quantum fields, in which the very idea of “stuff” would seem to disappear into process. Quantum IR – see (Wendt 2015), (Der Derian and Wendt 2020), (Pan 2020) – thus might be seen as a style of relational/systemic theory and research. (Albert and Bathon 2020) considers this framing from a “modern systems theory” perspective. 44 And thus, as I argued in §§3.5–3.10, the holism-individualism debates that have long bedeviled social theory are preempted or transcended. “Individual human beings” do not exist independent of the social and natural wholes of which they are part – nor do social groups exist apart from the “individual human beings” that compose them.

Relations, Processes, and Systems

187

Often, as I will argue in Chapters 12, 13, and 17, there is no master driver of change – which usually involves re-assembly and re-purposing of existing elements. Relatively modest alterations work through networks of relations in complex adaptive systems to produce large, even qualitative, transformations (systems effects). And the mutual adjustment of parts over time changes both parts and whole (and both new and old).

11

Multiple Dimensions of Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

This chapter begins to sketch alternatives to the Waltzian tripartite (ordering principle, functional differentiation, distribution of capabilities) conception of political structures, emphasizing that international systems are differentiated along multiple dimensions. I briefly introduce a number of different framings in order to suggest some of the breadth and variety of systemic/relational theory and research. (Part III(B) looks in greater depth and detail at some particular dimensions of differentiation.) 11.1 Differentiation Differentiation is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the process by which the different roles and functions of the members of a society become institutionalized.” As S. N. Eisenstadt puts it, through differentiation “the main social functions or the major institutional spheres of society become disassociated from one another, attached to specialized collectivities and roles, and organized in relatively specific and autonomous symbolic and organizational frameworks.”1 This section looks at three highly abstract framings for studying social and political differentiation. 11.1.1 Checklists, Toolkits, and Building Blocks Waltz sought a small number of ideal-type structural models composed of a few elements. In Part II I argued that there is no privileged account of the nature of “the structure” (or even the structures) of international systems. Here I suggest that we should aim instead for a checklist of dimensions of differentiation that we have reason to believe illuminate some recurrently important features that structure some social and political systems of interest. Or, changing metaphors, we should stock a toolbox of dimensions of differentiation for studying international systems. 1

(Eisenstadt 1964, 376).

188

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

189

Or, changing metaphors again, we can hope to use these building blocks to construct models that comprehend some important features of some multilayer, multiactor, multidimensional international systems. Rather than seek law-like regularities of the form “Most A’s are x” (e.g., states in anarchy balance) I want to enable explanations of the form “These A’s (but not those) are x, y, and z (but not a, b, or c) in these particular ways – and this characteristically has r, t, or s (but not g, h, and i) consequences.” I am seeking useful sets of modular elements that provide a scaffolding2 for relatively rich structural models. And I am arguing that we not only can but should cut into studying the organization and operation of international systems in different ways that in different instances may be complementary, competing, or unrelated. 11.1.2 Vertical and Horizontal Differentiation “Vertical differentiation” places “segments” into relations of super-, sub-, and co-ordination.3 Social stratification is, in these terms, a matter of vertical differentiation. “Horizontal differentiation” creates and populates (types of) social positions and entities that are different from, but not necessarily superior or inferior to, other differentiated (types of) entities and positions. Functional differentiation, for example, is on its face “horizontal.” Usually, though, it becomes interlinked with hierarchical “vertical differentiation,” as typically occurs with gender and occupation. This highly abstract framing seems to me sufficiently obvious and clear that I will make only one further comment here. Horizontal and vertical differentiation are analytic categories. We may fruitfully study them separately. In the social world, however, they are almost always intertwined. (For example, as I emphasize in §§9.1 and 15.1, hierarchies are systems of relations of stratification (vertical differentiation) and functional (horizontal) differentiation.4) And social roles are defined by both vertical and horizontal differentiation.

2

The framing of scaffolds, which has recently begun to gain some traction in the philosophy of Biology (e.g., (Caporael, Griesemer, and Wimsatt 2014), (Griesemer 2021), (Veit 2022)), seems to me worth consideration in the social sciences – although I have neither the confidence in my ability to cash out that intuition nor the space to try. 3 Equal, like superior and inferior, is a rank. And social relations of equality are no less important (and no less socially constructed) than relations of superiority and inferiority. See nn. 58, 59 in §9.4.2. 4 In the framing that I will use in the next section, different authorities are associated with different activities.

190

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

11.1.3 Formal and Substantive Differentiation Features such as the pattern of stratification or the number of poles of power refer to abstract structural “forms.” Purely formal models of systems are especially attractive if we think of explanation as a matter of providing generalized accounts of lawlike regularities. Thus Waltz stressed the formal dimensions of distribution of capabilities and levels of analysis and understood political ordering principles (anarchy and hierarchy) in a way that was as close to contentless as possible. And there is a wellestablished sociological tradition of formal structural analysis, rooted in Georg Simmel and extensively practiced today in social network analysis.5 The models that I present in Chapter 15 and 16 are largely formal. Other structural features of social and political systems, however, are “substantive,” such as the character of dominant actors, the functions they perform, and the authorities that they possess. In fact, social and political systems “are” in large measure organized systems of substantive institutions and norms. Chapter 14 looks at normative-institutional differentiation, which I employ (along with models of forms) in Chapter 17. 11.2

Differentiating Actors, Activities, and Authorities

Social differentiation – the processes by which social positions are produced, related, populated, reproduced, and transformed – has myriad forms and dimensions. Here I suggest that it is often fruitful to focus on the differentiation of actors, activities, and authorities; on determining who has what authority over whom with respect to what. 11.2.1 Segmentation (Actors) and Terminal Peer Polities “Segmentation” – delineating types of social segments; differentiating types of “units”6 or actors – is essential to differentiation. Because systems are composed of parts of particular types (arranged in particular ways) the character of those parts is essential to the structuring of any society. And the language of segments emphasizes that they are parts of larger wholes. Which type of actor predominates often is central to the structuring of a social system. Anthropology, Archaeology, and Sociology sometimes define societal types by their characteristic top-tier unit (e.g., band, 5 (Papilloud 2018) and (Canto-Milà 2018) are useful introductions. For a powerful contemporary expression, see (Martin 2009). 6 In (Donnelly 2009, 73–74) I called this “unit differentiation.” But as soon as they are differentiated they are no longer (abstract, characterless) “units.”

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

191

tribal, chiefdom, and state societies).7 In IR, Robert Gilpin argues that “the character of the international system is largely determined by the type of state-actor.”8 Even Waltz claimed that “international political structures are defined in terms of the primary political units of an era, be they city states, empires, or nations”9 and acknowledged that “systems populated by units of different sorts in some ways perform differently, even though they share the same organizing principle.”10 This suggests introducing a concept such as “terminal peer polities.”11 Top-tier polities are “terminal” in the sense that no polity is above them, only an “international system.” This usefully distinguishes international systems by level of organization12 (rather than ordering principle). It also, I think, better captures the insight underlying Waltz’s anarchy–hierarchy binary. (There is a fundamental difference between political systems that are polities capable of action in a larger political system and those that are not.) These terminal polities are “peers” in the sense of being “person[s] of high rank”13 that, like “member[s] of a rank of hereditary nobility,”14 do not all have the same rank. (Georg Schwarzenberger nicely describes states as the aristocrats of states systems and great powers as the oligarchs among those aristocrats.15) And as important as that there are top-tier actors is what they are (e.g., states, empires, societies, ethnic groups, tribes, religions, civilizations). Also crucial is how terminal entities are related to other entities (on both the same and other levels). For example, in recent decades we have seen not only the relative decline of states but also the absolute and relative rise of many types of transnational and supranational actors. This has produced a more heterogeneous set of higher-level actors.16 And

7 In none of these disciplines, though, is the structure of a system seen as reducible to the situation of the predominant groups. That understanding, which confuses demarcation with structure (see §6.1.5), is distinctively Waltz’s. See also §10.1. 8 (Gilpin 1981, 26). We will return to this point in §11.2.1. 9 (Waltz 1979, 91). 10 (Waltz 1990b, 37; See also Waltz 2000, 10). The subsection on functional ­differentiation in Theory of International Politics is titled “The Character of the Units” (Waltz 1979, 93). 11 I take the term from Colin Renfrew and John Cherry’s Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change (1986), a work in the comparative archaeology of early complex societies. 12 See §§1.3, 3.3. 13 Oxford English Dictionary. 14 Oxford English Dictionary. 15 (Schwarzenberger 1951, ch. 6, 7). 16 Sections 14.2 and 14.3 and Chapters 15 and 16 provide models that can be used to provide comparative-static depictions of such changes.

192

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

I see no indication either that top-tier “nonstate actors” are likely to become states or that a new dominant type of top-tier polity is emerging. Segmentation, like other dimensions of differentiation, neither exists nor operates independently. Social segments have activities, authorities, obligations, and resources associated with them. They stand in particular kinds of relations to one another. And those relations make social systems systems. 11.2.2 Functional Differentiation (Activities) There also is little dispute that how “functions” (activities) are delineated and allocated to social “segments” is of central structural significance. For example, the rise of early modern European states largely involved transferring existing functions to different actors. The twentieth-century rise of welfare states involved existing states doing new things. Now, with globalization, we are seeing the (partial) reallocation of existing functions to increasingly varied types of (subnational, transnational, and supranational) actors. In addition, new functions (e.g., regulating the global commons) are being created and allocated in varied ways. We thus should focus on both the diversity of forms of functional differentiation and the particular substance of different differentiations – in sharp contrast to Waltz’s emphasis on the sameness of states (both within and across states systems). For example, Waltz argued that nonstate “supranational agents able to act effectively … either themselves acquire some of the attributes and capabilities of states, as did the medieval papacy in the era of Innocent III [1198–1216], or they soon reveal their inability to act in important ways except with the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the principal states concerned with the matters at hand.”17 This arbitrarily designates certain attributes and capabilities as essentially those of states – and not of other kinds of actors. And it claims that states, in some sort of thick sense of that term, are, at least in the long run, always and necessarily the predominant terminal peer polities in international systems. In fact, however, as we will see in Chapter 17, medieval Europe did not have “states” in this sense. And at all levels, some medieval polities were secular and others were ecclesiastical. “Religion” and “politics” were not, as in modern societies, separate domains, only one of which was truly or fully “political.” (Medieval Christendom simply was not differentiated in that way.) Medieval politics had essential ecclesiastical 17

(Waltz 1979, 88).

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

193

and secular dimensions.18 The balance between religious and secular authorities thus was crucial to the political structuring of Western Christian society. During the Carolingian (800–888) and Ottonian (919–1024) dynasties, religious authorities generally were subordinate to, and typically appointed to ecclesiastical office by, secular rulers.19 In the early twelfth century, however, the Pope obtained the right to appoint (“invest”) archbishops.20 And for much of the next three or four centuries, through ups and downs, the Rome-based “papal monarchy” was arguably the most important political actor in Christendom.21 The early modern rise of kings involved subordinating not just provincial secular authorities but also clerical authorities. Even in Catholic countries, churches became increasingly national.22 And clerics, who made up the bulk of late-medieval royal bureaucracies, were increasingly displaced by secular “clerks” in royal administrations. Political and religious domains were increasingly sharply differentiated, laying the foundation for the separation of church and state, which restricted the authority of churches to a non-political religious domain. Who does (and does not do) what is unquestionably central to the structuring of a social system. 11.2.3 Stratification (Authorities) Differentiated social or political actors typically perform (some of) their differentiated activities with some degree of (official or unofficial) authority or obligation. Waltz’s pretense that international systems have no authority – “Nationally, relations of authority are established. Internationally, only relations of strength result”23 – is not a fruitful simplification. It is just plain wrong. It simply is not true that “in the absence of agents with system-wide authority, formal relations of super- and subordination fail to develop.”24 18 See §17.1. 19 (McKitterick 1999), (Reuter 2006, ch. 19). At the parish level this remained true throughout the medieval period. 20 See (Blumenthal 1988 [1982]), (Miller 2005), (Tellenbach 1959), and, more briefly, (Fuhrmann 1986 [1983], 81–87, 97–109). (Haldén 2017) discusses the Investiture Controversy in the context of IR theory. 21 On the high-medieval papacy see (Ullmann 1972, ch. 9, 10), (Blumenthal 2004), (Robinson 2004), (Watt 1999), (Meyer 2007), and, most briefly, (Watts 2009, 49–59). (Tierney 1961) discusses high-medieval church-“state” relations more generally. 22 See §17.2 at nn. 24–26. 23 (Waltz 1979, 112). 24 (Waltz 1979, 80).

194

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

In states systems, states are officially superordinate to nonstate actors, states mutually recognize one another’s sovereign authority, and horizontally generated authority develops through bilateral agreements and international regimes. In addition, unofficial relations of super- and subordination often are quite important. There is no real disagreement that who has which powers over whom – how a system is stratified; arranged in layered relations of super-, sub-, and co-ordination – is essential to the structuring of social and political systems. And once we abandon the Waltzian conceit that international systems are not stratified there can be no dispute that patterns of international stratification vary with time and place. Social stratification often is thought of as a matter of differences in power, which is usually seen as having both material (“hard”) and nonmaterial (“soft”) dimensions. This common framing, though, inappropriately prioritizes the material, by defining material “power” and treating everything else as a residual. Power, in the ordinary language sense of control over outcomes, can be more profitably understood as having material, normative, and institutional dimensions.25 In addition to the power that comes from might and the power that comes from being right there is the power that comes from being able to operate efficaciously within institutionalized settings. And the differences in the sources and mixes of these three types of power, as well as the ways in which they are related, are central to how a society is stratified. We will return to stratification in international systems in some detail in Chapter 15 (and to the importance of norms and institutions in ­Chapter 14). 11.3

Material Differentiation: Geotechnics and Scarcity

Segmentation, functional differentiation, and stratification are only a first step. Building on the comparison in Chapter 7 of forager societies, Hobbesian states of nature, and great power states systems, we can identify two additional “substantive” dimensions of differentiation: ­normative-institutional differentiation, which we will look at in some detail in Chapter 14, and material differentiation, which I briefly consider here.

25

Institutional and normative power are no more fruitfully understood as “types of nonmaterial power” than material power is fruitfully understood as a “type of nonnormative power.” We need to define all the important types of power, not just one. And this initial list needs to be expanded (at minimum by disaggregating normative power and material power).

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

195

11.3.1 Material Factors in Structural Realism Waltz’s exclusion of normative and institutional factors from his account of structure is notorious. Much less appreciated, but no less troubling, is his exclusion of material factors. It is often claimed that structural realism in particular and Waltzian structural theory in general is materialist.26 This, however, cannot be true given Waltz’s account of structure. The distribution of capabilities, even where all capabilities are material, is a purely formal property of a system. Capabilities – and material factors more generally – are just another thing that Waltz claimed structural theories must abstract from.27 Thus he explicitly denied that technological advances and changes in weaponry are structural changes.28 And the rise and fall of great powers does not, in Waltz’s account, change the structure of the system (as long as the number of great powers remains more than two). But just as self-identified structural realists smuggle back in normative and institutional features such as sovereignty and great power management – because we can’t really talk about international relations without them – they smuggle back in material factors. For example, Mearsheimer has a chapter in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics on “The Primacy of Land Power,” which addresses the stopping power of water.29 Most strikingly, Waltz argued that “the longest peace yet known rested on two pillars: bipolarity and nuclear weapons.”30 It is hard to see, though, why (bi)polarity but not nuclear weapons should be considered structural. If “among states armed with nuclear weapons peace prevails whatever the structure of the system may be,”31 I cannot imagine why we would not try to encompass the obviously structuring role of nuclear weapons32 – especially because their presence (or absence) in a system is no more an attribute of the actors than polarity. And in practice Waltz seemed to agree.

26

See, for example, (Wendt 1999, 2, 5, 6, 19), (Buzan and Albert 2010, 322), (Wohlforth 2011, 503). 27 Waltz did at one point (1979, 99) argue that “we abstract from every attribute of states except their capabilities.” But that is a single passing reference. And at the core of his conception of the elements of structure is the insistence on abstracting from capabilities (in order to look only at the overall system-wide distribution of capabilities). 28 (Waltz 1979, 67). 29 (Mearsheimer 2001, ch. 4). 30 (Waltz 1993, 44). See also (Waltz 1981, 2). 31 (Waltz 2004, 5). See also (Waltz 1993, 74): “the probability of major war among states having nuclear weapons approaches zero.” 32 A large part of the explanation in Waltz’s case, I suspect, was his mistaken notion of “the unit level.” See §§3.2, 3.3, 5.2–5.5.

196

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

In his first major published piece after Theory of International Politics, Waltz claimed to “deduc[e] expectations from the structure of the international political system.”33 The section in question, however, included a subsection titled “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons.”34 And in later works Waltz acknowledged that “multipolarity abolishes the stark symmetry and pleasing simplicity of bipolarity, but nuclear weapons restore both of those qualities to a considerable extent”35 and noted that military and industrial technology “may change the character of systems.”36 Glenn Snyder takes a step in the right direction when he argues that technology is a “structural modifier,” which he defines as something “structural in [its] inherent nature” but “not potent enough internationally to warrant that designation.”37 But we should not confuse causal potency with structural significance. Even if nuclear weapons are unusual (or even unique) in the magnitude of their causal impact that only means that technology usually explains less of what we are interested in than other dimensions of structure – not that it is not really (or not fully) structural.38 Technology is structural – it positions actors in particular ways – whatever its relative causal efficacy. 11.3.2 Geotechnics and Scarcity I suggest conceptualizing material differentiation in terms of geography and technology, which are analytically distinct but usually complexly related. I think that we would do well to adopt Daniel Deudney’s formulation of geotechnics39 – and then explore the many forms it takes. This would allow us to acknowledge the structural nature of features such as the offense–defense balance40 and would open up considering how capabilities, and other material factors, structure relations in international systems. This, though, is an area where I am at a comparative disadvantage. Therefore, I simply throw out a few pretty obvious ideas. 33

(Waltz 1981, 2). 34 This is still another instance of Waltz ignoring his theory when it proved obviously inadequate. However admirable this might be for a policy analyst, it is a telling indictment of the Waltzian conception of systemic/structural theory. 35 (Waltz 1993, 74). 36 (Waltz, 1990b, 37). 37 (Snyder 1996, 169). 38 Snyder, in other words, repeats Waltz’s error (see §6.4) of confusing structure and explanation. 39 (Deudney 2007, 39 and passim). 40 (Glaser and Kaufmann 1998) is a good introduction.

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

197

Geotechnics makes a place for geopolitics41 and for the substantial body of work in Geography and IR on the construction and organization of social space, including the modern notion of territoriality (and its fate in a globalizing world).42 The substance of both productive and destructive technologies, as the nuclear weapons example illustrates, is of obvious structural import. Consider the agricultural and industrial revolutions and the gunpowder revolution (and the Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul “gunpowder empires”). Scale and level/type of technological development are relatively abstract formal material features that would seem to be both separately central and interrelated. For example, forager societies are low-tech small-scale societies. Globalization is associated with large-scale hightech systems of relations. The three simple anarchical societies considered in Chapter 7 also suggest attention to scarcity – which is a variable, not a constant.43 For example, the abundance of forager societies is central to their warlessness.44 Forager abundance, though, depends on simple desires matched to the environment and on radical sharing (and the associated lack of private property). Scarcity, in other words, is (in part) socially constructed. Or consider what we might call sufficiency, which I think nicely describes material conditions in many OECD countries. Politics under conditions of sufficiency, it seems to me, is fundamentally different from politics under conditions of scarcity. For example, the infrequency of war among relatively wealthy democracies may be linked with sufficiency. 41

See, for example, (Agnew 2003), (Cohen 2009), (Dodds 2014), (Guzzini 2012a), (Jervis 2010), (Moisio and Paasi 2013), (Starr 2016 [2013]), (Tuathail 1996). 42 For a sampling of work in geography centrally relevant to IR, see, for example, (Agnew, Mitchell, and Tuathail 2003), (Cox, Low, and Robinson 2009), (Crang and Thrift 2000), (Harvey 2006), (Murdoch 2005). On the specificity of the idea of territory (and territoriality), see, for example, (Elden 2013), (Sassen 2008 [2006]). See also (Storey 2020). 43 In IR, however, scarcity usually is assumed – unthinkingly. Randall Schweller (1999, 147) is rare in even noting the importance of scarcity to the standard realist story: “States exist under conditions of material and social scarcity with no s­overeign ­arbiter ….” 44 See §6.3. Briefly, “foragers,” the simplest type of hunter-gathers, live in bands composed usually of dozens of individuals. Although their material life is extremely simple, they experience abundance, in the sense that their needs and principal desires are relatively easily satisfied. They have no social hierarchy and almost no functional differentiation. Political decisions typically are made by open discussion leading to consensus and are not subject to official coercive enforcement. But foragers do not balance or pursue relative gains. They do not experience security dilemmas. And relations between bands are warless.

198

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

More broadly, we might suggest that sufficiency decreases the range of issues over which states are willing to go to war – or, perhaps more precisely, scarcity (and especially deprivation) increases the likelihood of war “all other things being equal.” And fear for “survival,” which I argued does much of the actual explanatory work in structural realist explanations,45 may be as much a function of scarcity as of “anarchy.” 11.4

Additional Dimensions of Differentiation

We could go on for quite a while adding forms of differentiation that often structure relations in international systems. Here I will briefly note just three. 11.4.1 Polarity Polarity is not a universal feature of political or international systems.46 It is, however, a significant structuring feature of systems organized around similar and largely autonomous territorial “units.” In states systems, where concentrations of capabilities do tend to create distinct poles of power, we need to distinguish unipolar, bipolar, tripolar, and multipolar (more than three but less than about ten great powers) systems.47 Even “systems of states,” though, may have no great powers – or, what is functionally equivalent, so many “great powers” (say, a dozen or more) that the polarization of power is of little structural or explanatory significance. I call these systems unpolarized. The distinction is important because the wide dispersal of capabilities for violence in unpolarized systems pushes in the direction of Hobbes’ terrifying war of all against all (as in the parts of eleventh-century Europe where politics was largely dominated by local lords (castellans)48). Polarity, however, is one of many dimensions of differentiation, not an independent variable. For example, although moves toward unipolarity produced anti-hegemonic balancing in the modern European states system, in China for more than two millennia rising powers were often met 45

See §7,2,3. 46 See §8.2. When divided functionally, powers differ qualitatively. Therefore, different concentrations of power often cannot be aggregated into the quantitative distinctions that underlie conventional notions of polarity. (This is especially true in systems with tangled/heterarchic hierarchies. See §§15.2, 15.9). 47 Waltz’s distinction between bipolar and multipolar systems is obviously inadequate. Even worse was his contrasting of bipolarity to all other forms of polarity. (1979, 161, 168, 176). (This fits Waltz’s pattern of identifying something of interest to him (e.g., anarchy or the system level) and then treating everything else as a residual.) 48 See, for example, (Barthélemy 2009 [1997]), (Bonnassie 2009 [1985]).

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

199

with bandwagoning. And the Cold War-era debate over the relative stability of bipolar and multipolar orders49 was, I would argue, fundamentally misformulated as a question of independent-variable causal effects. (Nuclear bipolarity was very different from the bipolarity of Thucydides’ world.) 11.4.2 Levels of Organization Levels of organization, which we looked at in §§1.3 and 3.3, is another important structural feature of international systems. For example, in the past half century we have seen the emergence of a supranational but sub-global level of organization (populated by transnational actors and international and regional organizations and regimes of varied sorts). Chapter 16 illustrates one way in which spatial levels of organization can be deployed at the heart of structural models of polities and systems of polities. 11.4.3 Interaction Capacity An additional dimension of structural differentiation has been identified by two of Waltz’s most astute sympathetic critics: what John Ruggie, following Durkheim, calls dynamic density50 and what Barry Buzan and Richard Little, in what I think is more descriptive language, call “interaction capacity.”51 The underlying idea is that the type and volume of transactions that a system can sustain (“is designed to support”) is a crucial structural feature. (For example, low interaction capacity is an important aspect of forager societies.) Interaction capacity is complexly related to other dimensions of differentiation, including, most obviously, “the division of labor” (functional differentiation) and geotechnics. Nonetheless, it is an emergent property of social systems worth considering in its own right. (For example, both “modernity” and “postmodernity”/globalization involved qualitative jumps in interaction capacity.) Who can interact with whom with respect to what is, as network approaches underscore, a central structural feature of social and political systems. 49

(Deutsch and Singer 1964), (Waltz 1964), and (Rosecrance 1966) are classics. 50 (Ruggie 1983, 281ff.). See also (Barkdull 1995, 671–672). (Meijer and Jensen 2018) is an interesting recent application of the concept. 51 (Buzan and Little 2000, 8–9, 80–84, 92–93, 190–215, 276–299, 382–383, 378– 379). See also (Buzan and Lawson 2015, ch. 3), (Buzan, Jones, and Little 1993, ch. 4). For other uses of the concept, see, for example, (Butcher and Griffiths 2021), (Herrera 2003), (Phillips and Sharman 2015a, 438, 440; 2015b, 28–29, 49), (Thies 2010).

200

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

11.5

Positioned Social Persons

Thinking in terms of differentiation shifts our attention from abstract “units” or “actors” to social positions and their associated roles. Waltz at one point claimed to present “a purely positional picture of society.”52 Although no adequate account of the structuring of a society can be purely positional,53 it often is fruitful to think of social systems as composed of social positions (not “units”) – and social systems as “multidimensional space[s] of different social positions.”54 Furthermore, systemic accounts, even when discussing actors, usually should emphasize positioned actors whose interests, identities, and actions are shaped and shoved by their placements in the system. Unfortunately, though, Waltz identified not structured positions but privileged actors.55 And by denying functional differentiation he effectively denied the possibility of social positions – which I am arguing should be the focus of systemic/relational research. Both individual and group actors in the social world often can be profitably understood as persons, in the sense of “a role or character assumed in real life, or in a play, etc.; a part, function, or office; a persona.”56 They are social entities that have been constituted as capable of social action. I would even suggest that “individual human beings” not only are socially constructed but are social institutions.57 A focus on social positions also draws attention to the roles associated with positions. In enacting roles, “actors” act as parts of a system, bring agency and structuring together in practice.58 Consider, for example, the idea of polities as “powers,” which Edward Keene shows emerged in early modern Europe and was intimately connected with various gradings of the powers.59 Most obviously, “great power” has long been understood as a social role with rights, responsibilities, and status.60 And although great material power usually is associated with this role, it is neither sufficient (consider China in the 2010s) nor essential (consider the UK after World War II).61 52

53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61

(Waltz 1979, 80). See §11.1.3. (Blau 1977, 4). In IR, see, for example, (Nedal and Nexon 2019, 172–173). He then compounded the problem by both pretending that they were not privileged and treating them as the only structurally relevant actors. Oxford English Dictionary. See also §3.10. On the inseparability of agency and structuring in social systems, see §3.5. (Keene 2013, esp. 273–276). See, for example, (Simpson 2004), (Lowenheim 2007), (Cui and Buzan 2016), (McCormack 2019). Even Waltz (1979, ch. 9) shares this understanding. To take a pre-modern, non-Western example, consider the shifting roles and statuses of emperor, hegemon (ba), and “state” in China during the Eastern Zhou (770–221 bce ) dynasty. See, briefly, (Hsu 1999).

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

201

Thinking in terms of different types of “powers,” “states,” “sovereigns,” etc. – and the differences between these (and other) framings – pushes our attention beyond abstract actors defined by one or a few of their attributes (e.g., material resources or legal status) to consider historically contingent sets of rights, responsibilities, expectations, and dispositions that are related as parts of a larger whole (system). We are encouraged to look at real positioned social persons. This perspective also encourages us to appreciate and emphasize that social actors at every level of social organization occupy multiple social positions. For example, the biological entity that is writing these words was constituted as a social person by birth in a particular place and time, which gave him particular familial, ethnic, religious, and national identities/personalities. Now, many decades later, he also (among other things) is – that it, regularly enacts the roles of – a scholar and teacher, a spouse and father, and a tennis player. He holds a particular professorial position at a particular university and is a member of a particular nuclear family and a particular tennis club. And “he” is the complex whole that emerges from the assemblage of these (and other) positioned persons. The “actors” in the social world are contingently stabilized multiplex configurations of identifications, personalities, and roles for which we often use substantialist shorthands such as “person,” “individual human being,” “church,” “multinational corporation,” and “state.” 11.6

International Systems as Ecosystems

I want to close this introductory discussion of differentiation by suggesting that social positions can profitably be seen as like ecological niches – and international systems as like ecosystems. Ecosystems – communities of living organisms of different types linked with one another and with certain abiotic elements into systemic wholes – are “societies” composed of communities of different species living in differentiated niches. For example, at a high level of abstraction, focusing on flows of energy and nutrients, ecosystems are composed of autotrophs (especially plants and phytoplankton) that produce their own food from inorganic materials, herbivores that are the primary consumers of autotrophs, carnivores that consume herbivores (and other carnivores), and detritovores that live off of decomposing plant and animal material.62 Types of ecosystems can be distinguished by the kinds, numbers, and distributions of (and relations between) niches, by the kinds of creatures that occupy these niches, and by the system’s abiotic elements. 62 For a textbook account of the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems, see (Begon and Townsend 2021, ch. 20, 21).

202

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

An ecosystems metaphor reminds us that systemic theory and research focuses on relations between differentiated parts of a whole. For example, where Waltzian individualistic statism focuses on selective pressures on individuals within a niche that lead to their similarity63 an ecosystems analogy draws our attention to selective pressures on populations and how differences in niches produce diversity in the system (e.g., states and nonstate actors – and various subtypes of each). A substantial biological literature addresses “niche construction”64 and “ecosystems engineering.”65 Organisms not only adapt to their environments but also (re)construct environments to better suit their needs. (Consider beavers, African termites (Macrotermes), and earthworms  – not to mention Homo sapiens.) More generally, “all living creatures, through their metabolism, their activities, and their choices, partly create and partly destroy their own niches, on scales ranging from the extremely local to the global.”66 And this can have significant evolutionary implications. “The selective environments of organisms are themselves partly built by the niche constructing activities of the organisms that they are selecting for.”67 In the case of human beings, social positions are neither fixed nor entirely external to the organisms that occupy them. They are, to a greater or lesser extent, created (and continuously transformed) by the actions, interactions, and relations of the entities that occupy and act within those positions/niches. To return to states-in-a-states-system, Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was populated by a great variety of types of polities occupying varied niches: kingdoms, duchies, counties, and various lesser principalities; city-states, free cities, and urban corporations; villages and parishes; margravates and marcher lordships; (arch)bishoprics; and sui generis entities (such as the Papal States and the domains of the imperial knights). Although kings and the Emperor had special statuses, in power they were not even always first among equals. For example, when the Burgundian Wars (1474–1477) began, it was not clear that the Duke of Burgundy would lose to the alliance of the Swiss and the Emperor – or that on the death of Charles the Bold (r. 1467–1477) France would acquire Burgundy. 63

See §5.7. 64 See especially (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 1996; 2003). See also (Barker and Odling-Smee 2014), (Connelly et al. 2016), (Loudon et al. 2016), (Odling-Smee et al. 2013), (Sultan 2015), (Turner 2016). 65 See especially (Jones, Lawton, and Shachak 1994), (Wright and Jones 2006). See also (Barker and Odling-Smee 2014), (Erwin 2008), (Jones et al. 2010). 66 (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 1). 67 (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 17).

Differentiation in Assembled International Systems

203

In the sixteenth century, leading royal polities (especially Valois “France,” Hapsburg Castile/“Spain,” and, operating in the protected niche of the British Isles, Tudor England) increasingly differentiated themselves from other polities – which over the following centuries slowly came to be subordinated, eliminated, or restricted to increasingly marginal niches. By the mid-nineteenth century, “modern states” had largely eliminated their competitors in the European core of the system. Viewed in this light, globalization involves a fundamental ecological change, from a system dominated by top predators (great powers) to a much more complicated and biodiverse system that looks more like fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Europe. (We will return to this argument in §17.14.) An ecosystems metaphor also usefully highlights the material dimension of social positions, which is almost entirely ignored in mainstream discussions of structure. A niche is defined not simply by the kind of organisms that occupy it and what they do but also by its material characteristics (e.g., aquatic or terrestrial, desert or tundra). Similarly, the characters and activities of occupants of social niches often are both strongly shaped by and regularly contribute to (re)shaping the material world. 11.7 Summary Political structures do not come in just a few forms. And because there are so many different “important” elements that combine in so many ways, it is impossible to make many (if any) fruitful generalizations about “the structure” of “international systems.” This chapter has, however, identified several features that are recurrently significant in structuring political systems and several framings that can help us to understand the organization and operation of international political systems.

12

Continuous (Trans)formation



Producing Social Continuity and Social Change

In a world of pre-given substances (or static relations) change needs to be explained. (“For a thing the default is persistence.”1) In a processual world, though, “change, not stasis, is the default state.”2 Persistence demands explanation.3 Consider cancer. Much can be learned by studying pathological patterns of cell growth. But normal cell growth is not unproblematically given. It is produced and regulated in complex ways that demand attention (both in their own right and for understanding cancer).4 More broadly, “health is not … the default condition of an organism until something comes along to deflect it … It is a state that is maintained by countless interconnected activities occurring throughout, and even beyond, the organism.”5 In this chapter I argue that social continuity and social change are socially produced, “equally important,” and usually inextricably interrelated – which makes the social world a world of continuous (trans)formation. 12.1

Systems Far from Thermodynamic Equilibrium

Focusing on processes of continuity and transformation draws attention to the Second Law of Thermodynamics,6 which states that in “closed” 1

(Bertolaso and Dupré 2018, 321). 2 (Meincke 2018, 373). See also (Dupré 2021, §8.2), (Rescher 1996, 91). 3 (Anjum and Mumford 2018a, 71), (Arnellos 2018, 200), (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 14). 4 (Bertolaso and Dupré 2018) develops this argument. (Bertolaso 2017) makes a similar argument in the language of systems, subtitled “From Things to Relations.” (Plotynski 2019) provides a fascinating introduction to the philosophy of cancer, emphasizing (at the end of §1) that “cancer” “is” “a heterogeneous class of disease processes, with few definitive properties or unique causes.” (Strauss et al. 2021) advocates a complex systems approach to the study of cancer and its treatment. 5 (Dupré 2021, §8.2). 6 (Prigogine and Stengers 1984, esp. ch. 4, 5) is a classic popular account of the rise of thermodynamics as the basis for what are often called the sciences of complexity. (Goldstein and Goldstein 1995) is another good semi-popular introduction. On the centrality of time and irreversible processes (in contrast to time-reversible universal physical laws) see

204

Continuous (Trans)formation

205

systems – systems that do not take in matter, energy, or information7 from their environments – entropy usually increases (and never decreases).8 Roughly, the disorder/randomness of a closed system always increases (or remains constant). Systems tend, inexorably, over a long enough time, toward a state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium, with uniform temperature and no macroscopic change.9 The standard textbook example is a sealed chamber with separate quantities of warm and cold gas that move toward a uniform gas of a single temperature. Some “open” systems, however – systems that take in energy or matter10 – can achieve and sustain states far from thermodynamic equilibrium. There are “critical points beyond which the system may present ­ macroscopic phenomena of self-organization in space and time.”11 As Erwin Schrödinger, who did some of the basic math, puts it ­metaphorically, “organization [is] maintained by extracting ‘order’ from the environment” as the system “feeds upon negative entropy.”12 A simple physical example is the patterned bubbling (Rayleigh–Bénard convection cells) in a pot of water heated evenly from below. Typhoons

7

8

9

10

11



12



(Prigogine and Stengers 1984, ch. 7–9). More briefly, although more technically, see Prigogine’s Nobel lecture (1978). (Kondepudi and Prigogine 2015) is a relatively accessible college textbook introduction to this view of thermodynamics, understood as the scientific theory of irreversible processes. (Buckley 1968, Pt. IV.A) contains leading examples of early (and relatively accessible) work linking the ideas of entropy and systems. I will hereafter ignore information. But see (Maroney 2009). In much more detail, for those who can handle the Math and Physics (a group that I am not a part of), see (Gray 1990). In trying to get a handle on this topic, I found (Brillouin 1950; 1951; 1953; 1962, ch. 9) useful for brief, relatively accessible accounts of the similarities between information and negentropy (as expressed in the nearly identical formulas for entropy and “Shannon information”). I am confident, though, that I do not fully grasp what is going on. Therefore, I have abstracted from information in the account that follows. See, for example, (Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 14–18, 117–122, 137–139, ch. 8, ch. 9, 295–297), (Goldstein and Goldstein 1995, ch. 7–9). (Lemons 2013) is a useful introduction at the level of freshman Physics. In IR, Randall Schweller (2010, 2014) has drawn attention to entropy – although for very different purposes. Stuart Kauffman (2000, 58–60) offers a brief, nonmathematical account. Roughly, because “orderly” distributions (“macrostates”) are far more improbable than disorderly ones, “the increase of entropy in the second law is nothing but the tendency of systems to flow from less probable to more probable macrostates” (2000, 60). All systems have a considerable degree of operational closure. (Operations within the system are qualitatively different from operations in or with the environment.) “Open” systems, however, are energetically open – and the exchange of energy (and matter) with the environment is essential to the operational closure of the system. See (Von Bertalanffy 1950), (Luhmann 2013 [2002], 27–29ff., 64–70). It is important, though, not to exaggerate the operational closure of social systems. Social systems are structurally coupled with other systems. Adaptation arises from interactions with the environment. And this and the following chapters will give central attention to “multiple networks and flows that intersect, interpenetrate, and collide through each other” (Padgett 2012a, 56–57). (Prigogine 1975, 445). On self-organization as an essential feature of complex adaptive systems, see §2.3.3. (Schrödinger 2012 [1944], 73 [ch. 6]).

206

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

are sustained in far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium states by massive inputs of energy from warm water – until new inputs prove insufficient and the system decays and then disappears. Living organisms are also self-organizing13 far-from-equilibrium systems – as are the entities of the social world. Such “dissipative”14 systems or structures, however, can retain their internal order only by increasing the disorder in their environment. (Entropy increases in the larger system defined by the dissipative system and its environment.) Order is always “paid for” by disorder elsewhere. (The system sustains a far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium state by, as it were, displacing entropy into its environment.) Most importantly for our purposes here, in open systems (which includes all living and social systems) the “things” of the world are not simply there. They are constantly being made into what they are. Persistence is sustained only through change, both in the autocatalytic and “metabolic” processes of the system and in the environment (from which that system draws matter and energy and into which it discharges waste byproducts). Social actors, institutions, practices, and structures, as well as individual human beings, are temporary stabilizations of productive processes in far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium conditions.15 What something “is” is constantly being (re-)made. (A state, for example, can be kept in the far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium state of statehood only through extensive and complex processes of (re)production.) And in the social world, (re)productive processes are relatively malleable and variable, in both their operation and their outcomes, because they are neither determined by natural laws nor “coded” in a biochemical medium of reproduction. The persistence of social entities, practices, and relations thus is much more problematic than it usually is taken to be (because of an unthinking substantialist entity-bias that tends to treat things as given).16 At the very least, persistence needs to be no less subject to investigation than change. 13 See §2.3.3. 14 This terminology is due to Prigogine. See, for example, (Prigogine and Nicolis 1967), (Prigogine 1975), and, in a much more accessible form (in a much broader context), (Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 13–14, 143, 146, 171, 189). 15 See also §3.9. 16 In IR, despite growing recognition of the importance of constitutive relations, there is still little attention to the processes that sustain social entities – and to the transformative implications of (re)productive processes. For example, despite increasing attention to the construction of states through processes of state formation, it remains typical to talk about, say, “the modern state” as an entity of a singular sort with an essential character – note the definite article – rather than, as we will see in Chapter 17, a continuously transforming kind of thing.

Continuous (Trans)formation

207

The irreversibility of processes in far-from-equilibrium systems – a simple physical example is the mixing of coffee and cream, which produces a more disordered system that cannot be restored to its former state17 – also has important implications for the social world. There is always a prominent dimension of what social scientists call path dependence. As Prigogine puts it, in reference to the physical world, “the stable states of the system are a function of its history, and not only of the boundary conditions.”18 Therefore, although generalizations across cases regularly are possible, it often will be problematic to ignore the processes operating irreversibly across time that make the “thing” in question what it “is.”19 12.2

Continuous (Trans)formation

Social continuities no less than social transformations are produced. The (far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium) “things” of the social world are always being (re)formed into what they “are.” Without continuing (re)formation/(re)production they decay and die. And if some part of the social world is as it was at some point in the past, that is because of contingent processes of re-production. Processes of (re)production, however, regularly vary in their details. (“Sameness” in social systems is a matter of more or less, within a certain range of variation.) (Re)productive processes ­ sometimes ­misfire. Social actors regularly do old things in new ways and use old things for new purposes. Occasionally they even create radically novel entities, activities, or purposes. Furthermore, the environment for action regularly changes, sometimes dramatically, provoking adaptive responses. Whatever their genesis and consequences, though, processes of social formation are continuous. And both social continuities and social changes arise from similar, sometimes even the same, processes. 17

Some chemical reactions, by contrast, are reversible. For example, you can dissolve salt in water and then evaporate it back out. (The contrast is between complex and aggregative systems and effects. See §2.2.1.) 18 (Prigogine 1987, 100). 19 Any “laws” in the living and social worlds thus are, at best, what are sometimes called ceteris paribus laws; laws that have more or less extensive “scope conditions,” as social scientists say. The laws of fundamental Physics, by contrast, have traditionally been understood to be “true, logically contingent, universal statements that support counterfactual claims” (Reutlinger et al. 2019); that is, they hold everywhere, always (at least since a very early point in the history of our universe). Whether there are in fact such laws in the physical world is a matter of considerable debate. (See n. 65 in §4.6.1.) Unquestionably, though, there are few if any in the living and social worlds. See also (Craver and Kaiser 2013), (Giere 1999), (Mitchell 1997).

208

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

The modularity, multifunctionality, and redundancy characteristic of multicomponent, multilevel, self-organizing complex adaptive systems20 typically results in the interpenetration of continuities and transformations. Little in the social world is exactly what or as it was a decade (or even a year) ago. But little is entirely new. “New” “things” usually are created through transposing, transforming, reconfiguring, repurposing, or reprocessing old things. Even “radical” social change usually arises from the long accumulation of interconnected repurposings and rearrangements. And even truly novel inventions usually become (more or less quickly and more or less completely) enmeshed in established entities and practices, often significantly reshaping old and new alike. Social systems are constantly adapting – in response to changes in the environment, actors finding themselves in new situations, experiments in doing old things in new ways, and, occasionally, even attempts to do new things. And in competitive environments, adaptive change may be required just to “stay the same.” Adaptation, however, almost always is undertaken piecemeal (modularly) and with resources already at hand: making it up as you go; tinkering with small parts of a large and complicated system; moving practices or resources from one domain to another.21 (Here the fact that social actors perform many different roles in multiple subsystems is crucial.) For example, workers often find themselves with opportunities or demands to do their jobs differently. This usually involves discrete alterations to particular practices. But even minor changes can cumulate or migrate, so that after a time a group or organization (or even a sector) finds itself doing “the same thing” differently. (Consider changes over the past hundred years to house building, automobile manufacture, medicine, and making dinner.) Even when a decisive invention, such as steam power, fundamentally transforms how people work across a wide range of domains, the transformations are irregular, both in time and in space, usually slow (taking generations not years), and complexly enmeshed with other practices (both within and across organizations and domains). And those interrelated practices often are adapting on their own (also irregularly, slowly, and in their own ways) and co-evolving with other transformed and transformative practices. This is not a superficially clever plus ça change story. Rather, it is a challenge to thinking of constancy and change as fundamentally different, opposed, or 20

See §2.3. 21 On modularity in biological evolution, see §13.1.4.

Continuous (Trans)formation

209

unrelated. Once we abandon substantialism and focus on the making of social continuities and social transformations, the similarities between productive, re-productive, and transformative processes become as striking as the differences. Both social continuities and social changes, I am arguing, are manifestations of ongoing processes of continuous (trans)formation. 12.3

The Continuous (Trans)formation of Early Modern Militaries

Consider an historical example: the transition from medieval to “modern” armies. 12.3.1 The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe Historians often speak of “the military revolution” in early modern Europe.22 In Michael Roberts’ seminal account, European warfare was fundamentally transformed between roughly 1560 (the end of the Italian Wars) and roughly 1660 (the end of the Franco-Spanish War) by changes in infantry and cavalry tactics, associated changes in strategy, and a massive growth in the size of armies.23 This “revolution,” however, took a century. And it involved the piecemeal and stop-and-go accumulation and integration of relatively modest changes in tactics and strategy – which were not static either before or after “the revolution.” Geoffrey Parker presents “the military revolution” as taking place over three centuries (1500–1800),24 with roots going back a further two centuries. Although Parker sees the “rapid” spread of firearms as at the heart of the revolution25 he acknowledges that small caliber firearms were first used on European battlefields in the early fourteenth century26 and that powerful siege guns were introduced at the beginning of the fifteenth century.27 In other words, the process was not a bit revolutionary. And it is not even clear that change was obviously more prominent during “the revolution” than before or after it. 22

In addition to the works cited in the following notes, see, for example, (Duffy 1980), (Parrott 1985), (Adams 1990), (Black 1991; 2011), (Downing 1992), (Kingra 1993), (Eltis 1995), (Storrs and Scott 1996), (Paul 2004), (Rodger 2011), (Jacob and VisoniAlonzo 2016), (Conca Messina 2019 [2016], ch. 3), (Storrs 2019), (Costa 2021). 23 (Roberts 1956) = (Roberts 1967, 195–225), reprinted in (Rogers 1995). See also (Parker 1976), which is also reprinted in (Rogers 1995). 24 (Parker 1996). Parker defends the use of the label “revolution” at pp. 157–158. 25 (Parker 1996, 4). 26 (Parker 1996, 16–17). 27 (Parker 1996, 7).

210

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

For example, the decisive innovation, at the end of the sixteenth century, of volley fire from men arrayed in ranks28 was literally a matter of rearranging existing resources. It had a transformative impact only gradually, as it became interlinked with changes in strategy, tactics, and training that, in order to be realized, required (and provoked) changes in military finance (and through that the state29). And “the revolution” spread very irregularly (with irregular effects). As Parker notes, “throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, numerous encounters occurred in which troops equipped with all the tools of the military revolution were put to flight by the headlong charge of a horde of [Scots] clansmen armed only with traditional weapons.”30 On top of all of this, there were comparable “military revolutions” both before and after this one. Clifford Rogers argues for a military revolution during the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453).31 If Napoleon did not trigger another military revolution, there certainly was at least one industrial-era military revolution – followed by a nuclear revolution. And even if we are reluctant to call “the revolution in military affairs” of the post-Cold War era32 a true revolution, it significantly transformed the organization and operation of American armed forces (which are continuing to be transformed in our globalizing world). Thus MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray edited a volume titled The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–205033 – or, as I would put it, continuous (trans)formation in military affairs. 12.3.2 The Military Revolution in Early Modern France Late-medieval armies (composed of heavily armored cavalry combined with infantry armed with pikes or bows, raised largely through feudal levies) were not in any simple way “replaced” by a new kind of modern armed force. “Modern armies” emerged very slowly through a series of significant but relatively modest modifications. I illustrate this here by looking at two snapshots of France (the only first-tier military power across the whole of the early modern period) in the mid-sixteenth century and the late-seventeenth century. 28 (Parker 1996, 19ff.). Parker also emphasizes changes in fortifications and siege technologies and tactics. For simplicity here, though, I focus on infantries, which are central to both Roberts’ and Parker’s accounts. 29 See §17.10.2. 30 (Parker 1996, 35). 31 (Rogers 1993). See also (Querengässer 2021). 32 See (O’Hanlon 2000, 2018), (Bousquet 2017), (Raska 2021). 33 (Knox and Murray 2001).

Continuous (Trans)formation

211

During the first three wars (1562–1563, 1567–1568, 1568–1570) of the Wars of Religion (1562–1598)34 – which pitted King Charles IX (r. 1560– 1574) and his (largely Catholic) noble allies against varying alliances of (largely Protestant) nobles and cities – only between a quarter and a third of the king’s army was composed of standing royal forces. The bulk came, in roughly equal proportions, from mercenaries35 and feudal levies.36 The limits of the king’s control over foreign mercenaries is obvious. No less importantly, though, “royal” forces under the king’s command “were little more than the armed clients of their noble commanders.”37 They provided their own arms (which they took back home with them after the fighting). They served largely at their own discretion. And they usually had crosscutting (and often primary) allegiances to their commanders and to provincial and local nobles where they lived. To get a sense of the hodgepodge that made up the king’s army, consider the following description of reinforcements during the third war. In September, 1568, at Saumur Montpensier with some companies of gendarmes and a Poitvin infantry regiment under Richelieu was joined by a Breton infantry regiment and cavalry contingent under Martigues. By October, at Châtellerault, Montpensier had been reinforced by … veteran French infantry under Brissac and Strossi, and two advance groups of gendarmes under Guise and Longueville. In early November … [Henry, Duke of] Anjou [the king’s brother and the future King Henry III] arrived at Châtellerault to take command … At Dissay in midDecember … Brissac and Strossi were joined by another three French infantry regiments and large contingents of infantry and cavalry raised in Languedoc by Sarlaboz and Joyeuse. … [I]n late January, 1569 … the count of Tende had arrived from Dauphiny and Provence with another infantry regiment and more cavalry. … In June, at Saint-Benoit, the worn-out but still substantial elements of Aumale’s eastern army added to the total … [and] Jehan de Monluc joined the army with his regiment of Gascon infantry.38

We see here two immediate members of the Guise family,39 the leading supporters of the king, plus several members of the Guise network: 34

(Holt 2005) is the standard English-language history. 35 “Foreign” forces were essential to both sides. See, for example, (Salmon 1975, 147, 170, 174, 198, 237), (Knecht 1996, 36), (Holt 2005, 65, 69, 105), (Wood 1996, 7, 12, 13, 17, 20–22, 35, 56–59, 73, 123, 185, 208, 232–234). And in the later wars, they were often decisive. For example, in 1576, when 20,000 Germans joined the Protestants, “the crown’s authority and military power had so disintegrated that peace was virtually dictated to it by a Huguenot-led German mercenary army camped unopposed in the center of the kingdom” (Wood 1996, 7). 36 (Wood 1996, 44–66, 71–72, 233, Table 9.2). 37 (Collins 1995, 14). 38 (Wood 1996, 232). 39 In addition to (Henry I, [the third] Duke of) Guise, “Aumale” is Claude II, [the second] Duke of Aumale, the third son of Claude of Lorraine (and Antoinette of Bourbon), the first Duke of Guise.

212

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Louis of Bourbon, duke of Montpensier,40 Leonor of Orleans, Duke of Longueville and soon-to-become governor of Picardy, Sebastian of ­Luxembourg-Martigues, governor of Brittany, Corbeyran de C ­ ardaillac de Sarlaboz, governor of Le Havre, Philippe Strossi [Filippo Strozzi], a noble soldier of fortune,41 and William, viscount of Joyeuse.42 We also see several clients of the Valois king: Francois du Plessis, seigneur of Richelieu,43 Timoleon de Cossé, count of Brissac, and Léonor of Orleans, Duke of Longueville.44 And Jehan de Monluc had family ties to both the Guises and the Valois.45 The “French” component of the king’s army thus was in large ­measure a Valois-Guise military alliance that mobilized the patronage networks of these two leading families.46 And as the campaign dragged on, ­foreign forces came to play an increasingly significant role, making up the ­majority of the force by the summer of 1569.47 The king’s army “was in most respects an ad hoc and temporary conglomeration.”48 And the opposing army was entirely an ad hoc assemblage.49 These armies were “but a small step forward from the feudal levies of the middle ages.”50 Even in the mid-seventeenth century the French army, as Ronald Asch put it, was “almost a republic of semi-independent warlords.”51 For example, at the siege of La Rochelle in 1627, the Duke of Rochefoucald, the governor of a relatively small province, arrived with 1,500 mounted men – on four days’ notice!52 The king persuaded, cajoled, and coerced the high nobility more than he commanded them. He allied with, rather than ruled over, the leading nobles – when he was not struggling with or fighting against them. 40

Two years later he married Catherine of Lorraine, the sister of Henry [I, the third], Duke of Guise. 41 Martigues, Sarlaboz, and Strozzi had a few years earlier fought in Scotland for Mary of Guise, regent for her daughter Mary Stuart. 42 His son Anne was a favorite of King Charles’ brother, Henry, who arranged for his ­sister-in-law (the daughter of the Duke of Mercoeur, a strong Guise ally) to marry Anne. 43 The famous seventeenth-century Cardinal was his son. 44 His son, Henry, was governor of Picardy and later fought for King Henry III against the Catholic League and for Henry IV. 45 I have been unable to determine how the Count of Tende was tied into these networks. 46 On early modern families and patronage see §17.5.2. 47 (Wood 1996, 233, Table 9.2). 48 (Wood 1996, 42). 49 Furthermore, the walled towns that proved essential to the Protestant cause had considerable military autonomy. Royal garrisons were small and often influenced by local loyalties. Conversely, town militias could be significant forces. (For example, in 1597 Amiens had a force of 3,000 men. (Major 1994, 33).) And well-fortified towns usually could outlast any siege the king was able to (afford to) muster. 50 (Major 1962, 119). 51 (Asch 2014, 110). 52 (Collins 1995, 28).

Continuous (Trans)formation

213

A century later, under Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), royal armies were immensely larger53 and considerably more centralized. In addition, most nobles could no longer raise forces independently.54 But Louis fielded not “modern armies,” as we understand them, but what John Lynn nicely calls state commission armies.55 Although armies of the crown (rather than an agglomeration of royal, noble, and mercenary forces) they relied centrally on private commissioning.56 The crown contracted with (noble) colonels, who recruited soldiers (usually through local and patronage networks) and then equipped, trained, and paid them.57 The crown also contracted with (usually noble) “enterprisers,” as David Parrott calls them,58 who supplied the troops (at a profit). (More than half of a French private’s pay in the late seventeenth century went back to his commander and enterprisers to purchase his uniform and food.59 The government only began to provide arms directly to soldiers in 172760 and bread in 1799.61) This system was largely a “modernized” version of the late-medieval practice of “the enlistment of magnates as tax-funded recruiters of armies over which they could expect to exercise a fair measure of informal control.”62 In addition, Louis institutionalized the practice of venality in military office.63 Colonels “were officially allowed to sell the captaincies to suitable candidates. In their turn the captains sold lieutenancies … until each commission from the lowest to the highest came to be regarded as 53 Louis’ largest army, of about 350,000, was more than double the largest French force during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) – which itself was three times the largest French army during the Italian Wars (1494–1559). See (Downing 1992, 69), (Parrott 2012a, 65), and, in greater depth, (Lynn 1997, ch. 2). 54 (Rowlands 2002, 354–361), (Lynn 1997, 347). Nonetheless, Louis XIV’s resort to feudal levies in 1674, 1685, and 1695 (Storrs and Scott 1996, 5. See also (Corvisier 1979 [1976], 25–27)), although of limited success, indicates the persistence of (local) armed forces not under the control of the king. 55 (Lynn 1997, 9; 2001, 52). 56 For a brief overview of French armed forces during the ancien régime, see (Parrott 2012a). 57 Even this reflected some “progress” in royal control from the Thirty Years’ War, when entire armies were raised by entrepreneur-generals like Wallenstein. (Anderson 1998 [1988], Pt. 1) is a good overview of military entrepreneurship in the half century before Louis XIV assumed personal rule. 58 (Parrott 2001, 549; 2012b, 18, 20–22, and passim). 59 (Childs 1982, 62). 60 (Anderson 1998 [1988], 106). 61 (Corvisier 1979 [1976], 93). 62 (Watts 2009, 223). 63 (Parrott 2012b, 69, 291, 292–294), (Rowlands 2002, 166–171, 343–353), (Lynn 1997, 230–231), (Potter 2003b). Even Britain sold army offices – in 1720, the government published an official pricelist (Guy 1985, 138) – although not naval offices. (Brewer 1990 [1988], 44–45), (Bruce 1980).

214

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

a piece of property.”64 The best the king and his ministers could do was to try “as far as possible to keep major military commands in the hands of family, clients and allies.”65 During the eighteenth century, the king continued to increase his control over “his” armed forces. But it wasn’t until Napoleon, at the earliest, that France had anything resembling a “modern army.”66 12.4

The Inseparability of Continuities and Transformations

This, I want to suggest, is the standard pattern in the social world. Snapshot comparisons across centuries often suggest radical breaks. On time frames of a couple decades, though, sharp changes are rarely evident. And even when they are, the modularity of change means that continuities usually are as striking to many equally astute observers. Furthermore, when we consider processes of reproduction and transformation, we usually see neither radical change nor stasis but continuous (trans)formation. Both old and new typically both transform and are transformed by each other. And often there is no neutral perspective from which to determine which is “more important.” Distinct types and chronological divisions thus are largely conventional; that is, more or less illuminating and more or less misleading. For example, the common distinction, drawn by Waltz and regularly employed in the regimes literature, between change of a system and change within a system67 is, at best, overdrawn. As I argued above, international systems have neither ordering principles nor essences.68 For certain analytical purposes we might say that around time x accumulated changes can profitably be considered to have produced a change of system (e.g., a military revolution). But from another perspective, looking at other dimensions and elements of the system, continuity may be more striking. 64

(Childs 1982, 78–79). In Prussia, officers in times of peace not only continued to be paid for their regiment but were allowed to have their soldiers work for them as peasants or artisans (Kindleberger 1984, 173). On the sale of office more broadly in Bourbon France, see §17.7.2. 65 (Harding 1978, 284). 66 In another context, I would emphasize that what an “army” “is” changed with these processes. For example, armies understood as the armed forces of a state/polity did not exist before the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Even understanding armies as the armed forces of a ruler, in Europe this was, as the example of France suggests, a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century invention. Or consider the well-known demise of mercenarism (and the associated rise of citizen-soldier armies) – and then its twentyfirst-century revival (for example, half of US forces in the Iraq war, and two-thirds in Afghanistan, were, at the height of those conflicts, “civilian contractors”). 67 (Waltz 1979, 92, 145, 201), (Krasner 1982, 189). 68 See §9.2.

Continuous (Trans)formation

215

Even directional change usually appears directional only after the operation of extensive and extended (usually self-organized69) processes of continuous (trans)formation – Richelieu, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV had not the slightest idea of the modern state that they, with the benefit of hindsight, are usually seen as having helped to build – and usually only if we arbitrarily break the flow by specifying a conventional ideal type or terminus ad quem.70 Dynamic productive processes are essential to both social continu­ ities and social changes. And the distinctions between production, reproduction, and transformation are, in time frames of years and decades, often obscure at best. The social world is a world of continuous (trans)formation. 12.5

Transposition and Re-functionality

The framing of continuous (trans)formation is mine. It draws heavily, though, on work by John Padgett and Walter Powell, discussed in this section, and William Sewell, discussed in the next section. Padgett and Powell’s edited volume The Emergence of ­Organizations and Markets71 presents a framework for thinking about the ­emergence of ­economic and political “organizations,” broadly understood, that they and their collaborators test in a dozen case studies of market and state formation in medieval and modern Europe, communist and p ­ ost-­communist transitions, and the development of a new kind of b ­ io-tech firm and industry in the 1970s and 1980s. I focus here on their conceptualization of interrelated processes of reproduction and t­ransformation in terms of transposition and re-functionality. (For expositional convenience I will refer to everything in this volume, which was conceived of and functions as a collective project, as “Padgett and Powell.” Footnotes indicate the particular author(s) and chapter(s) referenced.) 69

On the importance of self-organization in complex adaptive systems, see §2.3.3. See also §§13.3.1, 13.3.2. 70 The exceptions that come to my mind involve collapse (e.g., Minoan and Mayan civilization) or decay (e.g., the late Roman Empire) rather than construction of a ­ new order – which, it seems to me, also underscores the productive, transformational (i.e., anti-entropic) nature of continuity. 71 (Padgett and Powell 2012b). This, in my view, is one of the two most exciting works (along with the second edition of Harrison White’s Identity and Control (2008)) in twenty-first-century relational/systemic social science. While writing this book I repeatedly taught Padgett and Powell’s book in my PhD seminar on relational approaches in IR. The similarities between my account and theirs thus is a hard-to-untangle mix of the convergence of independent lines of thought (that originated in rather different places but came to be linked through the idea of complex adaptive systems) and (intentional and unintentional) appropriations.

216

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Emphasizing self-organizing72 “autocatalytic”73 processes – that is, “the self-sustaining flows of ideas and resources that constitute and reproduce actors and activities”74 – Padgett and Powell argue that “all new organizational forms, no matter how radically new, are combinations and permutations of what was there before.”75 New institutional forms typically arise through “cross-network processes of transposition, refunctionality, and catalysis.”76 “Parts of life from one domain find a commonality, utility, or simply a resonance in a different and unexpected domain”77 – and in doing so, transform that domain. This sort of change is rooted in the multiple intersecting networks that are a universal feature of the multilevel, multicomponent complex adaptive systems that populate the living and social worlds.78 “Multiple overlapping domains emerge in autocatalytic models because shared rules and products create synergistic feedbacks – both positive for stimulation and negative for regulation – between individual autocatalytic production networks.”79 When people who participate in many networks use skills or practices that are typically employed in one domain atypically in another domain, such transpositions can be transformative when “new interactions feed back to alter the way existing relations reproduce.”80 Padgett and Powell suggest that the label recombination “is too atomistic.”81 “The elements being recombined are not atomic entities, decoupled from their context, but rather nodes or ties in some network or other. For that reason, network folding more accurately describe[s] the phenomena we observe.”82 I would say that both framings have their uses. (For example, recombination emphasizes the modularity of complex systems83 72

73 74 75 76

77 78 79

80 81 82 83

See §2.3.3. See n. 81 in §2.3.3. (Powell and Sandholtz 2012, 400). (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 2). “New things trace their lineages back through earlier incarnations and to the careers of individuals involved in their construction” (Powell and Sandholtz 2012, 379). (Padgett 2012b, 170). See also (Padgett and Powell 2012d, 377). (Padgett and Powell 2012a, 567). See §§2.3.1, 2.3.4. (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 9. See also 7 n. 20). (This passage continues: “Because of such synergies, multiple networks that self-organize are reproductively more resilient than any one autocatalytic network alone.”) See also (Padgett, McMahan, and Zhong 2012, 85) and §2.3.5. (Padgett 2012b, 170). (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 12). (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 6 n. 18). See §2.3.4. Furthermore, in practice Padgett and Powell (2012e, 6 n. 18) “stick with the word recombination because that is so prevalent in the literature.” And they focus “on components of new things and identifying the sources of separable parts, which can be moved, recombined, and translated by inventive humans” (Powell and Sandholtz 2012, 379).

Continuous (Trans)formation

217

and suggests assemblages.84) But I think that their most descriptive frame is transposition and re-functionality85 – “the movement of a relational practice from one domain to another and its reuse for a different function or purpose in the new domain.”86 Padgett and Powell’s case studies not only illustrate transposition and re-functionality but identify several particular mechanisms.87 For example, Powell and Kurt Sandholtz show how a new type of “dedicated biotech firm” emerged from reconfiguring the boundaries between academic science and commerce and introducing new forms of finance.88 Powell, Kelley Packalen, and Kjersten Whittington show how the mechanism of “anchoring diversity” – “the mediating role of community-oriented organizations”89 that provide “a scaffolding that, either intentionally or unexpectedly, assists subsequent connections and field formation”90  – led to the concentration of this new industry in the Bay Area, Boston, and northern San Diego county.91 Padgett traces the emergence merchant banks in the thirteenth century to innovations made by Pope Urban IV to fund his crusade against the Emperor, which created positive feedback loops in Tuscany.92 In another chapter he explains the rise of the Dutch Republic by the spread of mechanisms of lateral control and federalist ties operating homologously in government, the Church, 84 See §1.8. 85 Padgett and Powell speak of “the generality of cross-network refunctionality” (2012d, 377) and often use “transposition and refunctionality” as a general description of “the dynamics of reproduction of multiple networks” (Padgett 2012d, 170). See also (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 7, 11), (Padgett 2012a, 46, 60), (Padgett 2012c, 122), (Padgett 2012b, 222), (Obert and Padgett 2012, 257), (Padgett and Powell 2012d, 376, 377), (Powell and Sandholtz 2012, 383, 386, 400, 406, 408), (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 437–440, 449, 459–461), (Colyvas and Maroulis 2012, 496), (Padgett and Powell 2012a, 569). They also, though, present “transposition and refunctionality” as one particular mechanism by which network folding takes place. (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 12–15; Padgett 2012d). Here I follow the broader usage, which treats mechanisms such as “incorporation and detachment” and “migration and homology” (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 14–17) as types of, rather than alternatives to, transposition and re-functionality. 86 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 12). 87 The mechanisms that they identify are summarized at (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 11–26). 88 (Powell and Sandholtz 2012, 380, 400–406). See also (Powell and Owen-Smith 2012, 492). 89 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 15–16). 90 (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 439). They draw an analogy (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 439 n. 6) to keystone species (e.g., beavers) and present anchor tenants as “pollinators that create an open platform that others can build on for community-wide benefit.” 91 “The core factors are (1) a diversity of organizational forms and (2) the presence of an anchor tenant, and the mechanism is cross-realm transposition” (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 438). 92 (Padgett 2012c).

218

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

and the economy.93 Jonathan Obert and Padgett look at Bismarck’s unification of Germany as a process of “dual inclusion,” symbolized in the slogan “Prussia is in Germany and Germany is in Prussia,” which produced a distinctive hybrid of democracy and autocracy that was able to knit together rural and urban elites and left and right political parties in a new constitutional and bureaucratic structure.94 Padgett and Powell employ an open-ended relational processual understanding of actors similar to my account in §§3.5–3.10.95 Actors are understood as “clusters of relational ties”96 or “cross-domain composites of roles.”97 “Network reproduction generates people as social actors by shaping and composing the roles that act through them.”98 And these socially constructed social actors are the “vehicles through which autocatalytic life self-organizes.”99 Social actors are both the creations and the creators of structured social relations. And in this deeply processual account, both agents and structures are “vortexes in the flow of social life.”100 Organizational structure is the blending, transformation, and reproduction, onsite, of networks and interaction rules transported by people into the site from numerous sources. People, conversely, are the hybridized residues of past networks and rules acquired through interaction at their previous organizational sites. In other words, both organizations and people are shaped … by the history of each flowing through the other.101

Actors are sets of skills and relational ties that produce not only “products” but also relational structures and their very selves. “Autocatalytic networks are networks of transformations, not networks of mere transmission. … social networks don’t just pass things; they do transformational work.”102 “Individuals construct organizations with the social and technical tools they have at hand, fashioning the future with the available tools of the past and present.”103 And 93 (Padgett 2012b). 94 (Obert and Padgett 2012). 95 I would say the same thing of my book that they say of theirs: “This volume carries on [Harrison White’s] tradition of deriving social actors from concatenated social relations” (Padgett 2012a, 58). 96 (Padgett 2012b, 170). 97 (Padgett 2012b, 170). “Network reproduction generates people as social actors by shaping and composing the roles that act through them” (Padgett 2012b, 170). 98 (Padgett 2012b, 170). 99 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 3). On autocatalysis, see n. 79 in §2.3.3. 100 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 8). See also §3.5. 101 (Padgett 2012b, 171). 102 (Padgett 2017, 67). 103 (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 434).

Continuous (Trans)formation

219

“within constraints, component parts are transformed and molded into ongoing streams of action.”104 Continuous (trans)formation. 12.6

Eventful History

William Sewell presents another complementary account of social continuity and social change, focusing on “events,” understood as “sequences of occurrences that result in transformations of structures.”105 Structured social action tends to reproduce structured social relations. As Sewell puts it, “most happenings … reproduce social and cultural structures without significant changes.”106 But “events,” “although they are shaped by structures, transform the structures that shaped them.”107 And “social change, no less than social stasis, can be generated by the enactment of structures in social life”108 – as a result of the multiplicity of structure, the operation of social agency, and the resistance of “a balky world, which is under no obligation to behave as our categories tell us it should.”109 Sewell argues that “a plural rather than a singular conception of structure is absolutely crucial for a plausible theory of events.”110 “Structures need to be seen as multiple in the … sense that different institutional realms, operating at varying social and geographical scales, operate according to different … logics.”111 Social systems – especially large-scale systems such as national and international societies – “should be conceptualized as the sites of a multitude of overlapping and interlocking cultural [and material] structures.”112 “Societies are based on practices that derive from many 104 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 8). “Individuals construct organizations with the social and technical tools they have at hand, fashioning the future with the available tools of the past and present” (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 434). 105 (Sewell 2005, 227. See also 8, 100, 199, 218, 225, 228). Padgett and Powell (see 2012a, 60–61) also draw on Sewell. 106 (Sewell 2005, 100). “Most social practices … tend to be reproduced with considerable consistency over relatively extended periods of time” (Sewell 2005, 226). 107 (Sewell 2005, 204). 108 (Sewell 2005, 143). 109 (Sewell 2005, 204). 110 (Sewell 2005, 205). 111 (Sewell 2005, 208). Note the striking similarity of Sewell’s account, Harrison White’s emphasis on the multiplicity of “netdoms” (see §3.10), Padgett and Powell’s stress on multiple intersecting networks (see §12.5), and my emphasis (see ch. 11) on multiple dimensions of differentiation. The plurality of structuring relations and process, operating in different institutional domains, at different levels of organization, and at different scales is a central feature of a systemic/relational approach developed in this book. 112 (Sewell 2005, 209. See also 143). The social “is constituted by overlapping and interconnected streams of semiotic [and material] practices.” (Sewell 2005, 21). (For

220

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

distinct structures, which exist at different levels, operate in different modalities, and are themselves based on widely varying types and quantities of resources.”113 “Social space [is] made up of multiple, uneven, overlapping, and non-isomorphic networks.”114 “Given that structures overlap, cultural meanings and identities derived from one structure or institutional sphere can be transposed to others.”115 And people participating in multiple institutional domains regularly encounter situations where they are able, or even encouraged, to make such transpositions. Eventful change, Sewell argues, typically arises from “the necessary but risky application of existing cultural categories to novel circumstances.”116 Such innovations create “ruptures.” Although the reproductive power of systems leads to most disruptions being “neutralized and reabsorbed into the preexisting structures in one way or another,”117 some spread and become transformative. Social processes are both structured and “inherently contingent, discontinuous, and open-ended.”118 Therefore, much as agency and structuring are interdependent temporal and analytical perspectives on the flow of social processes,119 structure and event, rather than ­“hostile and mutually incomprehensible” categories, are i­ nterdependent. “Each category implies and requires the other.”120 “Events … are transformations of structure, and structure is the cumulative outcome of past events.”121 In fact, as Marshall Sahlins puts it, “the transformation of a culture is a mode of its reproduction.”122 The transformed system is “the same system” in a new form; the particular way that the system has (re)produced itself (which, like all social construction/(re)production, is based on and derived from but not identical to what came before). Structured

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

121 122

Sewell’s emphasis on the material dimensions of social structure and practice, see (esp. 2005, 356–369).) Society is a site/system where multiple sets of relations overlap and interpenetrate. (Sewell 2005, 140). (Sewell 2005, 121). (Sewell 2005, 209 [emphasis added]. See also 140). (Sewell 2005, 291). (Sewell 2005, 227). (Sewell 2005, 110). See §3.5. (Sewell 2005, 199). “It is the powerfully recurrent or structured character of social existence, the strong tendency of social relations to be reproduced, that makes the event an interesting and problematic category in the first place” (Sewell 2005, 199). Therefore, “the key to an adequate theory of the event is a robust theory of structure” (Sewell 2005, 219. See also 226). (Sewell 2005, 199). (Sahlins 1985, 138), quoted in (Sewell 2005, 200).

