DRAFT: September 20, 2010 Introduction: Puzzles about Power Martha Finnemore (George Washington University) Judith Goldstein (Stanford University) We live in a diverse world. States, organizations, and the people in them are differently endowed with wealth, knowledge, capacity and intent. They are also differently situated, confronting varied arrays of incentives, opportunities, constraints and threat. The roots of power lie in these differences, but figuring out the process by which difference becomes power or what its effects may be has been a challenge for scholars of world politics. Even actors blessed with resources and opportunities suffer bad outcomes if they pursue unrealistic goals or employ bad strategies. The fact that building blocks of power endowments, situation, goals do not map neatly onto political outcomes creates a host of puzzles for scholars. It also creates profound dilemmas for policy makers. Most of us would expect betterendowed and better situated actors to be more successful on the world stage. Often they are, as the rise of US power in the 19 th and 20 th centuries suggests, but not always. States endowed with abundant resources may remain weak, and even fail. We often speak of a resource curse to describe resource rich states like Venezuela or Congo seem unable to convert endowments into power or well being. Conversely, small island nations with relatively few resources may become major political or economic powers, as Britain did in the 18 th century and both Japan and Singapore did in the 20 th. The same paradox appears in actors other than states. The International Labor Organization (ILO), with one of the largest budgets among international organizations, has failed to effect sought after labor policies while the 1
WTO, with a far smaller budget has been highly efficacious in regulating trade. 1 Conversely, resource poor NGOs, like the International Campaign to Ban Landmines may succeed in reconfiguring policies of major militaries. Why resources endowments sometimes create power and success, but not always, is a puzzle. Even when resources create power in the form of troops, guns, and money that power does not always translate into policy success. Overt exercises of power like repression and threat can backfire; they may breed resistance rather than compliance. Insurgencies against existing powers often thrive on repression. Victims can become martyrs and help recruitment into the ranks of the weak. Similarly, vast sums of money may be funneled to poor countries in the form of development assistance without making appreciable differences in quality of life for people living in those places. One can hypothesize many possible reasons for these failures. Goals may be unrealistic; strategies may be bad. But, again, the link between power and outcomes is not clear. Predicting the purposes to which power will be put can be equally difficult and the effects of power may be unintended. Differences in endowments and situation may result in conquest and genocide, on the one hand, or they may be used for massive flows of foreign aid to people hit by natural disasters on the other. In neither case does purpose assure outcome, though. Good intentions are not enough to create happy outcomes, and evil intent may sometimes be thwarted. Conquest and genocide do not always create the intended control for the perpetrators. Whether or how much foreign aid actually relieves suffering may vary greatly and be difficult for powerful donors to control. Complicating matters further, actors such as states and individuals, are not the only sources of power in today s world. Institutions that structure situations of actors may be some of the most powerful forces at work in the world today. Markets, for example, exert huge power on many kinds of actors. They create incentives and exact punishment in ways that profoundly shape the fates of small farmers, huge corporations, and national treasuries, alike. Normative structures of 1 Blackhurst in Ann Krueger 2
law like the human rights regime generate new interests around which people and states may organize. Religions, in their varied forms, mobilize people and create reasons to act. 2 All of these empower civil society actors in ways that may constrain, or empower, states. Differences in endowments and situations create inequalities, or what those who study international relations would label as asymmetries. That these asymmetries create power in politics is not a new observation. From Thucydides to Morgenthau, policy makers and theorists have noted the importance of power differentials. Yet, the often implicit understanding that power differentials are important has not translated into a shared set of axioms about why and how power affects outcomes. Even definitions of power are contested. For some, power is closely associated with material attributes. This is power in the Hobbes tradition where nations exist in a world of limited rules and norms and power is the ability or capacity to do harm. Here, one has power over others a result of material differences in the ability to punish. But this view of power raises many questions. The purposes of power may matter; some goals are more realistic than others. The fungibility of these material resources also plays a role in producing the outcomes we see. Does military might always prevail against insurgents? Does economic wealth always translate into military capacity? The focus on power as a resource leaves open a large range of issues on how, when and why resource abundance can be used to maximize a nation s interests. The more conventional view of power is not oriented toward its material bases but instead on the activity or process of control. Robert Dahl famously explained that power was about getting someone else to do what you wanted them to do or as he suggested, A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do (1957). This definition was not without its critics. Steven Lukes in perhaps the most famous critique of Dahl s approach labeled it as one dimensional and suggested two other dimensions of importance: a second dimension observed by Bachrach and Baratz which looked at non decisions and a 2 Barnett and Duvall explore dimensions of institutional power in both their IO article and their book. Cite. 3
