Perpetual Westphalia? Exploring Westphalian and NonWestphalian Politics Through Aleatory Materialism
The majestic portal which leads from the old world into the new worldLeo Gross1
…new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of firs is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him where to looke for it.
-John Donne.2
Writing about historical consensus on the ‘Thirty Years’ War,’ Nicola Sutherland argues:
‘the Thirty Years War is a largely factitious conception which has nevertheless become an
indestructible myth.’3 Although Sutherland is referring to the common emplotment of
the Thirty Years War as the end of ongoing conflict between the Habsburg and Valois
dynasties, her words could easily be used to sum up the way the war’s conclusion- the
Treaty of Westphalia- has become the foundational myth of international relations. This
foundational myth, a common thread within academic International Relations and the
practice of international politics, states that Westphalia- particularly in regard to the
recognition of sovereign autonomy- instituted the modern practice of sovereignty.4 As
such, Westphalia is understood as the point at which sovereignty is distinguished from
other forms of authority, rendering state sovereignty the only source of properly political
Gross, L., (1948), ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948’, American Journal of International Law, 42(1), pp. 2041, p. 28-29.
2 Donne, J., (1611), ‘An Anatomy of the World’, (available at:
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/643.html) (accessed on: 27/02/2011).
3 Sutherland, N.M., (1992), ‘The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the structure of European Politics’,
EHR 107, p. 587.
4 For the treatment of this issue, see for example Arrighi, G., (1994), The Long Twentieth Century: Money,
Power and the Origins of Our Times, (London, Verso), pp. 36-47.
Kratochwil, F., (1986), ‘Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the
State System’, World Politics, 34(1), pp. 27-52.
Ruggie, J.G., (1983), ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis’,
in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics, (New York, Columbia University Press), pp. 131-157.
Wight, M., (1977), ‘The Origins of Our States-System: Chronological Limits’, in M. Wight (ed.), Systems of
States, (Leicester, Leicester University Press), pp. 129-153.
1
authority. 5 This distinction between legitimate state authority and other, illegitimate
authority continues to form the ‘normative core of international law,’6 as well as being
the sine qua non of much modern IR theory. Indeed, thinkers as dissimilar as Hans
Morgenthau 7 and Friedrich Kratochwil8 share the assumption that Westphalia was the
point where modern international politics was born. This is not to say that there have not
been dissenting views. Martin Wight, for example, locates an evolutionary process
whereby the modern states system came into being over the three centuries following the
failure of church reform in the late 15th Century, culminating in the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648.9 Similarly, Benno Teschke has demonstrated that, although the origins of the
modern international system can be found in social, political and economic
developments, they are intrinsically tied to the transformation of property relations in the
modern European (particularly the English) economy. 10 Where there has been a
challenge to this orthodoxy, it has often been ambivalent and unconvinced. The writings
of Stephen Krasner are a case in point, in which he has argued that the Treaty of
Westphalia both was11 and was not12 a significant point of rupture within the history of ‘the
international.’ What is more, where he does acknowledge the problems inherent in the
Westphalian account of the origin of international relations, it is to suggest slight
revisions to the thesis rather than to question the practice of identifying the origins of the
international system. It seems that Krasner’s approach to Westphalia is symptomatic of
Onnekink, D., (2009), ‘The Dark Alliance Between Religion and War’, in D. Onnekink (ed.), War and
Religion After Westphalia, 1648-1713, pp. 1-15 (Farnham, Ashgate), p. 2.
6 Brown, S., (1992), International Relations in a Changing Global System: Toward a Theory of the World Polity,
(Boulder, Westview), p. 74.
7 Morgenthau, H., (1967), Politics Among Nations, 4th Edition, (New York, Alfred Knopf), p. 299.
8 Kratochwil, F., (1986), ‘Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the
State System’, World Politics 34(1), pp 27-52.
9 Wight, M., (1977), ‘The Origins of Our States-System: Chronological Limits’, in H. Bull (ed.), Systems of
States, (Leicester, Leicester University Press), pp. 129-152.
10 Teschke, B., (2002), ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations From
Absolutism to Capitalism’, European Journal of International Relations 8(1), pp. 5-41.
11 Krasner, S.D., (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, (Princeton, Princeton University Press).
12 Krasner, S.D., (1993), ‘Westphalia and All That’, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political
Change, J. Goldstein & R.O. Keohane (eds.) pp. 235-264 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), p. 235.
5
the discipline as a whole; the actual origins of the modern international system are less
important than the way a ‘mythic foundation’ acts as a condition of possibility for a
particular type of account of the international system.
In light of this, rather than assessing the validity of the claims made by the ‘Westphalian
thesis,’ 13 this paper examines Westphalia’s role as the mythic origin of the international
system. It is the contention of this paper that the dominant approach to temporality
within IR is dependent on a point of rupture between past and present, represented by
the Peace of Westphalia, marking a transition from pre-modern to modern international
systems. This paper argues that the assumption of a point of rupture between premodern and modern international systems is the hallmark of a modernist philosophy of
history, in which the present is radically separated from the past.14 This rupture marks a
break with tradition in the light of a self-grounding modernity, implying for international
relations the move from the historical past to a relatively static, unchanging international
present. If this is not an analytically neutral concept, nor is temporality ethically neutralit constitutes the normative horizon of modern politics. Although this has a great many
implications, given the constraints under which this paper is being written, it is only
possible to address some of them. As such, the paper will proceed by identifying and
outlining three corollaries of IR’s ‘Westphalian moment’:
a) A temporal thesis- Westphalia acts as a device whereby the modern international
system is distinguished from the pre-modern by a radical rupture or break.
b) A spatial thesis- Westphalia (that which is constitutive of the international) marks
the birth of territory as the sole basis of international political order.
Benno Teschke has produced a fantastically erudite and rigorously researched analysis of the emergence
of the modern international system in The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International
Relations (London, Verso, 2003).
14 Lowenthal, D., (1985), The Past is a Foreign Country, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. xxiv.
13
c) A political thesis- Westphalia implies a particular normative orientation to the
practice of politics and a normative lens through which political community and
organization are viewed.
Once the implications of Westphalian idealism have been established, this paper goes on
to explore the implications of Louis Althusser’s ‘aleatory materialism’ for looking at
International Theory without the origin myth provided by Westphalian and postWestphalian narratives. Aleatory materialism offers us the capacity to think in terms of
the primacy of practice and do away with the idealistic foundations of the IR canon that
lock us into certain suppositions about where and how practices of politics must take
place.
Westphalia and the History of IR Theory:
Within IR theory, the Treaty of Westphalia is regarded as a decisive ‘tipping point’ within
the long transition between pre-modern and modern international relations. It is
considered the decisive point at which the ‘soft-textured’ overlapping authorities of the
medieval era were replaced by the state of sovereign equality central to modern
international politics.15 In many cases, this has been used as a means of justifying the
exceptionalism of the modern international system; through which IR’s disciplinary
distinction from History can be established. Although Herbert Butterfield, and many
others associated with the English School, have suggested that IR theorists should
engage more critically with the historian’s task of ‘elucidat[ing] the unlikeness between
past and present,’16 the way that most IR theorists have approached this task is through
15
16
Walker, R.B.J., (2010), After the Globe, Before the World, (London, Routledge), p. 131.
