Anarchy in International Relations

Is anarchy a useful assumption for IR theory in the 21^st century? Why or why not? Provide  clear definition of anarchy.

Anarchy is no longer a useful concept or starting point for IR theory. In fact, anarchy never was a practical starting point for theorists of IR or any other practical social science. Throughout history there has been a community or a semblance of structure among the system of states and polities that ordered and constrained state behavior. Therefore the definition of anarchy as a system absent authority and hierarchy is not relevant for IR theory, and its persistence in the discipline has led to pessimism and a negative self fulfilling prophecy.

In this essay, I will provide evidence that anarchy is not, nor has it ever been, characteristic of the international system. I will then address why the modern era is continually moving away from any resemblance to anarchy. Next, I will introduce important international phenomena that has been overlooked by theorists who focus myopically on the effects of anarchy, and show that this phenomena is becoming ever more powerful. Last, I will show that even if anarchy did characterize the international system, it does not change the overriding importance of other variables in the international system, and therefore is not a useful primary explanation for any IR theory, even neorealism, because it does not in and of itself offer a mechanism for war or peace.

Anarchy is understood as a system with a lack of hierarchy, authority, and obligation among units. This concept is the lynchpin of neorealism, which claims that the lack of hierarchy and order in the international system leads states to adopt self-help behaviors and to be irrevocably suspicious and antagonistic of each other. States will be single minded seekers of security, and will balance and bandwagon to offset power (Waltz 1979). According to realists, anarchy can never be replaced by order, and even a seemingly benevolent state could become revisionist and greedy any moment. This antagonistic, anarchy nature of international system is understood to swamp any other considerations and lead states to seek only their own security.

Taken from social philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, this view of the “state of nature” is an ideal type that is not characteristic of world history. Throughout the ages, there have been marks of authority, dominance, submission, Imperialism, protectorates, dependencies, and hierarchy in the world system. Even since the advent of Westphalian sovereignty in 1648, the international system has reflected different ordering principles. David Lake identifies mutually recognized religious hierarchy, as the Church claimed a monopoly on salvation and Christian states imperialized pagan lands. Following a religious ordering of the international system, a racial order formed, and there is documentation of both dominant and submissive assent to this hierarchy. This period can be illustrated by the attitude of Kipling’s, “White Man’s Burden” where race ordered the international system. With the rise of the Bretton-Woods institutions after World War II, a new order emerged, where Western accountants determined for the third world how they should conduct their economic affairs. This legacy continues today, and has caused an anti-globalization backlash to the uniform policies advocated by the West or the North upon the south. Like Lake, many critical theories, from World Systems theory, to Marxist theories and even feminist theory uncovers a multitude of hierarchic, patriarchal, or dominating relationships that have had lasting effects in today’s world, such as relegating the third world to the peripheries and subjecting them to irrevocable underdevelopment. While these critical theories do not offer a compelling account of a singular hierarchic order, together, they provide a plentiful account of the legacies of hierarchy in the international system. In the face of such historical accounts, acknowledged by both sides of the dominant/submissive dichotomy, it must be acknowledged that anarchy, the absence of authority, obligation, and hierarchy, does not and did not characterize the international system.

After having just established that world history illuminates a plethora of hierarchic relationships, I will now turn to the increasing presence of formal and informal organizing structures in the international system that belie the claims of anarchy. At the end of World War I, the League of Nations was constructed to provide the foundation for collective security and provide for mediation of interstate issues to preclude resort to war. After the ineptitude of this institution, the UN was created to serve the same purpose. Institutions were seen as a panacea to world war, as they could provide a formal structure for interstate cooperation. By providing an efficient way for states to coordinate, bargain, and enforce agreements through building regimes for mutual benefit, institutions gained an important status in the international system as being the forums in which states created reputations, gained trust, proved themselves, and formed identities. Traditionally, neoliberal institutionalists such as Keohane, Simmons, Nye, and Axelrod accept the starting point of anarchy, claiming that institutions merely mitigate the affects of anarchy such as animosity, distrust, and greed, by increasing the shadow of the future, ensuring repeated interactions, and linking issues together. However, institutions do much more than this. They also endogenously create actors and preferences, and set norms and mores for state behavior. Complying with these norms and expectations confers states with legitimacy, and disregarding the mandates of these international regimes, institutions and organizations labels a state as noncompliant, rogue, deviant, and a threat. Therefore, institutions play an important role in ordering relationships in the international system, and carry with them the ability to legitimize or delegitimize states, which matters greatly according to Ian Hurd, and also holds states accountable to their commitments, which implies a mutually recognized obligation on the part of member states. Some states even go to great extremes to participate in international institutions and organizations such as NATO or the EU. Schimmelfennig, for example, argues that states have willingly undergone great socialization to be accepted by these organizations. Whether they do so for the legitimacy that comes with membership (Hurd) or the benefits and priviledges of membership (rationalist argument) or to make a more credible and path dependent commitment to democratization (-----), states defer to the decision structure of various regimes, international laws, institutions and organizations. This deference and mutual recognition of obligation and authority is further proof that anarchy is not characteristic of the international system and should not be the point of departure for relevant international relations theory. In addition to the force of international regimes, institutions, and law, there are many new actors and interests in the international system that make anarchy an implausible starting point for IR theory. I will now turn to these new actors.

