Waltz's theory of theory

International Relations

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 201-222

  Wæver, Ole ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

International relations theory; Kenneth N. Waltz; Models; Neorealism; Philosophy of science; Positivism; Semantic view; Theories of theory; Theory

Indexed keywords

EID: 69249171989     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117809104635     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. Elizabeth Pond and Kenneth N. Waltz, Correspondence: International Politics, Viewed from the Ground, International Security, 19(1), 1994, pp. 195-9, citing from p. 198.
2. Kenneth N. Waltz, Kenneth N. Waltz [a presentation of the ten works that shaped Waltz's intellectual development - henceforth referred to as 'Ten Works'], Politik, 7(4), December 2004, pp. 93-105, citing from p. 103. This special issue '10×10', with ten leading social scientists presenting each the ten works influencing their thinking, has been republished as Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Ole Dahl Rasmussen and Ole Wæver (eds), 10×10 (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007).
3. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).
4. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979).
5. Kenneth N. Waltz, The Validation of International-Political Theory, Security Studies, 6(1), 1996, pp. 54-7
6. Kenneth N. Waltz, Evaluating Theories, American Political Science Review, 91(4), 1997, pp. 913-17
7. Kenneth N. Waltz, Thoughts about Assaying Theories, in Colin Elman and Miriam Fendus Elman (eds), Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the Field (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2003), pp. vii-xii
8. Kenneth N. Waltz, Neorealism: Confusions and Criticisms, Journal of Politics and Society, XV, 2004, pp. 2-6.
9. Kenneth N. Waltz, Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to my Critics, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 322-45.
10. Kenneth N. Waltz, Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory, Journal of International Affairs, 44(1), 1990, pp. 21-37; quoting from p. 26.
11. Waltz, Ten Works, p. 103.
12. Ole Wæver, The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 149-85.
13. To borrow the title of the key book edited by Frederick Suppe, The Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd edn (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1977).
14. Wæver, Rise and Fall
15. James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, Rationalism vs. Constructivism? A Sceptical View, in Walter Carlsnaes et al. (eds), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2001), pp. 52-72.
16. Note the launching in March 2009 of the new journal International Theory.
17. Wendt specifies two levels: second-order social theory and first-order theory of international relations. He conceptualises social theory so broadly as to include all second-order theory: ontology, epistemology and method. More usefully, we could distinguish issues ultimately about the ontology of the social (taking along connected epistemological and methodological issues). Separate are many questions of philosophy of science that are not answered by arguments about the ontology of society.
18. See especially Elman and Elman, Progress in International Relations Theory.
19. Some might see philosophy of science covered through the general 'fourth debate' struggle between rationalism and refl ectivism, where the word 'positivist' has been bandied about habitually (and often in connection with Waltz). Yes, refl ectivists often fell into the mainstream trap of debating at the level of epistemology. However, the interesting part of the fourth debate was in terms of ontology, social theory and philosophical-political-ethical questions. When conducted as an epistemological debate between 'positivists' and 'constructivists', it has usually been unbearably trivial.
20. A detailed discussion of these four interpretations was in the original version of this article presented at the Aberystwyth conference and will reappear in extended form on the internet.
21. Of course, the term 'positivism' is used in numerous ways. In some usages of the term it covers Waltz (and in some it covers almost everybody).
22. Pond and Waltz, Correspondence, pp. 195-9.
23. Hans Mouritzen, Kenneth Waltz: A Critical Rationalist between International Politics and Foreign Policy, in Iver B. Neumann and Ole Wæver (eds), The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 66-89.
24. Charles A. Jones, III. Rethinking the Methodology of Realism, in Barry Buzan, Charles A. Jones and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
25. Wendt wrote in The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory, International Organization, 41(3), note 35: Neorealists might be seen as scientific realists to the extent that they believe that state interests or utilities are real but unobservable mechanisms which generate state behaviour. This is a rather odd place in the theory to identify scientifi c realist features, when the obvious focus would be the structure that Waltz endows with power to 'shape and shove'. Most scientifi c realists have disowned Waltz, Fred Chernoff seeing him as 'thoroughgoing anti-SR'.
26. See Fred Chernoff, Scientific Realism as a Meta-Theory of International Politics, International Studies Quarterly, 46(2), 2002, pp. 189-207.
27. The scientific realists will - and should - insist that their difference with Waltz is fundamental. The scientific realist says that only by explicitly taking the starting point that science is the uncovering of causal laws, rooted in the generative mechanisms of things, will productive research ensue. However, this demands yet another case of placing basic starting assumptions in the realm of logic, intuition or other forms of a priori assumptions, i.e. independently of the actual scientifi c practice. Communicatively, the discipline gains from a more inclusive formulation over a route that demands a quasi-religious conversion to a particular denomination.
28. Waltz, Ten Works, p. 103.
