Transforming political community: A response to the critics

Review of International Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 165-175

  Linklater, Andrew ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0033478352     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210599001655     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. Whereas Waltz set out to explain constancies across whole millennia, Schweller focuses on patterns in the 'current epoch of world polities' which begins with the Westphalian settlement of 1648.
2. See Ken Booth, 'Discussion: A Reply to Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 371-7 and Steve Smith, 'Power and Truth: A Reply to William Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 507-16. Their comments were provoked by William Wallace, 'Truth and Power, Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations', Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 301-21. The question which Smith asks of Wallace can just as easily be asked of Schweller: why is it that the academic's 'responsibility to the state' is deemed greater than the 'responsibility to civil society?'. See Smith, p. 510.
3. See Ken Booth, 'Discussion: A Reply to Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 371-7 and Steve Smith, 'Power and Truth: A Reply to William Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 507-16. Their comments were provoked by William Wallace, 'Truth and Power, Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations', Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 301-21. The question which Smith asks of Wallace can just as easily be asked of Schweller: why is it that the academic's 'responsibility to the state' is deemed greater than the 'responsibility to civil society?'. See Smith, p. 510.
4. See Ken Booth, 'Discussion: A Reply to Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 371-7 and Steve Smith, 'Power and Truth: A Reply to William Wallace', Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 507-16. Their comments were provoked by William Wallace, 'Truth and Power, Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations', Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 301-21. The question which Smith asks of Wallace can just as easily be asked of Schweller: why is it that the academic's 'responsibility to the state' is deemed greater than the 'responsibility to civil society?'. See Smith, p. 510.
5. See John Ruggie, 'Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity', World Politics, 35 (1983), pp. 261-85. Schweller rebukes me for stating that for neo-realism 'internal forces have no effect on the behaviour of states', but this is carelessness on his part as the following indicates: 'Neo-realism does not argue that states are powerless to affect the functioning of the international system but it denies that theory can comment with any precision about any recurrent patterns of behaviour which arise from their limited autonomy and discretion' (Linklater, Transformation, p. 18).
6. My point is not that neo-realism conspires in this way and is part of a totalising project which reached its high point with the totalitarian states of this century but that the neo-realist critique of reformist projects effectively 'submits to the consequences of the totalising project' by failing to theorise the nature of, and prospects for, new forms of political community. See Linklater, Transformation, p. 27.
7. On this point, see Kenneth N. Waltz, 'Realist Thought and Neo-Realist Theory', Journal of International Affairs, 44 (1990), pp. 21-38.
8. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1994), p. 77 and p. 80.
9. For Walker's earlier position on this relationship, see his 'History and Structure in the Theory of International Relations', Millennium, 18 (1989), pp. 163-83.
10. I reject the antithesis here on the grounds that humanitarian aid without dialogue with the suffering has its own problems.
11. However, religious groups can be universalistic and deeply exclusionary at the same time, as I noted in my comments on Nelson's sociology of civilisations. See Linklater, Transformation, pp. 123ff.
12. T. Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York, 1992).
13. There are parallels here with Elshtain's argument that desperate human beings require immediate assistance rather than the promise of membership of a universal communication community, even though this aid may be no more than an exercise in 'wound-binding'.
14. Kymlicka regards decisions to deny the members of the dominant culture the right to buy property or vote in elections within indigenous territories as essential for the survival of first peoples. See his Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford, 1989).
15. On this subject, see the astute comments by Nicholas J. Rengger in his review of my book in International Affairs, 74 (1998), pp. 631-2.