Continuous (Trans)formation

221

action (re)produces structured relations that, whether their form is the same or changed, structure future action. Change, because it is modular and accomplished largely with the resources at hand, usually appears relatively rapidly in particular subpopulations or subsystems. As Sewell puts it, “when changes do take place, they are rarely smooth and linear in character; instead, changes tend to be clustered into relatively intense bursts. … Lumpiness, rather than smoothness, is the normal texture of historical temporality.”123 And then, if a change catches on, it radiates or percolates – sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, usually at different rates in different institutional and spatial domains – through the interconnected networks of relations in and between systems. Even “eventful” (structurally transformative) social change is deeply embedded in existing structures and networks. It is always re-making (not starting over). And its transformative effects usually lie in how these innovations play out through, and trigger other changes in, other parts of complicated, complex, multiactor, multilevel systems. 12.7 Conclusion The framings of continuous (trans)formation, transposition and re-­functionality, and eventful history share several understandings that are central to relational/systemic analysis as I understand it. I summarize them here while drawing connections with the discussions of systems, agency, structure, and persons in Chapters 2 and 3. • The structuring of a social system is both the result of streams of social action and an emergent (irreducible) property of the system. • Structure is not a thing but a property. Therefore, rather than speak of a structure or the structure – framings that are too easily reified – we should think of structured structuring relations (and configured configuring processes). • Social structuring is multidimensional; complex combinations of webs of relations, in multiple institutional domains, operate at varied organizational levels and spatial scales. • Different analytical and pragmatic purposes generate different fruitful depictions of selected structuring elements of a system. ­ There is no privileged perspective on “the structure” of a social or political system. 123



The parallel with punctuated equilibrium in Evolutionary Biology (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gould 2007) is striking. Padgett and Powell also repeatedly note the parallel (2012b, 7, 9, 44–46, 119, 168, 173, 187–188, 309, 466–467).

222

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

• Agency, like structure, is a property (not a thing). And it is possessed by social actors at multiple levels of social organization, from individuals to international organizations and global corporations. • Social agency involves positioned social action, which is possible only in structured social situations. • The actors in international relations are not pregiven entities with an essential character but evolving assemblages of identities generated across time in multiple institutional domains, on multiple levels of social organization. • Agency and structuring are not opposed processes but inescapably interrelated perspectives on social systems. In the short run, agents create structuring configurations of relations and processes. In the long run, structured actions make agents. • Social continuities are no less socially produced than social change – usually by the same kinds of mechanisms and processes. Dynamic productive processes are essential to both continuities and transformations in the social world. • The modularity, multifunctionality, and redundancy characteristic of multicomponent multilevel self-organizing complex adaptive systems typically results in the interpenetration of continuities and transformations. In social systems, the distinctions between processes of production, reproduction, and transformation often are obscure and depend centrally on where in the system one looks. • Social change typically occurs modularly and relatively rapidly, through transposition and re-functionality, in a sub-population or sub-system, and then radiates or percolates through interpenetrating and overlapping networks. • Social processes, although structured, are also open-ended, as a result of the multiplicity and interpenetration of networks of structuring relations, the productive power of social agency, and the resistance of the world.

13

Life Sciences and Social Sciences



Studying Co-evolving Complex Adaptive Systems

This chapter extends the argument of the preceding chapter by looking at how biologists approach issues of continuities and transformations. Mainstream social science, when it looks for parallels with the natural sciences, tends to look to classical Physics, which stresses laws and theories. I am suggesting that we look instead to Biology, which explains principally with models and mechanisms.1 Like John Padgett and Walter Powell, I see “the biology, not the physics, view of science”2 as essential to progress in the social sciences, because it not merely enables but demands relational/systemic research and explanations.3 Developmental Biology (which studies the (re)production of organisms) and Evolutionary Biology (which studies heritable changes in populations) seem to me of special interest for systemic/relational IR for at least three reasons. • These disciplines address (complex adaptive) living systems in ways very similar to the ways that I am arguing that social scientists should address (complex adaptive) social systems. • Systemic approaches have proved productive – while eliminative reductionist explanatory programs have failed, dramatically (and relatively recently). • There are robust substantive analogies between the production of continuities (development) and transformations (evolution) in the living and social worlds. I have made this a separate chapter (rather than the second half of the preceding chapter) partly because of length but also because some 1

I introduced this distinction in §4.8.2. 2 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 3). 3 The obvious reply is to challenge the analogy with Biology, arguing that the social world requires fundamentally different epistemic practices. For example, one might argue that social systems are more complicated than living systems (although on its face that is not obvious) or that ethical considerations preclude the full and effective use of experimental methods. Such arguments, however, still require rejecting King, Keohane, and Verba’s claim (see the second paragraph of Chapter 4) that scientific explanation is causal inference. And they make Physics even more irrelevant to the social sciences.

223

224

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

readers will find it tedious or too far afield to be worth their effort. But even if you find the substance uninteresting, the parallels with systemic/ relational social science seem to me sufficiently striking to make these excursions useful. And I immediately follow each dip into biology with a discussion of its relevance to the social sciences. 13.1 Evolution Many social scientists avoid evolutionary arguments in (an entirely justified) reaction against racist progressivist Social Darwinism, just-so-story sociobiology, and politicized misappropriations of notions of fitness and selection. But both continuous (trans)formation and transposition and re-functionality are strikingly similar to the understanding of evolution in contemporary Biology.4 And, I will argue, social scientists can learn much from Evolutionary Biology about how to study the world. 13.1.1 Units and Levels of Evolution Evolutionary Biology during the second half of the twentieth century was dominated by “the modern synthesis,”5 which holds (roughly) that inheritance is “particulate”/Mendelian – that is, that traits are passed on by discrete particles (genes) – and that only variations in genetic material produce traits that are subject to natural selection. Evolution thus “is” change over time in the proportions of particular “alleles” [alternative sequences at a particular genetic locus] in a population, produced primarily by natural selection (and secondarily by “genetic drift” and gene flow between (sub)populations). Especially after the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, many aspired to reductionist gene-based explanations.6 Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene exuberantly placed a reductive genic explanation of evolution at the center of both scientific and popular discussions. The failure 4

For ease of exposition, I treat Paleontology as a branch of or style of research in Evolutionary Biology. 5 The term was coined by Julian Huxley (1942). (Dobzhansky 1951 [1937]), (Mayr 1942), (Simpson 1944), and (Stebbins 1950) were seminal works. The Wikipedia entry “Modern synthesis (20th century)” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_synthesis_ (20th_century) last accessed October 20, 2022) provides a good brief overview. (Mayr and Provine 1998 [1980]) looks at the synthesis, near the peak of its powers, in operation in several disciplines and in several countries. (Gould 2002, ch. 7) is a respectful critical overview from a leading advocate for extending the synthesis. 6 George Williams’ Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966) introduced a tentative and hedged argument for restricting the use of the idea of adaptation to processes involving selection for genes. (Gould 2001, 230–232) presents a brief critique of Williams’ argument (and notes his effective abandonment of gene-only selection in (Williams 1992)).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

225

of that project – and the successes of systemic alternatives – has, I am arguing, much to teach the social sciences. Dawkins argued that organisms, the traditional Darwinian unit of selection, are merely “vehicles” that carry the genes that evolution selects7 – a biochemical analogue to extreme forms of more-than-merelymethodological individualism in the social sciences.8 For the past quarter century, however, this view has been rejected by most (and today by almost all) evolutionary biologists.9 Building on arguments developed by, among others, Richard Lewontin,10 Stephen Jay Gould,11 Elisabeth Vrba,12 and Niles Eldredge,13 it is now accepted that evolution takes place through “hierarchical selection” or “multilevel selection.”14 Natural selection occurs at many levels of biological organization, including, in Gould’s formulation, genes, cells, organisms, demes [local breeding groups], species, and clades [group of types of organisms that have a common ancestor].15 In addition, “selection on one level may enhance, counteract, or just be orthogonal to selection at any adjacent level”16 – which can create potentially complex feedback processes. And “each hierarchical level differs from all others in substantial and interesting ways, both in the style and frequency of patterns of change and causal modes.”17 (All of this sounds very much like adaptation in the complex multilevel social world.18) Genes are, of course, the heritable basis of variations in “phenotypes” [sets of observable characteristics of an organism]. Natural selection, however, cannot “see” genes. Rather, it works on traits, many of which (unlike the color and skin texture of Mendel’s peas) do not map one-to-one onto genes. For example, epistasis (genetic units interact 7 (Dawkins 1976, 19, 24–25, 264–265). 8 See (Okasha 2018). 9 (Gould 2002, 613–644) presents a resume of the logical and empirical inadequacies of genic selectionism. 10 Lewontin’s paper “The Units of Selection” (1970) was seminal. (Lewontin 1974) was also particularly influential. 11 (Gould 1977), (Gould and Lewontin 1979), (Lloyd and Gould 1993), (Gould and Lloyd 1999). 12 (Vrba and Eldredge 1984), (Vrba and Gould 1986), (Lieberman and Vrba 1995). 13 (Eldredge 1985). See also (Eldredge 1996). 14 See also (Brandon 1982, 1999), (Wilson and Sober 1994), (Griesemer 2000; 2001), (Okasha 2005; 2011; 2020), (Tëmkin and Eldredge 2015), (Eldredge et al. 2016). (Bourrat 2021) is a good recent overview. 15 (Gould 2002, 681–713). On the multiplicity of types of individuals in the living world, see §§3.6, 3.9. 16 (Gould 2002, 677). 17 (Gould 2002, 680). 18 Sewell (2005, 112–113) argues that Paleontology provides a good model for a historically informed social science.

226

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

nonlinearly to produce a trait),19 genetic linkage (genes are tied to one another on chromosomes, and thus cannot be separately selected), and pleiotropy (a single gene has effects on multiple traits) are common.20 And many traits that nature selects for, such as swiftness, dexterity, and visual acuity, have complex genetic bases that make reductive genetic analysis inconceivable. (Again, the parallels to the social world seem to me striking.) 13.1.2 The Process and Progress of Evolution Most “evolution involves continual fine-scale change” made possible by the high level of genetic variation within species, most of which “are collections of genetically differentiated populations.”21 Therefore, much evolutionary change “occur[s] through modification of genes and traits that already have [long] been subject to selection.”22 Evolution, in other words, often arises not from genetic changes but from changes in the selective environment (or how populations interact in or with it). In addition, “much of adaptive evolution does not lead anywhere, yet these small changes are crucially important. These continual microevolutionary changes keep populations in the evolutionary game.”23 “Populations and species persist partly because they are constantly evolving in small ways”24 and “continual adjustments in adaptation are often surprisingly important to the persistence of populations.”25 An extreme example is Red Queen evolution26 in which species, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, needing to run [evolve] as fast as they can just to stay where they are. Evolution is thus “progressive” in the narrow sense that the whole evolved entity, in so far as it reflects the results of natural selection, is more fit for that particular environment, relative to its competitors, at that time.27 19 (Carlborg and Haley 2004), (Cheverud and Routman 1995), (Cordell 2002), (De Visser, Cooper, and Elena 2011), (Domingo, Baeza-Centurion, and Lehner 2019), (Stearns 2010), (Weinreich, Watson, and Chao 2005), (Wolf et al. 2000). (Cheverud 2000) discusses both pleiotropy and epistasis. 20 (Cheverud 1996), (Paaby and Rockman 2013), (Solovieff et al. 2013), (Wang, Liao, and Zhang 2010), (Watanabe et al. 2019). For a brief discussion of the implications of epistasis, linkage, and pleiotropy, see (Brandon 1999, 168–169). 21 (Thompson 2005, 6). “Polymorphisms are highly dynamic within and among populations” (Thompson 2013, 5. See also 143, 212, 376). 22 (Thompson 2013, 5. See also 123). 23 (Thompson 2013, 6). 24 (Thompson 2013, 376). 25 (Thompson 2013, 5). 26 (Van Valen 1977) coined the term. See also (Bourgeois et al. 2021), (Brockhurst et al. 2014), (Morran et al. 2011), (Rabajante et al. 2015), (Vrba 1993). 27 (Thompson 2013, 377, 380).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

227

Conditions and competitors, however, change. Fitness, therefore, always is local, relative, and temporary.28 Furthermore, not all the changes produced by natural selection are adaptive improvements in fitness. (Not everything that is selected is selected for.29) For example, sickle cell disease is prevalent in populations where malaria is endemic because the mutation that causes the disease is protective against malaria. Similarly, genes that enhanced resistance to the plague increased susceptibility to some autoimmune disorders.30 In addition to epistasis, genetic linkage, and pleiotropy,31 there are higher-level “constraints of development,32 architecture,33 and inherited morphology.”34 Much of what happens in evolution thus involves “exaptations;”35 evolved changes that are not necessarily functional (let alone optimal). They are just changes, not adaptations in any strong or interesting sense of that term. And they persist more because they exist than anything else. (Looking for “the purpose/function” of a trait thus often is a fool’s errand – both because there may never have been a function and because even if there once was it may no longer be relevant.) 13.1.3 Co-evolution We move even further from a gene-centric story when we consider coevolution; “reciprocal evolutionary change among interacting species 28

Fitness also is, as Elliott Sober (1993 [1984], 88) nicely puts it, “causally inert.” It is an abstract description of the result of a historical process of selection. To the extent that fitness explains, it explains functionally (it enhances the reproductive success of a particular population in a particular place at a particular time). 29 (Sober 1993 [1984], §3.2). 30 (Klunk et al. 2022) 31 See above at nn. 21–23. 32 Developmental constraints on evolution are “biases on the production of ­variant phenotypes or limitations on phenotypic variability caused by the structure, ­ character, composition, or dynamics of the developmental system.” (Maynard ­ Smith et al. 1985, 265 [abstract]). For a recent overview see (Galis and Metz 2021). Wallace Arthur (2004, 11) speaks of “‘developmental bias,’ meaning the tendency of developmental systems to vary in some ways more readily than others.” See also (Uller et al. 2018). 33 There are physical and mechanical constraints to how things can be arranged and ­constructed. And certain outcomes may depend significantly on the fact that they are physically easier to produce. 34 (Gould 1980, 41). See also (Gould and Vrba 1982), (Gould 1997), (Lloyd and Gould 2017). 35 (Gould 1997), extending the argument of (Gould and Lewontin 1979). ((Padgett 2012a, 45–46) and (Powell, Packalen, and Whittington 2012, 461) draw explicit analogies to exaptation.) On the notion of developmental exaptation see (Chipman 2021, 29).

228

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

driven by natural selection.”36 Co-evolution can only be seen systemically and can only be understood relationally and processually. Two or more species often exert selective pressure on one another, either in antagonistic relations, such as predator–prey and host–parasite relations,37 or in mutualistic relations, as between clownfish (“Nemo”) and anemones.38 Most dramatically, mitochondria began as bacteria but co-evolved with their hosts to become the intracellular organelles that power most plants and animals. Or consider the essential role of communities of gut microflora to the survival of animals as varied as humans,39 cows, termites, and tubeworms. “Symbiosis is the rule rather than the exception in the biological realm.”40 Pairs, sets, and webs of populations and species thus are important units of selection, producing “a dynamic world of continually coevolving mutualistic and antagonistic interactions shifting about on the changing physical templates of land and sea.”41 And as “evolutionary changes in life histories ripple throughout webs of interacting species, fostering yet more evolutionary change within and among ecosystems,”42 we often see “highly dynamic, ongoing reciprocal change across landscapes.”43 John N. Thompson goes so far as to argue that “species in pure isolation simply do not make sense.”44 Because natural selection always takes place in a particular context that includes other competing or cooperating species, species are “inherently dependent upon other species.”45 36

(Thompson 2009, 247). Co-evolution has been a topic in the study of evolution at least since Darwin’s work on orchids and their pollinators. A major revival began after the publication in 1964 of Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven’s paper on the co-evolution of butterflies and their food plants. Their approach was explicitly a reaction against specialized analytic approaches in which “one group of organisms is all too often viewed as a kind of physical constant” or species are seen as “invariant entities” (1964, 586). 37 “The most common form of life on Earth is parasitism. There are more known species of parasites than there are all other kinds of species.” (Thompson 2009, 248). 38 (Thompson 2005, pt. 2) looks at co-evolution in both antagonistic and mutualistic relations. Scientific uses of the term symbiosis previously were restricted – and in ordinary language often still are – to mutualistic relations. Today, however, symbiosis is more often used in the literal sense of living together. (Begon and Townsend 2021), a standard Ecology textbook, addresses predation and parasitism in ch. 9, 10, 12. (Chapter 13 addresses “commensalism,” in which one party benefits while the other is neither harmed nor benefited – which is unlikely to involve co-evolution.) 39 On the human microbiome see n. 59 in §3.6. 40 (Dupré and Nicholson 2018, 20). See also (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 988). 41 (Thompson 2013, 385). 42 (Thompson 2013, 20). Ehrlich and Raven (1964, 586) introduced co-evolution as a starting point for broader investigations of more complex “community evolution.” 43 (Thompson 2005, 101). 44 (Thompson 1999, 2116). 45 (Thompson 2005, 6). They depend as well on a particular abiotic environment.

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

229

Even for those generally skeptical of analogies between biological evolution and social change, co-evolution seems to me a powerful framing for the social sciences.46 (Transposition and re-functionality is, as Padgett and Powell emphasize, a matter of co-evolution.47) In both the living and the social worlds, individuals and groups at various levels of organization typically exist, persist, and change interdependently. Therefore, their natures, and how they change, can only be adequately understood by giving central attention to systems effects and employing relational processual explanatory strategies. 13.1.4 Evolution as Modular Tinkering Most of evolution involves, in François Jacob’s often-quoted formulation, “tinkering.” A tinkerer does not know exactly what he is going to produce but uses whatever he finds around him … to produce some kind of workable object. … None of the materials at the tinkerer’s disposal has a precise and definite function. Each can be used in a number of different ways. … The tinkerer gives his materials unexpected functions to produce a new object … [that is] mainly a reorganization of what already existed.48

Evolution thus is fundamentally modular and combinatorial. (Note the strong parallels to continuous (trans)formation, transposition and refunctionality, and eventful history.) Adaptive change (evolution) in complex living systems almost has to be modular, in order to “permit[] change while the organismic machine is running.”49 And given the limited materials at hand, re-purposing and re-functionality must be the principal mechanisms of change. For example, bird wings and mammal forelimbs have the same bones (in different proportions) and nearly all mammals, from gerbils to giraffes, 46

For social scientists wishing to read more, (Thompson 2009) and (Thompson, Segraves, and Althoff 2021) are useful brief introductions. At book length, (Thompson 2005) is quite accessible. See also (Agrawal and Zhang 2021), (George and Levine 2021), (Levin 2005), (Piel et al. 2022), (Rubenstein et al. 2019). On co-evolution in economic systems, see (Almudi and Fatas-Villafranca 2021), (Bergh and Stagl 2003), (Gowdy 2013), (Winder, McIntosh, and Jeffrey 2005). For varied applications outside of Biology, see (Garnsey and McGlade 2006), (Herrmann-Pillath, Hiedanpää, and Soini 2022), (Leonardi, Bailey, and Pierce 2019), (Mastrobuono-Battisti et al. 2019), (Oliver and Myers 2003), (Porter 2006), (Stiner 2021), (Teubner 2002), (Yin et al. 2021). 47 See §12.5 and (Padgett and Powell 2012b, 2–4, 7, 37, 38, 70, 89, 118, 171, 173, 267–268, 271–272, 295–296, 309). For a more skeptical take on organizational coevolution, see (Abatecola, Breslin, and Kask 2020). 48 (Jacob 1977, 1163). 49 (West-Eberhard 2003, 164).

230

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

have seven (similarly shaped) cervical vertebrae (“neck bones”). (Manatees and sloths are the exceptions.) At the cellular level, a relatively small “toolkit” of genes, which have been conserved over hundreds of millions of years, plays a central role in the early development of most animals.50 The striking similarities to the account of social change sketched in the preceding chapter are rooted in the fact that both living organisms and social groups are self-organizing complex adaptive systems. For selforganizing systems there almost is no way other than modular tinkering to produce change, given the limited resources available and the likelihood that attempts at radical reconstruction would destroy the system. That does not mean that there have not been fundamental changes in the nature of life. Quite the contrary. But the “major transitions” in evolution,51 such as the development of eukaryotes (organisms that have cells with a nucleus) and of multicellular organisms (animals, plants, and fungi), have involved combining smaller elements into larger wholes that open up vast opportunities for change. As Padgett and Powell put it, “invention never eliminates the past; it rewires it.”52 And evolution, to requote a passage from the preceding chapter, is a process in which “within constraints, component parts are transformed and molded into ongoing streams of action.”53 13.2

“Evolution” in the Social World

The similarities between structural social change and biological evolution, I want to suggest, are more than merely metaphorical. Often there is at least a close analogy. Complex adaptive systems in the living and social worlds often operate through “the same” mechanisms, if we state those mechanisms at a high level of abstraction (e.g., modular adaptation through re-purposing elements). In some cases, I want to argue, social systems evolve in the same sense that biological systems do. Natural selection can operate wherever there are heritable variations in individuals that are associated with differential fitness. As Lewontin 50

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 1010–1020). More broadly, “development within all lineages uses the same types of molecules. The transcription factors, paracrine factors, adhesion molecules, and signal transduction cascades are remarkably similar from one phylum to another” (2020, 1010). 51 (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995) introduced this framing. (Szathmáry and Maynard Smith 1995) is a brief resume of the argument and (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1999) is a version for the general reader. See also (Calcott and Sterelny 2011), (Szathmáry 2015), and, with special reference to multilevel selection, (Okasha 2005). 52 (Padgett 2012a, 61). 53 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 8).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

231

puts it, “any entities in nature that have variation, reproduction, and heritability may evolve.”54 Social groups certainly vary. The turnover of members over time reproduces the group. And structured group practices are a mechanism of heritability (through socialization). Furthermore, social entities operate in competitive environments that exert selective pressures. Therefore, although the mechanisms of social change differ from those of biological evolution, both involve processes of selection in which units (at various levels of organization) enjoy differential reproductive success as a result of competitive and cooperative interactions with the biotic and abiotic (and social) systems of which they are parts and the environments in which they interact.55 As Stefan Thurner, Rudolf Hanel, and Peter Klimek put it, from a complex systems perspective, “evolution is a dynamical process that changes the composition of large sets of interconnected elements, entities, or species over time. The essence of evolutionary processes is that, through the interaction of existing entities with each other and with their environment, they give rise to an open-ended process of creation and destruction of new entities.”56 Such processes clearly are not restricted to the biological world. Padgett and Powell go so far as to argue that “social systems are one form of ‘life’.”57 Social systems are “alive” if the essential elements of life58 are entropy-reducing thermodynamic throughput of energy in self-­organized and self-reproductive systems with cellular enclosure.59 And even if we add the capacity for evolution as a criterion of life, social systems evolve (unless we arbitrarily restrict evolution to a process involving DNA). 54

(Lewontin 1970, 1). See also (West-Eberhard 2003, 143). For overviews of the roles of variation, heredity, and selection in evolution, see (Heams et al. 2015, ch. 2–4). 55 For example, “evolutionary economics” studies the evolution of markets and other economic systems. See, for example, (Cordes 2006), (Debray 2015), (Dosi and Nelson 1994). Although I have doubts and concerns about many of the arguments in this literature, it seems to me an interesting line of work. 56 (Thurner, Hanel, and Klimek 2018, 224). 57 (Padgett 2012d, 168). “Organizations are one form of life” (Padgett and Powell 2012c, 31). 58 Among the immense literature on the nature of life, in addition to Schrödinger’s classic What Is Life? (2012 [1944]), I found (Kauffman 2000) especially engaging (not coincidentally, I am sure, because of its emphasis on self-organization in complex adaptive systems). See also (Capra and Luisi 2014), (Damiano and Luisi 2010), (Dyson 2004 [1999]), (Gómez-Márquez 2021), (Jonas 2001 [1966]), (Koshland 2002), (Margulis and Sagan 1995), (Nealson and Conrad 1999), (Penny 2005), (Pross 2016), (Rosen 1991), (Tirard 2015), (Weber 2010). 59 (Padgett 2012a, 34ff.). As Stuart Kauffman (2000, 39. See also 68, 72, 85) puts it, drawing a tight analogy between agency and life, “an autonomous agent must be an autocatalytic system able to reproduce and able to perform one or more thermodynamic work

232

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

If this seems too extreme, much the same point can be made by saying that adaptation is central to both social systems and living systems, both of which are characterized by “reproduction, death, and feedback within and among multiple intertwined networks of transformation.”60 In both, much adaptation results from (the cumulated consequences of) a system’s activities within larger systems and encounters with its environment, involving attempts to extract resources, usually in competition with other systems trying to utilize those resources. Whatever we call this, it sounds strikingly like evolution through natural selection. I stress the similarities between biological evolution and social change to emphasize • The relational and historical character of the “things” of the living and social worlds. Storks and states are not like silver and sulfur, which have essential characters rooted in physical laws. They are contingent historical products subject to continuing modifications. • The shaping role of structured relations of “agents” with the systems of which they are part and the environments of those systems. • The importance of thinking about structural change not as intentional, teleological, or driven by a master cause but as contingently emergent over time. Structuring social relations and processes change not so much volitionally, as a result of an unfolding essence or inherent logic, or by being pushed or pulled by a small number of causes but because particular changes produced through particular mechanisms and processes operating contingently across time in complex multidimensional networks of relations happen to produce those (rather than other possible) changes. • The central importance of mechanisms and processes. Universal natural laws and this-is-a-cause-of-that regularities are relatively peripheral parts of the story – or, more precisely, usually are central only at lower levels of organization. • The embeddedness of change in the results of past change. The past sets the parameters for the future which, after it is realized, sets the parameters for what follows. Everything in the social and living worlds is path dependent (evolved). • The close connection of change to patterns of competition and cooperation in a specific environment. Change often comes not only from within agents and in direct response to environmental pressure but cycles.” Or, a bit more robustly, “an autonomous agent, or a collection of them in an environment, is a nonequilibrium system that propagates some new union of matter, energy, constraint construction, measurement, record, information, and work” (2000, 107). 60 (Padgett 2017, 59).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

233

also, centrally, through competitive and cooperative interactions, with both similar and dissimilar actors, in a shared space of action and appropriation. (Add or remove particular competitors or cooperators and outcomes can change dramatically.) Finally, even if you see any mention of social evolution as merely metaphorical, I encourage you to take the complexity of biological evolution, and the revolution in its study that was required by appreciating that complexity, as an inspiration for relational/systemic IR. As Gould puts it, the conceptual problems presented by theories based on causes operating at several levels simultaneously, of effects propagated up and down, of properties emerging (or not) at higher levels, of the interaction of random and deterministic processes, and of predictable and contingent influences, have proven to be so complex, and so unfamiliar to people trained in the simpler models of causal flows that have served us well for centuries … that we had to reach out to colleagues explicitly trained in rigorous ways of thinking about such things.61

IR, it seems to me, is finally beginning to confront the same kinds of problems – which can be addressed successfully only by reaching out to and learning from the perspectives and practices of relational/systemic approaches across the sciences (and in the life sciences in particular). 13.3 Development We now turn to “development,” the processes “by which an organism goes from genotype [genetic code] to phenotype [traits],”62 with a special focus on producing an embryo (and sending it out into the world). If your eyes begin to glaze over, or you just find this discussion boring or irrelevant, feel free to jump ahead. I encourage you, though, not to skip the following section (§13.4), which extends the argument for Biology as a model for the social sciences. 13.3.1 Cell Differentiation Twenty-first-century Developmental Biology has decisively rejected the old (reduction-friendly) idea that DNA directs a largely mechanical, ­bottom-up process in which gene-determined protein synthesis drives processes by which cells are differentiated and then assembled into 61

(Gould 2002, 28). 62 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 36). Of all the areas that I reach into in this book, this is the one where I feel most incompetent. I have, at best, a textbook grasp of some rudiments of the field – as reflected by my heavy reliance in the following footnotes on the Barresi and Gilbert textbook.

234

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

tissues and organs following something like a blueprint. In fact, “gene expression” [the process by which information in DNA is used to make the proteins that are essential to life] is neither like printing nor like executing a coded program. Protein production depends as much on how genetic material is manipulated and transformed as on the information that it contains. And cells develop properly only within multiple selforganizing regulatory networks. In any living animal, the nucleus of every “somatic cell” [cells other than reproductive cells] “has the same chromosomes – and therefore the same set of genes.”63 Particular types of activities and cells require only small but precise parts of that information. To get the right information to the right place at the right time, “an enormous repertoire of traits are turned off and on during development.”64 Therefore, “the predictable effects of genes depend as much on … local conditions within a preexisting structure as they do on the specificity of the genes themselves.”65 At the heart of these processes is “transcribing” [copying] DNA, the molecule that contains the genetic code but which always remains in the cell nucleus, into various forms of RNA,66 which engage in productive work in the cytoplasm [the contents of the cell other than the nucleus and cellular membrane]. Messenger RNA (mRNA) is central: it is “translated” into templates for synthesizing the proteins out of which organisms are built.67 Other kinds of RNA play important supporting roles. For example, transfer RNA provides a physical link between mRNA and the protein synthesis mechanism.68 “Ribozymes,” another type of RNA, catalyze biochemical reactions, including gene splicing.69 In the progress from gene to protein, genetic material is both manipulated physically – cut, rearranged, and folded in very precise ways70 – and chemically modified. And all of this is done in self-organizing autocatalytic systems – most prominently, “gene regulatory networks”71 – that are not coded in DNA (or otherwise centrally planned or directed). 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 103). (West-Eberhard 2003, 146). (West-Eberhard 2003, 93–94). (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 117–132). (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 136–145). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme. (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 104–106, 133–136, 157–158, 279–283, 301, 307). (Salazar-Ciudad 2021) is an interesting brief account focusing on what gene products and cells “do” and how they are combined into hierarchies of mechanisms. For more nuts and bolts approaches see (Levine and Davidson 2006) and, at much greater length, (Davidson 2001; 2006). (Difrisco and Jaeger 2019) emphasize mechanisms and processes.

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

235

Much of development, in other words, is “epigenetic;” “acting upon,” “in addition to,” or “outside of” the gene. It involves “modifying how a gene is expressed, rather than modifying the DNA sequence itself.”72 For example, “chromatin” [the material of which chromosomes are composed] is chemically modified by “histones” [proteins that provide structural support for chromosomes]. Very broadly, histone methylation [adding a methyl group (CH3)] tends to suppress transcription [copying DNA into RNA]; that is, “turns off” a gene. Histone acetylation”[adding an acetyl group (COCH3)] tends to permit transcription; “turns on” the gene.73 Or consider “transcription factors,” which bind to a specific DNA sequence adjacent to the genes that they regulate, so that the right genes are expressed in the right place at the right time.74 For example, Hox genes encode transcription factors that help to specify the body plan along the anterior-posterior (head-to-tail) axis.75 Pax genes encode transcription factors that are similarly central to the development of nerves and eyes.76 Spatial placement is also essential to cell differentiation. This is especially striking in the “gastrulation” phase in animals, during which the single layer of identical cells of the blastula [the ball of cells formed by division/cleavage of the cells of the zygote] becomes a three-layered structure composed of different types of cells.77 Inter-cellular signaling is also indispensable for proper development. This involves many forms of both “juxtracrine signaling” between adjacent cells and “paracrine signaling” in the extra-cellular matrix.78 “Cell interaction is critical for normal development.”79 13.3.2 Performing Processes of Development “Each organism represents a unique ‘performance’ coordinated by [autocatalytic] interactions that tell the individual cells which genes are to be expressed and which are to remain silent.”80 Although all the information 72

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 117). (Carey 2012) and (Francis 2011) are useful popular science overviews. (Hallgrimsson and Hall 2011) surveys epigenetic mechanisms. (Baedke 2018) is a broad philosophical discussion. 73 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 113–118). 74 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 123–131). 75 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 139, 502, 550–552, 563, 626, 719–722, 736–737), https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hox_gene. 76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_genes. 77 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 46–47, 54–57, 71, 168–170, 173–174), https://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Gastrulation. 78 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 174–211). 79 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 92). 80 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 155).

236

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

needed to make a mouse is in mouse DNA, that information is not in a form that can make a mouse (or anything else). Only in very particular contexts, which are not coded in DNA, can genetic information be used to produce the cells that, through other self-organizing processes, are transformed into the tissues and organs that, through still other selforganizing processes, are assembled and integrated into a mouse. Michael Barresi and Scott Gilbert suggest that “differential gene expression is more like interpreting a musical score than decoding a code script.”81 This is a step in the right direction. But it still suggests central direction and a plan. No thing interprets any thing. Rather, as Barresi and Gilbert go on to note, “there are numerous events that have to take place, and each event has its own numerous interactions among component parts.”82 These events take place modularly, with limited, largely local coordination – and yet, because of how they are (self-)organized, they produce spectacular emergent results (which are only more stunning when we understand that these systems result not from programming or design but the evolution of complex adaptive systems). 13.3.3 Phenotypic Plasticity and Environmental Influences on Development Reductionist gene-based accounts are further undermined by the fact that “the ability to change developmental course when confronted by or anticipating inhospitable environments is featured across all reaches of multicellular life.”83 As a result, “most traits of human interest vary among individuals within a population due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, meaning individuals’ phenotypes will depend on both their genotypes and environments.”84 “The environment not only select[s] variations, it help[s] produce them.”85 Mary Jane West-Eberhard even argues that “the most important initiator of evolutionary novelties is environmental induction”86 – although the relative contributions of genetic change and environmental inducement remains a matter of controversy. “The inherited genome generates a developmental system that can respond to numerous environmental factors.”87 In most animals, many 81

82 83 84 85 86 87

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 158). (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 158). (Ledón-Rettig and Ragsdale 2021, 117). (Goldstein and Erenreich 2021, 91). (Baedke and Gilbert 2020, §3). (West-Eberhard 2003, 144). (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 975).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

237

traits (e.g., height and weight) have a range of possible realizations; a “norm of reaction.” Therefore, any particular phenotype, as well as the range of phenotypes in a population, is the result of the interaction of genes, organisms, and environment. (Note that I did not say “nature” and “nurture.” The biotic and abiotic (and social) environments of an organism are no less a part of nature than its genetic endowment – and no less essential to its nature/character.) Some forms of “phenotype plasticity” – “the ability of an organism to react to an environmental input with a change in form, state, movement, or rate of activity;”88 “the ability of a given genotype to express different phenotypes in different environmental circumstances”89 – are discontinuous, producing “polyphenisms.”90 For example, temperature determines the sex of the embryo in turtles, alligators, and crocodiles91 and wing color in some butterflies.92 Diet determines whether adult female honeybees become workers or a queen, whether male dung beetles have horns (and guard the tunnels of their mates), and the shape of Nemoria arizonaria caterpillars.93 Frog tadpoles and water flea larvae often take different forms in the presence and absence of predators.94 More broadly, there is an “astonishing diversity of mechanisms” that produce “phenotypic heterogeneity without creating genetic variation,”95 including stochastic gene expression (gene expression “noise”), errors in protein synthesis, epigenetic modifications, and “promiscuous proteins [that] have one primary adaptive function and other secondary latent functions.”96 And such changes may enhance fitness. Some even are heritable.97 In many animals, “chemical signals from symbionts, usually bacteria or fungi, are needed for normal development. … In mammals, the gut microbiome is acquired at birth and is critical for the development of the gut, the capillary network, and the immune system. It may even be needed for normal development of the brain.”98 88

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 974). 89 (Sultan 2021, 5). 90 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 974–977ff.). See also (Cheverud 1996, 2000), (Paaby and Rockman 2013), (Solovieff et al. 2013), (Stearns 2010), (Wang, Liao, and Zhang 2010), (Watanabe et al. 2019). 91 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 195–196, 983). 92 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 984). 93 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 977–978). 94 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 981–982). 95 (Payne and Wagner 2019, 25). 96 (Payne and Wagner 2019, 25–29, quote at 28). 97 On heritable acquired epigenetic variations, see (Jablonka and Lamb 1989; 2014), (Jablonka 2017). 98 (Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 975. See also 996–1001).

238

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Diet can affect methylation (which, as we saw above, turns off genes). In one strain of mice, mothers that receive folate supplements produce “normal” brown and sleek offspring but those that do not produce obese yellow offspring.99 Similarly, folic acid is added to enriched grain products in the United States to prevent neural tube defects in human children. The relations between development, environments, and evolution becomes even more complex when we consider environmental engineering, niche construction, and extended organisms (which we briefly noted above100) as well as the interactions of multiple units and levels of development and evolution. This has led to the emergence of the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Evo Devo)101 and calls for a field of Eco Evo Devo102 as well. 13.4

Systems Biology and Relational/Systemic Social Science

Whatever interest the nuts and bolts of evolution and development may (or may not) have for social scientists, Developmental Biology and Evolutionary Biology, I want to suggest, should be an inspiration in their focus on multilevel, multicomponent complex adaptive systems. We too in IR, I am arguing, need, as Gould and Elizabeth Lloyd put it, “serious engagement with complexity, interaction, multiple levels of causation, multidirectional flows of influence, and pluralistic approaches to explanation in general.”103 In the living and social worlds, almost nothing of interest exists, persists, or changes in isolation. The things of the living and social worlds are the things that they are and act as they act in significant measure as a result of their connections to other living and social things. And these interconnected things change in interrelated sets, not separately. We live in a world of not only hierarchically layered but also complicated and complexly connected systems of systems of systems. 13.4.1 Systems Biology: A Model for the Social Sciences The transformation of Biology in recent decades is evident in the explosive rise of “systems biology,” which “considers biological entities as 99 100 101 102 103

(Barresi and Gilbert 2020, 980–981). See §§11.6, 3.6. (Nuño de la Rosa and Müller 2021) is a wide-ranging, weighty recent overview. See, for example, (Abouheif et al. 2014), (Gilbert, Bosch, and Ledón-Rettig 2015), (Roux et al. 2020), (Beldade and Monteiro 2021). (Gould and Lloyd 1999, 31).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

239

complex holistic structures whose behaviour cannot be reduced to the linear sum of the functions of their parts.”104 For example, a Google Scholar search in October 2022 for “systems biology” returned under 8,000 results for the period 1900[sic]–1999 but over 1.5 million for 2000–2022! All the features of systems that I highlighted in Part I of this book are centrally present in contemporary Developmental Biology and Evolutionary Biology. I want to draw special attention here, though, to the centrality of top-down causation. As Denis Noble puts it, looking at the intersection of evolution and development, “order originates at higher levels, which constrain the components at lower levels. … The origin of functional variation is not at the molecular level.”105 Causation in the living world – and, I am suggesting, in the social world as well – is in large measure the result of the organized operation of complex wholes. The failure of strong reductive programs in Biology, I want to suggest, makes it counter-productive not only to continue to pursue similar strategies in the social sciences but even to privilege (partially reductive) causal explanations. Conversely, the successes of mechanismic, processual, and systems approaches ought to be an inspiration for systemic and relational approaches in the social sciences. 13.4.2 Beyond Causes and Theories: How (Not What or Why) Explanations Mainstream social scientists typically ask “What are the causes of?” – war, human rights violations, poverty, economic growth, democratization, whatever. Students are trained to identify a dependent variable, which is understood as representing a more or less given kind of phenomenon, and to seek to explain as much of the variance in the values of that variable as they can with selected independent variables. Biologists instead typically ask “What are the mechanisms by which?” They try to determine the organized ensemble of entities and activities that produce an outcome – not the separate causes that contribute to it. In discussing causation, biologists rarely refer to “causes” understood as independent variables. They almost never address (the values of) variables. (Quite the contrary, their focus is on more or less 104 (Bardini et al. 2017, 396). (Kitano 2002a, b) are classic, very brief, introductory overviews. See also (Tavassoly, Goldfarb, and Iyengar 2018), (Green 2022b), and, at greater length, (Green 2017). 105 (Noble 2017, abstract).

240

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

invariant structured productive processes.) And they are sensitive to the fact that “the same” outcome may be produced by many different mechanisms.106 This-is-a-cause-of-that explanations107 are in no way privileged in Biology. And while lower-level “causes” operate in systems/mechanisms, those “causes” are neither central nor foundational to systemic/mechanismic explanations. King, Keohane, and Verba, who, as we saw above consider “causal inferences” of “causal effects” the essence of scientific explanation,108 treat mechanisms as intrinsically uninteresting things that are “posited to exist between cause and effect”109 and are largely reducible to causal effects. “Identifying the causal mechanisms requires causal inference … [T]o demonstrate the causal status of each potential linkage in such a posited mechanism, the investigator would have to define and then estimate the causal effect underlying it.”110 Only when the full set of causal effects is specified, they argue, do we have a real scientific explanation. And a good explanation, in this account, involves nothing more (or less) than specifying a string of causal effects. In Evolutionary Biology and Developmental Biology, by contrast, mechanisms are the heart and soul of explanations. For example, natural selection is an explanation – not something to be further explained by a series of cause–effect relations that produce adaptations. (I c­ annot even imagine what kind of strings of “causes” one might imagine could explain, for example, an instance of speciation by natural selection – or why one would imagine that that would be a “better” (or even ­coherent) explanation.) Similarly, the operation of gene regulatory ­networks is an explanation.111 (As I noted above, biologists explain why by showing how.112) 106 This means that in this-is-a-cause-of-that explanations, the dependent variable cannot be properly specified without knowledge of the mechanism by which the outcome of interest is produced. For example, we cannot study “the causes of death” because death by a gunshot, death by lung cancer, and death by malaria are different “things.” (Death is a coding category, not some thing in the world (that has independent-­variable causes).) See also n. 51 in §6.1.5. 107 See §§4.3–4.5. 108 See §4.5 at n. 56. 109 (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 85). Note the odd suggestion that causes and effects are real things but mechanisms are merely posited to exist. 110 (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 86). In fact, though, we can identify a mechanism without knowing all the causes that operate within it. Note also the peculiarly reductionist perspective implied by saying that causal effects underlie (rather than are produced by) mechanisms. 111 (Craver 2016) looks at some of the varied ways in which network models explain. 112 (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, 422. See also 421, 439).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

241

13.4.3 Models and Theories Another striking feature of the biological study of evolution and development is that theories are largely peripheral, underscoring the argument about models-and-mechanisms science that I introduced in §4.8. Evolutionary biologists usually talk not of a theory or ­competing theories of evolution but of “the modern synthesis” – and are currently debating the need for and the character of an “extended ­synthesis.”113 These shared, orienting visions of fundamental features of the world and how to go about studying them are similar to ­Lakatosian research programs114 or Kuhnian paradigms115 – not substantive explanatory accounts, such as structural realism and quantum chromodynamics. When “theory” is addressed, it typically refers either to such orienting frameworks or to a model of a mechanism. For example, Gould’s magnum opus The Structure of Evolutionary Theory addresses “the building of evolutionary theory since Darwin’s Origins.”116 Its topic is “the intellectual structure of evolutionary theory within Darwinian traditions [plural] and their alternatives;”117 “Darwinian logic and its substantial improvements and changes.”118 And Gould describes its structure as like a coral.119 Evolutionary theory is not a theory (in the sense of a particular substantive explanatory account). It is a shared set of principles and practices that biologists use to study heritable changes in populations. Similarly, what in popular discourse is often called “the theory of evolution” amounts to the claim that species (or clades) are the results of evolution, which operates primarily through the mechanism of ­natural selection. The explanatory claim is nothing more or less than that this is how the world works; that natural selection is the principal mechanism by which heritable changes in populations are produced. 113



114 115

116 117 118 119

See, for example, (Pigliucci 2001), (Müller 2007), (Pigliucci and Müller 2010), (Laland et al. 2015) and Volume 7, Issue 5 (2017) of the journal Interface Focus, on “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology.” (Lakatos 1978). In IR, see, for example, (Vasquez 1997), (Elman and Elman 1997), (Elman and Elman 2003). Very briefly, see (Bird 2018, §3). Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970 [1962], esp ch. 2–5) first presented the idea. (Masterman 1970) canvasses the multiple senses in which the term is used. Kuhn’s more refined ideas are presented in the postscript to the second edition (1970 [1962], 174–190). (Gould 2002, 4). (Gould 2002, 10). (Gould 2002, 11). (Gould 2002, 19).

242

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

At a lower level of abstraction, consider Thompson’s geographic mosaic theory of co-evolution,120 which emphasizes local (biotic and abiotic) contexts. “Most species are collections of genetically differentiated populations”121 and “most interacting species do not have identical geographic ranges.”122 Therefore, much co-evolution arises among interacting local populations123 and sub-populations. These local variations create coevolutionary “hot spots” and “cold spots.”124 Add the fact that “selection is usually episodic, with occasional bouts of strong selection over time­ scales of decades”125 and we often get surprisingly rapid, “punctuated,”126 evolution in a particular sub-population. (“Interactions between species can evolve and coevolve within decades.”127) Adaptations in particular populations and communities then radiate through the species and their environments to the extent that they enhance fitness in other locations.128 This “theory” is a fairly abstract model of a mechanism – not a specification of particular causes that are important drivers of outcomes. It tells us how – not what or why.129 Even more strikingly, in Developmental Biology “theory” is almost entirely absent. As Alan Love puts it, “although it is common in philosophy to associate sciences with theories … it is uncommon to find presentations of developmental biology that make reference to a theory of development.”130 “It was once thought that each science must have laws in order to offer explanations … but now this is seen as unnecessary … The expectation that a science have a theory to accomplish the task of organizing and guiding inquiry is of similar vintage.”131

120 (Thompson 2005). See also (Caldera et al. 2019), (Gomulkiewicz et al. 2007), (Medeiros et al. 2018). 121 (Thompson 2005, 6). See also (Thompson 2013, 212). 122 (Thompson 2005, 6). 123 In standard ecological terminology, a population is a locally, genetically, or demographically distinct subset of a species – or, at a higher level of organization (“metapopulations”) a set of interacting populations. 124 (Gomulkiewicz et al. 2000). 125 (Thompson 2013, 35). 126 (Eldredge and Gould 1972), (Gould 2007). Punctuated equilibrium, of course, is not restricted to co-evolution. But co-evolution does seem to be one powerful mechanism by which it is produced. 127 (Thompson 2005, 4). See also (Thompson 2013, 7–13ff.). 128 (Ehrlich and Raven 1964) initially proposed adaptive radiation as a mechanism. See also (Lunau 2004). 129 Thompson does repeatedly use the term theory. But there is no special value attached to it. (The title of his book is The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution.) He much more frequently refers to “coevolutionary dynamics.” And he sees his work as situated within and contributing to “the developing framework for coevolutionary research” (2005, 6). 130 (Love 2020, §2.1). 131 (Love 2020, §2.1).

Life Sciences and Social Sciences

243

Models, not theories, drive cutting edge research in both Evolutionary Biology and Developmental Biology, which employ multiple different (and sometimes even competing) models of different parts of complex, multilevel, multicomponent processes. (Physicists may reasonably strive for a single unified “theory of everything” only because what counts as everything at their focal level of organization includes little if any of what the rest of us deal with at our focal levels.132) And, to repeat, explanation in the life sciences, at every level of organization, has an essential dimension that is systemic, processual, or mechanismic. To requote the passage from Gould and Lloyd that I used at the outset of this section, we need “serious engagement with complexity, interaction, multiple levels of causation, multidirectional flows of influence, and pluralistic approaches to explanation in general.”133 The following chapters present my (very limited) efforts to offer a few examples of what that might look like in IR.

132



133

François Jacob (1977, 1162) goes so far as to suggest that “as a general rule, the statements of greatest importance at one level are of no interest at the more complex ones.” (Gould and Lloyd 1999, 31).

Part III (B)

FOUR EXCURSIONS IN RELATIONAL/SYSTEMIC IR

The four chapters in this sub-part present substantive applications of a relational/systemic understanding of international systems. Chapter 14, building on the distinction between formal and substantive dimensions of differentiation, takes up normative-institutional differentiation. I offer three illustrations of the importance of norms and institutions to the structures of international societies, presenting (a) a general model of what I call constitutional structures of international societies, (b) a typology of types of security systems, and (c) an account of the norm-driven abolition of aggressive territorial war and overseas colonial empires in the decades following World War II. Chapter 15 addresses hierarchy, which the Waltzian account perversely denies is a central feature of the structures of international systems. The bulk of the chapter presents models of nearly a dozen types of stratification that have helped to structure historical international systems. Chapter 16 use the frames of levels of organization and centerperiphery differentiation to create models of what I call spatio-political structure. Chapter 17 combines the frames of continuous (trans)formation and spatio-political differentiation to consider the evolution of politics in the Eurocentric world from the High Middle Ages to today, with special attention to early modern Europe and to the utility of a relational/systemic approach for understanding globalization. For all their shortcomings, I hope that these chapters, taken together, at least point in the direction of a proof of concept for relational/ systemic IR.

245

14

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

Waltz rightly notes that states are “differently placed by their power and differences in placement help to explain both their behavior and their fates.”1 International actors, however, are also differently placed (and shaped) by their authority, status, and roles, by the principles, norms, and rules that govern their actions, and by the institutions and practices in which they participate. In fact, social systems produce patterned behavior in large measure through norms and institutions that require, prohibit, encourage, enable, constrain, and ignore actions. In IR, though, the grip of the Waltzian tripartite (ordering principle, functional differentiation, distribution of capabilities) conception of political structure is so strong that even neoliberals, who focus substantively on institutions, treat them as nonstructural. For example, Robert Axelrod and Robert Keohane, in their classic article “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy,” write that “world politics includes a rich variety of contexts” that actors “seek to alter … through building institutions.”2 “Establishing hierarchies, setting up international regimes, and attempting to gain acceptance for new norms are all attempts to change the context.”3 They even write of “deliberate efforts to change the very structure of the situation by changing the context.”4 But systems and their structures are not (mere) “contexts.” And the “structure of the situation” is not the structure of a system. Although neoliberals claim to “find the neorealist conception of structure too narrow and confining,”5 they provide no alternative – and thus fail to do justice to the real (systemic/structural) significance of institutions. They typically either adopt “the neorealist sense” of structure6 or use “structure” in an ordinary-language sense in which situations are 1 (Waltz 1990b, 31). 2 (Axelrod and Keohane 1985, 228). 3 (Axelrod and Keohane 1985, 251). 4 (Axelrod and Keohane 1985, 249). 5 (Keohane 1989, 8). 6 (Keohane and Nye 1987, 745).

247

248

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

structured by many things other than the structure of the system. For example, in an overview of liberal institutionalism, Keohane writes of “structures of power and interests,” “power structures,” and “structures of power” without even hinting at what these are made up of.7 And his reference (in a section heading) to “changes in structure” gives no indication of the nature of such changes.8 Constructivists frequently do see norms and institutions as structural. Their discussions, though, have been ad hoc, historical, or focused on particular issues, cases, or types.9 And constructivists rarely use “structure” in a precise professional sense – further underscoring the Waltzian monopolization of the term. This chapter begins to try to give norms and institutions their due in an open-ended multidimensional framework for thinking about the configuring configurations that configure international systems. 14.1

Institutions and Practices

Social institutions, as I will use that term, are persistent patterns of social practice and their enactments. This, I want to immediately emphasize, is broader than Keohane’s well-known definition of “persistent and connected sets of formal and informal rules.”10 My account, which conforms with ordinary language – “an established law, custom, usage, practice, organization, or other element in the political or social life of a people”11 – includes other socially structured sources of patterning12 and emphasizes the processes by which those persistent patterns of social practice are produced and sustained. Patterned institutionalized practices typically are much more than a reflection or expression of rules.13 7 (Keohane 2012, 125, 133, 134; 128, 133, 144; 129, 136; 133). Similarly, (Abbott, Green, and Keohane 2016) use structure to refer to pretty much anything in an actor’s environment (2016, 249, 250), at the system level (2016, 258, 259), or that is not an attribute of agents (2016, 249). (This seems to me the natural result of an anti-systemic individualist/rationalist orientation that mirrors Waltz’s (see §§5.5–5.8).) 8 (Keohane 2012, 133). 9 See n. 2 in Chapter 10 and (Nexon and Wright 2007), (Nexon 2009), (MacDonald 2014). 10 (Keohane 2001, 2 [emphasis added]). 11 Oxford English Dictionary. 12 From within a liberal-institutionalist frame, (Green 2022a, 10–11) similarly critiques the regime complex literature for its narrow focus on rules. 13 Even where it is (not un)true that “institutions reflect norms” (Holsti 2004, 22) such a formulation is too easily read to suggest some sort of causal or conceptual priority for norms. And the influence runs in the other direction as well. Norms often reflect institutions.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

249

I use “norm” in the ordinary-language sense of “that which is a model or a pattern; a type, a standard” and in particular “a standard or pattern of social behaviour that is accepted in or expected of a group.”14 “Norm” has both statistical and prescriptive senses, which in social and political systems typically are interlinked, often with neither having conceptual or causal priority. “Norms” and “institutions” overlap considerably. I use both terms, though, not only to avoid a material–non-material binary that obscures the variety of the “non-material” world but also to oppose overly idealist or rationalist accounts of action.15 Institutions often are as much a cause as an effect of ideas and beliefs – or, more precisely, as with agents and structures, ideas and institutionalized practices usually are recursively related. Practices understood as ways of “being” and “doing” associated with structured dispositions in particular fields of action, are the heart of institutions. And a focus on practices, in addition to emphasizing the active and noncognitive dimensions of structured social action, draws attention to institutionalization; “the process[es] by which a given set of units and a pattern of activities come to be normatively and cognitively held in place, and practically taken for granted.”16 It also focuses on positioned action (rather than causal influences on more or less autonomous actors); the inseparably of actors and the structured contexts that make “doings” actions. Little, though, can be said in general about the institutionalized practices of social life. And there are far too many particular things to be said to even attempt anything like a systematic discussion. This chapter therefore offers three largely unconnected illustrations of the importance of normative-­institutional17 differentiation in structuring international systems. 14.2

Constitutional Structures

Flowing out of the work of Barry Buzan, a fairly substantial literature within the English School addresses primary or fundamental institutions,18 understood as “durable and recognised patterns of shared 14

Oxford English Dictionary. 15 It simply is not true that institutions are “patterned practices … based, usually, on coherent sets of ideas and/or beliefs” (Holsti 2004, 21–22). The relation between institutions, ideas, actions, and material forces is variable. The persistent patterning of practice defines an institution (whatever its mode of production, reproduction, or transformation). 16 (Meyer, Boli, and Thomas 1987, 13). 17 The hyphen in this formula is intended to mean something like “and/or but usually and.” 18 (Buzan 2004, ch. 6) is seminal. See also (Buzan and Schouenborg 2018), (Colas 2016), (Costa-Buranelli 2015), (Falkner and Buzan 2019), (Gonzalez-Pelaez 2009), (Knudsen

250

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

practices.”19 They are primary, fundamental, or foundational in the sense that they “are constitutive of actors and their patterns of legitimate activity in relation to each other.”20 Primary institutions, however, also regulate actions and interactions. And although constitution and regulation are analytically distinct, in practice they are inescapably intertwined.21 Figure 14.1 suggests that international systems typically combine certain kinds of fundamental institutions into what I call “constitutional structures.”22 14.2.1 Principles and Practices of International Legitimacy Daniel Philpott usefully identifies “three faces of authority” in international systems: “Who are the legitimate polities? What are the rules for becoming one of these polities? And, what are the basic prerogatives of these polities?”23 My principles and practices of international legitimacy in effect combine Philpott’s first two faces and divide his third. Membership criteria may extend no further than the capacity to impose one’s presence. Usually, though, full participants in an international society are expected or required to meet some substantive standards. For example, states in modern international society were24 expected to control a territory and a population and be willing to enter into and respect obligations in international law. I have distinguished principles and practices that assign status and allocate jurisdiction from the particular rights and obligations of members. Each significantly shapes the character of an international society. Consider, for example, the status competition in high- and late-medieval Europe between the Emperor, the Pope, and kings. The rise of a practice of humanitarian intervention against genocide in the 1990s illustrates the importance of jurisdiction, as do ongoing disputes over regulating the activities of transnational corporations. And the particular rights of members are obviously central to the substantive structuring of international

19

20 21 22 23

24

and Navari 2019), (Nantermoz 2020), (Navari 2020), (Schouenborg 2013), (Spandler 2015), (Wilson 2012). (Buzan 2004, 181). (Buzan 2004, 167. See also 181). (Buzan 2004, 176–181). I take the term from Christian Reus-Smit (1997, 1999) but give it quite a different interpretation. (Philpott 2001, 12). I use the past tense to suggest that we are now in the era of postmodern international society, understanding modern international society as a states-in-a-state-system governance structure. (Evidence supportive of this reading is scattered through the following chapters.)

Hegemonic

Cultural Values Principles and Practices of

Principles and Practices of

International Legitimacy

Domestic Legitimacy

Membership Status and Jurisdiction Rights, Obligations, and Prerogatives

Foundational Functional Practices Making “Rules,” Regulating Conflict, Regulating Force, Regulating Ownership and Exchange, Communicating, Aggregating Interests, Other

Figure 14.1  Constitutional structure of international societies

252

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

systems. (In §14.4.1 we will look at changes in the rights of states to use force in the post-World War II era.) 14.2.2 Principles and Practices of Domestic Legitimacy The internal character of the participants also usually is central to the structuring of an international society.25 For example, classical liberal states and welfare states have systematically different international economic preferences. We are concerned here not with the peculiarities of particular polities but with (domestic) principles and practices that are shared widely across an international society. There may be no patterns, competing patterns (e.g., monarchy vs. republics during Metternich’s era), or similarities among most or major polities.26 Whatever the case, though, conceptions of domestic political legitimacy are likely to help to shape the character of an international society. And vice versa. Politics rarely segregates neatly into unrelated international and domestic domains. For example, one explanation of “democratic peace” is that deeply embedded domestic practices of peaceful conflict resolution spill over into relations between democratic polities. Conversely, the corrupting influence of empire on democracy is a story that goes back at least to Thucydides. 14.2.3 Foundational Functional Practices Figure 14.1 identifies six types of functional institutions, rooted in “things” that any political system “needs to do.” The character of an international society, I am suggesting, usually is shaped by how it makes and implements “rules,” organizes communications, aggregates interests and power, and regulates force, conflict, and ownership and exchange. Making “rules” (broadly understood to include norms, practices, and institutions). In the absence of an international government, practices governing making (and implementing) agreements are especially important. Twentieth-century international society principally employed the

25

Reus-Smit (1997, 1999) treats “the moral purpose of the state” as the foundation of constitutional structure. I see principles and practices of domestic legitimacy as only one of several interrelated elements of a complex whole. 26 For example, at a very high level of abstraction, Reus-Smit (1999, 9) identifies “the augmentation of individuals’ purposes and potentialities” as the moral purpose of the state in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century international system.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

253

institution of international law in a largely positive and contractual form. Customary, religious, and “natural law” principles and practices are familiar historical alternatives. International standard setting is a distinctive type of rule making that is of growing significance today. Regulating the use of force. Any society must regulate the use of force. Determining who may legitimately use force is especially important. (Consider the differences between restricting the legitimate use of force to the armed forces of states, those of noble birth, and an armed people (e.g., citizens of a Greek polis, Germanic tribes, and Mongol bands).) Also central are “just war” regulations on when force can be used, why, and how. Regulating conflicts. Any social order requires practices to regulate and resolve conflicts. War and “treaties” (contracts, oaths, and other authoritative agreements) are common international mechanisms, as are negotiation, adjudication, arbitration, mediation, conciliation, and the provision of good offices. Regulating ownership and exchange. International societies usually regulate possession and exchange of valued objects. In contemporary international society, “property rights” are a fundamental institution. We also have rather elaborate international regulatory regimes for trade (centered around the World Trade Organization) and finance (more diffusely centered on the International Monetary Fund). Mercantilism, laissez faire, and the gold standard are modern European alternatives. Communicating and interacting. How an international society organizes communications helps to shape its character and functioning. Modern international society relied principally on diplomacy – which, understood as relations carried out by accredited permanently resident agents, is historically rare, if not unique.27 Alternatives have included the use of heralds and messengers (the norm in the ancient Near East), ad hoc agents, and the ancient Greek practice of proxeny (by which a citizen of one polis acted as an agent for another). More broadly – and underscoring the connection between material and institutional structuring  – advances in transportation and communications technologies (e.g., long-distance sailing ships, telegraph, aircraft, and the Internet) have regularly reshaped international systems. Aggregating interests and power. Members of an international society frequently want to act jointly or collectively. Modern international society has employed institutions including treaties, alliances, spheres of influence, and international organizations. Hegemonic leagues were an 27

(Mattingly 1955) is a standard source on the invention of the practice in Renaissance Italy. More broadly see (Anderson 1993), (Black 2010).

254

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

important mechanism in Classical Greece. Medieval Europe relied heavily on feudal obligations. Other. The above list is not comprehensive. There may be other (nearly) “universal” functional features of international systems. And many international systems have particular primary functions of central importance. For example, the regulation of religious belief and practice has been important to many Christian and Muslim international societies. 14.2.4 Hegemonic Cultural Values The other elements of constitutional structure operate within broader normative complexes that, for lack of a better term, I call “cultural.”28 For example, politics during the Song and Ming dynasties was inextricably intertwined with neo-Confucianism. And we cannot understand Greek international society without attending to widely shared conceptions of virtue (arete ̄), honor, and glory. Norms and institutions do not float freely. They are embedded not only in material structures but also in broader normative and institutional (“cultural”) structures that enable, constrain, and otherwise channel the development and articulation of particular norms and institutions. 14.3

Types of Security Systems

For a second (entirely unconnected) illustration, this section looks at variations in the international organization of security. Table 14.1, which is a modified version of a typology developed by Bruce Cronin,29 delineates security systems by their constitutive norms, dominant identities, and master institutions. Although all these systems are “anarchic” – they lack a single central government – they are (institutionally) structured in different ways and have very different characteristic behaviors. The Hobbesian state of nature is an asocial system without rules or institutions. Actors are, in Wendt’s terms, enemies that recognize neither the right of others to exist nor internal restrictions on the use of violence.30 The resulting war of all against all, however, is a condition that has existed in no actual international system (or even the most violent domestic society31).

28

The lack of subcategories seems to me not particularly troubling. This probably ought to remain something of a place holder for “other” values. 29 (Cronin 1999, 13). 30 (Wendt 1999, 259–263ff.). 31 For example, in a system of warlords, warlords (and their followers) fight warlords (and their followers).

Table 14.1  Types of international security systems Security System

Constitutive Norms

Dominant Identity

Master Institutions

Characteristic Behavior

State of Nature

None

Enemy

None

War of all against all

Multiple-independency systems Balance of Power Sovereign in dependence Protection/Guarantee Restricted sovereignty Concert Multilateral management Collective Security Indivisibility of peace

State/great power State Great power Cosmopolitan

Self-help (especially alliances) Protection/guarantee, intervention Congresses and summits Collective security organization

Balancing, bandwagoning Intervention Consultation and joint action Collective defense

Systems of hierarchical subordination Hegemony Hegemonic leadership Dominion Restricted autonomy Empire Empire

Hegemon Empire Empire

Hegemonic alliance Subservience/suzerainty Imperial governance

Hegemonic leadership Subordination (e.g., tribute) Imperial decision-making

Regional security regime Transnational association Confederation

Demilitarization Mutual support Political integration

Transnational security communities Pluralistic Security No war “Friend” Common Security Solidarity Ideological community Amalgamated Security Divided/pooled sovereignty Shared (e.g., pan-nationalism) Source: Based on (Cronin 1999, 13).

256

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

The next four systems are structured around multiple independent polities; “states systems.” A balance of power system emphasizes the sovereign independence of states in general and of great powers in particular. It is an institutionally thin32 self-help system that characteristically involves balancing by the strong and bandwagoning by the weak. Thus understood, a balance of power system involves a relatively egalitarian principle of sovereign equality. In the eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century Eurocentric international system, by contrast, practices of restricted or semi-sovereignty were primary institutions.33 In Europe and North Africa, these often took the form of treaties of protection or guarantee, in which a weaker power was required to do or not do something that ordinarily would be a matter of sovereign prerogative (e.g., allow or not allow troops of a particular foreign power to cross its territory).34 The “standard of civilization” similarly restricted but did not eliminate the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, China, Japan, and Siam.35 Treaty relations between the United States and indigenous Tribal peoples typically took a similar form. In such systems, which typically are bilateral and embedded within a larger (in the European case, a balance of power) system, intervention is the characteristic form of behavior.36

32

In Bull’s terms (1977, 69–70), it has rules of coexistence (involving mutual recognition of sovereignty and limited mechanisms for making agreements) but few practices of cooperation. 33 Classical international law speaks of “semi-sovereign” (Martens 1986 [1795], I.1.1, I.2.4), (Wheaton 1866, §§34–38), (Bluntschli 1874, §92)), “part-sovereign” (Lawrence 1898 [1895], §§49, 71), “not-full sovereign” (Oppenheim 1955, §65), “half sovereign” (McNair 1927, 138), (Oppenheim 1955, §126), and “conditionally independent” (Twiss 1861, §§24–26) states. These inequalities were not considered violations of sovereignty. Quite the contrary, they were formally recognized both by the state in question and by the society of states. See also (Learoyd 2018). 34 (Phillimore 1854, II §§56–63, 77–79), (Oppenheim 1955, §§574–577), (Dickinson 1920a, 240–252), (Headlam-Morley 1927), (McNair 1961, 239–254), (Verzijl 1968, 412–428, 457–459), (Ress 1984a, b), (Hoffmann 1987). 35 (Schwarzenberger 1955), (Roling 1960, ch. 4), (Gong 1984), (Keene 2002, ch. 4; 2005; 2014), (Koskenniemi 2002), (Horowitz 2004), (Suzuki 2005; 2009), (Bowden 2009, ch. 5), (Costa Buranelli 2020), (Tzouvala 2020). See also (Salter 2002). (Donnelly 1998) draws an analogy to the contemporary global human rights regime. 36 Rather than a sharp distinction between these two types, one might instead think of a continuum of more or less inegalitarian balance of power systems. All balance of power systems create inequalities between states by privileging power. Some systems, though, give relatively great emphasis to the formal legal equality of states (as has been the case in international society over the past half century). But other systems (like nineteenth-century Eurocentric international society) give a prominent place to more or less extensive official legal inequalities.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

257

In concert systems, as in the eponymous Concert of Europe,37 great powers multilaterally manage selected issues of joint concern. (In the classic nineteenth-century implementation, other issues were dealt with through self-help balancing and intervention.) Summits and conferences, which support practices of consultation and joint action, are the master institutions. The Group of Seven can be seen as a limited economic concert38 (although a secondary, not primary, institution of contemporary international society). In collective security systems39 – the one system in this set that has never been fully implemented – defense against aggression is transferred to an organization that is authorized to take collective action against any breach of the peace anywhere in the system. The underlying constitutive norm is often expressed as the indivisibility of peace; war anywhere is understood as an attack on everyone. This reflects a cosmopolitan identity with respect to peace. The overall system, however, remains “anarchic” – a collective security organization is not an international government – and other issues are dealt with differently. The authority of the United Nations Security Council to use force against breaches of the peace reflects a collective security orientation. The “veto” power of the permanent members, however, reflects a concert logic. What I call systems of hierarchical subordination – “imperial” international systems, in a loose sense of that term – are systems of separate polities in which subordination is more central than autonomy. Hegemony, in one standard definition in IR,40 is a system in which semi-sovereign hegemonized polities control their internal politics but have their foreign policy directed or dictated by a hegemon, typically through a league. Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War is

37

(Holbraad 1970), (Elrod 1976), (Jervis 1985, 1992), (Kupchan and Kupchan 1991), (Daugherty 1993), (Kagan 1997/98), (Cronin 1999, ch. 3), (Rendall 2006), (Mitzen 2013), (Humphreys 2017), (Schulz 2017), (Aall, Crocker, and Hampson 2020). 38 (Penttila 2003). See also (Merlini 1984). (Slaughter 2019, 49–53) argues for seeing the Group of Twenty as an informal concert. See also (Viola 2020). Figure 15.7 models stratification in concert systems. 39 The classic depiction is (Claude 1962, ch.4). See also (Schwarzenberger 1951, ch. 27), (Kupchan and Kupchan 1991). 40 (Doyle 1986a, 12, 40, 55–60), (Watson 1992, 15–16, 27–28, 122–128), (Watson 2007), (Nexon and Wright 2007, 256–258), (Musgrave and Nexon 2018, 595). (Clark 2011) is perhaps the best general discussion. (Dutkiewicz, Casier, and Scholte 2021) is a recent edited collection that also emphasizes the legitimacy – or, in the terms used here, the institutionalization – of hegemony. The standard translation of the Classical Chinese ba as hegemon – referring to struggle for predominance in the Spring and Autumn period between the effective rule of the Zhou Emperor and the states system of the Warring States period – reflects a similar understanding, emphasizing institutionalized hierarchy but not empire. See (Hsu 1999, 551–566), (Yan 2011, ch. 3, 6, App. 1).

258

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

a classic example of a dual hegemony. Relations between the United States and much of Central America throughout much of the twentieth century can reasonably be described as hegemonic.41 An empire, understood as an international system, has an imperial polity at its core. As one moves away from the center, though, imperialized polities retain separate identities and have varied degrees of effective autonomy.42 The Roman Empire in the first and second centuries is a good example. “Dominion”43 lies between hegemony and empire. Relations between various Chinese emperors and some marginal or peripheral parts of their realm often took such a form.44 The Soviet Bloc during the Cold War can be fruitfully seen as having had this more-than-hegemony-but-lessthan-empire form. The final three types involve relatively strong political communities – rather than systems that emphasize the independence of separate polities – that are not organized hierarchically by dominant powers. Pluralistic security communities45 are based on the abolition of war within the community; friendship in Wendt’s sense that the actors practice nonviolence and mutual aid.46 (Ole Waever uses the label “non-war community.”47) The USA–Canada relation and the Nordic countries are classic examples. Today we can also talk fruitfully of North Atlantic and Western European pluralistic security communities. Common security communities, which are based on ideological community and solidarity, involve practices of mutual support that go substantially beyond alliances rooted in calculations of interest. In the mid-1990s, there was some (not uninteresting) talk of a community of market economies. The Soviet Bloc in post-World War II Eastern Europe might be seen as a coerced common security community.48 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48

We return to stratification in hegemonies in §15.7.2. See also §16.4.2. These labels are taken from Adam Watson (1992, 15–16). On tributary states systems in the Chinese context, see (Womack 2012), (Zhang and Buzan 2012), (MacKay 2014), (Perdue 2015), (Kwan 2016), (Lee 2016), (Oh 2019), (Kang 2020). (Baldanza 2016) explores the case of Ming China and Vietnam. (Bang and Bayly 2011) takes a comparative perspective. On the Ottoman system, see (Kármán and Kunčević 2013), (Panaite 2019, pt. 5), (Kármán 2020). (Monson 2020) is an interesting account of Alexander the Great’s tributary empire. (Deutsch 1957) and (Adler and Barnett 1998) are the crucial works. See also (Acharya 2014), (Adler 2008), (Adler and Greve 2009), (Duarte Villa 2017), (Hajizada 2018), (Putra, Darwis, and Burhanuddin 2019), (Simão 2017). (Wendt 1999, 298ff.). (Waever 1998). Note that I have used the Soviet Bloc as an example of both dominion and a common security community. The boundaries between types are not sharp, especially when types are used for different analytical purposes. For example, Charlemagne may have

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

259

Amalgamated security communities involve a partial pooling of sovereignty rooted in a shared identity. Consider Nasser’s pan-Arabism, which led briefly to the United Arab Republic (joining Egypt and Syria). The United States into the 1820s was in many ways a confederal amalgamated security system.49 The European Union, however, seems to me not to fit this category (although it might be considered an amalgamated economic community). These types of security systems illustrate both the variety of international systems and the decisive importance of normative-institutional structuring to their character and functioning. 14.4

Transforming Post-World War II International Society

My final illustration of the importance of normative-institutional differentiation looks at the effective abolition of aggressive territorial war and overseas empires in the decades following World War II. I also use this example, returning to a theme from Chapter 4, to illustrate some differences between “causal” and systemic explanations. 14.4.1 Abolishing Territorial Acquisition by War In the heyday of “classical” positive international law, sovereign states had a largely unlimited right of war. Few international lawyers went as far as Oppenheim in defining war as “the contention between two or more States through their armed forces for the purpose of overpowering each other and imposing such conditions of peace as the victor pleases.”50 But even those who accepted Vattel’s natural law definition of war as “that state in which we prosecute our rights by force”51 acknowledged that international law “leaves states, which think themselves aggrieved, and which have exhausted all peaceable methods of obtaining satisfaction, to exact redress for themselves by force. It thus recognises war as a permitted mode of giving effect to its decisions.”52 For example, Wheaton listed first among the “absolute international rights of states” what he called the “right of selfpreservation”53 – which each state was free to interpret largely as it saw fit.