third that focused on the effects of ideology 3. But, even Lukes admits that Dahl was not wrong in the fundamental idea that power was somehow about A getting B to act contrary to B s desires but rather, that his description was too simple. 4 Wrestling with the problem of how to operationalize power is not new to the field of international politics. For example, Baldwin in 1985 commented that he had encountered formidable theoretical and methodological problems in making power analysis compatible with the concept of economic statecraft, his subject of inquiry at the time. 5 Robert Gilpin, also seeking to understand economic power, turned to Albert Hirschman to describe the effects of markets: the power to interrupt commercial or financial relations with a country is the root cause of the influence or power position which a country acquires in other countries. 6 Realists, including Gilpin, often found it easier to talk about states interests in maximizing security or/and wealth, rather than power itself because these terms were more easily understood and quantified. The problem with power is not that scholars do not observe its effects, but rather that the pathways between conventional measures of what we are calling asymmetries and outcomes do not often map as predicted. More recently, Barnett and Duvall have focused on the multiple dimensions of power, encouraging scholars to employ different definitions to explore different political problems. Their taxonomy of power reflects important changes in the field since Dahl s time. Following IR s interest in structure in the 1980s, they incorporate forms of structural and institutional power, and following the sociological turn in the field, they emphasize social as well as material aspects of power. 7 Scholars now have a large array of concepts with which to tackle problems of power. When Morganthau launched his new science of politics in 1948, he built that science on two foundational concepts, power and interests. Since the 1980s, 3 Is it not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things Steven Lukes Power A Radical View London: Palgrave 2005: 28. 4 Lukes, pp.38 41 on critique of Dahl 5 Baldwin, Economic Statecraft 1985 6 Gilpin 1987 citing Hirschman, 1945. 7 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, Power in International Relations International Organization 59 (winter 2005): 39 75. 4
however, power has taken a back seat to interests in both the formulation of theory and our analysis of political problems. Game theory and its notions about bargaining, and strategic interaction were powerful tools that gained increasing attention in the field. Analytics of these frameworks are driven by asymmetries of interest, not of power. In fact, initially, even the existence of interest asymmetries was not a focus of IR analysts. Starting in the 1980s, theorists focused more on harmony and shared interests. They investigated situations of mutual gain, in which nations did not forgo their objective interests but rather, worked cooperatively to make both better off. Here, the question of power was less central; instead, scholars asked how particular rules and norms could develop that would assure a cooperative, mutually beneficial outcome. The asymmetries that mattered were more often asymmetries of information and transaction costs, than power. As we discuss in the next section, a renewed exploration of power s role is warranted today. Our world is complex and traditional models have stumbled in their explanation of state behavior. Why has American military predominance not assured success in Afghanistan or Iraq, even though significant resources were spent? Why has pushing for democracy and elections as a requisite for US aid repeatedly backfired, perhaps best evidenced by the rise of Hamas in Gaza? Why have otherwise weak insurgent groups been able to reign terror on the West by convincing individuals to give up their lives as suicide bombers? Among others, these are the puzzles of the contemporary era and they force us to reconsider fundamental questions on the nature of, and uses of power, today. And although not ignored, power has been sidelined in contemporary studies of international politics in favor of more tangible variables. Yet, understanding the pathways by which asymmetries among actors in world affairs influence political outcomes remains a central theoretical question for political science. Prompted by these puzzles, the purpose of this volume is to examine the pathways by which power creates outcomes in international politics. The conclusions authors reach vary. Some seek an explanation for power s diverse and unpredicted effects by rethinking international structures and the international environment. Others craft new understandings of the way power works through a 5
focus on domestic ideas and institutions or how global forces transform local structures, and vice versa. Throughout the volume, authors remind us that no analysis is complete without consideration of interests, values and institutional setting. But as well, the essays remind us that power relations are the glue that connects these variables in a multitude of important ways. Theorizing Power: Realism as a Straitjacket Changing theories about power in the international relations field are inextricably bound up in the changing history of political realism. For realist thinkers, power has always been of primary importance and no other theory assigns it a more central role. Indeed, power politics is often synonymous with a realist theory and realpolitik practice. It is hardly surprising, then, that the changing treatment of power as a concept in our field is intimately bound up with the history of political realism. Realism makes power central to its understanding of the world but it has done so in very particular ways. The earliest, classical realist thinkers emphasized not just power but also fear as crucial drivers of politics. It was not just growing Athenian power that caused the Peloponnesian War, in Thucydides view; it was also the fear this created in Sparta that made war inevitable. 8 Similarly, Machiavelli emphasizes fear, rather than love, as the most effective way to exercise power and rule others. 9 Interestingly, fear figures much less prominently in post WWII realist theoretical writing. Why this should be is unclear since the post war world with its new nuclear technologies would seem, objectively, to be at least as fear inducing as previous periods. But emotion, which was so central to early realist logic was largely eclipsed by a concern to present realpolitik behavior as rational (emotions being understood as somehow anti rational.) The change reflected a shift from realism as a prescription to leaders to realism as a scientific functional theory. 8 Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. Penguin, 1954/72, chapter 1, parag. 24, p.49. 9 Machiavelli, The Prince. New York: Cambridge, 1988, chapter XVII. 6