Butterfield, H., (1949), The Whig Interpretation of History, (London, Bell), p. 10.
asserting the radical incommensurability of past and present, emphasizing the way in
which the ‘Christian unity of the medieval world seem[s] remote and alien.’17 Within the
discipline of IR, this is a remarkably common way of approaching the emergence of the
international system. Even the most historical-sociologically inclined thinkers, including
the nuanced and sophisticated accounts of Justin Rosenberg 18 and John Ruggie 19
incorporate a structural discontinuity between modern and pre-modern international
relations. Perhaps the most radical critique of the modernism implicit within IR’s
emplotment of the onset of modernity has come from the wholly a-historical approach
taken by structural realism, with practitioners of this theoretical school arguing that the
nature of international politics has essentially been static since the emergence of the
Sumerian City States system circa 3,500BC.20 However, given the manifold reasons to
reject the philosophy of history implicit in structural realism,21 there is reason to suggest
that neo-realism does not offer a desirable remedy to the temporality found within
Westphalian IR. It does, however, give us cause to question why IR theory has not
situated itself within the totality of human history and engaged more fully with the ‘long
view of history.’22
In accepting the notion of a discontinuity between modern and pre-modern international
politics, IR employs a modernist philosophy of history. Although IR is a specifically 20 th
Wight, M., (1979), Power Politics, (Harmondsworth, Penguin), p. 24.
Rosenberg, J., (1994), The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations,
(London, Verso).
19 Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity’.
20 Buzan, B. & Litle, R., (2002), ‘International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of
International Relations’, in Hobden, S. & Hobson, J.M., (eds.), Historical Sociology of International Relations,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 200-220.
21 For an excoriating critique of the assumptions of neo-realism, see Ashley, R.K., (1984), ‘The Poverty of
Neorealism’, International Organization 38(2), pp. 225-286.
Cox, R.W., (1987), ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, in
R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics, pp. 204-255.
22 Buzan, B., & Little, R., (2000), International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International
Relations, (Oxford, Oxford University Press), p. 2.
17
18
Century endeavor,23 it utilises a method of separating the past from the present that has
been in operation since the early modern period. Although a detailed discussion of how
and where International Relations theory is modernist, is not possible here, John Ruggie
has identified the core modernist assumptions of both realist power balancing theories
which rely on the notion of a new self-relating equilibrium at the heart of the European
society 24 and idealist theory which locates the new international order at the heart of
projects such as Abbe St. Pierre’s institutionalist plan for peace and the Perpetual Peace
enshrined in the writings of Immanuel Kant.25 All of this is to create an artificial divide
between the past and the present.26 In this, International Relations participates in what
Jurgen Habermas called the ‘project’ of enlightenment, whereby systematic efforts were
conducted ‘to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art,
according to their inner law.’27
Conceptualizing a rupture between past and present, which first emerged in renaissance
humanism, 28 was a representational schema deeply ingrained in early modern political
theory’s attempt to understand the origins of political authority. During this period, the
dominant understanding of the nature and origins of law were reformulated as Thomistic
natural law interpretations were challenged by the collapse of medieval cosmology under
the weight of the nominalist-scholastic controversy. 29 Although the transition from
natural law to positive law understandings of political authority was not marked by the
Schmidt, B.C., (2002), ‘On the History and Historiography of International Relations’, in W. Calsnaes, T.
Risse and B.A. Simmons, (eds.), Handbook of International Relations, (London, Sage).
24 Anderson, M.S., (1963), Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713-1783, (London, Longmans) identifies the
Treaty of Utrecht as the point at which self-balancing European powers was first instituted.
25 Hinsley, F.H., (1963), Power and the Pursuit of Peace, (London, Cambridge University Press), chapter 2 & 4.
26 Hobden, S., (1998), International Relations and Historical Sociology, (New York, Routledge), p. 21.
27 Habermas, J., (1981), ‘Modernity and Postmodernity’, New German Critique 22, p. 9.
28 Kellner, H., (1980), ‘A Bedrock of Order: Hayden White’s Linguistic Humanism’, History and Theory,
19(4), p. 5.
29 Gillespie, M.A., (2008), The Theological Origins of Modernity, (Chicago, Chicago University Press), p. 11.
23
neat discontinuity some accounts suggest,30 it is fair to say that the political thought of
the early modern period was driven by the question of how and where to found political
authority given the apparent inadequacy of hitherto dominant theological justifications.31
Given that it was also heavily influenced by the political consequences of reformation 32
and the subsequent necessity to re-think the political foundations of the polis, the nature
of Christendom and the relationship between political authority and religion, it is clear
that the political-theoretical landscape of the day was governed by questions about how
and where political authority was to be founded.
In light of this, there is a need to see modern international politics not as an era or epoch,
but as a practice of distinguishing the present from the past as a way of making claims
about the foundations of legitimate authority. This way of understanding modernity has
emerged from attempts by historians of ideas to come to terms with the developments of
early modern thought. During the enlightenment, it was accepted that the transition to
modernity was one of triumph, as great minds threw off the shackles of superstition and
established a new understanding of the world based on reason.33 However, by the 20th
Century this narrative was contested by intellectual historians such as Etienne Gilsen and
Karl Löwith, who argued that the apparent ‘early modern revolution’ was based not on
Rather than simply being an invention of early modernity, this intellectual foment was a key element of
‘the nominalist revolution’ in late medieval philosophy, having a significant impact on the political thought
of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, among others. See for example van Caenegem, R., (1988),
‘Government, Law and Society’, in J.H. Burns (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 3501450, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 174-210.
31 The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is symptomatic of this approach. Hobbes founds the authority of
positive law as an inescapable corollary of a reasoned argument from first principles. The univocal,
anthropogenic law of the leviathan replaces the hierarchical orders of law found in medieval political
thought.
32 Gorski, P.S., (1999), ‘Calvinism and State Formation in Early Modern Europe’, in G. Steinmetz (ed.),
State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn, (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), pp. 147-181.
33 Gillespie, M.A., (2008), The Theological Origins of Modernity, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), p. 11.
30
reason, but on the secularization of late medieval theological concepts.34 This thesis was
in turn challenged by scholars such as Hans Blumenberg who argued that modernity was
in fact a project, wherein a self-founding modernity created distance and separation from
the past.35 According to this view, the transition to modernity was not simply the move
from one worldview or era to another, but an attempt to create self-grounding meaning
and authority in a world from which God is absent, or at best capricious. Whilst this
project of modernity utilized a number of concepts, devices and themes from late
medieval thought (nominalism was the philosophical and theological leitmotif of both
the late middle ages and early modernity) the period should be thought of in terms of the
replacement of theological and hierarchical understandings of law, authority and
knowledge claims with self-founding authorities.36 Although it is incorrect to read this
period as a simple process whereby positive law simply replaced natural law- there is
reason to suggest that the dominant ideas of the early modern period were those in the
voluntarist tradition of natural law37 (the nominalist/voluntarist challenge to Thomistic
natural law
did require a new way of understanding the nature of law and authority in
the world. 38 ) In order to ground this new form of authority, early modern thought
developed an understanding of positive law rooted in natural law.39 No-one epitomizes
this philosophy better than Thomas Hobbes, who located the absolute necessity of the
authority of the sovereign source of positive law in an argument made through natural
law.40
Löwith, K., (1949), Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, (Chicago,
University of Chicago Press).
