Abstract
This article argues that neoclassical realism (NCR), though it presents one of the most intuitively attractive frameworks for understanding states’ actions, continues to struggle with a central conceptual tension. Some have argued that NCR is compatible with a structural realist approach, even that it is a ‘logical extension’ of it. Yet in seeking to identify law-like patterns of state behaviour arising from the varied features of states themselves, NCR appears to breach the outer limits of what Kenneth Waltz, the founding father of structural International Relations theory, thought tolerable in a theory of international politics. Thus, NCR arguably faces a fork in the road as to its future agenda and theoretical identity: should it limit itself essentially to chronicling anomalous occurrences within a fundamentally Waltzian paradigm, or try to map new rules of state behaviour on a scale that ultimately calls the primacy of Waltz's ‘systemic imperatives’ into question?
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Notes
Different labels, perhaps implying slightly varying conceptual taxonomy, have also been used. Schmidt (2005), for example, opts for ‘modified realism’ to capture the attempt to fuse the concerns of structural and classical paradigms.
This focus on ideas has potential, if one were so disposed, to overlap with the constructivist agenda, which some have argued need not be identified as thoroughly as it has tended to be with liberal-idealist approaches (Sterling-Folker, 2002; Barkin, 2003).
My account of Waltz's theory is drawn from close reading of Theory of International Politics (Waltz, 2010), supplemented by a collection of his articles Waltz (2008b) that expand and emphasise his thinking on some of the points discussed. Of particular relevance here is his article ‘Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory’ (Waltz, 2008a) in which he underlines his view that realism such as Morgenthau's amounts to a pre-theoretical ‘approach’ to the topic rather than a true ‘theory’. The best-known critiques of Waltz are summarised in Robert O. Keohane (1986).
Though in counterpoint, Walter Russell Mead argues that the United States has actually been well served by its own foreign policy traditions, whereas those European nations steeped in realist ideas have been rather less successful (Mead, 2002).
Peter Feaver touches on these questions in his response to Legro and Moravcsik's assault on realism, wherein he makes it clear that realism is defined as much by its convictions about actions’ consequences as by those about the causal source of action (Correspondence, 2000). He is not entirely clear on the question raised here, however, which is whether states must correct course or be overtaken in line with the Waltzian theory of punishment and selection in order for realism to be shown to be correct, or if it is possible for them to proceed indefinitely in error.
This is a point on which I have had valuable discussion with Felix Berenskoetter, and it is touched upon in, though not the central theme of Berenskoetter and Quinn (2012).
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The author would like to thank David Norman for research assistance during the preparation of the article.
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Quinn, A. Kenneth Waltz, Adam Smith and the Limits of Science: Hard choices for neoclassical realism. Int Polit 50, 159–182 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.5