Two elements of this shift influenced our conceptions of power. First, as the field sought more generalized explanations for political phenomena, realists became interested in developing grand theory. This aim, first articulated by Morganthau in his pursuit of a science of politics, was elaborated by a number of systems theorists in the 1950s and 1960s. 10 These aims were most fully realized by Kenneth Waltz who explicitly modeled his neo realism as a systemic theory. 11 Waltz s approach deviated markedly from classical realism. Classical realists like Machiavelli and Morganthau saw realism as both an analytic and a normative theory: life was nasty, brutish and short; and leaders were advised to act with that in mind. In contrast, Waltz cared little about prescribing behavior for leaders. In Waltz s world, the intent of individuals mattered little because nations who failed to act in line with international constraints would find themselves less well off. Waltz s theory was functional and systemic, not motivational. There was no theory of leadership nor even of strategy. Imagining the international environment to be akin to a market, Waltz s theory explains outcomes success or failure. The implicit assumption, not theorized, was that actors learned over time what policies were consistent with their market power. Unlike Morganthau, Waltz cared little about politics or process. The pursuit of grand theory, particularly theory of the type to which Waltz aspired, had important effects on realism and its understanding of power. It imposed a form of rigor and demanded logical consistency in ways that had big benefits for scholars and the field. It made scholars, both realists and their critics, self conscious about their thinking. It forced them to be transparent about their assumptions, and opened them to criticism by others in ways that earlier, more philosophic or poetic, forms of realism had managed to avoid. But the pursuit of grand theory also made realism a straitjacket. Its demands for parsimony and logical consistency often forced realists to be procrustean in their approach to the world. Events and phenomena that did not fit with prior assumptions were ignored or neglected, and realists treatment of power fell prey to these tendencies. Forms 10 For example, see: Kaplan, Rosecrance. 11 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics 1979. 7
of power that didn t fit the realist model ideas, persuasion, identity and affect were neglected, making it difficult for realists to analyze a large set of actors or understand more nuanced interests that shaped politics. A second effect of this shift toward scientific theory involved realists interrogation of their own assumptions. As scholars attempted to understand the micro foundations of politics, the concepts of interest and power were increasingly scrutinized. Scholars were asked to provide more detailed specification and justification for their variables. The result was that realist thinkers increasingly developed definitions of power that lent themselves to easy operationalization and quantification. Numbers of troops, size of GDP, and similar measures of material attributes became working definitions of power. Less easily quantified forms of power were neglected, as was the question of whether power resources were appropriate to meet national goals. Further, their focus on the state, married to a commitment to theoretical parsimony, led realists to ignore fundamental changes in the international environment. The international environment (or international system ) was reduced to the distribution of power, in neorealist thinking, and power was only consequential when it was state power. Other sources of power, for example the power of public opinion which concerned earlier realists like EH Carr, were explicitly excluded from this newer realist thinking. Even more problematic, new actors had no place in realist thought. The environment in which states lived was limited to other states. International institutions were said to be epiphenomenal of state power, non state actors dismissed as unimportant, international law was only a tool of powerful states. States thus became the only relevant object of analysis for realists in international affairs, and they interacted as billiard balls in an anarchic environment, structured only by their own relative power. Thus, starting with Morganthau, but particularly following the publication of Waltz s Theory of International Politics, realism clarified its claims but also narrowed them. Power was still central to realist thinking, but state power was the only power that mattered. Material power, which was thought to be more objective and easier to measure ergo more tractable for scientific theory testing, dominated 8
realist thought; other forms of power faded to the background. The distribution of power in the system constituted the international structure within which states acted and determined interests. Realist attention was also focused by Waltz on power as constraint. Power had its most important effects under structural realism by constraining states from acting and defining what they could not do. Structural realism was notably silent about what states actually could do; it offered no theory of statecraft and few predictions about what states, particularly great powers with few constraints, might actually do with their power. Scholars in the realist tradition often chaffed under these limitations and looked for ways to stretch the approach. Although still interested in power (and quick to remind others, notably liberals, of its importance) these subversive 12 realists recognized that power s role in politics extended well beyond the confines of neorealist theory. Understanding the power of MNCs and global markets was a major preoccupation of scholars, including realists, in the 1970s but fitting these actors into a realist model took some gymnastics. Theorizing about the role of nonstate actors like NGOs and terrorist groups raise similar issues in contemporary politics. But perhaps most problematic, failed states suggested that the fundamental building bloc of realism, sovereign states, was often more quicksand than terra firma. In general, understanding the power of ideology, ideas, and non material factors required serious thinking outside the realist box. These theoretical problems, compounded by real world events, most notably the end of the Cold War, led to a decline in interest in realist theory. Unfortunately, it also led to a decline in discussions of power. Methodological tools developed to test parsimonious, deductive theory flourished, a perhaps unintended legacy of Waltz s theoretical style, but realism s core substantive concerns with power seemed less relevant to the new situations that confronted nations in a global era. As we suggest below, however, it is time to once again ask about power s role in the contemporary international system. Doing so effectively, however, means shaking off some of the 12 See Keohane in this volume. 9