49

50 51 52 53



conceived of his empire as a polity but, especially under his successors, it was more a system of dominion or hegemony (and on the peripheries often barely that). (Deudney 1995) develops this argument. (Oppenheim 1906, 56). (Vattel 1916 [1758], II, I, §1, p. 235). (Hall 1917, 61). This passage (in Ch. III, §16) goes back unchanged to the first (1880) edition. (Wheaton 1866, 89 [§§60ff.]). See also Vattel, II, iv, §§49–52 (recognizing rights to selfprotection, resistance, redress, and punishing) and III, i, §§1–4.

260

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

The 1928 General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy (Kellogg–Briand Pact) preceded World War II by barely a decade. Therefore, skepticism, even cynicism, may have been in order when in 1945 the Charter of the United Nations proclaimed in Article 2(4) “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” With respect to territorial integrity, however, this seemingly idealistic pledge has been almost universally implemented. Territorial acquisition by war, which had previously appeared to be a fixed feature of international life, has been almost entirely eliminated – a stunning political (and human) achievement. Since 1950, when Tibet was formally incorporated into China, the only state eliminated by force has been South Vietnam.54 Even attempted conquests (e.g., Iraq’s attack on Kuwait in 1990) have been few. And almost all wars of partition have been unsuccessful55 – Russia’s seizure of Crimea being the glaring exception that proves the rule. Most strikingly, there have been no major forced territorial changes in sub-Saharan Africa, despite the creation over three decades of more than forty weak states with boundaries that reflect little more than long-past temporary balances of forces between colonial armies. The prohibition of aggressive territorial war, compared to, say, domestic laws against murder, has been wildly successful. (Note the crucial distinction between effective legal prohibition and completely effective elimination – which no national or international legal or political systems can ever achieve.) This has, in Wendt’s terms, replaced a Hobbesian anarchy of enemies with a Lockean anarchy of rivals,56 with profound implications for the organization and operations of international life.57 14.4.2 Abolishing Overseas Colonial Empires Overseas colonial empires were also abolished in the decades following World War II. Although often talked about as self-determination, the 54

East Timor was seized by Indonesia in 1975 before its declaration of independence could have any effect. (I thus read it as a contested decolonization, rather than the conquest of a state.) And Timor Leste did ultimately achieve independence in 2002. 55 The Israeli-occupied territories and Northern Cyprus illustrate the typical inability of acquiring states to turn even long-term successful control into widespread international recognition. 56 (Wendt 1999, 279ff.). States now recognize the rights of other states to exist. 57 At the level of IR theory, it has made realism largely obsolescent. It is not even close to true that, as Mearsheimer (2001, 31) puts it, “survival dominates other motives” – because (for nearly all states nearly all the time) survival is not at stake.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

261

actual practice was decolonization of (Western) overseas empires.58 Polities such as the United States that grew though the conquest of contiguous territories were not affected. And peoples (e.g., the Kurds) who did not have the “good fortune” of being contained within a single Western colony were not entitled to self-determination – nor were those (e.g., the Ibo in Nigeria) who were only one of multiple peoples in a colony. The 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (General Assembly Resolution 1514), which received abstentions (not negative votes) from Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, effectively acknowledged the end of the era of colonialism – not as a result of conquest or collapse but because of new understandings of political legitimacy and new practices for establishing membership in international society.59 Decolonization was governed by an order-based territorial logic. The subordinate entities of overseas empires were entitled to independence with exactly the same artificial boundaries they had as colonies, following the Roman law principle uti possidetis, ita possidetis (as you possessed, so shall you possess) – not because this was just but because anything else was a recipe for war.60 The abolition of aggressive territorial war then protected these new (and usually weak) states from predation. With few exceptions, survival came to depend not on the material power a state could marshal (either directly or through allies) but on international recognition – a huge change in the character of international relations. These changes, of course, required a permissive material context. For example, it certainly was important that technological advances allowed economic and political influence to be exercised without direct territorial control. The fact that by the 1950s few colonies were greatly profitable also was significant. Nonetheless, decolonization was in considerable measure norm driven. And it significantly restructured international relations in the last third of the twentieth century. 58 Of the immense (and growing) literature on decolonization, useful studies with an international political focus include (Birmingham 1995), (Burke 2010), (Chafer 2002), (Clayton 2014 [1996]), (Crawford 2002), (Hargreaves 2014 [1996]), (Jansen and Osterhammel 2017), (Kennedy 2016), (Rothermund 2006), (Strang 1991), (Thomas, Moore, and Butler 2015). 59 The process also largely erased the racial hierarchy of the preceding era. Sovereign equality came to be interpreted in increasingly egalitarian terms, emphasizing the legal equality of all states (rather than the superior status of states to nonstate actors). 60 This uti possidetis model of decolonization was sufficiently appealing that it was in effect applied to the post-Cold War breakup of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Federal republics were entitled to sovereignty (with the identical boundaries that they had as federal republics) but other entities were treated as integral parts of the successor states.

262

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

14.4.3 Norms, Causes, and Changing Social Practices Dan Altman has recently challenged the factual basis of the above account of territorial war, criticizing constructivist61 arguments that changing norms have constrained the resort to territorial war and arguing that “more than it declined, conquest evolved.”62 My argument here, however, has a very different form. Rather than ask “Has conquest declined – and if so why?” I ask whether the practices of international society with respect to aggressive territorial war (and overseas colonial empires) changed – with what consequences. My concern is not with “causes”63 (and causal effects) but with systems (and systems effects).64 What follows therefore should be seen not as a contest between competing explanations but as a comparison of systemic and “causal” understandings of “the same thing” (territorial warfare). Altman, much like Waltz, sees states as otherwise autonomous actors subject to independent-variable causal forces in the environments in which they interact. I, by contrast, depict states as parts of a states system, shaped and shoved by, among other things, the changing norms and practices of international society. I argue not that states previously were largely at liberty to conquer territory if they could get away with it. Rather, a well-established body of law and practice authorized territorial acquisition by force, making territorial war and colonialism primary institutions of modern Eurocentric international society. Those structured practices both validated overseas colonial empires and regularly led to internationally recognized state death – the number of independent polities in Europe declined from several hundred in the fifteenth century to roughly two dozen at the turn of the twentieth century – and dismemberment. After 1945, states stopped getting dismembered or killed not because new “causes” began to operate or old “causes” were weakened or eliminated. Rather, intertwining material, normative, and institutional 61

Careful readers may have noted that I avoid the framing “constructivist,” which usually not only adds nothing to our understanding but obscures the distinctive characters of systemic and relationalist theory and research. The standard rationalist–constructivist dichotomy defines rationalism and treats constructivism as a residual; not rationalist (i.e., does not take actors and their attributes as given and does not assume that they employ a universal instrumental rationality). Like most residuals, this lumps together many disparate things that share little or nothing beyond not being x. (In IR, see also “realism and its critics” and “hard and soft power.”) 62 (Altman 2020, 491). 63 I continue my practice (see §§4.3ff.) of using “cause” in scare quotes to indicate an independent-variable cause that is understood to have causal effects on a dependent variable. 64 See §4.4.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

263

changes altered the basic parameters of normal, permitted, and prohibited behavior. As a result, a previously well-established practice withered and died, surprisingly quickly. For centuries, legal and political rules, norms, and practices had authorized forced territorial acquisition. Therefore, states contemplating territorial war typically considered only material constraints. Over a relatively short period of time, however, changing beliefs and practices delegitimated forced territorial acquisition. And most states, for a complex combination of principled and instrumental reasons, came to comply with the new regime. States in 1945 and in 1995 were arranged differently in systems that operated differently. They were differently positioned, normatively and institutionally. The structuring of the system changed. And states, as a result, acted (systematically) differently. Similarly, both expectations and practices concerning overseas colonialism changed, among colonizers, the colonized, and observers alike. A new structured system of practice governed the unwinding of Western colonialism. And even contemporary Russian aggression and “neo-colonialism” has been decisively (re-)shaped by the (now deeply embedded) prohibition of territorial acquisition by force – which, I would argue, is the only way to understand why Ukraine remains the rare exception. 14.4.4 The Forcible Acquisition of Territory since 1945 But is Ukraine an exception? A large part of the answer depends on how one understands that question. Altman asks “whether some constraint – such as a territorial integrity norm or an alternative constraint against war initiation – has shaped conquest’s evolution.”65 He takes conquest to be some “thing” that, at least for the period 1918 to 2018 (for which he has developed a comprehensive dataset), persists but takes different forms. And his data shows that prior to 1945, aspiring conquerors used what Altman calls the “brute force” strategy.66 “The sequence of events often went: initiate war, then try to take territory. Today, the predominant sequence has become: seize a small piece of territory, then try to avoid war. The fait accompli has become the primary strategy of conquest.”67

65

(Altman 2020, 492). 66 (Altman 2020, 497). 67 (Altman 2020, 491).

264

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

I do not disagree.68 But I am making a very different point. I focus on the fact that a polity no longer defeats another polity in war and then incorporates all or part of it.69 Altman does not disagree. He just does not give this much attention – because he is focused not on the changing practices of the society of states but on the variations over time in “conquest,” understood as a dependent variable that changes in response to the effects of independent-variable “causes.” Because of that focus, Altman gives central attention to conquest attempts. From a systemic perspective, though, this is at best odd. If we want to know if conquest is prohibited, with what consequences, we should focus instead on the successes and failures of, and especially the responses to, conquest attempts. (If you want to know whether there are property rights you don’t count bicycle thefts.) And in fact even forced partitions have been few. For the period 1976–2006, Altman lists nine wars begun by conquest attempts,70 four other territorial wars,71 and five entirely non-territorial wars. Of these 13 territorial wars, only the Kosovo War of 1999 resulted in significant recognized territorial changes. And Kosovo was not a conquest (i.e., a forced territorial acquisition). A systemic perspective also provides an explanation for why things changed after 1945 – which escapes Altman’s reach. Although Altman rightly questions the idea that a territorial integrity norm (or some other cause) led to the demise of “war initiation” for territorial gain, he does not identify another cause. That, I would argue, is because there was no other “cause.” What changed was the practices of the society of states with respect to territorial acquisition by force – which forced states to abandon the brute force strategy. Until 1945, victorious states could, with a bit of good fortune, reasonably aspire to acquire territory (especially non-metropolitan territory). By the mid-1970s, the ability of states to acquire territory by force was

68

I would not, however, describe these cases as conquests – which I see as a practice that has been abolished in contemporary international society. Russia, in my reading, has conquered Crimea (although that conquest remains largely unrecognized) but not other areas in eastern Ukraine. And South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria fall into still another category. In other words, I would emphasize the various forms that (different kinds of) forced control take (rather than lump them all under “conquest”). Compare n.111 in §13.4.2. 69 “No longer” does not mean “not ever” – which, like always, never happens when we are dealing with institutions, norms, and social practices. I mean that there is no longer an established, expected, or even regularly tolerated practice of doing so. 70 Ogaden (1977), Uganda–Tanzania (1978), Cambodia–Vietnam (1979), Iran–Iraq (1980), Falklands (1982), Gulf War (1990), Cenepa [Ecuador-Peru] (1995), Badme [Ethiopia–Eritrea] (1998), Kargil [India–Pakistan] (1999). 71 Chad–Libya (1986), Nagorno-Karabakh (1992), Bosnia (1992), Kosovo (1999).

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

265

largely eliminated. States were no longer able to do something that previously had been normally done – in large measure because of normativeinstitutional changes. Altman makes the important point that Russia has repeatedly employed the fait accompli strategy.72 I instead emphasize that other states have not been able to employ this strategy successfully73 – and that the strategy itself attests to the power of the prohibition of aggressive territorial war. Furthermore, it is of immense political importance that such quasiacquisitions remain largely unrecognized by the broader international community, in sharp contrast to pre-1945 practice. Altman draws our attention to the fact that some kinds of (more or less successful attempts at) forced territorial control are likely to remain a feature of international relations in the coming years. My account instead emphasizes that even Russia’s “successes” have been incomplete, contested, or defective (and usually of relatively minor significance, Crimea being the signal exception). Furthermore, this is the only form of territorial acquisition that has not been effectively prevented. And even that has occurred almost exclusively on the borders of Russia. 14.4.5 The 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine The preceding paragraphs were written before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. I have left them unchanged, including references to “Ukraine” that refer to the 2014 seizure of Crimea. Writing in September 2022 (and doing the final copyediting revisions in May 2023) I want to argue that international responses have, at least so far, largely supported my account. Social practices are not causes; they do not have determinate (invariant or probabilistic) effects. Rather, they shape, direct, and regulate behavior, more or less strongly and more or less effectively. Laws are regularly violated, norms are regularly flouted, and practices are regularly defied. That does not mean that they do not operate with effect. Rather, their effects are not “causal.” The effects of law and norms are seen both in (unthinking and intentional) acts of compliance and in responses to infringements. Consider property rights, a striking domestic analogue to sovereign territoriality. Successful theft is exactly that – successful theft. The practice 72 (Altman 2020, 510–518). 73 This is not exactly correct. But instances such as Ethiopian’s refusal to withdraw from Badme for twenty years, even had it continued indefinitely, seem to me clearly exceptions that prove the rule.

266

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

of property rights remains established and effective as long as theft remains relatively rare and generally understood as theft, most potential thieves are deterred, and some thieves are sometimes punished. And the relative rarity of theft, given the pervasive temptation to take things that are not yours, is evidence of the effective operation of the practice. A governing practice, of course, can unravel, crumble, or break. But violations are part of the practice. (They are evidence that we are dealing with laws rather than laws of nature.) And in international and domestic law alike, the powerful sometimes “get away with murder.” Russia’s invasion was a blatant violation of well-established and generally effective international norms and practices – as is evident in the nearuniversal ridicule heaped on Putin’s shifting justifications and excuses. Furthermore, genuinely punishing sanctions have been imposed and are likely to persist well into the future. Russia almost certainly will come out of this adventure weaker, both absolutely and relatively, than it went in. And few if any states are likely to see Ukraine as suggesting that territorial aggression pays. I would not be surprised if in the end Russia acquired control over, or even annexed, some new pieces of territory.74 But I see no evidence either that Russian control will be widely acknowledged or that the prohibition of territorial aggression will be significantly weakened. Ukraine, it seems to me, will come to be seen as an exception that proves the rule (rather than a step down a slippery slope).75 None of this is accessible to an account (such as Altman’s) that focuses on the “causes” of “conquest” and countervailing conquest-impeding “causes.” If one wants to understand the “causes” of change in the value of a dependent variable then one proceeds in one way. But one proceeds differently if trying to understand how the structuring of relations within a system influences actions and outcomes. And now, at the end of the discussion, abandoning my attempt to neutrally compare explanatory strategies, I want to suggest that my normative-institutional relational/ systemic story is “more revealing” and addresses a “more important” part of the picture of the place of force in maintaining and acquiring control over territory in contemporary international society. 74 I wrote this a couple weeks before Russia’s “annexation” of additional Ukrainian territory in October 2022. And I continue to believe this as we wait for the anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive of the summer of 2023. 75 All eyes, of course, now turn to China. My account suggests that whatever happens with Taiwan – which is a sui generis case because it has never been recognized as a sovereign member of international society – China will not turn to Russia’s fait accompli strategy along its borders, partly because of low material gains but also because of normative constraints and the possibility of sanctions.

Normative-Institutional Differentiation

267

Without denigrating causal knowledge, I am insisting that there is significant value in knowledge of how the normative-institutional structuring of a system shapes and shoves international actions – and that systemic/relational research, properly executed, has a considerable but largely untapped potential to contribute to a more insightful and effective IR. 14.5

Regulative Regimes and International Governance

I want to conclude this chapter by emphasizing that systemic norms, institutions, and practices define the parameters of the (ab)normal, (im) permissible, and (un)desirable. The construction of territorial war and overseas empires as normal and permitted were central features of the structuring of international relations in the centuries before 1945. But these institutions and practices changed – with dramatic and profound consequences for what states could and could not do.76 And being able to comprehend such changes, I am arguing, is a crucial contribution of relational/systemic approaches to a pluralistic IR. More broadly, a growing range of regulative regimes are becoming increasingly important features of contemporary international society. And these regimes – and, increasingly, regime complexes77 – provide international governance (in the absence of an international government). Finally, emphasizing the systemic nature of my discussion, I want to repeat that I have not focused on rules, which, like “causes,” are too easily (and too frequently) seen as discrete things that act on otherwise autonomous agents. Regulative regimes, understood as structuring systems of norms, institutions, and practices, provide rule – in the absence of a ruler, by structured mechanisms that involve much more than rules.

76

As these cases suggest, the normative-institutional parameters of international relations often change less by instituting new practices of justice than by rejecting old practices as unjust. For example, the list of internationally recognized human rights offers not so much a positive conception of social justice as a compendium of well-established past practices that we no longer consider permissible. Even where norm entrepreneurs speak of lofty positive goals such as peace and self-determination, change usually is less a matter of realizing a good than avoiding harms such as territorial war or overseas colonialism. Ethan Nadelman (1990) thus usefully talks of global prohibition regimes, through which an activity that previously had been regarded as acceptable, or even desirable, is redefined as evil and, if not entirely abolished, at least forced into the margins and shadows. See also (Getz 2006), (Sanchéz-Avilés and Ditrych 2018), (Jung 2021). 77 See, for example, (Keohane and Victor 2011), (Pratt 2018), (Faude and Groβe-Kreul 2020), (Gómez-Mera, Morin, and Van de Graaf 2020), (Henning and Pratt 2021), (Green 2022a).

15

Vertical Differentiation



Stratification and Hierarchy in International Systems

How international (and other social) systems are stratified – how social positions are arranged in ranked relations of super-, sub-, and co-ordination – is obviously central to their structure and functioning. This chapter looks at two broad types of vertical differentiation: single (or convergent) hierarchies and heterarchies (or multiply ranked orders). Along with the next chapter, it attempts to develop sets of models, some of which are applied in Chapter 17, that can ground theoretically disciplined comparative work on the structuring of international systems with immediate relevance to understanding patterns of continuity and change in our globalizing world. 15.1

Stratification, Hierarchy, and Inequality

Contemporary IR, in large part because of Waltzian anarchy-centrism and the associated neglect of hierarchy, has no standard language for addressing vertical differentiation. I thus begin with terminology, focusing on the framings of hierarchy, stratification, and inequality. Hierarchy, as Waltz nicely put it, “entails relations of super- and subordination among a system’s parts, and that implies their differentiation.”1 “Actors are formally differentiated according to the degrees of their authority, and their distinct functions are specified.”2 Following this definition, which closely tracks ordinary language,3 I will use “hierarchy” to mean systems of relations of super-, sub-, and co-ordination and functional differentiation.4 A similar definition is adopted by Ayse Zarakol in her introduction to her edited volume Hierarchies in World Politics, which was a milestone in reintroducing the concept of hierarchy into contemporary IR.5 1

(Waltz 1979, 93). 2 (Waltz 1979, 81. See also 80, 97, 114). 3 “A body of persons or things ranked in grades, orders, or classes, one above another.” Oxford English Dictionary. 4 See also §9.1. 5 (Zarakol 2017b). See also (Ikenberry 2011, 11), (Macdonald 2018, 134).

268

Vertical Differentiation

269

Hierarchy has both a formal dimension (“ranking”) and a substantive dimension (“roles”). The substances of hierarchies, however, are immensely variable and thus resist being encompassed in the typologies that are my focus here. Therefore, I concentrate on models of forms of hierarchy – and in particular on forms of stratification.6 The Latin stratum indicates something spread or laid down; a layer or coat, especially one of a series of layers. Sociologically, stratification refers to “the formation and establishment of social or cultural levels.”7 Stratum in this sense indicates “a level or grade in social position or culture.”8 I will use this ordinary-language sociological sense here.9 Some stratified structures, such as geological strata, are arrayed in “ranks,” in the sense of “a row, line, or series of things”10 but are not “ranked” in the sense of “hav[ing] a specified place or status within a hierarchy.”11 Social stratification, however, involves hierarchical ranking. Occupants of vertically differentiated positions have differential access to goods, services, opportunities, and protections. In IR, however, many scholars have adopted David Lake’s conception. Lake treats anarchy as the ordering principle of international systems and hierarchy as a nonstructural feature of bilateral relations;12 “a dyadic relationship between two polities.”13 If, following Waltz, we insist that anarchy both is the ordering principle of international systems and excludes systematic relations of super- and sub-ordination then this is about the only possible space for international political hierarchy. This bilateral understanding, however, is inconsistent with ordinary language. (For example, great power states systems, international organizations, and international regimes would not be hierarchical, because they involve systemic, not bilateral, relations.) And it leaves us with no language to address the structured relations of stratification that are 6 By way of self-criticism, I note that these models are relational but not processual (see §10.4) – not, unfortunately, for principled epistemic reasons but for limitations in my interests and talents. Nonetheless, I suggest that comparative analysis with static relational models, both across cases and across time, can be valuable, producing a sometimes useful “second-best” kind of knowledge that also may point toward more comprehensive work on mechanisms and processes. 7 Oxford English Dictionary. 8 Oxford English Dictionary. 9 The Waltzian tripartite conception is largely about stratification – although it awkwardly considers official stratification as “ordering principle” and unofficial stratification as “distribution of capabilities” (which it then misrepresents as “polarity”) and fails to appreciate the interrelationship between authority, functions, and capabilities. 10 Oxford English Dictionary. 11 Oxford English Dictionary. 12 (Lake 2009, 17, 60–62. See also x, 133, 136, 174, 177). 13 (Lake 2009, 61).

270

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

central to the differentiation of international systems. In fact, this (actorcentric) definition obscures the systemic structured relations of super-, sub-, and co-ordination that are central to international (and other social) systems. There has also been a tendency – tied, I think, to a reaction against Waltz – to use “hierarchy” for inequalities that are ad hoc or interactional (rather than relational14). For example, Ann Towns, another pioneer in reintroducing hierarchy to IR, uses “social hierarchy … synonymously with social inequality, stratification, or rank.”15 Similarly, Paul Musgrave and Daniel Nexon define hierarchy as “any pattern of super- and subordination”16 and Jesse Dillon Savage, in slightly more statist terms, defines hierarchy (in general) as “where a state asserts authority or control over another.”17 Such usage, in addition to wasting a useful term (by turning “hierarchy” into a fancy label for inequality) distracts attention from the structured relations of stratification that are central to international systems. I therefore suggest understanding hierarchy, following Michael Barnett,18 as enduring relations of inequality and roles of superiority, inferiority, and equality expressed in structured systems of ranks and positions. Ranked positions are associated with particular rights, responsibilities, and roles that may be official (legal or similarly sanctioned) or unofficial.19 15.2

Forms of Hierarchy

Figure 15.1 presents a simple typology, distinguishing (a) hierarchies restricted to a single issue or institution (e.g., the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Catholic church) and those that span multiple issues, activities, or functions (e.g., “the social hierarchy”) and (b) hierarchies with a single axis of stratification and those with multiple axes. • In “simple” hierarchies, one axis of stratification orders one issue or institution (as in the official hierarchy of offices in a bureaucracy). 14

On this distinction between actions and interactions on the one hand and relations on the other hand, see §5.2 at nn. 24, 25. 15 (Towns 2010, 44). 16 (Musgrave and Nexon 2018, 594). The reference to any pattern seems intentional, being used also in (McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon 2018, 181). 17 (Dillon Savage 2021, 712). 18 (Barnett 2017, 91, 67). 19 I use “official” rather than “formal,” which I have already used to refer to the form (rather than the substance) of a dimension of differentiation (see §11.1.3). “Official” also may usefully suggest a connection with offices in the sense of social positions.

Vertical Differentiation Single Axis

271 Multiple Axes

Simple

Contested

Convergent

Tangled/Divergent

Single Issue or Institution

Multiple Issues or Institutions

Figure 15.1  A typology of hierarchical stratification

• “Contested” hierarchies have two or more axes of stratification operating within a single domain. For example, an institution’s official hierarchy of authority often diverges from its unofficial hierarchy of influence. • In “convergent” hierarchies, something like a single axis of stratification runs through a multifunctional group or multicomponent domain of activity. Analytically distinct hierarchies converge into a more or less singular hierarchy that pervades the system. For example, in the first half of the twentieth century most European states had largely overlapping and substantially convergent legal, political, economic, and status hierarchies. • “Tangled”20 or “divergent” hierarchies have different patterns of stratification in different places or issue areas. For example, the American Congress, President, and federal courts comprise a structured body of authorities that are not arranged “one above the other.” Each is superordinate in specific domains, subordinate in others, and coordinate in still others. The distinction between convergent and divergent hierarchies is especially important. There is nothing “natural” or “normal” about multiple hierarchies converging (as in the modern states-in-a-states-system

20

I take the term from (Hofstadter 1979, 10, ch. 20).

272

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

assemblage). Quite the contrary, divergent political hierarchies, as we will see in the Chapter 17, have been the norm in the Eurocentric world over most of the past millennium. And globalization is producing hierarchies that are becoming increasingly tangled. At the outset I also want to note a distinction that is central to thinking about globalization. Convergent hierarchies tend to be associated with territorial rule. (Hierarchies converge within a territory.) Functional rule, by contrast, tends to be associated with divergent hierarchies; a single place is subject to multiple authorities. 15.3

Single-Layer Systems: Unstratified and Autarchic Orders

We can imagine a system without vertical differentiation; an order that is “unstratified.” For example, in the pre-social (or immediately post-social) condition of a Hobbesian state of nature, where all individuals have effectively equal resources21 and are equal in authority (because no one has any22) there is no stratification – because there are no social mechanisms to create social strata (which are social products).23 The simplest societies, however, are not merely “flat” but “egalitarian.” For example, in forager band societies,24 actors with equal capabilities have the same (rather than no) authority. The “no rule” of the state of nature is replaced by “self-rule” or autarchy. Social practices that discourage the development of socially salient inequalities and foster sharing and equality create a single-tiered system of stratification.25 This important difference is represented in Figure 15.2. Autarchy, however, requires strong egalitarian values and supporting practices, which have been rare in international orders. 21 This is the first feature that Hobbes notes (Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 1). And it is no less important than the absence of a “power able to overawe them all” (Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 5). 22 Hobbes’ “right of every man to every thing” (Leviathan, ch. 14, par. 4) is equivalent to a right of no one to anything; “the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place” (Leviathan, ch. 13, par. 13). 23 If there is stratification, it is only in the geological sense of something laid down (by non-social processes) in a (in this case single) layer. 24 See §6.3 and, much more briefly, n. 16 in §7.2.1. Of most immediate relevance here, although all individuals are members of bands, bands have no authority over their members. And bands are the only collective actors in forager “international” systems – which are largely isolated from systematic relations with non-forager peoples. 25 See nn. 57, 58 in §9.4.2.

Vertical Differentiation

Unstratified: The Hobbesian State of Nature

Single- Layer Stratification: Autarchy

Figure 15.2  “Flat” orders

273

274

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

15.4

Multilayered (Hierarchical) Orders

Nearly all international systems are multilayered. They have official and unofficial hierarchies and inequalities between levels as well as equalities within levels. Some parts of the system are placed in relations of super- and sub-ordination. Others, however, stand in relations of coordination. And most actors typically participate in both types of relations. For example, sovereign states are both legally equal to one another and legally superior to nonstate actors. The remainder of this chapter presents highly abstracted models of forms of stratification26 in two broad types of multilayered orders (corresponding to the two columns in Figure 15.1). Single (or convergent) hierarchies have one axis of stratification that runs through the entire system. In multiply ranked (heterarchic) orders stratification operates along two or more axes. A more comprehensive account would add further formal dimensions of differentiation (e.g., the permeability of layers or the possibility of actors moving between levels). And any actual hierarchy will have crucial substantive, especially normative-institutional, dimensions. My goal here, however, is (only) to develop one set of models focused on a few formal dimensions of hierarchical stratification. 15.5

Single (Convergent) Hierarchies I: States Systems

The “obvious” starting point is systems of sovereign states, defined by the official differentiation of states from nonstate actors, the hierarchical superiority of states over nonstate actors, and the general predominance of states. Figures 15.3–15.7 model increasingly complicated types of states systems. In the following figures, horizontal lines mark layers, wide/hollow arrows mark relations of authority, and thin/solid arrows indicate relations of control based on capabilities. And “higher” actors have some sort of superior authority or control over some lower-level actors. 15.5.1 Types of States Systems Figure 15.3 is the simplest sort of states system. States are distinguished from nonstate actors (pictorially, by the use of ovals for states and other shapes for nonstate actors). States are legally 26 Hierarchy involves both stratification and functional differentiation. The following models, though, while they clearly identify patterns of stratification, only begin to hint at functional differentiation. They imply that there is functional differentiation but say little about its substance.

Vertical Differentiation

275

Figure 15.3  Stratification in an unpolarized states system

superior to nonstate actors (represented by both the horizontal line and the vertical arrow).27 As sovereigns, however, states are officially equal (represented by the horizontal arrow). In this simplest case, differences in state capabilities do not create significantly privileged or disadvantaged positions. (The system is unpolarized.28) Figure 15.4 introduces qualitative differences in state capabilities, creating a multipolar system. The most powerful states enjoy some element of unofficial control (represented by small solid arrows). Authority and capabilities produce different kinds of super- and subordination (which I think can profitably be described as command and control). Nonetheless, there is a single axis of stratification. 27 There thus is an implicit substantive (functional) distinction here. But, to repeat, my models are highly abstract and formal, indicating (implicitly) only that there are functional differences (not what those differences are). 28 See §11.4.1.

276

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 15.4  Stratification in a multipolar states system

In Figure 15.4 two nonstate actors have sufficient capabilities to put them “over the line” separating states from nonstate actors. That, however, is exceptional. If a substantial portion of nonstate actors were to rise “into the ranks of states” then capabilities might best be represented as a separate axis of stratification. And if some nonstate actors were able to rise to the level of great powers, there would be two different ladders to the top. Here, though, there is only one. And it is available only to states. IR’s standard implicit model seems to me closer to Figure 15.5. Great powers have quasi-consensual authority (superior status) to which most other states regularly acquiesce – represented by another rung on the ladder and the use of hybrid arrows to suggest quasi-authority exercised by great powers.

Vertical Differentiation

277

Figure 15.5  Stratification in a great power states system

Figure 15.6 adds two institutions of hierarchical subordination (depicted in highly abstract formal terms): semi-official spheres of influence29 (represented by the dark blobs and solid dark arrows connected to the two outside great powers) and relations of subordination (represented by the small unfilled arrows connected to the two inside/top great powers), such as treaties of protection or guarantee.30 29 (Hast 2016 [2014]) and (Jackson 2020) provide useful introductions to the theory and practice of spheres of influence. 30 See §14.3 at n. 33.

278

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 15.6  Spheres of influence and protectorates

This system, although complicated, is still fundamentally a single/convergent hierarchy. Multiple types of superordination converge around a single axis of stratification. It also remains a states system. Only states are officially superordinate. And states largely monopolize unofficial control. States (alone) predominate, categorically. Figure 15.7 represents still another type of states system: a concert.31 Great powers act not only individually but collectively, as members of a concert. Figure 15.7 represents this both in the curved arrows feeding into a new vector of hierarchy and in a more pronounced distinction between great and lesser powers. 31 See §14.3 at n. 37.

Vertical Differentiation

279

Figure 15.7  Stratification in a concert system

A concert system, though, is still singly ranked.32 Great powers have not transferred (“pooled”) any authority to the concert (which operates through congresses and summits of the powers, not as an even partially 32

In an earlier presentation (Donnelly 2009, 68–69) I treated concerts as multiply ranked. Ian Clark (2011, 7, 8, ch. 4) presents a similar reading. I think, though, that this attends too much to the transformation from unofficial to quasi-official control and not enough to the fact that there is still but one ladder of superordination that only states can climb. In other words, here I understand members of the concert as powerful states with special rights (rather than a different type of actor).

280

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

autonomous entity). They have only agreed to exercise some of their power jointly. And each member retains full authority to act unilaterally when, where, and as it sees fit (including on matters of concern to other members of the concert).33 15.5.2 Hierarchy in States Systems At the risk of overkill, I want to emphasize that the bottom parts of Figures 15.3–15.7 are neither superfluous nor too obvious to bother to represent. The systematic subordination of nonstate actors is a distinctive feature of states systems. In fact, the very idea of nonstate actors – treating everything except states as a residual – is an artifact of a system in which states predominate. (Only in a states system is the category nonstate likely to be of interest.) Ignoring (as Waltz does) the systemic subordination of nonstate actors at best sacrifices structure to “causal” explanation.34 In states systems, outcomes may be shaped disproportionately by great powers, which, as Waltz emphasized, stand in relations of coordination.35 But to stop the story here (as Waltz did) ignores the structurally-no-less-essential hierarchy of states over nonstate actors – and, in Figures 15.4–15.7, of great powers over lesser powers. Depicting the stratification of international systems requires encompassing the full range of ranks. (Ranking, being relative and relational, cannot be understood, or even seen, by looking only at those at the top of a hierarchy.) In addition to the privileged we must also consider the disadvantaged and deprived. For example, three societies with ten rich people but ten poor people, ten thousand poor people, and ten million poor people are structured very differently. 15.6

Single (Convergent) Hierarchies II: Imperial International Systems

Figure 15.8 represents a very different type of single hierarchy: an imperial system. Although this figure is meant to depict an imperial international system (e.g., the Roman Empire), “empire states” in a states

33

A collective security system (see §14.3 at n. 39), however, is a multiply ranked system. There is another level in the hierarchy occupied by a new type of actor with authority over issues of war and peace. 34 See §6.1.5. 35 (Waltz 1979, 88, 93).

Vertical Differentiation

281

Figure 15.8  Stratification in an imperial system

system (e.g., the late-nineteenth-century British Empire) have a similar structure. The imperial center, represented here by the crown-like shape in the top center, predominates over the empire and dwarfs neighboring unincorporated polities. The fundamental distinction is between the empire and everyone else. Note the fundamentally different structuring of imperial systems and unipolar great power systems, as represented in Figure 15.9.

282

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 15.9  Stratification in a unipolar states system

15.7

Multiply Ranked Orders: Heterarchies

Capabilities and authority may also be hierarchically distributed along multiple axes, creating different hierarchies in different spatial, functional, or relational domains. 15.7.1 Heterarchy Such multiply ranked orders are, I think, best described as “heterarchic,” a phrase that combines the root arkhe ̄ (rule) or arkhon (ruler) with the prefix hetero, indicating difference or variety. Heterarchy involves “differential rule” or “multiple rule” – in contrast to the “higher” rule of single hierarchy, the “self rule” of autarchy, and the “no rule” of states of nature.

Vertical Differentiation

283

The concept originated in cybernetics.36 In heterarchic systems, “phenomena at one level influence phenomena at putatively higher … lower … or the same level of description.”37 It has also been long used in business studies to describe firms in which authority relations vary with time, place, unit, or issue area.38 Heterarchy, as I use the term, involves multiple ranking associated with differentially divided activities, authorities, or capabilities.39 “In the case of hierarchy, there is only one top; heterarchy, on the other hand, has several tops”40 – and, continuing the series, autarchy has no top (or bottom). Units are autonomous in autarchies, embedded in single hierarchies, and variously related in heterarchies. Single hierarchies are centralized. Autarchic orders are decentralized. Heterarchic orders are “neither and both centralized and decentralized.”41 Heterarchy, although relatively new to IR,42 has affinities with various earlier insights. For example, John Ruggie describes medieval Europe’s “lattice-like network of authority relations,” following Friedrich Meinecke, as “heteronymous”43 – although without tying “heteronomy” to any broader conceptualization of structure. Hedley Bull’s prescient consideration of a “neo-medieval” future44 has certain similarities but draws 36

(Blackmore 2021) is a useful recent overview. 37 (Findlay and Lumsden 1988, Fig. 4). 38 (Hedlund 1986; Hedlund and Rolander 1996), (Maccoby 1991), (Stark 1999), (Schwaninger 2000: 165), (Spickard 2004), (Schoellhammer 2020). 39 Archaeology, the one social science where the concept has become semi-standard, usually employs Carole Crumley’s definition: heterarchic systems are either unranked or multiply ranked. (Crumley 1987; 2005), (Ehrenreich, Crumley, and Levy 1995). See also (Ray and Fernández-Götz 2019). This unfortunately lumps everything that is not singly hierarchical into a heterarchic residual category that obscures the fact that unranked (or equally ranked) actors stand in very different structural relations than actors (heterarchically) linked by contextually variable relations of super- and subordination. 40 (Tokoro and Mogi 2007, 135). 41 (Michael 1983, 260). 42 (Donnelly 2009) was an early published application. Colin Wight (2006, 223) in passing tantalizingly calls heterarchy structural. Volker Rittberger in an unpublished paper (2008, 22ff.) presents heterarchy as a third ordering principle in addition to anarchy and hierarchy. I also have found a doctoral dissertation (Singh 1996) with just one (1997) Google Scholar citation and two versions of a paper by Satoshi Miura (2003, 2004), also with just one Google Scholar citation. 43 (Ruggie 1983, 274 n. 30). See also (Hall 1997, 604), (Hall 2004), (Miura 2004), (Butcher and Griffiths 2022). Following Waltz, though, Ruggie (1983, 274, 279; 1993, 150–151, 161) presents heteronomy as a matter of functional differentiation. Because only anarchy and hierarchy are ordering principles in the Waltzian account, heteronomy “must” be a matter of functional differentiation (horizontal differentiation) – even though it is at least as much a matter of stratification (vertical differentiation). 44 (Bull 1977, 264–276). But cf. §17.15 at n. 235. Fred Riggs’ (1961) notion of a “prismatic system,” although developed from a very different perspective, also has certain similarities.

284

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

attention to the coexistence of multiple types of actors (rather than multiple ranking). Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye’s well-known model of complex interdependence45 has hints of heterarchy. They do not, however, connect it to a broader account of types of international systems. The literature on multilevel governance, following Bob Jessop,46 does use the term heterarchy – but to indicate a new kind of actor or governance mechanism, not a type of stratification.47 The literature on hierarchy “under,” “amidst,” or “in” anarchy48 grapples with some of the phenomena to which heterarchy turns our attention – but suggests not a distinctive type of stratification but an awkward combination of opposites or the space on a continuum between “anarchy” and “hierarchy.”49 It also ignores multiple axes of ranking. Heterarchy allows us to capture and incorporate these scattered insights within a general account of stratification that extends the reach and penetration of systemic/relational theory research and explanation.50 15.7.2 Hegemony as Heterarchy Hegemony is perhaps IR’s best-known heterarchic international form. A hegemon, in one standard definition, directs the foreign policy of lesser powers that remain substantially in control of their domestic policy.51 Power is thus differentially divided by subject matter (external and internal relations), creating two dimensions of superordination. 45 (Keohane and Nye 1977, 24–25ff.). (Jessop 1998). See also (Lipschutz 1998). 47 For example, Jürgen Neyer (2003, 242) uses heterarchy to conceptualize the fact that the EU is less than a state but more than a regime. And the typical language of sharing, pooling, or re-scaling sovereignty or jurisdiction (e.g., Neyer 2003, 243, 255; Jessop 2005, 54, 63; Curry 2006, 79, 81, 85) underscores the focus on Westphalian states and contemporary alternatives – rather than a systematic examination of differentially divided power or multidimensional stratification. 48 See, for example, (Wendt and Friedheim 1995), (Weber 1997, 2000), (Hobson and Sharman 2005), (Donnelly 2006), (Lake 2009), (Clapton 2014), (Macdonald 2018), (Learoyd 2018), (McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon 2018), (Fehl and Freistein 2020). 49 See also (Milner 1998, 774), (Lowenheim 2007, 22). 50 A Google Scholar search in November 2022 produced over 2,000 results for “heterarchy” or “heterarchic” and “international relations.” See, for example, (MacKay 2013), (Jackson 2014), (Sperling and Webber 2014), (Baumann and Dingwerth 2015), (Zwolski 2016), (Aggestam and Johansson 2017), (Spruyt 2017), (Hynek 2018), (Hanau Santini and Moro 2019), (Belmonte and Cerny 2021), (Deitelhoff and Daase 2021), (Onditi et al. 2021, ch. 2), (Sakwa 2021). 51 (Doyle 1986a, 12, 40, 55–60), (Watson 1992, 15–16, 27–28, 122–128), (Nexon and Wright 2007, 256–258), (Musgrave and Nexon 2018, 595). (Dutkiewicz, Casier, and Scholte 2021, Pt. 1) offers a good recent discussion of conceptualizing hegemony. See also §14.3. 46

Vertical Differentiation

285

Figure 15.10  Stratification in a dual hegemony system

Figure 15.10 illustrates a system with two hegemons (e.g., Athens and Sparta in the last third of the fifth century bce ). The hegemons are qualitatively distinguished from other units (depicted by the differently shaped figures on their own level). These are not just great powers, in the sense of the strongest among official equals, but hegemons, with special rights to lead based on a mix of command and control. Furthermore, a distinctive type of subordination operates within each league. The system thus has two more or less independent dimensions of stratification, represented by the addition of a top-right to bottom-left arrow of hegemonic subordination orthogonal to the state–nonstate axis (represented here as running from top-left to bottom-right).52 Figure 15.11 presents a system dominated by a single hegemon. 52 The spheres of influence in Figure 15.6 seem to me not heterarchic because they are not central to the structure of the system and thus do not introduce a fundamentally different axis of stratification. I suspect, though, that hegemony and spheres of influence are best understood as bleeding into one another.

286

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 15.11  Stratification in a single hegemony system

This still is a states system (not an imperial international system) and thus has two axes of stratification. Hegemonized states still have some limited autonomy. Some states are outside the hegemonic league. And the state–nonstate divide remains important. I suspect that something like this is what some in and around the George W. Bush Administration hoped for before the debacle in Iraq. We have thus identified three different types of hierarchy in “unipolar” systems: empire (Figure 15.8), single hegemony (Figure 15.11), and a unipolar great power system (Figure 15.9). Hegemony, however, is not “between” empire and a unipolar great power system – nor is unipolarity some sort of “incomplete” empire.53 The parts of these systems are

53 Discussions of hegemony in mainstream IR are often confused by the Waltzian anarchyplus-polarity conception of international political structure. For example, Robert Gilpin claims (1981, 144) that hegemony was “the fundamental ordering principle of international relations” in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Eurocentric international relations. Gilpin also, however, presents international relations as “a recurring struggle for wealth and power among independent actors in a state of anarchy” (1981, 7) and draws explicitly on Waltz’ account of “an anarchic order of sovereign states” (1981, 85). This makes sense only if, contrary to the standard

Vertical Differentiation

287

organized and operate in fundamentally different ways. If we want to plot them in two-dimensional space, they are three points of a triangle, lying in different directions from one another. 15.7.3 Heterarchy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Globalization and medieval Europe, “obvious” historical examples of heterarchy, are beyond my ability to depict in a way parallel to the types considered above.54 Figure 15.12 instead represents the turn-of-thetwentieth-century international system. This striking example of a multiply ranked order, however, is rarely understood as such in contemporary IR (because of the discipline’s narrow focus on anarchy and sovereign great powers). The great power, lesser power, nonstate actor layering here is paired with a hierarchical division between “civilized” (white and Christian) states and “savage,” “barbarian,” and “backward” states (marked by both the top-right to bottom-left arrow and the central line). Most of the polities of Africa and Asia (and some in the Americas) were incorporated into overseas empires (represented by encompassing irregular shapes). In the resulting “empire-states,” previously independent polities had their autonomy extinguished and were incorporated as administrative units of the empire-state – but not in the same way as metropolitan units.55 China, the Ottoman Empire, and Siam, however, had their sovereignty restricted rather than eliminated by “unequal treaties” justified by understanding in IR, hegemony, but not anarchy, is an ordering principle or type of system/structure – which is exactly the case in my account. Or consider Mearsheimer’s definition of a hegemon as “a state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system” (2001, 40). This is inconsistent with both etymology and the standard dictionary definition. (Hegemony: “political, economic, or military predominance or leadership, esp. by one member of a confederacy or union over other states” (Oxford English Dictionary) from ἡγεμών (leader) or ἡγεῖσθαι (to lead).) Predominance or leadership need not involve domination. And if it does, it need not be over all others in the system.) Furthermore, this makes Spartan hegemony in the fifth century bce – and American hegemony after World War II – not hegemonic (because these hegemons did not dominate the entire system). Mearsheimer’s account also erases the difference between empire and hegemony. And it leaves us unable to comprehend the heterarchic form(s) referenced here. But if (following Waltz) structure is reduced to anarchy and polarity, and if hegemony is seen as a structured international system, then there would seem to be no alternative to this unfortunate conflation of hegemony and unipolarity. 54 We will, however, look at these examples, without graphical aids, at the beginning and end of Chapter 17. 55 I emphasize the structural importance of differential incorporation of peripheries in §§16.4.2 and 17.4.

288

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

France

Austria

Britain

Germany

Russia

Italy USA Netherlands

Portugal

Belgium

Japan China Siam

Ottoman Empire

Ethopia India Persia

Figure 15.12 Stratification in turn-of-the-twentieth-century international society

a “standard of civilization.”56 Japan had by this time “graduated” from tutelage under the standard of civilization and was emerging as a more “regular” (and rising) regional power. (It held multiple Chinese concessions and would soon defeat Russia in war.) Nonetheless, it was still subject to race-based discrimination, which persisted through (and after) the Versailles conference. Ethiopia and Persia enjoyed official independence but also labored under a race- and culture-based reduced status. An American sphere of influence is represented by an encompassing bubble. I have not, however, included relations of protection or guarantee,57 which, although significant in north Africa, southeast Europe, and the Persian Gulf, had by this point been largely eliminated from the core of the system (with the notable exception of the permanent neutrality and demilitarization of Belgium). 56

See §14.3 at n. 35. 57 See §14.3 at n. 34.

Vertical Differentiation

289

I have not included solid arrows indicating capabilities-based control – more for substantive than graphical reasons. The number of independent polities in the world in 1900 – about fifty – was an historic low, which substantially decreased the significance of a capabilities-based hierarchy of states. The essence of the structure of this system was (multiple) hierarchy. Sovereign inequality was the dominant norm.58 There was also a game of great power politics played among relative equals. The Waltzian effort to reduce the system’s structure to this, however, is not a justifiable analytical simplification. It simply misrepresents the structuring (arrangement of the parts) of the system. 15.8

Conceptual Comments on Hierarchy and Heterarchy

My account of multiple types of hierarchy treats political systems not as more (or less) hierarchical but as differently hierarchical.59 For example, states systems are not “part way” to empires or states. They are a different type of single hierarchy. Likewise, although the great power systems of Figure 15.5 have more dimensions of stratification and more layers than the unpolarized systems of Figure 15.3, they are differently, not more, hierarchical. And the relatively complicated states systems of Figures 15.7 and 15.12 are neither more nor less hierarchical than the relatively simple imperial system of Figure 15.9. When thinking of stratification as the formal dimension of vertical differentiation, our focus should be on features such as the number, orientation, and range of axes of stratification and the distribution of actors among the resulting social layers and positions. As I put it above,60 the crucial question is not how hierarchical a system is but how it is hierarchical. Heterarchy thus identifies a distinct type – or, rather, set of types. Norman Yoffee’s complaint that heterarchy “simply refers to the existence of many hierarchies in the same society”61 focuses on the mere fact of hierarchy while ignoring the structurally essential issue of how units are ranked. Tangled hierarchies and convergent hierarchies produce different characteristic patterns of social relations. The form (not just the fact) of ranking is crucial. 58

In other words, “sovereign equality” continued to distinguish states from nonstate actors. But “full” sovereignty – in contrast to institutionalized semi-sovereignty – was enjoyed only by those able or fortunate enough not to have inequalities imposed on them. (See also n. 33 in §14.3.) And, as the Treaty of Versailles would strikingly illustrate, substantial inequalities could be imposed even on (defeated) great powers. 59 See also §12.1.1. 60 See the end of §9.1.1. 61 (Yoffee 2005, 179).

290

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Neither is heterarchy what lies “between” autarchy (“anarchy”) and single-hierarchy (“hierarchy”). Orders that divide authority and capabilities in different ways in different contexts are qualitatively different from – not approximations to, deviations from, or combinations of – those that concentrate power along a single axis of subordination and those organized around unit autonomy and equality.62 Heterarchy, however, presents a conceptual danger. Most actual autarchic orders include limited elements of superordination. Few single hierarchies are completely one-dimensional. It would be a pyrrhic victory, though, to replace the notion that almost all international systems are anarchic with the notion that almost all international systems are heterarchic. Even if not untrue, that would be deeply unfruitful. Only where there is substantial divergence between hierarchies is it likely to be profitable to describe a system as heterarchic. My construal of heterarchy also is too close to a residual; whatever is not either equally ranked or singly ranked. Although I can suggest some further dimensions of difference – for example, the extent to which hierarchies are cross-cutting (or parallel) and whether they involve few or many dimensions of ranking – I am afraid that I have nothing to suggest that might point toward a useful typology of forms of heterarchic stratification. The above, in other words, is only a step along one path toward developing the analytical resources necessary to understand forms of vertical differentiation in international societies. Nonetheless, it does seem to me a huge improvement over the Waltzian pretense that international orders lack not only government but also hierarchy.63 15.9

Typologies and Model-Based Explanation

I close this chapter by stepping back to metatheory and returning to the idea of explaining with mechanisms and models (rather than laws/causes and theories) and the epistemic functions of typologies. 15.9.1 Model-Based Explanation The figures presented above (and in the next chapter) are intended to be explanatory. They depict arrangement of the parts of a system in order to provide understanding or intelligibility. 62

Single-layer (autarchic) orders and single hierarchies are also qualitatively distinct types. Seeing “anarchy” and “hierarchy” as endpoints of a continuum of superordination in effect plots a percentage of “empire” or “statehood” – which misrepresents most of the international systems modeled in this chapter. 63 See §6.1.1.

Vertical Differentiation

291

These models, however, are presented at a high level of abstraction. I have already noted that they primarily identify forms (not the substance) of hierarchy. They also largely abstract from mechanisms and processes.64 Although such incomplete and static models can be useful, especially for comparative analysis, they should be seen, as I argued in §10.4, not as ends but as steps on the way to more adequate explanations that address how these relations work to produce particular kinds of outcomes. There are hints of that here. For example, the distinction between states and nonstate actors and between small solid arrows of control and large hollow arrows of authority hint at substance and mechanism – and call out for further elaboration, especially as such models are applied to cases. The institutions of spheres of influence, protectorates, and concerts also point toward process and substance, as do both the hybrid arrows of influence in Figure 15.5 and the different types of polities identified in Figure 15.12. These models, then, are as much heuristic as immediately explanatory. They should be seen as useful but limited tools that point toward richer and more satisfying explanations. 15.9.2 Thinking about Change with Typologies Typologies explain in distinctive ways. Here I want to suggest that simple typologies are especially useful for triangulating possible paths of change in parts of the structures of particular (sets of) international systems. Consider Figure 15.13, which continues my emphasis on different forms of representation of “the same thing” to serve different purposes. Distinguishing systems in which the principal segments are similar and dissimilar and equal and unequal,65 I identify three broad types of international systems – states systems, imperial systems, and interdependent systems – that seem to me useful as a set for thinking about change in contemporary international society. Nothing more. But nothing less. States systems, in the bottom left quadrant, are structured around the independence of the predominant polities in the systems. But different 64

In the language introduced in §4.8.3, they are at best “sketches” (which represent ignorance about some crucial parts of the mechanism) – or, more likely, “perspectives” (from which mechanism sketches might be developed) or even depictions of “causal thickets.” 65 This typology, in addition its substantive interest, seems to me to cover the common ground in my account, Waltz’s, and those of Griffiths and Albert, Buzan, and Zurn (which I addressed in §§9.3 and 9.4).

292

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Similar

Dissimilar

Unequal

Imperial Systems Hegemonic Systems Unipolar States Systems Great Power States Systems

Interdependent Systems

Unpolarized States Systems*

Equal Figure 15.13  A typology of international systems *Differences in power do not create qualitative differences between states. See §11.4.1.

states systems have different types of hierarchical stratification. Here I have distinguished unpolarized, great power, and unipolar systems. “Imperial” international systems, by contrast, are structured around a single hierarchical center that provides (or at least manages) international governance (as in, say, the Roman Empire of the second century). We might also introduce gradations in systems of hierarchical domination (e.g., relations of suzerainty).66 And I have included hegemonic systems, between states systems and “imperial” systems, to indicate that the distinctions between types are not sharp. What I have called interdependent (or functionally differentiated) international systems are composed of diverse actors linked in a relatively complex division of labor. Clearly, there are a great variety of possible types – which are of obvious interest in thinking about globalization. The space in Figure 15.13, I want to emphasize, should not be understood as homogeneous and linear. There are four ideal types at the corners of the figure. But the differences between types that I have identified are fundamentally qualitative (despite the fact that they arise 66

On suzerainty and vassalage in classical European international law, see (Phillimore 1854, §§87–101), (Dickinson 1920a, 236–240), (Oppenheim 1955, §§90–91), (Verzijl 1968, 339–398). Martin Wight (Wight 1977, 24–25) briefly discusses what he calls suzerain states systems. On suzerainty in imperial China, see (Zhang 2006) and (Zhang 2014).

Vertical Differentiation

293

from particular combinations of “quantities” of equality and similarity). Although there is a continuum along each axis, the spaces defined by the conjunction of those two (continuous) variables vary discontinuously. The identified spaces on the figure map emergent systems effects; nonlinear changes in configurations. (Although these types bleed into one another, their qualitative differences are more important than their quantitative similarities.) For example, as noted above, a hegemonic system is a distinct type that is neither a great power states system nor an imperial system – nor a combination of the two. It “lies between” but does not more or less approximate those types. It is a qualitatively distinctive type in its own right.67 This typology clearly does not provide anything close to adequate depictions of the structuring of any type of system. And it does not come close to exhausting the possibilities within this space. Nonetheless, it can help us think about globalization, understood as growth in the breadth, depth, and complexity of the international division of labor – contrasted to two broad types of systems that have been historically prominent and seem to have special contemporary relevance. For example, from the destruction of the Berlin Wall until the United States became bogged down in Iraq in 2004–2005, many commentators worried (or hoped) that we were moving from a great power system toward a hegemonic or imperial system. Others argued that growing economic, political, and social interdependencies were pulling the system in quite a different (“globalizing”) direction. Still others argued for the robustness of the system of sovereign states. These positions express visions of international order that are usefully encapsulated in the models of Figure 15.13. Today this typology, it seems to me, has value in thinking about the rise of China. For example, if China acts principally as a powermaximizing offensive realist great power, this might provoke strong and sustained counterbalancing that might stop or even reverse the trend over recent decades toward a more interdependent international system. If counterbalancing fails, though, the direction of movement may be toward a more imperial system (or perhaps a dual hegemony, if American “decline” proves to be only relative and primarily regional rather than absolute and global). But if China becomes increasingly embedded in international institutions, building on its centrality in the global economy and its desire for status/recognition, then movement toward

67

See also the second paragraph of §9.3.4.

294

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

increasing functional differentiation might be not only maintained but intensified. In other words, the typology as a whole facilitates (a limited range of) comparisons by (a) delineating a range of possibilities that seems especially relevant for a particular time, place, and purpose; (b) allowing us to locate cases in that space of possibilities; and (c) encouraging certain kinds of comparative thinking. It reflects a particular perspective that highlights some structural elements and dimensions (and obscures others), directing our attention in particular ways that, we hope, generate insights into and understandings of some important features of the world. This, I am arguing, generally is the case. Not only are international systems structured in greatly varied ways but any particular structure can be fruitfully addressed in multiple ways. Therefore, we should abandon talk not only about “the” structure of international systems in general but also about “the” structure of particular systems. Our aim should be not a complete account of all the ways in which a particular system or type of systems is structured but useful depictions of some important ways in which a particular system or type of system is organized and operates.

16

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries



Spatio-Political Differentiation

This chapter develops models of spatio-political structuring, rooted in the differentiation of centers and peripheries. (The next chapter applies this typology to Eurocentric political systems from the High Middle Ages to today.) Lurking behind this discussion is the intuition that spatiopolitical differentiation provides a penetrating picture of globalization. 16.1

Three Conceptions of Political Centralization

Underscoring the theme of diverse perspectives on a multidimensional reality, I begin by identifying three conceptions of political centralization. 16.1.1 Centralization as the Concentration of Power A standard ordinary-language sense of “centralization” is “the action or process of concentrating governmental or administrative power and control in a central place or authority.”1 Centralization thus understood varies both in range and in depth. A political system is “more centralized” both when the center controls more activities and when it has greater or deeper power, authority, or control. These dimensions, however, do not share a common metric. For example, Louis XIV claimed a divine right to rule over everything in his realm but had very little effective control over much of anything. Contemporary France has a much more limited range of authority but far more effective control. Which is “more centralized”? Reasonable arguments, it seems to me, can be made for both. This sense of centralization seems to me useful when talking comparatively about polities or forms of association (as in Ryan Griffiths’ depiction of confederations as more centralized than leagues, which are more centralized than alliances2). When addressing international systems, 1

Oxford English Dictionary. (I used this sense in the preceding chapter at n. 42.) 2 (Griffiths 2018, 134–135), discussed briefly in §9.3.

295

296

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 16.1  Centralized (spokes-and-hub) empires

however, measures of concentration, such as polarity,3 are of limited interest. Or, at the very least, there is much to be learned by considering how systems are centralized (in addition to how centralized they are). 16.1.2 Centralization as the Centering of Power Centralization also presents an alternative form (or way to understand the shape) of political authority and control: center and periphery.4 Power in this sense radiates out from a center (rather than flows down from the top). This is how many empires have understood themselves. (China as the Middle Kingdom. All roads lead to Rome.) We thus might represent an empire as in Figure 16.1 – which is quite different from the stratified representation in Figure 15.8. Using this framing, we might also re-present a simple states system as in Figure 16.2. This depiction nicely captures the “anarchy” of the system (in the empty space in the middle) and the autonomy of states (which are represented as ruling over peripheral entities within their territorial domains). It also draws attention to the equality of states (rather than their superiority over nonstate actors). And it gets at much that Waltz wanted to highlight in great power states systems (without the confusions of his conceptions of structure, levels, and theory). Authority is not always higher authority. Rule is not always from above. Centers, in addition to radiating influence, attract (and are attractive), exerting a “gravitational” pull on their peripheries. This mix of attractive 3

See §11.4.1. 4 Front and back – the head of the class; the back of the line – is still another representation.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

297

Figure 16.2  Centralization in a states system

and radiating powers exercised by central authorities differs fundamentally from the penetrating power of higher authorities. Even where center and periphery can be translated into top and bottom, something is usually lost in the translation. And the reverse translation regularly fails. Some tops are not centers. We thus might want to combine top-down and center-out accounts. Figure 16.3 attempts (somewhat awkwardly) such a representation of an imperial system. A single center (the pentagon) predominates. Power, however, flows both out from the center and down from the top. And it both grades off as one moves away from the center5 and extends out beyond the frontiers of the empire (for example, creating “tributary” relations over subordinate polities that retain some degree of autonomy,6 as in the top left). 16.1.3 Center–Periphery Differentiation Here I will use a slightly narrower frame of center–periphery differentiation to present a more explicitly relational take on centralization. 5

Adam Watson (1992, 15–16, 27–28, 122–128) depicts this feature with concentric circles, which seems to me overly elegant (especially given the agglomerative construction of most historical empires). 6 See n. 44 in §14.3.

298

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 16.3  Centered hierarchy in an imperial system

I represent social and political systems as structured around specially valued “places;” centers. As Edward Shils puts it “there is a central zone in the structure of society … Membership in the society, in more than the ecological sense of being located in a bounded territory and of adapting to an environment affected or made up by other persons located in the same territory, is constituted by relationship to this central zone.”7 Centrality has many dimensions (e.g., political, religious, cultural, and economic). Those dimensions may or may not overlap or converge. Centers may stand in varied relations to one another and to their peripheries. Whatever the details, though, how centers are related to people, places, groups, institutions, and values is essential to the structuring of social and political systems.8 7

(Shils 1975, 3). 8 Uses of center (or core) and periphery to refer to the global economy – (Wallerstein 2011 [1976]) is the classic example; (Denemark 2021) is a recent survey – involve a particular appropriation of concepts used regularly in Archaeology and Anthropology as I employ them here.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

299

As I use the term, center–periphery differentiation creates interlinked central and peripheral polities. “Centralization” and “peripheralization” are intertwined social processes that construct centers, peripheries, and their relations. Peripheries, as I will use that term, are defined not just by distance from but also by subordination to a center. “Peripheralization” transforms formerly autonomous peoples, polities, or places (or peripheries of another center) into peripheries of a specific center. (I call distant but unperipheralized polities “marginal,” “frontier,” or “outlying.”) Conversely, a powerful polity that merely sits on top of and dominates other polities is not “central.” A conquering power becomes an imperial center by peripheralizing peoples, places, or polities (which are transformed in the process). I therefore would describe twentieth-century France and the Roman Empire as differently (not more or less) centralized. Power was more concentrated in France and more dispersed in Rome. Both, though, were structured by processes of centralization and peripheralization.9 16.2

Spatio-Political Differentiation

I now introduce what I call spatio-political differentiation. Imagine a layered political space in which lower levels represent greater spatial detail. Higher-level entities spatially encompass those on lower levels, creating a compositional hierarchy of relative size. Figure 16.4 models such an abstract political space. The entire space on the top level is (arbitrarily) divided into four pieces on the second level, which are (arbitrarily) divided in four on the third level. But in this and the following figures, “higher” levels do not indicate greater authority or capabilities. The layering or nesting is spatial, with no implication of command or control. (Levels are connected by (undirected) lines, not arrows.) The following sections populate such spaces with “polities” (corporate political entities capable of at least semi-autonomous action10) to

9 The distinction between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” relations (see §1.8) can be usefully employed here. Centers and peripheries, as I have defined them, are intrinsically related. (No centers without peripheries and no peripheries that are not peripheries of a center.) The incorporated polities, however, are extrinsically related (assembled). Although parts of a system, they also retain a separate, or at least partially separable, identity. 10 This corresponds to both ordinary language (“an organized society; the state as a political entity,” Oxford English Dictionary) and standard disciplinary usage (rooted in (Ferguson and Mansbach 1996)).

300

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 16.4  A three-level spatial grid

develop models of compositional levels of political organization.11 Distinguishing between (a) the number of top-level political centers, (b) the homogeneity or heterogeneity of centers, peripheries, and their relations, and (c) the relative autonomy of centers and peripheries, I identify three principal types of political systems, both of which have “international” and “national” forms. • systems of single-level governance (e.g., states systems); • systems of single-center governance (e.g., empires); and • systems of multilevel multiactor governance (e.g., medieval Europe). In sharp contrast to IR’s standard (Waltzian) structural framing, in which pre-defined units (individuals and states), on (three) pre-defined

11

See §§1.3, 3.3.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

301

levels, combine into pre-defined types of (national and international) political systems, I treat as empirical questions the types of polities that exist within a space, their distribution and relations, and the resulting kinds of systems. More elaborated models would, for example, add directed flows of authority or control (transforming the connecting lines into arrows), map relations on (not just between) levels, and incorporate normativeinstitutional differentiation. My highly abstract and formal account is seriously incomplete – but, I am suggesting, illuminating. 16.3

Systems of Single-Level Governance (States Systems)

Figure 16.5 depicts IR’s standard (Waltzian) model of an “international political system” – a states system. The top level is unoccupied. (In Waltz’s terms, the system is anarchic.) The middle level is occupied by a relatively few centers (states/ units). The bottom level is occupied by a relatively large number of polities (e.g., provinces) that are peripheries of a second-tier center. (The units/states are internally hierarchical.)

Figure 16.5  A Waltzian states system

302

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

I call this a system of single-level governance by terminal peer polities.12 The system is arranged around “terminal polities;” the most encompassing polities in the space; polities that are parts of a larger political system that is not itself a polity.13 These terminal polities are located on a single level. They are peers in an international society. And they provide most of the governance in the system, “nationally” (“hierarchically”/vertically) and “inter-nationally” (horizontally, both bilaterally and multilaterally). This account differs from Waltz’s in at least five important ways. • This is only one type of international system (not a privileged or default model). • I define states systems by their governance structure – not by the fact that they are “not national” (lack a single central government). • Authority in the system is allocated to the terminal polities – not, as Waltz claimed, absent.14 Multiple centers on a single level provide vertical rule within their polities and (limited) horizontal governance of the broader system of which they are parts. • “Structure” refers to the arrangement of the parts of a system15 – not something on a higher “system level.” Neither the system nor its structure is on a (spatial or organizational) level separate from the “units.” • The top-level political system in Figure 16.5 is on the second (interstate) level – not the (empty) top level. This last feature suggests re-presenting states systems as two-level systems as in Figure 16.6.16 This chapter’s minimalist framing of spatio-political differentiation does not permit creating interesting variants on this model. The preceding chapter, however, as well as the discussion of security regimes

12

Although this jargon adds both content and precision, I usually use the familiar term “states system” (although always insisting on the plural states – rather than the much more common “state system,” which obscures the centrality of multiple states in defining the system). 13 See §11.2.1. The distinction here is between political systems that are corporate groups capable of (at least semi-) autonomous action – polities – and those that are not (in this case, a states system). 14 (Waltz 1979, 88, 104, 112). 15 “The arrangement and organization of mutually connected and dependent elements in a system” Oxford English Dictionary. “A structure is defined by the arrangement of its [the system’s] parts” (Waltz 1979, 80. See also 81, 88, 99). 16 I have also redrawn the shapes of the states to leave open the possibility of heterogeneity among the units – even if Waltz (1979, 74–77, 96–97, 104, 114, 127–128) is right that states in a states system tend to become similar.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

303

Figure 16.6  Single-level governance by terminal peer polities (a states system)

in §14.3, suggest some ways to incorporate the character of the centers and their relations with one another. For example, the institution of “great powers” introduces hierarchical stratification on the spatial level of states. 16.4

Systems of Single-Center Governance (States and Empires)

What I call systems of single-center governance have one top-tier center. I distinguish two types, based on the relations between the center and its peripheries. 16.4.1 Integrated Polities (States) In integrated polities, represented in Figures 16.7 and 16.8, relatively homogeneous peripheries stand in fundamentally similar relations to the center. Modern states are examples, in both their unitary (e.g., French) and federal (e.g., American and German) forms. All German Länder stand in similar relations to the federal center. Unlike French départements, though, they are not merely subordinate administrative units. In addition to being peripheries of the top-level center, they are (second-level) centers.

304

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 16.7  Single-center governance of a unitary integrated polity (a unitary state)

Figure 16.8  Single-center governance of a federal integrated polity

I represent this difference with “fills.” The top-level center in both figures is dark and opaque. Merely administrative units (on the bottom level) are unfilled. The second-tier polities in the federal polity in Figure 16.8, however, are partially opaque and lightly filled, reflecting both their limited autonomy and the fact that they are both centers and peripheries. I call both types States, with a capital S. (Most readers, I suspect, will find this less jarring jargon than (the more informative) “integrated single-center polities.”) “The modern state” is, in these terms, a type of State characterized by legal-rational bureaucratic rule.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

305

Figure 16.9  Single-center governance of an aggregated political system (empire)

16.4.2 Aggregated Polities (Empires) In aggregated polities, illustrated in Figure 16.9, heterogeneous peripheries stand in varied relations to a governing center. Lower-level polities differ not just in size but in character and political function, as indicated by both their varied shapes and their differing fills (which represent different degrees of autonomy/centrality). I call such a system an empire, in the ordinary-language sense of “an extensive territory … often consisting of an aggregate of many separate states or territories.”17 Empires that are polities in a larger system (e.g., nineteenth-century France) I call “empire-states,” using “state” in the broad sense of polity. Empires that encompass all of a space (or a regional sub-space) I call “imperial international (or regional) systems.” (The Roman Empire was an imperial international system with an empire-state at its core.) In the following chapter I argue that early modern states were (aggregated) empire-states, not (integrated) States. 16.4.3 Integrated and Aggregated Systems of Single-Center Rule Both “States” and “empires” – “integrated” and “aggregated” “singlecenter” polities – typically expand through agglomerative processes such 17

Oxford English Dictionary. Most scholarly definitions similarly see “empire as a territorially expansive and incorporative kind of state” (Sinopoli 1994, 160).

306

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

as war, marriage, inheritance, purchase, or voluntary union. “States” (with a capital S) re-integrate their peripheries into relatively similar parts of a relatively unified whole. “Empires” remain closer to their origins, “choosing” to rule their peripheries differentially; as parts of an aggregated (rather than an integrated) system. For example, late-medieval Florence acquired the surrounding communities through a series of ad hoc “bilateral accords [with] a large number of single entities.” “The plurality of asymmetrical relationships gave shape to a politico-territorial system in which a mosaic of unintegrated clusters was arranged about Florence as a central pole, each defined by separate autonomies and privileges.”18 In Classical Athens, by contrast, the reforms of Cleisthenes in 508/7 bce created a unitary political-juridical structure. “The Athenians” were spread across the whole territory of the polis. Those in physically or socially peripheral districts (demes) were no less citizens than those living in the city. (Classical Greek distinguished astu (“city” as urban space) from polis (“city” as polity or “city-state”).) And, as the system matured, a single system of law governed all citizens equally (isonomia). Note my loose use of “single-center” in reference to empires and federal States, which have peripheries that are also lower-level centers. By “single-center” I mean a system with only one top-tier center. Whether a system has one or more top-level centers is a crucial feature of spatiopolitical differentiation, as I understand it. 16.5

Systems of Multilevel Multiactor Governance (Heterarchies)

In Figure 16.10, which I constructed with contemporary Europe in mind, multiple heterogeneous centers on multiple levels stand in varied relations to one another and to their peripheries. I describe this as a system of multilevel multiactor governance and use the label heterarchy.19 Heterarchic systems may be polities in a larger system or “international” (or regional) systems. Governance in heterarchies is organized in significant measure functionally. Different authorities regulate different issues, making most places subject to multiple and varied centers that share governance. Different kinds of centers exercise different authorities in overlapping spaces.

