Wendt: Anarchy is What States Make of It

Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46:391-425.

Claims that debates in IR have been focused heavily on whether or not anarchy is amenable to change. Is it an overarching structure whose influence remains static? Or, is it a process variable that takes different forms at different space/time points?

This debate has been largely between neorealists and neoliberals, who are both rationalists. These theories, as with all theories, allow for the asking of certain questions and obscure other questions. Rationalist theories treat identities and interests as imposed from the outside, as exogenous, as opposed to developing internally to the theory itself. Therefore, questions of identity and interest formation are not of interest to rationalists.

Liberals have taken issue with the Realist formulation of state behavior in anarchy, where structure is privileged and process is treated secondarily. “’Strong’ liberals should be troubled by the dichotomous privileging of structure over process, since transformations of identity and interest through process are transformations of structure” (393).

Argues for making interest and identities the dependent variable in the analysis. Does this by looking at anarchy as a structural force. “I argue that self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally from anarchy and that if today we find ourselves in a self-help world, this is due to process, not structure” (394). “…structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process” (395).

Argues that the treatment of interests and identities as exogenous variables is not instrumentally very useful. It does not tell us whether or not states will respect each others sovereignty, etc. Also, there are different results from the same sort of material capacity change, US military power is different for Vietnam than it is for Spain, for example. Also, agents taken on a variety of different identities at any one given point. Also, “Identities are the basis of interests” (398).

“Self-help is an institution, one of various structures of identity and interest that may exist under anarchy. Processes of identity-formation under anarchy are concerned first and foremost with preservation or ‘security’ of the self. Concepts of security therefore differ in the extent to which and the manner in which the self is identified cognitively with the other, and, I want to suggest, it is upon this cognitive variation that the meaning of anarchy and the distribution of power depends” (399-400). Then compares competitive, individualistic and cooperative international systems that could all emerge in relation to the institution of self-help anarchy.

So, what is left if we remove any vestige of assumptions about the interaction of states in anarchy? Wendt proposes two things: firstly, there is the structure of the state, the governing institution. Secondly, there is a desire to survive. These do not logically proceed to a self-help system of relative gains.

Waltz claims that structure conditions and socializes. “As James Morrow points out, Waltz’s two mechanisms condition behavior, not identity and interest. This explains how Waltz can be accused of both ‘individualism’ and ‘structuralism.’ He is the former with respect to systemic constitutions of identity and interest, the later with respect to systemic determinations of behavior” (403).

Wendt then explores what would happen if two actors with the above characteristics would meet for the first time. Would they necessarily attack one another out of their own desire for relative power gains? He explores this partially through a hypothetical encounter between us and aliens. If an outside being came and destroyed a major city, that would illicit a certain kind of response. If an outside power came with gifts, that would illicit a different kind of response. This takes place by one group signaling intentions to another group. “This process of signaling, interpreting, and responding completes a ‘social act’ and begins the process of creating intersubjective meanings” (406).

Social configuration are not ‘objective’ like mountains or forests, but neither are they ‘subjective’ like dreams or flights of speculative fancy. They are, as most social scientists concede at the theoretical level, intersubjective constructions” (406).

A more persuasive argument would be one about there only being one predatory state in the international system. This state would signal to other states that it is out to destroy these states. This would cause other states to possibly respond as if some of the neorealist assumptions were correct. However, this is not a structural explanation of the formation of conflictual relations internationally. This is a unit-level explanation. Also, if there is a world of war of all against all that is socially constructed, that does not also infer that it is easy to change.

“For both systemic and ‘psychological’ reasons, then, intersubjective understandings and expectations may have a self-perpetuating quality, constituting path-dependencies that new ideas about self and other must transcend” (412).

Wendt then provides three examples of, “…three institutional transformations of identity and security interest through which states might escape a Hobbesian world of their own making” (412).

Sovereignty provides a socially constructed institution that provides a framework for state interaction. Sovereigns always must have a counter, an opposite, that recognizes them as sovereign. There are rights and responsibilities coffered upon those who are sovereign. “Sovereignty norms are now so taken for granted, so natural, that it is easy to overlook the extent to which they are both presupposed by and an ongoing artifact of practice” (413).

Cooperation is another field in that the Hobbsian would can be supervened. In a one-iteration Prisoner’s Dilemma game, the incentive is to defect. However, in a game with multiple iterations and a clearly established shadow of the future, cooperative regimes can be established. “A constructivist analysis of cooperation…would concentrate on how the expectations produced by behavior affect identities and interests” (417).