old assumptions and opening up new perspectives on the way power works in world politics. Old Power New World Concepts change to reflect empirical reality. The old realist mantra was We live in a world of states. That world is gone, if it ever really existed. In this volume, we ask a different question: What kind of world do states live in? When asking our authors to once again place power center stage, we found that they returned neither to the same place nor the same field realists examined decades ago. The field of IR has changed enormously since Morganthau s day. Scholars now demand transparent assumptions, conceptual clarity, and logical consistency in ways they did not 50 or 60 years ago. They are also grappling with policy problems that did not much concern earlier generations of scholars, and these have implications for the way we theorize. The increasing number of failed states has made the assumption of states as actors problematic. Likewise, the failure of the American military in the Middle East, suggests that seeing power as flowing simply from resource endowments remains problematic. The deep integration of the world economy means that a housing problem in the US becomes a financial crisis in Greece, making it difficult to speak of national interests apart from international economic structures. Thus as our authors bring power back into field, they are not following the old realist power politics template far from it. They are incorporating power in new and different ways; they are exploring new forms of power, new ways of wielding it, new effects it might have on the world, some intended, others not. Papers in this volume exemplify some of these departures but are by no means exhaustive. 13 Below we highlight three questions that derive from a reading of the papers. Answers to these questions suggest critical potential pathways by which power may be manifest in political outcomes. 13 Footnote on theoretical perspectives on power NOT represented by our group. Barnett/Duvall s piece is hugely cited. Ron Krebs work is very different. Guzzini and Neumann have a bunch of stuff in the works. 10
Are States the Primary Actors in International Politics? The most obvious departure from the old power politics framework involves new thinking about the state. For decades, state power was at the core of traditional international relations theory. Authors knew that transnational actors existed and realized that states varied in their ability to control their own borders, but they still placed states as the central, and often the only, unit of analysis. In fact, in the face of criticism in the 1970s that state power was being underemphasized, authors went out of the way to bring back the state. 14 And even when scholars argued about whether or not we should think of the nation state as independent or constituted by international norms, everyone agreed that the state, in some form, was the most important unit of analysis. 15 By the 1980s, earlier efforts to recognize other types of actors 16 fell by the wayside as both the neorealist and neoliberal theorists dominating the field focused on state power. State power defined the international system. It created the relevant constraints on actors. The power that mattered in the world was state power. Today, states remain important, if not the most important, actors on the world stage. Yet, the ontology of realism, based on states as the building bloc of our theories, is problematic. States today are not alone on the world stage; they are joined by, and affected by, a host of other actors. We cannot assume that states are without equals. We also cannot assume that states are ontologically unproblematic or stable. 17 Analysts must ask the more fundamental question of the nature and status of states in differing policy arenas. The writers in this volume do exactly this. They suggest that states are often, but not always the central figure in analyses of international events. As well as states, our authors look at the effects of power from non state sources that are not obviously under state control. There are numerous sources of influences, and diverse effects from them. Global markets shape and constrain state choice, and 14 Cite Skocpol and Krasner 15 Wendt.. 16 (cite interdependence literature, Keohane/Nye) 17 Cite literature on neomedievalism, failed states, SDK on sovereignty. 11
these effects have increased with the deepening and broadening of globalization. A strong state, even one classified as hegemonic, may find itself at the mercy of private economic actors beyond the control of their own regulatory structures. Likewise, international organizations are doing far more than merely encouraging cooperation between nations they are actively reshaping domestic institutions, often in ways that bolster states, rather than threaten or weaken them. Changing ideas and norms shared across global publics galvanize social groups and exert power over the minds of state decision makers, persuading them of the value of new interests and policies. Effects created by this richer international environment vary and they interact in diverse ways with nation states. States vary in their ability to both control events within their own borders and to project their interests onto the world stage. In part, this reflects the existence of non state actors, including corporations, transnational interest groups, and terrorist cells, for example, all of whom can influence and affect how and when nations are able to meet goals. While we have long been aware that non state actors matter, our arguments about exactly how they matter and effects they create are still underdeveloped. Yet, no theory of international politics in the 21 st century can ignore their role in international politics. What Happens When States Become Problematic Sovereigns? Coupled with the assumption that states were the actors that mattered scholars routinely assumed that states were competent and reasonably effective in their exercise of power. Waltz had carefully delineated foreign policy from international politics, relegating any description of internal processes to the former. The effect was to downplay fundamental differences in states internal structures. 