Wendt: Agent-Structure Problem in IR

Wendt, Alexander. 1987. “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory.” International Organization 41:335-370.

Neorealism and World System Theory (WST) both claim to provide structural accounts of IR. Both have a different understanding of system structure. “Neorealists define international system structures in terms of the observable attributes of their member states…, and as a result, they understand the explanatory role of those structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state actors” (335). “World-system theorists, on the other hand, define international system structures in terms of the fundamental organizing principles of the capitalist world economy which underlie and constitute states, and thus they understand the explanatory role of structures in structuralist terms as generating state actors themselves” (335).

These theories could be critiqued from a number of perspectives, but Wendt chooses to explore the ontological critique: “…neorealism embodies an individualist ontology, while world-system theory embodies a holistic one” (336). “A useful way to capture the nature and implications of this difference is to evaluate the two theories in terms of their underlying assumptions about the relationship of system structures to human agents (336).

“All social scientific theories embody an at least implicit solution to the ‘agent-structure problem,’ which situates agents and social structures in relation to one another” (337).

The Agent-Structure Problem:

“The agent-structure problem has its origins in two truisms about social life which underlie most social scientific inquiry: 1) human beings and their organizations are purposeful actors whose actions help reproduce or transform the society in which they live; and 2) society is made up of social relationships, which structure the interactions between these purposeful actors” (337-8).

Agent and structure are interdependent, co-constitutive, etc.

There are two issues involved in this debate, one is ontological and the other epistemological. The ontological issues, “…concerns the nature of both agents and structures and, because they are in some way mutually implicating, of their interrelationship” (339). There are three possible responses to the “ontological problem”: individualism, structuralism, and structurationism (339). Neorealists and WST theorists embrace the first two solutions. “The structurationist approach, on the other hand, tries to avoid what I shall argue are the negative consequences of individualism and structuralism by giving agents and structures equal ontological status” (339).

The answer to the ontological issue drives the scientists’ answer to the epistemological problem. “This problem actually raises two epistemological issues. The first is the choice of the form of explanation corresponding respectively to agents and structures…On the other hand, approaches that conceive of human beings as nothing more than complex organisms processing stimuli—such as behaviorism—generate agent-explanations that are more mechanistically causal in form” (339-40).

Reductionism and Reification in International Relations Theory:

Wendt compares neorealism and WST in their conception of structuralism, as well as showing that their approaches are similar and that, “…precludes an explanation of the essential properties of their respective primitive units” (340).

Thorough critique of the nature of neorealist conceptions of international structure affecting its atomized, individualist state without the deployment of a theory of the state.

WST: “Without a recognition of the ontological dependence of system structures on state and class agents, Wallerstein is forced into an explanation of that transition in terms of exogenous shocks and the teleological imperatives of an immanent capitalist mode of production” (348).

“World-system theorists, then, like neorealistis, treat their primitive units, in this case the structure of world system, as given and unprobmeatic. This treatment leads them to separate the operation of system structures from the activities of state and class agents—in other words, to reify system structures in a way which leads to static and even functional explanations of state action” (348).

“I have…attempted to show that…neorealism and world-system theory share a common, underlying approach to the agent-structure problem: they both attempt to make either agents or structures into primitive units, which leaves each equally unable to explain the properties of those units, and therefore to justify its theoretically and explanatory claims about state action” (349).

The implication of all of this is the following: theories need to start somewhere, they need to begin with either agents or structures, but they also need to have a theory for why they begin where they begin. Theories can have “primitive units”, but they should also explain that they are not ontologically prior or from God.

Alternative Approach to the Agent-Structure Problem:

“Structuration theory is a relational solution to the agent-structure problem that conceptualizes agents and structures as mutually constituted or codetermined entities” (350).

Digresses to the debate between rationalists and empiricists.

Implications: “First, scientific realism attempts to make sense of what practicing natural and social scientists in fact do, rather than prescribing on the legitimacy of certain research practices versus others…in contrast to empiricism, scientific realism can make scientific sense of unobservable generative structures, of structures that are irreducible to and generate their elements…Finally, although there are important problems in translating the protocols and discourse of natural scientific practice directly to the social sciences…the basic realist idea that scientific explanation consists in the identification of underlying causal mechanisms rather than in generalizations about observable regularities does apply to the social sciences, and its adoption there would have important implications for the explanation of social action” (354-5).

“Structuraiton theory attempts to preserve the generative and relational aspects of structuralism while taking explicit conceptual and methodological steps to prevent the analytical separation of generative structures fro the self-understandings and practices of human agents to prevent structural reification” (355). It is analytical, and not substantive, about the, “analysis rather than the substance of the social world” (355).

Core of the program: accept unobservable social structures as generative; stress human intentionality and motivation; there is a unification of agents and structures in a “dialectical synthesis”; social and space/time structures are different (356).

Agents and structures can not be seen or determined independently.