18

(Zorzi 2000, 23, 30). 19 See §15.7.1.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

307

Figure 16.10  Multilevel multiactor governance (heterarchy)

In states systems, by contrast, political functions are concentrated in terminal polities, making governance fundamentally territorial, as suggested by the vertical lines of authority. In Figure 16.10, however, the lines on the top two levels are cross-cutting, reflecting the fact that different top-tier polities (in the European case, different regional organizations) have different functions (and different memberships). Another important feature of Figure 16.10 is that the top-tier polities are not the predominant centers in this space – which is structured around the second-tier polities (in the European case, sovereign states). (Recall that in these models higher-level polities are only spatially more encompassing. Larger does not mean more powerful. Top-level does not mean sovereign.)20 The largest top-tier polity in Figure 16.10, however, is approximating a co-equal center. (It is only one shade lighter and just 20 percent less 20

That my models do not represent “upward” authority relations presents an obvious (although readily remedied) problem, which also arises in federal (and especially confederal) polities.

308

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Figure 16.11  Heterarchic stratification in contemporary Europe

opaque than the second-tier polities.) Further (re)allocations of authority to top-tier polities would at some point require representing the partial peripheralization of second-tier polities by reducing their shade or opacity. This framing allows us to map relations in complicated multilevel and multidimensional systems of polities. The Waltzian framing, by contrast, works well only in the simple case of States-in-a-states-system – a type of international system that merits neither conceptual nor historical privilege. Finally, to underscore the difference between center–periphery and stratification framings, consider Figure 16.11, which represents stratification in contemporary Europe with a model similar to those used in the preceding chapter. Figure 16.11 maps layered authority (rather than the spatial levels that I have addressed in this chapter). Therefore, both leading European states and leading regional organizations are “at the top” (on the left and on the right, respectively). The system is structured along two axes of stratification: states (top left to bottom right) and regional organizations (top right to bottom left). And the middle layer is populated by (small) states, (large) nonstate actors, and (middling) regional organizations alike, indicating that the eroding predominance of a states-system structuring.

Levels, Centers, and Peripheries

16.6

309

Summary: Types of Polities and International Systems

Focusing on the differences between systems with one and more than one top-level center and with homogeneous and heterogeneous centers and peripheries, I have identified three broad types of governance systems: single-center governance, single-level governance, and multilevel multiactor governance, each of which can take both “national” (types of polities) and “international” (systems of terminal polities) forms. • States (with a capital S): systems with a single top-tier center that stands in similar relations to similar peripheries (Figures 16.7 and 16.8). • Empire-states: systems with a single top-tier center that stands in varied relations to heterogeneous peripheries (Figure 16.9). • Heterarchy-states: polities composed of multiple heterogeneous centers that operate on different scales and stand in varied relations to one another and their peripheries21 (Figure 16.10). • States systems: systems of single-level governance by terminal peer polities. (Figure 16.6). • Heterarchic international systems: systems of multilevel multiactor governance. (Figure 16.10). • Imperial international systems: one actor predominates in a system that is more an “international” system than a “national” empire (Figure 16.9). My distinction between systems with one top-tier polity and those with more than one has similarities to Waltz’s division of hierarchic/national and anarchic/international systems. In addition, my focus on homogeneity and heterogeneity has resonances with Waltz’s conception of functional differentiation. I argue, however, that political spaces do not typically have a simple two-level national–international structure. And, extending the argument of §9.2, I have shown that political systems need not have a singular ordering principle. International political systems, no less than national political systems, are structured in varied ways. And, as illustrated by the differences between the stratification framing of the preceding chapter and the spatio-political framings of this chapter, there usually are multiple illuminating ways to understand the organization and operation of national and international political systems.

21

Section 17.4.3 presents the early modern Holy Roman Empire as a heterarchy-state.

17

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Political Systems (c. 1225 – c. 2025)

This chapter, which is by far the longest in the book, looks at the Eurocentric political world over the past eight centuries employing the spatiopolitical typology sketched in the preceding chapter and the frame of continuous (trans)formation presented in Chapter 12. The Waltzian conception holds that there has been almost no structural change in the Eurocentric international system from the central/ high medieval period to today. (It has remained anarchic and, except for half a century, multipolar.) This is patently ludicrous on any plausible conception of structure. More interesting is the common narrative of a singular modern transition (somewhere between 1500 and 1650). I am aware, though, of no criteria that could justify depicting a decisive modern break with three or four centuries of fundamental continuity on either side. And in fact we see a series of relatively modest innovations that result in major changes but not radical breaks – a pattern of continuous (trans)formation that I argue has important implications for how we think about globalization. Covering eight centuries in a single chapter means that most of what follows is wildly oversimplified. As a partial remedy, almost three-­quarters of the chapter considers the early modern period. Readers interested principally in the contemporary analytical payoff may prefer to look first (or only) at §§17.14 and 17.15, which address globalization. 17.1

High Medieval Heterarchy

I begin at the end of the “high” or “central” medieval period, suppressing great spatial variation to depict political structures in western and central Europe in the 1220s (early in the reigns of Louis IX (r. 1226–1270) in France and Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–1250)). Political authority was divided functionally (heterarchically) into sacerdotium (supreme spiritual authority; priesthood) and imperium (supreme secular authority; empire) or regnum (secular rule; government). And, in sharp contrast to today, spiritual authority was not only a branch of 310

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

311

political authority but the most important branch. The preeminent political task in medieval Europe was the regulation of religious belief and practice – the path to eternal salvation.1 Two parallel political hierarchies jointly governed high-medieval (Western) Christendom,2 reflecting the “two powers” or “two swords” doctrine.3 And in both “acceptance of some level of [hierarchy]” was “accompanied by informal measures to preserve as much independence or influence for different layers as possible.”4 Each functional domain had four levels. At the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy5 was the Pope, the Bishop of Rome; the successor to Peter, to whom Jesus gave the keys to heaven.6 Sacerdotal authority was exercised by archbishops, bishops, and parish priests, governing loosely nested communities of decreasing scale. As the hierarchical or physical distance from Rome increased, though, papal control declined, usually precipitously. And secular authorities everywhere regularly exerted substantial influence (although, at the highest levels, not as much as two or three centuries earlier7). The top secular level was occupied by the Emperor, the successor to the emperor of Rome.8 Propagandistic protestations of universal imperium aside, though, he had little power beyond the boundaries of the Empire (Germany, northern Italy, south-eastern France, and the low countries) – which itself was a disparate collection of more than two hundred secular and ecclesiastical polities of diverse sizes, shapes, and powers standing in varied relations to the Emperor. I call the second secular level regnal, using a neologism created by Susan Reynolds9 to indicate a separate secular polity (regnum; realm, government) without suggesting anything else about the character of the polity (or its ruler). Regnal rulers such as the King of France, the Duke 1 (Peters 1980) reviews medieval struggles against heresy, which were at the heart of both “internal” and “international” politics. See also (Ames 2015). R. I. Moore (2007 [1987]) even defines medieval Europe (somewhat anachronistically, it seems to me) as “a persecuting society.” 2 (Cowdrey 1998, 546–550 and ch. 10), (Chodorow 1972, ch. 9). 3 The classic statement is in a letter from Pope Gelasius I to Emperor Anastasius in 494. (Robinson 1988, 288–300ff.) briefly introduces the doctrine and its development. 4 (Watts 2009, 216). See also (Reynolds 1984, 9). 5 Very briefly, see (Watts 2009, 116–122). 6 (Ullmann 1972) and (Whalen 2014) are single-volume histories of the medieval papacy. 7 On the Investiture Controversy, which in the early twelfth century shifted the power to appoint archbishops to the Pope, see §11.2.2 at n. 21. 8 (Fuhrmann 1986 [1983]) and (Haverkamp 1988 [1984]) are histories of the centralmedieval Empire. 9 (Reynolds 1984, ch. 8, esp. 254). (Watts 2009, 376–380) powerfully applies the concept to the development of late-medieval and early modern polities.

312

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

of Brittany, and the Count of Flanders, however, not only had limited legal, fiscal, and political rights but also usually lacked the resources to exercise much control beyond their personal dynastic domains. Secular rulers on what I call the provincial level thus typically were subject only to limited (imperial or regnal) direction and oversight.10 As John Watts nicely puts it, there was “a thin royal crust over a mass of independent jurisdictions.”11 In local communities, which were overwhelmingly rural, secular authority was exercised by lords (seigneurs, Herren), with little higher supervision.12 (Most localities were outlying areas that had not been peripheralized.13) Furthermore, “many lordships … were little more than private estates, with odd scraps of jurisdiction attached – often insecurely.”14 These two functionally separate hierarchies also diverged territorially. Regnal polities usually included (at least parts of) multiple archbishoprics. Archbishoprics did not correspond to duchies or counties. Church parishes rarely corresponded to local lordships. The result was a heterarchic15 system of overlapping and interpenetrating authorities and jurisdictions.16 Each place typically was subject to multiple secular and ecclesiastical “princes” – who often stood in complicated (and contested) relations. Overlaid on all this was a socio-political hierarchy based on a functional division between those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked the land.17 My spatio-political focus downplays this hierarchy. In an account that aspired to greater completeness, though, it would deserve considerable emphasis. Although the particularism of medieval life stands out to us today, the emphasis at the time was on the unification of particularities in an allencompassing cosmic hierarchy18 – and the temporal hierarchical unity

10

See (Reynolds 1984, ch. 7). (Arnold 1991) explores princely rule in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Empire. 11 (Watts 2009, 84). 12 (Reynolds 1984, ch. 5), (Sivéry 1999), (Freedman 2000), (Dyer 1998). 13 On this distinction, see §16.1.3. 14 (Watts 2009, 97). 15 See §§15.7.1, 16.5. 16 Control over the use of force was similarly shared across levels, with regnal rulers raising armies of self-armed and self-provisioned men through feudal levies. See, for example, (Contamine 1984 [1980], ch. 2, 3, 8), (Brown 2001). 17 (Duby 1980 [1978]) is a standard account of this “three orders” framework. 18 (Pseudo-)Dionysius (Denys the Areopagite) provided the most influential expression of this vision. His works are available in translation at www.ccel.org/ccel/dionysius/works .html. (Rorem 1993) provides a commentary on the texts and their influence.

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

313

of Christendom, the universal polity that provided the path to salvation. Therefore, the top level, although populated by actors with limited powers, was essential to the structuring of high-medieval politics. 17.2

Late Medieval Changes

This heterarchic high-medieval system very gradually gave way to an early modern states system through a long sequence of changes that can be traced back into the thirteenth century. After the death of Frederick II in 1250 there was a steady (although uneven) absolute rise in the capabilities and autonomy of leading provincial-­level polities within the Empire.19 And outside the Empire, the motto rex imperator in regno suo [the king is emperor in his realm] was being regularly used by the end of the thirteenth century.20 Although the Emperor held a superior status, he did not even claim to rule over, let alone in, kingdoms such as England, Castile, and France. The papacy,21 in addition to facing the challenge of rising secular rulers, was weakened by sustained internal conflict, especially the move to Avignon (1309–1377) and the Great (Western) Schism (1378–1417), during which competing popes, and their political backers, crassly competed for ecclesiastical control.22 Even after the Council of Constance (1414–1418) restored ecclesiastical unity,23 churches in France,24 Germany,25 and Spain26 became increasingly “national”/regnal. The failed crusades against the Hussites,27 which forced the papacy in 1436 to

19

(Arnold 1991) is a standard English-language source on medieval Territorialstaten (provincial polities in my terminology). 20 (Hinsley 1986, 88–89), (Pennington 1993, 31–36), (Rivière 1924), (Ullmann 1975, 96ff.; 1979), (Watts 2009, 68). 21 On the high-medieval papacy see (Ullmann 1972, ch. 9, 10), (Blumenthal 2004), (Robinson 2004), (Watt 1999), (Meyer 2007), and, most briefly, (Watts 2009, 49–59). 22 See (Ullmann 1972, ch. 11, 12), (Kaminsky 2000), (Zutshi 2000), (Logan 2002, ch. 15, 16) and, at greater length, (Rollo-Koster 2015; Rollo-Koster and Izbicki 2009). During the Schism, kings, especially in France and Castile, “began to wield powers that had formerly been exercised by popes” (Watts 2009, 296), including taxation to support the Church. (Watts 2009, 291–301) briefly summarizes the decline of papal power in the first half of the fifteenth century. 23 (Black 1998, 67–76) and (Watts 2009, 291–301) provide brief accounts of the Council and its successors. 24 (Small 1995, 8–25) briefly addresses the link between kingship and religion in latemedieval France. (Lewis 1968, ch. 3, sect. iv) is a good brief introduction to the latemedieval French Church. 25 A useful introduction to the Reichskirke (Imperial [Catholic] Church) can be obtained by following the index entries in (Wilson 2016). 26 (Payne 1984, ch. 2), (Rawlings 2002). 27 (Klassen 1998).

314

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

accept religious heterodoxy in Bohemia and Moravia, foreshadowed the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations of the sixteenth century,28 which fatally fractured the doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity of Christendom (on which much of the Pope’s authority rested). And the Italian Wars (1494–1559)29 effectively reduced the secular power of the papacy to that of an Italian regional actor.30 In the fifteenth century, however, Emperors Sigismund (r. 1410–1437) and Frederick III (r. 1452–1493) were not merely competent but in many ways successful rulers.31 Sixteenth-century Emperors thus exercised greater control over a stronger polity than their fourteenth-century predecessors.32 The official change of name in 1512 to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, however, reflected the fact that the Emperor had in effect become king of Germany; that is, a regnal-level great power. Thus by the late sixteenth century the high-medieval “universal” (supra-regnal) level had been eliminated. And, as we will see as we proceed, governance was increasingly concentrated in regnal, and especially royal, polities. 17.3

New Monarchies and the Rise of a European States System

The most important spatio-political change in fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Christendom was the absolute and relative rise of regnal polities. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, leading kings and dukes expanded their systems of law courts and improved their administrative and fiscal capabilities,33 allowing them to begin to push their authority a bit further and deeper into their realms. And some kings who managed to succeed in the brutal dynastic wars of the fifteenth century began to distinguish themselves from all other secular princes. In France, England, and Spain, several decades of crisis – the last decades of the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453),34 the Wars of the 28 (Greengrass 2014, ch. 10, 11) and (Marshall 2009) are useful, recent, brief overviews. (Cameron 2012) and (Marshall 2015) are thorough but accessible book-length introductions, as are (Pettegree 2000) and (MacCulloch 2005 [2003]) at greater length. 29 (Mallett and Shaw 2014 [2012]) provides a good recent overview. 30 (Ullmann 1972, 332) concludes his history of the medieval papacy with the observation that “on the threshold of the modern period” the papacy had been “reduced … to a power situated in central Italy.” 31 (Herde 2000), (Hlavacek 2000), (Scott 1998). 32 See §17.4.3. 33 (Watts 2009, 43–129, 205–263, 393–419) surveys changing late-medieval governmental structures and practices. See also (Guenée 1985 [1981]). 34 (Vale 1998), (Neillands 2001, ch. 13–16).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

315

Roses (1455–1485),35 and a series of wars and succession crises from 1412 to 1469 within and between the crowns of Castile and Aragon36 (followed by the War of the Castilian Succession (1475–1479)) – opened spaces for vigorous and effective kings to try to establish something like hegemony in their realms. (I explicitly use the language of hegemony, in the IR sense of more or less grudgingly acknowledged predominance and leadership, to underscore the absence of anything like a supreme central government.) The principal issue of “national” political contention became the balance between regnal and provincial centers. “Internationally,” a single Christian polity remained an almost universally endorsed ideal. In practice, though, heterarchic multilevel governance gave way over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to a states system, rooted in dynastic political particularism and a grudging tolerance for the coexistence of polities of (a few) different Christian confessions. Charles of Hapsburg (1500–1558) made the last serious attempt to (re-)establish something resembling a universal Christian polity.37 Dynastic good fortune added to his hereditary title of Duke of Burgundy (as Charles II) not only rule over both Castile and Aragon (in 1516, as Carlos I) but also the Empire (in 1519, as Karl/Carolus V), creating a polity that rivaled Charlemagne’s in size and power. In addition, he strongly supported Christian unity – that is, efforts to suppress, by force if necessary, heresy (Protestantism) – and military efforts to stop the advance of the “heathen” Turk. But Charles’ realm did not include France (or England). And near the end of his life, disillusioned, he effectively renounced both secular and religious universalism. In 1556, Charles abdicated and divided his domains, passing Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip and the Empire to his brother Ferdinand. No less importantly, in 1555 he agreed to the Peace of Augsburg, which established the principle cuius regio, eus religio [whose realm, their religion], allowing princes within the Empire to choose Catholicism or Lutheranism as the official religion of their polity. This acceptance of (limited) religious heterodoxy and the subordination of churches to princes marked a decisive shift from the functional bifurcation of highand late-medieval politics. These changes, along with the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), which finally ended the Italian (Hapsburg-Valois) Wars, can be seen as 35 (Carpenter 1997), (Horrox 1998), (Pollard 2013, ch. 5, 6), (Grummitt 2013, ch. 7, 8). 36 (Hilgarth 1978, pt. 2), (Ruiz 2007, ch. 5), (Del Treppo 1998), (MacKay 1998). 37 See, for example, (Blockmans 2002), (Maltby 2004), (Parker 2019), and, in IR, (Nexon 2009, ch. 5).

316

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

the beginnings of a (slow and uneven) transition to an early modern states system. A four-level system of functionally divided governance was replaced by a three-level system in which both “national” and “international” governance was increasingly concentrated in regnal polities. Although the Peace of Westphalia (1648) presented itself as “a Christian and Universal Peace” for “the Benefit of the Christian World,”38 in practice there was no politically significant actor above the regnal level after the 1550s. During the personal rule of Louis XIV (1661–1715), driven in part by fears of French hegemony, a political world dominated by (mostly royal39) regnal polities became the near-universal expectation. And this understanding became relatively highly institutionalized in the decades following the Peace of Utrecht (1713–1715). These major structural transformations, as we will see as we proceed, were matters of continuous (trans)formation. In an average lifetime, the experience of continuity would usually have been greater than the experience of change – except for catastrophes, such as famine, pestilence, and war.40 And across generations and centuries, although basic structuring relations did change, those changes were largely driven by mechanisms of transposition and re-functionality that produced co-evolving polities and political systems that by the eighteenth century were settling into the configuration of states-in-a-states-system – “modern international relations.” 17.4

Early Modern Dynastic Empire-States

The polities in the emerging early modern states system were empirestates (agglomerated polities) not States (integrated polities)41 – let alone “modern” legal-rational states, a model that “is hopelessly anachronistic when applied to an early modern state.”42 Where “the modern state has been constructed to create a uniformity or universality of life within its borders”43 – a “single system of 38

Treaty of Munster, Article 1 and Preamble. (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ westphal.asp.spu). 39 The Dutch Republic was the one non-royal great power. In “Germany,” the power of the Hapsburg rulers, beginning with Leopold I (r. 1658–1705), rested more on their regnal holdings as Archduke of Austria (and King of Bohemia and King of Hungary) than the Imperial crown. (Lists of great powers therefore came to use Austria rather than the Empire.) 40 Charles V is the exception that proves the rule – and even there his dramatic rise was the result of well-established practices of dynastic agglomeration. 41 See §16.4. 42 (Collins 1995, 2). See also (Elliott 2002 [1963], 77). 43 (Migdal 1997, 209).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

317

governance … [and] law applies to (virtually) all who find themselves within these boundaries”44 – early modern polities were variegated aggregations of “a myriad of smaller territorial and jurisdictional units jealously guarding their independent status,”45 with “different social structures [and] different laws and institutions.”46 These “composite states”47 were very much assemblages – “non-integrative unions”48 – in which “constituent parts ha[d] a meaningful and partly independent existence.”49 Here I look at France, Spain, Britain, and the Empire, the four great powers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (Those uninterested in the details should feel free to skim or skip this section.) 17.4.1 France When Louis XI became king in 1461, although the English had been expelled from everywhere except Calais, “France” did not include Brittany, Burgundy, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Savoy, Provence, Picardy, Flanders, or Hainaut.50 Furthermore, different territories were differently incorporated. Two-fifths of the king’s subjects in the sixteenth century retained their traditional laws and representative institutions. Even Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) added Flanders to his realm through agglomerative compacts that produced “two governmental systems corresponding to very different historical traditions [that] found themselves having to work side by side.”51 Early modern French kings, like their medieval predecessors, “assembled their kingdom piecemeal, layer on layer. They accreted different customs, legal systems, and privileges.”52 The resulting “conglomeration of duchies, counties, and provinces”53 was “under the domination of the king of France”54 but “only partially under 44

45 46 47 48

49 50 51



52

53 54

(Morris 2004, 197). (Elliott 1992, 51). (Koenigsberger 1986, x). See (Elliott 1992), (Koenigsberger 1978) = (Koenigsberger 1986, ch. 1), and, more briefly (Nexon 2009, 68–72). (Hayton and Kelly 2010b, 4). (Watts 2009, 380). The fragmented character of Louis’ realm is strikingly evident in www.emersonkent .com/map_archive/france_1461_map.htm. (Lottin 1991, 86). (McCluskey 2013) examines Louis’ military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy, providing considerable insight into the character of politics in the far peripheries of the kingdom. (Briggs 1977, 2). (Major 1962, 125). (Mousnier 1979 [1980], 251).

318

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

royal control.”55 And whatever the official legal status of a place, “political control … always ebbed at the extremities of the country, progressively decreasing in the more recently acquired provinces farthest from Paris.”56 Provincial governors were more or less independent powers (usually with deep local roots).57 Major towns were semi-­autonomous.58 Many rural areas were largely untouched by royal rule (except for increasingly onerous taxation). Malcolm Vale’s assessment of mid-fifteenth-century France applies across the early modern period. “Dynastic loyalty and a recognition of the crown’s theoretical sovereignty was as much as could be expected from many of the kingdom’s inhabitants. Divided by law, language and custom, France was not a ‘nation’ in the modern sense.”59 “France” was not an “international system” either.60 But the sixteenth-century Valois kings ruled a polity that was in many ways as similar to today’s EU as to today’s France. Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643) and Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) did significantly increase central administrative capabilities. As we will see in §17.7.2, though, administration in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, although no longer “medieval,” certainly was not “modern.” “The French king’s writ did not extend equally across his kingdom even when Bourbon power was at its most complete.”61 And, as we saw in §12.3, Louis XIV’s armies were similarly post-medieval but early/ pre-modern. Early modern France was “a polyglot empire” – as late as 1789, half of the population did not speak French62 – “with a wide range of local institutions adapted to the many local cultures.”63 It “had no common legal code or administrative system … and individuals, towns, corporations, and provinces all possessed a bewildering array of privileges.”64 Even

55

(Kettering 1986b, 5). See also (Mousnier 1979 [1980], 251), (Hoffman 1994, 227), (Salmon 1975, 62). 56 (Anderson 1974, 85–86). 57 (Harding 1978), (Mousnier 1979 [1980], ch. 22). 58 (Mousnier 1979 [1974], ch. 13). 59 (Vale 1998, 407). 60 See §17.13.1 on the problems of a national–international binary in early modern Europe. 61 (Hayton and Kelly 2010a, 245). See also (Anderson 1974, 85–86), (Brewer 1990 [1988], 6). 62 (Hobsbawm 1992, 60). 63 (Collins 1995, 5). P. S. Lewis’ (1968, 4) observation on the late medieval period is equally true of the early modern period: “we must begin … with this concept of a France highly regional in mentality.” 64 (Swann 2001, 145).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

319

“the famous hexagon [the shape of modern France] can itself be seen as a colonial empire shaped over the centuries.”65 And that final shape only was solidified by French failures in the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and Louis XIV’s inability to take Hapsburg holdings in Italy and Catalonia. 17.4.2 Spain The marriage in 1469 of Isabella, future queen of Castile, and Ferdinand, future king of Aragon, laid the foundations for the creation of “modern Spain.” The Crown of Aragon, however, was “a loose federation of territories” – including not only Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia but also Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and Majorca – “each with its own laws and institutions.”66 And Castile, although more geographically compact, was no less an agglomeration. These two amalgamated polities were incompletely integrated, each retaining its own system of law and distinctive political institutions. (In fact, on Isabella’s death in 1504, Ferdinand did not inherit the Crown of Castile.) Granada and Navarre were added to the Crown of Castile in 1492 and 1515, to be governed by their own laws. The growing new world empire was incorporated (into Castile) on still different terms – as was Portugal (in 1580). In 1516, both Castile and Aragon passed to Charles I, who in 1519 also inherited the “Austrian” Hapsburg holdings and was elected Holy Roman Emperor (where he reigned as Charles V). “Spain” thus became the Western anchor of a Hapsburg dynastic empire that encircled France. But when Charles abdicated and divided his holdings, his son, who was king consort of England (through his marriage to Mary I), succeeded to the crowns of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre as Philip II (r. 1556–1598). (Charles’ eastern holdings were passed to his brother Ferdinand.) In the seventeenth century, Castilian dominance was solidified. But Portugal fought (successfully) for almost three decades to break free (in 1688) from this dynastic composite. And Catalonia tried (unsuccessfully) to exit as well, revolting from 1640 to 1652 during the FrancoSpanish War (1635–1659) – which concluded with the loss of northern Catalonia to France, making the Pyrenees the border – again from 1687 to 1689, and still again from 1705 to 1714, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715). Only in 1714 did Castilian law become the law throughout the entire realm of the (now Bourbon) Spanish crown. 65

(Weber 1976, 485). 66 (Elliott 2002 [1963], 31).

320

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

17.4.3 England/Britain In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the early modern English crown came to rule an increasingly complex imperial agglomeration. In 1542 Ireland became a separate kingdom, held by the English crown but subject to a very different (brutally oppressive) system of rule.67 And in 1603 James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I as James I of England, creating a personal dynastic union of the two kingdoms.68 It may be an exaggeration to say that “England and Scotland had little more than their king in common.”69 Nonetheless, throughout the seventeenth century Scots identity remained strong, Scots law operated in tandem with English law, and the Parliament of Scotland remained independent.70 And the Scots were persistently obstreperous. Charles I’s attempt in 1637 to impose the Anglican (English) Book of Common Prayer led to the Bishops’ Wars (1639–1640) – which concluded when the Scots crossed the Tweed and took Northumberland and Durham, which they continued to hold as surety for the indemnity Charles agreed to pay in the Treaty of Ripon (1640). In the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1653)71 the Scots, who pursued an independent foreign policy that courted both the Dutch Republic and Sweden,72 fought, and in 1646 defeated and captured, the king – with whom they signed a secret treaty in 1647 and supported (by invading England) in response to the royalist uprising in 1648. And in 1650, the future Charles II (r. 1660–1685), following his father’s execution by the English Rump Parliament, concluded the Treaty of Breda with a faction of Scots, provoking another decade of warfare. (Charles came to Scotland to accept the crown in January 1651 but in September, after losing to Cromwell’s forces at Worcester, was forced to flee to the continent.) 67

On Ireland under the Tudors, see (Brady 1991), (Moody, Martin, and Byrne 1991 [1976], ch. 2–4). (Canny 2001) is a detailed study of the imposition of the plantation system, up through the rebellion of 1641. More briefly, see (Moody, Martin, and Byrne 1991 [1976], ch. 7–9). Cromwell’s reconquest was particularly brutal. See (Connolly 2008, ch. 3), (Moody, Martin, and Byrne 1991 [1976], ch. 13, 14), (O’Siochrú 2008). And resistance to foreign (English) domination persisted through the twentieth century. 68 (Cantry 1995) examines regional responses to the growing power of the Tudor and early Stuart monarchs. On the problems posed by multiple kingdoms, see (Russell 1990, ch. 2), (Bucholz and Key 2009, ch. 7), (Macinnes 2003). 69 (Koebner 1961, 63). 70 (Mitchison 1983) traces the progress of union from a Scots-centric but relatively balanced perspective. See also (Mitchison 2002, ch. 10–19) and, more briefly, (Wormald 2005, ch. 5, 6). (Brown, Tanner, and Mann 2004; 2005) covers the early modern Scottish Parliament in great detail. 71 (Gentles 2014 [2007]), (Royle 2004), and (Scott 2004) are histories that treat the conflicts in all three kingdoms. See also (Wheeler 2002). 72 (Young 2001, 87–103).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

321

The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 provoked another half century of rebellions in Scotland (and in Ireland and northern England), with major uprisings in 1689, 1715, 1719, and 1745 (popularized in Outlander).73 And the vagaries of dynasticism led in 1714 to Georg Ludwig, Duke of Hanover, becoming King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, which he and his successors held in personal union with Hanover. As in Spain and France, differentially incorporated polities retained much of their original character within a dynastic assemblage. And, as in Spain and France, a growing overseas empire was understood as just another differentially incorporated part of the realm. “Empire” was simply a term for the agglomerated realm of a ruler who recognized no higher secular authority (much like the eighteenth- and nineteenth-­ century Russian and Austrian empires) – not a term focused on overseas colonial holdings.74 17.4.4 The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation The early modern Holy Roman Empire, although it remained more a heterarchy-state than a single-center polity, underwent similar processes of “state formation” in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with similar results. In 1495 an independent imperial court, the Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Court), was created to replace the Hofgericht, the personal high court of the Emperor.75 The other high court, the Reichshofrat (“Aulic Council”), was reorganized in 1497/1498 and further reformed in 1559.76 The Reichstag (Imperial Diet), which was reorganized in 1489, had by the mid-sixteenth century become a significant representative institution.77 The Empire also “modernized” its taxation and defense administrations,78 with results broadly comparable to those of its geopolitical rivals. All of this left the Emperor (Kaiser) and the 73

(Szechi 2002) and (Szechi 2012) are brief overviews of the Jacobite movement. At greater length, see (Szechi 1994). (Szechi 2006) is a history of the 1715 rebellion. (Plank 2006) looks at the 1745 rebellion in a broader imperial context. (MacInnes, German, and Graham 2016 [2014]) is a self-consciously revisionist collection of essays on Jacobitism. 74 (Koebner 1961) covers early modern English usage. See also (Armitage 2000). (Koebner and Schmidt 1965) traces the transformation of the term in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 75 (Wilson 2011, 70–75), (Wilson 2004, 177–182), (Holborn 1959, 43–44). 76 (Whaley 2012, 364–365). On the jurisdiction of the supreme courts, see (Härter 2013, 124–129). 77 (Whaley 2012, 355–356, 370–371). 78 (Whaley 2012, 361–362, 439–440, 443–444, 494–497, 512–521, 570–572), (Wilson 2011, 85–93), (Wilson 2004, 157–169).

322

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

imperial institutions stronger, both absolutely and relatively, than they had been in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – and a force to be reckoned with internationally until the end of the seventeenth century. The principal subordinate political centers, the “territorial states” (Territorialstaten),79 were even more internally diverse and differentially incorporated than provincial polities in Britain and France. Seven Electors (Kurfürsten) – the Archbishops of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine (Pfalzgraf) of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave (Markgraf) of Brandenburg80 – exercised many rights that elsewhere were held by kings, including rights to hear legal appeals, collect taxes, levy customs duties, and mint coins. Imperial Princes (Reichsfürsten) – in 1582, 43 voted in the Prince’s Chamber (Reichsfürstenrat) of the Reichstag – had, in addition to their elevated status and imperial rights, important juridical, fiscal, and governmental rights. And both Electors and Imperial Princes had rights to make alliances with other princes, both within and outside the Empire. In addition, Imperial Counts (Reichsgrafen) – there were about 140 in the mid-sixteenth century – exercised a variety of governmental rights.81 Not all of the territory of the Empire, however, was subject to a “territorial prince.” Imperial Knights (Reichsritter),82 who owed direct allegiance to the Emperor, governed some 1,500 estates encompassing 4,000 square miles and hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Imperial Cities (Freie und Reichsstädte)83 – there were about five dozen in the late sixteenth century84 – also enjoyed “imperial immediacy” (Reichsunmittelbarkeit); i.e., direct subordination to the Emperor, without incorporation into a “territorial” unit. It is true that “the emperor wielded power and influence to very different degrees in different areas”85 and that “different dynastic and legal 79 On territorial political organization in the early modern Empire, see (Wilson 2016, 396– 421), (Barraclough 1963 [1947], 320–381), (Whaley 2012, 47–49, 255–271, 275–280, 486–491), (Wilson 2011, 33–36, 99–102). 80 New Electorates were created for Bavaria in 1623 and Hanover (Brunswick-Lüneburg) in 1692/1708. 81 Furthermore, in most of the leading “territorial states” princes shared rule with “estates” (Landstände and Landtage); that is, corporately organized representative institutions that were a lower-tier parallel to the Reichstag. (Carsten 1959) is the standard Englishlanguage introduction to the “German” estates. On assemblies of estates more broadly in early modern Europe, see §17.5.2 at nn. 106–114. 82 (Wilson 2004, 41–42, 199–200, 245, 249, 341–342; 2011, 12, 14, 29–30), (Whaley 2012, 42–43, 80, 210, 353). 83 (Wilson 2004, 37–38, 72–74, 147–148, 347–348, 378–379), (Whaley 2012, 26, 41, 43, 249–251, 351–352, 531–540). 84 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Free_Imperial_Cities. 85 (Whaley 2012, 19).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

323

traditions gave rise to differing degrees of imperial jurisdiction.”86 These descriptions, though, also fit Spain, France, and Britain. Similarly, although “attempts to establish an effective system of royal government, either in south Germany or in the Reich as a whole, remained piecemeal and only intermittently effective,”87 much the same was true of Spain, France, and Britain. And Karl Härter’s observation on the Empire’s array of judicial mechanisms holds across early modern Europe: they “didn’t necessarily form a hierarchical order, but rather a system of legal spaces with complex interactions and interconnections. It was characterised by legal diversity and legal pluralism.”88 (Even France did not have a single system of law until Napoleon.) In addition, there were considerable attractions to an imperial structure that both fostered and embodied local autonomy and diversity. As Peter H. Wilson puts it, the structure of the Empire reflected not “failure to centralize” but success in “revising and recombining earlier methods into a new, more collective form of imperial governance by the emperor and a more self-conscious princely elite.”89 The Empire kept its monarch in check at least as well as in Britain and better than in France. And its geopolitical orientation was largely defensive not aggressive. Abandoning nationalist and statist prejudices, we might even see the Empire as an attractive historical model for thinking about regional integration90 and globalization – more a precocious foretaste of a postmodern future than a relic of the medieval past. At the time of the Peace of Westphalia (1648), despite the devastation of Germany over the preceding thirty years, nothing suggested that the Empire had a less robust future than France or Britain. Only in the wars of Louis XIV, beginning in 1672 and reaching frightening scale in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715), did the weakness of the Empire begin to become evident. And the problem then was not that the Empire was less modern in the Weberian sense but that it was less “absolutist;” less able to coerce resources from its population to fund huge armies. In the eighteenth century, the Empire lost out not

86

87 88 89 90

(Whaley 2012, 24). (Whaley 2012, 80). (Härter 2013, 116). (Wilson 2016, 353). See (Zielonka 2006, 2013). This was true not only of the Empire as a whole but also of the Kreise (singular, Kreis; “circle”), regional groups – six created in 1500, four more added in 1512 – that jointly provided military contingents, had considerable responsibility for maintaining public order, and allocated and collected centrally mandated taxes. See (Wilson 2011, 67–68, 89–93), (Wilson 2004, 184–198), (Whaley 2012, 20, 35–36, 355–361, 366–368, 585–591, 609, 631).

324

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

to modern states but to a different type of pre-modern state, the fiscalmilitary state (to which we turn briefly in §17.10). 17.5

States, Status, Corporations, and Privileges

The very idea of “the state,” as we understand it, was foreign to ­sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe. The central political concern was the statuses and privileges of the corporate groups that composed early modern polities. Although the following discussion falls well outside this chapter’s principally spatio-political focus, it is essential to understanding how early modern politics was organized and operated. (Any focus is partial. Therefore, when that partiality impedes understanding, supplemental analysis, even if ad hoc and eclectic, often will be appropriate (as I believe it is here).) 17.5.1 States and Status Consider the Territorialstaten of the Empire – which, in our terms, were neither territorial nor states. The subordinate domains of the Emperor’s realm were defined, like France, Britain, Spain, and the Empire itself, not territorially but dynastically and historically. For example, sixteenth-century Electoral Palatine was composed of a large but wildly irregular “Swiss cheese” centered on Heidelberg plus some two dozen small and half a dozen intermediatesized pieces. Electoral Cologne was more compact but also included the Duchy of Westphalia some fifty miles to the east. And processes of territorial agglomeration continued through the early modern period.91 Most notably, in 1618 the Margrave of Brandenburg added Prussia to his domain, creating Brandenburg-Prussia, which included not only its two (widely separated, amoeba-shaped) named components but also Cleves, Ravensberg, and Mark to the southwest (to which Minden and Halberstadt were added in 1648); “a completely artificial, composite state, spread in three main blocks across northern Germany and Poland.”92 Furthermore, early modern regnal polities were not impersonal authorities that performed most major political functions. And “state,” in line with the root of the term (in both Romance and German languages) in the Latin status, indicated polities of greatly varied types with legally recognized corporate status/privileges. 91

(Wilson 2016, ch. 8) is a good introduction (pp. 431–475 covers the period of Hapsburg rule). 92 (Koenigsberger 1987, 193).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

325

The first two clusters of definitions of “state” in the Oxford English Dictionary, which is organized chronologically, are “senses relating to a condition or manner of existing” and “senses relating to status or rank.” In French as well, état goes back to the thirteenth century, with initial core senses of “manner of being” and “situation of a person in society.”93 These senses parallel contemporaneous Latin usage.94 For example, in formulations such as status reipublicae (the republic), status imperii (the Empire), status regni (the kingdom), or status coronae (the crown), “the word status still meant no more than ‘condition,’ ‘situation’.”95 Similarly, status regis (the king, kingship) referred to “the royal function, office and dignity” rather than the realm.96 In addition, “in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries status, ‘state’ and stato are frequently synonymous with potestas, regimen, gubernatio (power, rule, governance).”97 Status – “state” – “was used regularly and fully interchangeably to mean government, constitution, welfare, common good, way of life, status, and estate (in both the sense of hierarchical rank and of social-­occupational group).”98 It did not, however, refer to a polity or unit of rule. And regnum referred equally to the rule and the realm of a ruler (which were inextricably intertwined not only with each other but also with the office and person of the ruler). Such usages persisted through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Increasingly, though, they were supplemented by uses of “state” to mean polity. But even in the eighteenth century, as we will see below, “state” did not have anything close to the modern sense of a permanent impersonal authority with a territorial monopoly on jurisdiction and the legitimate use of force. The quip attributed to Louis XIV, L’Etat c’est moi, does mark an important change: by the early eighteenth century, in the regnal polities in which authority was most concentrated in the top-tier center, there was but one état that ultimately mattered. Even here, though, status, realm, and ruler were complexly entangled. In sharp contrast to modern states, which are logically and legally prior to their rulers, early modern polities were defined by (the office of) the ruler. And kings, not polities, were sovereign. 93

Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française (my translation). 94 (Guenée 1985 [1981]) and (Harding 2002) discuss the late-medieval evolution of the idea of “state.” 95 (Guenée 1985 [1981], 4). See also (Stump 1994, 253). 96 (Guenée 1985 [1981], 4). See also (Stump 1994, 253). 97 (Guenée 1985 [1981], 5). 98 (Stump 1994, 253).

326

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

17.5.2 Corporations, Privileges, and Estates Another standard sense of “state” in late-medieval and early modern English was “property, possessions, fortune, capital.”99 (There was no distinction between “estate” and “state” in English at this time.) Property gave one a status in society.100 And it made one part of an estate (état, state), in the sense of a privileged social corporation (“an order or class regarded as part of the body politic, and as such participating in the government either directly or through its representatives”101) – in France, le tiers état. Corporate privilege, in the root sense of private laws, was an essential structuring element of early modern polities. The provinces of early modern France were understood as territorial corporations; legally recognized differentially privileged entities.102 And across Europe, corporate privileges were also “assigned vertically along a hierarchy of social status.”103 Nobles104 enjoyed extensive social, legal, and fiscal privileges.105 Towns – urban corporations composed of their citizen members – enjoyed more or less broad powers of self-rule and various economic and fiscal privileges.106 Churches (and often clergy) were also privileged. Furthermore, in most regnal realms select social corporations were politically represented as “estates” (états, Stände, staten, stati) organized in assemblies at the “national”/regnal level (e.g., the “Estates General” in France and the Netherlands) or “provincial” level.107 These assemblies of estates “claim[ed] to represent a wider, more abstract, territorial entity – country, Land, terra, pays – which, they assert[ed], the ruler is entitled to rule only to the extent that he upholds its distinctive customs and serves its interests.”108 “The territorial ruler and the Stände [estates] ma[de] up the polity jointly, but as separate and mutually acknowledged political centers. Both constitute[d] it, through their mutual agreement.”109 99 Oxford English Dictionary. 100 Another medieval and early modern sense of “(e)state” was “Status, standing, position in the world; degree of rank.” Oxford English Dictionary. 101 Oxford English Dictionary. 102 (Bossenga 2012), (Mousnier 1979 [1974], ch. 10). 103 (Bossenga 1991, 5). 104 (Dewald 1996) offers an overview of late-medieval and early modern nobilities. 105 (Bush 1983). 106 (Friedrichs 1995). 107 (Graves 2001) and (Myers 1975) provide general, although often superficial, overviews. See also (Stasavage 2011, ch. 3), (Downing 1992, 30–38, 90–97, 113–136, 238–246). 108 (Poggi 1990, 41). 109 (Poggi 1978, 48 [emphasis added]).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

327

Rather than precursors of modern legislatures, these assemblies were mechanisms by which the prince and select privileged corporations (“estates”) shared rule. (Most developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,110 underscoring the fundamentally late-medieval conception of shared rule.) Although the powers and procedures of assemblies of estates varied considerably,111 the usual dynamic involved royal requests for taxes, subsidies, or loans that were met by invocations of the right to advise and consent, insistence on the crown’s obligation to protect existing privileges, and, often, demands for new privileges. The corporate groups represented also varied. One pattern involved three estates, corresponding to the three medieval social orders of clergy, nobility, and laborers – although the “third estate” typically represented towns (and in Britain the gentry) not the people generally. In other words, to the medieval “ruling orders” of clergy and nobility were added (usually urban) propertied interests. H. G. Koenigsberger thus speaks of “the crystallization of powerful social groups into estates.”112 The estates were “the watchdogs of privilege and power-sharing”113 – which were inextricably linked in early modern composite-corporate polities. As Weber puts it, “proprietors of privilege … came together in joint congresses for the purpose of ordering political matters by means of compromise.”114 The other crucial corporate group in early modern Europe was the family/clan/dynasty. “What mattered above all to most of those associated with the state, from the highest ranking to the lowliest, was the situation of their family.”115 Deploying their status, children, lands, offices, and wealth, families created often complicated multilevel networks of alliances. And multilevel patronage networks were central features of early modern regnal polities and governance. In these systems of patronage politics,116 the king was not a qualitatively different actor but “the archpatron,”117 “best visualized as sitting, spider-like, at the centre of

110



111 112 113 114 115 116 117

(Blockmans 1978; 1998), (Hébert 2014). See also (Harding 2002, 221–240), (Guenée 1985 [1981], 221–226). See, for example, in the Empire (Carsten 1959), (Oestrich 1982, ch. 11); in France (Major 1980), (Collins 1994), (Miller 2010), (Swann 2003); in Spain (Jago 1981; 1992), (Sanz 1994). (Koenigsberger 1995, 160). See also (Poggi 1990, 42). (Graves 2001, 3–4). (Weber 1994, 101). (Rowlands 2002, 12). (Adams 2005) develops a model of the early modern “familial state.” (Lind 1996) briefly discusses patronage and early modern state building. On Renaissance France, see (Major 1964). (Kettering 1986b) is a standard study of ­seventeenth-century French patronage. (Salmon 1975, 92). See also (Major 1964, 643 (“the greatest patron”)).

328

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

a kingdom-wide network of patron-client relations”118 – pursuing, like most other actors, primarily familial (dynastic), not national, interests. These various privileged corporations were polities; persistent corporate political actors with a recognized status. Governance, as I have stressed, was neither fundamentally territorial nor even in theory monopolized by “state” or royal institutions. Substantial elements of heterarchic governance were central to early modern kingdoms, even as authority and control were increasingly concentrated on the regnal level. Where and how one was placed – one’s status, and the privileges that went with it – was far more important in medieval and early modern society and politics than the regnal polity of one’s birth or residence. And those regnal polities were agglomerations of territorial and social corporations. In this world, no territory was ruled by an impersonal supreme political authority. Therefore, there was no reason for “state” to refer to such a polity – which was not even imagined, let alone advocated, in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe. 17.6

Agglomeration, Centralization, and Particularism

By the early eighteenth century, the leading early modern kings had more or less successfully subordinated their provincial-level challengers, making them “internal” parts of realms in which power was increasingly concentrated in the royal center. This concentration of politics, however, involved a series of re-­centerings that were achieved through contentious, often violent, “negotiations” – and continuing renegotiations. The British Isles, “Spanish” Iberia, and “France” became less heterarchic and more single-center polities. But they remained agglomerated not integrated polities; empire-states rather than States (let alone modern (Weberian) states).119 In fact, “centralization” and regionalization, rather than competing political projects, were two sides of the early modern process of agglomerative polity formation. “The acceptance of decentralization was a characteristic of nearly all the Renaissance monarchies.”120 And that acceptance was crucial to new provinces acquiescing in their incorporation into the royal realm.121 For example, in 1539, “conquered Piedmont 118 119 120 121

(Koenigsberger 1987, 42). On these distinctions, see §16.4. (Major 1962, 116 n. 6). This dual dynamic goes back to the central Middle Ages. As Watts (2009, 122, 123) puts it, by 1300 we can see not only “the gradual emergence of more powerful and plural ‘regnal’ polities” but an “equally pronounced … proliferation of overlapping, and

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

329

was given a [regional] parlement. This was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a ‘decentralization of justice and administration’: it was rather a concomitant of the establishment of fixed centres [plural] of government.”122 Bernard Chevalier’s assessment of France at the ascension of Francis I (r. 1515–1547) is true of most early modern monarchies: “the gradual elimination of the principalities and the centralisation of power in the person of the king enforced a decentralisation in geographical and institutional terms which respected the strength of provincial particularism.”123 Or as Mario del Treppo puts it in the case of the fifteenth-century kings of Aragon “on the one hand they strengthened the centralised authority of the state, above all by extending the general competence of certain … authorities … to include the entire crown of Aragon. At the same time these same functions submitted to a process of decentralisation.”124 Early modern polities were based on what Angelo Torre nicely calls “empowering interactions and entwining jurisdictions;”125 “a reciprocal sequence of ‘crossed legitimations’ between different social, juridical and political actors.”126 Early modern kings ruled not so much over their provinces (and the privileged groups that dominated them) as in conjunction with them – a type of rule that was closer to their thirteenth-century predecessors than their twentieth-century successors. And these changes occurred largely modularly, through transposition and re-functionality, producing a continuous (trans)formation of early modern polities. 17.7

Early Modern Administration

Having stressed the composite nature of early modern polities, this section looks briefly at the character of early modern administration. (Section 12.3 looked briefly at early modern militaries.) The modern (Weberian) state is a type of bureaucratic state that “adjudicate[s] and administer[s] according to rationally established law

122

123 124 125 126

at some level autonomous, political and governmental structures.” But where Watts (2009, 122) describes these as “two contradictory developments” I am arguing that they were (in both the medieval and early modern periods) two sides of the process of agglomerative polity formation. (Harding 2002, 288). Similarly, “the establishment at Bordeaux, after its conquest in 1451, of Grand Jours [a regional parlement], marked the final incorporation into the French kingdom” (Harding 2002, 168). On Louis XIV’s differential incorporation of Flanders, see above at n. 51. (Chevalier 1998, 419–420). (Del Treppo 1998, 194). (Torre 2009). (Torre 2009, 319).

330

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

and regulation.”127 Early modern “bureaucracies” – that term was not even used before the last half of the eighteenth-century128 – were quite different. They evolved out of medieval administrative systems organized around the household of the ruler, supplemented by legally trained clerics. (The centrality of processes of transposition and re-functionality is strikingly illustrated by titles such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the medieval office responsible for collecting and auditing royal revenues) and the very term “clerk” (originally meaning cleric – who were much more likely to be literate than their lay peers).) I look here at Spain and France, the most administratively advanced great powers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively. (Those who find this discussion overkill should feel free to move to the next section, which offers a general account of the logic of composition in early modern Europe.) 17.7.1 Spain Ferdinand and Isabella created the Council of the Inquisition in 1488 and the Council of Orders in 1489, laying the foundation for the Spanish practice of administration by councils. By the late sixteenth century, Philip II (r. 1556–1598) ruled through six geographical and eight functional councils,129 giving Spain what J. H. Elliott describes as administratively “the most advanced state of sixteenth-century Europe.”130 But two sentences later Elliott describes this bureaucracy as “cumbersome, corrupt, and appallingly slow.”131 Philip did substantially regularize provincial (and urban) administration. The Spanish bureaucracy, however, was an instrument of patrimonial and personal (not legal-rational) rule. “The administration was really an ad hoc system of councils with the king at the center.”132 And Philip extensively employed juntas (unofficial committees)133 to maintain his independence from the official bureaucracy. “Only in Castile was any real attempt made to centralise the administration, and even here effective control of the towns and countryside fell to

127 (Weber 1978, 1394. See also 971, 1393). 128 The Oxford English Dictionary dates it to 1759 in French, 1781 in Italian, and 1790 in German – and provides no uses in English before 1815. 129 (Elliott 2002 [1963], 170–181). (Thompson 1967) examines the Council of War under Philip II. 130 (Elliott 1989, 14). 131 (Elliott 1989, 14). See also (Dover 2016 [2012]), (Poole 1981). 132 (Woodward 2013 [1992], 12). 133 (Lovett 1977, 144–146, 63–73, 97–100, 194–210).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

331

the grandees and nobility.”134 And seventeenth-century Spanish administration became even more patrimonial and driven by patronage.135 At best, Hapsburg Spain saw limited concentration of capabilities in the royal center that did not introduce legal rationality into administration. 17.7.2 France In France, administrative centralization did increase throughout the seventeenth century. But France’s burgeoning bureaucracy136 – Louis XII (r. 1498–1515) had perhaps 5,000 officials; Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) had more the 50,000 – neither penetrated very deeply into the provinces nor was entirely under royal control. Provincial governors, drawn principally from the upper nobility, were semi-independent powers137 and “the great nobles exercised considerable influence over the appointment and behavior of royal officials in their fiefs.”138 Major towns were semi-autonomous.139 And, as we saw above, provincial legal and political institutions and identities remained strong. The creation in 1634 of intendants, who exercised general administrative oversight in two dozen généralités (new administrative districts),140 was a major innovation. But in typical early modern fashion they were layered on top of, rather than replacements for, older jurisdictions, institutions, and practices. And intendants acted less as legal-rational bureaucrats than as brokers in the patronage networks of the king and his ministers141 – and as agents of their own families. The crown “ruled through the manipulation and management of factional groups within the government and the court elites.”142 And it 134 (Woodward 2013 [1992], 16) 135 The first half of the century was the era of the privado or valido, the royal favorite who was not just a first minister but virtually the alter ego of the king. (On the broad phenomenon in early modern Europe, see (Elliott and Brockliss 1999).) Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, Duke of Lerma, effectively ruled Spain from 1599 until 1618. (Williams 2010), (Feros 2000). Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, dominated Spanish politics from 1621 to 1643. (Elliott 1986). And in the second half of the seventeenth century, “Spanish” politics became so fragmented that often there was little significant central direction. 136 (Collins 1995, 5–22) and (Major 1994, 32–47) provide useful brief introductions. 137 (Mousnier 1979 [1980], ch. 22), (Harding 1978). 138 (Major 1964, 640). 139 (Mousnier 1979 [1974], ch. 13). (Finley-Croswhite 1999) examines towns during the reign of Henry IV. 140 (Mousnier 1979 [1980], ch. 26). 141 (Kettering 1986a, 233, 235). See also (Collins 1995, 65). (Major 1994, ch. 8–10) presents a story of Richelieu’s administration that combines the themes of nobility, estates, and patronage. 142 (Parrott 2012b, 284).

332

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

continued to rely on the still semi-independent power of provincial (and local) elites to implement its designs and directives. Furthermore, almost the entire judiciary and much of the royal administration owned their offices143 – which after 1604 were fully transferable private property.144 By 1664 there were more than 45,000 venal offices in the judiciary and financial administration alone.145 Needless to say, such office-holders were more concerned with assuring a return on their investment than with rational administration or the rights and interests of those who appeared before them – or, often, the interests of the King or France. The crown, however, was so desperate financially146 that it had no choice – given that directly taxing the nobility was unthinkable.147 In fact, the crown regularly acted on its financial incentives to create unnecessary, even duplicative, offices (to the considerable chagrin of both office holders and the population that they “served”). Royal fiscal and administrative weakness also underlay the practice of tax farming, by which specified tax receipts were “leas[ed] by the crown … to a private contractor for a set number of years in return for a fixed annual rent, any additional profits of the farm accruing to the contractor.”148 The “general farm” (ferme–générale), established by Colbert in 1681, provided about half the crown’s annual revenues until the Revolution.149 (This parallels the farming out of military recruitment and supply.150) In addition, kinship remained central to the system. For example, “from 1680 to 1700 the closest circle of ministers around Louis XIV of France consisted, with one exception, exclusively of members of the family clans of Colbert and LeTellier-Louvois.”151 143 (Mousnier 1979 [1980], ch. 5) is a good introduction to officiers. 144 (Mousnier 1979 [1980], 35–52). (The droit annuel (“La Paulette”) required an annual payment (initially one-sixteenth of the price of the office), making even past venality a continuing source of royal revenue.) 145 (Doyle 1996, 6, 11). Note that this does not include venal military offices. (See nn. 62, 63 in §12.3.2.) (Mousnier 1971 [1946]) and (Potter 2003b) look at venality in the seventeenth century. (Doyle 1996) considers the eighteenth century. For a broad survey of venality in seventeenth-century Europe, see (Swart 1949) and, much more briefly, (Blockmans 1997, 227–234). 146 The extreme case may have been 1633, when income from the sale of offices amounted to half of total royal receipts. (Mousnier 1970, 492). 147 (Kwass 2000, 23, 31), (Parker 1983, 139). Similarly, in Britain “the options of ­eighteenth-century fiscal legislators were severely limited as long as they refused to countenance a properly policed tax on wealth” (Brewer 1990 [1988], 217). 148 (Bonney 1979, 11). 149 (Bonney 1979, 11). 150 See §12.3.2. 151 (Reinhard 1996a, 8).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

333

Louis XIV did significantly weaken the independent power of the provincial nobility. Nonetheless, “a major problem for Louis, as for his predecessors, was to ensure the loyalty and cooperation of his officials.”152 A. Lloyd Moote thus titles an article on the period 1615–1683 “The French Crown versus Its Judicial and Financial Officials.”153 Governance in Bourbon France (1592–1792) was “quasi-bureaucratic at best.”154 17.7.3 Administering Early Modern Polities “Nowhere in Europe, not even in Prussia, did a fully developed professional civil service exist before the end of the eighteenth century.”155 Administratively – no less than legally, politically, socially, and militarily – early modern polities were variegated agglomerations that did not aspire to be rationalized unitary wholes. Early modern bureaucracies instead “facilitated the administration of composite entities.”156 In Weber’s ideal-type legal-rational bureaucratic orders, administrators are “personally free.” They are “organized in a clearly defined hierarchy of offices” in which “each office has a clearly defined sphere of competence.” “The office is filled by a free contractual relationship.” Bureaucrats “are selected on the basis of technical qualification” and “are remunerated by fixed salaries in money.” “The office is … the primary occupation of the incumbent” and “constitutes a career.” “The official works entirely separated from ownership of the means of administration and without appropriation of his position” and “is subject to strict and systematic discipline and control in the conduct of the office.”157 By the mid-seventeenth century, administrators had long been personally free and a growing number were making administration both a career and their primary occupation. But even in the eighteenth century, all the other features of Weberian bureaucracy were, at best, embryonic. And the entire apparatus was driven by the personal and dynastic interests of a patrimonial ruler – and the no less patrimonial interests of office holders. “Officials worked within the constraints of fiscal, legal and territorial privilege at almost every level of early modern society, and 152 (Parker 1983, 137). See also (Potter 2003a). 153 (Moote 1962). 154 (Kettering 1988, 422). “On paper, the king possessed an impressive officialdom, but it should not be confused with a modern bureaucracy” (Swann 2001, 146). 155 (Reinhard 1996a, 13). 156 (Nexon 2009, 91). 157 (Weber 1978, 220–221. See also 956).

334

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

encountered provincial, institutional, and individual autonomy, influence and obstructionism just as inevitably.”158 Even in the most “modern” of mid-eighteenth-century bureaucracies, most officers still fit G. E. Aylmer’s model of “the old administrative system.” (i) entry to office by means of patronage, patrimony, purchase, or some combination of these; (ii) tenure of office either for life or during pleasure; (iii) entry often through the acquisition of a reversionary interest; venality; the treatment of offices as if there were subject to normal rights of private property; (iv) the employment of deputies by part-time or wholly absentee office-holders, and the (de facto) acceptance of sinecurism; (v) the remuneration of officials by means of fees, gratuities, and perquisites, as much as, often more than, by salaries, stipends or wages from the Crown or the State; … (vi) the regarding of office as a private right or interest, rather than as a public service.159

Furthermore, even the most advanced early modern administrations were ad hoc aggregations that reflected and perpetuated the balance of interests between the crown and the nobility (and, increasingly in the eighteenth-century, non-noble elites). And, as in the case of intendants, usually “‘new’ administration did not replace but was added on to existing institutions … [A]dministrative innovation … either worked around existing office-holders and their interests or reached an accommodation with them by combining the old and new to their mutual satisfaction.”160 17.8

The Logic of Composition in Early Modern Europe

From a modern perspective, early modern kingdoms were kludges. But rather than “an unsatisfactory prelude to the construction of a more effective and permanent form of political association”161 they were the European norm for three centuries – largely because they reflected the predominant values of the time. Even in the eighteenth century, “few European states had any obvious geographical, ethnic, or linguistic unity, nor was it widely felt that they should.”162 People saw themselves (and each other) as members of multiple complexly interrelated corporate groups with different functions, roles, and statuses. And a legitimate government was expected to respect corporate privileges. As James Collins puts it in the case of the French legal system, “the thicket of jurisdictions, seemingly so absurd, in

158 159 160 161 162

(Parrott 2012b, 328). (Aylmer 1980, 92). (Brewer 1990 [1988], 69. Cf. 74). (Elliott 1992, 71). (Doyle 1992, 221).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

335

fact served a very important political purpose: it protected the contracts between the king and [privileged] members of French society.”163 The medieval world of a “patchwork of jurisdictions, operating under a (sometimes very light) co-ordinating authority”164 had become more “centralized,” in the sense that more capabilities and authority were concentrated in the regnal (usually royal) center. It remained, though, an aggregated hodgepodge – because that suited the political needs and aspirations of (the dominant groups in) the multiple overlapping communities and corporations that made up early modern regnal polities.165 17.9

Change in Early Modern Europe

In my telling, the early modern era was a “middle age” between the medieval and modern worlds; post-medieval but pre-modern. In this section I want to emphasize that although the combination of dramatic political growth and transformation and devastating and sustained crises eventually re-centered European politics around larger and more consolidated kingdoms, there was no intentionality, teleology, or master driving causes. Actors of various sorts responded, in both routine and innovative ways, to constraints and opportunities, both old and new, producing largely incremental changes punctuated by eventfully cascading processes that over time accumulated to produce polities that, when compared at hundred-year intervals were both clearly different from and clearly similar to what they had been and what they would become. 17.9.1 Crisis and Growth In agrarian societies, population is a good proxy for prosperity. Although statistics for this period are notoriously speculative, the population of Europe (excluding Russia), which had dropped (largely as a result of the plague166) from perhaps 75–80 million in 1300 to perhaps 55–60 million in 1400, returned to around 70 million by 1500 – and then grew to about 90 million by 1600.167 Bernard Chevalier’s assessment of France 163 (Collins 1995, 9). 164 (Watts 2009, 127). 165 It also suited a world with relatively simple organizational and technological capabilities; a system with (compared to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) modest interaction capacity (see §11.4.3). 166 (Epstein 2009, ch. 9) is a useful brief introduction to the plague and its impact. 167 (Malanima 2009, 9), which is also used in (McCants 2015, 125). A similar picture is painted by the parallel figures in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Demographics_of_Europe#cite_note-ggdc.net-5) of a total western European population of 57 million in 1500 and 74 million in 1600 (growing to 81 million in 1700).

336

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

is generally applicable: “as centuries go, growth was certainly the chief characteristic of the ‘wonderful sixteenth century’.”168 Having so far emphasized the consolidation and deepening of regnal polities, here I want to stress that the early modern period was no less characterized by repeated, deep, and widespread crises that emerged and developed along at least five (often-interacting) dimensions. First, the institution of kingship suffered from disputed successions, royal minorities, and dependence on the personality of the king, leading to recurrent dynastic crises. For example, both the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) and the Frondes (1648–1653) began during royal minorities. Second, many conflicts involved noble and regional resistance to growing royal power. Third, religious heterodoxy was both an independent source of conflict (as in the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) in the Empire and the French Wars of Religion) and a complicating or intensifying factor in dynastic disputes, centralization conflicts, and international wars. Fourth, disease and famine regularly produced demographic crisis, especially at the provincial level. For example, in Castile and Andalusia plague in 1599 and famine in 1600 killed about 10 percent of the population. “Mortalités” in France in 1630–1632, 1648–1653, and 1660–1662 killed as much as a third of the population in particular regions.169 Finally, international wars, often involving dynastic or confessional rivalry, were regular, of greatly growing expense, and immensely destructive – especially when accompanied, as they often were, by disease and famine. Most dramatically, during the Thirty Years’ War the population of Germany was reduced by probably about a third.170 Conflict and crisis predominated from the mid-fourteenth century (the Plague) through the dynastic wars of the fifteenth century. The “long sixteenth century” was fundamentally a period of growth, creative transformation, and consolidation. (France during the Wars of Religion was the exception that proves the rule – and was only a temporary setback.) The middle decades of the seventeenth century were again dominated by crisis.171 But the era of the mature ancien régime – beginning in the last 168 (Chevalier 1998, 421). 169 (Mousnier 1971 [1946], 480). 170 (Parker 2008, 1058). (Theibault 1993) briefly surveys responses to the death and destruction. 171 On the idea of a general pan-European mid-seventeenth-century crisis, see (TrevorRoper 1959) and (Parker and Smith 1997). There was a dramatic slowing (and in some cases reversal) of the population growth rate. For example, (Malanima 2009, 9) suggest a growth rate of over 25% in the sixteenth century, not much more than 10%

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

337

third of the seventeenth century and running to the French Revolution – was a period of consolidation and growth. 17.9.2 Periodizing Early Modern Politics Oversimplifying, we can identify two rather different periods in the early modern era. The earlier “Renaissance” period was a time of progressing but still hotly contested peripheralization, culminating in the tumultuous 1640s and 1650s: the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648),172 the English Civil War (1642–1651)173 and Protectorate (1653–1659),174 the Frondes (1648– 1653),175 and the Catalan Revolt (1640–1659)176 and Portuguese War of Restoration (1640–1668).177 By the last third of the seventeenth century, though, French and English kings had made their principal challengers peripheralized parts of regnal realms.178 This ushered in the later “Baroque” (or ancien régime) period. 1660 – the Stuart Restoration in England, followed the next year by Louis XIV’s assumption of personal rule – is a conventional marker. Baroque states, however, remained agglomerated, not integrated, polities. Although provinces (and provincial nobles) rarely retained the option of armed resistance, they continued to enjoy considerable autonomy and a wide range of fiscal, legal, and political privileges. And the central government still had only the most limited local capabilities. 17.10 Baroque Absolutism and Fiscal-Military States “The rise of the early modern state” led to the century-long apotheosis of the ancien régime under Louis XIV (d. 1715) and Louis XV (d.

172



173 174 175 176 177 178

in the seventeenth century, 20% in the first half of the eighteenth century, and another 25% in the last half of the eighteenth century. (Parker 2006), (Wilson 2009), (Bonney 2014), (Kamen 1968), (Sutherland 1992). See also (Wilson 2010), (Wedgewood 2005 [1938]). (Stoyle 2005), (Russell 1990), (Hughes 1998). See also (Parry 1970), (Young 2012), (Purkiss 2009). (Coward 2002), (Worden 2010). (Bonney 1978) is a good brief introduction. See also (Collins 1995, 65–78) and, at greater length, (Ranum 1993). (Moote 1971) focuses on the parelements, (Bonney 1981) on the high nobility, (Kettering 1986a) on patronage. (Elliott 1963) is an extended study. (Birmingham 2018, ch. 2), (Livermore 1969, ch. 7). See also (Newitt 2009, ch. 6). The Spanish crown did not even try very hard at this task – and thus dropped from the ranks of the great powers. And in Central Europe the Hapsburg monarch’s power increasingly shifted to Austria (and Bohemia), reflecting both the relatively effective peripheralization of the crown’s dynastic domains and the growing autonomy of the other parts of the Empire.

338

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

1774), the Restoration in Britain, and the eighteenth-century emergence as great powers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. None of these polities, with the partial exception of Britain at the end of the eighteenth century, resembled “modern” (nineteenth- and twentieth-century) states. Lacking the space to give the eighteenth century anything more than the most superficial attention, in this section I offer two brief illustrations, using the framings of “absolutist” and “fiscal-military” states. 17.10.1 “Absolutist” States The political form that Louis XIV (r. 1643/1661–1715) perfected in France179 and that dominated eighteenth-century Europe is commonly – although misleadingly – called “absolutist.”180 Otto Hintze describes “absolutism” as “a concomitant of that process of political organization in which a conglomerate of separate territories becomes fused into a unitary political structure.”181 A more unitary political structure, though, need not be – and in early modern Europe certainly was not – absolute. Likewise, Charles Lipp’s description of “a system in which authoritarian royal power freed itself from traditional limitations, legitimized itself by divine right, and thus exercised greater domination over society”182 does not describe anything that could plausibly be called absolute rule. Roland Mousnier thus speaks of “absolutism, or, rather, … increasing bureaucratic centralism, which was confused with absolutism.”183 As we saw above, “the power of the monarch depended on the government’s ability to manipulate an array of vested interests rather than its capacity to override them.”184 “Absolutism” reflected a new kind of “alliance between the monarchies and the high nobility;”185 “a renewed accommodation between monarchy and nobility, not a radical restructuring of their relationship in favour of the former. … [I]t augmented and 179



180

181 182 183 184 185

(Collins 1995) is an excellent introduction to the French ancien régime state. For good introductory surveys of the ancien régime, with an emphasis on politics and society, see (Williams 1999 [1970]), (Doyle 1986b, 2012). (Doyle 1992) is an excellent general history of the period. (Asch 2015, 369–379), (Campbell 2012), and the beginning pages of (Sommerville 2016 [2012]) provide complementary surveys of the recent historiography of “absolutism.” (Henshall 1992) compares France and Britain in some detail. On Germany/ Austria see (Gagliardo 1991), (Weis 1986), (Wilson 2000). (Miller 1990) contains several short national case studies. (Teschke 2003, ch. 5) is also useful. (Hintze 1975, 173). (Lipp 2011, 5). (Mousnier 1979 [1980], 235). (Parker 2003, 62). (Koenigsberger 1987, 42). See also (Clark 1995).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

339

stabilized the power of both monarchy and a section of the nobility.”186 “This alliance of absolute monarchy with the nobility is a characteristic feature of the whole ancien régime.”187 Consider Perry Anderson’s Lineages of the Absolutist State. By “the Absolutist State” Anderson means simply “the centralized monarchies of France, England, and Spain” that emerged in the sixteenth century.188 And although these polities “introduced standing armies, a permanent bureaucracy, national taxation, a codified law, and the beginnings of a unified [state],” marking “a decisive rupture with the pyramidal, parcellized sovereignty of the mediaeval social formations, with their estates and liege-systems,”189 they were not modern states. Rather, they represented “a redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination, designed to clamp the peasant masses back into their traditional social position;” “a displacement of politico-legal coercion upwards towards a centralized, militarized summit.”190 They were “first and foremost modernized instruments for the maintenance of noble domination over the rural masses;” “exotic, hybrid compositions whose surface ‘modernity’ again and again betrays a subterranean archaism.”191 “The ‘success’ of Louis XIV’s reign after 1661 owed much to a conscious royal determination to be more sensitive to the interests and aspirations of the social elites”192 – so long as they did not insist on autonomous political power. The “absolutist” state “was forged by respecting pre-existing institutions so long as they could be induced to cooperate with the king, modifying those that proved too recalcitrant … and only occasionally constructing new institutions for circumventing, although rarely outright replacing, those that proved particularly obdurate or inefficient.”193 France, like the other regnal polities of the Baroque era, “remained, despite the ideological trappings of central control and absolutism, a composite state.”194 Royal officials sat more heavily on, but did not deeply penetrate (let alone control), provincial institutions and elites. 186 (Zmora 1991, 6). See also (Clark 1995). 187 (Hintze 1975, 202). Thus H. M. Scott and Christopher Storrs (2007) write of “The Consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c. 1600–1800.” For brief overviews of the French and British nobilities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see (Mettam 2007), (Swann 2007), (Cannon 2007). 188 (Anderson 1974, 15). 189 (Anderson 1974, 17, 15). 190 (Anderson 1974, 18, 19). 191 (Anderson 1974, 20, 29. See also 40–42). 192 (Rowlands 2002, 2). 193 (Benedict 1992, 33). 194 (Nexon 2009, 264).