18 Thus, a generation of students was taught to think about nations as billiard balls and political outcomes as a result of their relative power. This theoretical formulation put all the analytic weight on the international distribution of state 18 Waltz: Man, State and War and chapter two of Theory of International Politics 12
power as scholars attempted to understand the extent to which anarchy dictated state action. 19 The internal workings of states and their competence to pursue national interests were of secondary consideration. Beginning in the 1990s, this assumption came under intense scrutiny. Failed states became a topic of concern for IR scholars. Places that were nominally states like Somalia, Haiti, and Chad lacked the institutions and internal coherence to perform the most basic state functions of providing security and order, much less a functioning economy or human rights. The decoupling of externally recognized sovereignty from any kind of internal competence or control raised a host of policy challenges as well as theoretical issues for scholars. The result has been a more nuanced set of arguments about states. While recognizing that in some dimensions, such as under international law, states are alike, scholars have attempted to understand the extent to which states are able to be state like. Can they control their borders? Can they collect taxes? The answers are sometimes surprising. As well as recognizing variation in state capacity to act on their national interests, international relations scholars turned increasingly to the work of those studying comparative politics to understand the source of national interests. 20 Students of foreign policy analysis pointed scholars to the effects of bureaucratic politics on states policy and use of power as well as the existence of authority outside the traditional national borders. The growing fields of comparative political economy found that choices of economic structures, such as the creation of an independent central bank, influenced outcomes as much or more than economic endowments. On the security side, scholars looked at the core machinery of state power its military and intelligence apparatus and found it plagued by inefficiencies and pathologies created by domestic political processes. 21 International behaviors, once thought to be a response to external stimuli, was explained by variation in electoral institutions, relegating the same variables to foreign policy that explained other aspects of governance. 19 Arguments about what anarchy meant: Wendt and Milner, among others 20 Milner article on comparative politics and IR one of the states of the discipline books 21 Zegart; Krasner on Allison 13
Central to realist logic had been the claim that regime type was not central to the exercise of state power. States used their power in accordance with the dictates of international constraints and strategic incentives in the overall international system, regardless of leadership, regime type, or other characteristics. Liberals of various stripes have been contesting this claim for years, most prominently in the extensive democratic peace literature. Starting in the 1990s, the field consensus was that realists had lost this debate. The democratic peace the idea that democracies will not fight each other was as close to a finding as the IR field had produced and a decade of US foreign policy was predicated on this idea. That debate may be less settled than we thought, however, as Gowa s paper in this volume demonstrates. Finally, and in addition to reviving and revamping bureaucratic and domestic politics arguments, IR scholars have begun to explore a wide range of other substate, transnational avenues for the exercise of power. For example, scholars such as Anne Marie Slaughter argue for the importance of trans governmental politics and there is increasing recognition of transnational networks, whether to regulate international commerce or create rules and norms for the regulation of human rights. 22 Where international law had been relegated as an antiquated art in the past, international law in multiple forms civil, criminal and administrative is now seen to both empower and constrain actors. 23 How Should We Conceive of and Measure Power Today? In addition to rethinking the state and its relationship to power, IR scholars have been reconsidering the nature of power, itself. Oddly, the forefront of this thinking is not happening among realists, for whom power is so central. Most of these new conceptions of power are in some way linked to the sociological and constructivist turn in the field that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Early reconsiderations of power focused on the power of ideas, challenging the purely material conceptions of power that dominated the field. Power was not 22 Newman, Buthe 23 Kingsbury et al at NYU Law 14
