Review: Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International Politics
Reviewed Work(s): War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives. by Bruce
Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman: The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. by Richard
Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein: Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International
Ambition. by Jack Snyder
Review by: Ethan B. Kapstein
Source: International Organization , Autumn, 1995, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp.
751-774
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706925
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Is realism dead? The domestic
sources of international politics
Ethan B. Kapstein
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman. War and Reason: Domestic
and International Imperatives. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1992.
Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, editors. The Domestic Bases of
Grand Strategy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Jack Snyder. Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and InternationalAmbition.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Is realism dead? Has it finally succumbed to the theoretical and empirical
onslaught to which it has been subjected? If the answer is yes, which theories
have taken its place? If the answer is no, what explains its durability?'
I argue in this essay that structural realism, qua theory, must be viewed as
deeply and perhaps fatally flawed. Yet at the same time, qua paradigm or
worldview, it continues to inform the community of international relations
scholars. The reason for this apparent paradox is no less sociological than
epistemological. Borrowing from Thomas Kuhn, I argue that structural realism
will not die as the cornerstone of international relations theory until an
alternative is developed that takes its place.2 In the absence of that alternative,
students of world politics will continue to use it as their cornerstone; in an
important sense, structural realism continues to define the discipline.
I thank Michael Desch, Joseph Grieco, Ted Hopf, Jack Levy, John Odell, Scott Sagan, Randall
Schweller, and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1. In this review I use the terms "realism," "neorealism," and "structural realism" interchangeably; when I refer to the realism expressed, for example, by Morgenthau, I call it "classical
realism." See Hans J. Morgenthau, PoliticsAmong Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948; New
York: Grosset and Dunlop, 1964).
2. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1962). For an account from the "sophisticated falsificationist" perspective, see, for example, Imre
Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), especially pp. 31-47.
International Organization 49, 4, Autumn 1995, pp. 751-74
? 1995 by The 10 Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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752 International Organization
The books under review mark a continuation of past efforts to attack
structural realism by emphasizing the domestic sources of international
relations. In so doing, each offers unique methodological approaches and
an array of fascinating case studies. They raise insightful questions about
the conditions under which domestic political and ideological factors can
shape foreign policies that lead to such outcomes as overexpansion and
war.
But the central questions to be raised in this essay are: to what extent do the
works under review contribute to the crucial task of theory building in
international relations? Do they offer alternative theories of world politics that
promise to supplant realism? If not, to what extent are the modifications
provided generalizable beyond the specific cases analyzed? Or, instead, have
these and other works simply led us into a period of theoretical "crisis," in
which the discipline finds itself dissatisfied with existing theories but as yet
unable to construct new ones?3
That the books under review seek to challenge realism on its "home ground"
of national security cannot be doubted. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David
Lalman, for example, state that "Although we set out with no preconceived
notions about the relative merits of . . . realpolitik and domestic interpretations
[of state behavior] ... the logic and evidence developed in this book provide a
foundation for the claim that a perspective that is attentive to the domestic
origins of foreign policy demands gives a richer and empirically more reliable
representation of foreign affairs than a realist emphasis."4 Richard Rosecrance
and Arthur Stein write: "The study of grand strategy, which deals with what
influences and determines nations' policy choices for war and peace, is an ideal
arena in which to examine 'realist' approaches. It is, after all, the realm in
which countries should be most expected to follow realist imperatives.... And
yet the findings of this volume suggest that this ... response to security stimuli
does not always and may not even usually occur."5 And for Jack Snyder,
''recent exponents of Realism in international relations have been wrong in
looking exclusively to states as the irreducible atoms whose power and interests
are to be assessed . . . domestic pressures often outweigh international ones in
the calculations of national leaders."6
In mounting their attack, the authors highlight not only the logical flaws
contained in realism but also its inability to explain (much less predict) many of
3. The language is borrowed, of course, from Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It
should be noted that Kuhn did not refer to the social sciences in this work, instead limiting his
claims to what he called "normal science."
4. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and International
Imperatives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 9.
5. Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 12.
6. Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 19-20.
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Realism 753
the outcomes that are of greatest interest to contemporary scholars, including
the end of the cold war and the repeated failures of states to balance against
threatening powers.7 That these books, which are all within the field of security
studies, should point to realism's weaknesses is especially significant, for it is in
that domain of international relations where its legacy probably remains the
strongest.
Yet I conclude that these works are unlikely to produce a "paradigm
change" in international relations scholarship, for two reasons. First, none of
them goes beyond its case study material to produce a generalizable alternative
theory; indeed, as we will see, Snyder explicitly omits whole types of states from
his analysis. Second, none of these works provides even a decisive modification
of structural realism, if by such a modification we mean the generation of
alternative hypotheses from existing realist assumptions (i.e., states as primary
actors; anarchy as the international condition; state behavior as rational) or
from a changed set of assumptions.
Because of this failure, those scholars who believe that realism is dead
should prepare themselves for a shock. Indeed, a notable example is Bruce
Russett, who ironically borrowed Mark Twain's famous remark about the
premature report of death in an article about American decline.8 Reviewing
War and Reason among other books, Russett stated that "these broadsides
leave a sinking hulk" where realism "once ruled the theoretical seas."9 And he
quotes Zeev Maoz, who has written that system theories are "useless
theoretically," "empirically meaningless," and "normatively objectionable."10
What these critiques overlook is that scholars will continue to cling to realist
planks until they are rescued.
In the following section, I briefly discuss what we might reasonably expect
from a theory of world politics, whether it be domestically or systemically
oriented. I then examine each book, highlighting both the insights and
problems associated with the argumentation. I conclude by examining the
status of structural realism in light of these critiques and providing some
suggestions for how scholars might proceed if they seek to develop a
progressive research program.
7. For further elaboration of realism's explanatory and predictive failures, with special reference
to the end of the cold war, see John Lewis Gaddis, "International Relations Theory and the End of
the Cold War," in Sean Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller, eds., The Cold War and After: Prospects for
Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 323-88; and Richard Ned Lebow, "The Long
Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism," International Organization 48 (Spring
1994), pp. 249-78.
8. Bruce Russett, "The Mysterious Case of Vanishing Hegemony: Or is Mark Twain Really
Dead?" International Organization 39 (Autumn 1985), pp. 207-31.
9. Bruce Russett, "Processes of Dyadic Choice for War and Peace," World Politics 47 (January
1995), pp. 268-82. The quotations are drawn from p. 269.
10. Zeev Maoz, National Choices and International Processes (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), p. 548, quoted in Russett, "Processes of Dyadic Choice for War and Peace," p. 269.