340

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

The balance had shifted to the center. Power, however, remained deeply disaggregated. William Beik thus titles an article “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration.”195 Alejandra Irigoin and Regina Grafe write of “bargaining for absolutism” in Spain.196 Baroque kings often did seek to subordinate (although usually not eliminate) corporate privileges and regional institutions. This move to more unilateral, even arbitrary rule, along with the development in the seventeenth century of doctrines of the divine right of kings,197 did have a certain “absolutist” air. But the absolute rights of Baroque kings were of about as much practical significance as the universal imperium of medieval Emperors. 17.10.2 Fiscal-Military States In the century prior to the French Revolution, nearly all of Baroque Europe’s great powers – France, Britain, Austria, the Dutch Republic, and Prussia, and in some accounts even Russia198 – were, despite significant differences in constitutional form, what historians today often call fiscal-military states.199 War, finance, and state-building were essentially linked throughout late-medieval and early modern European history. A tipping point was reached, though, in the late-seventeenth century. Increased central authority, power, and efficiency allowed France and its adversaries to deploy armies of unprecedented size – the population of France increased by about a half between 1500 and 1700 but its army was six or seven times larger200 – and to keep them in the field for years on end. And the “need” for such massive armies drove political centralization. 195 (Beik 2005). 196 (Irigoin and Grafe 2008). 197 (Figgis 1896), which covers both Britain and the Continent, remains a useful overview. (Bossuet 1999 [1707]) is the classic mature French expression. (Beik 2000) provides a useful collection of primary source material for France. (Keohane 1980, ch. 8) surveys the development of the idea in the reign of Louis XIV. (Wootton 2003) covers the debates in Stuart England. The enhanced status of divinely ordained kingship, in addition to being intrinsically desirable, was, in a highly status-conscious world, a valuable political resource, especially in contests with status inferiors or during religious strife. But claims of divine right only mildly enhanced the limited powers of early modern kings. 198 (Hartley 2009). 199 (Parrott 2012b, 327–334) briefly summarizes the type. (Brewer 1990 [1988]) and (Glete 2002) are standard book-length studies. See also (Stone 1994), (Storrs 2009), (Graham and Walsh 2016), (Conca Messina 2019 [2016], ch. 4, 5). 200 For figures on the size of early modern armies, see (Downing 1992, 69), (Greengrass 1991, 5).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

341

This, however, clearly distinguishes these polities from modern (and especially twentieth-century) states. Wolfgang Reinhard observes that “in its decisive phase of growth the [early] modern state is a war state, which expands its administration and taxation mainly in order to be able to wage war.”201 In eighteenth-century Britain and France, military spending plus debt (which was almost entirely war debt) typically consumed four-fifths or more of annual income.202 Such war states look more like the polities of Warring States China and ancient empires such as Rome.203 Furthermore, these wars were dynastic wars. The two great wars of the first half of the eighteenth century were the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). Eighteenth-century France, Austria, Britain, and Prussia were patrimonial204 monarchies rather than modern states. 17.11 A Succession of Types of Polities I have told a story of the succession of different types of polities brought about through extensive and extended processes of continuous (trans) formation. This contrasts sharply to the standard story of the development of “the modern state” as a type of polity that was present, in essence or in embryo, early on. For example, Hendrik Spruyt argues that as early as the late eleventh century “we find the beginnings of the modern state,” although “the process came to full fruition [only] in the wake of the French Revolution.”205 Setting aside the implausibility of a single process of institutional unfolding over seven centuries, this reading is hopelessly anachronistic. Spruyt titles a chapter “The Rise of the Sovereign Territorial State in Capetian France.”206 In fact, though, the realm of the last king of the house of Capet, Charles IV (r. 1294–1328) was a patchwork of

201 (Reinhard 1996b, 9). 202 (Brewer 1990 [1988], 40, Fig 2.1, 116, 133). See also (Félix 2012, 78). 203 See (Hui 2005) for a China–Europe comparison from an IR perspective. (Eisenstadt 1993 [1963]) is a classic macro-historical work that categorizes early modern European states as a form of empire. 204 Given my primarily spatio-political focus, I have not emphasized the Weberian ideal type of patrimonial rule. Weber (1978, 231–232, 643–644, 1006–1011, 1055–1059) sketches the type, emphasizing its military-bureaucratic character. See also (Bendix 1977 [1960], 334–359). For applications to early modern Europe, see, for example, (Ertman 1997, 2005), (Gorski 2003, 2005). (Wang and Adams 2011) compares patrimonialism in early modern Europe and Qing China. 205 (Spruyt 2002, 132, 133). 206 (Spruyt 1994, ch. 5).

342

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

disconnected, dynastically agglomerated holdings.207 Rather than the sovereign ruler of a territorial polity, Charles was the overlord of various principalities that were largely independent polities. And the Hundred Years’ War would soon tear “France” apart – on dynastic, rather than territorial, grounds. If, as Spruyt argues, the key element of a modern state is “territorial exclusivity”208 then, as we have seen above, there was nothing even close to a modern state in early modern Europe. And it is simply false to say that “in late medieval Europe … states became synonymous with sovereign territorial rule”209 or that the thirteenth century – or even the seventeenth century – saw the emergence of “homogeneous governance.”210 Similarly, Joseph Strayer is just plain wrong when he claims that by the early fourteenth century “basic loyalty shifted from Church, community, and family to the emerging state.”211 As Ruth Mackay nicely puts it, even in the seventeenth century “‘Spain,’ ‘Castile,’ and their derivatives were used rarely by policy-makers, usually inconsistently, and hardly ever by common people, whose concerns did not embrace such large geographic expanses.”212 And the same was true in the other composite states of early modern Europe. Furthermore, turning our attention to the end of this process, if we take France as paradigmatic of “the development of the modern state” (as is typical and as Spruyt does) then “absolutism” looks more like a dead end than anything else. The French Revolution, rather than perfect the form developed by the Bourbon kings, overthrew the ancien régime, which had to be destroyed (even if it was not fully swept away) before a modern state could be constructed on its ruins. Only in the “relatively medieval” polities of Britain and the Dutch Republic – which did not become “absolutist” states – can we tell anything even close to a story of eighteenth-century progress toward “the modern state.” 17.12 Pre-modern Polities in an Early Modern States System Part of the problem in conceptualizing political change in early modern Europe arises from assuming that the “states” of “the early modern states system” must have been “modern states.” For example, Spruyt claims 207



208

209 210 211 212

www.pitt.edu/~medart/image/france/france-l-to-z/mapsfrance/sf076fra.jpg is a readily accessible map. (Spruyt 1994, 3). (Spruyt 2002, 131). (Spruyt 2002, 132). (Strayer 1970, 36). (MacKay 1999, 15).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

343

that his principal concern is “the origins of the state system” and especially the fact that “the feudal order was gradually replaced by a system of sovereign states.”213 He thus rightly emphasizes the decline of feudal particularism and the demise of papal and imperial universalism,214 which may indeed be traced back into the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This, though, is irrelevant to the (Weberian) modernity of early modern polities – which, as we have seen, were dynastic empire-states. For example, Michael Mann calls early modern polities “relatively centered and relatively territorial”215 – which they were compared to the polycentric non-territorial heterarchy of the medieval world. Compared to modern states, though, they were very loosely and incompletely “centered;” empires rather than States. And through the entire early modern period they remained dynastic composites. The internal political transformations associated with the move from a medieval heterarchy to an early modern states systems were largely matters of (a) scale – larger polities, larger armies, more officials; (b) the balances between secular and ecclesiastical authorities; and (c) the balances between, on the one hand, kings and the regnal center and, on the other hand, aristocrats and the provinces of regnal realms. Furthermore, to the extent that these changes involved new forms of “state,” those forms, as we have seen, were not expressions of or unfolding steps on the path to “the modern state.” By the late-seventeenth or early-eighteenth century, European polities were externally (or internationally) sovereign and territorial, in the sense that they mutually recognized one another’s jurisdiction over a territory. But sovereigns, as we have seen, did not rule their territories territorially. And those territories were defined dynastically or historically – not territorially. We can pull together much of the preceding discussion by noting four fundamental differences between early modern composite polities and (Weberian) “modern states.” • Modern states were defined territorially or nationally, legitimated legally and rationally, and ruled bureaucratically. Early modern polities were defined dynastically, legitimated by tradition, religion, and dynasticism, and ruled patrimonially. • Modern states were relatively tightly integrated polities with a single system of law and administration. Early modern polities were

213 (Spruyt 1994, 3. Cf. 16–17.). 214 (Spruyt 1994, 36–57). See also (Strayer 1970, 22, 27–28, 43, 53, 57). 215 (Mann 1986, 455).

344

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

agglomerations of disparate territorial and social corporations governed by different laws and institutions. • Modern states had citizens who were individually equal before the law. Early modern polities had subjects who were members of hierarchically organized corporate groups, all but the lowest of which enjoyed particularistic privileges. • Modern states were multifunctional entities that monopolized not only law and force but identity, social policy, and economic regulation. Early modern polities provided little more than limited access to justice, some degree of internal order, and ruinous foreign wars (during which they offered partial protection against external attack). 17.13 Before (and Beyond) “International Relations” I have focused on the organization of regnal polities partly because of my spatio-political focus, partly for reasons of space, and also because this was the fundamental locus of structural political change in early modern Europe. The focus on regnal polities, however, also reflects the fact that the idea of “international relations” is problematic in medieval and early modern Europe. Political systems did not sort into “national/internal” and “international/external.” Multiple nested systems of polities (rather than a single international system composed of many national systems) – multilevel multiactor governance (not single-level governance) – has been the historic norm in the Western world since the fall of the Roman Empire. 17.13.1 Before “International Relations” For example, France between 1560 and 1660 experienced “internal” warfare in 49 years and “external” war in 47.216 And “internal” “French” politics often looked more like relations between polities than within a polity. During the Wars of Religion (1562–1598)217 large swaths of the king’s realm repeatedly fell out of his control, including Paris from 1588 to 1593, as leading families – Valois, Bourbon, Guise, Montmorency – pursued dynastic, religious, and regional interests. For example, in the fifth (1575–1576) war, the King’s brother, Francis, the heir to the throne, joined the rebels (to advance his own fortunes and those of his branch of the family lineage). And in 1587 the Guises, who for a quarter century 216 (Lynn 1997, 11, Table 1.1). 217 (Holt 2005) is an excellent general history. In IR, see (Nexon 2009, ch. 7).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

345

had been the King’s leading supporters, turned on him. Nobles, for family, religious, or personal reasons, regularly chose to fight against the king (or sit out a particular conflict). And the King too pursued his (dynastic, royal, and religious) interests rather than anything that could plausibly be understood as a national interest in anything close to the modern sense of that term. Furthermore, noble leaders of rebel communities as a matter of course made treaties with foreign rulers. For example, both the 1562 Treaty of Hampton Court, between the Prince of Condé and Queen Elizabeth of England, and the 1584 Treaty of Joinville, between the Guises (on behalf of the Catholic League) and Philip II of Spain, brought “foreign” forces to France. And, partially in response to the Treaty of Joinville, the English crown concluded the Treaty of Nonsuch (1585) with Dutch rebels in the “Spanish” Netherlands. Treaties were agreements between “princes,” in the broadest sense of that term, not kings (let alone states). Guise, Bourbon, and Valois were equally free to enter into treaties. (That the former usually were less attractive allies is a different matter – as is the changing dynastic fortunes of the Bourbons.) Conversely, royal edicts ending individual wars were essentially peace treaties among the various “French” parties. And they regularly returned leading rebels to their prior positions. For example, after the first war the Protestant leader Louis of Bourbon, Prince of Condé, received the office of Lieutenant-General, which had been held by his brother, who had been killed in the fighting. This looks very much like the treatment of foreign princes after a war: restoration of the status quo ante, with adjustments based on the ex post balance of power. Even more strikingly, in 1620 Marie de Medici, King Louis XIII’s mother (and the former regent), led an ill-fated rebellion. At its conclusion “Marie and her followers were given full pardons, captives were freed without ransom, offices were restored, salaries and pensions were paid for the period of the revolt, royal taxes that had been appropriated were written off, and Marie herself received six hundred thousand livres to pay her [war] debts.”218 France, it must be emphasized, was not unusual. For example, during the Catalan Revolt of the 1640s and 1650s (more than a century and a half after “the creation of modern Spain”) Elliott notes that “the rebels found it easier to rally support, because the oppression came from foreign [i.e., Castilian] rulers, foreign officials and foreign troops.”219 Or 218 (Major 1986, 404–405). 219 (Elliott 1969, 51).

346

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

consider the rebellions of Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century – which involved “national” differences and had significant “international” participation. Neither was this an early and brief “transitional” phenomenon. As we noted above, in the mid-seventeenth century regime-threatening regional crises wracked all the (dynastically agglomerated) great powers – both where religion interacted with provincialism and privilege (in Britain (the Civil War) and the Empire (the Thirty Years’ War)) and where it did not (in Spain (the Catalan and Portuguese revolts) and France (the Frondes)). And this was a continuation, on a larger geographical scale, of a pattern of provincial resistance to royal rule – contested peripheralization – going back at least to Charlemagne. The end of such rebellions, however, did mark an important structural change – which came to France in the late-seventeenth century; to Spain (through the imposition of Bourbon rule) in the early eighteenth century; and to Britain in the last half of the eighteenth century (if, as is often the English wont, we don’t count Ireland). “Modern” states typically did not have provincial rebellions. Early modern polities, like their medieval predecessors, did – regularly, and often with a vengeance. Rebellions were the flip side of practices of dynastic agglomeration and legitimation. 17.13.2 Beyond “National” and “International” Politics: Layered Systems of Polities IR’s national–international binary defines political systems by whether they involve relations within or between a privileged type of polity – “states” (terminal polities). This, in addition to its anachronism, makes “the international system” an external, even alien, arena; a mere environment in which polities happen to interact.220 My account instead sees “the international system” as a system (whole) of which polities of varied and particular sorts are parts. It also sees multiple nested systems of polities as normal. (The two-level structure of Figure 16.6 is but one (not especially common) arrangement of political space.) Even Justin Rosenberg’s account of “the international” as “that dimension of social reality which arises specifically from the coexistence within it of more than one society,”221 reflecting the fact that “human existence is not unitary but multiple,”222 largely reformulates a foundational national–international binary as unitary–multiple. It also suppresses the 220 See also §5.8. 221 (Rosenberg 2006, 308). 222 (Rosenberg 2016, 135).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

347

fact that all complex societies are societies of societies – and that federal States, empire-states, and heterarchy-states include multiple centers/ polities/societies. Multiplicity is distinctively “international” only where r­ elatively tightly integrated terminal polities create domains of relative (internal/“national”) unity and deal with each other as peers. The more that centers are distributed across levels the more problematic the label international. It thus seems to me not at all coincidental that the term “international” was coined in the late eighteenth century, as a system of single-level governance by terminal peer polities was emerging. (The Oxford English Dictionary attributes it to Jeremy Bentham (in 1780).) And today the term “international” seems increasingly incomplete (and sometimes even off the mark). Only in a world of States-in-a-states-system is it illuminating to draw a fundamental distinction between national/inside/unity and international/ outside/multiplicity. Mainstream IR, however, inappropriately generalizes this very particular kind of structuring. The frame of centers and peripheries, by contrast, shifts attention to the variety of relations between polities in layered systems of polities. It also (properly) treats as empirical questions the locations of governance and the ways that peoples, places, and political authorities are organized and related. 17.14 Re-assembling a Globalizing World For reasons of space, I jump to today. My framework depicts “globalization” as an epochal change from the configuration of modern-Statesin-the-modern-states-system to a postmodern configuration that is increasingly heterarchic but otherwise of uncertain shape. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, governance was concentrated in actors of a single type located on a single level. These privileged peer polities provided governance “nationally” on a territorial basis and (to a limited extent) “internationally,” through bilateral and multilateral cooperation and conflict. The political hallmark of modernity, in this reading, was the comprehensive centering of political life on the modern state. The modern world was also associated with the rise of a relatively sharp functional differentiation of state, market, and civil society. Modern states, however, struggled – mightily, with varying degrees of success – to contain all three domains within the boundaries of the state; to create national economies and national societies within national polities. Globalization represents the ultimate failure of these efforts.

348

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

But rather than something radically new, globalization has largely involved the unbundling or unwinding of the modern system of singlelevel governance through terminal peer polities. Or, stated more positively, globalization has involved processes of re-assembly that are giving greater priority to functional heterarchic governance. And in both readings, globalization involves continuous (trans)formation, largely through transpositions and re-functionality and cross-network re-configurations. 17.14.1 From States System to Heterarchy The multiple monopolies of the modern state are eroding, very unevenly. Authorities and capabilities previously concentrated in territorially delimited terminal peer polities (modern states) are being disaggregated and reallocated – “up,” “down,” and “across.” Furthermore, new functions (e.g., standard setting) are being created, usually at a level above states. And non-territorial forms of organization are increasingly salient. When we step back, though, many of the principal actors and issues look not really the same yet not fundamentally different from how they looked half a century ago (that is, in my adult memory). Figure 16.9, as I noted above, was designed with contemporary Europe in mind. To model globalization we would need to add one more layer on top (and populate the two supra-state levels much more unevenly). In the contemporary world, the inter-state system, which previously was the highest-level political system, now is the middle-level system. States remain the most important centers. (Most governance still goes through states, even where they are no longer its sole or direct provider.) There is a clear trend, though, toward multilevel multiactor functional governance. And to the extent that a fundamental national–international distinction persists, the character of “the international” has been transformed by the growing importance of the regional and global supranational levels.223 Bilateral action by the great powers remains central – but for a declining range of issues. International regimes, which greatly enhanced international governance capabilities in the twentieth century, remain important. Today, however, “regime complexes” are increasingly necessary to address supranational problems and opportunities.224 And “nonstate

223



224

International relations can no longer be plausibly represented as largely inter-state politics. The society of states no longer exhausts international society. Regional international societies and world society are of steadily (although unevenly) growing importance. See n. 77 in §14.5.

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

349

actors” of varying sorts are increasingly central to supranational governance, acting in varying combinations with one another and with states. At the national level as well, we see an increasing “decentering” of the state – or, more accurately, various re-centerings and re-­arrangements of relations between publics and polities of varied types on multiple levels. “Subordinate” jurisdictions are in many places acquiring increasing autonomy. “Private” actors are increasingly participating in, and occasionally taking over, activities that in twentieth-century Europe were monopolized by states – and undertaking new kinds of governance activities as well. In addition, non-national actors on various levels are playing growing roles in national and sub-national politics, economics, and society. More generally, the relatively sharp distinctions between levels characteristic of modern governance are eroding. And political patterns and processes are increasingly varied by place. An increasingly complicated heterarchic system is emerging. 17.14.2 Globalization as Continuous (Trans)formation These new entities, institutions, and practices, however, largely involve re-arranging and re-purposing “modern” elements. For example, there were not-insignificant nonstate actors in the early modern and modern eras, especially in national and international economies. Now, though, more kinds are becoming increasingly central. Similarly, the growth of “global governance” – more accurately, the growing importance of regional and other forms of (usually functional) supranational regulation – builds on the birth of “international organizations” in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. More broadly, globalization, rather than a radical break with a line of development that spanned half a millennium, is another phase in the continuing transformation of polities and systems of polities outlined above. In fact, the movement “away” from the modern looks very much like a move “back” toward the early modern.225 Interestingly, though, while the upward reallocation of state authorities has been primarily functional the downward reallocation has been more territorial – which suggests unplanned modular adaptations involving repurposings of existing resources. Even in countries where “devolution” is relatively advanced, such as Spain and the UK, authority has flowed mostly to regional territorial polities (rather than being fundamentally

225



Compare (Nexon 2009, 298–300).

350

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

reorganized along functional lines).226 Territorial organization at the national and subnational levels remains resilient. The character of states, however, is changing as their functions and relations change. Postmodern states are recognizable descendants of modern states. But they are increasingly looking like a new “species” of polity, living in a very different “ecosystem.”227 Talk of “the rise of the modern state” thus increasingly appears as, if not simply misguided, out of date. Late-medieval and early modern history did not so much lead toward the modern state as happen to get there. And then history did not stop. The modern state was an undeniably central feature of the modern era. Viewed across the arc of pre-modern, modern, and postmodern history, however, it seems more like a digression – or a transition. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century configuration of States-in-a-statessystem increasingly looks like a bridge between the multilevel multiactor governance of medieval and early modern Europe and the multilevel multiactor governance of the postmodern globalizing world.228 But the substantive contrasts with the medieval and early modern worlds are at least as striking as the formal structural similarities. 17.15 Alternative Framings My spatio-political account not only easily and “naturally” pulls together standard elements in depictions of globalization (such as interdependence, complexity, changes in scale, changes in sovereignty, and the rise of nonstate actors) but shows them to be structurally interrelated. It also encompasses globalization within a comparative framework of broad applicability – rather than draw ad hoc comparisons with selected features of the modern configuration (or claim that nothing fundamental has changed because the system remains anarchic). The familiar framing most similar to mine is “multilevel governance.”229 Heterarchy, however, adds multiactor governance. And if, as I have suggested, these two features are both interdependent and

226



227 228 229

“Privatization,” which often is more deeply heterarchic (i.e., less territorial and involving a wider range of types of actors and forms of action), remains limited in most places. On an ecosystem metaphor of international systems see §11.6. To the extent that this is true, IR’s tendency to assume a states system not only takes the particular for the general but also takes the exception for the rule (at least in the European case). (Stephenson 2013), (Schakel, Hooghe, and Marks 2015), (Behnke, Broschek, and Sonnicksen 2019).

Continuous (Trans)formation of Eurocentric Systems

351

connected with a move from territorial to functional organization then heterarchy provides a richer account of the referenced phenomena. It also makes the distinction between single-level and multi-level governance a matter of conceptual principle rather than ad hoc comparison to a previously predominant (single-level) pattern. The rise of nonstate actors and transnational action has been an important theme in IR for half a century.230 Heterarchy, however, does not conceptualize political organization through the lens of (the historically contingent dominance of) states; refuses to reduce most types of political actors to undefined members of a residual class (not states); and presents the multiplicity of types of actors as noteworthy but normal. My account also has similarities to James Rosenau’s notion of “fragmegration,” understood as “processes of integration and fragmentation [that] are unfolding simultaneously and endlessly interacting as the migration of authority [away from states] moves helter-skelter and in contradictory directions.”231 But fragmentation and integration – differentiation232 – are universal features of social and political systems. States systems are segmented and integrated in one way, empires in other ways, and heterarchies in still other ways. “Fragmegration” inappropriately takes the configuration States-in-a-states-system as an unquestioned reference point and somehow not fragmegrated. Similarly, the idea of an embedded state, enmeshed in increasingly complicated transnational, international, and supranational institutions and practices,233 inappropriately privileges the (unembedded) modern state – which was created through historically uncommon processes of dis-embedding. This framing also is focused on states (rather than systems) and their autonomy (rather than the structuring of their relations). My framework shifts attention to the fact that polities of various types are regularly parts of varied kinds of layered systems of polities. Anne-Marie Slaughter’s notions of the “disaggregated state” and a “disaggregated world order”234 likewise take the particular aggregation of functions in modern states as a pre-given condition or unproblematic reference point. And she focuses on states and “government networks” rather than systems and their structures.

230



231 232 233 234

(Keohane and Nye 1972) was seminal. See also (Risse-Kappen 1995), (Risse 2007), (Milner and Moravcsik 2009), (Cerny 2010), (Go and Krause 2016). (Keck and Sikkink 1999) launched a now-massive literature on transnational advocacy networks. (Rosenau 2005, 75). The concept is more fully elaborated in (Rosenau 1997). See Chapter 11. (Hanrieder and Zangl 2015), (Jacobsson, Pierre, and Sundström 2015). (Slaughter 2004, 12–14 and ch. 4).

352

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

Globalization is also sometimes presented as “neo-medieval.”235 The world of the twenty-first century, however, is not becoming “more medieval” in substance. It is becoming more heterarchic. A spatio-political depiction of globalization, although neither complete nor privileged, provides distinctive and penetrating insights that help us to see globalization as neither structurally unprecedented nor insignificant but a matter of re-configurations comparable in significance, substance, and form to those that have occurred more or less continuously in Eurocentric political spaces over the past millennium. A spatio-political framing also allows us to consider the (I think very real) possibility that rather than moving in any particular direction – for example, toward a world state or back toward a states system – varied changes in relations between varied polities on varied levels will proceed in varied ways and varied paces in different places. As in earlier periods, we can expect to see, on a time scale of a few decades, not directional change but complex combinations of continuities and transformations in the configurations of polities and systems of polities.

235



The locus classicus, which predates talk of globalization, is (Bull 1977, 254–255, 264– 276). See also (Held 1995, 137–140), (Kobrin 1999), (Friedrichs 2001), (Faludi 2018), (Duran 2022).

18 Afterword

Multiple Approaches to Multidimensional Systems of Relations

This brief afterword restates the case for a pluralistic IR that gives substantial attention to the multidimensional structuring of relations in international systems; the configuring configurations that configure layered systems of polities. 18.1

Multiple Models of Multidimensional Systems

Political systems and their structures are not simple things that come in only a few forms that differ in relatively minor ways. Having briefly surveyed several dimensions of variation, I conclude with an emphasis on the fact of multidimensionality. It would be difficult for any systemic account to address, let alone integrate, all potentially relevant dimensions. And I doubt that that would be desirable. Depending on the facts of the case and the purpose of the analysis, only some dimensions are likely to be of concern. (A cardiologist is not likely to be interested in (most) of the structure of the skeletal system.) Therefore, rather than try to generate a single typology of near universal applicability or depict “the structure” of a (national or international) political system, we should seek insightful models of some important features that help us to better understand the nature and structured operation of some parts of some types of political systems. In the preceding chapter, my principal focus was on spatio-political differentiation. But I supplemented my models to produce richer empirical accounts. For example, dynastic aggregation (a normative-institutional feature) helps to explain the prevalence of provincial/regional rebellions during the long period during which previously more autonomous polities were being peripheralized. If space had allowed, I would have looked at fiscal and juridical developments that enabled royal centers to penetrate their peripheries both more extensively and more intensively. This, over a period of centuries, prepared the way for what ultimately became States – although that transition also required, among other things, politically subordinating social corporations and reconfiguring political 353

354

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

relations between sovereigns and subjects toward relations between states and citizens. The interactions between the facts of the world and the interests of the observer also leaves considerable room for substantive and methodological variation, even when addressing similar subjects. For example, Meghan McConaughey, Paul Musgrave, and Daniel Nexon develop a three-dimensional typology that in many ways overlaps with mine but focuses attention in significantly different places, in large measure as a result of adopting a contracting frame and looking at “segments” (rather than centers and peripheries).1 Such projects share a focus on thoughtfully selected sets of “middlerange” configurational models. (“Structure” is used not with the definite article but with adjectives, such as spatio-political.) These sets of models not only enable “big picture” comparative explanations/understandings but also, by specifying a set of alternatives, facilitate exploring possibilities for and patterns of both continuity and change2 – and, through further critical attention to what they leave out, can help to move us toward new kinds of insights. 18.2

The Nature of Systemic/Relational Explanations

Systemic/relational models explain things that otherwise resist explanation (and sometimes even identification). And they explain differently – through configurations (not causes). I thus want to conclude by returning to the contrast between my account of systemic/relational explanations and Waltz’s account (which still preoccupies IR). If systems are parts of particular kinds arranged in particular ways to produce wholes with emergent properties then systemic/relational explanations must seek to identify the relational connections and interdependencies that give a system a particular character. Waltz’s claim that “structurally we can describe and understand the pressures states are subject to”3 is, by contrast, inappropriately individualistic (seeing states as externally constrained autonomous actors rather than parts of assembled wholes). Waltz got a bit closer to what I have in mind when he talked about structures “shaping and shoving” states4 – especially if we emphasize

1

(McConaughey, Musgrave, and Nexon 2018). (Nedal and Nexon 2019) is another complementary cut at some of these issues, focusing on hierarchy and the balance of power. 2 See also §15.9.2. 3 (Waltz 1979, 71. See also 89, 118). 4 (Waltz 1990, 34; 1997, 915).

Afterword

355

shaping. Or, as I would put it, assembled systems position actors in ways that recursively (re)shape their character and interests, (re)set the parameters of the possible (both for them and for the system), and, through these structured relations, regulate (but do not cause or determine) actions and interactions – all in ways that are constantly evolving. Although Waltz claimed that systemic/structural theories provide a “positional picture of society,”5 there are no social positions in his anarchic void. In my account, by contrast, polities occupy positions that have associated rights, responsibilities, and roles. The resulting structuring (of positions) creates a particular type of system that shapes, channels, and regulates political actions and interactions in particular ways. And my models try to depict how, as Waltz put it, “a great many different phenomena are part of a coherent whole”6 – a task that, in practice, he did not even attempt. Systemic models neither identify causes nor explain law-like regularities. Rather, they suggest that certain “things” tend to result when (other) “things” are arranged this way – and that these arrangements help us to understand some of what typically happens (and does not happen).7 Structural explanations take the form “That is what we should expect when the world is more or less like this (as a result of the organization and operation of this system).” As Patrick Jackson puts it, “[social-]scientific researchers trace and map how particular configurations of ideal-typified factors come together to generate historically specific outcomes in particular cases.”8 Or in John Padgett and Walter Powell’s formulation, “scientific prediction in open-ended, creative systems … is not the specification of a fixed-point equilibrium. It is the description of processual mechanisms of genesis and selection in sufficient detail to be capable, in the rich interactive context of the study system, of specifying a limited number of possible histories.”9 This, it seems to me, nicely explains what I tried to do in the preceding chapter. Waltz, however, attempted no such thing. And the Waltz who argued that theories explain laws10 would have been appalled at

5 (Waltz 1979, 80). 6 (Waltz 1979, 9, quoting (Heisenberg 1971, 31)). See also §4.1.2. 7 These are not, however, “indeterminate predictions” (Waltz 1979, 124). The aim is not prediction but configurational understanding – just as estimates of causal effects are not indeterminate predictions but causal explanations (that have a particular probability or explain some part of the observed variance). 8 (Jackson 2011, 114). 9 (Padgett and Powell 2012e, 2). 10 See §4.1.1.

356

Part III: Systems, Relations, and Processes

the suggestion that this is what (one type of) social scientific explanation looks like. Jackson goes on to argue that “keeping the ideal firmly in mind helps us make sense of what actually did happen.”11 Or as Ole Waever puts it, “application of theory then takes the form of assessing the fit between the model and things in the world.”12 And that fit is the explanation; an illumination of a particular case by showing it to be an instance of a generalized set of structured relations. My models, I have argued, do (sometimes) fit the world rather well. And they help us make (a certain kind of) sense of what has happened, is happening, or might happen. They render certain actions, interactions, and outcomes intelligible; explicable (through the model). This, as I have repeatedly emphasized, is not meant to criticize or even denigrate causal (or rationalist) theories or explanations – properly applied, in their proper place. Different kinds of theories, models, and explanations look at different things in different ways to help us understand different parts of the world, differently. (Scientific explanations do not have a singular character or structure.) But I have argued that, among the many things worth knowing about political systems, knowledge of how they are differentiated and structured into configuring configurations that configure is an often valuable but widely underappreciated and woefully under-pursued kind of knowledge. That sounds both a lot like where Waltz started and very far from where he ended up. This book therefore can be read as an attempt to vindicate the systems-theoretic (and more broadly relational) project that Waltz claimed was his inspiration by rescuing systemic theory from what happened to it in, and through the influence of, Theory of International Politics. In any case, it is now time – actually, long past time – to get out and do it. I am at work on such a book of my own. And I hope that the arguments above, both negative and positive, help to inspire, encourage, or support relational/systemic work by others. In particular, I hope that properly understanding the nature of systemic explanations and research will help to further facilitate and consolidate the broader relational program in contemporary IR. If both systemists and relationalists come to appreciate that relationalists are doing systemic work, and vice versa, then IR may finally be able to to begin to realize the promise of systemic approaches.

11

(Jackson 2011, 115). 12 (Waever 2009, 207). On model-based explanations, see §4.8.2.

Afterword

357

Relational/systemic research, properly conceived and well executed, can both expand the range of things that we can understand and increase the penetration of our explanations. That would not amount to the “Copernican Revolution” that Waltz promised.13 It would, though, be not just an incremental advance but a jump forward into new material and new ways of understanding.

13

(Waltz 1979, 13).

References

Aall, Pamela, Chester A. Crocker, and Fen Osler Hampson. 2020. “A New Concert? Diplomacy for a Chaotic World.” Survival 62 (6):77–94. Abatecola, Gianpaolo, Dermot Breslin, and Johan Kask. 2020. “Do Organizations Really Co-evolve? Problematizing Co-evolutionary Change in Management and Organization Studies.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 155:119964. Abbott, Andrew. 1988. “Transcending General Linear Reality.” Sociological Theory 6 (2):169–186. Abbott, Andrew. 2007 [1996]. “Mechanisms and Relations.” Sociologica 2:1–22. Abbott, Kenneth W., Jessica F. Green, and Robert O. Keohane. 2016. “Organizational Ecology and Institutional Change in Global Governance.” International Organization 70 (2):247–277. Abell, Peter. 2011. “Singular Mechanisms and Bayesian Narratives.” In Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, edited by Pierre Demeulenaere. Cambridge University Press. Abouheif, Ehab et al. 2014. “Eco-Evo-Devo: The Time Has Come.” In Ecological Genomics: Ecology and the Evolution of Genes and Genomes, edited by Christian R. Landry and Nadia Aubin-Hearth. Springer. Abrahamsen, Adele, Benjamin Sheredos, and William Bechtel. 2017. “Explaining Visually Using Mechanism Diagrams.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy, edited by Stuart Glennan and Phyllis Illari. Routledge. Abrahamsen, Rita and Michael C. Williams. 2009. “Security beyond the State: Global Security Assemblages in International Politics.” International Political Sociology 3 (1):1–17. Acharya, Amitav. 2014. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order. 3rd ed. Routledge. Acuto, Michele and Simon Curtis, eds. 2014. Reassembling International Theory: Assemblage Thinking and International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan. Acuto, Michele and Benjamin Leffel. 2021. “Understanding the Global Ecosystem of City Networks.” Urban Studies 58 (9):1758–1774. Adams, Julia. 2005. The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Cornell University Press. Adams, Simon. 1990. “Tactics or Politics? ‘The Military Revolution’ and the Hapsburg Hegemony, 1525–1648.” In Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871, edited by John A. Lynn. University of Illinois Press. 358

References

359

Adler, Emanuel. 2008. “The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO’s Post-Cold War Transformation.” European Journal of International Relations 14 (2):195–195. Adler, Emanuel. 2019. World Ordering: A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution. Cambridge University Press. Adler, Emanuel and Michael N. Barnett, eds. 1998. Security Communities. Cambridge University Press. Adler, Emanuel and Patricia Greve. 2009. “When Security Community Meets Balance of Power: Overlapping Regional Mechanisms of Security Governance.” Review of International Studies 35 (S1):59–84. Adler, Emanuel and Vincent Pouliot, eds. 2011. International Practices. Cambridge University Press. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2011. “Inter- and Transnational Field(s) of Power: On a Field Trip with Bourdieu.” International Political Sociology 5 (3):327–331. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2015. “Conclusion: Relationalism or Why Diplomats Find International Relations Theory Strange.” In Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics, edited by Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver B. Neumann. Cambridge University Press. Adler-Nissen, Rebecca and Vincent Pouliot. 2014. “Power in Practice: Negotiating the International Intervention in Libya.” European Journal of International Relations 20 (4):889–911. Aggestam, Lisbeth and Markus Johansson. 2017. “The Leadership Paradox in EU Foreign Policy.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 55 (6):1203–1220. Agnew, John A. 2003. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. 2nd ed. Routledge. Agnew, John A., Katharyne Mitchell, and Gearóid Ó Tuathail, eds. 2003. A Companion to Political Geography. Blackwell Publishing. Agrawal, Anurag A. and Xuening Zhang. 2021. “The Evolution of Coevolution in the Study of Species Interactions.” Evolution 75 (7):1594–1606. Al-Otaibi, Saleh Zaid. 2020. “The Impact of Arab Revolution on the Security of the Arabian Gulf: The Yemeni Revolution as a Model.” Review of Economics and Political Science 5 (2):136–148. Albert, Mathias. 2016. A Theory of World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Albert, Mathias and Felix Maximilian Bathon. 2020. “Quantum and Systems Theory in World Society: Not Brothers and Sisters but Relatives Still?” Security Dialogue 51 (5):434–449. Albert, Mathias and Barry Buzan. 2013. “International Relations Theory and the “Social Whole”: Encounters and Gaps between IR and Sociology.” International Political Sociology 7 (2):117–135. Albert, Mathias, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn. 2013. “Introduction: Differentiation Theory and International Relations.” In Bringing Sociology to International Relations: World Politics as Differentiation Theory, edited by Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn. Cambridge University Press. Alker, Hayward R. 1996. Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies. Cambridge University Press. Allen, Colin and Jacob Neal. 2020. “Teleological Notions in Biology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato .stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/teleology-biology/.

360

References

Allen, T. F. H. and T. B. Starr. 2017. Hierarchy: Perspectives for Ecological Complexity. University of Chicago Press. Almond, Gabriel A. and G. Bingham Powell. 1978. Comparative Politics: System, Process, and Policy. Little, Brown and Company. Almudi, Isabel and Francisco Fatas-Villafranca. 2021. Coevolution in Economic Systems. Cambridge University Press. Altman, Dan. 2020. “The Evolution of Territorial Conquest after 1945 and the Limits of the Territorial Integrity Norm.” International Organization 74 (3):490–522. Ames, Christine Caldwell. 2015. Medieval Heresies. Cambridge University Press. Amstutz, Mark R. 2013. International Ethics: Concepts, Theories, and Cases in Global Politics. 4th ed. Rowman and Littlefield. Andersen, Jakob L. et al. 2021. “Defining Autocatalysis in Chemical Reaction Networks.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.03086. Anderson, M. S. 1993. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919. Routledge. Anderson, M. S. 1998 [1988]. War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618– 1789. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Anderson, Perry. 1974. Lineages of the Absolutist State. Verso. Andreas, Holger and Mario Guenther. 2021. “Regularity and Inferential Theories of Causation.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/ causation-regularity/. Angell, Norman. 1910. The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Angell, Norman. 1914. Arms and Industry: A Study of the Foundations of International Polity. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Angell, Norman. 1921. The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to “The Great Illusion”. The Century Company. Angstrom, Jan. 2000. “The Sociology of Studies of Ethnic Conflict: Explaining the Causal Status of Development.” Civil Wars 3 (3):23–44. Angyal, Andras. 1939. “The Structure of Wholes.” Philosophy of Science 6 (1):25–37. Anjum, Rani Lill and Stephen Mumford. 2017. “Emergence and Demergence.” In Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation, edited by Michele Paolini Paoletti and Francesco Orilla. Routledge. Anjum, Rani Lill and Stephen Mumford. 2018a. Causation in Science and the Methods of Scientific Discovery. Oxford University Press. Anjum, Rani Lill and Stephen Mumford. 2018b. “Dispositionalism: A Dynamic Theory of Causation.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Ankersen, Christopher. 2021. “A Kaleidoscopic Future: The State and Assemblages in Global Affairs.” In The Future of Global Affairs: Managing Discontinuity, Disruption and Destruction, edited by Christopher Ankersen and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu. Palgrave Macmillan. Arcand, Bernard. 1999. “The Cuiva.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press.

References

361

Archer, Margaret S. 1982. “Morphogenesis versus Structuration: On Combining Structure and Action.” British Journal of Sociology 33 (4):455–83. Archer, Margaret S. 1995. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge University Press. Archer, Margaret S. 2000. “For Structure: Its Reality, Properties and Powers. A Reply to Anthony King.” Sociological Review 48 (3):464–472. Archer, Margaret S., ed. 2013. Social Morphogenesis. Springer. Ariew, André. 2007. “Teleology.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, edited by David L. Hull and Michael Ruse. Cambridge University Press. Ariew, André, Robert Cummins, and Mark Perlman, eds. 2002. Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology. Oxford University Press. Armitage, David. 2000. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press. Arnellos, Argyris. 2018. “From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological Individuals.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Arnold, Benjamin. 1991. Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany. Cambridge University Press. Aron, Raymond. 2003 [1966]. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Transaction Publishers. Art, Robert J. and Robert Jervis, eds. 1973. International Politics: Anarchy, Force, Imperialism. Little, Brown and Company. Arthur, Wallace. 2004. Biased Embryos and Evolution. Cambridge University Press. Asch, Ronald G. 2014. Sacral Kingship between Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment: The French and English Monarchies, 1587–1688. Berghahn Books. Asch, Ronald G. 2015. “Monarchy in Western and Central Europe.” In The  Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History. Volume II: Cultures and Power, edited by Hamish Scott. Oxford University Press. Ashby, W. Ross. 1956. An Introduction to Cybernetics. J. Wiley. Ashley, Richard K. 1984. “The Poverty of Neorealism.” International Organization 38 (2):225–286. Ashley, Richard K. 1988. “Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique.” Millennium 17 (2):227–262. Ashworth, Lucian M. 2017. “David Mitrany on The International Anarchy: A Lost Work of Classical Realism?” Journal of International Political Theory 13 (3):311–324. Austin, Christopher J. 2020. “Organisms, Activity, and Being: On the Substance of Process Ontology.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (2):1–21. Avant, Deborah D., Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell, eds. 2010. Who Governs the Globe? Cambridge University Press. Avant, Deborah and Oliver Westerwinter, eds. 2016. The New Power Politics: Networks and Transnational Security Governance. Oxford University Press. Axelrod, Robert. 1981. “The Emergence of Cooperation among Egoists.” American Political Science Review 75 (2):306–318. Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. Basic Books.

362

References

Axelrod, Robert and Robert O. Keohane. 1985. “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions.” World Politics 38 (1):226–254. Ayala, Francisco J. 1970. “Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology.” Philosophy of Science 37 (1):1–15. Aylmer, G. E. 1980. “From Office-Holding to Civil Service: The Genesis of Modern Bureaucracy. The Prothero Lecture.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 30:91–108. Bachmann, Jan, Colleen Bell, and Caroline Holmqvist, eds. 2015. War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention. Routledge. Bachmann, Pascale Angelica, Pier Luigi Luisi, and Jacques Lang. 1992. “Autocatalytic Self-Replicating Micelles as Models for Prebiotic Structures.” Nature 357 (6373):57–59. Baedke, Jan. 2018. Above the Gene, beyond Biology: Toward a Philosophy of Epigenetics. University of Pittsburgh Press. Baedke, Jan and Scott F. Gilbert. 2020. “Evolution and Development.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato .stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/evolution-development/. Bailer-Jones, Daniela M. 2009. Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science. University of Pittsburgh Press. Bailey, Kenneth D. 1983. “Relationships among Conceptual, Abstracted, and Concrete Systems.” Behavioral Science 28 (3):219–232. Bailey, S. H. 1938. International Studies in Modern Education. Oxford University Press. Bain, William. 2019. “International Anarchy and Political Theology: Rethinking the Legacy of Thomas Hobbes.” Journal of International Relations and Development 22 (2):278–299. Baird, Julia et al. 2019. “Emergence of Collaborative Environmental Governance: What Are the Causal Mechanisms?” Environmental Management 63 (1):16–31. Baldanza, Kathlene. 2016. Ming China and Vietnam: Negotiating Borders in Early Modern Asia. Cambridge University Press. Balzacq, Thierry. 2011. “A Theory of Secutitization: Origins, Core Assumptions, Variations.” In Understanding Securitisation Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve, edited by Thierry Balzacq. Routledge. Balzacq, Thierry. 2019. “Securitization Theory: Past, Present, and Future.” Polity 51 (2):331–348. Bang, Peter Fibiger and C. A. Bayly, eds. 2011. Tributary Empires in Global History. Palgrave Macmillan. Banks, Michael. 1969. “Systems Analysis and the Study of Regions.” International Studies Quarterly 13 (4):335–360. Bapteste, Eric and Gemma Anderson. 2018. “Intersecting Processes Are Necessary Explanantia for Evolutionary Biology, but Challenge Retrodiction.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Bapteste, Eric and John Dupré. 2013. “Towards a Processual Microbial Ontology.” Biology & Philosophy 28 (2):379–404. Bardini, R. et al. 2017. “Multi-Level and Hybrid Modelling Approaches for Systems Biology.” Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal 15:396–402.

References

363

Barkdull, John. 1995. “Waltz, Durkheim, and International Relations: The International System as an Abnormal Form.” American Political Science Review 89 (3):669–680. Barker, Gillian and John Odling-Smee. 2014. “Integrating Ecology and Evolution: Niche Construction and Ecological Engineering.” In Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences, edited by Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins, and Trevor Pearce. Springer. Barman, Emily. 2016. “Varieties of Field Theory and the Sociology of the NonProfit Sector.” Sociology Compass 10 (6):442–458. Barnard, Alan. 1992. Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. Cambridge University Press. Barnard, Alan. 2002. “The Foraging Mode of Thought.” In Self- and OtherImages of Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Henry Stewart, Alan Barnard, and Keiichi Omura. National Museum of Ethnology. Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1930. World Politics and Modern Civilization: The Contributions of Nationalism, Capitalism, Imperialism and Militarism to Human Culture and International Anarchy. A. A. Knopf. Barnett, Michael. 1993. “Institutions, Roles, and Disorder: The Case of the Arab States System.” International Studies Quarterly 37 (3):271–296. Barnett, Michael. 1998. Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order. Columbia University Press. Barnett, Michael. 2017. “Hierarchy and Paternalism.” In Hierarchies in World Politics, edited by Ayse Zarakol. Cambridge University Press. Barnett, Michael and Raymond Duvall, eds. 2005. Power in Global Governance. Cambridge University Press. Barnett, Michael and Kathryn Sikkink. 2008. “From International Relations to Global Society.” In The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, edited by Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal. Oxford University Press. Baron, Joshua. 2013. Great Power Peace and American Primacy: The Origins and Future of a New International Order. Palgrave Macmillan. Barraclough, Geoffrey. 1963 [1947]. The Origins of Modern Germany. Capricorn Books. Barresi, Michael J. F. and Scott F. Gilbert. 2020. Developmental Biology. 12th (Kindle) ed. Sinauer Associates. Bartelson, Jens. 1995a. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge University Press. Bartelson, Jens. 1995b. “The Trial of Judgment: A Note on Kant and the Paradoxes of Internationalism.” International Studies Quarterly 39 (2):255–279. Bartha, Paul. 2019. “Analogy and Analogical Reasoning.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/spr2019/entries/reasoning-analogy/. Barthélemy, Dominique. 2009 [1997]. The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian. Cornell University Press. Bathelt, Harald and Johannes Glückler. 2003. “Toward a Relational Economic Geography.” Journal of Economic Geography 3 (2):117–144. Bathelt, Harald and Peng-Fei Li. 2014. “Evolutionary Economic Geography and Relational Geography.” In Handbook of Regional Science, edited by Manfred M. Fischer and Peter Nijkamp. Springer.

364

References

Baumann, Rainer and Klaus Dingwerth. 2015. “Global Governance vs Empire: Why World Order Moves towards Heterarchy and Hierarchy.” Journal of International Relations and Development 18 (1):104–128. Baur, Nina and Stefanie Ernst. 2011. “Towards a Process-Oriented Methodology: Modern Social Science Research Methods and Norbert Elias’s Figurational Sociology.” The Sociological Review 59 (S1):117–139. Beach, Derek. 2013. “Taking Mechanisms Seriously?” European Political Science 12 (1):13–15. Beach, Derek. 2015. “Liberal International Relations Theory and EU Foreign Policy.” In The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Policy, edited by Knud Erik Jorgensen et al. SAGE Publishers. Beach, Derek. 2020. “Multi-Method Research in the Social Sciences: A Review of Recent Frameworks and a Way Forward.” Government and Opposition 55 (1):163–182. Beach, Derek and Rasmus Brun Pedersen. 2019. Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines. 2nd ed. University of Michigan Press. Beardsley, Kyle et al. 2020. “Hierarchy and the Provision of Order in International Politics.” The Journal of Politics 82 (2):731–746. Beattie, J. H. M. 1964. “Kinship and Social Anthropology.” Man 64 (4):101–103. Beauchamp, Tom L. and Alexander Rosenberg. 1981. Hume and the Problem of Causation. Oxford University Press. Bechtel, William. 2011. “Mechanism and Biological Explanation.” Philosophy of Science 78 (4):533–557. Bechtel, William. 2016. “Mechanists Must be Holists Too! Perspectives from Circadian Biology.” Journal of the History of Biology 49 (4):705–731. Bechtel, William. 2017a. “Diagrammatic Reasoning.” In Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science, edited by Lorenzo Magnani and Tomasso Bertolotti. Springer. Bechtel, William. 2017b. “Explicating Top-Down Causation Using Networks and Dynamics.” Philosophy of Science 84 (2):253–274. Bechtel, William. 2017c. “Systems Biology: Negotiating between Holism and Reductionism.” In Philosophy of Systems Biology: Perspectives from Scientists and Philosophers, edited by Sara Green. Springer. Bechtel, William and Adele Abrahamsen. 2005. “Explanation: A Mechanist Alternative.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36:421–441. Bechtel, William and Robert C. Richardson. 1992. “Emergent Phenomena and Complex Systems.” In Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism, edited by Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr, and Jaegwon Kim. Walter de Gruyter. Bechtel, William and Robert C. Richardson. 2010. Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research. MIT Press. Becker, Heike. 2003. “The Least Sexist Society? Perspectives on Gender, Change and Violence among Southern African San.” Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (1):5–23. Bedau, Mark A. 1997. “Weak Emergence.” Noûs 31:375–399. Bedau, Mark A. 2002. “Downward Causation and the Autonomy of Weak Emergence.” Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 6 (1):5–50.

References

365

Bedau, Mark A. and Paul Humphreys, eds. 2008. Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. MIT Press. Beebee, Helen. 2006. Hume on Causation. Routledge. Begon, Michael and Colin R. Townsend. 2021. Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems. 5th ed. John Wiley & Sons. Behnke, Nathalie, Jörg Broschek, and Jared Sonnicksen, eds. 2019. Configurations, Dynamics and Mechanisms of Multilevel Governance. Palgrave Macmillan. Beik, William, ed. 2000. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s. Beik, William. 2005. “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration.” Past & Present 188:195–224. Beldade, Patrícia and Antónia Monteiro. 2021. “Eco-Evo-Devo Advances with Butterfly Eyespots.” Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 69:6–13. Bell, Martin. 2008. “Hume on Causation.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hume, 2nd ed., edited by David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Taylor. Cambridge University Press. Belmonte, Rosalba and Philip G. Cerny. 2021. “Heterarchy: Toward Paradigm Shift in World Politics.” Journal of Political Power 14 (1):235–257. Bendix, Reinhard. 1977 [1960]. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. University of California Press. Benedict, Philip. 1992. “French Cities from the Sixteenth Century to the Revolution: An Overview.” In Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, edited by Philip Benedict. Routledge Bengtsson, Bo and Hannu Ruonavaara. 2017. “Comparative Process Tracing: Making Historical Comparison Structured and Focused.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (1):44–66. Bennett, Andrew. 2010. “Process Tracing and Causal Inference.” In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed., edited by Henry E. Brady and David Collier. Rowman & Littlefield. Bennett, Andrew. 2013. “The Mother of All Isms: Causal Mechanisms and Structured Pluralism in International Relations Theory.” European Journal of International Relations 19 (3):459–481. Bennett, Andrew and Jeffrey T. Checkel, eds. 2015a. Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytical Tool. Cambridge University Press. Bennett, Andrew and Jeffrey T. Checkel. 2015b. “Process Tracing: From Philosophical Roots to Best Practices.” In Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytical Tool, edited by Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel. Cambridge University Press. Berenskoetter, Felix. 2011. “Reclaiming the Vision Thing: Constructivists as Students of the Future.” International Studies Quarterly 55 (3):647–668. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Doubleday. Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M. van den and Sigrid Stagl. 2003. “Coevolution of Economic Behaviour and Institutions: Towards a Theory of Institutional Change.” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 13 (3):289–317. Berling, Trine Villumsen. 2015. The International Political Sociology of Security: Rethinking Theory and Practice. Routledge. Bernard, Luther Lee and Jessie Bernard. 1934. Sociology and the Study of International Relations. Washington University.

366

References

Bertolaso, Marta. 2017. “A Systems Approach to Cancer: From Things to Relations.” In Philosophy of Systems Biology: Perspectives from Scientists and Philosophers, edited by Sara Green. Springer. Bertolaso, Marta and John Dupré. 2018. “A Processual Perspective on Cancer.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Betts, Matthew W., Mari Hardenberg, and Ian Stirling. 2015. “How Animals Create Human History: Relational Ecology and the Dorset–Polar Bear Connection.” American Antiquity 80 (1):89–112. Bickhard, Mark H. 2004. “Process and Emergence: Normative Function and Representation.” Axiomathes 14 (3):121–155. Bickhard, Mark H. 2011. “Some Consequences (and Enablings) of Process Metaphysics.” Axiomathes 21 (1):3–32. Biesele, Megan and Kxao Royal-/o/oo. 1999. “The Ju/’hoansi of Botswana and Namibia.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Biggiero, Luccio et al., eds. 2022. The Relational View of Economics: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Relational Transactions. Springer. Bigo, Didier. 2011. “Pierre Bourdieu and International Relations: Power of Practices, Practices of Power.” International Political Sociology 5 (2):225–258. Binford, Lewis R. 1980. “Willow Smoke and Dogs Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation.” American Antiquity 45 (1):4–20. Bird, Alexander. 2018. “Thomas Kuhn.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/ entries/thomas-kuhn/. Bird-David, Nurit. 1992. “Beyond ‘The Original Affluent Society’: A Culturalist Reformulation.” Current Anthropology 33 (1):25–34. Bird-David, Nurit. 1994. “Sociality and Immediacy: Or, Past and Present Conversations on Bands.” Man 29 (3):583–603. Birmingham, David. 1995. The Decolonization of Africa. UCL Press. Birmingham, David. 2018. A Concise History of Portugal. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press. Black, Anthony. 1998. “Popes and Councils.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Black, Jeremy. 1991. A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society, 1550–1800. Humanities Press. Black, Jeremy. 2010. A History of Diplomacy. Reaktion Books. Black, Jeremy. 2011. Beyond the Military Revolution: War in the Seventeenth Century World. Palgrave Macmillan. Blackmore, H. 2021. “The Seven Themes of Heterarchy: Reviewing a 75-YearOld Concept and Suggestions for Further Development.” Cybernetics and Human Knowing 28 (1–2):11–29. Blagden, David. 2021. “Uneven and Combined Development: Convergence Realism in Communist Regalia?” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 34 (2):250–266. Blaney, David L. and Tamara A. Trownsell. 2021. “Recrafting International ̇ ¸kiler Dergisi 18 (70):45–62. Relations by Worlding Multiply.” Uluslararası I lis

References

367

Blau, Peter M. 1977. Inequality and Heterogeneity: A Primitive Theory of Social Structure. The Free Press. Blockmans, Wim. 1978. “A Typology of Representative Institutions in Late Medieval Europe.” Journal of Medieval History 4 (2):189–215. Blockmans, Wim. 1997. A History of Power in Europe: Peoples, Markets, States. Fonds Mercator. Blockmans, Wim. 1998. “Representation (Since the Thirteenth Century).” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Blockmans, Wim. 2002. Emperor Charles V, 1500–1558. Arnold. Blokhuis, Alex, David Lacoste, and Philippe Nghe. 2020. “Universal Motifs and the Diversity of Autocatalytic Systems.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (41):25230–25236. Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. 1988 [1982]. The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. University of Pennsylvania Press. Blumenthal, Uta-Renate. 2004. “The Papacy, 1024–1122.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 4 c. 1024–c. 1198, Part II, edited by David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith. Cambridge University Press. Bluntschli, Johann Caspar. 1874. Le droit international codifié. 2nd ed. Librairie de Guillaumin et cie. Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Harvard University Press. Boggs, Jeffrey S. and Norma M. Rantisi. 2003. “The ‘Relational Turn’ in Economic Geography.” Journal of Economic Geography 3:109–116. Bonnassie, Pierre. 2009 [1985]. From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Western Europe. Cambridge University Press. Bonney, Richard. 1978. “The French Civil War, 1649–53.” European History Quarterly 8:71–100. Bonney, Richard. 1979. “The Failure of the French Revenue Farms, 1600–60.” The Economic History Review 32 (1):11–32. Bonney, Richard. 1981. “Cardinal Mazarin and the Great Nobility during the Fronde.” The English Historical Review 96 (381):818–833. Bonney, Richard. 2014. The Thirty Years’ War 1618–1648. Bloomsbury Publishing. Boogerd, Fred C. et al. 2005. “Emergence and Its Place in Nature: A Case Study of Biochemical Networks.” Synthese 145 (1):131–164. Boorse, Christopher. 1976. “Wright on Functions.” The Philosophical Review 85 (1):70–86. Booth, Ken. 1991. “Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice.” International Affairs 67 (3):527–545. Booth, Ken. 2007. Theory of World Security. Cambridge University Press. Borgatti, Stephen P. et al. 2009. “Network Analysis in the Social Sciences.” Science 323 (5916):892–895. Bossenga, Gail. 1991. The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille. Cambridge University Press. Bossenga, Gail. 2012. “Estates, Orders, and Corps.” In The Oxford Handbook of The Ancien Régime, edited by William Doyle. Oxford University Press.

368

References

Bossuet, Jacques. 1999 [1707]. Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture. Cambridge University Press. Bouchard, Frédéric. 2013. “What Is a Symbiotic Superindividual and How Do You Measure Its Fitness?” In From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality, edited by Frédéric Bouchard and Philippe Huneman. MIT Press. Bouchard, Frédéric. 2018. “Symbiosis, Transcient Biological Individuality, and Evolutionary Processes.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Boudon, Raymond. 1998. “Social Mechanisms without Black Boxes.” In Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, edited by Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg. Cambridge University Press. Boulding, Kenneth E. 1962. Conflict and Defense: A General Theory. Harper Torchbooks. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977 [1972]. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1996 [1989]. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1993. “From Ruling Class to Field of Power: An Interview with Pierre Bourdieu on La noblesse d’État.” Theory, Culture and Society 10 (1):19–44. Bourgeois, Yann et al. 2021. “Balancing Selection for Pathogen Resistance Reveals an Intercontinental Signature of Red Queen Coevolution.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 38 (11):4918–4933. Bourrat, Pierrick. 2021. Facts, Conventions, and the Levels of Selection. Cambridge University Press. Bourrat, Pierrick and Paul E. Griffiths. 2018. “Multispecies Individuals.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40 (2):1–23. Bousquet, Antoine. 2017. “A Revolution in Military Affairs? Changing Technologies and Changing Practices of Warfare.” In Technology and World Politics: An Introduction, edited by Daniel R. McCarthy. Routledge. Bousquet, Antoine and Simon Curtis. 2011. “Beyond Models and Metaphors: Complexity Theory, Systems Thinking, and International Relations.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21 (1):43–62. Bowden, Brett. 2009. The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea. University of Chicago Press. Bowman, Isaiah. 1921. The New World: Problems in Political Geography. World Book Company. Bowman, Isaiah. 1930. International Relations. American Library Associations. Brady, Ciaran. 1991. “The Decline of the Irish Kingdom.” In Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, edited by Mark Greengrass. Edward Arnold. Brady, Henry E. 2008. “Causation and Explanation in Social Science.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, edited by Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady, and David Collier. Oxford University Press.

References

369

Brailsford, Henry Noel. 1917 [1914]. The War of Steel and Gold: A Study of Armed Peace. G. Bell and Sons. Brandon, Robert N. 1982. “The Levels of Selection.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982 (1):315–323. Brandon, Robert N. 1999. “The Units of Selection Revisited: The Modules of Selection.” Biology and Philosophy 14 (2):167–180. Braumoeller, Bear F. 2012. The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empirical Perspective. Cambridge University Press. Braun, Benjamin, Sebastian Schindler, and Tobias Wille. 2019. “Rethinking Agency in International Relations: Performativity, Performances and ActorNetworks.” Journal of International Relations and Development 22:787–807. Brewer, John. 1990 [1988]. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783. Harvard University Press. Brigg, Morgan. 2018. “Beyond the Thrall of the State: Governance as a Relational-Affective Effect in Solomon Islands.” Cooperation and Conflict 53 (2):154–172. Briggs, Robin. 1977. Early Modern France 1560–1715. Oxford University Press. Brillouin, L. 1950. “Thermodynamics and Information Theory.” American Scientist 38 (4):594–599. Brillouin, L. 1951. “Maxwell’s Demon Cannot Operate: Information and Entropy. I.” Journal of Applied Physics 22 (3):334–337. Brillouin, L. 1953. “The Negentropy Principle of Information.” Journal of Applied Physics 24 (9):1152–1163. Brillouin, L. 1962. Science and Information Theory. 2nd ed. Dover Publications. Brockhurst, Michael A. et al. 2014. “Running with the Red Queen: The Role of Biotic Conflicts in Evolution.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281 (1797):20141382. Brodie, Bernard. 1959. Strategy in the Missile Age. Princeton University Press. Brodie, Bernard. 1973. War and Politics. Macmillan. Bromley, Simon. 2004. “International Politics: States, Anarchy, and Governance.” In Making the International: Economic Interdependence and Political Order, edited by Simon Bromley, Maureen Mackintosh, and William Brown. Pluto Press. Brooks, Daniel S. 2021. “Levels of Organization as Tool and Doctrine in Biology.” In Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences, edited by Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. MIT Press. Brooks, Daniel S., James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. 2021a. “Introduction. Levels of Organization: The Architecture of the Scientific Image.” In Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences, edited by Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. MIT Press. Brooks, Daniel S., James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt, eds. 2021b. Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences. MIT Press. Brooks, Stephen G., G. John Ikenberry, and William Wohlforth. 2012. “Don’t Come Home Again, America: The Case against Retrenchment.” International Security 37 (3):7–51. Brown, Bill. 2020. “Re-Assemblage (Theory, Practice, Mode).” Critical Inquiry 46 (2):259–303. Brown, Chris. 2012. “The ‘Practice Turn’, Phronesis and Classical Realism: Towards a Phronetic International Political Theory?” Millennium 40 (3):439–456.

370

References

Brown, Keith M., Roland Tanner, and Alastair J. Mann, eds. 2004. The History of the Scottish Parliament, Volume I: Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235– 1560. Edinburgh University Press. Brown, Keith M., Roland Tanner, and Alastair J. Mann, eds. 2005. The History of the Scottish Parliament, Volume II: Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1567– 1707. Edinburgh University Press. Brown, Michael E. et al., eds. 2000. Rational Choice and Security Studies: Stephen Walt and His Critics. MIT Press. Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds. 1995. The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security. MIT Press. Brown, Philip Marshall. 1923. International Society: Its Nature and Interests. The Macmillan Company. Brown, Warren C. 2001. Violence in Medieval Europe. Longman. Bruce, A. P. 1980. The Purchase System in the British Army, 1660–1871. Royal Historical Society. Bruun, Hans Hendrik and Same Whimster, eds. 2012. Max Weber: Collected Methodological Writings. Routledge. Bryant, Levi R. 2011. The Democracy of Objects. Open Humanities Press. Bryce, James. 1922. International Relations. Macmillan Co. Buchanan, Ian. 2020. Assemblage Theory and Method. Bloomsbury Academic. Bucher, Bernd. 2017. “Moving beyond the Substantialist Foundations of the Agency-Structure Dichotomy: Figurational Thinking in International Relations.” Journal of International Relations and Development 20 (2):408–433. Bucholz, Robert and Newton Key. 2009. Early Modern England 1485–1714: A Narrative History. 2nd ed. Wiley. Buckley, Walter Frederick. 1967. Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Prentice-Hall. Buckley, Walter Frederick, ed. 1968. Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook. Aldine Publishing Company. Bueger, Christian. 2014. “Pathways to Practice: Praxiography and International Politics.” European Political Science Review 6 (3):383–406. Bueger, Christian. 2016a. “Doing Europe: Agency and the European Union in the Field of Counter-Piracy Practice.” European Security 25 (4):407–422. Bueger, Christian. 2016b. “Security as Practice.” In Routledge Handbook of Security Studies, 2nd ed., edited by Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Thierry Balzacq. Routledge. Bueger, Christian. 2018. “Territory, Authority, Expertise: Global Governance and the Counter-Piracy Assemblage.” European Journal of International Relations 24 (3):614–637. Bueger, Christian and Frank Gadinger. 2015. “The Play of International Practice.” International Studies Quarterly 59 (3):449–460. Bueger, Christian and Frank Gadinger. 2018. International Practice Theory. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan. Buell, Raymond Leslie. 1925. International Relations. H. Holt. Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1981. The War Trap. Yale University Press. Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. Columbia University Press. Bunge, Mario. 1960. “Levels: A Semantic Preliminary.” Review of Metaphysics 13 (3):396–406.

References

371

Bunge, Mario. 1979. A World of Systems (Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Volume 4, Ontology II). D. Reidel. Bunge, Mario. 1982. “Is Chemistry a Branch of Physics?” Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 13 (2):209–223. Bunge, Mario. 1992. “Systems Everywhere.” In Cybernetics and Applied Systems, edited by Constantin Virgil Negoita. CRC Press. Bunge, Mario. 1997. “Mechanism and Explanation.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (4):410–465. Bunge, Mario. 2000. “Systemism: The Alternative to Individualism and Holism.” The Journal of Socio-Economics 29 (2):147–157. Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. Burke, Roland. 2010. Decolonization and Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press. Burt, Ronald S. 2005. Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital. Oxford University Press. Burton, John W. 1965. International Relations: A General Theory. Cambridge University Press. Burton, John W. 1972. World Society. Cambridge University Press. Bush, Michael. 1983. Noble Privilege. Manchester University Press. Butcher, Charles and Ryan Griffiths. 2021. “War, Interaction Capacity, and the Structures of State Systems.” International Theory 13 (2):372–396. Butcher, Charles and Ryan D. Griffiths. 2022. “Toward a Theory of Heteronomy.” International Studies Quarterly 66 (1):1–9. Butler, Nicholas Murray. 1912. The International Mind: An Argument for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Butterfield, Herbert. 1950. Christianity and History. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Butterfield, Herbert and Martin Wight, eds. 1966. Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics. Harvard University Press. Buzan, Barry. 1984. “Peace, Power, and Security: Contending Concepts in the Study of International Relations.” Journal of Peace Research 21 (2):109–125. Buzan, Barry. 1995. “The Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations Reconsidered.” In International Relations Theory Today, edited by Ken Booth and Steve Smith. Pennsylvania State University Press. Buzan, Barry. 2004. From International Society to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization. Cambridge University Press. Buzan, Barry and Mathias Albert. 2010. “Differentiation: A Sociological Approach to International Relations Theory.” European Journal of International Relations 16 (3):315–337. Buzan, Barry, Charles A. Jones, and Richard Little. 1993. The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism. Columbia University Press. Buzan, Barry and George Lawson. 2015. The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Buzan, Barry and Richard Little. 2000. International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations. Oxford University Press. Buzan, Barry and Laust Schouenborg. 2018. Global International Society: A New Framework for Analysis. Cambridge University Press.

372

References

Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner. Byrne, David and Gillian Callaghan. 2014. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: The State of the Art. Routledge. Calcott, Brett and Kim Sterelny, eds. 2011. The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited. MIT Press. Caldera, Eric J. et al. 2019. “Local Adaptation of Bacterial Symbionts within a Geographic Mosaic of Antibiotic Coevolution.” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 85 (24):e01580–19. Callebaut, Werner and Diego Rasskin-Gutman, eds. 2005. Modularity: Understanding the Development and Evolution of Natural Complex Systems. MIT Press. Cameron, Euan. 2012. The European Reformation. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Campbell, David. 1998. National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia. University of Minneapolis Press. Campbell, Donald T. 1974. “‘Downward Causation’ in Hierarchically Organised Biological Systems.” In Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, edited by Francisco José Ayala and Theodosius Dobzhansky. Palgrave. Campbell, Peter R. 2012. “Absolute Monarchy.” In The Oxford Companion of The Ancien Régime, edited by William Doyle. Oxford University Press. Campbell, Richard J. and Mark H. Bickhard. 2011. “Physicalism, Emergence and Downward Causation.” Axiomathes 21 (1):33–56. Cannon, John. 2007. “The British Nobility, 1660–1800.” In The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Volume I: Western and Southern Europe, 2nd ed., edited by H. M. Scott. Palgrave Macmillan. Canny, Nicholas. 2001. Making Ireland British, 1580–1650. Oxford University Press. Canto-Milà, Natàlia. 2018. “Georg Simmel’s Concept of Forms of Association as an Analytical Tool in Relational Sociology.” In The Plagrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, edited by François Dépelteau. Palgrave Macmillan. Cantry, Nicholas. 1995. “Irish, Scottish and Welsh Responses to Centralisation, c. 1530–c. 1640: A Comparative Perspective.” In Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, edited by Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer. Routledge. Capano, Giliberto and Michael Howlett. 2021. “Causal Logics and Mechanisms in Policy Design: How and Why Adopting a Mechanistic Perspective Can Improve Policy Design.” Public Policy and Administration 36 (2):141–162. Caporael, Linda R., James R. Griesemer, and William C. Wimsatt, eds. 2014. Developing Scaffolds in Evolution, Culture, and Cognition. MIT Press. Capra, Fritjof and Pier Luigi Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge University Press. Carey, Nessa. 2012. The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance. Columbia University Press. Carlborg, Örjan and Chris S. Haley. 2004. “Epistasis: Too Often Neglected in Complex Trait Studies?” Nature Reviews Genetics 5 (8):618–625. Carlsnaes, Walter, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds. 2002. Handbook of International Relations. SAGE Publications.

References

373

Carlsnaes, Walter, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, eds. 2013. Handbook of International Relations. 2nd ed. SAGE Publications. Carnap, Rudolf. 2013 [1934]. The Unity of Science. Routledge. Carpenter, Charli. 2011. “Vetting the Advocacy Agenda: Network Centrality and the Paradox of Weapons Norms.” International Organization 65 (1):69–102. Carpenter, Christine. 1997. The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c.1437–1509. Cambridge University Press. Carr, Edward Hallett. 1964 [1946]. The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. 2d ed. Harper Collins. Carroll, John W. 2016. “Laws of Nature.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward M. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/ laws-of-nature/. Carsten, F. L. 1959. Princes and Parliaments in Germany: From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. The Clarendon Press. Carter, Bob and Oliver J. T. Harris. 2020. “The End of Normal Politics: Assemblages, Non-Humans and International Relations.” In Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and Practice, edited by Joana Castro Pereira and André Saramago. Springer. Cartwright, Nancy. 1983. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Clarendon Press. Cartwright, Nancy. 2014. “Causal Inference.” In Philosophy of Social Science: A New Introduction, edited by Nancy Cartwright and Eleonora Montuschi. Oxford University Press. Cartwright, Nancy and Keith Ward, eds. 2016. Rethinking Order: After the Laws of Nature. Bloomsbury Academic. Cat, Jordi. 2017. “The Unity of Science.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/ entries/scientific-unity/. Cavelty, Myriam Dunn and Mark Daniel Jaeger. 2015. “(In)visible Ghosts in the Machine and the Powers that Bind: The Relational Securitization of Anonymous.” International Political Sociology 9 (2):176–194. Cederman, Lars-Erik. 1994. “Emergent Polarity: Analyzing State-Formation and Power Politics.” International Studies Quarterly 38 (4):501–533. Cerny, Philip G. 2010. Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism. Oxford University Press. Chafer, Tony. 2002. The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization. Berg. Chakravarty, Anjan. 2017. “Scientific Realism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Science, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2017/entries/scientific-realism/. Chalmers, Adam William and Kevin L. Young. 2020. “Network Effects in the Formation of the Financial Industry’s Regulatory Preferences in the European Union.” Business and Politics 22 (1):52–84. Chayes, Abram and Antonia Handler Chayes. 1995. The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements. Harvard University Press. Checkel, Jeffrey T. 2006. “Tracing Causal Mechanisms.” International Studies Review 8 (2):362–370.

