Lecture 10: Structure, Agency, and the Causes of War Pt. 1 Flashcards
The starting assumption of much of IR
The international system is anarchical
~ no world government, no actor who can enforce contracts, punish defection from cooperative agreement, protect states from aggressors, enforce rights protections
Anarchy is a structural condition of the international system
States cannot unilaterally alter this, can’t decide system is not anarchical
~ part-whole relation: states are actors that make up the anarchical international system
~ constraint: anarchy constrains what states are able to do
How does anarchy make international relations distinct from other levels of policy?
There is no higher authority in anarchy
How does anarchy constrain states?
~ creates collective action problems
~ makes cooperation difficult and unstable
~ predisposes states to conflictual relations
~can be combined with another structure: the balance of power among states in the system
System polarity
unipolar v. multipolar v. bipolar systems
~ polarity of the system is argued to explain patterns of interstate conflict
Social structures are malleable
Can change or change from within
~ problem: structures do not always operate as a constraint, do not consistently constrain in the same way
Can be changed from the outside (people have agency)
~ problem: causal relationships between structures and agents is not unidirectional
Structural explanations in IR are often deterministic
Portrays outcomes as inevitable, not much room for contingency
What was Wendt’s “agent-structure problem”?
~ Humans and their organizations are purposive actors who reproduce and transform society
~ Society is made up of social relationships that structure interactions between these purposive actors
Two dominant structure theories of IR
Neorealism and world-systems theory
Neorealism
Assumes an anarchic system, fundamental fear is insecurity
The distribution of capabilities in the system constrains the states
~ individualist ontology: states are the main actors
~ explanandum: interactions of states
~ explanans: system of the structure and the states constrained by that system
Wendt’s critique to neorealism
Neorealism reduces the international system to the properties of states, leads to situational determinism
World-systems theory
Organizing principles of capitalist world economy constitute/generate state actors
~ holistic/structuralist ontology: the system is the main actor
~ explanandum: states
~ explanans: structure of the world system and international division of labor
Wendt’s critique to world-systems theory
not much room for state agency, cannot explain properties of the system itself, leads to historical determinism
Structuration theory
Humans are inseparable from social structure, do not exist outside of society
Tenets of structuration theory according to Wendt
~ Social structures are real, important to explanation, and generate agents
~ Social structures are not explained by their function, need to account for human agency
~ Can combine agents and structures in dialectical synthesis (moving between the two)
~ Social structures as co-determined/mutually constituted (no states without an international system, no international system without states)