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754 International Organization
In search of theory
If theories of the domestic sources of world politics are to replace or
significantly modify structural realism as the cornerstone of international
relations theory, they must be able not only to falsify it but also to articulate an
explicit model of how a given set of domestic factors can produce particular
international outcomes, the most important being war and peace. In order to
take that next crucial step, they must be able to conceptualize the causal
mechanisms at work that lead from the domestic factors that have been
identified as critical (democratic regime type, for example) to foreign policies
(for example, free trade) and to specific international outcomes (peace, for
example). In other words, they must offer explanations of international
relations that either work from the "inside out" or, if their more modest task is
to modify structural realism, that specify the domestic process by which
uncertain systemic pressures are translated into particular policy responses.
Further, the theories must be generalizable beyond the case studies treated if
they are to have any hope of exercising a decisive influence on international
relations theory.
The need for theories that incorporate the systemic and unit levels in an
operational way has, of course, become an old theme within the discipline. For
instance, writing in these pages some fifteen years ago, Peter Gourevitch asked:
"Is the traditional distinction between international relations and domestic
politics dead? Perhaps. Asking the question presupposes that it once fit reality,
which is dubious."" He urged scholars to examine domestic and international
politics "as a whole," and this continues to be a major, if elusive, goal.12
In the interim, the theoretical issue at stake concerns the explanatory
mileage we get from adopting one particular model over another, no matter
how closely its assumptions fit reality. Gourevitch noted that political scientists
had adopted two major approaches for exploring the problem of how states
behave with respect to their external environment. The first, most powerfully
associated with but not limited to structural realism, privileges the autonomous
nature of the anarchic international system and focuses on the pressures that it
places on every nation-state. In this view, the foreign policies of states are best
explained as a rational response to these external pressures. To be sure, the
reactions of states to the international system are processed through some form
of domestic intermediation. Political structures, bureaucracies, and ideas and
beliefs can all play a role in shaping policy, and structural explanations often
11. Peter Gourevitch, "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic
Politics," International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978), pp. 881-911, at p. 881.
12. For one promising contribution, however, that focuses on international negotiations, see
Peter Evans, Harold Jacobson, and Robert Putnam, eds., Double-Edged Diplomacy: International
Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), which contains a
number of case studies of bargaining in both economics and security.
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Realism 755
provide no more than a starting point for analyzing state behavior.13 Still,
for those scholars who accept the power of a structural paradigm, the most
parsimonious explanation of a country's foreign policy behavior is not found
in the psychology of its leaders, its regime type, or its political ideology; instead, it is located in the relative position of the state in the anarchic
international system, as measured by its capabilities-its capacity for independent action.
The second approach rejects or downplays the utility of system-level
theorizing. It argues either that there is no objective international system with
an independent existence or that systemic pressures are so weak and uncertain
that they are indeterminate with respect to the foreign policy choices that states
make and the outcomes of their international interactions. In order to
understand state behavior, therefore, scholars must reject the "billiard ball"
model of structural realism and begin their exploration inside the "black box"
of domestic politics. The causal logic of this explanation thus begins with what
is happening inside a particular unit.
Two brief examples, one theoretical, the other historical, seemingly provide
strong support to the inside-out framework. From a theoretical perspective, the
strongest inside-out alternative to structural realism would seem to be the
theory of the democratic peace. A cottage industry has emerged in recent years
that seeks to explain why states with democratic regimes do not go to war with
one another. The word "theory," however, is a misnomer in this context, for
proponents of this school have accumulated observations rather than any
sustained causal logic.14 Further, even if the causal logic were established,
democratic peace theory would still have a difficult time explaining the
outcomes of conflicts among democratic states in such issue-areas as trade and
finance. In economic relations among democracies, threats and coercion-the
stuff of realist theory-are ever-present as part of international negotiations,
while the value of international institutions in mitigating these conflicts may be
overrated.'5
But these criticisms aside, we could hypothesize with some confidence that a
world composed solely of liberal states would not confront the same type of
13. On political structures, see Peter Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1978). On bureaucracies, see Graham Allison, Essence of Decision
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). On beliefs, see Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985).
14. For a critical review of democratic peace theory, see Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant:
The Myth of the Democratic Peace," International Security 19 (Fall 1994), pp. 5-49.
15. Ethan B. Kapstein, Governing the Global Economy: International Finance and the State
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). For a criticism of liberal institutionalism, see
John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19
(Winter 1994/95), reprinted in Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven Miller, eds., The
Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and Intemational Security (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1995), pp. 332-76.
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756 International Organization
security dilemma that exists when these same liberal states must coexist with
authoritarian regimes, because liberal states view one another primarily as
trading partners and not as potential military adversaries.16 Thus, we can argue
that a multipolar world of liberal states would be more peaceful than a
multipolar world consisting of different regime types, some of which are
nonliberal. Absent any structural determinism, world politics closely resembles
the nature of the actors who interact across borders.17 In short, regime type is a
more significant determinant of international relations than polarity, or the
distribution of power.
An obvious historical example that would seem to support the regime type
approach is provided by the German case. During the early 1930s, Hitler
apparently thought-and convinced large numbers of his countrymen to
believe-that a global conspiracy of Jews and Communists was preventing
Germany from gaining its rightful place in the world. In the process of
advancing his beliefs, he mobilized a nation that went on to conquer and
occupy most of Europe. In contrast, Hitler's predecessors in Weimar Germany,
who also lived in a multipolar world full of threats and challenges, generally did
not believe that the country's problems could or should be solved through
rearmament and the unilateral application of military force. Thus, despite the
similarities of the Weimar and Nazi periods at the systemic level, very different
international outcomes obtained owing to the differences in regime types.
These examples should suffice to suggest the limits of structural approaches
to world politics and lead us to concentrate on what drives decision making
within the black box. But this has proved to be a frustrating endeavor. As
Robert Putman has observed, "much of the existing literature on relations
between domestic and international affairs consists either of ad hoc lists of
countless 'domestic influences' on foreign policy or of generic observations that
national and international affairs are somehow 'linked.' "18
Indeed, an example of such list making is provided by Rosecrance and Stein,
who write in the introductory chapter of their edited volume that "domestic
groups, social ideas, the character of constitutions, economic constraints
(sometimes expressed through international interdependence), historical social tendencies, and domestic political pressures play an important, indeed, a
pivotal role in the selection of grand strategy, and, therefore, in the prospects
for international conflict and cooperation."'19 This statement is probably true,
but if we are not told how to weigh these factors-to hypothesize about which
16. Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
17. For a good review of these inside-out approaches, see Randall L. Schweller, "Domestic
Structures and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?," World Politics 44 (January 1992),
pp. 235-69. For a skeptical view of liberalism in the European context, see John J. Mearsheimer,
"Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War," Intemational Security 15 (Summer
1990), pp. 5-56.
18. Robert Putnam, "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,"
Intemational Organization 42 (Summer 1988), pp. 427-60, at p. 430.