374

References

Checkel, Jeffrey T. 2015. “Mechanisms, Process, and the Study of International Institutions.” In Process Tracing: From Meatphor to Analytical Tool, edited by Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel. Cambridge University Press. Chevalier, Bernard. 1998. “The Recovery of France, 1450–1520.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambrdige University Press. Cheverud, James M. 1996. “Developmental Integration and the Evolution of Pleiotropy.” American Zoologist 36 (1):44–50. Cheverud, James M. 2000. “The Genetic Architecture of Pleiotropic Relations and Differential Epistasis.” In The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, edited by Günter P. Wagner. Academic Press. Cheverud, James M. and Eric J. Routman. 1995. “Epistasis and Its Contribution to Genetic Variance Components.” Genetics 139 (3):1455–1461. Childs, John. 1982. Armies and Warfare in Europe, 1648–1789. Manchester University Press. Chipman, Ariel D. 2021. “Developmental Exaptation.” In Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide, edited by Laura Nuño de la Rosa and Gerd B. Müller. Springer. Chodorow, Stanley. 1972. Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century: The Ecclesiology of Gratian’s Decretum. University of California Press. Christov, Theodore. 2005. “Liberal Internationalism Revisited: Grotius, Vattel, and the International Order of States.” The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 10 (6):561–584. Christov, Theodore. 2017. “The Invention of Hobbesian Anarchy.” Journal of International Political Theory 13 (3):296–310. Churchland, Paul M. and Clifford Hooker, eds. 1985. Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism. University of Chicago Press. Cineda, Ion. 2006. “Complex Systems: New Conceptual Tools for International Relations.” Perspectives (26):46–68. Clapton, William. 2014. Risk and Hierarchy in International Society: Liberal Interventionism in the Post-Cold War Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Clark, Ian. 2011. Hegemony in International Society. Oxford University Press. Clark, Samuel. 1995. State and Status: The Rise of the State and Aristocratic Power in Western Europe. McGill-Queens University Press. Clarke, Ellen. 2010. “The Problem of Biological Individuality.” Biological Theory 5 (4):312–325. Clarke, Killian and Korhan Kocak. 2020. “Launching Revolution: Social Media and the Egyptian Uprising’s First Movers.” British Journal of Political Science 50 (3):1025–1045. Clastres, Pierre. 1972. “The Guayaki.” In Hunters and Gatherers Today: A Socioeconomic Study of Eleven Such Cultures in the Twentieth Century, edited by M. G. Bicchieri. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Clastres, Pierre. 1977 [1974]. Society Against the State: The Leader as Servant and the Humane Use of Power among the Indians of the Americas. Urizen Books. Clastres, Pierre. 1998 [1972]. Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians. Zone Books. Claude, Inis L. 1962. Power and International Relations. Random House. Clayton, Anthony. 2014 [1996]. The Wars of French Decolonization. Routledge.

References

375

Cochran, Molly. 2001. “What Does it Mean to Be an American Social Science? A Pragmatist Case for Diversity in International Relations.” In International Relations – Still an American Social Science? Toward Diversity in International Thought, edited by Robert M. A. Crawford and David S. L. Jarvis. State University of New York Press. Cochran, Molly. 2002. “Deweyan Pragmatism and Post-Positivist Social Science in IR.” Millennium 31 (3):525–548. Cochran, Molly. 2012. “Pragmatism and International Relations: A Story of Closure and Opening.” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 4 (IV-1). 10.4000/ejpap.777. Cohen, Saul Bernard. 2009. Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations. Rowman & Littlefield. Colas, Alejandro. 2016. “Barbary Coast in the Expansion of International Society: Piracy, Privateering, and Corsairing as Primary Institutions.” Review of International Studies 42 (5):840–857. Coleman, James S. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press. Collar, Anna et al. 2015. “Networks in Archaeology: Phenomena, Abstraction, Representation.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 22 (1):1–32. Collier, David. 2011. “Understanding Process Tracing.” PS: Political Science & Politics 44 (4):823–830. Collier, David, Henry E. Brady, and Jason Seawright. 2010. “Introduction to the Second Edition.” In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed., edited by Henry E. Brady and David Collier. Rowman & Littlefield. Collier, Jamie. 2018. “Cyber Security Assemblages: A Framework for Understanding the Dynamic and Contested Nature of Security Provision.” Politics and Governance 6 (2):13–21. Collins, James B. 1994. Classes, Estates, and Order in Early Modern Brittany. Cambridge University Press. Collins, James B. 1995. The State in Early Modern France. Cambridge University Press. Colyvas, Jeannette A. and Spiro Maroulis. 2012. “Academic Laboratories and the Reproduction of Proprietary Science: Modeling Organizational Rules through Auutocatalytic Networks.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Conca Messina, Silvia A. 2019 [2016]. A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe. Routledge. Connelly, Brian D. et al. 2016. “Negative Niche Construction Favors the Evolution of Cooperation.” Evolutionary Ecology 30 (2):267–283. Connolly, S. J. 2008. Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630–1800. Oxford University Press. Contamine, Phillipe. 1984 [1980]. War in the Middle Ages. Blackwell. Copeland, Dale. 2003. “A Realist Critique of the English School.” Review of International Studies 29 (3):427–441. Copeland, Dale. 2012. “Realism and Neorealism in the Study of Regional Conflict.” In International Relations Theory and Regional Transformation, edited by T. V. Paul. Cambridge University Press. Cordell, Heather J. 2002. “Epistasis: What It Means, What It Doesn’t Mean, and Statistical Methods to Detect It in Humans.” Human Molecular Genetics 11 (20):2463–2468.

376

References

Cordes, Christian. 2006. “Darwinism in Economics: From Analogy to Continuity.” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 16 (5):529–541. Corvisier, André. 1979 [1976]. Armies and Societies in Europe, 1494–1789. University of Indiana Press. Costa-Buranelli, Filippo. 2015. “‘Do You Know What I Mean?’ ‘Not Exactly’: English School, Global International Society and the Polysemy of Institutions.” Global Discourse 5 (3):499–514. Costa, Fernando Dores. 2021. “Was There an Early Modern Military Revolution in Mainland Portugal?” In The First World Empire: Portugal, War, and Military Revolution, edited by Hélder Carvalhal, André Murteira, and Roger Lee de Jesus. Routledge. Costa Buranelli, Filippo. 2020. “Standard of Civilization, Nomadism and Territoriality in Nineteenth-Century International Society.” In Nomad-State Relationships in International Relations: Before and after Borders, edited by Jamie Levin. Palgrave Macmillan. Costello, Elizabeth K. et al. 2012. “The Application of Ecological Theory towards an Understanding of the Human Microbiome.” Science 336 (6086):1255–1262. Côté-Boucher, Karine, Federica Infantino, and Mark B. Salter. 2014. “Border Security as Practice: An Agenda for Research.” Security Dialogue 45 (3):195–208. Coward, Barry. 2002. The Cromwellian Protectorate. Manchester University Press. Cowdrey, H. E. J. 1998. Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085. Clarendon Press. Cox, Kevin R., Murray Low, and Jennifer Robinson, eds. 2009. The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography. SAGE Publications. Cox, Robert W. 1981. “Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory.” Millennium 10 (2):126–155. Cox, Robert W. 1996. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press. Crang, Mike and Nigel Thrift. 2000. Thinking Space. Routledge. Craver, Carl F. 2001. “Role Functions, Mechanisms, and Hierarchy.” Philosophy of Science 68 (1):53–74. Craver, Carl F. 2006. “When Mechanistic Models Explain.” Synthese 153 (3):355–376. Craver, Carl F. 2015. “Levels and Emergence.” In Open MIND: 8(R), edited by Thomas K. Metzinger and Jennifer M. Windt. MIND Group. Craver, Carl F. 2016. “The Explanatory Power of Network Models.” Philosophy of Science 83 (5):698–709. Craver, Carl F. and Lindley Darden. 2013. In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences. University of Chicago Press. Craver, Carl F. and Marie I. Kaiser. 2013. “Mechanisms and Laws: Clarifying the Debate.” In Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, edited by Ksiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen, and Roberta L. Millstein. Springer. Craver, Carl F. and David M. Kaplan. 2020. “Are More Details Better? On the Norms of Completeness for Mechanistic Explanations.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1):287–319. Craver, Carl F. and James Tabery. 2019. “Mechanisms in Science.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/sum2019/entries/science-mechanisms/.

References

377

Craver, Carl F. et al. 2020. “Gloomy Prospects and Roller Coasters: Finding Coherence in Genome-Wide Association Studies.” Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1084–1095. Crawford, Neta. 2002. Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge University Press. Creath, Richard. 2022. “Logical Empiricism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2022/entries/logical-empiricism. Cronin, Bruce. 1999. Community under Anarchy: Transnational Identity and the Evolution of Cooperation. Columbia University Press. Crossley, Nick. 2011. Towards Relational Sociology. Routledge. Crossley, Nick. 2013. “Interactions, Juxtapositions, and Tastes: Conceptualizing ‘Relations’ in Relational Sociology.” In Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, edited by Christopher Powell and François Dépelteau. Palgrave Macmillan. Crumley, Carole L. 1987. “Celtic Settlement before the Conquest: The Dialectics of Landscape and Power.” In Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective, edited by Carole L. Crumley and William H. Marquardt. Academic Press. Crumley, Carole L. 2005. “Remember How to Organize: Heterarchy across Disciplines.” In Nonlinear Models for Archaeology and Anthropology: Continuing the Revolution, edited by Christopher S. Beekman and William W. Baden. Ashgate. Cudworth, Erika and Stephen Hobden. 2013. “Complexity, Ecologism, and Posthuman Politics.” Review of International Studies 39 (3):643–664. Cui, Shunji and Barry Buzan. 2016. “Great Power Management in International Society.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 9 (2):181–210. Cummins, Robert. 1975. “Functional Analysis.” Journal of Philosophy 72 (20):741–765. Curry, Dion. 2006. “Relations Revisited: A Nuanced Approach to Multilevel Governance.” CEU Political Science Journal 5:77–93. Damiano, Luisa and Pier Luigi Luisi. 2010. “Towards an Autopoietic Redefinition of Life.” Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 40 (2):145–149. Darden, Lindley. 2002. “Strategies for Discovering Mechanisms: Schema Instantiation, Modular Subassembly, Forward/Backward Chaining.” Philosophy of Science 69 (S3):S354–S365. Darden, Lindley. 2008. “Thinking Again about Biological Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 75 (5):958–969. Darden, Lindley. 2013. “Mechanisms versus Causes in Biology and Medicine.” In Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics, edited by Ksiang-Ke Chao, Szu-Ting Chen, and Roberta L. Millstein. Springer. Daugherty, William H. 1993. “System Management and the Endurance of the Concert of Europe.” In Coping with Complexity in the International System, edited by Jack L. Snyder and Robert Jervis. Westview Press. Davenport, Andrew. 2013. “Marxism in IR: Condemned to a Realist Fate?” European Journal of International Relations 19 (1):27–48. Davenport, Andrew. 2020. “Multiplicity: Anarchy in the Mirror of Sociology.” Globalizations 17 (3):532–545.

378

References

Davidson, Eric H. 2001. Genomic Regulatory Systems: Development and Evolution. Academic Press. Davidson, Eric H. 2006. The Regulatory Genome: Gene Regulatory Networks in Development and Evolution. Academic Press. Davies, Lord David. 1940. A Federated Europe. Victor Gollancz Ltd. Davies, Mathew. 2016. “A Community of Practice: Explaining Change and Continuity in ASEAN’s Diplomatic Environment.” The Pacific Review 29 (2):211–233. Davies, Sara E. and Jacqui True, eds. 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Women, Peace, and Security. Oxford University Press. Davison, Dinah R. and Richard E. Michod. 2021. “Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality.” In Phenotypic Plasticity & Evolution: Causes, Consequences, Controversies, edited by David W. Pfennig. CRC Press. Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press. De Keersmaeker, Goedele. 2014. “Polariteit als basisconcept van de Internationale Betrekkingen: theoretische analyse, historische situering en hedendaagse relevantie.” PhD Thesis. Ghent University. De Keersmaeker, Goedele. 2017. Polarity, Balance of Power, and International Relations Theory. Palgrave Macmillan. de Madariaga, Salvador. 1938. The World’s Design. George Allen & Unwin. De Visser, J. Arjan G. M., Tim F. Cooper, and Santiago F. Elena. 2011. “The Causes of Epistasis.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278 (1725):3617–3624. Debray, Eva. 2015. “Evolutionary Economics: A Specific Form of Evolution?” In Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, edited by Thomas Heams et al. Springer DeGarmo, Denise. 2005. International Environmental Treaties and State Behavior: Factors Influencing Cooperation. Routledge. Deitelhoff, Nicole and Christopher Daase. 2021. “Rule and Resistance in Global Governance.” International Theory 13 (1):122–130. Del Treppo, Mario. 1998. “Aragon.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Delaisi, Francis. 1927. Political Myths and Economic Realities. Noel Douglas. DeLanda, Manuel. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum. DeLanda, Manuel. 2016. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987 [1980]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Demetriou, Chares. 2012. “Processual Comparative Sociology: Building on the Approach of Charles Tilly.” Sociological Theory 30 (1):51–65. Demeulenaere, Pierre, ed. 2011. Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms. Cambridge University Press. Denemark, Robert A. 2021. “World-Systems Analysis.” In Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations, edited by Benjamin de Carvalho, Julia Costa Lopez, and Halvard Leira. Routledge. Dépelteau, François. 2013. “Comparing Elias and Bourdieu as Relational Thinkers.” In Norbert Elias and Social Theory, edited by François Dépelteau and Tatiana Savpoia Landini. Palgrave Macmillan.

References

379

Dépelteau, François and Tatiana Savpoia Landini, eds. 2013. Norbert Elias and Social Theory. Palgrave Macmillan. Der Derian, James and Alexander Wendt. 2020. “‘Quantizing International Relations’: The Case for Quantum Approaches to International Theory and Security Practice.” Security Dialogue 51 (5):399–413. Dessler, David. 1989. “What’s at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” International Organization 43 (3):441–474. Deudney, Daniel. 1995. “The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, circa 1787– 1861.” International Organization 49 (2):191–228. Deudney, Daniel. 2007. Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. Princeton University Press. Deudney, Daniel and G. John Ikenberry. 1999. “The Nature and Sources of Liberal International Order.” Review of International Studies 25 (2):179–196. Deutsch, Karl W. 1953. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Wiley. Deutsch, Karl W. 1957. Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience. Princeton University Press. Deutsch, Karl W. 1963. The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control. The Free Press. Deutsch, Karl W. 1968. The Analysis of International Relations. Prentice-Hall. Deutsch, Karl W. and J. David Singer. 1964. “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability.” World Politics 16 (3):390–406. Dewald, Jonathan. 1996. The European Nobility, 1400–1800. Cambridge University Press. Dewey, John. 1925. Experience and Nature. Open Court Publishing Company. Di Floristella, Angela Pennisi. 2015. The ASEAN Regional Security Partnership: Strengths and Limits of a Cooperative System. Palgrave Macmillan. Dickinson, Edwin DeWitt. 1920a. The Equality of States in International Law. Harvard University Press. Dickinson, G. Lowes. 1917 [1916]. The European Anarchy. The Macmillan Company. Dickinson, G. Lowes. 1920b. Causes of International War. Swathmore Press. Dickinson, G. Lowes. 1926. The International Anarchy, 1904–1914. The Century Company. Difrisco, James. 2018. “Biological Processes: Criteria of Identity and Persistence.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Difrisco, James and Johannes Jaeger. 2019. “Beyond Networks: Mechanism and Process in Evo-Devo.” Biology & Philosophy 34 (6):1–24. Dillon Savage, Jesse 2021. “Common-Pool Hierarchy: Explaining the Emergence of Cooperative Hierarchies.” International Studies Quarterly 65 (3):712–723. Dittmer, Jason. 2015. “Everyday Diplomacy: UK-USA Intelligence Cooperation and Geopolitical Assemblages.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (3):604–619. Dixon, Peter and Chris Tenove. 2013. “International Criminal Justice as a Transnational Field: Rules, Authority and Victims.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 7 (3):393–412.

380

References

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1951 [1937]. Genetics and the Origin of Species. 3rd ed. Columbia University Press. Dodds, Klaus. 2014. Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Dombrowski, Peter. 1998. “Haute Finance and High Theory: Recent Scholarship on Global Financial Relations.” Mershon International Studies Review 42 (1):1–28. Domingo, Júlia, Pablo Baeza-Centurion, and Ben Lehner. 2019. “The Causes and Consequences of Genetic Interactions (Epistasis).” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 20 (1):433–460. Donati, Pierpaolo. 2011. Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences. Routledge. Donati, Pierpaolo and Margaret S. Archer. 2015. The Relational Subject. Cambridge University Press. Donnelly, Jack. 1998. “Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?” International Affairs 74 (1):1–24. Donnelly, Jack. 2006. “Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society.” European Journal of International Relations 12 (2):139–170. Donnelly, Jack. 2009. “Rethinking Political Structures: From ‘Ordering Principles’ to ‘Vertical Differentiation’ – and Beyond.” International Theory 1 (1):49–86. Donnelly, Jack. 2012. “The Elements of the Structures of International Systems.” International Organization 66 (4):609–643. Donnelly, Jack. 2013. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Cornell University Press. Donnelly, Jack. 2015. “Normative versus Taxonomic Humanity: Varieties of Human Dignity in the Western Tradition.” Journal of Human Rights 14 (1):1–22. Dorussen, Han, Erik A. Gartzke, and Oliver Westerwinter. 2016. “Networked International Politics: Complex Interdependence and the Diffusion of Conflict and Peace.” Journal of Peace Research 53 (3):283–291. Dosi, Giovanni and Richard R. Nelson. 1994. “An Introduction to Evolutionary Theories in Economics.” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 4 (3):153–172. Dougherty, James and William Pfaltzgraff Jr. 1971. Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey. Lippincott. Dougherty, James and William Pfaltzgraff Jr. 1981. Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey. 2nd ed. Harper & Row. Dougherty, James and William Pfaltzgraff Jr. 1990. Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey. 3rd ed. Harper & Row. Dougherty, James and William Pflatzgraff Jr. 1997. Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey. 4th ed. Harper & Row. Downing, Brian M. 1992. The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe. Princeton University Press. Doyle, Michael W. 1983. “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (3):205–235. Doyle, Michael W. 1986a. Empires. Cornell University Press. Doyle, William. 1986b. The Ancien Regime. Humanities Press.

References

381

Doyle, William. 1992. The Old European Order, 1660–1800. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. Doyle, William. 1996. Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France. Clarendon Press. Doyle, William, ed. 2012. The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime. Oxford University Press. Drago, Antonino. 2020. “A New Definition of Reduction between Two Scientific Theories: No Reduction of Chemistry to Quantum Mechanics.” Foundations of Chemistry 22 (3):421–445. Druzin, Bryan H. 2014. “Opening the Machinery of Private Order: Public International Law as a Form of Private Ordering.” Saint Louis University Law Journal 58 (2):423–466. Druzin, Bryan H. 2021. “Can the Liberal Order Be Sustained? Nations, Network Effects, and the Erosion of Global Institutions.” Michigan Journal of International Law 42 (1):1–46. Duarte Villa, Rafael. 2017. “Security Community or Balance of Power? Hybrid Security Governance in Latin America.” In Power Dynamics and Regional Security in Latin America, edited by Marcial A. G. Suarez, Rafael Duarte Villa, and Brigitte Weiffen. Palgrave Macmillan. Duby, Georges. 1980 [1978]. The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined. University of Chicago Press. Duffield, John S. 2001. “Transatlantic Relations after the Cold War: Theory, Evidence, and the Future.” International Studies Perspectives 2 (1):93–115. Duffy, Michael, ed. 1980. The Military Revolution and the State: 1500–1800. University of Exeter, Department of History and Archaeology. Dunn, Frederick Sherwood. 1937. Peaceful Change: A Study of International Procedures. Council on Foreign Relations. Dunn, Frederick Sherwood. 1950. War and the Minds of Men. Council on Foreign Relations. Dunne, Tim, Michael Cox, and Ken Booth, eds. 1998. The Eighty Years’ Crisis: International Relations 1919–1999. Cambridge University Press. Dunne, Tim and Christian Reus-Smit, eds. 2017. The Globalization of International Society. Oxford University Press. Dupré, John. 1995. The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Harvard University Press. Dupré, John. 2020. “Life As Process.” Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 57 (2):96–113. Dupré, John. 2021. “Processes within Processes: A Dynamic Account of Living Beings and Its Implications for Understanding the Human Individual.” In Biological Identity: Perspectives from Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Biology, edited by Anne Sophie Meincke and John Dupré. Routledge. Dupré, John A. and Daniel J. Nicholson. 2018. “A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Duque, Marina G. 2018. “Recognizing International Status: A Relational Approach.” International Studies Quarterly 62 (3):577–592.

382

References

Duran, Manuel. 2022. “Regional Diplomacy: Re-Territorialisation as a Piece in the Neo-Medieval Puzzle?” In Geopolitics and International Relations: Grounding World Politics Anew, edited by David Crieksmans. Brill. Durkheim, Emile. 2013 [1895]. The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Methods. The Free Press. Dutkiewicz, Piotr, Tom Casier, and Jan Arte Scholte, eds. 2021. Hegemony and World Order: Reimagining Power in Global Politics. Routledge. Dyer, Christopher. 1998. “Rural Europe.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Dyson, Freeman. 2004 [1999]. Origins of Life. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Earle, Edward Meade, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, eds. 1943. Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler. Princeton University Press. Easton, David. 1953. The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. Alfred A. Knopf. Easton, David. 1965. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. Wiley. Eckstein, Arthur. 2017. “Thucydides, International Law, and International Anarchy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides, edited by Sara Forsdyke, Edith Foster, and Ryan Balot. Oxford University Press. Eder, James F. 1999. “Batak.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Ehrenreich, Robert M., Carole L. Crumley, and Janet E. Levy, eds. 1995. Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies. American Anthropological Association. Ehrlich, Paul R. and Peter H. Raven. 1964. “Butterflies and Plants: A Study in Coevolution.” Evolution 18 (4):586–608. Eigen, Manfred. 1971. “Self-Organization of Matter and the Evolution of Biological Macromolecules.” Die Naturwissenschaften 58:465–523. Eigen, Manfred and Peter Schuster. 1977. “The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization (Part One).” Die Naturwissenschaften 64:541–565. Eigen, Manfred and Peter Schuster. 1978a. “The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization (Part Three).” Die Naturwissenschaften 65:341–369. Eigen, Manfred and Peter Schuster. 1978b. “The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization (Part Two).” Die Naturwissenschaften 65:7–41. Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette. 2014. “Network Theory and Security Governance.” In Handbook of Governance and Security, edited by James Sperling. Edward Elgar. Eisenstadt, S. N. 1964. “Social Change, Differentiation and Evolution.” American Sociological Review 29 (3):375–386. Eisenstadt, S. N. 1993 [1963]. The Political System of Empires. Transaction Publishers. Elden, Stuart. 2013. The Birth of Territory. University of Chicago Press. Elder-Vass, Dave. 2007a. “For Emergence: Refining Archer’s Account of Social Structure.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (1):25–44. Elder-Vass, Dave. 2007b. “Reconciling Archer and Bourdieu in an Emergentist Theory of Action.” Sociological Theory 25 (4):325–346.

References

383

Elder-Vass, Dave. 2012. “Top-Down Causation and Social Structures.” Interface Focus 2 (1):82–90. Elder-Vass, Dave. 2014. “Social Entities and the Basis of Their Powers.” In Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate, edited by Julie Zahle and Finn Collin. Springer. Eldredge, Niles. 1985. Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern Evolutionary Thought. Oxford University Press. Eldredge, Niles. 1996. “Hierarchies in Macroevolution.” In Evolutionary Paleobiology, edited by James W. Valentine. University of Chicago Press. Eldredge, Niles and Stephen Jay Gould. 1972. “Punctuated Equillibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism.” In Models in Paleobiology, edited by Thomas J. M. Schopf. Feeeman, Cooper. Eldredge, Niles et al., eds. 2016. Evolutionary Theory: A Hierarchical Perspective. University of Chicago Press. Elias, Norbert. 1978. What is Sociology? Columbia University Press. Elias, Norbert. 2000 [1939]. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Rev. ed. Blackwell. Elliott, J. H. 1963. The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain. Cambridge University Press. Elliott, J. H. 1969. “Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern Europe.” Past & Present 42:35–56. Elliott, J. H. 1986. The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline. Yale University Press. Elliott, J. H. 1989. Spain and Its World, 1500–1700. Yale University Press. Elliott, J. H. 1992. “A Europe of Composite Monarchies.” Past & Present 137:48–71. Elliott, J. H. 2002 [1963]. Imperial Spain 1469–1716. Penguin. Elliott, J. H. and L. W. B. Brockliss, eds. 1999. The World of the Favourite. Yale University Press. Elman, Colin and Miriam Fendius Elman. 1997. “Lakatos and Neorealism: A Reply to Vasquez.” American Political Science Review 91 (4):923–926. Elman, Colin and Miriam Fendius Elman, eds. 2003. Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field. MIT Press. Elrod, Richard B. 1976. “The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System.” World Politics 28 (2):159–174. Elster, Jon. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press. Elster, Jon. 2015. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Revised ed. Cambridge University Press. Eltis, David. 1995. The Military Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Europe. I. B. Tauris. Emirbayer, Mustafa. 1997. “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (2):281–317. Emmeche, Claus, Simo Køppe, and Frederik Stjernfelt. 1997. “Explaining Emergence: Towards an Ontology of Levels.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 28 (1):83–117. Emmeche, Claus, Simo Køppe, and Frederik Stjernfelt. 2000. “Levels, Emergence, and Three Versions of Downward Causation.” In Downward Causation: Minds, Bodies and Matter, edited by Peter Bogh Andersen et al. Aarhus University Press.

384

References

Endicott, Karen L. 1999. “Gender Relations in Hunter-Gatherer Societies.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Enloe, Cynthia H. 2001 [1989]. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. University of California Press. Epstein, Gil S. 2008. “Herd and Network Effects in Migration DecisionMaking.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (4):567–583. Epstein, Joshua M. 2006. Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling. Princeton University Press. Epstein, Steven A. 2009. An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000–1500. Cambridge University Press. Ereshefsky, Marc, ed. 1992. The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species. MIT Press. Ereshefsky, Marc and Makmiller Pedroso. 2013. “Biological Individuality: The Case of Biofilms.” Biology & Philosophy 28 (2):331–349. Erikson, Emily and Nicholas Occhiuto. 2017. “Social Networks and Macrosocial Change.” Annual Review of Sociology 43:229–248. Eronen, Markus I. 2021. “Levels, Nests, and Branches: Compositional Organization and Downward Causation in Biology.” In Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences, edited by Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. MIT Press. Eronen, Markus I. and Daniel Stephen Brooks. 2018. “Levels of Organization in Biology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/ levels-org-biology/. Ertman, Thomas. 1997. Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Ertman, Thomas. 2005. “Building States – Inherently a Long-Term Process? An Argument from Comparative History.” In States and Development: Historical Antecedents of Stagnation and Advance, edited by Matthew Lange and Dietrich Rueschemeyer. Palgrave Macmillan. Erwin, Douglas H. 2008. “Macroevolution of Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction and Diversity.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 23 (6):304–310. Falk, Richard. 1975. A Study of Future Worlds. The Free Press. Falkner, Robert and Barry Buzan. 2019. “The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society.” European Journal of International Relations 25 (1):131–155. Falleti, Tulia G. and Julia F. Lynch. 2009. “Context and Causal Mechanisms in Political Analysis.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (9):1143–1166. Faludi, Andreas. 2018. The Poverty of Territorialism: A Neo-Medieval View of Europe and European Planning. Edward Elgar Publishing. Fararo, Thomas J. 2011. “Generative Process Model Building.” In Analytical Sociology and Social Mechanisms, edited by Pierre Demeulenaere. Cambridge University Press. Faude, Benjamin and Felix Groβe-Kreul. 2020. “Let’s Justify! How Regime Complexes Enhance the Normative Legitimacy of Global Governance.” International Studies Quarterly 64 (2):431–439.

References

385

Fehl, Caroline and Katja Freistein. 2020. “Organising Global Stratification: How International Organisations (Re)produce Inequalities in International Society.” Global Society 34 (3):285–303. Feldman, David P. 2019. Chaos and Dynamical Systems. Princeton University Press. Félix, Joël. 2012. “Finances.” In The Oxford Companion of the Ancien Régime, edited by William Doyle. Oxford University Press. Fenwick, Charles G. 1934. International Law. 2nd ed. D. Appleton-Century Company. Ferguson, Yale H. and Richard W. Mansbach. 1988. The Elusive Quest: Theory and International Politics. University of South Carolina Press. Ferguson, Yale H. and Richard W. Mansbach. 1996. Polities: Authority, Identities, and Change. University of South Carolina Press. Feros, Antonio. 2000. Kingship and Favoritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598– 1621. Cambridge University Press. Figgis, J. Neville. 1896. The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings. The [Cambridge] University Press. Findlay, C. Scott and Charles J. Lumsden. 1988. “The Creative Mind: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Discovery and Innovation.” Journal of Social and Biological Systems 11 (1):3–55. Finley-Croswhite, S. Annette. 1999. Henry IV and the Towns: The Pursuit of Legitimacy in French Urban Society, 1589–1610. Cambridge University Press. Finnemore, Martha. 1996. National Interests in International Society. Cornell University Press. Fisher, Daniel X. O. 2018. “Situating Border Control: Unpacking Spain’s SIVE Border Surveillance Assemblage.” Political Geography 65:67–76. Flanagan, James G. and Steve Rayner. 1988. “Introduction.” In Rules, Decisions, and Inequality in Egalitarian Societies, edited by James G. Flanagan and Steve Rayner. Avebury. Fligstein, Neil and Doug McAdam. 2012. A Theory of Fields. Oxford University Press. Flood, Robert L. and Ewart R. Carson. 1993. Dealing with Complexity: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of Systems Science. 2nd ed. Plenum Press. Floridi, Luciano. 2008. “The Method of Levels of Abstraction.” Minds and Machines 18 (3):303–329. Fodor, J. A. 1974. “Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis).” Synthese 28 (2):97–115. Follett, M. P. 1920. The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government. Longmans, Green and Co. Fortna, Virginia Page. 2004. “Interstate Peacekeeping: Causal Mechanisms and Empirical Effects.” World Politics: 481–519. Fowler, Chris. 2013. The Emergent Past: A Relational Realist Archaeology of Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices. Oxford University Press. Fowler, Chris. 2017. “Relational Typologies, Assemblage Theory and Early Bronze Age Burials.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27 (1):95–109. Fox, Nick J. and Pam Alldred. 2020. “Re-assembling Climate Change Policy: Materialism, Posthumanism, and the Policy Assemblage.” The British Journal of Sociology 71 (2):269–283.

386

References

Fox, William T. R. 1944. The Super-Powers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union – Their Responsibility for Peace. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Fox, William T. R., ed. 1959. Theoretical Aspects of International Relations. University of Notre Dame Press. Francis, Richard C. 2011. Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes. W. W. Norton. Frankel, Benjamin, ed. 1996. Realism: Restatements and Renewal. Frank Cass. Freedman, Paul H. 2000. “Rural Society.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VI c. 1300–c. 1415, edited by Michael Jones. Cambridge University Press. Friedberg, Aaron L. 2005. “The Future of U.S.-China Relations: Is Conflict Inevitable?” International Security 30 (2):7–45. Friedmann, Wolgang. 1951. An Introduction to World Politics. Macmillan and Co. Friedrich, Carl Joachim. 1938. Foreign Policy in the Making: The Search for a New Balance of Power. W. W. Norton & Company. Friedrichs, Christopher R. 1995. The Early Modern City 1450–1750. Longman. Friedrichs, Jörg. 2001. “The Meaning of New Medievalism.” European Journal of International Relations 7 (4):475–501. Friedrichs, Jörg. 2016. “Causal Mechanisms and Process Patterns in International Relations: Thinking within and without the Box.” St Antony’s International Review 12 (1):76–89. Friedrichs, Jörg and Friedrich Kratochwil. 2009. “On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology.” International Organization 63 (4):701–731. Frigg, Roman and Stephan Hartman. 2020. “Models in Science.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/spr2020/entries/models-science/. Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. Fuhrmann, Horst. 1986 [1983]. Germany in the High Middle Ages c. 1050–1200. Cambridge University Press. Gabora, Liane and Mike Steel. 2017. “Autocatalytic Networks in Cognition and the Origin of Culture.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 431:87–95. Gade, Emily Kalah et al. 2019. “Networks of Cooperation: Rebel Alliances in Fragmented Civil Wars.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (9):2071–2097. Gadinger, Frank and Dirk Peters. 2016. “Feedback Loops in a World of Complexity: A Cybernetic Approach at the Interface of Foreign Policy Analysis and International Relations Theory.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29 (1):251–269. Gagliardo, John G. 1991. Germany under the Old Regime, 1600–1790. Longman. Galis, Frietson and Johan A. J. Metz. 2021. “A Macroevolutionary Perspective on Developmental Constraints in Animals.” In Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide, edited by Laura Nuño de la Rosa and Gerd B. Müller. Springer. Galison, Peter and David J. Stump, eds. 1996. The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power. Stanford University Press. Gallop, Max and Shahryar Minhas. 2021. “A Network Approach to Measuring State Preferences.” Network Science 9 (2):135–152.

References

387

Galton, Antony. 2006. “On What Goes On: The Ontology of Processes and Events.” In Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (FOIS 2006), edited by Brandon Bennett and Christiane Fellbaum. IOS Press. Galton, Antony and Riichiro Mizoguchi. 2009. “The Water Falls but the Waterfall Does Not Fall: New Perspectives on Objects, Processes and Events.” Applied Ontology 4 (2):71–107. Gardner, Peter. 1972. “The Paliyans.” In Hunters and Gatherers Today: A Socioeconomic Study of Eleven Such Cultures in the Twentieth Century, edited by M. G. Bicchieri. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gardner, Peter. 1999. “The Paliyan.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Garnsey, Elizabeth and James McGlade, eds. 2006. Complexity and Co-evolution: Continuity and Change in Socio-Economic Systems. Edward Elgar Publishing. Garson, Justin. 2019. What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter. Cambridge University Press. Gatti, Roberto Cazzolla et al. 2018. “Niche Emergence as an Autocatalytic Process in the Evolution of Ecosystems.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 454:110–117. Gazit, Orit. 2019. “Van Gennep Meets Ontological (In)Security: A Processual Approach to Ontological Security in Migration.” International Studies Review 21 (4):572–597. Geldenhuys, Deon. 2014. “The African Union, Responsible Sovereignty, and Contested States.” Global Responsibility to Protect 6 (3):350–374. Gell-Mann, Murray. 1994. “Complex Adaptive Systems.” In Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality. Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. No.19. Addison-Wesley. Gentles, Ian. 2014 [2007]. The English Revolution and the Wars in the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1652. Routledge. George, Jason T. and Herbert Levine. 2021. “Implications of Tumor–Immune Coevolution on Cancer Evasion and Optimized Immunotherapy.” Trends in Cancer 7 (4):373–383. Gergen, Kenneth J. 2009. Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community. Oxford University Press. Gerring, John. 2010. “Causal Mechanisms: Yes, But ….” Comparative Political Studies 43 (11):1499–1526. Getz, Kathleen A. 2006. “The Effectiveness of Global Prohibition Regimes: Corruption and the Antibribery Convention.” Business & Society 45 (3):254–281. Gheciu, Alexandra and William C. Wohlforth, eds. 2018. The Oxford Handbook of International Security. Oxford University Press. Ghiselin, Michael T. 1974. “A Radical Solution to the Species Problem.” Systematic Biology 23 (4):536–544. Gibbons, Herbert Adams. 1922. An Introduction to World Politics. The Century Company. Gibson, Thomas. 1985. “The Sharing of Substance versus the Sharing of Activity among the Buid.” Man 20 (3):391–411.

388

References

Gibson, Thomas. 1986. Sacrifice and Sharing in the Philippine Highlands: Religion and Society among the Buid of Mindoro. Athlone Press. Giere, Ronald N. 1999. Science without Laws. University of Chicago Press. Giere, Ronald N. 2004. “How Models Are Used to Represent Reality.” Philosophy of Science 71 (5):742–752. Giere, Ronald N. 2006a. “Modest Evolutionary Naturalism.” Biological Theory 1 (1):52–60. Giere, Ronald N. 2006b. Scientific Perspectivism. University of Chicago Press. Giere, Ronald N. 2010. “An Agent-Based Conception of Models and Scientific Representation.” Synthese 172 (2):269–281. Giere, Ronald N. 2014. “Naturalism.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed., edited by Martin Curd and Stathis Psillos. Routledge. Gilbert, Jack A. et al. 2018. “Current Understanding of the Human Microbiome.” Nature Medicine 24 (4):392–400. Gilbert, Scott F. 2018. “Rethinking Parts and Wholes.” In Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences, edited by Snait B. Gissis, Ehud Lamm, and Ayelet Shavit. MIT Press. Gilbert, Scott F. 2019. “Evolutionary Transitions Revisited: Holobiont EvoDevo.” Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 332 (8):307–314. Gilbert, Scott F., Thomas C. G. Bosch, and Cristina Ledón-Rettig. 2015. “Eco-Evo-Devo: Developmental Symbiosis and Developmental Plasticity as Evolutionary Agents.” Nature Reviews Genetics 16 (10):611–622. Gilbert, Scott F. and Alfred I. Tauber. 2016. “Rethinking Individuality: The Dialectics of the Holobiont.” Biology & Philosophy 31 (6):839–853. Gill, Stephen, ed. 1993. Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Gilpin, Robert. 1975. U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Direct Foreign Investment. Basic Books. Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Gissis, Snait B., Ehud Lamm, and Ayelet Shavit. 2018. Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences. MIT Press. Glaser, Charles L. 2010. Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation. Princeton University Press. Glaser, Charles L. and Chaim Kaufmann. 1998. “What is the Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure It?” International Security 22 (4):44–82. Gleick, James. 2008 [1987]. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin. Glenn, John. 2009. “Realism versus Strategic Culture: Competition and Collaboration?” International Studies Review 11 (3):523–551. Glennan, Stuart. 2010. “Mechanisms, Causes, and the Layered Model of the World.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2):362–381. Glennan, Stuart. 2016. “Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press. Glennan, Stuart. 2017. The New Mechanical Philosophy. Oxford University Press. Glennan, Stuart and Phyllis Illari, eds. 2018. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy. Routledge.

References

389

Glete, Jan. 2002. War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States. Routledge. Glouberman, Sholom and Brenda Zimmerman. 2012. Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform of Medicare Look Like? Ottawa: Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada. https://publications​.gc​ .ca/site/eng/235920/publication.html. Go, Julian. 2008. “Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the British and American Empires.” Sociological Theory 26 (3):201–229. Go, Julian. 2011. Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. Go, Julian and Monika Krause. 2016. “Fielding Transnationalism: An Introduction.” The Sociological Review 64 (2 suppl):6–30. Goddard, Stacie E. 2009a. “Brokering Change: Networks and Entrepreneurs in International Politics.” International Theory 1 (2):249–281. Goddard, Stacie E. 2009b. Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy: Jerusalem and Northern Ireland. Cambridge University Press. Goddard, Stacie E., Paul K. MacDonald, and Daniel H. Nexon. 2019. “Repertoires of Statecraft: Instruments and Logics of Power Politics.” International Relations 33 (2):304–321. Goddard, Stacie E. and Daniel H. Nexon. 2005. “Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 11 (1):9–61. Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2006. “The Strategy of Model-Based Science.” Biology and Philosophy 21 (5):725–740. Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2016. “Individuality and Life Cycles.” In Individuals across the Sciences, edited by Alexandre Guay and Thomas Pradeu. Oxford University Press. Goemans, Hein and William Spaniel. 2016. “Multimethod Research: A Case for Formal Theory.” Security Studies 25 (1):25–33. Goertz, Gary. 2017. Multimethod Research, Causal Mechanisms, and Case Studies: An Integrated Approach. Princeton University Press. Goh, Evelyn. 2008. “Hierarchy and the Role of the United States in the East Asian Security Order.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 8 (3):353–377. Goldstein, Ilan and Ian M. Erenreich. 2021. “Genetic Variation in Phenotypic Plasticity.” In Phenotypic Plasticity & Evolution: Causes, Consequences, Controversies, edited by David W. Pfennig. CRC Press. Goldstein, Martin and Inga F. Goldstein. 1995. The Refrigerator and the Universe: Understanding the Laws of Energy. Harvard University Press. Gómez-Márquez, Jaime. 2021. “What is Life?” Molecular Biology Reports 48 (8):6223–6230. Gómez-Mera, Laura, Jean-Frédéric Morin, and Thijs Van de Graaf. 2020. “Regime Complexes.” In Architectures of Earth System Governance: Institutional Complexity and Structural Transformation, edited by Frank Biermann and Rahkyun E. Kim. Cambridge University Press. Gomulkiewicz, Richard et al. 2007. “Dos and Don’ts of Testing the Geographic Mosaic Theory of Coevolution.” Heredity 98 (5):249–258. Gomulkiewicz, Richard et al. 2000. “Hot Spots, Cold Spots, and the Geographic Mosaic Theory of Coevolution.” The American Naturalist 156 (2):156–174.

390

References

Gong, Gerrit W. 1984. The Standard of ‘Civilisation’ in International Society. Clarendon Press. Gonzalez-Pelaez, Ana. 2009. “The Primary Institutions of the Middle Eastern Regional Interstate Society.” In International Society and the Middle East: English School Theory at the Regional Level, edited by Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Pelaez. Palgrave Macmillan. Goodhart, Michael. 2005. Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization. Routledge. Gorski, Philip S. 2003. The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. University of Chicago Press. Gorski, Philip S. 2005. “The Protestant Ethic and the Bureaucratic Revolution: Ascetic Protestantism and Administrative Rationalization in Early Modern Europe.” In Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion, edited by Charles Camic, Philip S. Gorski, and David M. Trubek. Stanford University Press. Götz, Elias. 2021. “Neoclassical Realist Theories, Intervening Variables, and Paradigmatic Boundaries.” Foreign Policy Analysis 17 (2):oraa026. Gougen, Joseph A. and Francisco J. Varela. 1979. “Systems and Distinctions: Duality and Complementarity.” International Journal of General Systems 5 (1):31–43. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1977. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. The Belknap Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1980. “The Evolutionary Biology of Constraint.” Daedalus 109 (2):39–52. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1997. “The Exaptive Excellence of Spandrels as a Term and Prototype.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 94 (20):10750–10755. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2001. “The Evolutionary Definition of Selective Agency, Validation of the Theory of Hierarchical Selection, and Fallacy of the Selfish Gene.” In Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspective, edited by Rama S. Singh et al. Cambridge University Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Harvard University Press. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2007. Punctuated Equilibrium. Harvard University Press. Gould, Stephen Jay and Richard C. Lewontin. 1979. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 205 (1161):581–598. Gould, Stephen Jay and Elisabeth A. Lloyd. 1999. “Individuality and Adaptation across Levels of Selection: How Shall We Name and Generalize the Units of Darwinism?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96 (21):11904–11909. Gould, Stephen Jay and Elisabeth S. Vrba. 1982. “Exaptation – A Missing Term in the Science of Form.” Paleobiology 8 (1):4–15. Gowa, Joanne. 1994. Allies, Adversaries, and International Trade. Princeton University Press. Gowdy, John. 1999. “Hunter-Gatherers and the Mythology of the Market.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press.

References

391

Gowdy, John. 2013. Coevolutionary Economics: The Economy, Society and the Environment. Springer Grabowski, Franciszek and Dominik Strzalka. 2008. Simple, Complicated and Complex Systems: The Brief Introduction. In 2008 Conference on Human Systems Interactions. Krakow, Poland, 25–27 May. Graham, Aaron and Patrick Walsh, eds. 2016. The British Fiscal-Military States, 1660–c.1783. Routledge. Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6):1360–1380. Grant, A. J. et al. 1916. An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. Macmillan and Co. Graves, Michael A. R. 2001. The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe. Pearson Education. Gray, Robbert M. 1990. Entropy and Information Theory. Springer-Verlag New York. Green, Jessica F. 2022a. “Hierarchy in Regime Complexes: Understanding Authority in Antarctica.” International Studies Quarterly 66 (1):sqab084. Green, Sara. 2017. Philosophy of Systems Biology: Perspectives from Scientists and Philosophers. Springer Nature. Green, Sara. 2022b. “Philosophy of Systems and Synthetic Biology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/sum2022/entries/systems-synthetic-biology/. Greengrass, Mark. 1991. “Conquest and Coalescence.” In Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, edited by Mark Greengrass. Edward Arnold. Greengrass, Mark. 2014. Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517–1648. Penguin Books. Greenstein, Fred I. and Nelson W. Polsby, eds. 1975. Handbook of Political Science, Volume 8: International Politics. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Grene, Marjorie. 1967. “Biology and the Problem of Levels of Reality.” The New Scholasticism 41 (4):427–449. Grieco, Joseph M. 1988. “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism.” International Organization 42 (3):485–507. Griesemer, James. 2000. “Development, Culture, and the Units of Inheritance.” Philosophy of Science 67 (S3):S348–S368. Griesemer, James. 2001. “The Units of Evolutionary Transition.” Selection 1 (1–3):67–80. Griesemer, James. 2018. “Individuation of Developmental Systems: A Reproducer Perspective.” In Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices, edited by Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan. Oxford University Press. Griesemer, James 2021. “Levels, Perspectives, and Thickets: Toward an Ontology of Scaffolded Living Systems.” In Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences, edited by Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. MIT Press. Griffiths, Ryan D. 2018. “The Waltzian Ordering Principle and International Change: A Two-Dimensional Model.” European Journal of International Relations 24 (1):130–152.

392

References

Grummitt, David. 2013. A Short History of the Wars of the Roses. I. B. Tauris. Guay, Alexandre and Thomas Pradeu, eds. 2016a. Individuals across the Sciences. Oxford University Press. Guay, Alexandre and Thomas Pradeu. 2016b. “To Be Continued: The Genidentity of Physical and Biological Processes.” In Individuals across the Sciences, edited by Alexandre Guay and Thomas Pradeu. Oxford University Press. Guenée, Bernard. 1985 [1981]. States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe. Basil Blackwell. Guisasola, Santiago Orlando. Introduction to Complexity (Online Course). www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/144-introduction-to-complexity/ segments/14475?summary#. Gulick, Edward Vose. 1943. The Balance of Power. The Pacifist Research Bureau. Gunitsky, Seva. 2013. “Complexity and Theories of Change in International Politics.” International Theory 5 (1):35–63. Guttinger, Stephan. 2018. “A Process Ontology for Macromolecular Biology.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Guy, Alan J. 1985. Oeconomy and Discipline: Officership and Administration in the British Army, 1714–63. Manchester University Press. Guzzini, Stefano, ed. 2012a. The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises. Cambridge University Press. Guzzini, Stefano. 2012b. “Which Geopolitics?” In The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises, edited by Stefano Guzzini. Cambridge University Press. Guzzini, Stefano. 2013. “Power: Bourdieu’s Field Analysis of Relational Capital, Misrecognition, and Domination.” In Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethinking Key Concepts in IR, edited by Rebecca Adler-Nissen. Routledge. Haas, Ernst B. 1964. Beyond the Nation State: Functionalism and International Organization. Stanford University Press. Haas, Peter M. 1991. “Policy Responses to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion.” Global Environmental Change 1 (3):224–234. Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Harvard University Press. Hafner-Burton, Emilie, Miles Kahler, and Alexander H. Montgomery. 2009. “Network Analysis for International Relations.” International Organization 63 (3):559–592. Haim, Dotan A. 2016. “Alliance Networks and Trade.” Journal of Peace Research 53 (3):472–490. Hajizada, Mukhtar. 2018. “Challenges and Opportunities for Establishing a Security Community in the Wider Black Sea Area.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 18 (4):529–548. Haldén, Peter. 2017. “Heteronymous Politics beyond Anarchy and Hierarchy: The Multiplication of Forms of Rule 750–1300.” Journal of International Political Theory 13 (3):266–281. Hall, Martin. 2004. On the Morphology of International Systems: Political Space as Structure and Process in Early Medieval Europe. CFE [Center for European Studies at Lund University] Working Paper.

References

393

Hall, Peter A. 2013. “Tracing the Progress of Process Tracing.” European Political Science 12 (1):20–30. Hall, Rodney Bruce. 1997. “Moral Authority as a Power Resource.” International Organization 51 (4):591–622. Hall, William Edward. 1917. A Treatise on International Law. 7th ed. Clarendon Press. Hall, William Edward. 1924. A Treatise on International Law. 8th ed. Clarendon Press. Hallgrimsson, Benedikt and Brian K. Hall, eds. 2011. Epigenetics: Linking Genotype and Phenotype in Development and Evolution. University of California Press. Halpern, Joseph Y. and Judea Pearl. 2005. “Causes and Explanations: A Structural-Model Approach. Part II: Explanations.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (4):889–911. Hanau Santini, Ruth and Francesco N. Moro. 2019. “Between Hierarchy and Heterarchy: Post-Arab Uprisings, Civil–Military Relations and the Arab State.” Mediterranean Politics 24 (2):137–156. Hanrieder, Tine and Bernhard Zangl. 2015. “The Embedded State: The New Division of Labor in the Provision of Governance Functions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State, edited by Stefan Leibfried et al. Oxford University Press. Hansen, Lene. 2012. “Reconstructing Desecuritisation: The Normative-Political in the Copenhagen School and Directions for How to Apply It.” Review of International Studies 38 (3):525–546. Harding, Alan. 1978. Anatomy of a Power Elite: Provincial Governors in Early Modern France. Yale University Press. Harding, Alan. 2002. Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State. Oxford University Press. Hargreaves, John D. 2014 [1996]. Decolonization in Africa. Routledge. Harknett, Richard J. and Hasan B. Yalcin. 2012. “The Struggle for Autonomy: A Realist Structural Theory of International Relations.” International Studies Review 14 (4):499–521. Harman, Graham. 2010. Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures. Zero Books. Harré, Rom. 1986. Varieties of Realism: A Rationale for the Natural Sciences. Basil Blackwell. Harris, Graham P. and A. Louise Heathwaite. 2012. “Why is Achieving Good  Ecological Outcomes in Rivers So Difficult?” Freshwater Biology 57:91–107. Harris, Oliver J. T. 2020. “What Do We Mean by Relational Anyway?” In Archaeological Theory in Dialogue, edited by Rachel J. Crellin et al. Routledge. Harrison, Neil E., ed. 2006. Complexity in World Politics: Concepts and Methods of a New Paradigm. State University of New York Press. Harrison-Buck, Eleanor and Julia A. Hendon. 2018. Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology. University Press of Colorado. Härter, Karl. 2013. “The Early Modern Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (1495–1806): A Multilayered Legal System.” In Law and Empire: Ideas, Practices, Actors, edited by Jeroen Duindam et al. Brill.

394

References

Hartley, Janet. 2009. “Russia as a Fiscal-Military State, 1689–1825.” In The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P.G.M. Dickson, edited by Christopher Storrs. Ashgate. Hartwell, Leland H. et al. 1999. “From Molecular to Modular Cell Biology.” Nature 402 (6761):C47–C52. Harvey, David. 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. Verso. Hasenclever, Andreas, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger. 1997. Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge University Press. Hast, Susanna. 2016 [2014]. Spheres of Influence in International Relations: History, Theory and Politics. Routledge. Hatleberg, William L. and Veronica F. Hinman. 2021. “Modularity and Hierarchy in Biological Systems: Using Gene Regulatory Networks to Understand Evolutionary Change.” In Current Topics in Developmental Biology, edited by Scott F. Gilbert. Academic Press. Havercroft, Jonathan and Alex Pritchard. 2017. “Anarchy and International Relations Theory: A Reconsideration.” Journal of International Political Theory 13 (3):252–265. Haverkamp, Alfred. 1988 [1984]. Medieval Germany: 1056–1273. Oxford University Press. Hayton, D. W. and James Kelly. 2010a. “Conclusion.” In The Eighteenth-Century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800, edited by D. W. Hayton, James Kelly, and John Bergin. Palgrave Macmillan. Hayton, D. W. and James Kelly. 2010b. “Introduction: The Irish Parliament in European Context: A Representative Institution in a Composite State.” In The Eighteenth-Century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Ireland and Europe, 1689–1800, edited by D. W. Hayton, James Kelly, and John Bergin. Palgrave Macmillan. Headlam-Morley, J. W. 1927. “Treaties of Guarantee.” Cambridge Historical Journal 2 (2):151–170. Heams, Thomas et al., eds. 2015. Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer. Heatley, D. P. 1919. Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations. Clarendon Press. Hébert, Michel. 2014. Parlementer: assemblées représentatives et échange politique en Euope occidentale à la fin du Moyen Age. Editions De Boccard. Hedlund, Gunnar. 1986. “The Hypermodern MNC: A Heterarchy?” Human Resource Management 25 (1):9–35. Hedlund, Gunnar and Dag Rolander. 1996. “Action in Heterarchies: New Approaches to Managing the MNC.” In Managing the Global Firm, edited by Christopher A. Bartlett and Gunnar Hedlund. Routledge. Hedström, Peter. 2005. Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytic Sociology. Cambridge University Press. Hedström, Peter and Peter Bearman, eds. 2009a. The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. Oxford University Press. Hedström, Peter and Peter Bearman. 2009b. “What Is Analytical Sociology All About? An Introductory Essay.” In The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology, edited by Peter Hedström and Peter Bearman. Oxford University Press.

References

395

Hedström, Peter and Richard Swedberg. 1996. “Social Mechanisms.” Acta Sociologica 39 (3):281–308. Hedström, Peter and Richard Swedberg. 1998. “Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay.” In Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, edited by Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg. Cambridge University Press. Hedström, Peter and Petri Ylikoski. 2010. “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 36:49–76. Hehmeyer, Jenks. 2019. “Two Potential Evolutionary Origins of the Fruiting Bodies of the Dictyostelid Slime Moulds.” Biological Reviews 94 (5):1591–1604. Heil, John. 2003. “Levels of Reality.” Ratio 16 (3):205–221. Heisenberg, Werner. 1971. Physics and Beyond. Harper and Row. Held, David. 1995. Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford University Press. Hempel, Carl G. 1965. Aspects of Scientific Explation. Free Press. Hempel, Carl G. and Paul Oppenheim. 1948. “Studies in the Logic of Explanation.” Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135–175. Hendry, Robin Findlay. 2012. “Reduction, Emergence and Physicalism.” In Philosophy of Chemistry, edited by Andrea I. Woody, Robin Findlay Hendry, and Paul Needham. North-Holland. Hendry, Robin Findlay and Paul Needham. 2007. “Le Poidevin on the Reduction of Chemistry.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):339–353. Henning, C. Randall and Tyler Pratt. 2021. “Hierarchy and Differentiation in  International Regime Complexes: A Theoretical Framework for Comparative Research.” www.tylerbpratt.com/s/Henning-Pratt-Hierarchyand-Differentiation-in-Regime-Complexes-June-2021-distribution.pdf. Henshall, Nicholas. 1992. The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy. Longman. Herde, Peter. 2000. “From Adolf of Nassau to Lewis of Bavaria, 1292–1347.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VI c. 1300–c. 1415, edited by Michael Jones. Cambridge University Press. Herrera, Geoffrey L. 2003. “Technology and International Systems.” Millennium 32 (3):559–593. Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, Juha Hiedanpää, and Katriina Soini. 2022. “The Co-Evolutionary Approach to Nature-Based Solutions: A Conceptual Framework.” Nature-Based Solutions 2:100011. Herva, Vesa-Pekka et al. 2010. “Daughters of Magic: Esoteric Traditions, Relational Ontology and the Archaeology of the Post-Medieval Past.” World Archaeology 42 (4):609–621. Herz, John H. 1959. International Politics in the Atomic Age. Columbia University Press. Hesse, Markus and Catherine Mei-Ling. 2020. “Cities Seen through a Relational Lens.” Geographische Zeitschrift 108 (2):74–98. Hesse, Mary. 1996. Models and Analogies in Science. University of Notre Dame Press. Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy, and Burke Johnson, eds. 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry. Oxford University Press.

396

References

Hettema, Hinne. 2015. “Reduction for a Dappled World: Connecting Chemical and Physical Theories.” In Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline, edited by Eric Scerri and Lee McIntyre. Springer Netherlands. Hicks, Frederick Charles. 1920. The “New World Order”: International Organization, International Law, International Cooperation. Doubleday, Page & Company. Hilgarth, J. N. 1978. The Spanish Kingdoms 1250–1516: Volume II, 1410–1516, Castilian Hegemony. Clarendon Press. Hill, David Jayne. 1911. World Organization as Affected by the Nature of the Modern State. The Columbia University Press. Hill, Erica. 2011. “Animals as Agents: Hunting Ritual and Relational Ontologies in Prehistoric Alaska and Chukotka.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21 (3):407–426. Hill, Kim and A. Magdalena Hurtado. 1999. “The Aché of Paraguay.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Hinsley, F. H. 1963. Power and the Pursuit of Peace. Cambridge University Press. Hinsley, F. H. 1986. Sovereignty. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Hintze, Otto. 1975. The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze. Edited by Felix Gilbert. Oxford University Press. Hitchcock, Robert K. and James I. Ebert. 1989. “Modelling Kalahari HunterGatherer Subsistence and Settlement Systems.” Anthropos 84 (1/3):47–62. Hlavacek, Ivan. 2000. “The Luxemburgs and Rupert of the Palatine, 1347– 1410.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VI c. 1300–c. 1415, edited by Michael Jones. Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. 1992. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press. Hobson, J. A. 1902. Imperialism: A Study. James Pott Company. Hobson, J. A. 1915. Towards International Government. George Allen & Unwin. Hobson, J. A. 1922. Problems of a New World Order. The Macmillan Company. Hobson, John M. and J. C. Sharman. 2005. “The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change.” European Journal of International Relations 11 (1):63–98. Hodder, Ian. 2012. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Wiley-Blackwell. Hoddie, Mathew and Caroline Hartzell. 2005. “Signals of Reconciliation: Institution-Building and the Resolution of Civil Wars.” International Studies Review 7 (1):21–40. Hodges, Charles. 1931. The Background of International Relations: Our World Horizons, National and International. John Wiley & Sons. Hodgson, Geoffrey M. 2000. “The Concept of Emergence in Social Sciences: Its History and Importance.” Emergence, A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management 2 (4):65–77. Hoffman, Carl. 1986. The Punan: Hunters and Gatherers of Borneo. Iowa State University Press. Hoffman, Philip T. 1994. “Early Modern France, 1450–1700.” In Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government, 1450–1789, edited by Philip T. Hoffman and Kathryn Norberg. Stanford University Press.

References

397

Hoffmann, Gerhard. 1987. “Protectorates.” In Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Volume 10, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt. North Holland. Hoffmann, Stanley. 1965. The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Relations. Frederick I. Praeger. Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1979. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books. Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Emmanuel Sander. 2013. Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. Basic Books. Holborn, Hajo. 1959. A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation. Alfred A. Knopf. Holbraad, Carsten. 1970. The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory, 1815–1914. Longman. Holland, John H. 1992. “Complex Adaptive Systems.” Daedalus 121 (1):17–30. Holland, John H. 1992 [1975]. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence. MIT Press. Holland, John H. 1995. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity. Basic Books. Holland, John H. 1998. Emergence: From Chaos to Order. Basic Books. Holland, John H. 2012. Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Sysems. MIT Press. Holland, John H. 2014. Complexity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Hölldobler, Bert and E. O. Wilson. 2009. The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies. W.W. Norton. Holmes, Marcus. 2011. “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: Representations of Anarchy in International Relations Theory.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11 (2):279–308. Holsti, Kalevi J. 1991. Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648–1989. Cambridge University Press. Holsti, Kalevi J. 2004. Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics. Cambridge University Press. Holt, Mack P. 2005. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629. Cambridge University Press. Holthaus, Leonie. 2020. “Who Practices Practice Theory (and How)? (Meta-) theorists, Scholar-practitioners, (Bourdieusian) Researchers, and Social Prestige in Academia.” Millennium 48 (3):323–333. Hooker, Cliff, ed. 2011. Philosophy of Complex Systems. North-Holland. Hope, Jessica. 2021. “The Anti-politics of Sustainable Development: Environmental Critique from Assemblage Thinking in Bolivia.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46 (1):208–222. Hordijk, Wim, Jotun Hein, and Mike Steel. 2010. “Autocatalytic Sets and the Origin of Life.” Entropy 12 (7):1733–1742. Horowitz, Richard S. 2004. “International Law and State Transformation in China, Siam, and the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of World History 15 (4):445–486.

398

References

Horrox, Rosemary. 1998. “Yorkist and Early Tudor England.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Hsu, Cho-yun. 1999. “The Spring and Autumn Period.” In The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge University Press. Hughes, Ann. 1998. The Causes of the English Civil War. 2nd ed. Macmillan. Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. 2005. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Hull, David L. 1976. “Are Species Really Individuals?” Systematic Zoology 25 (2):174–191. Hull, David L. 1978. “A Matter of Individuality.” Philosophy of Science 45 (3):335–360. Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. University of Chicago Press. Hull, William I. 1908. The Two Hague Conferences and Their Contributions to International Law. Ginn & Company. Humphreys, Adam R. C. 2017. “Concerts as a Mode of Ordering in World Politics.” In Great Power Multilateralism and the Prevention of War, edited by Harald Müller and Carsten Rauch. Routledge. Humphreys, Paul. 2016. Emergence: A Philosophical Account. Oxford University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Simon and Schuster. Hurd, Ian. 2014. “The UN Security Council and the International Rule of Law.” Chinese Journal of International Politics 7 (3):361–379. Hutson, Scott R. 2010. Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya: Relational Archaeology at Chunchucmil. AltaMira Press. Huxley, Julian. 1942. Evolution. The Modern Synthesis. George Allen & Unwin. Hynek, Nik. 2018. “Theorizing International Security Regimes: A PowerAnalytical Approach.” International Politics 55 (3):352–368. Ichikawa, Mitsuo. 1999. “The Mbuti of Northern Congo.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Ikenberry, G. John. 2001. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton University Press. Ikenberry, G. John. 2002. America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power. Cornell University Press. Ikenberry, G. John. 2011. Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton University Press. Ilardi, Stephen S. and David Feldman. 2001. “On Mental Events, Disciplinary Boundaries, and Reductionism: A Reply to Plaud.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 57 (9):1103–1107. Illari, Phyllis. 2019. “Mechanisms, Models and Laws in Understanding Supernovae.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 50 (1):63–84. Illari, Phyllis and Federica Russo. 2014. Causality: Philosophical Theory Meets Scientific Practice. Oxford University Press.

References

399

Illari, Phyllis and Jon Williamson. 2012. “What is a Mechanism? Thinking about Mechanisms across the Sciences.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 2 (1):119–135. Illari, Phyllis and Jon Williamson. 2013. “In Defence of Activities.” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 44 (1):69–83. Imbens, Guido W. and Donald B. Rubin. 2015. Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Ingold, Tim. 1992. “Comment on ‘Beyond “The Original Affluent Society”’.” Current Anthropology 33 (1):41–42. Ingold, Tim. 1999. “On the Social Relations of the Hunter-Gatherer Band.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Ingold, Tim. 2004. “Beyond Biology and Culture: The Meaning of Evolution in a Relational World.” Social Anthropology 12 (2):209–221. Inoguchi, Takashi and Paul Bacon. 2001. “The Study of International Relations in Japan: Towards a More International Discipline.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 1 (1):1–20. Irigoin, Alejandra and Regina Grafe. 2008. “Bargaining for Absolutism: A Spanish Path to Nation-State and Empire Building.” Hispanic American Historical Review 88 (2):173–209. Jablonka, Eva. 2017. “The Evolutionary Implications of Epigenetic Inheritance.” Interface Focus 7 (5):20160135. Jablonka, Eva and Marion J. Lamb. 1989. “The Inheritance of Acquired Epigenetic Variations.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 139 (1):69–83. Jablonka, Eva and Marion J. Lamb. 2014. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Rev. ed. MIT Press. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2006. Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2011. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implication for the Study of World Politics. Routledge. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2017. “The Production of Facts: Ideal-Typification and the Preservation of Politics.” In Max Weber and International Relations, edited by Richard Ned Lebow. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Daniel H. Nexon. 1999. “Relations before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 5 (3):291–332. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Daniel H. Nexon. 2009. “Pragmatic Faults in International-Relations Theory.” International Studies Review 53 (4):907–930. Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Daniel H. Nexon. 2019. “Reclaiming the Social: Relationalism in Anglophone International Studies.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32 (5):582–600. Jackson, Robert H. 1990. Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Stephen T. and Dov F. Sax. 2010. “Balancing Biodiversity in a Changing Environment: Extinction Debt, Immigration Credit and Species Turnover.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25 (3):153–160.

400

References

Jackson, Van. 2014. “Power, Trust, and Network Complexity: Three Logics of Hedging in Asian Security.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 14 (3):331–356. Jackson, Van. 2020. “Understanding Spheres of Influence in International Politics.” European Journal of International Security 5 (3):255–273. Jacob, François. 1977. “Evolution and Tinkering.” Science 196 (4295):1161–1166. Jacob, Frank and Gilmar Visoni-Alonzo. 2016. The Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe: A Revision. Palgrave Macmillan. Jacobsson, Bengt, Jon Pierre, and Göran Sundström. 2015. Governing the Embedded State: The Organizational Dimension of Governance. Oxford University Press. Jago, Charles. 1981. “Habsburg Absolutism and the Cortes of Castile.” The American Historical Review 86 (2):307–326. Jago, Charles. 1992. “Crown and Cortes in Early-Modern Castile.” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 12 (2):177–192. Jakobsen, Susanne. 1999. “International Relations and Global Environmental Change: Review of the Burgeoning Literature on the Environment.” Cooperation and Conflict 34 (2):205–236. James, Patrick. 1993. “Neorealism as a Research Enterprise: Toward Elaborated Structural Realism.” International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique 14 (2):123–148. James, Patrick. 2002. International Relations and Scientific Progress: Structural Realism Reconsidered. Ohio State University Press. James, Patrick. 2017. “Clarifying Causal Mechanisms in International Relations.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, edited by William R. Thompson. Oxford University Press. James, Patrick. 2019. “Systemist International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 63 (4):781–804. James, William. 1904. “The Pragmatic Method.” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 1 (25):673–687. James, William. 1907. “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth.” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 4 (6):141–155. Jansen, Jan C. and Jürgen Osterhammel. 2017. Decolonization. Princeton University Press. Jansen, Stef. 2016. “For a Relational, Historical Ethnography of Hope: Indeterminacy and Determination in the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Meantime.” History and Anthropology 27 (4):447–464. Jantsch, Erich. 1975. Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and Planning in the Life of Human Systems. G. Braziller. Jantsch, Erich. 1980a. The Self-organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution. Pergamon Press. Jantsch, Erich. 1980b. “The Unifying Paradigm Behind Autopoiesis, Dissipative Structure, Hyper- and Ultracycles.” In Autopoiesis, Dissipative Structures, and Spontaneous Social Orders, edited by Milan Zeleny. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Jepperson, Ronald L. and John W. Meyer. 2011. “Multiple Levels of Analysis and the Limitations of Methodological Individualisms.” Sociological Theory 29 (1):54–73.

References

401

Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton University Press. Jervis, Robert. 1978. “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 30 (2):167–214. Jervis, Robert. 1985. “From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation.” World Politics 38 (1):58–79. Jervis, Robert. 1992. “A Political Science Perspective on the Balance of Power and the Concert.” American Historical Review 97 (3):716–724. Jervis, Robert. 1997. System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life. Princeton University Press. Jervis, Robert. 1999. “Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate.” International Security 24 (1):42–63. Jervis, Robert. 2010. “Thinking Systemically about Geopolitics.” Geopolitics 15 (1):165–171. Jervis, Robert. 2020. “Liberalism, the Blob, and American Foreign Policy: Evidence and Methodology.” Security Studies 29 (3):434–456. Jessop, Bob. 1998. “The Rise of Governance and the Risks of Failure: The Case of Economic Development.” International Social Science Journal 50 (155):29–45. Jessop, Bob. 2005. “Multi-level Governance and Multi-level Metagovernance: Changes in the EU as Integral Moments in the Transformation and Reorientation of Contemporary Statehood.” In Multi-level Governance, edited by Ian Bache and Matthew Flinders. Oxford University Press. Johnson, Allan G. 2000. The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishers. Johnson, Allen W. and Timothy Earle. 2000. The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. 2nd ed. Stanford University Press. Johnson, Dominic D. P. 2004. Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions. Harvard University Press. Johnson, Samuel G. B. and Woo-kyoung Ahn. 2017. “Causal Mechanisms.” In The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning, edited by Michael R. Waldman. Oxford University Press. Jonas, Hans. 2001 [1966]. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. Northwestern University Press. Jones, Clive G., John H. Lawton, and Moshe Shachak. 1994. “Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers.” Oikos 69 (3): 373–386. Jones, Clive G. et al. 2010. “A Framework for Understanding Physical Ecosystem Engineering by Organisms.” Oikos 119 (12):1862–1869. Jonsson, Christer and Jonas Tallberg. 1998. “Compliance and Post-Agreement Bargaining.” European Journal of International Relations 4 (4):371–408. Jooss, Christian. 2020. Self-Organization of Matter: A Dialectical Approach to Evolution of Matter in the Microcosm and Macrocosmos. De Gruyter. Joseph, Jonathan. 2018. “Beyond Relationalism in Peacebuilding.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 12 (3):425–434. Jung, Ludwig. 2021. The Political Economy of International Prohibition Regimes: A Transaction Cost Perspective on Relational Contracting between States. Nomos Verlag. Kaare, Bwire and James Woodburn. 1999. “The Hadza of Tanzania.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press.

402

References

Kadushin, Charles. 2012. Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings. Oxford University Press. Kagan, Korina. 1997/98. “The Myth of the European Concert: The RealistInstitutionalist Debate and Great Power Behavior in the Eastern Question, 1821–1841.” Security Studies 7 (2):1–57. Kahler, Miles and David A. Lake. 2004. “Governance in a Global Economy: Political Authority in Transition.” PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (3):409–414. Kaiser, Marie I. 2015. Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences. Springer. Kaiser, Marie I. 2018. “Individuating Part-Whole Relations in the Biological World.” In Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices, edited by Otávio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan. Oxford University Press. Kamen, Henry. 1968. “The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War.” Past & Present 39:44–61. Kaminsky, Howard. 2000. “The Great Schism.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VI c. 1300–c. 1415, edited by Michael Jones. Cambridge University Press. Kang, David C. 2020. “International Order in Historical East Asia: Tribute and Hierarchy beyond Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism.” International Organization 74 (1):65–93. Kaplan, David. 2000. “The Darker Side of the ‘Original Affluent Society’.” Journal of Anthropological Research 56 (3):301–324. Kaplan, Morton A. 1957. System and Process in International Politics. John Wiley & Sons. Kármán, Gabor. 2020. Tributaries and Peripheries of the Ottoman Empire. Brill. Kármán, Gabor and Lovro Kunčević, eds. 2013. The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Brill. Katzenstein, Peter, ed. 1996. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in International Politics. Cornell University Press. Katzenstein, Peter J., Robert O. Keohane, and Stephen D. Krasner, eds. 1999a. Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics. MIT Press. Katzenstein, Peter J., Robert O. Keohane, and Stephen D. Krasner. 1999b. “International Organization and the Study of World Politics.” In Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane, and Stephen D. Krasner. MIT Press. Katzenstein, Peter J. and Lucia A. Seybert. 2018. Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Kauffman, Stuart A. 1986. “Autocatalytic Sets of Proteins.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 119 (1):1–24. Kauffman, Stuart A. 1993. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press. Kauffman, Stuart A. 1995. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of SelfOrganization and Complexity. Oxford University Press. Kauffman, Stuart A. 2000. Investigations. Oxford University Press. Kaufman, Stuart, Richard Little, and William Wohlforth, eds. 2007. The Balance of Power in World History. Palgrave Macmillan. Kauppi, Niilo and Mikael Rask Madsen, eds. 2013. Transnational Power Elites: The New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security. Routledge.