35 Blumenberg, H., (1989), The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press).
36 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, p. 12.
37 Oakley, F. (1961), ‘Medieval Theories of Natural Law: William of Ockham and the Significance of the
Voluntarist Tradition’, The American Journal of Jurisprudence 6, pp. 72-73.
38 The relationship between nominalism and the rise of humanism is becoming increasingly established in
the history of science. See for example Koyré, A., (1957), From Closed World to Infinite Universe, (Baltimore,
Johns Hopkins University Press) & Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age.
39 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, p. 19.
40 Hobbes, T. (1994), Elements of Law: Natural and Positive, (London, Penguin), p. 254.
34
The conception of modernity as a self-grounding project underwent a revival in the 18th
and 19th Centuries, when it became inextricably linked to a particular normative and
political project. It was in 18th and 19th Centuries that the ‘international problematic’ as
understood by contemporary international relations emerged. 41 In particular, it was
intimately connected to the sovereign state. As Constantin Fasolt has argued, the
freedom of the modern state is defined in terms of both spatial and (most importantly)
temporal freedom. 42 The modern nation state is intimately connected to the ‘autoproduction’ of modernity, through which the modern idea of sovereignty (and its
corollary ideas such as citizenship, rights and the rule of positive law) as a regulative
norm, is founded not only through spatial borders, but also borders in time. Indeed, this
rupture in time is primary, acting as a condition of possibility of spatial border practices.43
Only in asserting man’s freedom from the tradition and custom that governed past
politics can the authority of self-grounding human freedom associated with the modern
nation state be founded.
As such, this form of temporality has both theoretical and political implications. It is
intrinsically tied to the nation state and the sovereign order as a way of understanding the
world. Indeed, ‘professional’ history-44 with which political science shares a number of
common intellectual and institutional origins- is intimately tied to the emerging nation
state, with the pioneers of modern historical explanation engaged in telling national
Patomaki, H., (2002), After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)construction of World Politics,
(London, Routledge),
42 Fasolt, C., (2004), The Limits of History, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), p. 7.
43 Walker, R.B.J., (2006), ‘Lines of Insecurity: International, Imperial, Exceptional’, Security Dialogue, 37(1),
pp. 65-82.
44 That is to say historical explanation carried out in Universities following the rise of History as a
profession in 19th Century Germany.
41
histories.45 Knowledge about the past becomes the search for power and independence,
through which the project of modern authority is continually re-founded.46 International
Relations, a discipline which finds its intellectual roots in the 19th Century,47 participates
in this intellectual project, drawing upon the legacy of the enlightenment and the idea of
an international order comprised of states in their proper place. 48 The conceptual
apparatus of International Relations theory has statist, rationalist and nationalist origins
and the ‘myth of Westphalia’ is a significant condition of possibility for this mode of
emplotment.
As such, the temporality of political modernity is not simply a means by which the
present is defined as radically different to the past; it also shapes the normative horizon
of international politics. The cleavage between past and present implicitly contains a set
of theses about how man is to behave in the world. 49 In particular, it places the
territorially bounded state (as part of a states-system, within which borders mark the
boundary between the jurisdiction of sovereign authorities) at the centre of the
normative frame. Within this normative frame, both ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’
readings of the world share a common understanding of the nature and location of
politics. 50 This at once makes the state the sine qua non of politics in the Westphalian
system and- in emphasizing the institution of sovereign authority as the origin of the
For an interesting discussion of this, see Harrison, R., Jones, A. & Lambert, P.A., (2004)‘The
institutionalization and organization of history’, in P. Lambert & P. Schofield (eds.), Making History: An
introduction to this history and practices of a discipline’, (London, Routledge), pp. 9-25.
Lambert, P., (2003), ‘The Professionalisation and Institutionalisation of History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner &
K. Passmore, (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice, (London, Arnold), pp. 42-60.
46 Fasolt, The Limits of History, pp. 13-14.
47 Knutsen, T., (1992), A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester, Manchester University Press).
Walker, After the Globe, p. 41, n.10.
48 Koskenniemi, M., (2001), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 20.
49 Walker, After the Globe, p. 32.
50 Fasolt, The Limits of History, p. 15.
45
modern international system- de-politicises borders as sites where politics is performed.51
The self-foundation of modern political authority also makes clear normative
prescriptions (and, conversely proscriptions) about the nature and location of legitimate
politics. Within ‘Westphalian order,’ the state is the sole legitimate source of political
authority and- as such- delegitimizes political practices taking place in other forms and in
other contexts. The processes and temporalities through which activities are designated
as ‘properly political’ are inherently political processes themselves!
The idea that modernity is an era, a move from the past to the present, obscures the
contingency of this political order. Within IR, there is a tendency to read the emergence
of the modern international system teleologically,52 which simultaneously naturalises and
depoliticizes ‘Westphalian’ order. In light of this, it is important to recognize the
emergence of modern states as specific practices whereby political authority was
legitimized as a response to the concrete intellectual and political problems of the age. As
Hidemi Suganami has argued, the practice of sovereignty- in both Schmittian and
Kelsonian guises- is based in the mutual imbrication of sovereignty and the ‘possibility of
arbitrary violence.’53 This practice emerged as a response to the conflicts of the late 16th
and early 17th Centuries 54 and the difficulties of establishing a foundation for legal
authority after the demise of Thomism.55 However, if modernity is not the move from
one era to another, but the foundation of authority in the present through the
establishment of the radical alterity of the past, these foundations are as much the root of
Walker, After the Globe, pp. 32-33.
John Hobson identifies two tendencies within International Relations Theory- Chronofetishism and
Tempocentrism – which he argues is responsible for naturalizing the modern international system. Hobson,
J.M., (2002), ‘What’s at Stake in ‘Bringing Historical Sociology Back Into International Relations?
Transcending ‘Chronofetishism’ and ‘Tempocentrism’ in International Relations’, in S. Hobden & J.M.
Hobson (eds.), Historical Sociology of International Relations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 3-41.
53 Suganami, H., (2007), ‘Understanding Sovereignty Through Kelsen/Schmitt’, Review of International Studies,
33 pp. 511-530, p. 530.
54 Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, p. 72.
55 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, pp. 253-254.
51
52
present political order as they are the historical origins of the modern international
system. The corollary of this is that there is clear scope for a re-assessment of the way
that foundational practices constitute political order.
There is a particular need to re-assess the bordering processes of the international system
in the 21st Century. Not only might this prove useful in highlighting the implications of
the bordering practices through which borders are created and sustained, 56 but it could
also help change the way that some major problems in international politics are
approached. Particularly prominent amongst these is the question of the authority of the
state in the 21st Century world. International Relations theorists obsesses about the move
‘beyond Westphalia,’ using language which suggests that the early 21st Century marks a
period of epochal change, 57 but perhaps this is to fall into the same error as those
accounts addressing the transition between the medieval period and modernity. If
transition takes place in the changing location of and practices of founding political
authority, it is on these issues that analysis must focus. There is historical precedent for
this situation, in which political authority has not been coterminous with the dominant
economic forms or organisation, particularly because, as Benno Teschke has argued, the
rise of the modern, international market was not only compatible with, but existed in a
symbiotic relationship with the modern state. 58 Rather than assuming opposition of
interests between the state as locus of authority in the modern political world and global
markets or civil society,59 it is necessary to address the way that this relationship entails a
This topic has been discussed at some length in Walker, R.B.J., (1992), Inside/Outside: International Relations
as Political Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
57 See for example Linklater, A., (1998), The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the PostWestphalian Era, (Oxford, Polity).