19. Rosecrance and Stein, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, p. 5.
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Realism 757
of them matters at what time-then we are left with nothing of theoretical
value.
We all know that theories are more than lists of independent variables: they
seek to explain cause-and-effect relationships. But while some political
scientists do not like to admit it, theories of social science are different from
those of natural science. With few exceptions, they are historically and
culturally contingent, and while the best of them may help us to explain the
past, most are poor at predicting the future. Realism, with its pretensions of
being a "universal" theory, provides an apparent exception; one may ask,
however, whether structural realism actually stands on any firmer an empirical
foundation than the inductive inside-out theories described in these pages, or
whether it has provided any greater predictive power.
Further, with the exception of Marxian theories, explanations in the social
sciences tend to be static and fail to account for change. Structural realism
provides an excellent example of a social science theory that assumes systemic
continuity and does not incorporate the notion of change (although theoretical
modifications, like Robert Gilpin's notion of hegemonic war, provide important exceptions).20 Despite these limitations, we should nonetheless expect
social science theories to be stated clearly and the causal linkages that purport
to explain events to be specified clearly.21
The first step in theory building is to determine what is to be explained. This
sounds simple enough, but as I will show with respect to the books under
review, a loosely stated or poorly conceptualized dependent variable can create
tremendous problems for an author. Further, scholars sometimes accuse
theories of failing to meet a particular test when in fact they do not purport to
explain the phenomenon in question. This is an especially important issue
when comparing different theories. Do theories of world politics that are
rooted in domestic sources and those rooted in structural realism seek to
explain the same phenomena?22
Having chosen a dependent variable, one must determine the appropriate
independent variables; again, these must be clearly stated and conceptualized.
Many realists, for example, use the term "power" as a key independent variable
without adequately defining its meaning, a point to which I will return below.23
20. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1981).
21. Two useful recent works on social science theory are Alexander Rosenberg, Philosophy of
Social Science (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988); and Daniel Little, Varieties of Social Explanation
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991).
22. For a model of how social scientists should compare competing theories, see Scott D. Sagan,
The Limits of Safety (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), chap. 1.
23. On this point, see Robert Keohane, "Realism, Neorealism, and the Study of World Politics,"
in Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
pp. 1-26 and p. 13 in particular. Important exceptions such as Knorr and Baldwin have made
significant efforts to clarify the meaning of the term "power." See Klaus Knorr, The Power of
Nations (New York: Basic Books, 1975); and David Baldwin, "Power Analysis and World Politics,"
World Politics 31 (January 1979), pp. 161-94.
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758 International Organization
Similarly, phrases like "domestic structure" often are used rather loosely by
unit-level theorists.24
In both the social and natural sciences, as Oran Young reminds us, theories
"are often judged in terms of the criterion of parsimony, or, the ability to
explain the maximum number of phenomena with the minimum number of
assumptions of premises."25 As suggested by the ad hoc lists cited above,
theories with too many variables simply become unusable or lead to spurious
causation. Further, if two theories are competing to explain the same
phenomena, the more parsimonious one will be preferred (assuming that it is
accurate). Yet the requirement for parsimony can also stand in the way of
theoretical progress. Any adequate understanding of contemporary international politics likely will require theories that are more complex than those now
at our disposal.26
Finally, as Young also notes, theories may play a heuristic role "in facilitating
intellectual progress by suggesting or precipitating the development of addi-
tional theories."27 The theory as presented can fail on logical grounds but still
generate important questions and insights. I argue below that despite its many
faults, structural (or neo) realism continues to have significant heuristic value;
indeed, the rich literature presented in this review was generated by puzzles
that realism raises but apparently cannot answer. The failure of a theory to
solve problems does not necessarily spell its demise. Anomalies occur all the
time in nature that existing theories have difficulty explaining. In order to
overturn a theory, one needs a new theory that does a better job of explaining
both the old observations and the new observations. Part and parcel of the
falsification process is alternative theory development.28
Domestic politics and war
Among the books under review, only Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's War
and Reason uses formal theory or modeling techniques to bridge domestic and
international politics. Those scholars supportive of the rational-choice research
program will see in this book yet another reason to accept its promise as the
theory of modern political science. For those who have avoided the contempo-
24. For perhaps the most influential rendering of this term, see Peter Katzenstein, "Conclusions," in Katzenstein, Between Power and Plenty.
25. Oran Young, "The Perils of Odysseus: On Constructing Theories of International Relations," in Raymond Tanter and Richard Ullmann, eds., Theory and Policy in Intemational Relations
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 181.
26. I thank John Odell for highlighting this point. For more on theorizing in the social sciences,
see Robert Keohane, Gary King, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
27. Young, "The Perils of Odysseus," p. 182.
28. On this point, see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; and Lakatos, The
Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.
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Realism 759
rary rational-choice literature owing to math phobia, Bueno de Mesquita and
Lalman surely are among the most accessible scholars working this vein. The
arguments of the book can be clearly discerned without a sophisticated
mathematics background, and that is to the authors' credit.
What are the authors trying to explain in War and Reason? Their dependent
variable seems to be whether or not wars "arise from considerations contrary to
the general welfare." Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman state that the general
welfare (which is defined as security against foreign incursion) "concerns the
connection between the goals of the citizenry and the objectives and actions of
... statesmen. Have leaders chosen the best course of action ... to enhance the
welfare of the people?"29
War and Reason is an ambitious book, and the authors are trying to address
one of the central issues in the literature: whether states go to war because
external pressures have weighed so heavily upon them as to give them little or
no choice if they wish to survive (the structural realist approach) or because
domestic political factors have led states to aggression (the domestic sources
approach). To once again cite the example of Germany, was it structural
pressures that led the Nazis to wage war, or unit-level factors? If the former,
why did the Weimar Republic not declare war? Bueno de Mesquita and
Lalman's effort to construct a formal test of these alternatives should be
applauded, but as we will see below their simplification of realist theory
undermines their analysis.
In essence, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman begin their test by treating
structural realism as the "pure theory" of international politics, and the
authors ask whether or not the foreign policies of states diverge from its
predictions about how they should behave in an anarchic environment. More
narrowly, the authors focus on balance-of-power theory, for, as Kenneth Waltz
wrote, "If there is any distinctively political theory of international politics,
balance-of-power theory is it."30
The authors test balance-of-power theory by modeling an international
interactions game, which is really at the heart of the book. The game itself is
simple and clearly explained and is illuminating in several respects. Indeed,
their explication should be required reading for all formal theorists who seek a
wider audience for their scholarship.
In setting up the game, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman contrast the realist
view of foreign policy with a domestic-political view. According to them, "the
realist view . . . suggests that leaders select policies vis-'a-vis putative rivals to
maximize the welfare of their own state (and presumably themselves) in the
foreign policy context."13' In the domestic politics model, the "key foreign policy
leader . . . is not charged with defining the aims of foreign policy. These aims
29. Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman, War and Reason, p. 3. On the definition of welfare, see
ibid., p. 12.
30. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 117.
31. Ibid., p. 17.
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760 International Organization
originate from the domestic political process." As the authors themselves
admit, the "domestic political process" is never defined adequately in the book
and remains something of a mystery.
In their international interactions game, they build a model that is supposed
to demonstrate the differences between the realist and domestic political
approaches. The model is based on six assumptions that are common to both
theoretical variants: that strategies are chosen to maximize expected utility;
that the ultimate change in welfare resulting from a war or from negotiation is
uncertain (that is, it is difficult to know in advance whether one will be better
off on the basis of negotiating or going to war); that losses in war are certain;
that nations prefer to attain their objectives through negotiation rather than
war; that acceding to foreign demands is less desirable than the status quo,
which is less desirable than gaining one's demands; and that "each outcome has
a set of potential benefits and/or costs appropriately associated with it."32
The international interactions game has two proper subgames, which are of
greatest interest. These crisis subgames arise when state A does not capitulate
to state B's demand to change the status quo. In their most significant finding,
Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman argue that, using their realist assumption in
which the leader is unconstrained by domestic political forces, the only rational
outcomes for the actors are either negotiation or continuation of the status
quo. Thus, realism does not explain the most important outcome of world
politics, namely the decision for war. The study of war and peace, therefore,
must focus by default on domestic politics.
How do the authors reach this remarkable conclusion? The logic is as
follows. Take two states A and B, with identical preference structures. They
each prefer the status quo (SQ) to acquiescence (A) to the other country's
demands, and acquiescence to capitulation (C) following the use of military
force; thus SQ > A > C. A negotiated settlement (N) to the dispute, however,
is also preferred to acquiescence and capitulation; thus N > A > C. Given this
preference ordering, rational actors with complete information about the risks
associated with the use of force will either maintain the status quo or seek a
negotiated settlement; the other alternatives-acquiescence or capitulationclearly are inferior. In short, if war arises from a crisis it must be because of
factors located at the unit level, since structural pressures generate a status quo
preference.
In modeling this interaction, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman have turned
structural realist theory on its head. Realists generally believe that wars happen
because there is no central power to prevent their occurrence. In contrast,
Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman argue that realist logic actually points in the
opposite direction: structural pressures should act to prevent wars, but they are
overpowered by "irrational" domestic political forces.
32. Ibid., p. 40.
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Realism 761
This compelling argument suffers from several problems, and here I focus on
two: first, the authors' misunderstanding of realist theory; and second, the
assumptions underlying their international interactions game.33
For contemporary structural realism, what happens when states become
aggressive or revisionist?34 The most important hypothesis is that other states
will balance against the threatening power; thus, any rational state that seeks to
dominate its neighbor should expect a coalition to rise up against it. But if a
state knows that a balancing coalition of equal or greater power inevitably will
form, then it should negotiate or remain content with the status quo. Bueno de
Mesquita and Lalman remind us, however, that balances do not always form, at
least in time to prevent war. This failure is, according to the authors,
inexplicable by realist logic.
But no realist ever claimed that balances occur automatically; that is, in time
to prevent war or save a given international-political structure from crumbling.
States often are slow to recognize threats; the United States only went to war in
1941 after being victimized by Japan's surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. Further,
alliances may not form quickly because states will engage in buck-passing-an
effort to get other states to bear the greatest burden of the conflict.35 Indeed,
given the temptation to free ride the question for realists is: why do alliances
ever form at all, and this is also a question that revisionist leaders may ask
when they make their decision for war. Do not such leaders generally expect to
divide and conquer their enemies?36
What this suggests is that the rational leader may choose to start a limited war
if it seems unlikely that a balance will form to stop the aggression; in fact, the
leader would expect a countervailing balance to form only when and if the
revisionist state threatens the existing international order. The puzzle thus
becomes: why do states sometimes overexpand (go too far), causing other states
to create such counterbalances? (This is the very puzzle that Jack Snyder
explores in Myths of Empire.)
The point about limited war, in turn, suggests that one of Bueno de Mesquita
and Lalman's major assumptions should be challenged: namely, that states
always prefer negotiation to war. On the one hand, one could argue that such
an assumption skews their results: if we assume that states prefer negotiation to
33. Bueno de Mesquita used many of the same assumptions as the basis for his earlier book, The
War Trap (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), and at that time a number of
fundamental criticisms were raised. See, for example, Yuen Foong Khong, "War and International
Theory: A Commentary on the State of the Art," Review of Intemational Studies 10 (January 1984),
pp. 41-63. I thank Scott Sagan for bringing this article to my attention.
34. Randall Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,"
Intemational Security (Summer 1994), pp. 72-107.
35. Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, "Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting
Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity," Intemational Organization 44 (Spring 1990), pp. 137-68.
36. For a discussion of the standard realist response and views on this subject, see Steven Walt,
"Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy," Security Studies 1 (Spring 1992), pp. 448-82 and p.
449 in particular.
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762 International Organization
war we should not be surprised if this result flows from their game. On the
other, it could be that states that prefer negotiation will nonetheless get war, in
prisoners' dilemma fashion.37 The authors could have clarified better how these
contending perspectives play out.
More important, states may actually prefer war to negotiation for the
following reasons: first, to take advantage of strategic surprise; second, because
war may create a bandwagon effect that tips the international balance in the
state's favor; and finally, because war is seen as preferable to negotiation as a
means, given the state's broader strategic ends (e.g., to demonstrate its military
force to potential challengers).38
These critiques, however, should not obscure War and Reason's contribution
to the literature. Its effort to test realist versus domestic-political theories and
its blend of (clearly explicated) formal modeling with historical examples
provide a useful example for scholars working in this genre. Bueno de Mesquita
and Lalman have sought to address some of the major theoretical and empirical
issues in international relations, and if they have not provided alternative
theories they have at least written a thought-provoking tour d'horizon.
Domestic politics and overexpansion
Whereas Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman have attempted to launch a spare
and logical attack on structural realism in War and Reason, Snyder has provided
a rich and complex battery of evidence in Myths of Empire. Snyder provides an
ambitious account of the "overexpansion" of the major great powers since the
nineteenth century-an expansion that led to the creation of countervailing
balances of power. The author claims that his account is consistent with a
modified realist position; that is, a modification that fully incorporates domes
politics. Indeed, the book blasts open the black box of the state in an effort to
uncover the interest groups that promote particular foreign policy decisions.39
As noted above, Snyder has chosen a good puzzle for careful readers of
realist theory, since we would expect rational leaders to halt their aggression
before causing balances to form against them. The international environment
permits aggression, but systemic factors alone do not explain why overexpansion occurs. For this, Snyder argues, we need to understand the dynamics of
policy formation within the nation-state, and especially the role of competing
interest groups within various political structures.