References

403

Kavalski, Emilian. 2007. “The Fifth Debate and the Emergence of Complex International Relations Theory: Notes on the Application of Complexity Theory to the Study of International Life.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20 (3):435–454. Kavalski, Emilian. 2016. “Relationality and Its Chinese Characteristics.” China Quarterly 226:551–559. Kavalski, Emilian. 2018. The Guanxi of Relational International Theory. Routledge. Kay, Adrian and Phillip Baker. 2015. “What Can Causal Process Tracing Offer to Policy Studies? A Review of the Literature.” Policy Studies Journal 43 (1):1–21. Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell University Press. Keck, Margaret E. and K. Sikkink. 1999. “Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics.” International Social Science Journal 51 (159):89–101. Kedar, Asaf. 2007. “Ideal Types as Hermeneutic Concepts.” Journal of the Philosophy of History 1 (3):318–345. Keeley, Lawrence H. 1997. War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Oxford University Press. Keene, Edward. 2002. Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Keene, Edward. 2005. International Political Thought: An Historical Introduction. Polity Press. Keene, Edward. 2013. “The Naming of Powers.” Cooperation and Conflict 48 (2):268–282. Keene, Edward. 2014. “The Standard of ‘Civilisation,’ the Expansion Thesis and the 19th-Century International Social Space.” Millennium 42 (3):651–673. Kegley, Charles W. and Gregory A. Raymond. 2011. The Global Future: A Brief Introduction to World Politics. 4th ed. Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Kelly, Phil. 2020. “The Present Transition in Global Politics.” World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues 24 (1):10–23. Kelly, Raymond C. 2000. Warless Societies and the Origin of War. University of Michigan Press. Kelly, Robert E. 2012. “A ‘Confucian Long Peace’ in pre-Western East Asia?” European Journal of International Relations 18 (3):407–430. Kelly, Robert L. 1995. The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways. Smithsonian Institution Press. Kennan, George F. 1951. American Diplomacy, 1900–1950. New American Library. Kennedy, Dane Keither. 2016. Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Kennedy, Denis and Brian Beaton. 2016. “Two Steps Forward? Assessing Latin American Regionalism through CELAC.” Latin American Policy 7 (1):52–79. Keohane, Nannerl O. 1980. Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Princeton University Press. Keohane, Robert O. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton University Press. Keohane, Robert O., ed. 1986a. Neorealism and Its Critics. Columbia University Press.

404

References

Keohane, Robert O. 1986b. “Reciprocity in International Relations.” International Organization 40 (1):1–27. Keohane, Robert O. 1986c. “Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond.” In Neo-Realism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane. Columbia University Press. Keohane, Robert O. 1989. International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory. Westview Press. Keohane, Robert O. 1990. “Correspondence.” International Security 15 (2):192–194. Keohane, Robert O. 1993. “Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge after the Cold War.” In Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, edited by David A. Baldwin. Columbia University Press. Keohane, Robert O. 2001. “Governance in a Partially Globalized World.” American Political Science Review 95 (1):1–13. Keohane, Robert O. 2012. “Twenty Years of Institutional Liberalism.” International Relations 26 (2):125–138. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye, eds. 1972. Transnational Relations and World Politics. Harvard University Press. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. 1977. Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. Little, Brown and Company. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye. 1987. “Power and Interdependence Revisited.” International Organization 41 (4):725–753. Keohane, Robert O. and David G. Victor. 2011. “The Regime Complex for Climate Change.” Perspectives on Politics 9 (1):7–23. Kerin, Roger A., P. Rajan Varadarajan, and Robert A. Peterson. 1992. “FirstMover Advantage: A Synthesis, Conceptual Framework, and Research Propositions.” Journal of Marketing 56 (4):33–52. Kerr, Philip Henry (Marquis of Lothian). 1935. Pacifism Is Not Enough, nor Patriotism Either. Clarendon Press. Kerr, Philip Henry (Marquis of Lothian). 1941. The American Speeches of Lord Lothian, July 1939 to December 1940. Oxford University Press. Kertzer, Joshua D. 2017. “Microfoundations in International Relations.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 34 (1):81–97. Kettering, Sharon. 1986a. “Patronage and Politics during the Fronde.” French Historical Studies 14 (3):409–441. Kettering, Sharon. 1986b. Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France. Oxford University Press. Kettering, Sharon. 1988. “The Historical Development of Political Clientelism.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (3):419–447. Keuschnigg, Marc, Niclas Lovsjö, and Peter Hedström. 2018. “Analytical Sociology and Computational Social Science.” Journal of Computational Social Science 1 (1):3–14. Keynes, John Maynard. 1920. The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Kiel, L. Douglas and Euel W. Elliott. 1996. Chaos Theory in the Social Sciences: Foundations and Applications. University of Michigan Press. Kim, Jaegwon. 2008. “Reduction and Reductive Explanation: Is One Possible without the Other?” In Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation,

References

405

and Causation, edited by Jakob Hohwy and Jesper Kallestrup. Oxford University Press. Kim, Moonhawk and Scott Wolford. 2014. “Choosing Anarchy: Institutional Alternatives and the Global Order.” International Theory 6 (1):28–67. Kim, Rakhyun E. 2019. “Understanding Institutional Complexity through Networks.” In Global Challenges, Governance, and Complexity: Applications and Frontiers, edited by Victor Galaz. Edward Elgar Publishing. Kim, Rakhyun E. 2020. “Is Global Governance Fragmented, Polycentric, or Complex? The State of the Art of the Network Approach.” International Studies Review 22 (4):903–931. Kim, Rakhyun E. and Jean-Frédéric Morin. 2021. “Massive Institutional Structures in Global Governance.” Global Environmental Politics 21 (3):1–23. Kincaid, Harold. 2012. “Mechanisms, Causal Modeling, and the Limitations of Traditional Multiple Regression.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Harold Kincaid. Oxford University Press. Kindleberger, Charles P. 1984. A Financial History of Western Europe. George Allen & Unwin. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton University Press. Kingra, Mahinder S. 1993. “The Trace Italienne and the Military Revolution during the Eighty Years War, 1567–1648.” The Journal of Military History 57 (3):431. Kirk, Grayson L. 1947. The Study of International Relations in American Colleges and Universities. Council on Foreign Relations. Kishigami, Nobuhiro. 2004. “A New Typology of Food-Sharing Practices among Hunter-Gatherers, with a Special Focus on Inuit Examples.” Journal of Anthropological Research 60 (3):341–358. Kissinger, Henry A. 1957. A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22. Houghton Mifflin. Kistler, Max. 2009. “Mechanisms and Downward Causation.” Philosophical Psychology 22 (5):595–609. Kitano, Hiroaki. 2002a. “Computational Systems Biology.” Nature 420 (6912):206–210. Kitano, Hiroaki. 2002b. “Systems Biology: A Brief Overview.” Science 295 (5560):1662–1664. Kitchen, Nicholas. 2010. “Systemic Pressures and Domestic Ideas: A Neoclassical Realist Model of Grand Strategy Formation.” Review of International Studies 36 (1):117. Kivinen, Osmo and Tero Piiroinen. 2006. “Toward Pragmatist Methodological Relationalism.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (3):303–329. Klassen, John. 1998. “Hus, the Hussites and Bohemia.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Klunk, Jennifer et al. 2022. “Evolution of Immune Genes Is Associated with the Black Death.” Nature 611 (7935):312–319. Knecht, R. J. 1996. The French Wars of Religion. 2nd ed. Longman. Knoke, David et al. 2021. Multimodal Political Networks. Cambridge University Press.

406

References

Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Pergamon Press. Knorr Cetina, Karin. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Harvard University Press. Knox, MacGregor and Williamson Murray, eds. 2001. The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050. Cambridge University Press. Knudsen, Tonny Brems and Cornelia Navari. 2019. International Organization in the Anarchical Society: The Institutional Structure of World Order. Palgrave Macmillan. Knuppe, Austin J. 2014. “Handcuffing the Hegemon: The Paradox of State Power under Unipolarity.” International Politics Reviews 2 (2):61–71. Kobrin, Stephen. 1999. “Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World Economy.” In Globalization and Governance, edited by Jeffrey A. Hart and Aseem Prakash. Routledge. Koebner, Richard. 1961. Empire. Cambridge University Press. Koebner, Richard and Helmut Dan Schmidt. 1965. Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840–1960. Cambridge University Press. Koenigsberger, H. G. 1978. “Monarchies and Parliaments in Early Modern Europe: Dominium Regale or Dominium Politicum et Regale?” Theory and Society 5 (2):191–217. Koenigsberger, H. G. 1986. Politicians and Virtuosi: Essays in Early Modern History. The Hambeldon Press. Koenigsberger, H. G. 1987. Early Modern Europe: 1500–1789. Longman. Koenigsberger, H. G. 1995. “Parliaments and Estates.” In The Origins of Modern Freedom in the West, edited by Richard W. Davis. Stanford University Press. Kondepudi, Dilip and Ilya Prigogine. 2015. Modern Thermodynamics: From Heat Engines to Dissipative Structures. 2nd ed. Wiley. Koremenos, Barbara, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal. 2001. “The Rational Design of International Institutions.” International Organization 55 (4):761–799. Koshland, Daniel E. Jr. 2002. “The Seven Pillars of Life.” Science 295 (5563):2215–2216. Koskenniemi, Martti. 2002. The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960. Cambridge University Press. Krasner, Stephen D. 1978. Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Policy. Princeton University Press. Krasner, Stephen D. 1982. “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables.” International Organization 36 (2):185–206. Krasner, Stephen D., ed. 1983. International Regimes. Cornell University Press. Krasner, Stephen D. 1992. “Realism, Imperialism, and Democracy: A Response to Gilbert.” Political Theory 20 (1):38–52. Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton University Press. Kratochwil, Friedrich. 1989. Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. Cambridge University Press. Kratochwil, Friedrich. 2007a. “Evidence, Inference, and Truth as Problems of Theory Building in the Social Sciences.” In Theory and Evidence in Comparative

References

407

Politics and International Relations, edited by Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach. Palgrave Macmillan. Kratochwil, Friedrich. 2007b. “Of False Promises and Good Bets: A Pragmatic Approach to Theory Building.” Journal of International Relations and Development 10 (1):1–15. Kratz, Corinne A. 1999. “The Okiek of Kenya.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Krebs, Ronald R. 1999. “Perverse Institutionalism: NATO and the GrecoTurkish Conflict.” International Organization 53 (2):343–377. Kroeber, A. L. and Talcott Parsons. 1958. “The Concepts of Culture and of Social System.” American Sociological Review 23 (5):582–583. Krohs, U. et al., eds. 2009. Functions in Biological and Artificial Worlds: Comparative Philosophical Perspectives. MIT Press. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970 [1962]. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press. Kukla, André. 2013. Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. Routledge. Kuorikoski, Jaakko. 2009. “Two Concepts of Mechanism: Componential Causal System and Abstract Form of Interaction.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 23 (2):143–160. Kupchan, Charles A. and Clifford Kupchan. 1991. “Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe.” International Security 16 (1):114–161. Kurki, Milja. 2008. Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis. Cambridge University Press. Kurki, Milja. 2020. International Relations in a Relational Universe. Oxford University Press. Kurki, Milja. 2022. “Relational Revolution and Relationality in IR: New Conversations.” Review of International Studies 48 (5):821–836. Kustermans, Jorg. 2016. “Parsing the Practice Turn: Practice, Practical Knowledge, Practices.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 44 (2):175–196. Kutschera, Ulrich. 2018. “Systems Biology of Eukaryotic Superorganisms and the Holobiont Concept.” Theory in Biosciences 137 (2):117–131. Kwan, Alan Shiu Cheung. 2016. “Hierarchy, Status and International Society: China and the Steppe Nomads.” European Journal of International Relations 22 (2):362–383. Kwass, Michael. 2000. Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France: Liberté, Franternité, Fiscalité. Cambridge University Press. Kwon, Seok-Woo et al. 2020. “Network Brokerage: An Integrative Review and Future Research Agenda.” Journal of Management 46 (6):1092–1120. Kydd, Andrew. 2018. “Game Theory and the Future of International Security.” In The Oxford Handbook of International Security, edited by Alexandra Gheciu and William C. Wohlforth. Oxford University Press. Ladyman, James and Karoline Wiesner. 2020. What Is a Complex System? Yale University Press. Ladyman, James, James Lambert, and Karoline Wiesner. 2013. “What Is a Complex System?” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3:33–67. Lakatos, Imre. 1970. “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imré Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. Cambridge University Press.

408

References

Lakatos, Imré. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge University Press. Lake, David A. 2003a. “International Relations Theory and Internal Conflict: Insights from the Interstices.” International Studies Review 5 (4):81–90. Lake, David A. 2003b. “The New Sovereignty in International Relations.” International Studies Review 5 (3):303–323. Lake, David A. 2009. Hierarchy in International Relations. Cornell University Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. Laland, Kevin N. et al. 2015. “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Its Structure, Assumptions and Predictions.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282 (1813):20151019. Landini, Tatiana Savpoia and François Dépelteau. 2014. Norbert Elias and Empirical Research. Palgrave Macmillan. Laski, Harold J. 1921. The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Laski, Harold J. 1932. Nationalism and the Future of Civilization. Watts and Company. Lasswell, Harold D. 1935. World Politics and Personal Insecurity. The Free Press. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford University Press. Lauterpacht, H. 1933. The Function of Law in the International Community. Clarendon Press. Lawrence, T. J. 1898 [1895]. The Principles of International Law. 2nd ed. D. C. Heath & Co. Lawrence, T. J. 1919. The Society of Nations: Its Past, Present, and Possible Future. Oxford University Press. Le Poidevin, Robin. 2005. “Missing Elements and Missing Premises: A Combinatorial Argument for the Ontological Reduction of Chemistry.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (1):117–134. Leacock, Eleanor and Richard Lee. 1982. “Introduction.” In Politics and History in Band Societies, edited by Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee. Cambridge University Press. Leacock, Stephen. 1906. Elements of Political Science. Houghton Mifflin Company. Learoyd, Arthur. 2018. “Configurations of Semi-sovereignty in the Long Nineteenth Century.” In De-centering State Making: Comparative and International Perspectives, edited by Jens Bartelson, Martin Hall, and Jan Teorell. Edward Elgar Publishing. Lebow, Richard Ned. 2008. A Cultural Theory of International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Lechner, Silviya. 2017. “Why Anarchy Still Matters for International Relations: On Theories and Things.” Journal of International Political Theory 13 (3):341–359. Lechner, Silviya and Mervyn Frost. 2018. Practice Theory and International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Ledón-Rettig, Cristina and Eric J. Ragsdale. 2021. “Physiological Mechanisms and the Evolution of Plasticity.” In Phenotypic Plasticity & Evolution: Causes, Consequences, Controversies, edited by David W. Pfennig. CRC Press.

References

409

Lee, Ji-young. 2016. China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination. Columbia University Press. Lee, Richard B. 1968. “What Hunters Do for a Living, or, How to Make Out on Scarce Resources.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. Aldine Publishing Company. Lee, Richard B. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge University Press. Lee, Richard B. 1982. “Politics, Sexual and Non-sexual, in an Egalitarian Society.” In Politics and History in Band Societies, edited by Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee. Cambridge University Press. Lee, Richard B. 1984. The Dobe !Kung. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Lee, Richard B. 1986. “!Kung Kin Terms, the Name Relationship and the Process of Discovery.” In The Past and Future of !Kung Ethnography: Critical Reflections and Symbolic Perspectives. Essays in Honour of Lorna Marshall, edited by Megan Biesele. Helmut Buske Verlag. Lee, Richard B. and Richard Daly. 1999. “Foragers and Others.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Lee, Richard B. and Irven DeVore. 1968. “Problems in the Study of Hunters and Gatherers.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. Aldine Publishing Company. Lee, Yong Wook. 2019. “Relational Ontology and the Politics of BoundaryMaking: East Asian Financial Regionalism.” Politics 39 (1):18–34. Lees, Nicholas. 2020. “Conflict and the Separateness of Peoples: Investigating the Relationship between Multiplicity, Inequality and War.” Globalizations 17 (3):404–418. Legg, Catherine and Christopher Hookway. 2021. “Pragmatism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/sum2021/entries/pragmatism/. Legg, Stephen. 2009. “Of Scales, Networks and Assemblages: The League of Nations Apparatus and the Scalar Sovereignty of the Government of India.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (2):234–53. Lemons, Don S. 2013. A Student’s Guide to Entropy. Cambridge University Press. Lentner, Howard H. 2006. “Hegemony and Power in International Relations.” In Hegemony and Power: Consensus and Coercion in Contemporary Politics, edited by Mark Haugaard and Howard H. Lentner. Lexington Books. Leonardi, Paul M., Diane E. Bailey, and Casey S. Pierce. 2019. “The Coevolution of Objects and Boundaries over Time: Materiality, Affordances, and Boundary Salience.” Information Systems Research 30 (2):665–686. Levin, Janet. 2018. “Functionalism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/ entries/functionalism/. Levin, Simon A. 1992. “The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology.” Ecology 73 (6):1943–1967. Levin, Simon A. 2005. “Self-Organization and the Emergence of Complexity in Ecological Systems.” BioScience 55 (12):1075–1079.

410

References

Levine, Michael and Eric H. Davidson. 2006. “Gene Regulatory Networks for Development.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (14):4936–4942. Levy, Jack S. and William R. Thompson. 2013. “The Decline of War? Multiple Trajectories and Diverging Trends.” International Studies Review 15 (3):411–419. Lewis, P. S. 1968. Later Medieval France: The Polity. Macmillan. Lewontin, Richard C. 1970. “The Units of Selection.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1:1–18. Lewontin, Richard C. 1974. The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. Columbia University Press. Lieberman, Bruce S. and Elisabeth S. Vrba. 1995. “Hierarchy Theory, Selection, and Sorting.” BioScience 45 (6):394–399. Lieberman, Marvin B. and David B. Montgomery. 1988. “First‐Mover Advantages.” Strategic Management Journal 9 (S1):41–58. Light, Ryan and James Moody, eds. 2021. The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks. Oxford University Press. Lim, Alwyn. 2020. “Global Fields, Institutional Emergence, and the Regulation of Transnational Corporations.” Social Forces 99 (3):1060–1085. Lind, Gunner. 1996. “Great Friends and Small Friends: Clientelism and the Power Elite.” In Power Elites and State Building, edited by Wolfgang Reinhard. Clarendon Press. Lind, Jennifer M. 2004. “Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy.” International Security 29 (1):92–121. Linklater, Andrew. 2011. The Problem of Harm in World Politics: Theoretical Investigations. Cambridge University Press. Linklater, Andrew and Stephen Mennell. 2010. “Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations – An Overview and Assessment.” History and Theory 49 (3):384–411. Lipp, Charles T. 2011. Noble Strategies in an Early Modern Small State: The Mahuet of Lorraine. University of Rochester Press. Lippmann, Walter. 1915. The Stakes of Diplomacy. Henry Holt and Company. Lippmann, Walter. 1943. U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic. Little, Brown and Company. Lipschutz, Ronnie D. 1998. “Bioregionalism, Civil Society, and Global Environmental Governance.” In Bioregionalism, edited by Michael Vincent McGinnis. Routledge. Little, Daniel. 2011. “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Realm.” In Causality in the Sciences, edited by Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo, and Jon Williamson. Oxford University Press. Little, Richard. 2007. The Balance of Power in International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Liu, Xin. 2016. “Anarchy in the East: Eurocentrism, China-Centred Geopolitics and Uneven and Combined Development.” International Politics 53 (5):574–595. Livermore, H. V. 1969. A New History of Portugal. Cambridge University Press. Lloyd, Elisabeth A. and Stephen J. Gould. 1993. “Species Selection on Variability.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 90 (2):595–599.

References

411

Lloyd, Elisabeth A. and Stephen Jay Gould. 2017. “Exaptation Revisited: Changes Imposed by Evolutionary Psychologists and Behavioral Biologists.” Biological Theory 12 (1):50–65. Logan, F. Donald. 2002. A History of the Church in the Middle Ages. Routledge. Lombrozo, Tania and Susan Carey. 2006. “Functional Explanation and the Function of Explanation.” Cognition 99 (2):167–204. Long, David. 1995. “Conclusion: Inter-War Idealism, Liberal Internationalism, and Contemporary International Theory.” In Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed, edited by David Long and Peter Wilson. Clarendon Press. Long, David and Peter Wilson, eds. 1995. Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed. Clarendon Press. Lopez, Anthony C. and Dominic Johnson. 2020. “The Determinants of War in International Relations.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 178:983–997. López-Jiménez, Ana Teresa et al. 2019. “The Developmental Cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum Ensures Curing of a Mycobacterial Infection at Both Cell-Autonomous Level and by Collaborative Exclusion.” bioRxiv:586263. 10.1101/586263 Lorenz, Edward N. 1963. “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.” Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 20 (2):130–141. Lorenz, Edward N. 1972. “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, December 29. Lorenz, Edward N. 1995. The Essence of Chaos. University of Washington Press. Lottin, Alain. 1991. “Louis XIV and Flanders.” In Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, edited by Mark Greengrass. Edward Arnold. Loudon, Claire Marie et al. 2016. “Experimental Evidence that Evolution by Niche Construction Affects Dissipative Ecosystem Dynamics.” Evolutionary Ecology 30 (2):221–234. Love, Alan. 2020. “Developmental Biology.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2022/entries/biology-developmental/. Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Harvard University Press. Lovett, A. W. 1977. Philip II and MateoVázquez de Leca: The Government of Spain (1572–1592). Librairie Droz. Lowenheim, Oded. 2007. Predators and Parasites: Persistent Agents of Transnational Harm and Great Power Authority. University of Michigan Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 1990a. “The Autopoiesis of Social Systems.” In Essays on Self-Reference. Columbia University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 1990b. “The Paradox of System Differentiation and the Evolution of Society.” In Differentiation Theory and Social Change: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Paul Colomy. Columbia University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 1995 [1984]. Social Systems. Stanford University Press.

412

References

Luhmann, Niklas. 2002. “The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and the Reality that Remains Unknown.” In Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity, edited by William Rasch. Stanford University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 2012 [1997]. Theory of Society. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. 2013 [2002]. Introduction to Systems Theory. Polity Press. Luisi, Pier Luigi. 2016. The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Lunau, Klaus. 2004. “Adaptive Radiation and Coevolution: Pollination Biology Case Studies.” Organisms Diversity & Evolution 4 (3):207–224. Lye, Tuck-Po. 2004. Changing Pathways: Forest Degradation and the Batek of Pahang, Malaysia. Lexington Books. Lynn, John A. 1997. Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army 1610–1715. Cambridge University Press. Lynn, John A. 2001. “Forging the Western Army in Seventeenth-Century France.” In The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, edited by MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray. Cambridge University Press. Lynn-Jones, Sean M. and Steven E. Miller. 1995. “Preface.” In The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security, edited by Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller. MIT Press. Lyons, Timothy D. 2016. “Scientific Realism.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press. Maccoby, Malcolm. 1991. “Move from Hierarchy to Heterarchy.” Research Technology Management 34 (5):46–47. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2005 [2003]. The Reformation. Penguin Books. MacDonald, Paul K. 2014. Networks of Domination: The Social Foundations of Peripheral Conquest in International Politics. Oxford University Press. MacDonald, Paul K. 2018. “Embedded Authority: A Relational Networks Approach to Hierarchy in World Politics.” Review of International Studies 44 (1):128–150. Machamer, Peter. 2004. “Activities and Causation: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Mechanisms.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (1):27–39. Machamer, Peter, Lindley Darden, and Carl F. Craver. 2000. “Thinking about Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1–25. Macinnes, Allan I. 2003. “The Multiple Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland: The ‘British Problem’.” In A Companion to Stuart Britain, edited by Barry Coward. Blackwell. Macinnes, Allan I., Kieran German, and Lesley Graham, eds. 2016 [2014]. Living with Jacobitism, 1690–1788: The Three Kingdoms and Beyond. Routledge. MacKay, Angus. 1998. “Castile and Navarre.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. MacKay, Joseph. 2013. “International Politics in Eighteenth- and NineteenthCentury Central Asia: Beyond Anarchy in International Relations Theory.” Central Asian Survey 32 (2):210–224. MacKay, Joseph. 2014. “Rethinking the IR Theory of Empire in Late Imperial China.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 15 (1):53–79.

References

413

MacKay, Ruth. 1999. The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile. Cambridge University Press. Mackenzie, Kenneth D. 2004. “The Process Approach to Multi-Level Organizational Behavior.” In Multi-Level Issues in Organizational Behavior and Processes, edited by Francis J. Yammarino and Fred Danserau. Elsevier. Mackinder, H. J. 1919. Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction. Henry Holt and Company. Mahan, A. T. 1912. Armaments and Arbitration or the Place of Force in the International Relations of States. Harper & Brothers. Mahoney, James. 2001. “Review Essay: Beyond Correlational Analysis: Recent Innovations in Theory and Method.” Sociological Forum 16 (3):575–593. Mahoney, James. 2012. “The Logic of Process-Tracing Tests in the Social Sciences.” Sociological Methods & Research 41 (4):570–597. Mahoney, James. 2016. “Mechanisms, Bayesianism, and Process Tracing.” New Political Economy 21 (5):493–499. Major, J. Russell. 1962. “The French Renaissance Monarchy as Seen through the Estates General.” Studies in the Renaissance 9:113–125. Major, J. Russell. 1964. “The Crown and the Aristocracy in Renaissance France.” The American Historical Review 69 (3):631–645. Major, J. Russell. 1980. Representative Government in Early Modern France. Yale University Press. Major, J. Russell. 1986. “The Revolt of 1620: A Study of Ties of Fidelity.” French Historical Studies 14 (3):391–408. Major, J. Russell. 1994. From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Malanima, Paolo. 2009. Pre-modern European Economy: One Thousand Years (10th–19th Centuries). Brill. Mallett, Michael and Christine Shaw. 2014 [2012]. The Italian Wars 1494–1559: War, State and Society in Early Modern Europe. Routledge. Mallon, Ron. 2007. “A Field Guide to Social Construction.” Philosophy Compass 2 (1):93–108. Malpas, Jeff. 2012. “Putting Space in Place: Philosophical Topography and Relational Geography.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2):226–242. Maltby, William S. 2004. The Reign of Charles V. Palgrave. Mancilla Garcia, Maria, Tilman Hertz, and Maja Schlüter. 2020. “Towards a Process Epistemology for the Analysis of Social-Ecological System.” Environmental Values 29 (2):221–239. Mandel, Robert. 2013. Global Security Upheaval: Armed Nonstate Groups Usurping State Stability Functions. Stanford University Press. Mandelbaum, Michael. 1998–1999. “Is Major War Obsolete?” Survival 40 (4):20–38. Mander, Linden. 1941. Foundations of Modern World Society. Stanford University Press. Mann, Michael. 1986. The Sources of Social Power, Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760. Cambridge University Press. Manning, C. A. W. 1932. The Policies of the British Dominions in the League of Nations. Oxford University Press.

414

References

Manning, C. A. W., ed. 1937. Peaceful Change: An International Problem. The Macmillan Company. Mansbach, Richard W. 2004. “The Meaning of 11 September and the Emerging Postinternational World.” In 11 September and Its Aftermath: The Geopolitics of Terror, edited by Stanley D. Brunn. Frank Cass. Mansfield, Edward D. 1993. “Concentration, Polarity, and the Distribution of Power.” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1):105–128. Manzo, Gianluca, ed. 2014. Analytical Sociology: Actions and Networks. John Wiley & Sons. Mao, Shuhua et al. 2020. “Grey–Lotka–Volterra Model for the Competition and Cooperation between Third-Party Online Payment Systems and Online Banking in China.” Applied Soft Computing 95:106501. Margulis, Lynn. 1991. “Symbiogenesis and Symbiontism.” In Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis, edited by Lynn Margulis and René Fester. MIT Press. Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan. 1995. What is Life? University of California Press. Maroney, Owen. 2009. “Information Processing and Thermodynamic Equillibrium.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-entropy/. Marshall, Peter. 2009. The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Marshall, Peter, ed. 2015. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation. Oxford University Press. Martens, Georg Friedrich von. 1986 [1795]. Summary of the Law of Nations, Founded on the Treaties and Customs of the Modern Nations of Europe. Fred B. Rothman & Co. [Thomas Bradford]. Martin, John Levi. 2003. “What Is Field Theory?” American Journal of Sociology 109 (1):1–49. Martin, John Levi. 2009. Social Structures. Princeton University Press. Martin, John Levi. 2011. The Explanation of Social Action. Oxford University Press. Massimi, Michela and Casey McCoy, eds. 2020. Understanding Perspectivism: Scientific Challenges and Methodological Prospects. Routledge. Masterman, Margaret. 1970. “The Nature of a Paradigm.” In Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imré Lakatos and Alan Musgrave. Cambridge University Press. Masters, Roger D. 1964. “World Politics as a Primitive Political System.” World Politics 16 (4):595–619. Mastrobuono-Battisti, Alessandra et al. 2019. “Star Formation at the Galactic Centre: Coevolution of Multiple Young Stellar Discs.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 490 (4):5820–5831. Mattingly, Garrett. 1955. Renaissance Diplomacy. Houghton Mifflin. Maturana, Humberto R. and Francisco J. Varela. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel Publishing Company. Maxwell, Bertram. 1939. International Relations. Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Maynard Smith, John and Eörs Szathmáry. 1995. The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford University Press.

References

415

Maynard Smith, John and Eörs Szathmáry. 1999. The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language. Oxford University Press. Maynard Smith, John et al. 1985. “Developmental Constraints and Evolution.” Quarterly Review of Biology 60 (3):265–287. Mayr, Ernst. 1942. Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist. Columbia University Press. Mayr, Ernst and William B. Provine. 1998 [1980]. The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology. Harvard University Press. McAdam, Doug, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. 2008. “Methods for Measuring Mechanisms of Contention.” Qualitative Sociology 31 (4):307–331. McCants, Ann. 2015. “Historical Demography.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750. Volume I: Peoples and Places, edited by Hamish Scott. Oxford University Press. McClamrock, Ron. 1991. “Marr’s Three Levels: A Re-Evaluation.” Minds and Machines 1 (2):185–196. McClamrock, Ron. 2005. “Modularity.” In Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, edited by Lynn Nadel. John Wiley and Sons. McClelland, Charles A. 1966. Theory and the International System. The Macmillan Company. McCluskey, Phil. 2013. Absolute Monarchy on the Frontiers: Louis XIV’s Military Occupations of Lorraine and Savoy. Manchester University Press. McConaughey, Meghan, Paul Musgrave, and Daniel H. Nexon. 2018. “Beyond Anarchy: Logics of Political Organization, Hierarchy, and International Structure.” International Theory 10 (2):181–218. McCormack, Daniel. 2019. Great Powers and International Hierarchy. Palgrave Macmillan. McCourt, David M. 2014. Britain and World Power since 1945: Constructing a Nation’s Role in International Politics. University of Michigan Press. McCourt, David M. 2016. “Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism.” International Studies Quarterly 60 (3):475–485. McDonald, Matt. 2008. “Securitization and the Construction of Security.” European Journal of International Relations 14 (4):563–587. McIntyre, David P. and Arati Srinivasan. 2017. “Networks, Platforms, and Strategy: Emerging Views and Next Steps.” Strategic Management Journal 38 (1):141–160. McKitterick, Rosamond. 1999. “The Church.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History,Volume 3, c. 900–1024, edited by Timothy Reuter. Cambridge Univrsity Press. McLaughlin, Peter. 2001. What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems. Cambridge University Press. McNair, Arnold D. 1927. “Equality in International Law.” Michigan Law Review 26 (2):131–152. McNair, Arnold D. 1961. The Law of Treaties. Clarendon Press. Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Norton. Mearsheimer, John J. 2006. “Conversations in International Relations: Interview with John J. Mearsheimer (Part II).” International Relations 20 (2):231–243. Medeiros, Lucas P. et al. 2018. “The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution in Mutualistic Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (47):12017–12022.

416

References

Meibauer, Gustav et al. 2021. “Rethinking Neoclassical Realism at Theory’s End.” International Studies Review 23 (1):268–295. Meijer, Hugo and Benjamin Jensen. 2018. “The Strategist’s Dilemma: Global Dynamic Density and the Making of US ‘China Policy’.” European Journal of International Security 3 (2):211–234. Meillassoux, Claude. 1981 [1975]. Maidens, Meals and Money. Cambridge University Press. Meincke, Anne Sophie. 2018. “Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Meincke, Anne Sophie. 2019a. “Autopoiesis, Biological Autonomy and the Process View of Life.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9:1–16. Meincke, Anne Sophie. 2019b. “Human Persons: A Process View.” In Was sind und wie existieren Personen?, edited by Jörg Noller. Mentis. Meincke, Anne Sophie and John Dupré, eds. 2021. Biological Identity: Perspectives from Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Biology. Routledge. Mennell, Stephen. 1998. Norbert Elias: An Introduction. University College Dublin Press. Menzies, Peter and Helen Beebee. 2019. “Counterfactual Theories of Causation.” In The Stanford Encylcopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/causation-counterfactual/. Merlini, Cesare. 1984. Economic Summits and Western Decision-Making. Routledge. Mettam, Roger. 2007. “The French Nobility, 1610–1715.” In The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Volume I: Western and Southern Europe, 2nd ed., edited by H. M. Scott. Palgrave Macmillan. Meyer, Andreas. 2007. “Papal Monarchy.” In A Companion to the Medieval World, edited by Carol Lansing and Edward D. English. Blackwell. Meyer, John W., John Boli, and George M. Thomas. 1987. “Ontology and Rationalization in the Western Cultural Account.” In Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and Individual, edited by George M. Thomas et al. Sage. Michael, Donald N. 1983. “Neither Hierarchy nor Anarchy: Notes for Norms on Governance in a Systemic World.” In Rethinking Liberalism, edited by Walter Truett Anderson. Avon Books. Middlebush, Frederick A. and Chesney Hill. 1940. Elements of International Relations. McGraw-Hill Book Company. Migdal, Joel S. 1997. “Studying the State.” In Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, Structure, edited by Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman. Cambridge University Press. Militello, Guglielmo, Leonardo Bich, and Alvaro Moreno. 2021. “Functional Integration and Individuality in Prokaryotic Collective Organisations.” Acta Biotheoretica 69 (3):391–415. Miller, Benjamin. 2004. “The International System and Regional Balance in the Middle East.” In Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century, edited by T. V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortman. Stanford University Press. Miller, John H. 1990. Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century Europe. St. Martin’s Press.

References

417

Miller, John H. 2015. A Crude Look at the Whole: The Science of Complex Systems in Business, Life, and Society. Basic Books. Miller, John H. and Scott E. Page. 2007. Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life. Princeton University Press. Miller, Maureen C. 2005. Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martins. Miller, Stephen J. 2010. “The Estates of Languedoc in Eighteenth-Century France: Administrative Expansion and Feudal Revitalisation.” In The Eighteenth-Century Composite State: Representative Institutions in Irealand and Europe, 1689–1800, edited by D. W. Hayton, James Kelly, and John Bergin. Palgrave Macmillan. Milner, Helen V. 1998. “Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International, American, and Comparative Politics.” International Organization 52 (4):759–786. Milner, Helen V. and Andrew Moravcsik, eds. 2009. Power, Interdpendence, and Nonstate Actors in World Politics. Princeton University Press. Mische, Ann. 2011. “Relational Sociology, Culture, and Agency.” In The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, edited by John Scott and Peter J. Carrington. SAGE Publications. Mitchell, Sandra D. 1997. “Pragmatic Laws.” Philosophy of Science 64 (S4):S468–S479. Mitchell, Sandra D. 2003. Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism. Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, Sandra D. 2012. “Emergence: Logical, Functional and Dynamical.” Synthese 185 (2):171–186. Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin and Paul R. Hensel. 2007. “International Institutions and Compliance with Agreements.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (4):721–737. Mitchison, Rosalind. 1983. Lordship to Patronage: Scotland 1603–1745. E. Arnold. Mitchison, Rosalind. 2002. A History of Scotland. 3rd ed. Routledge. Mitrany, David. 1933. The Progress of International Government. Yale University Press. Mitrany, David. 1944. A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organization. Royal Institute of International Affairs. Mitzen, Jennifer. 2013. Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance. University of Chicago Press. Miura, Satoshi. 2003. “The Heterarchical Society: Networks and Authorities in World Politics Institutionalization of International Relations.” International Relations 2003 (132):58–76. Miura, Satoshi. 2004. “Heterarchy in World Politics: Circularity, Distributed Authority, and Networks.” Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. Moghaddam, Fathali M., Benjamin J. Walker, and Rom Harré. 2003. “Cultural Distance, Levels of Abstraction, and the Advantages of Mixed Methods.” In Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research, edited by Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie. SAGE Publications. Moisio, Sami and Anssi Paasi. 2013. “Beyond State-Centricity: Geopolitics of Changing State Spaces.” Geopolitics 18 (2):255–266.

418

References

Molter, Dan. 2017. “On Mushroom Individuality.” Philosophy of Science 84 (5):1117–1127. Monson, Andrew. 2020. “Alexander’s Tributary Empire.” In The Legitimation of Conquest: Monarchical Representation and the Art of Government in the Empire of Alexander the Great, edited by Kai Trampedach and Alexander Meeus. Franz Steiner Verlag. Montgomery, Alexander H. 2016. “Centrality in Transnational Governance: How Networks of International Institutions Shape Power Processes.” In The New Power Politics: Networks and Transnational Security Governance, edited by Deborah Avant and Oliver Westerwinter. Oxford University Press. Monton, Bradley and Chad Molder. 2021. “Constructive Empiricism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato .stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/constructive-empiricism/. Moody, Theodore William, Francis X. Martin, and Frances Jon Byrne. 1991 [1976]. Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691. Clarendon Press. Moon, Parker T. 1925. Syllabus on International Relations. The Macmillan Company. Moon, Parker T. 1926. Imperialism and World Politics. The Macmillan Company. Moore, John Bassett. 1898. History and Digest of the International Arbitrations to Which the United States Has Been a Party. Vol. I-VI. Government Printing Office. Moore, R. I. 2007 [1987]. Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishing. Moote, A. Lloyd. 1962. “The French Crown versus Its Judicial and Financial Officials, 1615–1683.” Journal of Modern History 34 (2):146–160. Moote, A. Lloyd. 1971. The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652. Princeton University Press. Moreno, Alvaro and Matteo Mossio. 2015. Biological Autonomy: A Philosophical and Theoretical Inquiry. Springer. Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2007. Counterfactuals and Causal Inference. Cambridge University Press. Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2012. “Bringing Context and Variability Back into Causal Analysis.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Harold Kincaid. Oxford University Press. Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2015. Counterfactuals and Causal Inference. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1946. Scientific Man versus Power Politics. University of Chicago Press. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1948. Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. Alfred A. Knopf. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1951. In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy. Alfred A. Knopf. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1962. Politics in the Twentieth Century. Volume I: The Decline of Democratic Politics. University of Chicago Press. Morgenthau, Hans J. 1970. Truth and Power: Essays of a Decade, 1960–70. Praeger. Morran, Levi T. et al. 2011. “Running with the Red Queen: Host-Parasite Coevolution Selects for Biparental Sex.” Science 333 (6039):216–218.

References

419

Morris, Christopher W. 2004. “The Modern State.” In Handbook of Political Theory, edited by Chandran Kukathas and Gerald F. Gaus. SAGE Publications. Mouritzen, Hans. 1980. “Selecting Explanatory Level in International Politics: Evaluating a Set of Criteria.” Cooperation and Conflict 15 (3):169–182. Mousnier, R[oland]. 1970. “French Institutions and Society 1610–61.” In The New Cambridge Modern History, IV: The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War 1609–48/59, edited by J. P. Cooper. Cambridge University Press. Mousnier, Roland. 1971 [1946]. La Venalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII. Presses Universitaires de France. Mousnier, Roland. 1979 [1974]. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy 1598–1789. Volume I: Society and the State. University of Chicago Press. Mousnier, Roland. 1979 [1980]. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy 1598–1789. Volume II: The Organs of State and Society. University of Chicago Press. Mowat, R. B. 1929. The European States System: A Study in International Relations. Oxford University Press. Mowat, R. B. 1931. International Relations. The Macmillan Company. Mueller, Milton, Andreas Schmidt, and Brenden Kuerbis. 2013. “Internet Security and Networked Governance in International Relations.” International Studies Review 15 (1):86–104. Muir, Ramsay. 1932. The Interdependent World and Its Problems. Constable & Co. Mulich, Jeppe. 2020. In a Sea of Empires: Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean. Cambridge University Press. Müller, Gerd B. 2007. “Evo–Devo: Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis.” Nature Reviews Genetics 8 (12):943–949. Murdoch, Jon. 2005. Post-Structuralist Geography: A Guide to Relational Space. SAGE Publications. Murray, Robert W. 2016. “Realist Multilateralism.” In Seeking Order in Anarchy: Multilateralism as State Strategy, edited by Robert W. Murray. University of Alberta Press. Musgrave, Paul and Daniel H. Nexon. 2018. “Defending Hierarchy from the Moon to the Indian Ocean: Symbolic Capital and Political Dominance in Early Modern China and the Cold War.” International Organization 72 (3):591–626. Myers, A. R. 1975. Parliaments and Estates in Europe to 1789. Thames and Hudson. Nadel, S. F. 1957. The Theory of Social Structure. The Free Press. Nadelman, Ethan A. 1990. “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society.” International Organization 44 (4):479–526. Nagel, Ernest. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. Harourt, Brace & World. Nantermoz, Olivia. 2020. “International Refugee Protection and the Primary Institutions of International Society.” Review of International Studies 46 (2):256–277. Nardin, Terry. 2008. “Theorising the International Rule of Law.” Review of International Studies 34 (385–401).

420

References

Navari, Cornelia. 2020. “Agents, Structures and Institutions: Some Thoughts on Method.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 33 (4):467–470. Nealson, Kenneth H. and Pamela G. Conrad. 1999. “Life: Past, Present and Future.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 354 (1392):1923–1939. Nedal, Dani K. and Daniel H. Nexon. 2019. “Anarchy and Authority: International Structure, the Balance of Power, and Hierarchy.” Journal of Global Security Studies 4 (2):169–189. Needham, Joseph. 1937. Integrative Levels: A Revaluation of the Idea of Progress. The Clarendon Press. Needham, Rodney. 1971. “Penan Friendship-Names.” In The Translation of Culture: Essays to E. E. Evans-Pritchard, edited by T. O. Beidelman. Tavistock Publications. Needham, Rodney. 1972. “Punan-Penan.” In Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia. Volume 1: Indonesia, Andaman Islands, and Madagascar, edited by Frank M. Lebar. Human Relations Area Files Press. Neillands, Robin. 2001. The Hundred Years War. Routledge. Neumann, I. B. 2002. “Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 31 (3):627–651. Newitt, Malyn. 2009. Portugal in European and World History. Reaktion Books. Nexon, Daniel H. 2009. The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change. Princeton University Press. Nexon, Daniel H. and Iver B. Neumann. 2018. “Hegemonic-Order Theory: A FieldTheoretic Account.” European Journal of International Relations 24 (3):662–686. Nexon, Daniel H. and Thomas Wright. 2007. “What’s at Stake in the American Empire Debate.” American Political Science Review 101 (2):253–271. Neyer, Jürgen. 2003. “Discourse and Order in the EU: A Deliberative Approach to Multi-Level Governance.” In European Governance, Deliberation and the Quest for Democratisation, edited by Eric O. Eriksen, Christian Joerges, and Jürgen Neyer. ARENA and European University Institute. Nicholson, Daniel J. 2018. “Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Nicholson, Daniel J. and Richard Gawne. 2015. “Neither Logical Empiricism nor Vitalism, but Organicism: What the Philosophy of Biology Was.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37 (4):345–381. Nicolescu, Basarab. 2010. “Methodology of Transdisciplinarity: Levels of Reality, Logic of the Included and Complexity.” Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion 1 (1):19–38. Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Noble, Denis. 2017. “Evolution Viewed from Physics, Physiology and Medicine.” Interface Focus 7 (5):20160159. Noel-Baker, Philip. 1928. The League of Nations at Work. 3rd ed. Nisbet. Nordin, Astrid H. M. et al. 2019. “Towards Global Relational Theorizing: A Dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone Scholarship on Relationalism.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 32 (5):570–581.

References

421

Normandin, Sebastian and Charles T. Wolfe, eds. 2013. Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Springer. Nuño de la Rosa, Laura. 2018. “Capturing Process: The Interplay of Modelling Strategies and Conceptual Understanding in Developmental Biology.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Nuño de la Rosa, Laura and Gerd B. Müller, eds. 2021. Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide. Springer. O’Hanlon, Michael. 2000. Technological Change and the Future of Warfare. The Brookings Institution. O’Hanlon, Michael. 2018. A Retrospective on the So-Called Revolution in Military Affairs. The Brookings Institution. O’Siochrú, Michael. 2008. God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland. Faber & Faber. Oatley, Thomas et al. 2013. “The Political Economy of Global Finance: A Network Model.” Perspectives on Politics 11 (1):133–153. Obert, Jonathan and John F. Padgett. 2012. “Conflict Displacement and Dual Inclusion in the Construction of Germany.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Odling-Smee, F. John, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman. 1996. “Niche Construction.” The American Naturalist 147 (4):641–648. Odling-Smee, F. John, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman. 2003. Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton University Press. Odling-Smee, John et al. 2013. “Niche Construction Theory: A Practical Guide for Ecologists.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 88 (1):3–28. Oestrich, Gerhard. 1982. Neostoicism and the Early Modern State. Cambridge University Press. Oh, Si Jin. 2019. “Resolving the Misunderstood Historical Order: A Korean Perspective on the Historical Tributary Order in East Asia.” Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international 21 (3):341–377. Okasha, Samir. 2005. “Multilevel Selection and the Major Transitions in Evolution.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1013–1025. Okasha, Samir. 2011. “Précis of Evolution and the Levels of Selection.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (1):212–220. Okasha, Samir. 2018. “Methodological Individualism in Evolutionary Biology and in Social Science: A Comparison.” In Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences, edited by Snait B. Gissis, Ehud Lamm, and Ayelet Shavit. MIT Press. Okasha, Samir. 2020. “The Relation between Kin and Multilevel Selection: An Approach using Causal Graphs.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (2):435–470. Oliver, Pamela and Daniel Myers. 2003. “The Coevolution of Social Movements.” Mobilization: An International Quarterly 8 (1):1–24. Olson, William and Nicholas Onuf. 1985. “The Growth of a Discipline: Reviewed.” In International Relations: British and American Perspectives, edited by Steve Smith. Basil Blackwell. Onditi, Francis et al. 2021. Reimagining Security Communities. Palgrave Macmillan.

422

References

Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. 1989. World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. University of South Carolina Press. Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. 1995. “Levels.” European Journal of International Relations 1 (1):35–58. Onuf, Nicholas. 2009. “Structure? What Structure?” International Relations 23 (2):183–199. Oppenheim, L. 1906. International Law: A Treatise. Volume II: War and Neutrality. Longmans, Green and Co. Oppenheim, L. 1955. International Law: A Treatise. 8th ed. 2 vols. David McKay Company. Oppenheim, Paul and Hilary Putnam. 1958. “Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis.” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2:3–36. Organski, A. F. K. 1958. World Politics. Alfred A. Knopf. Orsini, Amandine et al. 2020. “Complex Systems and International Governance.” International Studies Review 22 (4):1008–1038. Osgood, Robert E. and Robert W. Tucker. 1967. Force, Order, and Justice. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Osiander, Andreas. 1998. “Reading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited.” International Studies Quarterly 42 (3):409–432. Owen, John M. IV. 2010. The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change, 1510–2010. Princeton University Press. Owen, Taylor. 2016. “The Networked State and the End of 20th Century Diplomacy.” Global Affairs 2 (3):301–307. Oye, Kenneth A., ed. 1986. Cooperation under Anarchy. Princeton University Press. Paaby, Annalise B. and Matthew V. Rockman. 2013. “The Many Faces of Pleiotropy.” Trends in Genetics 29 (2):66–73. Padgett, John F. 2012a. “Autocatalysis in Chemistry and the Origin of Life.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter D. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. 2012b. “Country as Global Market: Netherlands, Calvinism, and the Joint-Stock Company.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. 2012c. “The Emergence of Corporate Merchant Banks in Dugento Tuscany.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. 2012d. “Transposition and Refunctionality: The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. 2017. “The Emergence of Organizations and States.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks, edited by Jennifer Nicoll Victor, Alexander H. Montgomery, and Mark Lubell. Oxford University Press. Padgett, John F., Peter McMahan, and Xing Zhong. 2012. “Economic Production as Chemistry II.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press.

References

423

Padgett, John F. and Walter W. Powell. 2012a. “Coda: Reflections on the Study of Multiple Networks.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. and Walter W. Powell, eds. 2012b. The Emergence of Organizations and Markets. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. and Walter W. Powell. 2012c. “Introduction to Part I, Autocatalysis.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. and Walter W. Powell. 2012d. “Introduction to Part IV, Contemporary Capitalism and Science.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padgett, John F. and Walter W. Powell. 2012e. “The Problem of Emergence.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Padovani, Flavia. 2013. “Genidentity and Topology of Time: Kurt Lewin and Hans Reichenbach.” In The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism, edited by Nikolay Milkov and Volker Peckhaus. Springer. Palacios, Patricia. 2022. Emergence and Reduction in Physics. Cambridge University Press. Pan, Chengxin. 2020. “Enfolding Wholes in Parts: Quantum Holography and International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 26 (S1):14–38. Panaite, Viorel. 2019. Ottoman Law of War and Peace: The Ottoman Empire and Its Tribute-Payers from the North of the Danube. 2nd revised ed. Brill. Pańkowska, Malgorzata, ed. 2021. Handbook of Research on Autopoiesis and SelfSustaining Processes for Organizational Success. IGI Global. Paoletti, Michele Paolini and Francesco Orilia, eds. 2017. Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation. Routledge. Papilloud, Christian. 2018. “Georg Simmel and Relational Sociology.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology, edited by François Dépelteau. Palgrave Macmillan. Papineau, David. 2020. “Naturalism.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/ entries/naturalism/. Parent, Joseph M. and Joshua A. Baron. 2011. “Elder Abuse: How the Moderns Mistreat Classical Realism.” International Studies Review 13 (2):193–213. Paris, Roland. 2006. “Bringing the Leviathan Back In: Classical versus Contemporary Studies of the Liberal Prace.” International Studies Review 8 (3):425–440. Parker, David. 1983. The Making of French Absolutism. Routledge. Parker, David. 2003. “Absolutism, Feudalism and Property Rights in the France of Louis XIV.” Past & Present 179:60–96. Parker, Geoffrey. 1976. “The ‘Military Revolution,’ 1560–1660 – A Myth?” Journal of Modern History 48 (2):195–214. Parker, Geoffrey. 1996. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Parker, Geoffrey. 2006. The Thirty Years’ War. 2nd ed. Routledge.

424

References

Parker, Geoffrey. 2008. “Crisis and Catastrophe: The Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century Reconsidered.” The American Historical Review 113 (4):1053–1079. Parker, Geoffrey. 2019. Emperor: A New Life of Charles V. Yale University Press. Parker, Geoffrey and Lesley M. Smith. 1997. The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. 2nd ed. Routledge. Parrott, David. 1985. “Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years’ War: The ‘Military Revolution’.” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 38 (2):7–24. Parrott, David. 2001. Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–1642. Cambridge University Press. Parrott, David. 2012a. “Armed Forces.” In The Oxford Handbook of The Ancien Régime, edited by William Doyle. Oxford University Press. Parrott, David. 2012b. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Parry, R. H., ed. 1970. The English Civil War and After, 1642–1658. University of California Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. The Free Press. Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. Free Press. Parsons, Talcott, ed. 1966. Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Prentice-Hall. Parsons, Talcott. 1971. The System of Modern Societies. Prentice-Hall. Parsons, Talcott. 1979. “Concrete Systems and ‘Abstracted’ Systems.” Contemporary Sociology 8 (5):696–705. Patomaki, Heikki. 2002. After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re) Construction of World Politics. Routledge. Paul, Michael C. 2004. “The Military Revolution in Russia, 1550–1682.” The Journal of Military History 68 (1):9–45. Paulle, Bowen, Bart van Heerikhuizen, and Mustafa Emirbayer. 2012. “Elias and Bourdieu.” Journal of Classical Sociology 12 (1):69–93. Payne, Joshua L. and Andreas Wagner. 2019. “The Causes of Evolvability and their Evolution.” Nature Reviews Genetics 20 (1):24–38. Payne, Stanley G. 1984. Spanish Catholicism: An Historical Overview. University of Wisconsin Press. Pearl, Judea. 2009a. “Causal Inference in Statistics: An Overview.” Statistics Surveys 3:96–146. Pearl, Judea. 2009b. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. Pearl, Judea, Madelyn Glymour, and Nicholas P. Jewell. 2016. Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer. John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Pedroso, Makmiller. 2018. “Forming Lineages by Sticking Together.” Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 11 (16):1–15. Penesyan, Anahit et al. 2021. “Three Faces of Biofilms: A Microbial Lifestyle, a Nascent Multicellular Organism, and an Incubator for Diversity.” npj Biofilms and Microbiomes 7 (80):1–9. Pennington, Kenneth. 1993. The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition. University of California Press. Penny, David. 2005. “An Interpretive Review of the Origin of Life Research.” Biology and Philosophy 20 (4):633–671.

References

425

Penttila, R. E. J. 2003. “The G8 as a Concert of Powers.” Adelphi Papers 43 (355):17–32. Perdue, Peter C. 2015. “The Tenacious Tributary System.” Journal of Contemporary China 24 (96):1002–1014. Perkins, Dexter. 1952. The American Approach to Foreign Policy. Harvard University Press. Peters, Edward. 1980. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. University of Pennsylvania Press. Peterson, Nicolas. 1993. “Demand Sharing: Reciprocity and the Pressure for Generosity among Foragers.” American Anthropologist 95 (4):860–874. Pettegree, Andrew, ed. 2000. The Reformation World. Routledge. Phillimore, Robert. 1854. Commentaries upon International Law. 3 vols. T. & J. W. Johnson. Phillips, Andrew. 2017. “Making Empires: Hierarchy, Conquest and Customization.” In Hierarchies in World Politics, edited by Ayse Zarakol. Cambridge University Press. Phillips, Andrew and Jason C. Sharman. 2015a. “Explaining Durable Diversity in International Systems: State, Company, and Empire in the Indian Ocean.” International Studies Quarterly 59 (3):436–448. Phillips, Andrew and Jason C. Sharman. 2015b. International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge University Press. Philpott, Daniel. 2001. Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations. Princeton University Press. Pickel, Andreas. 2011. “Systems Theory.” In The SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences, edited by Ian C. Jarvie and Jesús Zamora-Bonilla. SAGE Publications. Pickering, Jonathan. 2019. “Deliberative Ecologies: Complexity and Social– Ecological Dynamics in International Environmental Negotiations.” Global Environmental Politics 19 (2):61–80. Piel, Damien et al. 2022. “Phage–Host Coevolution in Natural Populations.” Nature Microbiology 7 (7):1075–1086. Pigliucci, Massimo. 2001. Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Pigliucci, Massimo and Gerd B. Müller, eds. 2010. Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. MIT Press. Plank, Geoffrey. 2006. Rebellion and Savagery: The Jacobite Rising of 1745 and the British Empire. University of Pennsylvania Press. Plotynski, Anya. 2019. “Cancer.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward M. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/ cancer/. Poggi, Gianfranco. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Stanford University Press. Poggi, Gianfranco. 1990. The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects. Stanford University Press. Polat, Necati. 2012. International Relations, Meaning and Mimesis. Routledge. Poli, Roberto. 2009. “Two Theories of Levels of Reality: In Dialogue with Basarab Nicolescu.” Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion 6:135–150.

426

References

Poli, Roberto. 2013. “A Note on the Difference between Complicated and Complex Social Systems.” Cadmus 2 (1). http://cadmus.newwelfare.org/2013/​ 10/27/a-note-on-the-difference-between-complicated-and-complex-socialsystems/. Politis, Nicolas. 1926. New Aspects of International Law. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pollard, A. J. 2013. The Wars of the Roses. 3rd ed. Palgrave Macmillan. Poole, Stafford. 1981. “Institutionalized Corruption in the Letrado Bureaucracy: The Case of Pedro Farfán (1568–1588).” The Americas 38 (2):149–171. Popper, Karl R. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Harper & Row. Porter, Bryan, ed. 1972. The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969. Oxford University Press. Porter, Terry B. 2006. “Coevolution as a Research Framework for Organizations and the Natural Environment.” Organization & Environment 19 (4):479–504. Posen, Barry R. 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict.” In Ethnic Conflict and International Security, edited by Michael E. Brown. Princeton University Press. Posen, Barry R. 2017. “Civil Wars and the Structure of World Power.” Daedalus 146 (4):167–179. Potochnik, Angela. 2021. “Our World Isn’t Organized into Levels.” In Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences, edited by Daniel S. Brooks, James DiFrisco, and William C. Wimsatt. MIT Press. Potter, Mark. 2003a. Corps and Clienteles: Public Finance and Political Change in France, 1688–1715. Ashgate. Potter, Mark. 2003b. “War Finance and Absolutist State Development in Early Modern Europe: An Examination of French Venality in the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of Early Modern History 7 (1–2):120–147. Potter, Pitman B. 1922. An Introduction to the Study of International Organization. The Century Company. Potter, Pitman B. 1929. This World of Nations: Foundations, Institutions, Practices. The Macmillan Company. Potter, Pitman B. and Roscoe L. West. 1927. International Civics: The Community of Nations. The Macmillan Company. Pouliot, Vincent. 2010. International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATORussia Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press. Pouliot, Vincent. 2013. “Putting Practice Theory into Practice.” In Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethnking Key Concepts in IR, edited by Rebecca AdlerNissen. Routledge. Pouliot, Vincent. 2016. International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy. Cambridge University Press. Povich, Mark and Carl F. Craver. 2017. “Mechanistic Levels, Reduction, and Emergence.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy, edited by Stuart Glennan and Phyllis Illari. Routledge. Powell, Christopher. 2013. “Radical Relationism: A Proposal.” In Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, edited by Christopher Powell and François Dépelteau. Palgrave Macmillan.

References

427

Powell, Christopher and François Dépelteau, eds. 2013. Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues. Palgrave Macmillan. Powell, Robert. 1991. “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory.” American Political Science Review 85 (4):1303–1320. Powell, Robert. 1993. “Guns, Butter, and Anarchy.” American Political Science Review 87 (1):115–132. Powell, Robert. 1994. “Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate.” International Organization 48 (2):313–344. Powell, Walter W. and Jason Owen-Smith. 2012. “An Open Elite: Arbiters, Catalysts, or Gatekeepers in the Dynamics of Industry Evolution?” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Powell, Walter W., Kelley Packalen, and Kjersten Whittington. 2012. “Orrganizational and Institutional Genesis: The Emergence of High-Tech Clusters in the Life Sciences.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Powell, Walter W. and Kurt Sandholtz. 2012. “Chance, Nécessité, et Naïveté: Ingredients to Create a New Organizational Form.” In The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, edited by John F. Padgett and Walter W. Powell. Princeton University Press. Pradeu, Thomas. 2016. “The Many Faces of Biological Individuality.” Biology & Philosophy 31 (6):761–773. Pradeu, Thomas. 2018. “Genidentity and Biological Processes.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Pratt, Simon Frankel. 2016a. “Pragmatism as Ontology, Not (Just) Epistemology: Exploring the Full Horizon of Pragmatism as an Approach to IR Theory.” International Studies Review 18 (3):508–527. Pratt, Simon Frankel. 2016b. “A Relational View of Ontological Security in International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 61 (1):78–85. Pratt, Simon Frankel et al. 2021. “Pragmatism in IR: The Prospects for Substantive Theorizing.” International Studies Review 23 (4):1933–1958. Pratt, Tyler. 2018. “Deference and Hierarchy in International Regime Complexes.” International Organization 72 (3):561–590. Prigogine, Ilya. 1975. “Dissipative Structures, Dynamics and Entropy.” International Journal of Quantum Chemistry 9 (S9):443–456. Prigogine, Ilya. 1978. “Time, Structure, and Fluctuations.” Science 201 (4358):777–785. Prigogine, Ilya. 1987. “Exploring Complexity.” European Journal of Operational Research 30 (2):97–103. Prigogine, I[lya] and G. Nicolis. 1967. “On Symmetry-Breaking Instabilities in Dissipative Systems.” The Journal of Chemical Physics 46 (9):3542–3550. Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers. 1984. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s Dialogue with Nature. Bantam Books. Proctor, Lita M. et al. 2019. “The Integrative Human Microbiome Project.” Nature 569 (7758):641–648. Pross, Addy. 2016. What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology. Oxford University Press.

428

References

Puar, Jasbir K. 2017 [2007]. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Tenth Anniversary Expanded ed. Duke University Press. Purkiss, Diane. 2009. The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain. Basic Books. Putra, Bama Andika. 2019. “ASEAN Political-Security Community: Challenges of Establishing Regional Security in the Southeast Asia.” Journal of International Studies 12 (1):33–49. Querejazu, Amaya. 2022. “Cosmopraxis: Relational Methods for a Pluriversal IR.” Review of International Studies 48 (5):875–890. Querengässer, Alexander. 2021. Before the Military Revolution: European Warfare and the Rise of the Early Modern State 1300–1490. Oxbow Books. Rabajante, Jomar F. et al. 2015. “Red Queen Dynamics in Multi-Host and Multi-Parasite Interaction System.” Science Reports 5:10004. Ranum, Orest A. 1993. The Fronde: A French Revolution, 1648–1652. W. W. Norton. Rapoport, Anatol. 1960. Fights, Games, and Debates. University of Michigan Press. Rapoport, Anatol. 1968. “Forward.” In Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist: A Sourcebook, edited by Walter Buckley. Aldine Publishing Company. Raska, Michael. 2021. “The Sixth RMA Wave: Disruption in Military Affairs?” Journal of Strategic Studies 44 (4):456–479. Rathbun, Brian. 2008. “A Rose by Any Other Name: Neoclassical Realism as the Logical and Necessary Extension of Structural Realism.” Security Studies 17 (2):294–321. Rawlings, Helen. 2002. Church, Religion, and Society in Early Modern Spain. Routledge. Ray, Celeste and Manuel Fernández-Götz, eds. 2019. Historical Ecologies, Heterarchies and Transtemporal Landscapes. Routledge. Raymond, Gregory A. 1997. “Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms.” International Studies Quarterly 41 (S2):205–245. Raymond, Gregory A. 2021. “Introduction: Order without Leviathan.” In International Norms and the Resort to War, edited by Gregory A. Raymond. Springer International Publishing. Reinhard, Wolfgang. 1996a. “Introduction: Power Elites, State Servants, Ruling Classes and the Growth of State Power.” In Power Elites and State Building, edited by Wolfgang Reinhard. Clarendon Press. Reinhard, Wolfgang, ed. 1996b. Power Elites and State Building. Clarendon Press. Reinsch, Paul S. 1900. World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century, as Influenced by the Oriental Situation. The Macmillan Company. Reinsch, Paul S. 1911. Public International Unions: Their Work and Organization, a Study in International Administrative Law. Ginn and Company. Renault, Emmanuel. 2016. “Critical Theory and Processual Social Ontology.” Journal of Social Ontology 2 (1):17–32. Rendall, Matthew. 2006. “Defensive Realism and the Concert of Europe.” Review of International Studies 32 (3):523–540. Renfrew, Colin and John F. Cherry, eds. 1986. Peer Polity Interaction and SocioPolitical Change. Cambridge University Press. Rescher, Nicholas. 1996. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. State University of New York Press.

References

429

Rescher, Nicholas. 2000. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. State University of New York Press. Ress, Georg. 1984a. “Guarantee.” In Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Volume 7, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt. North Holland. Ress, Georg. 1984b. “Guarantee Treaties.” In Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Volume 7, edited by Rudolf Bernhardt. North Holland. Reus-Smit, Christian. 1997. “The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions.” International Organization 51 (4):555–589. Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton University Press. Reus-Smit, Christian and Duncan Snidal, eds. 2008. Oxford Handbook of International Relations. Oxford University Press. Reuter, Timothy. 2006. Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities. Cambridge University Press. Reutlinger, Alexander et al. 2019. “Ceteris Paribus Laws.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward M. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2021/entries/lceteris-paribus/. Reynolds, Susan. 1984. Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300. Clarendon Press. Richardson, Lewis F. 1960. Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origins of War. The Boxwood Press. Riggs, Fred W. 1961. “International Relations as a Prismatic System.” In The International System: Theoretical Essays, edited by Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba. Princeton University Press. Ripsman, Norrin M., Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, and Stephen E. Lobell. 2016. Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics. Oxford University Press. Risse, Thomas. 2007. “Transnational Actors and World Politics.” In Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance, edited by Walther Ch. Zmerli, Markus Holzinger, and Klaus Richter. Springer. Risse-Kappen, Thomas, ed. 1995. Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-state Actors, Domestic Structures, and International Institutions. Cambridge University Press. Rittberger, Volker. 2008. “Global Governance: From ‘Exclusive’ Executive Multilateralism to Inclusive, Multipartite Institutions.” Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. Rivière, Jean. 1924. “Sur l’origine de la formule juridique: ‘Rex imperator in regno suo’.” Revue des sciences relgieuses 4:580–586. Roberts, John T. 2016. “Laws of Nature.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press. Roberts, Michael. 1956. The Military Revolution, 1560–1660. Queen’s University. Roberts, Michael. 1967. Essays in Swedish History. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Robinson, I. S. 1988. “Church and Papacy.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350–c. 1450, edited by J. H. Burns. Cambridge University Press. Robinson, I. S. 2004. “The Papacy, 1122–1198.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 4 c. 1024–c. 1198, Part II, edited by David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith. Cambridge University Press.

430

References

Rodger, Nicholas A. M. 2011. “From the ‘Military Revolution’ to the ‘FiscalNaval State’.” Journal for Maritime Research 13 (2):119–128. Rogers, Clifford J. 1993. “The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War.” The Journal of Military History 57 (2):241–278. Rogers, Clifford J., ed. 1995. The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformaiton of Early Modern Europe. Westview Press. Roling, B. V. A. 1960. International Law in an Expanded World. Djambatan. Rollo-Koster, Joëlle. 2015. Avignon and Its Papacy, 1309–1417: Popes, Institutions, and Society. Rowman & Littlefield. Rollo-Koster, Joëlle and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. 2009. A Companion to the Great Western Schism (1378–1417). Brill. Rorem, Paul. 1993. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence. Oxford University Press. Rose, Gideon. 2019. “The Fourth Founding: The United States and the Liberal Order.” Foreign Affairs 98 (1):10–21. Rosecrance, Richard N. 1963. Action and Reaction in World Politics: International Systems in Perspective. Little, Brown and Company. Rosecrance, Richard N. 1966. “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (3):314–327. Rosen, Robert. 1991. Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life. Columbia University Press. Rosenau, James N., ed. 1961. International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Policy. The Free Press. Rosenau, James N. 1971. The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy. The Free Press. Rosenau, James N. 1997. Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World. Cambridge University Press. Rosenau, James N. 2005. “Illusions of Power and Empire.” History and Theory 44 (4):73–87. Rosenau, James N. and Mary Durfee. 2000. Thinking Theory Thoroughly: Coherent Approaches to an Incoherent World. Westview Press. Rosenberg, Alex. 2020. Reduction and Mechanism. Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, Alexander. 1994a. Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science. University of Chicago Press. Rosenberg, Alexander. 2007. “Reductionism (and Antireductionism) in Biology.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, edited by David L. Hull and Michael Ruse. Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, Eugene and Ilana Zilber-Rosenberg. 2018. “The Hologenome Concept of Evolution after 10 Years.” Microbiome 6 (1):1–14. Rosenberg, Justin. 1994b. The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations. Verso. Rosenberg, Justin. 2006. “Why Is There No International Historical Sociology?” European Journal of International Relations 12 (3):307–340. Rosenberg, Justin. 2016. “International Relations in the Prison of Political Science.” International Relations 30 (2):127–153. Roth, Ariel Ilan. 2009. “Reassurance: A Strategic Basis of U.S. Support for Israel.” International Studies Perspectives 10 (4):378–393. Rothermund, Dietmar. 2006. The Routledge Companion to Decolonization. Routledge.

References

431

Roux, Natacha et al. 2020. “Anemonefish, A Model for Eco-Evo-Devo.” Evodevo 11 (1):1–11. Rowlands, Guy. 2002. The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest 1661–1701. Cambridge University Press. Royle, Trevor. 2004. The British Civil War: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1660. Palgrave Macmillan. Rubenstein, Dustin R. et al. 2019. “Coevolution of Genome Architecture and Social Behavior.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 34 (9):844–855. Rubin, Donald B. 1974. “Estimating Causal Effects of Treatments in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies.” Journal of Educational Psychology 66 (5):688. Rubin, Donald B. 1986. “Statistics and Causal Inference. Comment: Which Ifs Have Causal Answers.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 81 (396):961–962. Rubin, Donald B. 2005. “Causal Inference Using Potential Outcomes: Design, Modeling, Decisions.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 100 (469):322–331. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1983. “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis.” World Politics 35 (2):261–285. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1993. “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations.” International Organization 47 (1):139–174. Ruggie, John Gerard. 1998. Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization. Routledge. Ruiz, Teofilo F. 2007. Spain’s Centuries of Crisis: 1300–1474. Blackwell. Russell, Conrad. 1990. The Causes of the English Civil War. Clarendon Press. Russell, Frank M. 1936. Theories of International Relations. D. Appleton-Century Company. Ruthenberg, Klaus and Ave Mets. 2020. “Chemistry is Pluralistic.” Foundations of Chemistry 22 (3):403–419. Sahlins, Marshall D. 1968. “Notes on the Original Affluent Society.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. Aldine Publishing Company. Sahlins, Marshall D. 1985. Islands of History. University of Chicago Press. Sahlins, Marshall D. 2013. What Kinship Is – And Is Not. University of Chicago Press. Sakwa, Richard. 2021. “Heterarchy: Russian Politics between Chaos and Control.” Post-Soviet Affairs 37 (3):222–241. Salazar-Ciudad, Isaac. 2021. “Mechanisms of Pattern Formation, Morphogenesis, and Evolution.” In Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide, edited by Laura Nuño de la Rosa and Gerd B. Müller. Springer. Salmon, J. H. M. 1975. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. Ernest Benn. Salmond, Anne. 2012. “Ontological Quarrels: Indigeneity, Exclusion and Citizenship in a Relational World.” Anthropological Theory 12 (2):115–41. Salter, Mark B. 2002. Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations. Pluto Press. Salter, Mark B. 2019. “Security Actor-Network Theory: Revitalizing Securitization Theory with Bruno Latour.” Polity 51 (2):349–364.

432

References

Salthe, Stanley N. 2009. “A Hierarchical Framework for Levels of Reality: Understanding through Representation.” Axiomathes 19:87–99. Sampson, Aaron Beers. 2002. “Tropical Anarchy: Waltz, Wendt, and the Way We Imagine International Politics.” Alternatives 27 (4):429–457. Samuels, Richard. 2012. “Massive Modularity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, edited by Richard Samuels. Oxford University Press. Sanchéz-Avilés, Constanza and Ondrej Ditrych. 2018. “The Global Drug Prohibition Regime: Prospects for Stability and Change in an Increasingly Less Prohibitionist World.” International Politics 55 (3):463–481. Sanderson, Stephen K. 1987. “Eclecticism and Its Alternatives.” Current Perspectives in Social Theory 8:315–345. Sanz, Porfirio. 1994. “The Cities in the Aragonese Cortes in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods.” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 14 (2):95–108. Sassen, Saskia. 2008 [2006]. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Updated ed. Princeton University Press. Savage, Glenn C. 2020. “What is Policy Assemblage?” Territory, Politics, Governance 8 (3):319–335. Sawyer, R. Keith. 2005. Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems. Cambridge University Press. Saylor, Ryan. 2020. “Why Causal Mechanisms and Process Tracing Should Alter Case Selection Guidance.” Sociological Methods & Research 49 (4):982–1017. Sazak, Selim Can. 2020. “Bad Influence: Social Networks, Elite Brokerage, and the Construction of Alliances.” European Journal of International Relations 25 (S1):64–90. Scartozzi, Cesare M. 2018. “A New Taxonomy for International Relations: Rethinking the International System as a Complex Adaptive System.” Journal on Policy and Complex Systems 4 (1):109–133. Scerri, Eric. 2007. “Reduction and Emergence in Chemistry: Two Recent Approaches.” Philosophy of Science 74 (5):920–931. Schakel, Arjan H., Liesbet Hooghe, and Gary Marks. 2015. “Multilevel Governance and the State.” In The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State, edited by Stefan Leibfried et al. Oxford University Press. Schatzki, Theodore. 2016. “Practice Theory as Flat Ontology.” In Practice Theory and Research: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Life, edited by Gert Spaargaren, Don Weenink, and Machiel Lamers. Routledge. Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press. Schelling, Thomas C. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. W. W. Norton. Schieder, Siegfried and Manuela Spindler. 2014. “Theory in International Relations.” In Theories of International Relations, edited by Siegfried Schieder and Manuela Spindler. Routledge. Schieve, William C. and Peter M. Allen, eds. 1982. Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures: Applications in the Physical and Social Sciences. University of Texas Press. Schmidt, Brian C. 1998. The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations. State University of New York Press.