Held, D., (2004), A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics & Politics, (London, Routledge).
58 Teschke, The Myth of 1648, p. 23.
Teschke, ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States’, p. 38.
59 See for example Gilpin, R., (1987), The Political Economy of International Relations, (Princeton, Princeton
University Press), p. 10.
56
mutually co-dependent grounding of legitimate political authority. 60 Although it is not
possible to enter into a fuller discussion of this issue here, it is the supposition of this
author that if the issue were approached from this perspective, the ‘globalisation debate’
and the analysis of the changing role of the state may have a somewhat different- and
significantly more productive- outcome.
Philosophical Idealism in International Relations Theory:
At this point, it is worth examining in greater detail the extent to which IR has inherited
a philosophical idealist worldview. Refracted through the lens of early modern
international law and the influence of German philosophers and jurists such as Hegel,
Schmitt and Kelsen, philosophical idealism has come to assume a dominant position
within modern IR theory. Although the origins of idealist thought in IR theory can be
found in the influence of this legal and juridical thought on IR, it was brought into the
discipline in two distinct ways: the role of early modern international law in defining and
delimiting ‘the international’ as a sui generis form of law and the influence of German legal
thought on the sociological formalism of early realist thought within IR. Although these
theories tend to be associated with very different approaches to IR, they share a common
set of philosophical assumptions, which leads them to define ‘the international’ in similar
ways.
Castells, M., (1996), The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture; Volume 1, The Rise of the Network Society,
(Oxford, Blackwell).
Cerny, P., (1996), ‘International Finance and the Erosion of State Policy Capacity’, in P. Gummett (ed.),
Globalization and Public Policy, (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar).
60 This is not a new argument in International Political Economy circles, as Mann, M., (1993), ‘Nationstates in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, not Dying’, Daedalus: Journal of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 122(3), pp. 115–40 indicates. What is new however, is making this
argument through the problem of temporality, modernity and the practice of locating legitimate political
authority. This would bring questions of political foundation to a debate which has usually been conducted
in sociological and/or economic terms. There is certainly reason to suggest that a debate conducted in a
political theoretical register would have a greater impact on International Relations theory, overcoming the
tendency for this issue to be marginalized as an ‘IPE matter.’
Legal thinking has had a profound, and often underestimated, influence on the way that
IR has come to terms with the world. Of particular importance is the centrality of early
modern international legal thought such as that of Pufendorf, Vattel and Kant, in
shaping the horizons of the discipline;61 evidence of their influence on the contemporary
discipline of academic International Relations can be found in its continued engagement
with these thinkers. 62 The formative processes whereby international law was codified
and promulgated have gone hand-in hand with the way we understand the modern state;
the Treaty of Westphalia (as the point at which the principle of sovereign equality was
formally recognized) is both of central importance to the development of international
law and the emergence of modern international politics.63
The theoretical discourse of the state in late 19th and early 20th Century social, political
and legal thought also had a significant influence on early IR theory. This is an argument
that Brian Schmidt makes in The Political Discourse of Anarchy, in which he contends that
the ‘pre-history’ of the discipline of international relations has had a significant impact on
IR, where “the theoretical discourse of the state tacitly laid the groundwork for the
political discourse of anarchy.” 64 In early 20th Century intellectual culture, heavily
influenced by Hegel and Weber, the study of the state was the study of man’s modern
See for example Suganami, H., (1989), The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals, (Cambridge,
Cambridge University press), p. 13.
62 See for example Wight, M., (2005), Four Seminal Thinkers in International Relations: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant
and Mazzini, G. Wight & B. Porter (eds.), (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
Wight, M., (1991), International Theory: The Three Traditions, (Leicester, Leicester University Press).
Linklater, A., (1982), Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, (Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan)
Koskenniemi, M., (2001), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
63 Knutsen, T.L., (1992), A History of International Relations Theory, (Manchester, Manchester University
Press), p. 115.
Teschke, B., (2003), The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations,
(London, Verso).
64 Schmidt, B.C., (1998), The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations,
(Albany, SUNY Press), p. 45.
61
condition: the modern state was both the teleological culmination of man’s progress and
the guarantor of modern life.65 As Anna Haddow has argued, the nascent discipline of
Political Science (and by extension, International Relations), at least in the USA, shared a
lot of the philosophical assumptions of (particularly German) legal and historical
thought.66 It appears that not only is there a close relationship between the theory of the
state outlined in 19th Century historical, legal and political enquiry and early theories of
international relations, but there is also a close relationship between the philosophical
assumptions of fin de siècle social and political thought and early international relations
theory.
Another key way in which (particularly German) legal thinking was brought into IR was
through the sociological concepts pioneered by Max Weber. “The key conceptualization
of politics, definitely in International Relations but arguably also in social theory generally,
is Max Weber’s.”67 Weber’s theoretical project was dominated by a desire to develop a
nomothetic theory of the way in which social organization takes place, developing his
‘ideal typical’ approach to social theory- treating ‘the political’ (as he would any other
facet of social existence) as an abstraction that can be made to analyse any society. 68
Students of Weber’s approach proved instrumental in defining the methods and limits of
the discipline69 as early IR theorists such as Hans Morgenthau adopted Weber’s ideal
types as a cornerstone of their conception of ‘the international’ and firmly ensconced
Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, pp. 148-150.
Haddow, A., (1939), Political Science in American Colleges and Universities, 1636-1900, (New York, AppletonCentury Company).
67 Neumann, I.B. & Sending, O.J., (2007), ‘”The International” as Governmentality’, Millenium- Journal of
International Studies 35, p. 679.
68 Weber’s approach to the ideal type is most clearly articulated in Weber, M., (1976), The Protestant Ethic and
the Spirit of Capitalism, (London, Allen & Unwin), p. 28.
69 Neumann & Sending, ‘The International as Governmentality’, p. 682.
65
66
Weber at the heart of IR.70 Although Carl Schmitt offers a slightly different theory of
sovereignty to Weber- replacing the monopoly of political violence with the sovereign
decision- the implications are similar. The idea that sovereignty resides with the power
that can declare and enforce a state of exception, a self-grounded legal order71 is based on
a similar theoretical basis to Weber’s and has influenced much the same theorists. 72As
has been argued elsewhere, 73 this does not just define ‘the international’ as a clearly
demarcated sphere of action, but it also implies a certain type of politics will take place in
the international sphere: the politics of struggle and rationalisation. It is worth noting
here Weber’s insistence on the relativity of political values: Weber- and the most
Weberian of IR theorists, Hans Morgenthau- was quick to point out that his nomothetic
theory of ‘the political’ was relevant only to the specific cultural and historical context of
the period in which he was writing. 74 Nonetheless, the influence of Weber- albeit a
particular reading of Weber- has led to the dominance of a vision of international politics
in which conflict, tension and dispute at the level of the state are the sine qua non of ‘the
political.’ 75 Despite the insistence of Weberians that Weber’s methodologies were
historically sensitive, they have entrenched a particular set of interests and concerns at
the heart of IR theory: that of the nationalist state.