something tangible that could be counted and neatly quantified; power was more than the number of warheads a state had or the size of its GDP. Ideas, too, were powerful and shaped politics in important ways. These scholars also showed that ideas were not always purely instrumental; they were not simply tools useful in pursuit of material interests. Instead, ideas could take on a life of their own and have wide ranging effects often not intended by their creators or those who deploy them. 24 These themes were greatly expanded by constructivist, post modern, and more sociologically inclined scholars in the 1990s. Older notions that power could be understood simply as an attribute of actors were challenged, and often stood on their head. These scholars showed how social structures exerted power over actors in diverse ways. Indeed, these scholars argued, social structures were what constituted and in that sense created many of the actors we previously took for granted. Structures of meaning and shared understandings both coerced agents into conformity but also socialized them and transformed their identities. Recognition of this social character of power generated large literatures on norms, identities, rhetoric and culture. 25 Analytically, it shifted the scholarly focus. Rather than understanding power as an attribute of actors alone, power in this conception worked through social relations. Norms exist and have power only in a community. Identity exists and shapes action only in relation to others. Culture, similarly, is a social phenomenon. One notable artifact of this shift to more social views of power is the appearance of the word authority in the vocabulary of IR scholars. Formerly, IR scholars spoke only of power, never authority. Authority was a domestic phenomenon, not applicable to IR. It existed only inside states, where community and recognizable hierarchy existed. This view has changed. During the past decade, scholars have begun to explore the role of authority from a variety of angles and 24 Goldstein & Keohane, 1993. 25 Examples 15
with diverse agendas. 26 What these views share is an appreciation of the relational character of social power. Power may be seized or taken unilaterally by its holder. Not so, authority. Others confer authority. One is only an authority if others recognize you as such. Re thinking about Power as Explanation How does the recognition that states are not the only actors in the international environment, that they are not equally sovereign in their exercise of their interests and that power relations are material, social and ideational, help to explain politics today? In wrestling with these concepts, the authors in this volume suggest that we examine three distinct pathways by which power may be thought to be manifest in today s world. The first group of scholars in this volume explores power exerted by the international environment, but they understand that power in diverse ways. The international environment is comprised of diverse actors, not just other states, and is permeated by a variety of structures markets, international institutions, ideas. State actions are thus determined largely by power exerted on them from outside their borders. Internal state structures and regime type are secondary. A second group of authors disagree, arguing that domestic structures are persistent and necessary for explanations of foreign policy behavior. This group does not ignore international structures or constraints but rather, argues that power works its effects via sticky domestic institutions and norms. Leaders here are constrained by regime type, by bureaucracies or by ideologies and state power is a function of these variables. As opposed to our first group of papers, here, state variation is extremely important for any explanation of foreign policy actions. A third group of essays look at the interaction between international and domestic structures. Authors in this group suggest that domestic structures matter 26 Works on authority in IR, including, Foucaudians and postmoderns as well as rationalists like Lake and sociological like Finnemore/Barnett, Avant/Finnemore. Guzzini/Neumann forthcoming shows that the wave continues. 16
but that they are manipulated and altered by international forces. State borders do not protect domestic institutions from the interests of outsiders. Rather, both policy and institutional forms reflect extant international structures in which nations operate. a. International power but from diverse sources Our first set of papers examines the extent to which the unit of the state remains the fundamental variable for the exercise of power politics. In classic realism and neo realist analyses, states are granted special status and realists are not alone in seeing nations as the building blocs of international politics. States remain central and legitimate according to international law and often only they have standing in international courts. It is nations that are awarded seats at the UN and governments that are signatories to an increasingly diverse array of international agreements. But, as our paper writers point out, they are not the only actors in international politics. Transnational groups, international organizations, technical epistemic communities, religious organizations, for example, are influential and appear to exert authority in some domains. Yet, recognizing other actors does not translate into their being central in determining foreign policy outcomes. State autonomy may look different in today s world but in the end, all states will attempt to maximize their interests given international constraints and opportunities, no matter their domestic structures. Four papers in our volume remind us that the international environment can be as or more important to an explanation for state behavior than is domestic institutional attributes. Dan Drezner notes in his paper that states operate in a thickly institutionalized environment. World politics has become increasingly shaped by rules, laws and organizations, all claiming jurisdiction over states. Yet, he concludes that contrary to conventional wisdom, this increasingly dense environment has led to more, not less state autonomy. Regime and rule proliferation can lead to forum shopping and the ability of strategic states to pick and choose the rules that most benefit their interests. Drezner sees states, at least powerful ones, as increasingly able to act as they please and in line with a real politick predictions of behavior. 17