References

433

Schmidt, Brian C. 2002. “Anarchy, World Politics and the Birth of a Discipline: American International Relations, Pluralism and the Myth of Interwar Idealism.” International Relations 16 (1):9–31. Schmidt, Brian C. 2004. “Realism as Tragedy.” Review of International Studies 30 (3):427–441. Schmitz, Andreas, Daniel Witte, and Vincent Gengnagel. 2017. “Pluralizing Field Analysis: Toward a Relational Understanding of the Field of Power.” Social Science Information 56 (1):49–73. Schneider, Volker. 2015. “Relationalism in Political Theory and Research: The Challenge of Networked Politics and Policy-Making.” Political Science Review 4:191–206. Schoellhammer, Sarah. 2020. Innovation Exposed: Case Studies of Strategy, Organization and Culture in Heterarchies. Springer Gabler. Schouenborg, Laust. 2013. The Scandinavian International Society: Primary Institutions and Binding Forces, 1815–2010. Routledge. Schouten, Peer. 2014. “Security as Controversy: Reassembling Security at Amsterdam Airport.” Security Dialogue 45 (1):23–42. Schrödinger, Erwin. 2012 [1944]. What is Life? With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches. Cambridge University Press. Schulz, Matthias. 2017. “The Concert of Europe and International Security Governance.” In Great Power Multilateralism and the Prevention of War, edited by Harald Müller and Carsten Rauch. Routledge. Schuman, Frederick Lewis. 1933. International Politics: An Introduction to the Western State System. McGraw-Hill. Schwaninger, M. 2000. “Distributed Control in Social Systems.” In The Performance of Social Systems: Perspectives and Problems, edited by Francisco Parra Luna. Springer. Schwarz, Rolf. 2017. “Project for a Kantian Europe.” Democracy and Security 13 (2):144–165. Schwarzenberger, Georg. 1951. Power Politics: A Study of International Society. 2nd ed. Stevens/F. A. Praeger. Schwarzenberger, Georg. 1955. “The Standard of Civilisation in International Law.” Current Legal Problems 8:212–234. Schweller, Randall L. 1993. “Tripolarity and the Second World War.” International Studies Quarterly 37 (1):73–103. Schweller, Randall L. 1997. “New Realist Research on Alliances: Refining, Not Refuting, Waltz’s Balancing Proposition.” American Political Science Review 91 (4):927–930. Schweller, Randall L. 1998. Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. Columbia University Press. Schweller, Randall L. 1999. “Forum: Fantasy Theory.” Review of International Studies 25 (1):147–150. Schweller, Randall L. 2003. “The Progressiveness of Neo-Classical Realism.” In Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field, edited by Colin Elman and Miriam Fendis Elman. MIT Press. Schweller, Randall L. 2006. Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton University Press.

434

References

Schweller, Randall L. 2010. “Entropy and the Trajectory of World Politics: Why Polarity Has Become Less Meaningful.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23 (1):145–163. Schweller, Randall L. 2014. Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Schweller, Randall L. and William C. Wohlforth. 2002. “Power Test: Evaluating Realism in Response to the End of the Cold War.” Security Studies 9 (3):60–107. Scott, David. 2004. Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms, 1637–49. Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, H. M. and Christopher Storrs. 2007. “The Consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c. 1600–1800.” In The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Volume I: Western and Southern Europe, 2nd ed., edited by H. M. Scott. Palgrave Macmillan. Scott, Tom. 1998. “Germany and the Empire.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press. Sears, Nathan Alexander. 2017. “The Neoclassical Realist Research Program: Between Progressive Promise and Degenerative Dangers.” International Politics Reviews 5 (1):21–31. Seawright, Jason. 2016. Multi-Method Social Science: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Tools. Cambridge University Press. Seawright, Jason. 2021. “What Can Multi-Method Research Add to Experiments?” In Advances in Experimental Political Science, edited by James N. Druckman and Donald P. Green. Cambridge University Press. Seawright, Jason and David Collier. 2010. “Glossary.” In Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed., edited by Henry E. Brady and David Collier. Rowman & Littlefield. Seibt, Johanna, ed. 2011. Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in Dynamic Categories. Springer Science. Seibt, Johanna. 2017. “Units and Levels of Selection.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/sum2020/entries/process-philosophy/. Seibt, Johanna. 2018. “Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology: Some Basic Notions of General Proocess Theory.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Selg, Peeter. 2016. “Two Faces of the ‘Relational Turn’.” PS: Political Science & Politics 49 (1):27–31. Sellato, Bernard. 1994 [1989]. Nomads of the Borneo Rainforest: The Economics, Politics, and Ideology of Settling Down. University of Hawaii Press. Sellato, Bernard. 2007. “Resourceful Children of the Forest: The Kalimantan Punan through the Twentieth Century.” In Beyond the Green Myth: HunterGatherers of Borneo in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Peter G. Sercombe and Bernard Sellato. NIAS Press. Sender, Ron, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milo. 2016. “Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body.” PLoS Biology 14 (8):e1002533.

References

435

Sewell, William H. Jr. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1):1–29. Sewell, William H. Jr. 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. University of Chicago Press. Sharp, Paul B. and Gregory A. Miller. 2019. “Reduction and Autonomy in Psychology and Neuroscience: A Call for Pragmatism.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 39 (1):18. Sharp, Walter R. and Grayson L. Kirk. 1940. Contemporary International Politics. Farrar & Rinehart. Sheredos, Benjamin and William Bechtel. 2019. “Imagining Mechanisms with Diagrams.” In The Scientific Imagination, edited by Arnon Levy and Peter Godfrey-Smith. Oxford University Press. Shils, Edward. 1975. Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology. University of Chicago Press. Shotwell, James T. 1929. War as an Instrument of Policy and Its Renunciation in the Pact of Paris. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Sikkink, Kathryn. 1993. “Human Rights, Principled Issue Networks, and Sovereignty in Latin America.” International Organization 47 (Summer):411–441. Sil, Rudra and Peter J. Katzenstein. 2010a. “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions.” Perspectives on Politics 8 (2):411–431. Sil, Rudra and Peter J. Katzenstein. 2010b. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics. Bloomsbury Publishing. Silberbauer, George B. 1981. Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert. Cambridge University Press. Silberbauer, George B. 1982. “Political Process in G/wi Bands.” In Politics and History in Band Societies, edited by Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee. Cambridge University Press. Silberbauer, George B. 1996. “Neither Are Your Ways My Ways.” In Cultural Diversity among Twentieth-Century Foragers, edited by Susan Kent. Cambridge University Press. Simão, Licínia. 2017. The EU’s Neighbourhood Policy towards the South Caucasus: Expanding the European Security Community. Palgrave Macmillan. Simmons, Beth A. 2009. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics. Cambridge University Press. Simon, Herbert A. 1962. “The Architecture of Complexity.” Proceedings of the American Philological Society 106 (6):467–482. Simon, Jean-Christophe et al. 2019. “Host-Microbiota Interactions: From Holobiont Theory to Analysis.” Microbiome 7 (1):1–5. Simonds, Frank H. and Brooks Emeny. 1935. The Great Powers and World Politics: International Relations and Economic Nationalism. American Book Company. Simons, Peter. 2018. “Processes and Precipitates.” In Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, edited by John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford University Press. Simpson, George Gaylord. 1944. Tempo and Mode in Evolution. Columbia University Press.

436

References

Simpson, Gerry. 2004. Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order. Cambridge University Press. Singer, J. David. 1961. “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations.” World Politics 14 (1):77–92. Singer, J. David, ed. 1968. Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence. The Free Press. Singh, Deepak. 1996. “The Heterarchical Society: Explaining and Understanding Post-Cold War International Relations.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Miami. Sinopoli, Carla M. 1994. “The Archaeology of Empires.” Annual Review of Anthropology 23:159–180. Sivéry, Gérard. 1999. “Social Change in the Thirteenth Century: Rural Society.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume V c. 1198–c. 1300, edited by David Abulafia. Cambridge University Press. Skalník, Peter. 1978. “The Early State as a Process.” In The Early State, edited by Henri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalník. Mouton Publishers. Skiadas, Christos H. and Charilaos Skiadas, eds. 2017. Handbook of Applications of Chaos Theory. CRC Press. Skillings, Derek. 2016. “Holobionts and the Ecology of Organisms: MultiSpecies Communities or Integrated Individuals?” Biology & Philosophy 31 (6):875–892. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. 1995. “Liberal International Relations Theory and International Economic Law.” American University Journal of International Law and Policy 10 (2):717–743. Slaughter, Anne-Marie. 2004. A New World Order. Princeton University Press. Slaughter, Steven. 2019. “The G20 and Realist International Relations Theory.” In The G20 and International Relations Theory: Perspectives on Global Summitry, edited by Steven Slaughter. Edward Elgar Publishing. Small, David B. 1995. “Heterarchical Paths to Evolution: The Role of External Economies.” In Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies, edited by Robert M. Ehrenreich, Carole L. Crumley, and Janet E. Levy. American Anthropological Association. Smith, M. G. 1956. “On Segmentary Lineage Systems.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 86 (2):39–80. Smith, M. G. 1966. “A Structural Approach to Comparative Politics.” In Varieties of Political Theories, edited by David Easton. Prentice-Hall. Smith, Steve, Ken Booth, and Marisya Zalewski, eds. 1996. International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge University Press. Smuts, Jan C. 1918. The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion. The Nation Press. Snidal, Duncan. 1991a. “International Cooperation among Relative Gains Maximizers.” International Studies Quarterly 35 (4):387–402. Snidal, Duncan. 1991b. “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation.” American Political Science Review 85 (3):701–726. Snyder, Glenn H. 1961. Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security. Princeton University Press. Snyder, Glenn H. 1996. “Process Variables in Neorealist Theory.” Security Studies 5 (3):167–192. Snyder, Glenn H. 1997. Alliance Politics. Cornell University Press.

References

437

Snyder, Glenn H. and Paul Diesing. 1977. Conflict among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises. Princeton University Press. Snyder, Jack. 2002. “Anarchy and Culture: Insights from the Anthropology of War.” International Organization 56 (1):7–45. Snyder, Jack and Robert Jervis, eds. 1993. Coping with Complexity in the International System. Westview Press. Sober, Elliott. 1993 [1984]. The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. University of Chicago Press. Sober, Elliott. 1999. “The Multiple Realizability Argument Against Reductionism.” Philosophy of Science 66 (4):542–564. Solé, Ricard V. 2011. Phase Transitions. Princeton University Press. Solé, Ricard V. and Jordi Bascompte. 2012. Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems. Princeton University Press. Solovieff, Nadia et al. 2013. “Pleiotropy in Complex Traits: Challenges and Strategies.” Nature Reviews Genetics 14 (7):483–495. Sommerville, Johann P. 2016 [2012]. “Early Modern Absolutism in Practice and Theory.” In Monarchism and Absolutism in Early Modern Europe, edited by Cesare Cuttica and Glenn Burgess. Routledge. Sotomayor, Marilda, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Filippo Castiglione, eds. 2020. Complex Social and Behavioral Systems: Game Theory and Agent-Based Models. Springer Spandler, Kilian. 2015. “The Political International Society: Change in Primary and Secondary Institutions.” Review of International Studies 41 (3):601–622. Sperling, James and Mark Webber. 2014. “Security Governance in Europe: A Return to System.” European Security 23 (2):126–144. Spickard, James V. 2004. “Globalization and Religious Organizations: Rethinking the Relationship between Church, Culture, and Market.” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 18 (1):47–63. Sprout, Harold and Margaret Sprout, eds. 1945. Foundations of National Power: Readings on World Politics and American Security. Princeton University Press. Sprout, Harold and Margaret Sprout. 1965. The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs: With Special Reference to International Politics. Princeton University Press. Spruyt, Hendrik. 1994. The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change. Princeton University Press. Spruyt, Hendrik. 2002. “The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State.” Annual Review of Political Science 5 (1):127–149. Spruyt, Hendrik. 2017. “Collective Imaginations and International Order: The Contemporary Context of the Chinese Tributary System.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 77 (1):21–45. Spruyt, Hendrik. 2020. The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in the Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies. Cambridge University Press. Spykman, Nicholas J. 1942. America’s Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Stampnitzky, Lisa. 2013. Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism’. Cambridge University Press.

438

References

Stark, David. 1999. “Heterarchy: Distributing Authority and Organizing Diversity.” In The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise, edited by John Heny Clippinger III. Jossey-Bass Publishers. Starr, Harvey. 2016 [2013]. On Geopolitics: Space, Place, and International Relations. Routledge. Stearns, Frank W. 2010. “One Hundred Years of Pleiotropy: A Retrospective.” Genetics 186 (3):767–773. Stebbins, G. Ledyard Jr. 1950. Variation and Evolution in Plants. Columbia University Press. Steel, Daniel. 2004. “Social Mechanisms and Causal Inference.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34 (1):55–78. Steel, Daniel. 2008. Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science. Oxford University Press. Steinmetz, George, ed. 2005. The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others. Duke University Press. Steinmetz, George. 2007. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. University of Chicago Press. Steinmetz, George. 2008. “The Colonial State as a Social Field: Ethnographic Capital and Native Policy in the German Overseas Empire before 1914.” American Sociological Review 73 (4):589–612. Stensrud, Astrid B. 2016. “Climate Change, Water Practices and Relational Worlds in the Andes.” Ethnos 81 (1):75–98. Stephenson, Paul. 2013. “Twenty Years of Multi-Level Governance: ‘Where Does It Come From? What Is It? Where Is It Going?’.” Journal of European Public Policy 20 (6):817–837. Sterling-Folker, Jennifer. 2002. Theories of International Cooperation and the Primacy of Anarchy: Explaining U.S. International Policy-Making after Bretton Woods. State University of New York Press. Stetter, Stephan. 2013. “Some Quanta of Solace: World Politics in the Era of Functional Differentiation.” In Bringing Sociology to International Relations: World Politics as Differentiation Theory, edited by Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn. Cambridge University Press. Stiner, Mary C. 2021. “The Challenges of Documenting Coevolution and Niche Construction: The Example of Domestic Spaces.” Evolutionary Anthropology 30 (1):63–70. Stivachtis, Yannis A. 2000. “The International System and the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Journal of Strategic Studies 23 (1):101–131. Stokes, Susan C. et al. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. Cambridge University Press. Stolz, Jörg. 2016. “Opening the Black Box: How the Study of Social Mechanisms Can Benefit from the Use of Explanatory Mixed Methods.” Analyse & Kritik 38 (1):257–286. Stone, Lawrence. 1994. An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689–1815. Routledge. Storey, David, ed. 2020. A Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality. Edward Elgar Publishing.

References

439

Storrs, Christopher, ed. 2009. The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Essays in Honour of P. G. M. Dickson. Ashgate. Storrs, Christopher. 2019. “War and the Military Revolution.” In Interpreting Early Modern Europe, edited by C. Scott Dixon and Beat Kümin. Routledge. Storrs, Christopher and H.M. Scott. 1996. “The Military Revolution and the European Nobility, c. 1600–1800.” War in History 3 (1):1–41. Stovel, Katherine and Lynette Shaw. 2012. “Brokerage.” Annual Review of Sociology 38:139–158. Stoyle, Mark. 2005. Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War. Yale University Press. Strang, David. 1991. “Global Patterns of Decolonization, 1500–1987.” International Studies Quarterly 35 (4):429–454. Strauss, Bernhard et al., eds. 2021. Rethinking Cancer: A New Paradigm for the Postgenomics Era. MIT Press. Strausz-Hupé, Robert. 1942. Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Strayer, Joseph R. 1970. On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State. Princeton University Press. Streinzer, Andreas. 2016. “Stretching Money to Pay the Bills: Temporal Modalities and Relational Practices of ‘Getting By’ in the Greek Economic Crisis.” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 34 (1):45–57. Stump, Philip H. 1994. The Reforms of the Council of Constance (1414–1418). E. J. Brill. Sugawara, Kazuyoshi. 2005. “Possession, Equality and Gender Relations in / Gui Discourse.” In Property and Equality: Ritualisation, Sharing, Egalitarianism, edited by Thomas Widlok and Wolde Gossa Tadesse. Berghahn Books. Sugawara, Kazuyoshi. 2012. “Interactive Significance of Simultaneous Discource or Overlap in Everyday Conversations among /Gui Former Foragers.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (5):577–618. Sultan, Sonia E. 2015. Organism and Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaptation. Oxford University Press. Sultan, Sonia E. 2021. “Phenotypic Plasticity as an Intrinsic Property of Organisms.” In Phenotypic Plasticity & Evolution: Causes, Consequences, Controversies, edited by David W. Pfennig. CRC Press. Sutherland, Nicola M. 1992. “The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Structure of European Politics.” The English Historical Review 107 (424):587–625. Suzuki, Shogo. 2005. “Japan’s Socialization into Janus-Faced European International Society.” European Journal of International Relations 11 (1):137–164. Suzuki, Shogo. 2009. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society. Routledge. Sveinsdóttir, Ásta. 2015. “Social Construction.” Philosophy Compass 10 (12):884–892. Swann, Julian. 2001. “The State and Political Culture.” In Old Regime France 1648–1788, edited by William Doyle. Oxford University Press. Swann, Julian. 2003. Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy: The Estates General of Burgundy, 1661–1790. Cambridge University Press.

440

References

Swann, Julian. 2007. “The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century.” In The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Volume I: Western and Southern Europe, 2nd ed., edited by H. M. Scott. Palgrave Macmillan. Swart, K. W. 1949. Sale of Offices in the Seventeenth Century. M. Nijhoff. Swedberg, Richard. 2018. “How to Use Max Weber’s Ideal Types in Sociological Analysis.” Journal of Classical Sociology 18 (3):181–196. Swedberg, Richard and Ola Agevall. 2016. The Max Weber Dictionary: Key Words and Central Concepts. 2nd ed. Stanford University Press. Symons, John, Olga Pombo, and Juan Manuel Torres, eds. 2011. Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science. Springer Netherlands. Szathmáry, Eörs. 2015. “Toward Major Evolutionary Transitions Theory 2.0.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (33):10104–10111. Szathmáry, Eörs and John Maynard Smith. 1995. “The Major Evolutionary Transitions.” Nature 374 (6519):227–232. Szechi, Daniel. 1994. The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. Manchester University Press. Szechi, Daniel. 2002. “The Jacobite Movement.” In A Companion to EighteenthCentury Britain, edited by H. T. Dickinson. Blackwell. Szechi, Daniel. 2006. 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion. Yale University Press. Szechi, Daniel. 2012. “Scottish Jacobinism in Its International Context.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History, edited by T. M. Devine and Jenny Wormald. Oxford University Press. Tahara, Takeru et al. 2018. “Asymptotic Stability of a Modified Lotka-Volterra Model with Small Immigrations.” Scientific Reports 8 (1):1–7. Taliaferro, Jeffrey W. 2000/2001. “Security Seeking under Anarchy: Defensive Realism Revisited.” International Security 25 (3):128–161. Tanaka, Jiro and Kazuyoshi Sugawara. 1999. “/Gui and //Gana.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly. Cambridge University Press. Tannenbaum, Frank. 1955. The American Tradition in Foreign Policy. University of Oklahoma Press. Tavassoly, Iman, Joseph Goldfarb, and Ravi Iyengar. 2018. “Systems Biology Primer: The Basic Methods and Approaches.” Essays in Biochemistry 62 (4):487–500. Taylor, Michael. 1976. Anarchy and Cooperation. Wiley. Tellenbach, Gerd. 1959. Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the Investiture Contest. Basil Blackwell. Tëmkin, Ilya and Niles Eldredge. 2015. “Networks and Hierarchies: Approaching Complexity in Evolutionary Theory.” In Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation, Evidence, edited by Emanuele Serrelli and Nathalie Gontier. Springer. Teschke, Benno. 2003. The Myth of 1648. Verso. Teubner, Gunther. 2002. “Idiosyncratic Production Regimes: Co-evolution of Economic and Legal Institutions in the Varieties of Capitalism.” Proceedings of the British Academy 112:161–181. Teufel, Thomas. 2011. “Wholes that Cause Their Parts: Organic SelfReproduction and the Reality of Biological Teleology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2):252–260.

References

441

Thayer, H. S., ed. 1982. Pragmatism: The Classical Writings. Hackett. Theibault, John. 1993. “The Rhetoric of Death and Destruction in the Thirty Years War.” Journal of Social History 27 (2):271–290. Theis, Kevin R. et al. 2016. “Getting the Hologenome Concept Right: An EcoEvolutionary Framework for Hosts and Their Microbiomes.” Msystems 1 (2):e00028–16. Thelen, Tatjana, Larissa Vetters, and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann. 2018. Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State. Berghahn Books. Thies, Cameron G. 2010. “State Socialization and Structural Realism.” Security Studies 19 (4):689–717. Thomas, Martin, Bob Moore, and Larry Butler. 2015. Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States. Bloomsbury Publishing. Thompson, I. A. A. 1967. “The Armada and Administrative Reform: The Spanish Council of War in the Reign of Philip II.” The English Historical Review 82 (325):698–725. Thompson, John N. 1999. “The Evolution of Species Interactions.” Science 284 (5423):2116–2118. Thompson, John N. 2005. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution. University of Chicago Press. Thompson, John N. 2009. “Coevolution.” In The Princeton Guide to Ecology, edited by Simon A. Levin et al. Princeton University Press. Thompson, John N. 2013. Relentless Evolution. University of Chicago Press. Thompson, John N., Kari A. Segraves, and David M. Althoff. 2021. “Coevolution and Macroevolution.” In Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide, edited by Laura Nuño de la Rosa and Gerd B. Müller. Springer. Thompson, William R. 1973. “The Regional Subsystem: A Conceptual Explication and a Propositional Inventory.” International Studies Quarterly 17 (1):89–117. Thurner, Paul W. et al. 2019. “Network Interdependencies and the Evolution of the International Arms Trade.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (7):1736–1764. Thurner, Stefan, Rudolf Hanel, and Peter Klimek. 2018. Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems. Oxford University Press. Tickner, J. Ann. 2014. A Feminist Voyage through International Relations. Oxford University Press. Tierney, Brian. 1961. The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300. University of Toronto Press. Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. Russell Sage Foundation. Tilly, Charles. 1995. “To Explain Political Processes.” American Journal of Sociology 100 (6):1594–1610. Tilly, Charles. 1998. Durable Inequality. University of California Press. Tilly, Charles. 2001a. “Mechanisms in Political Processes.” Annual Review of Political Science 4:21–41. Tilly, Charles. 2001b. “Relational Origins of Inequality.” Anthropological Theory 1 (3):355–372. Tilly, Charles. 2010. “Mechanisms of the Middle Range.” In Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science, edited by Craig Calhoun. Columbia University Press.

442

References

Tilly, Charles. 2015 [2008]. Explaining Social Processes. Routledge. Tirard, Stéphan. 2015. “Life.” In Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences, edited by Thomas Heams et al. Springer. Toje, A. and B. Kunz, eds. 2012. Neoclassical Realism in European Politics: Bringing Power Back In. Manchester University Press. Tokoro, Mario and Ken Mogi. 2007. Creativity and the Brain. World Scientific. Torfing, Jacob. 2012. “Governance Networks.” In The Oxford Handbook of Governance, edited by David Levi-Faur. Oxford University Press. Torre, Angelo. 2009. “Empowering Interactions and Entwining Jurisdictions.” In Empowering Interactions: Political Culture and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900, edited by André Holenstein, Wim Blockmans, and Jon Mathieu. Ashgagte Publishing. Towns, Ann E. 2010. Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Trachtenberg, Marc. 2012. The Cold War and After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics. Princeton University Press. Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. 1959. “The General Crisis of the 17th Century.” Past & Present 16:31–64. Trueblood, Benjamin Franklin. 1899. The Federation of the World. Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Tsekeris, Charalambos. 2013. “Norbert Elias on Relations: Insights and Perspectives.” In Conceptualizing Relational Sociology: Ontological and Theoretical Issues, edited by Christopher Powell and François Dépelteau. Palgrave Macmillan. Tuathail, Gearóid Ó. 1996. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. University of Minnesota Press. Turnbull, Colin M. 1961. The Forest People. Simon and Schuster. Turnbull, Colin M. 1968. “The Importance of Flux in Two Hunting Societies.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. Aldine Publishing Company. Turnbull, Colin M. 1981. “Mbuti Womanhood.” In Woman the Gatherer, edited by Frances Dahlberg. Yale University Press. Turner, J. Scott. 2000. The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures. Harvard University Press. Turner, J. Scott. 2004. “Extended Phenotypes and Extended Organisms.” Biology and Philosophy 19 (3):327–352. Turner, J. Scott. 2016. “Homeostasis and the Physiological Dimension of Niche Construction Theory in Ecology and Evolution.” Evolutionary Ecology 30 (2):203–219. Twiss, Travers. 1861. The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities. Oxford University Press. Tzouvala, Ntina. 2020. Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law. Cambridge University Press. Uller, Tobias et al. 2018. “Developmental Bias and Evolution: A Regulatory Network Perspective.” Genetics 209 (4):949–966. Ullmann, Walter. 1972. A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages. Methuen. Ullmann, Walter. 1975. Law and Politics in the Middle Ages: An Introduction to the Sources of Medieval Political Ideas. Cambridge University Press.

References

443

Ullmann, Walter. 1979. “This Realm of England is an Empire.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (2):175–203. Ulrich, H. and G. J. B. Probst, eds. 1984. Self-Organization and Management of Social Systems: Insights, Promises, Doubts, and Questions. Spinger-Verlag. Vale, Malcolm. 1998. “France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420– 1461).” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VII c. 1415–c. 1500, edited by Christopher Allmand. Cambridge University Press. van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980. The Scientific Image. Clarendon Press. van Ham, Peter and Sergei Medvedev. 2002. Mapping European Security after Kosovo. Manchester University Press. van Hateren, J. H. 2017. “A Unifying Theory of Biological Function.” Biological Theory 12 (2):112–126. van Inwagen, Peter. 2002. “What Do We Refer to When We Say “I”?” In The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, edited by Richard M. Gale. Blackwell Publishers. Van Krieken, Robert. 2001. “Norbert Elias and Process Sociology.” In Handbook of Social Theory, edited by George Ritzer and Barry Smart. SAGE Publications. Van Valen, Leigh. 1977. “The Red Queen.” The American Naturalist 111 (980):809–810. Vasquez, John A. 1993. The War Puzzle. Cambridge University Press. Vasquez, John A. 1997. “The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz’s Balancing Proposition.” American Political Science Review 91 (4):899–912. Vattel, Emerich de. 1916 [1758]. The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct of the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns. The Carnegie Institution of Washington. Veit, Walter. 2022. “Scaffolding Natural Selection.” Biological Theory 17 (2):163–180. Verzijl, J. H. W. 1968. International Law in Historical Perspective: Part II, International Persons. A. W. Sijthoff. Victor, Jennifer Nicoll, Alexander H. Montgomery, and Mark Lubell. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks. Oxford University Press. Viola, Lora Anne. 2013. “Stratificatory Differentiation as a Constitutive Principle of the International System.” In Bringing Sociology to International Relations: World Politics as Differentiation Theory, edited by Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn. Cambridge University Press. Viola, Lora Anne. 2020. “‘Systemically Significant States’: Tracing the G20’s Membership Category as a New Logic of Stratification in the International System.” Global Society 34 (3):335–352. Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. 1950. “The Theory of Open Systems in Physics and Biology.” Science 111 (2872):23–29. Von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. 1968. General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. George Braziller. von Foerster, Heinz. 2007 [1959]. “On Self-Organizing Systems and Their Environments.” In Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, edited by Heinz von Foerster. Springer-Verlag New York.

444

References

Vrba, Elisabeth S. 1993. “Turnover-pulses, the Red Queen, and Related Topics.” American Journal of Science 293 (A):418–452. Vrba, Elisabeth S. and Niles Eldredge. 1984. “Individuals, Hierarchies and Processes: Towards a More Complete Evolutionary Theory.” Paleobiology 10 (2):146–171. Vrba, Elisabeth S. and Stephen Jay Gould. 1986. “The Hierarchical Expansion of Sorting and Selection: Sorting and Selection Cannot Be Equated.” Paleobiology 12 (2):217–228. Vucetic, Srdjan. 2011. “Bound to Follow? The Anglosphere and US-Led Coalitions of the Willing, 1950–2001.” European Journal of International Relations 17 (1):27–49. Waever, Ole. 1998. “Insecurity, Security, and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community.” In Security Communities, edited by Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett. Cambridge University Press. Waever, Ole. 2009. “Waltz’s Theory of Theory.” International Relations 23 (2):201–222. Wagner, Günter P., Mihaela Pavlicev, and James M. Cheverud. 2007. “The Road to Modularity.” Nature Reviews Genetics 8 (12):921–931. Wagner, Maren. 2016. Social Emergence in International Relations: Institutional Dynamics in East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. Wagner, R. Harrison. 1983. “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation.” American Political Science Review 77 (2):330–346. Wagner, R. Harrison. 1993. “What was Bipolarity?” International Organization 47 (1):77–106. Wagner, R. Harrison. 2007. War and the State: The Theory of International Politics. University of Michigan Press. Walby, Sylvia. 2007. “Complexity Theory, Systems Theory, and Multiple Intersecting Social Inequalities.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (4):449–470. Walby, Sylvia. 2009. Globalization and Inequalities: Complexity and Contested Modernities. SAGE Publications. Waldner, David. 2012. “Process Tracing and Causal Mechanisms.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Harold Kincaid. Oxford University Press. Waldner, David. 2015. “What Makes Process Tracing Good? Causal Mechanisms, Causal Inference, and the Completeness Standard in Comparative Politics.” In Process Tracing: From Meatphor to Analytical Tool, edited by Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel. Cambridge University Press. Walker, R. B. J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2011 [1976]. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. University of California Press. Walsh, D. M. 2008. “Teleology.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Biology, edited by Michael Ruse. Oxford University Press. Walsh, Edmund A., ed. 1922. The History and Nature of International Relations. The Macmillan Company. Walt, Stephen M. 1987. The Origins of Alliances. Cornell University Press.

References

445

Walt, Stephen M. 1988. “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation: The Case of Southwest Asia.” International Organization 42 (2):275–316. Walt, Stephen M. 1998. “International Relations: One World, Many Theories.” Foreign Policy 110:29–46. Walter, Barbara F. 1997. “The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement.” International Organization 51 (3):335–364. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1959. Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Columbia University Press. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1964. “The Stability of a Bipolar World.” Daedalus 93 (3):881–909. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Random House. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1981. “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better.” Adelphi Papers 171:1–32. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1986. “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics.” In Neo-Realism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane. Columbia University Press. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1988. “The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (4):615–628. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1990a. “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities.” American Political Science Review 84 (3):731–745. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1990b. “Realist Thought and Neo-Realist Theory.” Journal of International Affairs 44 (1):21–37. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1993. “The Emerging Structure of International Politics.” International Security 18 (2):44–79. Waltz, Kenneth N. 1997. “Evaluating Theories.” American Political Science Review 91 (4):913–917. Waltz, Kenneth N. 2000. “Structural Realism after the Cold War.” International Security 25 (1):5–41. Waltz, Kenneth N. 2004. “Neorealism: Confusions and Criticisms.” Journal of Politics and Society 15 (1):2–6. Waltz, Kenneth N. 2007. “Kenneth N. Waltz.” In 10 x 10, edited by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Ole Dahl Rasmussen, and Ole Waever. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Waltz, Kenneth N. and Harry Kreisler. 2003. “Theory and International Politics. Conversation with Kenneth N. Waltz.” www.youtube.com/ watch?v=F9eV5gPlPZg. Wang, Liping and Julia Adams. 2011. “Interlocking Patrimonialisms and State Formation in Qing China and Early Modern Europe.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 636 (1):164–181. Wang, Zhi, Ben-Yang Liao, and Jianzhi Zhang. 2010. “Genomic Patterns of Pleiotropy and the Evolution of Complexity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (42):18034–18039. Ward, Kevin. 2010. “Towards a Relational Comparative Approach to the Study of Cities.” Progress in Human Geography 34 (4):471–487. Ware, Edith E. 1934. The Study of International Relations in the United States. Columbia University Press. Waskan, Jonathan. 2011. “Mechanistic Explanation at the Limit.” Synthese 183 (3):389–408.

446

References

Watanabe, Kyoko et al. 2019. “A Global Overview of Pleiotropy and Genetic Architecture in Complex Traits.” Nature Genetics 51 (9):1339–1348. Watson, Adam. 1992. The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis. Routledge. Watson, Adam. 2007. Hegemony and History. Routledge. Watt, J. A. 1999. “The Papacy.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume V c. 1198–c. 1300, edited by David Abulafia. Cambridge University Press. Watts, Christopher. 2014. Relational Archaeologies: Humans, Animals, Things. Routledge. Watts, John. 2009. The Making of Polities: Europe 1300–1500. Cambridge University Press. Watzlawick, Paul, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson. 1967. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Inter-Actional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. Norton. Weaver, Warren. 1948. “Science and Complexity.” American Scientist 36 (4):536–544. Webber, Mark. 1996. The International Politics of Russia and the Successor States. Manchester University Press. Weber, Bruce H. 2010. “What is Life? Defining Life in the Context of Emergent Complexity.” Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres 40 (2):221–229. Weber, Eugen. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford University Press. Weber, Katja. 1997. “Hierarchy Amidst Anarchy: A Transaction Costs Approach to International Security Cooperation.” International Studies Quarterly 41 (2):321–340. Weber, Katja. 2000. Hierarchy Amidst Anarchy: Transaction Costs and Institutional Choice. State University of New York Press. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. 2 vols. University of California Press. Weber, Max. 1994. Weber: Political Writings. Edited by Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge University Press. Weber, Yuval. 2019. “Measuring Hierarchy in the European Union and Eastern Partnership Countries.” In Resilience and the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood Countries, edited by Gilles Rouet and Gabriela Carmen Pascariu. Palgrave Macmillan. Wedgewood, C. V. 2005 [1938]. The Thirty Years War. New York Review of Books. Wegner, Lars H. and Ulrich Lüttge, eds. 2019. Emergence and Modularity in Life Sciences. Springer Nature. Weijer, Cornelis J. 2004. “Dictyostelium Morphogenesis.” Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 14 (4):392–398. Weinert, Matthew S. 2007. “Bridging the Human Rights-Sovereignty Divide: Theoretical Foundations of Democratic Sovereignty.” Human Rights Review 8 (2):5–32. Weinert, Matthew S. 2016. “Regional Multilateralism and the Reconfiguration of International Society: A View from the English School.” In Seeking Order in Anarchy: Multilateralism as State Strategy, edited by Robert W. Murray. University of Alberta Press.

References

447

Weinreich, Daniel M., Richard A. Watson, and Lin Chao. 2005. “Perspective: Sign Epistasis and Genetic Constraint on Evolutionary Trajectories.” Evolution 59 (6):1165–1174. Weis, Eberhard. 1986. “Enlightenment and Absolutism in the Holy Roman Empire: Thoughts on Enlightened Absolutism in Germany.” The Journal of Modern History 58:S181–S197. Weisberg, Michael, Paul Needham, and Robin Hendry. 2019. “Philosophy of Chemistry.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/chemistry/. Weiss, Moritz. 2018. “How to Become a First Mover? Mechanisms of Military Innovation and the Development of Drones.” European Journal of International Security 3 (2):187. Weltman, John J. 1973. Systems Theory in International Relations: A Study in Metaphoric Hypertrophy. Lexington Books. Wendt, Alexander. 1987. “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory.” International Organization 41 (3):335–370. Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46 (2):391–425. Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. Wendt, Alexander. 2003. “Why a World State is Inevitable.” European Journal of International Relations 9 (4):491–542. Wendt, Alexander. 2005. “Agency, Teleology and the World State: A Reply to Shannon.” European Journal of International Relations 11 (4):589–598. Wendt, Alexander. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. Cambridge University Press. Wendt, Alexander and Daniel Friedheim. 1995. “Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State.” International Organization 49 (4):689–721. West-Eberhard, Mary Jane. 2003. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford University Press. Whalen, Brett Edward. 2014. The Medieval Papacy. Palgrave Macmillan. Whaley, Joachim. 2012. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. Volume I: From Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia 1493–1648. Oxford University Press. Wheaton, Henry. 1866. Elements of International Law. 8th ed. Little, Brown and Company. Reprint, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wheeler, James Scott. 2002. The Irish and British Wars, 1637–1654: Triumph, Tragedy, and Failure. Routledge. White, Harrison C. 1992. Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action. Princeton University Press. White, Harrison C. 2008. Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge. 2nd ed. Princeton University Press. Whittlesey, Derwent. 1939. The Earth and the State: A Study of Political Geography. Henry Holt and Company. Wieland, Josef. 2020. Relational Economics: A Political Economy. Springer. Wiener, Norbert. 1948. “Cybernetics.” Scientific American 179 (5):14–19. Wiener, Norbert. 1961 [1948]. Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine. 2nd ed. MIT Press.

448

References

Wiessner, Polly. 1982. “Risk, Reciprocity and Social Influence on !Kung San Economics.” In Politics and History in Band Societies, edited by Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee. Cambridge University Press. Wiessner, Polly. 1986. “!Kung San Networks in a Generational Perspective.” In The Past and Future of !Kung Ethnography: Critical Reflections and Symbolic Perspectives. Essays in Honour of Lorna Marshall, edited by Megan Biesele. Helmut Buske Verlag. Wight, Colin. 2006. Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology. Cambridge University Press. Wight, Martin. 1977. Systems of States. Leicester University Press. Wight, Martin. 1978 [1946]. Power Politics. Leicester University Press. Wilcox, Lauren B. 2015. Bodies of Violence: Theorizing Embodied Subjects in International Relations. Oxford University Press. Williams, E. N. 1999 [1970]. The Ancien Régime in Europe: Government and Society in the Major States, 1648–1789. Pimlico. Williams, George C. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton University Press. Williams, George C. 1992. Natural Selection: Domains, Levels and Challenges. Oxford University Press. Williams, Patrick. 2010. The Great Favourite: The Duke of Lerma and the Court and Government of Philip III of Spain, 1598–1621. Manchester University Press. Willoughby, Westel Woodbury. 1896. An Examination of the Nature of the State: A Study in Political Philosophy. Macmillan and Co. Wilson, David Sloan and Elliott Sober. 1989. “Reviving the Superorganism.” Journal of Theoretical Biology 136 (3):337–356. Wilson, David Sloan and Elliott Sober. 1994. “Reintroducing Group Selection to the Human Behavioral Sciences.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):585–608. Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Wilson, Peter. 2012. “The English School Meets the Chicago School: The Case for a Grounded Theory of International Institutions.” International Studies Review 14 (4):567–590. Wilson, Peter H. 2000. Absolutism in Central Europe. Routledge. Wilson, Peter H. 2004. From Reich to Revolution: German History, 1558–1806. Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Peter H. 2009. The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy. Harvard University Press. Wilson, Peter H. 2010. The Thirty Years War: A Sourcebook. Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Peter H. 2011. The Holy Roman Empire 1495–1806. Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Peter H. 2016. Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire. Harvard University Press. Wimsatt, William C. 1994. “The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 24 (sup1):207–274. Wimsatt, William C. 2007. Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality. Harvard University Press.

References

449

Winder, Nick, Brian S. McIntosh, and Paul Jeffrey. 2005. “The Origin, Diagnostic Attributes and Practical Application of Co-evolutionary Theory.” Ecological Economics 54 (4):347–361. Winning, Jason. 2020. “Mechanistic Causation and Constraints: Perspectival Parts and Powers, Non-perspectival Modal Patterns.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4):1385–1409. Wivel, Anders. 2013. “The Politics of International Theory: Reading Waltz 1979 as a Classic.” In Classics of International Relations: Essays in Criticism and Appreciation, edited by Henrik Bliddal, Casper Sylvest, and Peter Wilson. Routledge. Wohlforth, William C. 2011. “Gilpinian Realism and International Relations.” International Relations 25 (4):499–511. Wolf, Jason B. et al., eds. 2000. Epistasis and the Evolutionary Process. Oxford University Press. Wolfers, Arnold. 1940. Britain and France between Two Wars: Conflicting Strategies of Peace Since Versailles. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Wolfers, Arnold. 1962. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics. The Johns Hopkins Press. Womack, Brantly. 2012. “Asymmetry and China’s Tributary System.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5 (1):37–54. Wood, James B. 1996. The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562–1576. Cambridge University Press. Woodburn, James. 1968. “Stability and Flexibility in Hadza Residential Groupings.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore. Aldine Publishing Company. Woodburn, James. 1979. “Minimal Politics: The Political Organization of the Hadza of North Tanzania.” In Politics in Leadership: A Comparative Perspective, edited by William A. Shack and Percy S. Cohen. Clarendon Press. Woodburn, James. 1982. “Egalitarian Societies.” Man 17 (3):431–451. Woodburn, James. 1988. “African Hunter-Gatherer Social Organization: Is It Best Understood as a Product of Encapsulation?” In Hunters and Gatherers 1: History, Evolution, and Social Change, edited by Tim Ingold, David Riches, and James Woodburn. Berg. Woodburn, James. 1998. “‘Sharing is Not a Form of Exchange’: An Analysis of Property-Sharing in Immediate-Return Hunter-Gatherer Societies.” In Property Relations: Renewing the Anthropological Tradition, edited by C. M. Hann. Cambridge University Press. Woodburn, James. 2005. “Egalitarian Societies Revisited.” In Property and Equality: Ritualisation, Sharing, Egalitarianism, edited by Thomas Widlok and Wolde Gossa Tadesse. Berghahn Books. Woodward, Geoffrey. 2013 [1992]. Philip II. Routledge. Woodward, James. 2004. “Counterfactuals and Causal Explanation.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 18 (1):41–72. Woodward, James. 2016. “Causation and Manipulability.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford .edu/archives/win2016/entries/causation-mani/. Woodward, James and Lauren Ross. 2021. “Scientific Explanation.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/sum2021/entries/scientific-explanation/.

450

References

Woolf, Leonard. 1916. International Government: Two Reports. George Allen & Unwin. Woolf, Leonard. 1940. The War for Peace. G. Routledge & Sons. Wootton, David, ed. 2003. Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England. Hackett. Worden, Blair. 2010. “Oliver Cromwell and the Protectorate.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 20:57–83. Wormald, Jenny. 2005. Scotland: A History. Oxford University Press. Wright, Cory and William Bechtel. 2007. “Mechanisms and Psychological Explanation.” In Handbook of the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, edited by Paul Thagard. Elsevier. Wright, Justin P. and Clive G. Jones. 2006. “The Concept of Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers Ten Years On: Progress, Limitations, and Challenges.” BioScience 56 (3):203–209. Wright, Larry. 1973. “Functions.” Philosophical Review 83:139–168. Wright, Quincy. 1930. Research in International Relations since the War. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wright, Quincy. 1964 [1942]. A Study of War. University of Chicago Press. Wu, Zhengyu. 2018. “Classical Geopolitics, Realism and the Balance of Power Theory.” Journal of Strategic Studies 41 (6):786–823. Xavier, Joana C. et al. 2020. “Autocatalytic Chemical Networks at the Origin of Metabolism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 287 (1922):20192377. Yan, Xuetong. 2011. Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power. Princeton University Press. Yeung, Henry Wai‐chung. 2005. “Rethinking Relational Economic Geography.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (1):37–51. Yin, Yian et al. 2021. “Coevolution of Policy and Science during the Pandemic.” Science 371 (6525):128–130. Ylikoski, Petri. 2012. “Micro, Macro, and Mechanisms.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Harold Kincaid. Oxford University Press. Yoffee, Norman. 2005. Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States and Civilizations. Cambridge University Press. Young, John R. 2001. “The Scottish Parliament and European Diplomacy 1641–1647: The Palatine, The Dutch Republic and Sweden.” In Scotland and the Thirty Years’ War: 1618–1648, edited by Steve Murdoch. Brill. Young, Oran R. 1994. International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society. Cornell University Press. Young, Oran R. 2017. Governing Complex Systems: Social Capital for the Anthropocene. MIT Press. Young, Peter. 2012. The English Civil War Armies. Bloomsbury Publishing. Zahle, Julie. 2016. “Methodological Holism in the Social Sciences.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford .edu/archives/win2021/entries/holism-social/. Zaks, Sherry. 2016. “The Logic of Process Tracing: Contributions, Pitfalls and Future Directions.” In Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Political Science, edited by Hans Keman and Jaap J. Woldendorp. Edward Elgar Publishing.

References

451

Zarakol, Ayse, ed. 2017a. Hierarchies in World Politics. Cambridge University Press. Zarakol, Ayse. 2017b. “Theorizing Hierarchies: An Introduction.” In Hierarchies in World Politics, edited by Ayse Zarakol. Cambridge University Press. Zeleny, Milan. 1977. “Self-Organization of Living Systems.” International Journal of General Systems 4 (1):13–28. Zeleny, Milan, ed. 1980. Autopoiesis, Dissipative Structures, and Spontaneous Social Orders. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Zhang, Feng. 2012. “The Tsinghua Approach and the Inception of Chinese Theories of International Relations.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5 (1):73–102. Zhang, Feng. 2014. “International Societies in Pre-modern East Asia: A Preliminary Framework.” In Contesting International Society in East Asia, edited by Barrry Buzan and Yongjin Zhang. Cambridge University Press. Zhang, Shiming. 2006. “A Historical and Jurisprudential Analysis of Suzerain– Vassal State Relationships in the Qing Dynasty.” Frontiers of History in China 1 (1):124–157. Zhang, Yongjin and Barry Buzan. 2012. “The Tributary System as International Society in Theory and Practice.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 5 (1):3–36. Zielonka, Jan. 2006. Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union. Oxford University Press. Zielonka, Jan. 2013. “The International System in Europe: Westphalian Anarchy or Medieval Chaos?” Journal of European Integration 35 (1):1–18. Zimmern, Alfred E. 1922. Europe in Convalescence. 2nd ed. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Zimmern, Alfred E. 1936. The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935. 2nd ed. Macmillan and Company. Zmora, Hillay. 1991. Monarchy, Aristocracy and the State in Europe 1300–1800. Routledge. Zorzi, Andrea. 2000. “The ‘Material Constitution’ of the Florentine Dominion.” In Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power, edited by William J. Connell and Andrea Zorzi. Cambridge University Press. Zürn, Michael. 2018. A Theory of Global Governance: Authority, Legitimacy, and Contestation. Oxford University Press. Zurn, Michael, Barry Buzan, and Mathias Albert. 2013. “Conclusion: Differentiation Theory and World Politics.” In Bringing Sociology to International Relations: World Politics as Differentiation Theory, edited by Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zurn. Cambridge University Press. Zutshi, P. N. R. 2000. “The Avignon Papacy.” In The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume VI c. 1300–c. 1415, edited by Michael Jones. Cambridge University Press. Zwolski, Kamil. 2016. “How to Explain the Transnational Security Governance of the EU?” In International Relations Theory and European Security: We Thought We Knew, edited by Lorenzo Cladi and Andrea Locatelli. Routledge.

Index

absolutism, 338–340 accuracy (in explanations), 78–80 adaptation, 33–35, 208, 225, 226, 229, 232 agents/agency, 47, 48, 185, 200, 222, 232 agent–structure problem, 46–49, 185, 222 agglomerated/aggregated polities, 305, 316–324, 334–335, 343–344 aggregate(d), 27, 29, 68 Albert, Buzan, and Zurn, 163–169 Altman, Dan, 262–265 amalgamated security communities, 259 Analytical Sociology, 44–45 anarchy, 36, 62, 86–87, 97–130, 136–141, 143, 153, 154, 156, 157, 160–162, 171, 254, 269, 284, 296 consequences/effects of, 105–109, 116, 139–141 cultures of (Wendt), 108 definition, 100–101 discourse of, 117–127 vs. hierarchy, 97–98, 102, 103, 141, 153, 154, 159 Archer, Margaret, 48 assemblages, 9, 15, 17–18, 56, 185–186, 222 autarchy, 272, 282, 283 autocatalysis, 32, 216, 218, 235 autopoiesis, 32 Axelrod, Robert, 121, 247 Barnett, Michael, 270 Baroque (era), 337–341 binding through sharing, 115–116, 140 Binford, Lewis, 109 Britain, 320–321 Bull, Hedley, 283 Bunge, Mario, 4, 10, 23, 38, 47, 69 Buzan, Barry, 39, 40, 199, 249, See also Albert, Buzan, and Zurn

452

capabilities, distribution of, 86, 144, 147–152, 195 causal inference, 60, 65, 67, 69, 74–76, 240 causal thickets, 77–78 causation, 66–68, 239 causes, 61, 64–69 centralization, 157–158, 295–299, 328–329, 349 Charles V, 315–316 co-evolution, 227–229, 241–242 Coleman, James, 44 common security communities, 258 complex interdependence, 284 complexity, 29–36 complicated, 28–30 composite polities. See agglomerated/ aggregated polities concert systems, 257, 278 configurations, 9–11, 180, 183–184, 201, 354, 356 constitutional structure, 249–254 constructivism, 94, 122, 134, 248, 262 constructivism, philosophical, 12 continuous (trans)formation, 207–215, 224, 229, 310, 316, 335, 341, 348–350 globalization as, 349–350 Cronin, Bruce, 254 Dawkins, Richard, 224–225 decolonization, 260–261 decomposition, 22, 28, 35, 46, 88–89 DeLanda, Manuel, 7 demarcation criterion, 98–99, 104, 121 Dickinson, G. Lowes, 125 differentiation, 163–166, ch. 11 activities, 192–193 actors, 190–192 authorities, 193–194 center–periphery, 297–299 dimensions, 164 formal, 190, 274

Index functional, 146–147, 193, 310–311 horizontal, 189 material, 194–198 normative-institutional. ch. 14 segmentation, 190–192 spatio-political. ch. 16 stratification, 193–194, 269, 274–280 substantive, 190, 274 types, 164 vertical, 189, ch. 15 dissipative structures/systems, 206 dominion, 258 double dichotomy (Waltz), 101–103 downward causation, 7, 239 ecosystems (international systems as), 201–203 effects of anarchy, 105, 106, 122–123, 127 causal, 64, 66, 67, 262 systems, 4–6, 23, 26, 28, 67, 109, 162, 262, 293 egalitarian (autarchic) orders, 272 Elster, Jon, 44, 69 emergence, 10, 22, 26–29, 215, 232 inferential, 28 methodological, 28 ontological, 28 empire-states, 305, 309, 316–324 empiricism, 13 entropy, 205, 206 environment (vs. system), 4, 94–95 epistasis, 225 essentialism, 11 estates, 326–328 eventful history, 219–221, 229 evolution, 36, 52, 202, 224–230, 232–233, 236, 238, 241–243 social, 230–233 theory of, 241 exaptation, 227 existential fear effects of, 139–141, See also survival explanation, 64, 69–73 accuracy in, 78–80 analogical, 72 analytic, 5–6, 20, 28, 40, 41, 88–90, 170 as if, 72 associational, 70 causal, 64–69, 239–240 field, 71 functional, 73 how, 63, 68–69, 239–240, 290–291 intentional, 72 model-based, 76–77, 290–291 natural law, 70

453 predictive, 70 rational actor, 72 reductive, 20, 23, 29, 41, 90–91, 224, 239 relational. See explanation, systemic scientific, 64 systemic, 5–6, 36–37, 40, 46, 59, 70–71, 78–80, 243, 354–356 this-is-a-cause-of-that, 65, 68–69, 74, 75, 240 top-down, 7, 24, 90, 94, 239 why, 69–70 extended organisms, 51 extrinsic relations, 17 fields, 9, 71, 106 fiscal-military states, 340–341 fitness, 227 forager societies, 109–116, 137–140, 197 France, 317–319, 331–333 genetic linkage, 226 genidentity, 53–56 geographic mosaic theory (of co-evolution), 242 geotechnics, 196–198 globalization, 37, 203, 272, 347–352 Gould, Stephen J., 233, 238, 241, 243 governance, 267 multilevel multiactor, 306–308, 344, 350 single-center, 303–306 single-level, 301–303, 347, 351 great power states systems, 98, 116, 138, 140–143, 146, 276 Griffiths, Ryan, 157–163 Hedström, Peter, 45 hegemony, 257, 284–287 heterarchy, 282–290, 306–308, 310–313, 328, 348–349 in early twentieth century, 287–289 globalization as, 348–349 hegemony as, 284–287 hierarchical subordination (systems of), 257 hierarchy, 6, 36, 86, 98–99, 102, 134, 141, 144, 149–150, 153–158, 171, 189, 268–272, 274–287, 289, 291–292, 297 compositional, 43, 51, 299 contested, 271 convergent, 271, 274–282 divergent, 271, See also heterarchy simple, 270 in states systems, 280 tangled. See heterarchy taxonomic, 6

454

Index

Hobbesian state of nature, 137–140, 254, 272 holism, 23–24 holobionts, 50 Holy Roman Empire, 311, 313–315, 321–324 Humphreys, Paul, 28 ideal type, 99, 103, 161–162, 167, 292 imperial international systems, 258, 280–282, 292 individuals. See also persons biological, 49–51 evolutionary, 51 human, 48, 52, 54, 200, 201 social groups as, 52–53 species as, 52 inequality, 99, 165, 270, 289 inside-out theory, 89 institutions, 248–249 security, 254–259 integrated polities, 303–304 interaction capacity, 199 intrinsic relations, 17 irreducibility, 18, 27, 28, 47 Jackson, Patrick, 24, 180–183, 355, 356 Jacob, Francois, 229 Jervis, Robert, 19, 28, 40–41, 66, 81 Jessop, Bob, 284 Keohane, Robert O., 82, 92, 122, 247, 248, 284 King, Keohane, and Verba, 60, 64, 66, 69, 74, 240 laws and theories model, 76, 223 levels, 38 of abstraction, 38, 42–44 of analysis, 19, 37–43, 89, 170 of evolution, 225 of explanation, 39 of organization, 6–7, 19, 23, 37–39, 42–43, 47, 48, 52, 53, 57, 186, 199, 229, 300, 311–312 of reality, 6 triads of, 43–44, 46 Lewontin, Richard, 225, 231 Lloyd, Elizabeth, 238, 243 Lotka–Volterra model, 67 Louis XIV, 213–215, 325 Luhmann, Niklas, 4, 32

major transitions in evolution, 230 Mann, Michael, 343 Mearsheimer, John, 125, 139–140, 195 mechanisms, 15–17, 70, 76, 77, 240, 241 mechanisms and models approach, 76, 223, 240–242, 290 micro foundations, 44–46 micro–macro, 43–44, 46 military revolution, 209–214 Mitchell, Sandra, 60, 80 models, 76–79, 169, 177, 188–190, 243, 274, 290–291, 353–356 modern synthesis (evolutionary biology), 224, 241 modularity, 34–36, 208, 222, 229–230, 236 Molter, Dan, 50 multilevel selection, 225 Nadel, S. F., 136 natural selection, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 232, 240, 241 naturalism, 23, 70 neoliberalism, 82, 107, 122, 134 neo-medievalism, 283, 352 neo-positivism, 13 netdoms, 56 networks, 9, 70, 181, 190, 216, 218 gene regulatory, 234 Nexon, Daniel, 24, 180–183, 270, 354 non-aggregative, 26–27, 29 non-linearity, 30–31 norms, 248–249, 254, 261 constitutive, 254 Nye, Joseph, 82, 284 ontologically flat, 7 ordering principles, 86, 97, 103, 104, 116, 134–136, 151, 153–157, 160–163, 163, 168–171, 269, 309 outside-in theory, 90 Padgett, John, 215–219 Padgett and Powell, 51, 55, 215–219, 229–231 Parker, Geoffrey, 209–210 partial (in)separability (of systems and their components), 20–25, 186 path dependence, 207, 232 persistence (requires explanation), 204, 206 persons, 55–58, 200–201 perspectives, 77 phenotype plasticity, 236–238 pleiotropy, 226 pluralism, explanatory, 60, 61, 64, 73

Index pluralistic security communities, 115, 258 polarity, 150–152, 199 positions, 182, 200, 202, 355 Powell, Christopher, 185 Powell, Robert, 88, 105 Powell, Walter, 215–219 practices, 9, 249–254, 262–263, 265–266 pragmatism, 12 Prigogine, Ilya, 31, 207 processes, 13–15, 17, 33, 34, 54–55, 67, 68, 180–185, 206–207, 214–215, 220–222, 232, 235–236, 298–299 reduction, 20–23, 89–91, 224–226, 239 eliminative, 21–22, 89, 224–225, 234 regnal polities, 311–312, 314–315 regulative regimes, 267 relational institutionalism, 9 relationalism, 8–13, 36–37, 179–185, passim relations, 24–25, 95–96 extrinsic, 17, 299 vs. interactions, 88, 95, 108–109 intrinsic, 17, 299 relative gains, 87, 105, 115, 116 Renaissance (era), 337 Rescher, Nicholas, 14, 27, 55 residuals, 30, 42, 154, 198, 262, 290, 351 Roberts, Michael, 209 Rosenau, James, 351 Rosenberg, Justin, 346 rules, 96, 128, 137, 248, 252–253, 267 Sampson, Aaron, 136 scale, 197 scarcity, 197–198 schema, 77 Schmidt, Brian, 125–127 Schrödinger, Erwin, 205 scientific realism, 12 second law of thermodynamics, 204 security systems, types of, 254–259 segmentation, 160, 164, 169, 190–192 self-help, 86, 105, 109, 114, 115, 148 self-organization, 31–33, 216, 218, 230, 231, 234, 236 Sewell, William, 219–221 Simon, Herbert, 35 Singer, J. David, 38, 41 sketch, 77 Slaughter, Anne–Marie, 351 solidarity (organic and mechanical), 159–160 Spain, 319, 330–331 spheres of influence, 277 Spruyt, Hendrik, 341–342

455 states, 303–304, 316–317, 324–325, 328–330, 343–344 states systems, 24–26, 89, 94, 101, 119, 128, 171, 194, 274–280, 286, 289, 292, 301–303, 307, 314–316, 348–349 states-in-a-states-system, 25, 184, 202, 347, 351 stratification, 193–194, 269, 274–282, 308 Strayer, Joseph, 342 structural realism, 86–87, 144, 151, 195–196 structure, 36, 58–59, 87–88, 221, 248, 294, 309, passim substantialism, 10–11, 14, 180, 182, 206, 209 sufficiency (vs. scarcity), 197 superorganism, 49 survival, 79, 92, 198 symbiosis, 228 systems. Passim, See esp. ch. 1, 2, 5, 10 closed, 204, 205 complex adaptive, 33–34, 36, 53, 58, 208, 222, 223, 225, 230 complex physical, 33 definition, 3–5, 87–88 dissipative, 206 far-from-equilibrium, 206, 207 open, 205, 206 of systems of systems, 6, 43, 44, 47, 58, 238 vs causes, 68 systems effects, 168, 169, 187, See also effects, system terminal peer polities, 191–192, 347, 348 territorial war, 259–267 territoriality, 197, 261, 272 theory, 61–64, 74–79, 241–243 structural (Waltzian), 89–92, 96, 144–145, 172 systemic, 8, 85, 89, 91–92, 96, 129, 202, 356 Waltz on, 61–64 thermodynamic equilibirum, 205 this-is-a-cause-of-that explanation. See explanation Thompson, John N., 228, 242 tinkering (evolution as), 229 transposition and re-functionality, 215–219, 224, 229, 230 tripartite conception, 141–144, 247 typologies, 166–167, 291–294, 353 Ukraine, 265–267 unipolarity, 281, 286

456

Index

unit level, 42, 85, 91, 96 unit of analysis, 39 units, 88, 91–92 unity of science, 21, 65 Waltz, Kenneth N. passim. See esp. ch. 5, 7, 8 and §§3.2, 4.1, 6.1, 9.7 Wars of Religion (France), 211–213

Wendt, Alexander, 41, 105, 108, 115, 122, 140 White, Harrison, 8, 55–58, 218 Wilson, E. O., 22 Wimsatt, William, 22, 27, 77, 78 Woodburn, James, 109 Zürn, Michael. See Albert, Buzan, and Zurn

Cambridge Studies in International Relations 159 Claire Vergerio War, states, and international order Alberico Gentili and the foundational myth of the laws of war 158 Peter Joachim Katzenstein Uncertainty and its discontents Worldviews in world politics 157 Jessica Auchter Global Corpse politics The Obscenity taboo 156 Robert Falkner Environmentalism and global international society 155 David Traven Law and sentiment in international politics Ethics, emotions, and the evolution of the laws of war 154 Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson Secrets in global governance Disclosure dilemmas and the challenge of international cooperation 153 Lora Anne Viola The closure of the international system How institutions create political equalities and hierarchies 152 Cecelia Lynch Wrestling with God Ethical precarity in Christianity and international relations 151 Brent J. Steele Restraint in international politics 150 Emanuel Adler World ordering A social theory of cognitive evolution 149 Brian C. Rathbun Reasoning of state Realists and romantics in international relations 148 Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost Practice theory and international relations 147 Bentley Allan Scientific cosmology and international orders 146 Peter J. Katzenstein and Lucia A. Seybert (eds.) Protean power Exploring the uncertain and unexpected in world politics

145 Catherine Lu Justice and reconciliation in world politics 144 Ays¸e Zarakol (ed.) Hierarchies in world politics 143 Lisbeth Zimmermann Global norms with a local face Rule-of-law promotion and norm-translation 142 Alexandre Debs and Nuno P. Monteiro Nuclear politics The strategic causes of proliferation 141 Mathias Albert A theory of world politics 140 Emma Hutchison Affective communities in world politics Collective emotions after trauma 139 Patricia Owens Economy of force Counterinsurgency and the historical rise of the social 138 Ronald R. Krebs Narrative and the making of US national security 137 Andrew Phillips and J.C. Sharman International order in diversity War, trade and rule in the Indian Ocean 136 Ole Jacob Sending, Vincent Pouliot and Iver B. Neumann (eds.) Diplomacy and the making of world politics 135 Barry Buzan and George Lawson The global transformation History, modernity and the making of international relations 134 Heather Elko McKibben State strategies in international bargaining Play by the rules or change them? 133 Janina Dill Legitimate targets? Social construction, international law, and US bombing 132 Nuno P. Monteiro Theory of unipolar politics 131 Jonathan D. Caverley Democratic militarism Voting, wealth, and war

130 David Jason Karp Responsibility for human rights Transnational corporations in imperfect states 129 Friedrich Kratochwil The status of law in world society Meditations on the role and rule of law 128 Michael G. Findley, Daniel L. Nielson and J. C. Sharman Global shell games Experiments in transnational relations, crime, and terrorism 127 Jordan Branch The cartographic state Maps, territory, and the origins of sovereignty 126 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.) The persistent power of human rights From commitment to compliance 125 K. M. Fierke Political self-sacrifice Agency, body and emotion in international relations 124 Stefano Guzzini The return of geopolitics in Europe? Social mechanisms and foreign policy identity crises 123 Bear F. Braumoeller The great powers and the international system Systemic theory in empirical perspective 122 Jonathan Joseph The social in the global Social theory, governmentality and global politics 121 Brian C. Rathbun Trust in international cooperation International security institutions, domestic politics and American multilateralism 120 A. Maurits van der Veen Ideas, interests and foreign aid 119 Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (eds.) International practices 118 Ays¸e Zarakol After defeat How the East learned to live with the West

117 Andrew Phillips War, religion and empire The transformation of international orders 116 Joshua Busby Moral movements and foreign policy 115 Séverine Autesserre The trouble with the Congo Local violence and the failure of international peacebuilding 114 Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore and Susan K. Sell (eds.) Who governs the globe? 113 Vincent Pouliot International security in practice The politics of NATO-Russia diplomacy 112 Columba Peoples Justifying ballistic missile defence Technology, security and culture 111 Paul Sharp Diplomatic theory of international relations 110 John A. Vasquez The war puzzle revisited 109 Rodney Bruce Hall Central banking as global governance Constructing financial credibility 108 Milja Kurki Causation in international relations Reclaiming causal analysis 107 Richard M. Price Moral limit and possibility in world politics 106 Emma Haddad The refugee in international society Between sovereigns 105 Ken Booth Theory of world security 104 Benjamin Miller States, nations and the great powers The sources of regional war and peace 103 Beate Jahn (ed.) Classical theory in international relations

102 Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami The English School of international relations A contemporary reassessment 101 Colin Wight Agents, structures and international relations Politics as ontology 100 Michael C. Williams The realist tradition and the limits of international relations 99 Ivan Arreguín-Toft How the weak win wars A theory of asymmetric conflict 98 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall (eds.) Power in global governance 97 Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach Remapping global politics History’s revenge and future shock 96 Christian Reus-Smit (ed.) The politics of international law 95 Barry Buzan From international to world society? English School theory and the social structure of globalisation 94 K. J. Holsti Taming the sovereigns Institutional change in international politics 93 Bruce Cronin Institutions for the common good International protection regimes in international security 92 Paul Keal European conquest and the rights of indigenous peoples The moral backwardness of international society 91 Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver Regions and powers The structure of international security 90 A. Claire Cutler Private power and global authority Transnational merchant law in the global political economy 89 Patrick M. Morgan Deterrence now

88

Susan Sell Private power, public law The globalization of intellectual property rights

87

Nina Tannenwald The nuclear taboo The United States and the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945

86

Linda Weiss States in the global economy Bringing domestic institutions back in

85

Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker (eds.) The emergence of private authority in global governance

84

Heather Rae State identities and the homogenisation of peoples

83

Maja Zehfuss Constructivism in international relations The politics of reality

82

Paul K. Ruth and Todd Allee The democratic peace and territorial conflict in the twentieth century

81

Neta C. Crawford Argument and change in world politics Ethics, decolonization and humanitarian intervention

80

Douglas Lemke Regions of war and peace

79

Richard Shapcott Justice, community and dialogue in international relations

78

Phil Steinberg The social construction of the ocean

77

Christine Sylvester Feminist international relations An unfinished journey

76

Kenneth A. Schultz Democracy and coercive diplomacy

75

David Houghton US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis

74

Cecilia Albin Justice and fairness in international negotiation

73

Martin Shaw Theory of the global state Globality as an unfinished revolution

72

Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour Perfect deterrence

71

Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams Contesting global governance Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements

70

Roland Bleiker Popular dissent, human agency and global politics

69

Bill McSweeney Security, identity and interests A sociology of international relations

68

Molly Cochran Normative theory in international relations A pragmatic approach

67

Alexander Wendt Social theory of international politics

66

Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.) The power of human rights International norms and domestic change

65

Daniel W. Drezner The sanctions paradox Economic statecraft and international relations

64

Viva Ona Bartkus The dynamic of secession

63

John A. Vasquez The power of power politics From classical realism to neotraditionalism

62

Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.) Security communities

61

Charles Jones E. H. Carr and international relations A duty to lie

60

Jeffrey W. Knopf Domestic society and international cooperation The impact of protest on US arms control policy

59

Nicholas Greenwood Onuf The republican legacy in international thought

58

Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer Nations at war A scientific study of international conflict

57

Randall D. Germain The international organization of credit States and global finance in the world economy

56

N. Piers Ludlow Dealing with Britain The Six and the first UK application to the EEC

55

Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger Theories of international regimes

54

Miranda A. Schreurs and Elizabeth C. Economy (eds.) The internationalization of environmental protection

53

James N. Rosenau Along the domestic-foreign frontier Exploring governance in a turbulent world

52

John M. Hobson The wealth of states A comparative sociology of international economic and political change

51

Kalevi J. Holsti The state, war, and the state of war

50

Christopher Clapham Africa and the international system The politics of state survival

49

Susan Strange The retreat of the state The diffusion of power in the world economy

48

William I. Robinson Promoting polyarchy Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony

47

Roger Spegele Political realism in international theory

46

Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.) State sovereignty as social construct

45

Mervyn Frost Ethics in international relations A constitutive theory

44

Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton Governing global networks International regimes for transportation and communications

43

Mark Neufeld The restructuring of international relations theory

42

Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.) Bringing transnational relations back in Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions

41

Hayward R. Alker Rediscoveries and reformulations Humanistic methodologies for international studies

40

Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair Approaches to world order

39

Jens Bartelson A genealogy of sovereignty

38

Mark Rupert Producing hegemony The politics of mass production and American global power

37

Cynthia Weber Simulating sovereignty Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange

36

Gary Goertz Contexts of international politics

35

James L. Richardson Crisis diplomacy The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century

34

Bradley S. Klein Strategic studies and world order The global politics of deterrence

33

T. V. Paul Asymmetric conflicts War initiation by weaker powers

32

Christine Sylvester Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era

31

Peter J. Schraeder US foreign policy toward Africa Incrementalism, crisis and change

30

Graham Spinardi From Polaris to Trident The development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile technology

29

David A. Welch Justice and the genesis of war

28

Russell J. Leng Interstate crisis behavior, 1816–1980 Realism versus reciprocity

27

John A. Vasquez The war puzzle

26

Stephen Gill (ed.) Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations

25

Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds.) From cold war to collapse Theory and world politics in the 1980s

24

R. B. J. Walker Inside/outside International relations as political theory

23

Edward Reiss The strategic defense initiative

22

Keith Krause Arms and the state Patterns of military production and trade

21

Roger Buckley US-Japan alliance diplomacy 1945–1990

20

James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.) Governance without government Order and change in world politics

19

Michael Nicholson Rationality and the analysis of international conflict

18

John Stopford and Susan Strange Rival states, rival firms Competition for world market shares

17

Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.) Traditions of international ethics

16

Charles F. Doran Systems in crisis New imperatives of high politics at century’s end

15

Deon Geldenhuys Isolated states A comparative analysis

14

Kalevi J. Holsti Peace and war Armed conflicts and international order 1648–1989

13

Saki Dockrill Britain’s policy for West German rearmament 1950–1955

12

Robert H. Jackson Quasi-states Sovereignty, international relations and the third world

11

James Barber and John Barratt South Africa’s foreign policy The search for status and security 1945–1988

10

James Mayall Nationalism and international society

9

William Bloom Personal identity, national identity and international relations

8

Zeev Maoz National choices and international processes

7

Ian Clark The hierarchy of states Reform and resistance in the international order

6

Hidemi Suganami The domestic analogy and world order proposals

5

Stephen Gill American hegemony and the Trilateral Commission

4

Michael C. Pugh The ANZUS crisis, nuclear visiting and deterrence

3

Michael Nicholson Formal theories in international relations

2

Friedrich V. Kratochwil Rules, norms, and decisions On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international relations and domestic affairs

1

Myles L. C. Robertson Soviet policy towards Japan An analysis of trends in the 1970s and 1980s