The particular set of philosophical concepts through which International Relations
theorists view the world is a direct inheritance of this philosophical idealist tradition. If
Guzzini, S., (1998), Realism in International Relations and International Political Theory: The Continuing Story of a
Death Foretold, (London, Routledge), p. 26.
See also Williams, M.C., (2004), ‘Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical
Realism and the Moral Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization 58(3), pp. 633-665.
71 Schmitt, C., (2003), The Nomos of the Earth: in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, (New York,
Telos Press), p. 73.
72 Clohesy, A.M., Isaacs, S. & Sparks, C., (2009), Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, (London,
Routledge), p. 39.
73 Williams, ‘Why Ideas Matter in International Relations’.
74 Hobson, J.M. & Seabrooke, L., (2001), ‘Reimagining Weber: Constructing International Society and the
Social Balance of Power’, European Journal of International Relations 7 (2), pp. 239–74.
75 Neumann & Sending, ‘The International as Governmentality’, p. 689.
70
the philosophical idealism of late 19th Century Germany represents a particular set of
interests, then the international political theory built on these ideas shares these interests.
Concepts such as the state, international anarchy and sovereignty which are often
considered irreducible starting points for the investigation of international politics are
not then neutral starting points for the investigation of world politics, but ideologically
located foundations. The basic premises of International Relations are rooted in the
particular predispositions of this tradition in such a way that it is very difficult to depart
from them and still be classified as ‘doing IR.’ Indeed, it is from this tradition that
international political theory has inherited its liberal76 as well as its statist characteristics. 77
Likewise, the persistence of nationalist assumptions within International Relations is a
function of the discipline’s heavy debt to a late 19th Century intellectual culture beholden
to nationalist themes and tropes. 78 The inside/outside formulation through which
domestic and international politics are counterposed, 79 has similar origins. The nation
state and the concept of sovereignty that goes hand-in glove with it, has become
something of the sine qua non of IR. This has had a sclerotic effect on the forms of social
and political organisation the discipline recognizes in the world, but it has also
fundamentally conditioned the way that we ask questions about the political world. It is
not simply that enlightenment critique has not been extended to the liberal societies
Irrespective of the divide between ‘realist’ and ‘liberal’ theories of international politics, IR has a much
broader foundation in the political philosophical assumptions of liberal theory. See for example Schmidt,
B.C., (1998), The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, (New York,
SUNY Press).
77 Prichard, A., (2010), ‘Deepening Anarchism: International Relations and the Anarchist Ideal’, Anarchist
Studies, 10(2), pp. 29-57.
78 See for example the early American realist thinkers and their intellectual inheritance from Schmitt and
German formalist sociology. Not only was their thought heavily legalistic in its outlook (that is to say based
in the juridical philosophy which undergirds theories of power and the state in late 19th Century thought),
but it was inherently tied to the nationalist tropes inherent within late 19 th and early 20th Century German
sociological and legal thought.
Niebuhr, R., (1960), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, (New York, Charles Schribner’s Sons).
Morgenthau, H.J., (1965), Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, (Chicago, Phoenix Books).
Morgenthau, H.J., (1978), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, (New York, Alfred A.
Knopf).
79 Wight, M., (1960), ‘Why is there no international theory?’, International Relations, 2(1), pp. 35-48.
Walker, R.B.J., (1992), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press).
76
within which the enlightenment has taken place, 80 but that the idealism of Western
liberalism has obscured and occluded forms of organization and political possibility
within the world. John Meyer and Ronald Jepperson wonder at ‘a surprising feature of
the modern system [which] is how completely the Western models dominate world
discourse about the rights of individuals, the responsibilities and sovereignty of the state,
and the nature of preferred organizational forms,’81 but this should be hardly surprising
considering the hegemonic power of Western, idealist modernity. But this does not mean
that the problem simply goes away. As Jens Bartelson and Rob Walker have argued, if
they are to overcome these problematic elements of international thought, International
Relations theorists will have to re-examine the foundations of international theory in
order to propose alternatives.82 As such, if IR is to overcome these problematic elements
of mainstream international thought, in both theory and practice,83 it must look outside
the philosophical idealism that constructed this problematic. Despite hinting at the
Eurocentrism of the IR canon, I hope that, given the subject of this conference and the
philosophical resources available to me as a scholar in a Western social science institution,
I will be excused if I suggest another Western tradition of thought might be a useful way
of re-thinking some of the idealisms that predominate within our discipline! Despite
being Western, this tradition is a subversive one. If we are to believe Louis Althusser &
Antonio Negri, materialism exists as the ‘hidden history’ or ‘unspoken Other’ that
Foucault, M., (1984), ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, (New York,
Pantheon Books), pp. 32-50.
81 Meyer, J.W., & Jepperson, R., (2000), ‘The Actors” of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction of
Social Agency’, Sociological Theory 18 (1), p. 106.
82 Bartelson, J., (2009), Visions of World Community, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 21.
Walker, R.B.J., (2010), After the Globe, Before the World, (London, Routledge).
83 Overcoming ‘the international problematic’ as understood in 20 th and 21st Century context, has become
a central feature of contemporary IR theory, with ‘Critical’ International Relations Theory attempting to
envision new forms of community that cannot be conceived within ‘the international’ as we currently
understand it.
See for example Shaw, M., (2000), Theory of the Global State: Gobality as an Unfinished Revolution, (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press).
Bartelson, Visions of World Community.
Walker, After the Globe.
Linklater, A., (2011), The Problem of Harm in World Politics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
80
possesses the potential to unsettle the dominant narrative of Western modernity. It is to
the materialist tradition that I must now turn.
The Return to Materialism:
Materialism, like Marxism, is not a body of theory, to be accepted or rejected as a whole,
but a philosophical tradition that can act as a ‘foundation stone’84 for philosophy in the
present. The 20th Century materialism espoused by Althusser is not one of ‘causal’ or
necessary relations, but a materialism of the contingent and the aleatory. As such, it
should not be confused with the crude reduction of reality to the atomic, as has
characterized ‘post-Aristotelian’ materialism.
85
As Bertrand Russell has stressed,
‘traditional’ or ‘atomistic’ materialism has been challenged by Einstein’s theories of
relativity; the traditional philosophical notion of substance persisting through time is
untenable following the merger of time into ‘space-time.’86 In light of this, the notion of
substance and individualistic metaphysics- manifest as mechanistic atomism87- integral to
classical materialisms must be replaced with a relational ontology of forces. In a curious
manner, this places contemporary materialism in line with both 20th Century physics88
and the pre-Socratic metaphysics of Stoic, Cynical and Megarian thought.89 This is not a
materialism of the necessary or the teleological, but one of contingency, freedom and the
Althusser, L., (1990c), ‘Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy’, G. Lock (trans.), Philosophy and the
Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays, G. Elliott (ed.), (London, Verso), p. 230.
Lenin, V.I., (1960), ‘Our Programme’, in Collected Works, (Moscow, Progress Publishers), pp. 211-212.
85 Olssen, M., (2006), Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, (London, Paradigm), p. 207.
See also Laruelle, F., (2001), ‘The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter’, Pli 12, pp. 33-40.