In developing his domestic-political explanation for overexpansion, Snyder
draws heavily on Alexander Gerschenkron's distinction between early and late
37. I thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.
38. On the bandwagon effect, see Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit." The bandwagoning
hypothesis, of course, opposes the neorealist hypothesis that the international system tends
towards balance.
39. For a penetrating review essay on Snyder, see Fareed Zakaria, "Realism and Domestic
Politics," Intemational Security 17 (Summer 1992), pp. 177-98.
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Realism 763
industrializers. The early industrializers-namely Britain and the United
States-were less prone to overexpansion because their political systems were
resistant to "cartelization" and capture by a small number of interest groups;
instead, a variety of contending interests clashed in the domestic political
sphere. But in late industrializers, like Germany and Japan, a coalition of
powerful economic and political interest groups, which shared a desire for
geographic expansion, were able to capture the government and cartelize
policy formation. The "myth of empire"-or of the state's alleged need to
engage in imperial expansion-was thus created by those groups that favored
such expansion for political and/or economic reasons. Unfortunately, in the
process of logrolling political favors, the demand for expansion got out of hand,
and overexpansion resulted; overexpansion, or the provoking of a countervailing balance, was an outcome that no single group wanted but that the
coalition-captured government was unable to prevent.
This snowball theory of overexpansion has some significant problems. I will
focus on two of them: first, its generalizability; second, its utility in modifying
realism.
Snyder himself does not make any claims for the generalizability of his
approach. For example, he argues that it is difficult to know a priori what a
dictator will do with respect to foreign policy, given his or her complete control
of the political system. To be sure, some dictators, such as Hitler, have pursued
expansionist policies that ultimately provoked a response by other great
powers. But other dictators, like Franco, have focused their political machinations on the domestic front. Thus, Snyder's model does not purport to explain
some of the most interesting and important cases of state behavior in
international history.
Snyder's analysis also seems to work better for his historic as opposed to his
contemporary cases; perhaps this says something about the value of a historical
perspective. For example, he contrasts the overexpansion of Germany and
Japan in the 1940s with the relatively moderate geopolitical behavior of the
Soviet Union and the United States during the cold war. But to assert that the
Soviet Union did not overexpand is dubious, since Stalin's postwar policies led
to the creation of a balancing coalition that incorporated a majority share of the
world's gross product and included the United States and all of Western
Europe (along these lines, one wishes that the author had hypothesized about
China's likely geopolitical evolution). With respect to the United States, one
could argue that a Soviet-led counterbalance was indeed created during the
cold war in response to U.S. expansion in Western Europe; and looking to the
future, some scholars posit that a new balance eventually will form to counter
America's current position of hegemonic power.40
To state that Snyder's approach is not generalizable is not to reject its value.
Most social science theories are historically contingent, and scholars of
40. See, for example, Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will
Rise," Intemational Security 17 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51.
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764 International Organization
international relations may eventually decide that this is the best they can
achieve. If that is the case, however, to what extent can we say that Snyder
successfully has modified structural realism, a theory that does have pretenses
of universal significance?
At a minimum, any modification of realism would have to retain the insights
that it does contribute to our understanding of world politics, but this is not the
case if we adopt Snyder's model. Take the case of "strange alliances," such as
those that form between democratic and nondemocratic powers or among
authoritarian regimes. Snyder's theory of alliances is as follows: "States with
myth-resistant domestic political orders behave in accord with the tenets of
defensive Realism. They form defensive alliances to contain the expansion of
aggressive states."'41 Since the behavior of dictatorships cannot be predicted,
however, the theory would not enable us to explain the most puzzling (from a
unit-level perspective) alliance of modern times: that between the Soviet Union
and the United States to check Hitler. Realism does a better job of predicting
alliances between democracies and dictatorships when they share a common
enemy.
And what about the behavior of states prone to adopt the myths of empire?
For these states, Snyder says, we need to adopt a different variant of realism,
which he labels "aggressive realism." These revisionist powers are not satisfied
with the status quo and engage in overexpansion. Their behavior can be
understood only by opening the black box of domestic politics. But how does
such an approach help us understand the alliance behavior of revisionist states,
such as those between Germany and Japan during World War II, or the
Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact?
Snyder's theory also fails the parsimony test. Again, as stated at the outset of
this review, the value of parsimony is probably overstated by international
relations scholars-especially when it applies to theories that patently fail to
explain outcomes in world politics. But an examination of Snyder's cases
suggests that a simple, realist explanation of overexpansion may have yielded a
significant amount of explanatory power. Snyder admits as much when he
writes, "in several cases a state's position in the international system correlated
roughly with its propensity to overexpand."42
In his commentary on Myths of Empire, Fareed Zakaria also has pointed out
that a "spare systemic explanation" can explain the outcome of each country
study (namely, imperial Germany, 1930s Japan, Victorian Britain, the United
States, and the Soviet Union) that Snyder covers.43 Contrast the examples of
British and Japanese expansion. During the nineteenth century, Zakaria
reminds us, Britain was the world's superpower, controlling the sea lanes,
international finance, and a large share of global wealth. With the defeat of
41. Snyder, Myths of Empire, p. 12.
42. Ibid., p. 307.
43. Zakaria, "Realism and Domestic Politics."
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Realism 765
Napoleonic France, it faced no serious European challengers for fifty years,
and it expanded thereafter in gluttonous fashion; as Randall Schweller has
remarked, "the appetite of great powers grows with the eating."44 In short,
Britain expanded because nothing stopped it, including domestic politics.
Japan, in contrast, was a growing regional power that relied on imports for
almost all its raw materials, including oil from the United States and minerals
from various British colonies.45 In trying to secure its supplies in a world of
competing economic blocs (for example, the British-led sterling bloc, the
protectionist policies of which even enraged the United States as late as the
Marshall Plan years), Japan engaged in a policy of imperial expansion with the
objective of creating a so-called co-prosperity sphere of its own.46 Ultimately,
this policy collided with that of the United States, a nation with much greater
economic and military capabilities than Japan. Relative power explains the
outcome of this ill-fated expansion episode.47
Snyder would respond that realism still does not tell us anything about the
possible sources of such policy behavior. If the above statements about relative
power are true, why then did Japan seek to conquer all of east Asia, much less
attack the United States? Why did it not maintain a limited-war strategy? If
Japan had been a rational actor, would not it have avoided a direct conflict with
a much more powerful state? Indeed, historians have demonstrated that many
Japanese officials had powerful doubts about their country's course of action
and accurately predicted that its aggressive policies must end in ruin.48
The challenge for such a perspective is to make a convincing case that an
alternative paradigm was available to Japanese decision makers for their
consideration in light of the international conditions that were present. Snyder
points out, for example, that in the mid-1920s liberals and conservatives
engaged in a lively debate over Japanese foreign policy. But he observes that
the liberals' position was severely undermined by the closure of markets around
the world during the Great Depression. As he writes, "At the end of the 1920s,
depression and protectionism helped kill ... democracy."49 This suggests that
Japanese militarism and overexpansion were, at a minimum, aided and abetted
by how other countries were coping with economic decline; that is, by systemic
pressures. Thus, the more threatening the external environment, the more
warlike the domestic environment. (Ironically, rearmament played a useful role
44. Randall Schweller, personal communication, 28 March 1994.
45. On Japan's economic dependence and its related military strategy, see Alan S. Milward,
War, Economy and Society: 1939-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 30-36.
