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Summary: Wendt - Social Theory of International Politics - chapter 6
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Summary on Wendt chapter 6 - Social Theory of International Politics
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The three cultures of anarchy – Wendt Chapter 6States are intentional, corporate actors whose identities and interests are in important part determined by
domestic politics rather than the international system. Within domestic politics states are still socially
constructed, of course, but this is a different level of construction; relative to the international system states are
self-organizing facts. This means that if we are interested in the question of how the states system works, rather
than in how its elements are constructed, we will have to take the existence of states as given.
- The fact that state agents are not constructed by system structures all the way down does not mean they
are not constructed by them to a significant extent. The per se individuality of states may be given
outside the system, but the meanings or terms of that individuality are given within.
- The structure is an anarchy defined as the absence of centralized authority. Disparities of power
between Great and Small Powers raise doubts about this assumption on the centralization side, and
states' acceptance of international norms raise more on the authority side.
Variation and construction question
- The first is whether anarchy is compatible with more than one kind of structure and therefore ``logic.'' It
is important here to distinguish between micro- and macro-level structures between what Waltz calls
the domains of ``foreign policy'' and ``international politics.'' Everyone agrees that micro- or
interaction- level anarchic structures vary. Some are peaceful, others warlike.
o In the Neorealist view they do: anarchies are inherently self- help systems that tend to produce
military competition, balances of power, and war. Against this I argue that anarchy can have at
least three kinds of structure at the macro-level, based on what kind of roles - enemy, rival, and
friend - dominate the system.
Hobbesian, Lockean and Kantian cultures
Hobbesian structure is a truly self-help system, and as such there is no such
thing as a ``logic of anarchy.''
- The other question is whether the international system constructs states. Do anarchic structures affect
state identities and interests, or merely their behavior?
o Only the behavior of states is affected by system structure, not their identities and interests.
o Apart from its implications for change, the answer to the construction question also bears on
the variation question, since if anarchic structures have no construction effects then it is more
likely that anarchy does not have a single logic. Game theory teaches us that the outcomes of
interaction stem from configurations of desires and beliefs, which can vary from ``Harmony''
all the way to ``Deadlock.
In this light it is not surprising that Waltz hypothesizes that anarchy tends to produce
``like units'' (a construction hypothesis), though for good measure he also assumes
that states are by nature self-regarding and security seeking. These moves eliminate
much of the possible variation in interests that could undermine the idea of a single
logic of anarchy.
I defend a third possibility: (1) anarchic structures do construct their elements, but (2) these structures vary at the
macro- level and can therefore have multiple logics. Anarchy as such is an empty vessel and has no intrinsic
logic; anarchies only acquire logics as a function of the structure of what we put inside them.
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, - The key to this argument is conceptualizing structure in social rather than material terms. When IR
scholars today use the word structure they almost always mean Waltz's materialist de®nition as a
distribution of capabilities.
- Defining structure in social terms admits those possibilities, and without any real loss of parsimony,
since I believe that Waltz's theory itself presupposes a social structure, a Lockean one.
o To say that a structure is ``social'' is to say, following Weber, that actors take each other ``into
account'' in choosing their actions. This process is based on actors' ideas about the nature and
roles of Self and Other, and as such social structures are ``distributions of ideas'' or ``stocks of
knowledge.''8 Some of these ideas are shared, others are private. Shared ideas make up the
subset of social structure known as ``culture''). In principle Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian
structures might be constituted entirely by private ideas, but in practice they are usually
constituted by shared ones.
Political culture - Its political culture is the most fundamental fact about the structure of an international system,
giving meaning to power and content to inter- ests, and thus the thing we most need to know to explain a ``small
number of big and important things.
- To see this it is useful to consider three reasons why actors may observe cultural norms: because they
are forced to, because it is in their self-interest, and because they perceive the norms as legitimate.
However, I believe it is more useful to see them as reflecting three different ``degrees'' to which a norm
can be internalized, and thus as generating three different pathways by which the same structure can be
produced : ``force,'' ``price,'' and ``legitimacy.''
o Thus, even though I show that the structure of anarchy varies with relationships between states,
I do not argue here that ``anarchy is what states make of it.
Structure and roles under anarchy
The first implication is that there is no relationship between the extent of shared ideas or culture in a system and
the extent of cooperation.