86 Russell, B., (1925), ‘Introduction: Materialism Past and Present’, in F.A. Lange (ed.) The History of
Materialism, E.C. Thomas (trans.), pp. v-xix, (London, Kegan Paul).
87 Particularly representative of this tradition is Thomas Hobbes, for whom an individualistic philosophy
and a mechanistic atomism went hand in hand.
Skinner, Q., (1999), ‘Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State’, The Journal of Political Philosophy
7(1), pp. 7-8.
88 Heisenberg, W., (2000), Philosophy and Physics: The Revolution in Modern Science, (London, Penguin).
89 See for example Deleuze, G., (2004), The Logic of Sense, M. Lester with C. Stivale (trans.), (London,
Continuum), p. 143, p. 147, p. 161, n.1.
84
encounter. This materialism offers the opportunity to re-orient International Relations,
as well as social sciences more generally along properly materialist lines.
Constituent Power and Constituted Power in International Relations Theory:
In order to fully appreciate the materialist position, it is necessary to understand the
distinction between two types of power: constituent power and constituted power. These
are usually considered in juridical terms, with constituted power used to refer to a legal or
juridical order and constitutive power indicate the processes within which this authority
is grounded. 90 Within Western political thought, constituent power- the power that
makes world order is suppressed and ignored, whilst juridical power, the power that
merely regulates existing order is placed at the centre of analysis. Indeed, this very
schema originates in political and philosophical attempts to challenge the apparent
neutrality of legal orders.91
The understanding of the relationship between constitutive power and social order that
has been adopted by IR theory is one that, in focusing on concepts such as sovereignty
and ‘the international’, highlights juridical order over and above the practices that
produce it. These constitutive processes only come to light when disturbing the
dominant order; this creates the image of a world in which a stable international ordercomprising of institutions (such as sovereignty, the law) and organizations (such as the
state)- is interrupted by the operation of constitutive power. Events, such as the
Negri, A., (1999), Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, (Minneapolis, Minnesota University
Press), p. 10.
91 These theories of power have been developed within French and Italian Marxism as a means of
challenging Leninist assumptions about political action. See for example
Virno, P. & Hardt, M., (eds.), (2006), Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press).
90
formation of the state92 and revolutions within the international system are exceptions to
the normal order of the international system. Temporary periods of exceptional politics
such as the ‘twenty years’ crisis’ spoken of by E H Carr 93 or the ‘interregnum’ the
international system entered after the Cold War 94 are exceptions to the norm; the
sovereign order prevails except during periods of exceptionalism.
Althusser & Orthodox Marxism
In rejecting International Relations’ focus on the institutional existence of ‘the
international,’ Althusserian Marxism offers a similar challenge to IR as it does to classical
or orthodox Marxism (whatever that might be). As Marx outlines in The German Ideology,
the distinctive feature of his own work- in contradistinction to idealism in general and (in
particular) that of both Hegel and the young Hegelians- is not just the assertion that the
juridical, political and religious order are unjust (such critique can be found in many
places), but that to pose the questions of politics and life in these terms is fundamentally
misleading. 95 Hitherto existing, or bourgeois, sciences had concerned themselves with
superstructural factors, completely ignoring the productive base that was ultimately
responsible for the existence of institutions such as the law.96 Marx argues that to ask
questions about the state or the law as an abstract entity is illegitimate as they can only be
comprehended in terms of the material conditions of their existence. 97 Marx’s key
The acceptance of Machiavelli’s writings about the constitutive power inherent in the formation of the
state is a case in point.
93 Carr, E.H., (2001), The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919-1939, (New York, Harper Collins).
94 Cox, M., Booth, K. & Dunne, T., (1999), ‘Introduction’, in The Interregnum: Controversies in World Politics,
1989-1999, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
95 Marx, K. & Engels, F., (1987), The German Ideology: Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, (London,
Lawrence and Wishart).
96 Marx, K., (1859), ‘Introduction’ in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (Available at:
92
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-poleconomy/preface.htm), (Accessed on: 01/05/2011).
97
Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Marx in his Limits’, in Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987, (London,
Verso), p. 55.
contribution to materialist philosophy is to reject the idealism of German philosophy and
the juridical thought that is implied by this, replacing this with a focus on the productive
means through which man provides for his own subsistence. This re-orients the
relationship between constituent power and constituted power in such a way that it treats
the production of social and political order not as an exception, but as something that
needs to be understood as part of its regular operation.
The majority of Marxist IR theory has been based around a deterministic reading of the
relationship between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure.’98 This reflects much of the literature on
Marx’s philosophy in which the mode of production (comprised of both ‘means’ and
‘relations’ of production) is seen to determine the superstructure ‘in the last instance.’99
Within IR, engagements with Marxism have broadly taken three forms. The first of
which is historical sociological, with authors such as Fred Halliday,100 Justin Rosenberg101
and Benno Teschke 102 writing Marxist-inspired historical sociological analyses of the
international system. The second is in international political economy, where authors
such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi have utilized Marxian ideas to
develop a theory of international politics in which the global economy acts as driver of
world politics. 103 Finally, Critical Theory and Gramscian approaches have utilized
This idea was first developed in the preface of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. It
has subsequently become a point of contention for Marx, K., (1859), ‘Preface’, A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy, (available online at:
98
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-poleconomy/preface.htm), (accessed on: 12/04/2011).
Olssen, M., (2004), ‘Foucault and Marxism: Rewriting the theory of historical materialism’, Policy Futures
in Education 2(3), p. 256.
100 Halliday, F., (1994), Rethinking International Relations, (Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan).
101 Rosenberg, J., (1994), The Empire of Civil Society: Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations,
(London, Verso).
102 Teschke, B., (2009), The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations,
(London, Verso).
103 See for example Wallerstein, I., (2004), World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, (Durham, Duke University
Press).
Arrighi, G., (2009), The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Time, (London, Verso).
These theorists have also utilized the writings of Lenin, V.I., (2010), Imperialism: The Highest Stage of
Capitalism, (London, Penguin).
99
Marxian analysis to develop theories of international politics that eschew the
instrumental or ‘problem-solving’ focus of traditional theory and attempt to develop
critical, transformative approaches to international politics.104 These approaches, unlike
traditional theory which re-enforce existing world order, self-consciously follow Marx’s
‘Eleventh Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach,’ seeking to change the world rather than simply
to interpret it.105 Despite the success of these approaches in making ‘elbow room’ for
Marxist theory within the discipline of IR, they have almost exclusively relied on
approaches that have offered an economic determinist reading of Marx. In these
accounts, ‘the international’ is but a superstructural epiphenomenon, with international
politics merely reflecting the dominant mode of production of any given historical
situation. By way of contrast to this, Althusser’s materialism rejects the division of the
world into productive base and epiphenomenal superstructure.
Althusser Against Orthodox Marxism: The Critique of Determinism
Marx’s economic determinism has been subject to considerable contestation and revision,
from contemporaries such as Joseph Bloch,106 to modern thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze
The distinction between traditional and critical theorizing was first brought into being by Max
Horkheimer in his essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in Horkheimer, M., (1999), Critical Theory: Selected
Essays, (London, Continuum), pp. 188-243.
It was first applied to International Relations in Cox, R.W., (1981), ‘Social Forces, States and World Order:
Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millenium: Journal of International Relations 10(2), pp. 126-155.