See also Michael Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1987).
46. On Anglo-American friction over the sterling bloc, see Ethan B. Kapstein, The Insecure
Alliance: Energy Crises and Westem Politics Since 1944 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990),
chap. 2.
47. Zakaria, "Realism and Domestic Politics."
48. See, for example, Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War.
49. Ibid., p. 151.
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766 International Organization
in economic recovery in Japan and elsewhere by the eve of World War II, but
this rearmament also increased the level of global insecurity.)50
Overall, Myths of Empire provides a fascinating account of the domestic
politics of five nations during those periods when they were undergoing intense
economic and political change and of how such changes favored the interests of
certain organized groups in society. It is unlikely, however, that the complex,
Gerschenkronian model presented in the book will provide either the cornerstone for a new paradigm of international relations or even lead to a decisive
modification of structural realism-especially in light of Snyder's failure to
explain the behavior of dictatorships. Further, he does not make a convincing
case for the marginal theoretical (as opposed to historical) value of his model.
If state actions can be broadly understood as a response to systemic pressures,
and if outcomes can be broadly understood as the product of relative power
capabilities, it is a priori unclear how much explanatory leverage we would gain
by adopting Snyder's approach as opposed to a more parsimonious systemic
account.
Domestic politics and grand strategy
For Snyder, the constellation of domestic political forces rather than power
capabilities provides the key to understanding state behavior in the international system. The essays in The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy further
complicate the picture by suggesting that, in addition to such forces, beliefs,
constitutions, economic conditions, and ideas all can influence the shape and
execution of national security policy. Each essay is well-written, and most are
relatively persuasive on a stand-alone basis; unfortunately, in the interests of
space they cannot all be described in this article. But the volume provides us
with a series of theoretical appetizers rather than a meal, and no overall
framework is provided that would guide us through such fundamental
questions as, which of the cited influences is most important, and why?
Each essay finds as its starting point the failure of structural approaches to
explain particular policy outcomes; of course, most neorealists would probably
respond that their theory does not try to explain the details of unit-level
decision making. Thus, in his study of the cold war, John Mueller asks why it
ended in 1985 (the year the cold war ended, like the year in which it began, will
no doubt fuel historic controversy for generations to come) despite the fact that
Soviet economic and military capabilities were not far different from their 1981
levels? Thus, well before the demise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet
empire, the Soviet Union and the United States were speaking about the war's
50. On the role of rearmament in economic growth, see Charles Kindleberger, A World in
Depression: 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and Alan S. Milward, War,
Economy and Society: 1939-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
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Realism 767
end and the implications of that change for world peace.51 Such momentous
changes, Mueller argues, are inexplicable by realist logic, and he tells us that
"the grand strategies of the major contestants ... were chiefly determined by
differences in ideas and ideologies that emanate from domestic politics, not by
structural differences in the distribution of capabilities at the international
level."52
But what were the differences between the cold war strategies of the Soviet
Union and those of the United States? Did they each not form large blocs that
confronted one another? Did they each not fight wars on their peripheries?
And was their contest not ultimately decided by relative power capabilities?
Again, Mueller's approach may supplement a realist account, but he does not
supplant much less modify one.
In his essay, Arthur Stein states that neorealism fails to illuminate U.S.
security policy during two crucial periods-the 1930s and late 1940s-and
suggests that "domestic politics underlay an incoherence in U.S. grand
strategy."53 For Stein, the puzzle is found in U.S. "underextension" in the
interwar years, followed by overextension in the postwar era. That is, U.S.
foreign commitments were less extensive than its capabilities would have
permitted during the 1930s but more extensive than its capabilities warranted
in the late 1940s, following massive troop demobilization after World War II.
The failure of U.S. grand strategy in the interwar years, says Stein,
contributed to the eruption of World War II, while the postwar gap between
commitments and fielded capabilities provided a permissive environment for
Soviet expansion and the Korean invasion. The lag between the perception of
threats to the balance of power and the implementation of policies to counter
those threats provides a challenge, Stein asserts, to structural realism, and is
found in the complex interplay of domestic political forces. Again, besides
challenging some of Stein's historiography (the United States did begin to
engage in a substantial military buildup during the late 1930s, as measured by
defense budgets and industrial mobilization policies), most realists would
accept that such lags occur all the time; what matters to them is that great
powers respond eventually.
In their study of British grand strategy during the 1930s, Rosecrance and
Zara Steiner turn Stein's analysis on its head.54 Great Britain, they argue,
lacked the economic and military capabilities to challenge Hitler in the late
1930s, but it did so anyway (they seem to overlook the fact that Britain was first
tacitly and later explicitly allied with France during most of this period, and
51. John Mueller, "The Impact of Ideas on Grand Strategy," in Rosecrance and Stein, The
Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, pp. 48-64, and pp. 54-55 in particular.
52. Ibid., p. 48.
53. Arthur Stein, "Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoherence of Grand
Strategy, 1938-1950," in Rosecrance and Stein, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, pp. 96-123.
The quotation is drawn from p. 97.
54. Richard Rosecrance and Zara Steiner, "British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World
War II," in Rosecrance and Stein, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, pp. 124-153.
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768 International Organization
that their combined resources were probably greater than those available to
Hitler's Germany).55 They argue that this policy decision, seemingly at odds
with neorealist predictions, was due to a change in "cognitive beliefs" within
the British polity about Hitler's objectives and the possibility of meeting them
through peaceful accommodation.56 While Britain's economic and military
situation, they say, should have dictated a continuation of the appeasement
strategy and further negotiation (as Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's model of
realist theory would predict), the country accepted an alliance with countries
that it could not defend (France, Poland) and found itself in a war that it could
not win on its own.
To be sure, all the essays described above suggest the importance of
enriching realist explanations with domestic-level analyses. But who would
quarrel with that? No serious scholar disputes the importance of ideas, beliefs,
and domestic political factors in shaping foreign policies. The more crucial
question for our purpose, however, is, what is the underlying theory here? In
what ways have the authors advanced our understanding of domestic and
international politics as a whole?