In the contemporary world, anarchy is becoming even more irrelevant than it was before. This is because there is a vast increase of transnational actors, organizations, networks, corporations, movements, and interests that blur the distinctions and transcend state lines, and even regional and continental lines. Without clearly demarcated entities, anarchy is a moot concept because there is mass convergence and increased globalization that unites, rather than divides entities. (Held and McGrew). There is increasing economic interdependence (Keohane and Nye) which constrains state decision making as a state’s welfare is tied directly to another state’s welfare. Additionally, there are transnational, interracial, interreligious activist networks that have banded together to counteract the liberal family planning and women’s issue platforms of the UN. A major player in many international issues such as global poverty alleviation, just war, family issues, and health policy is the power international organization of the Roman Catholic Church. Such an organization carries an unparalleled legitimacy, in at least some faction of most states in the world. Such groups cannot be ignored or abstracted out of IR analysis. Moreover, states are swayed by these NGOs, institutions, and transnational activist networks to follow through with their commitments, are pressured to join treaties and sign international agreements on human rights, convention against landmines, convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. The legitimacy and reputations conferred by non-state actors are important to states and they create obligations and international authority that is socially constructed rather than rational-legal authority that sets out a formal hierarchy. In the face of obligations and authority presented by non-state actors and transnational activists, anarchy is an unintelligible concept that applies only to state-centric, black boxed states that have no order, authority, obligation, or hierarchy. The propagation of non-state actors, transnational actors, and formal and informal obligatory and legitimacy-conferring organizations all point to the reality that even if the system had appeared thus at one point, it is swiftly evolving into a cosmopolitan society of states.

Neorealists, neoliberals, and even the conventional constructivists like Alexander Wendt who accept that anarchy is the defining characteristic of the international system have condemned IR theory to never move beyond the past. By spending so much time theorizing on anarchy and hostility, threat, and unrelenting security seeking, the prospects for progress and peace have been woefully neglected. Human rights regimes, international institutions and nongovernmental organizations that have built, pioneered, and helped diffuse norms throughout the international system have no place in neorealism, and are only viewed through a rationalist lens by neoliberal institutionalists who see these groups as a way for states to bargain and strategically coordinate and enforce best practices for dealing with pressing issues more effectively. The most disappointing of these theories that have focused too little on non-state actors and the prospects for transformation and peace in the international system is Alex Wendt’s brand of constructivism. While he claims that the self-help behavior is not necessarily part and parcel of the anarchic world system, he does not challenge the assumption of anarchic structure. While constructivism holds that norms, identities, structures and identities are all socially constructed by intersubjective agreements and understandings, he omits the international anarchic structure from social construction, arguing that it is prior constituted and irrevocable. All of these theories in their mainstream applications deny that a community or society of states can or will emerge or currently exists. Their acceptance of anarchy precludes this possibility. From this essay, it should be clear that a community and society of states does in fact exist, and that the influence of non-state actors and principles of authority, obligation and hierarchy do present a damning critique of the anarchy assumption. Ignoring these vibrant and growing entities only hurts the field of IR. The benefits gained from a simple and classical assumption of anarchy is by far outweighed by the loss of explanatory power and promise that comes from the exploration and further specification, modeling, testing, and theorizing with these other forces and ordering principles.

Last, even if anarchy were the characterizing principle of the international system, what do we gain from this analysis? Anarchy in and of itself does not offer an adequate mechanism for war. Even Fearon recognizes this and posits mechanisms for war that rely on commitment problems and the presence of private information and the incentive to misrepresent that private information. Just because states exist in a system that lacks hierarchy, authority, and obligation, this is merely a permissive condition for war, but war is not necessary or inevitable. There is little to be gained from starting at anarchy, but much to be lost from precluding other important variables from consideration. For these reasons, anarchy is not of primary relevance or concern in the contemporary world and the focus on this concept is overrepresented in IR literature to the detriment of progress and greater understandings of transformation and peace in the international community.