In her paper on the democratic peace, Joanne Gowa also suggests a counterintuitive finding on the importance of international structure. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, that the expansion of democracy has fundamentally changed the potential for war, Gowa suggests that both the causal logic and supporting data in these studies is problematic. Instead of democracy leading to peace, she argues that traditional variables associated with a balance of international power explain the pattern of war and peace. The cold war and the enduring balance between the US and Russia, she says, is what is critical in explaining both post WWII and post Cold War policy. Even more than Drezner, she argues that a focus on regime type will be misleading, and her paper is a caution that international structures of state power still create big effects. Two other essays also suggest that analyses of foreign policy behavior should begin at the international level. Cohen examines the case of a large nation with an international currency, and asks whether or not and in what ways, a state benefits from its monetary role. In his analysis, that nation benefits only in some functions of international money large nations do get returns in their financial markets, in trade effects and in their position as a reserve currency. Other benefits however, are more limited. Cohen s essay suggests that the understanding of the role of currency power requires no in depth analysis of domestic variables, such as central banking functions or exchange rate commitments. These may be interesting questions for analysts who want to know how and why a nation is able to initially support a key currency, as his own earlier work has shown. But, the answer to the question of what power accrues to the nation that has attained top currency status has little to do with domestic choice but rather, the external role played by the currency in international markets. Art Stein s paper examines international power exercised, not by the system or international structures but by outside actors conventionally understood to be powerless. In a traditional model of power, we would imagine that powerless actors would refrain from attacking the powerful. If you have limited weapons, for example, you refrain from attacking a state with more resources, understanding the asymmetry will not be in your favor. In the contemporary world, 18
however, Stein points out that, not only do the weak attack the strong, but that the most powerful nations in the system are preoccupied by the threat posed by states so weak that they cannot even project power within their own border. In this world, the power shaping strong state behavior is coming from the international environment, but again, it is not an environment defined by relative state power. In fact, thinking about these asymmetries in statist terms may lead you to more puzzles than answers. b. Domestic structures and international behavior: Domestic politics matters While one set of papers highlights external power s effects, regardless of a state s domestic institutions, this second set sees the most important pathways of power to be within the nation state. Five papers suggest how and why this is the case. Lloyd Gruber s evaluation of the effects of globalization reminds readers that it is the governing institutions within nation states that both buffer domestic populations from the effects of global markets and delineate who within a nation will benefit or lose from open borders. Gruber s analysis hinges on the geographic unevenness of globalizatation s effects. Depending upon domestic institutional structures geographic inequality created or amplified by shifting markets, can create more or less polarized domestic politics. In this view, the globalization of markets is an exogenous force with the most interesting affects manifest on the domestic level, mitigated by domestic institutions and policies. Likewise, Peter Gourevitch finds that international market forces are funneled through domestic structures, explaining variation in how nations responded to the economic downturn in 2007 08. Even more, he suggests that only with attention to domestic regulatory institutions can we point to the factors that explain the downturn itself. Gourevitch sees domestic structures as sticky corporate structures, domestic political variables, cultural norms are deeply entrenched in countries and operate as to make economic shocks feel differently across nations: Policies centered in nations caused the crisis, and policies centered in nations shaped the way they variously responded. Thus while economic shocks 19
may start outside one s border, how a nation responds, for example, whether or not they intervene and how they manage private domestic actors, is not dictated by external factors but rather, by deeply institutionalized institutions that vary across nations. Etel Solingen similarly assumes that factors within the nation are important to an explanation of foreign policy choices. Interested in the extent to which our notions of sovereignty can predict state actions, she looks at different moments in which nations choose policies, which will affect their autonomy. She concludes that although the international system presents constraints, states have some freedom of choice about how to respond and even within regions that face the same opportunities, national decisions vary.. Thus in Asia, we find developmental states while in the Arab Middle East, predatory states. Even when confronted by the same international institutions, for example the NPT, states vary in how they interpret the constraints of the treaty Two other papers in this category offer slightly different interpretations of how and why domestic politics matters. Peter Katzenstein warns against simplifying assumptions and unitary views of domestic politics. He examines claims that the US has a cohesive ideology that informs foreign policy based on Hartzian liberalism and rejects them as simplistic. Ideology is more nuanced and varied in the US and foreign policy decisions can be traced to diverse strands of liberalism. Similarly, Katzenstein reminds us that to understand policy choices we need to explore the different institutional contexts in which states and their rulers are embedded It may be messier than looking merely at a unified state, but provides a richer and more accurate understanding of how politics occurs. Capacious concepts are better guides if we want to understand how power plays out within nations Robert Keohane similarly emphasizes domestic variables as pathways of power. Using the works of Stephen Krasner as a foil, he shows that even within the realist tradition, domestic variables are at work. Even the most ardent realist, Keohane argues, must rely on institutions and norms in order to explain policy behavior. Keohane then examines a fundamental aspect of world politics missing from realist analysis: the role of persuasion. Persuasion has both direct and indirect 20