In that regard, perhaps the most useful essay in the volume is Matthew
Evangelista's contribution on Soviet grand strategy.57 As with the volume's
other contributors, Evangelista discovers serious anomalies between realism's
predictions about state behavior and actual Soviet policies. But Evangelista
goes beyond a mere critique of existing theories to suggest a new paradigm that
incorporates structural and unit-level approaches. Further, the insights generated in the essay are policy-relevant in the best sense of that term: they raise
significant questions about U.S. foreign policy during the cold war and whether
other roads could have been taken that would have promoted those moderates
working within the Soviet government.
Evangelista opens his essay by noting the contradictions in two accounts of
Soviet behavior by Waltz written in 1981 and 1990. In 1981, Waltz claimed that
relative Soviet weakness vis-a-vis the United States had led it to invest massive
sums in military power; in a 1990 essay he claimed that relative Soviet weakness
had led it to seek accommodation with the West; thus, at one time weakness led
to an effort to catch up, while a few years later it led to negotiation.58 This,
Evangelista says, is puzzling, since the sharpest drop in Soviet economic output
relative to the United States occurred in neither the late 1970s nor 1980s but in
55. I thank Randall Schweller for highlighting this point.
56. Ibid., p. 126.
57. Matthew Evangelista, "Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strategy: The Soviet
Case," in Rosecrance and Stein, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, pp. 154-78.
58. See Kenneth Waltz, "On the Nature of States and Their Recourse to Violence," United
States Institute for Peace Joumal 3 (June 1990), pp. 6-7; Kenneth Waltz, "Another Gap," Policy
Papers in International Affairs, Institute for International Affairs, Berkeley, Calif., 1981, pp. 79-80,
cited in Evangelista, "Internal and External Constraints on Grand Strategy " pp. 157 and 160.
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Realism 769
the early 1970s, which was a time of detente on the one hand and a continued
Soviet military buildup on the other.59 Thus, changes in capabilities do cause
changes in behavior, but the direction of that behavioral change is indeterminate.
Taking this as his starting point, Evangelista then opens the black box of
domestic politics to relax realism's unitary actor assumption. He suggests that
policymakers are in fact aware of their relative economic position in the
international system and of the degree of military threat posed by other actors.
What public officials debate, however, is the appropriate policy response to the
international environment in which they find themselves. And that policy
response is shaped not merely by relative capabilities but by the foreign policies
of other states in the system.
Evangelista labels this approach "postrealist," and argues "that if the leaders
of one country, such as the United States, understand the nature of internal
foreign policy debates in a rival country, such as the former Soviet Union, they
can tailor their own policies to try to influence the outcome of debates in the
rival country and, consequently, their rival's behavior. Thus, in considering how
postrealist analysts would relate the external environment to Soviet economic
constraints we should look beyond a simple dichotomy of perceptions of high
versus low threat to consider internal Soviet disagreements about U.S.
behavior."60
Evangelista's assumption that foreign policy decisions in country A will
produce a reaction in country B is hardly original. What is intriguing, however,
is the idea that the foreign policy decisions taken in country A can decisively
influence the politics of B's internal debates over how best to respond. In other
words, he emphasizes that policy interactions between two states are not
predetermined and that a significant scope for choice is possible. Foreign
policies in country A, he argues, can favor either moderate or hard-line forces
in country B. In the case at hand, he states that the United States generally
pursued cold war policies that favored hard-liners in the Soviet Union, and that
it lost several opportunities to promote the moderates in power, especially
during the Khrushchev years. On a more hopeful note, however, he suggests
that the American government's policies toward Presidents Gorbachev and
Yeltsin have been sensitive to promoting the moderates at work in Russia.
The problem with this approach is that it easily leads to a chicken-and-egg
situation, since one could argue that it was really Soviet policies under Stalin
that encouraged hard-line responses by the United States in the first place.
After all, postwar America engaged in a rich debate over how diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union should be pursued, a debate that led, among
other things, to the firing of Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace from the
59. Ibid., pp. 157-60.
60. Ibid., p. 170.
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770 International Organization
Truman administration and the near-split of the Democratic party.6" It was
Stalin, so goes this line of argument, rather than conservatives in the U.S.
government, who forced the United States to adopt policies such as those
found in NSC-68, one of the cold war's founding documents.62 Should
Evangelista pursue this postrealist approach, one hopes that he will provide us
with some guidance as to how we might resolve these types of deadlocks with
respect to action-reaction functions.
In generating their various puzzles, the essays in the Rosecrance and Stein
volume, like War and Reason and Myths of Empire, seemingly provide further
evidence against the explanatory and predictive power of structural realism.
They call into question both that theory's operating assumptions and its
analysis of state behavior. And while many of the critiques fault neorealism for
claims it never makes, some essays raise serious questions that must be
confronted by realist scholars if they wish to continue defending the theory's
utility. This issue will be treated in more detail in the following section.
Nonetheless, the works under review are markedly less successful in
providing the reader with a well-articulated alternative to the realist paradigm
or even to useful modifications of it in anything but ad hoc fashion. While
several of the authors provide useful supplements to realist accounts, those
who reject realism outright must leave us with something more, for example,
than the finding that "ideas matter." Evangelista's chapter represents a partial
and welcome exception in this regard, but postrealism will need significant
development before it can be viewed as a viable paradigm in its own right.
Is realism dead?
Despite its weaknesses, structural realism somehow remains standing as the
only paradigm that purports to explain the insecure nature of the anarchic
international environment and the behavior of the states within it over the
broad sweep of history. From its core assumptions about the system and its
units, it draws a number of hypotheses. Unfortunately, the books under review
suggest serious flaws in both its assumptions and its hypotheses, leading to
questions about the theory's utility if not durability.
Of all realism's assumptions and hypotheses, probably the most disputed
concern rationality and balancing behavior. For example, the rationality
61. Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1985), On the firing of Wallace, see pp. 288-94.
62. National Security Council document number 68 (NSC-68), written in 1950, provided the
rationale for a new American military buildup in the wake of the rapid demobilization that had
followed the end of World War II. According to historian John Lewis Gaddis, "What NSC-68 did
was to suggest a way to increase defense expenditures without war, without long-term budget
deficits, and without crushing tax burdens." NSC-68 has been viewed by historians as a founding
document of U.S. cold war strategy. See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 93.
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Realism 771
assumption is questioned by nearly all the authors discussed here, and even
those scholars who find it useful continue to debate its meaning.63 Are states
rational in the economic value-maximizing sense of the term, or in the
psychological satisficing sense? If a state can choose between balancing for
security or banding together for gain, what is the rational policy to adopt? Can
states learn from past experiences? As stated above, the insistence of theorists
on using concepts like rationality without fully defining them and showing their
operational value can only hinder the field's progress.