Other examples of this approach in International Relations include:
Gill, S., (1993), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press).
Linklater, A., (2007), Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity, (London,
Routledge).
Neufeld, M., (1995), The Restructuring of International Relations Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press).
Roach, S.C., (2010), Critical Theory of International Politics: Complementarity, Justice and Governance, (London,
Routledge).
105 Marx, K., (1845), Theses on Feuerbach, (available online:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm), (accessed on:
12/04/2011).
106 Olssen, M., (2004), ‘Foucault and Marxism: Rewriting the theory of historical materialism’, Policy Futures
in Education 2(3), p. 455.
104
and Felix Guattari,107 and Michel Foucault, who has criticised Marx’s political economy
for its affinities with the liberal political economy of the 19th Century- resembling very
closely the type of ‘meta-economics’ employed by David Ricardo. 108 Central to this
resemblance is the idea that the ‘social, political and spiritual’ processes of life are
determined by the ‘deeper’ or ‘underlying’ reality of the economic base. 109 The
relationship between base and superstructure is one of model and copy,110 a feature of
Marx’s philosophy that is inherently Platonic. In this context, it is helpful to think of
Platonism as a doctrine that suggests that everyday reality is determined by a deeper
metaphysical reality; 111 consequently, the understanding we have of the world and the
things in it can takes one of two forms: an imperfect appreciation of surface illusions (in
Marx’s case ideology112) or a direct engagement with the ‘thing in itself’113 (in Marx’s case
his critical political economy114). This forms the basis of the Marxist critique of ideology,
where the imperfect ideological view of the world is replaced by an appreciation of the
world in terms of a non-ideological perspective.
By way of contast, thinking ‘beyond’ ideology is anathema to Althusser. Where
Althusserian Marxism differs from more orthodox Marxisms is in its rejection of the
directionality of the relationship between base and superstructure. It was in the face of
the practice of identifying concrete historical laws (most commonly associated with the
See for example Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., (2004), Anti Oedipus, (London, Continuum).
Foucault, M., (2001), ‘Interview with Michel Foucault’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.), Michel Foucault: Power, pp.
239-297, (London, Penguin), p. 269.
109 Marx develops this idea most strongly in Marx, K., (1904), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
N.I. Stone (trans.), (London, International Library Publishing Company), pp. 11-12.
110 Williams, R., (1980), Problems in Materialism and Culture, (London, Verso), p. 33.
111 Plato’s discussion of the forms in the analogy of the cave in The Republic is central to this. Plato, (2007)
The Republic, H.D.P. Lee & D. Lee (trans.), (London, Penguin), book VII.
112 Marx, K. & Engels, F., (1987), The German Ideology: Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, (London,
Lawrence and Wishart).
113 This Kantian terminology would be familiar to Marx but not, naturally, Plato.
114 Perhaps the most substantive development of this approach can be found in Marx, K., (2004), Capital:
Critique of Political Economy vol. 1, B. Fowkes (trans.), (London, Penguin);
Marx, K., (2006), Capital: Critique of Political Economy vol. 2, D. Fernbach (trans.), (London, Penguin);
Marx, K., (2006), Capital: Critique of Political Economy vol. 3, D. Fernbach (trans.), (London, Penguin).
107
108
‘official’ historical materialism of Marxist-Leninist parties) 115 that Althusser sought to
develop his non-deterministic theory of Marxism. Although Althusser accepts Marx’s
critique of the philosophical idealism of legal and political theory that employs the
juridical as a frame of reference, Althusser does not accept that the economic should be
determinate ‘in the last instance’; arguing instead that ‘anything can be determinate in the
last instance (which is to say that anything can dominate).’116 Here, it is important to note
that Althusser regarded himself as ‘following in the footsteps of Marx and Engels,’
quoting Friedrich Engels who said: “one must not think that the economic situation is
cause, and solely active, whereas everything else is only passive effect.”117 An example of this
can be found in Marx’s writings on the ancient world, where the politics of Ancient
Greece and the religion of Ancient Rome displaced the mode of production as
determining Greek and Roman society in the last instance. 118 In any case, what is
important here is that Althusser overturns a dominant interpretation of the relationship
between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’ as deterministic through developing a theory of
overdetermination. The next section will explore Althusser’s theory of overdetermination
as well as its implications for the study of international politics.
Overdetermination and ‘the international’:
In order to describe social systems ‘without origin,’ thereby eradicating the problem of
economic reductionism, Althusser developed a theory of overdetermination. 119 Although
Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, in Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987,
(London, Verso), pp. 253-254.
116 Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 263.
117 Friedrich Engels, quoted in Sinclair, A., (2010), International Relations Theory and International Law: A
Critical Approach, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 73.
118 Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 263.
119 Althusser’s motivations were political as well as theoretical. As well as challenging the predominance of
dogmatic “Bolshevik Marxism” within Marxist scholarship, his writings were also a thinly-veiled attack on
the hegemonic influence of Leninist politics within the French Communist Party. His thoughts on this
subject are most elaborately elucidated in:
115
overdetermination was a concept first developed by Sigmund Freud, 120 it formed the
centerpiece of Althusser’s writing on structure and causation,121 later being adopted by
Mark Olssen (among others) to explain structure and cause in Foucault’s writings.122 The
concept of overdetermination encourages us to think of the world in terms of multiple open
causal systems. Although within any given causal mechanism, 123 every level makes a
causal contribution, the relative importance of each varies on a case-by-case basis. Both
Althusser’s theory of overdetermination (and the theory of causation employed by Foucault),
suggest that we should view social relations as complex systems 124 which cannot be
thought of in terms of either autonomous, closed systems or base-superstructure logics,
where a multifarious social field is determined by one central causal determination.
An Althusserian approach to the autonomy of the international argues neither that the
international is an autonomous sphere, nor that it can be wholly reduced to a deeper
reality. Its liminal existence between casua sui and wholly determined renders the
Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987,
(London, Verso).
120 Freud, S., (1976), The Interpretation of Dreams, (London, Harper Collins).
121 Althusser, L., (1969), ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’, in For Marx, (London, Penguin).
122 Olssen, Materialism and Education, p. 54.
It should be immediately clear that Olssen’s reading of Foucault is a particular one, not only locating
Foucault as a materialist, but also attributing to Foucault a form of causal theory. Whilst most Foucauldian
theorists argue that Foucault is explicitly not a causal theorist, Olssen contends that this assertion can only
be maintained if we operate within the classical definition of causation as efficient cause. By way of
contrast, materialist thought (including Olssen’s reading of Foucault) allows us to pose the ‘problem’ of
causation in a way that utilizes contemporary complexity science (and the concept of cause implicit in this)
as the basis for a new approach to causation in a similar way that classical conceptions of causation
were/are undergirded by the mechanistic physics of Newtonian science.
123 To adopt a term (if not necessarily its full meaning) borrowed from Bhaskar, R., (1979), A Realist Theory
of Science, (London, Verso).
124 Broadly defined, a complex system is one for which system-level ‘behaviour’ cannot be predicted
through the study of its parts. In recent times, interest in complex social systems- developed through
Foucauldian and Althusserian theory as well as rooted in other social theoretical foundations- has caused a
considerable ‘overlap’ between social theory and science. Fractal geometry, non-Eucilidean geometry and
chaos theory have all garnered attention from social theorists seeking to think of social social systems as
complex entities.