- Culture may constitute conflict or cooperation. The second implication is that the concept of ``role''
should be a key concept in structural theorizing about the international system. Most IR scholarship
assumes that roles are unit-level properties with no place in structural theory. I believe this
misunderstands the nature of roles, which are properties of structures, not agents. The culture of an
international system is based on a structure of roles.
- There are two problems of order in social life. 15 One is getting people to work together toward
mutually beneficial ends like reducing violence or increasing trade, and for this reason it is sometimes
known as the ``cooperation problem.'
- There is another problem of order, however, what might be called the ``sociological'' as opposed to
``political'' problem, which is creating stable patterns of behavior, whether cooperative or conflictual.
Regularities are plentiful in nature, where they are determined primarily by material forces. These
matter in society as well, but social regularities are determined primarily by shared ideas that enable us
to predict each other's behavior.
- Since in anarchy there is no such authority states must assume the worst about each other's intentions,
that others will violate norms as soon as it is in their interest to do so, which forces even peace-loving
states to play power politics. Any shared ideas that emerge will be fragile and fleeting,
̄fleeting, subject to subject to
potentially violent change with changes in the distribution of power. The only shared idea that can be
stable under such conditions is that ``war may at any moment occur,'' but for Realists this is simple
prudence, not culture.
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, o At least limited forms of inter-state cooperation based on shared ideas – respecting property,
keeping promises, and limiting violence – are possible and as such there can be an anarchical
society.
- Hobbesian logics can be generated by
deeply shared ideas, and Kantian logics
by only weakly shared ones. Each logic of
anarchy is multiply realizable: the same
effect can be reached through different
causes. Which pathway realizes a given
anarchy is an empirical question. All nine
cells of figure 4 should be in play in
international theory, not just those along
the diagonal.
- I am most interested in the upper-left cells of figure 4, but there are equally interesting neglected
possibilities for Realists in the bottom right. The second implication concerns structural change. Realist
pessimism notwithstanding, it is easier to escape a Hobbesian world whose culture matters relatively
little, and notwith- standing Idealist optimism, harder to create a Kantian one based on deeply shared
beliefs. It is Realists who should think that cultural change is easy, not constructivists, because the more
deeply shared ideas are internalized - the more they ``matter'' - the stickier the structure they constitute
will be. This suggests a rethinking of Waltz's definition of structure. In order to make clear that
structure contains both material and ideational elements let me begin by building on Dan Deudney to
make an analogy between modes of production and ``modes of destruction.'' On the material side of the
latter are ``forces of destruction'': technological artifacts like spears, tanks, and ICBMs that have the
ability to kill people and destroy property. These vary quantitatively, which is captured by Waltz's
``distribution of capabilities,'' and qualitatively, which is reflected in the changing balance between
offensive versus defensive weapons technologies
- What gives meaning to the forces of destruction are the ``relations of destruction'' in which they are
embedded: the shared ideas, whether cooperative or conflictual, that structure violence between states.
These ideas constitute the roles or terms of individuality through which states interact. The concept of
terms of individuality play the same function in this model as principles of differentiation does in
Waltz’s. Both concern the ways in which agents are constituted by structures.
o Extending theory to role differentiation
o In some cases material conditions are decisive, in others it will be ideas.
o Rather than follow Neorealists in focusing first on material structure, therefore, I believe that if
we want to say a small number of big and important things about world politics we would do
better to focus first on states' ideas and the interests they constitute, and only then worry about
who has how many guns.
- Shared understandings about violence vary from the general (``kill or be killed'') to the specific (use
white flags to surrender). While each may be studied individually, my proposal, adapted from Bull and
Wight, is that they tend to cluster into three cultures with distinct logics and tendencies, Hobbesian,
Lockean, and Kantian.
- They may be found in regional sub- systems of the international system - Buzan's ``security complexes''
- or in the system as a whole. Finally, although they may be affected by cultures at the domestic and/or
transnational level, the cultures of interest here are states system-centric. This means that even if states'
domestic cultures have little in common, as in Huntington's ``clash of civilizations,'' the states system
could still have one culture that affected the behavior of its elements. A key aspect of any cultural form
is its role structure, the configuration of subject positions that shared ideas make available to its holders.
Subject positions are constituted by representations of Self and Other as particular kinds of agents
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