form, he suggests. By appealing to interests and considerations of legitimate authority, one actor can convince another that some particular policy choice is to be preferred. This is not coercion, not simple bargaining nor even emulation but rather, the ability to use information in a way as to change an actor s view of her own utility. c. Domestic structures and international behavior: International interaction defines and re designs domestic structures A third set of papers looks at how international interactions alter or manipulate domestic structures. Causality here depends upon where you begin your analysis as well as the various interactions that follow. As Jervis points out, large strands of political science rarely pay attention to chronology. 27 Yet in the absence of attention to such detail, it is hard to sort out cause and effect. What happens at the end may be very different from what any actor expected or sought at any stage, and while we can trace causation at numerous points, it is hard to know how to do so for the entire arc of the interaction. Analysts seek to know what is exogenous to our explanations yet from a different perspective, this could be just one step back in a causal chain. Thus although authors in this group argue that national borders are porous, the pressures from international forces themselves may well originate in some domestic structures. Richard Steinberg makes the strongest case for the reach of contemporary international forces. In his paper he argues that domestic state structures are fundamentally different than they would be in the absence of the international trade regime. Both liberalization of trade and the particular international institutions that oversee a state s compliance with international rules have led to a, bounded convergence in the form of the trading state across countries. The power of international trade rules has forced states to reconfigure their own internal structures to comply with the international environment s demands. The force of these trading rules is not equal across all nations, however the world s poorer 27 There are, of course, strands of analysis that make chronology and history central, notably the historical institutionalist pioneered by Kathleen Thelen, Paul Pierson, Charles Tilly and others. Cites. 21
countries have been left out of the system. But for the middle and upper income nations, the effect of participation in the GATT/WTO regime has been a fundamental constraint on domestic institutional design. Thomas Risse also explores situations in which domestic structures are powerfully reconfigured, even sometimes replaced, by international actors. His point of departure is the observation that, contrary to assumptions about Westphalian statehood, many states lack the capacity to exercise effective control and provide governance and public services inside their own borders. Filling this gap in these areas of limited statehood are a variety of new modes of governance supplied by diverse actors other states, IGOs, NGOs, private firms often working in partnerships with each other and/or with local government actors. David Lake contrasts authority with power in international politics and explains why there is less coercion and more order between and among nations. Lake suggests that all states, even the most powerful, have an interest in political order and as such seek to make their rule legitimate. This need for legitimacy explains a host of state policies, from international economic liberalism to relations between the developing and developed world. In Lake s rendering of the world system, both dominant and subordinate states buy into authority relations. Strong states ensure benefits, which help legitimate domestic structures, even in weaker states. Weaker states accept as legitimate the political order created by the powerful. The result is an international system that is less a Hobbesian state of nature and more a Lockian contract. The Pathways of Power in the Contemporary World Power s role in contemporary politics cannot be understood with the oversimplified framework of past realist analysis. We need more sophisticated and varied understandings of what power is and the relationship between actor s endowments, relative and absolute, their goals and their efficacy in reaching objectives. The papers in this volume work to that end, providing richer empirical 22
understanding of power s effects on state policies and structures through a variety of pathways. Taken together, they suggest at least three insights. First, the papers remind us that the context of politics matters. When we move to the empirical study of policy, there is no state of nature. Rather, politics, domestic and international, occurs in a normed and thickly institutionalized setting. To study power is to study that context. Today, foreign policies must accommodate a dense international environment that includes international institutions, an intrusive global economy, and a rapidly changing threat environment. Analysis cannot and should not ignore the nuances of this environment and we should be wary of universal claims about power s effects across time and space. Second, a focus on power is inexplicably tied to the analysis of inequality and/or asymmetries. We live in a world not of like units but of units that vary dramatically in their endowments and capacities. But, the simple existence of these differences is a poor predictor of outcomes. The ability to mobilize resources and the depth of those resources may not be related in a linear fashion. Similarly, the existence of an opportunity or advantageous situation is no guarantee that an actor can or will exploit it. The ability of a leader, ruler or nation state to reach a stated goal is about marshalling these resources and position, not simply having them in your arsenal. Third, the world of politics in the 21 st century is one in which states are often not alone in carrying out functions we classically attribute to nations. Non state actors exert influence on populations within some legitimate national units, where central decision makers may have none; in other cases, central governments are efficacious and legitimate. This makes applying classical realist thought difficult. Yet, abandoning such an approach may be premature. The finding of overlapping jurisdiction and function between state and non state actors does not mean that all these actors are equally powerful. Rather, it suggests scholars need to ask questions about the effects of relative power of diverse actors and, not assume that the only relevant actors are states. Understanding power today is difficult, not because it is hard to find asymmetries but because they are everywhere. Causality is over determined in 23