See for example Delanda, M., (2006), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity,
(London, Continuum).
Borch, C., (2011), Niklas Luhmann, (London, Routledge).
Protevi, J., (2009), Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic, (Minneapolis, Minnesota University
Press), particularly part 1: ‘A Concept of Bodies Politic’.
Urry, J., (2002), Global Complexity, (London, Polity).
international a set of social relations without origin. Overdetermination describes social
spheres or sites of action (such as ‘the international’) as supervenient upon other spheres,
albeit in such a way that it can neither be reduced to any of them, nor treated as an
autonomous sphere for analytical purposes. In Althusser’s terms, this is the hallmark of a
materialist philosophy; in setting aside the question of origin and the problem of
foundation, materialist philosophy asks not about the origin, meaning or telos of the
international, but simply about its performance.125
The international is not simply the product of one logic (Westphalia)- be it competing
sovereignties or capital- but the result of multiple logics. In this regard, the type of
international system that might be envisaged through Althusser is distinctly nonWestphalian. The Westphalian system is but one encounter amide a series of encounters
that comprise the multitextured space of international politics. What is more, the
relationship between these causes and ‘the international’ is inherently non-linear: it is not
clear which of these are sufficient and which of these are necessary to produce the
modern international political system. All social relations are, ultimately, contingent. The
aleatory encounters that forms the basis of the international could always be other than
they are. This is not simply to suggest that everything is wholly indeterminate. Rather,
global politics is both determined and indetermined; neither wholly subject to
deterministic laws, nor wholly indeterminate. Philosophically, this is the difference
between complete indeterminacy and what is called hyperchaos.126 Whilst the international
is not without foundation, its foundations are loose and there is a considerable degree of
‘play’ between the international system and its constituent parts.
125
126
Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 273.
Meillassoux, Q., After Finitude, p. 53, 57-60, 63-64, 73-75.
The implication of this is that the site at which the international is performed is- at basea negativity or absence of being which makes possible the freedom to be otherwise.
However, this freedom to be otherwise is not limited to relations between states.
Althusser’s conception of interlocking, overlapping overdetermined social systems means
that political change is non-linear, with changes at one level of human activity impacting
on others. This form of causation not only means that ‘lower levels’ can cause change at
ontologically higher levels, but also that change at higher levels can impact on those
below it. 127 For example, changes in diplomatic practices in the early modern period
played a role in bringing the modern state into being and the rise of the absolutist state
acted as a condition of possibility for the onset of European capitalism. Likewise, in
contemporary context, the performance of international financial markets impacts on the
micropolitics of local communities as the global economy goes through a period of
recession. Although many scientists and environmental campaigners have been deeply
critical of the efforts of the UNFCC to deal with the causes and consequences of
anthropogenic climate change, international agreements have had an impact on the way
in which business, industry and citizens interact with their environment. Working in the
other direction, from ‘macro’ to ‘micro’, we see the everyday performance of stock
traders comprising the overall ‘market.’ Similarly, the emerging practice of capital
accumulation in 17th Century England was responsible for the development of the
capitalist mode of production128- a set of practices which ultimately changed the face of
the international system. 129 In contemporary context, this suggests that it is not
Where the term ontologically higher is used, this refers only to scale. Althusser’s ontology is a ‘flat’
ontology insofar as no sphere of human activity is considered a priori to be supervenient on another. For
more on flat ontologies, see Bryant, L.R., (2011, forthcoming), The Democracy of Objects, (Melbourne,
Re:press).
128 Although this is contestable, this is where Marx allocates the emergence of the capitalist mode of
production. Marx, K., (1867), ‘Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation’, in Capital, S. Moore & E. Aveling
(trans.), (Available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/), (accessed on:
03/05/2011).
129 See for example Benno Teschke’s analysis of the origin of the modern international system. It is
simultaneously the product of the sovereign authority of early modern absolutist government combined
127
immediately obvious where- or indeed when- the next major transformation in
international politics will arrive.
The twofold emphasis on practice (or encounter) and overdetermination gets to the heart
of the materialist ‘challenge’ to Westphalian and post-Westphalian modes of politics.
Althusser’s position can ultimately be summed up as the rejection of the juridical, idealist
frame of reference that would seek to determine the institutions of the social world a
priori, replacing it with an emphasis on constitutive power and the process which make
and sustain the world we live in. To put the problematique in terms more commonly
associated with Giorgio Agamben than Louis Althusser: The central problem of a
materialist politics (in the Western tradition or otherwise) is not sovereignty, but
government.130 To the extent that Althusser subscribes to this doctrine, it is hard to find
a better summary of the contribution of 20th Century materialist philosophy to
International Relations Theory than this.
Conclusion:
For most IR theory, Westphalia marks the ‘mythic origin’ of the modern international
system. Although there are clear historical inaccuracies in the Westphalian account,131 it
persists as a legitimating myth of the discipline because its significance is not historical,
but as a condition of possibility for modern International Relations. This paper has
with the revolution in the mode of production that was the emergence of capitalism in 17 th Century
England.
Teschke, B., (2002), ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from
Absolutism to Capitalism’, European Journal of International Relations 8(5), pp. 5-48.
130 Agamben, G., (2011), ‘Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy’, in G. Agamben et al. (eds.),
Democracy in What State?, W. McCuaig (trans.), (New York, Columbia University Press), p. 4.
131 See for example Teschke, The Myth of 1648.
Osiander, A., (2001), ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and the Westphalian Myth’, International
Organisation 55(2), pp. 251-287.
sought to challenge the temporality of this account on theoretical and political grounds,
proposing that we understand Westphalia not as a transition that international relations
has already gone through, but as a contingent encounter that is continually performed
and it is continually undergoing. The assumption of periodization and the location of
points of origin- such as the move from the pre-modern to the modern- unduly
naturalises contemporary political practices, making them the ineradicable horizon of
modern international politics. In re-casting the problem of modernity not in terms of the
transition from one era to another, but as a transition in practices/ways that political
authority is founded, two corollaries immediately jump out. The first is that we are to
think about political (sovereign) authority not as something that has historical foundation,
but as something that is continually and perpetually re-founded. If this is the case, the
institution of the authority of positive law, and the authorities that undergird the modern
international system, is not an historical event, but an on-going process. The second
implication of this is that the potential of a politics beyond Westphalia should not be
understood as a move beyond ‘Westphalia,’ but a re-engagement with the foundations of
‘Westphalian order.’ To paraphrase Andreas Osiander, we cannot move ‘beyond
Westphalia’ if ‘Westphalia’ is simply a particular way of articulating claims about political
authority and international order. 132 It is these foundational concepts that we must
address when engaging with questions about the transformation of political community,
be it the emergence of modern international relations or any move beyond ‘the
international.’ Similarly, an International Relations looking to escape its statist, nationalist
foundations and seeking to address questions about the spatial organization of the world,
must also ask questions about time and the way that certain types of political authority
and particular forms of knowledge claims about international politics are founded
through temporal claims about the nature of modernity. To the extent that ‘Westphalia’132
Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and the Westphalian Myth’, p. 284.
as a way of founding claims about legitimate political authority- marked the beginning of
international relations, it marks the continued operation of the modern international
system and will also mark its end.