And what about the balancing hypothesis, which is attacked by several of the
authors discussed herein (for example, Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman)?
Waltz, of course, argued that states balanced against capabilities, while his
student Steven Walt suggested that they balance against threat.64 Other
scholars have suggested that balancing occurs against land powers, not naval
powers.65 In contrast, Schweller asserts that the prevalence of balancing has
been overstated, to the neglect of "bandwagoning" behavior. Schweller says
states are motivated to side with the stronger party (bandwagon) "by the
prospect of making gains."66 In short, the most significant neorealist hypothesis
remains contested.
From a broader theoretical perspective, one may question the analogy
between structural realism and microeconomics. Waltz, for example, has
written that "balance-of-power theory is microtheory precisely in the economist's sense. The system, like a market in economics, is made by the actions and
interactions of its units, and the theory is based on assumptions about their
behavior."67 However, the international system, as Waltz describes it, operates
nothing like a competitive marketplace, and it is wrong to argue, as he does,
that the international system generates pressure on states in the same way that
markets generate pressure on firms.68
If this is true, why do relatively few states disappear or "go out of business?"
Further, the balance of power, to the extent that it does become operational,
unwittingly acts to maintain the system of states. This, of course, would be
unheard of in economics, where "creative destruction" is an ongoing process.69
63. For a critical review of the literature on rationality, see Jack Snyder, "Rationality at the
Brink," World Politics 30 (April 1978), pp. 345-65. For a sympathetic overview, see Edward
Rhodes, Power and MADness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 47-81. For
competing treatments of the balance of power, see, among others, Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's
Classical Balance of Power (New York: Norton, 1955); Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993 orig. 1948), pp. 183-216; Steven Walt, Origins of Alliances (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); and Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit."
64. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics; and Walt, Origins ofAlliances.
65. I thank Jack Levy for highlighting this point. See Jack Levy, "Theories of General War,"
World Politics 37 (April 1985), pp. 344-74.
66. Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit," p. 24.
67. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 118.
68. Waltz, Theory of International Politics. Zakaria also accepts the value of this analogy in
"Realism and Domestic Politics," pp. 193-95. See also Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard
Little, The Logic ofAnarchy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 192-94.
69. Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's Classical Balar.ce of Power (New York: Norton, 1955).
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772 International Organization
Perhaps of greatest importance, economic systems are regulated by states,
whereas the international system is anarchic.
Realist theory, then, appears flawed in many important respects. As a result,
the study of international relations is now in something of a crisis stage: the
existing paradigm appears to be of limited value, but no strong contenders
provide a viable alternative. We know that domestic politics "matter," but we
still do not know how to treat domestic and international politics as a whole. It
is thus not surprising that the field has found itself mired in debates that are
taking an increasingly strident and even ideological tone: whether states seek
relative or absolute gains, or whether particular scholars adopt a realist or
liberal institutionalist perspective in their work. Adopting extreme positions
may be professionally useful, but one wonders how helpful it is for illuminating
our object of study, namely state behavior.
A positive research program should not abandon realism but should
continue to build on and refine its basic analysis of the relationship between
system and unit. Most scholars of international relations probably accept that
one of the defining features of their field of study is that the interactions of the
units take place in an anarchic environment, an environment without any
central, governing authority. What they dispute are the implications of anarchy
for state behavior.
For Waltz, the crucial independent variable within this environment is the
distribution of power; namely, whether it is bipolar, unipolar, or multipolar.
But a significant debate has erupted about the definition of polarity, as
exemplified by a set of recent articles that take contending views on the
distribution of power in the contemporary system.70 With the end of the cold
war, the concept of polarity seemingly has become even more confused; a
positive research program would reexamine this concept and possibly redefine
it, perhaps incorporating notions of state type.
This interplay between polarity and regime type goes to the heart of the
debate among systemic and domestic politics approaches. A priori, realists
would predict that a bipolar world, irrespective of state type, would be more
peaceful than a multipolar world of democracies. At the same time, several
studies have argued that economic cooperation among democracies is more
likely to prevail when the distribution of power is asymmetric, or when one
state is "hegemonic."71 While recognizing that economic conflicts among
democracies may not ignite international wars, the manner in which they are
resolved is still influenced if not determined by the distribution of power within
the particular issue-area.72
This point leads to an observation about the state of international relations
scholarship, as exemplified by the books reviewed herein. What they all share is
70. For the debate, see Lynn-Jones and Miller, The Cold War and After.
71. See, for example, Gilpin, War and Change; and Kapstein, The InsecureAlliance.
72. See Baldwin, "Power Analysis."
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Realism 773
not the assumption of rational state behavior but rather a concern about state
power-how it is accumulated and how it is exercised.73 Scholars across the
methodological and theoretical spectrum are reexamining the most fundamen-
tal concept in politics: power. If the current theoretical crisis promotes a fresh
understanding of power, to include comparisons of the ability of different types
of states to extract and employ economic and military resources, it will have
left a promising legacy for future generations.74 And in this exercise, contemporary scholars would do well to reexamine and then go beyond the work of such
classical realists as Morgenthau, Kennan, and Kissinger, who were concerned
with the material bases of power (unlike structural realists), but rather less with
the nature of domestic regimes.
Conclusions
The books under review have led us to wonder whether a structural approach
still provides a useful starting point for analyzing international politics. If
systemic pressures are weak or indeterminate when it comes to foreign policy,
then structural theories would seem to tell us almost nothing about how states
will behave in their international interactions. This suggests that future
explanations should begin within the nation-state.
Why, then, can we not take the decisive step and simply abandon structural
realism once and for all? Why should it remain, as Robert Keohane asserts, "a
necessary component in a coherent analysis of world politics?"75 Does not such
an approach mislead rather than guide us?
In this review essay, I have tried to provide some reasons as to why a
structural theory remains valuable for students of international relations.
Beyond its continuing merits on heuristic grounds, neorealism provides a useful
starting point for understanding outcomes in the international system. Further,
with its emphasis on both system and unit, neorealism is perhaps the only
paradigm that actually does treat domestic and international politics as a
whole.
But perhaps a more profound, if troubling, answer to why we still cling to
neorealism was provided by Kuhn in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions. He wrote:
Let us then assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emer-
gence of novel theories and ask next how scientists respond to their exis73. For an optimistic view of the rationality assumption, see Duncan Snidal, "The Game Theory
of International Politics," in Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1986).
74. For one compelling study along these lines, see Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
75. Robert Keohane, "Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond," in Keohane,
ed., Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 158-203. The quotation is drawn from p. 159.
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774 International Organization
tence. Part of the answer ... can be discovered by noting first what scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies.
Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they
do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis.... The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept
another.76
76. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 77.
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