29. Harry Kreisler, Theory and International Politics: Conversation with Kenneth N. Waltz, 10 February 2003, available at: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Waltz/ (webcast, podcast and text versions) (accessed 19 March 2009).
30. Waltz characterises neorealism as the basic theory of international relations (Structural Realism after the Cold War, p. 41). In an exchange with Keohane, Waltz remarks on the two most prominent alternative theories, liberal institutionalism and constructivism, that one is really a branch of his theory, and that the other is not a theory at all.
31. For these four criteria - that roughly lead to similar results - see respectively Ole Wæver, Still a Discipline after all these Debates? in Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (eds) IR Theories: Discipline and Diversity? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 288-308
32. Thomas J.Biersteker, The Parochialism of Hegemony: Challenges for "American" International Relations, in Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Wæver (eds), International Relations Scholarship around the World (London: Routledge 2009), pp. 307-26
33. Richard Jordan, Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes and Susan Peterson, One Discipline or Many? 2008 TRIP Survey of International Relations Faculty in Ten Countries, Reves Center for Arts and Sciences, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, February 2009; and for the fourth criterion there is so far no solid documentation, mostly rumours and general practical/tribal knowledge.
34. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
35. Waltz, TIP, p. 5.
36. Post-positivists and scientific realists will object that Waltz's understanding of 'laws' is problematic or even positivist. (In the typical critiques of Waltz that ignore his arguments about theory, his notion of laws is emphasised to depict him as more positivist than reasonably the case.)True: Waltz presents laws in a traditional Humean sense as regularity in relations between variables: if a, then b. But this has much less importance than one should think. His main line is to downgrade the trust in laws, and upgrade the importance of theory. The link between theory and law is loosened, and his main project is radically anti-inductivist. Thus the formulations about laws are partly polemical to sharpen their contrast to theory. A serious understanding of Waltz's theory has to focus on his understanding of - theory!
37. Here scientific realists will object that Waltz unfortunately uses positivist language, even when his intention is to construct an anti-empiricist and anti-inductivist understanding of theory. The theoretical notions move away from 'sense experience'. To a realist they move closer to something at least as real: the actual forces and tendencies that drive events and form the basis of experiences. However, in relation to the advice for scientific practice, the difference in terminology matters less than scientific realists expect.
38. Waltz, TIP, p. 6.
39. Waltz, TIP, pp. 6f.
40. Waltz, TIP, p. 7.
41. Waltz, TIP, p. 8
42. cf. Waltz, Evaluating Theories, p. 913
43. and the interviews with Kreisler, Theory
44. and Ole Wæver and Ingvar Sejr Hansen, Teori, Praksis og fredelige Atomvåben (Theory, Praxis, and Peaceful Nukes), Universitetsavisen, 11 June 2005, available at: http://universitetsavisen.ku.dk/dokument9/nyhedsarkiv/2005/2005-06/050611h/. In TIP, this sentence ends with a reference '(cf. Boltzman 1905)'. It should be Boltzmann (see references in notes 38 and 39 below).
45. Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
46. Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel H. Nexon, Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics, European Journal of International Relations, 11(1), 2005, pp. 9-61.
47. Waltz, TIP, p. 9
48. Cf. Roy Bhaskar: Science is work that requires creative intelligence, and there can be no mechanical surrogate for that. The idea of an automatic science is a will-o'-the-wisp that the philosophy of science has pursued, with damaging consequences, since Bacon's search for a 'sure and certain method': Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978), p. 168
49. Waltz, Ten Works, p. 103.
50. Ludwig Boltzmann, On the Significance of Theories (1890), in L. Boltzmann Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems: Selected Writings (Reidel: Dordrecht, 1974), pp. 33-6, quotation from p. 33.
51. Henk W. de Regt, Ludwig Boltzmann's Bildtheorie and Scientific Understanding, Synthese, 119(1-2), 1999, pp. 113-34 (and other articles in this special issue of Synthese).
52. See also Carlo Cercignani, Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man who Trusted Atoms (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1998).
53. Frederick Suppe, The Search for Philosophical Understanding of Scientific Theories, in Suppe,The Structure of Scientific Theories, pp. 1-241, and Afterword - 1977 in 2nd edn, pp. 615-730.
54. Patrick Suppes, A Comparison of the Meaning and Uses of Models in Mathematics and the Empirical Sciences, Synthese 12, 1960, pp. 287-301
55. Frederick Suppe, The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific Realism (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1989)
56. Frederick Suppe, Scientific Theories, in Donald Brochert (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement (New York: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 521-4
57. Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980) and Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
58. Ronald N. Giere, Scientific Perspectivism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 97.
59. Giere, Scientific Perspectivism, p. 119.
60. Cf. Suppe, The Structure, p. 522.
61. Giere, Scientific Perspectivism, p. 123.
62. While such definitions are usually - especially from those who use the wide conception of theory - implied but not spelled out, laudably clear presentations can be found in Barry Buzan, From International to World Society?: English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 24-6
63. Gunther Hellmann, Klaus Dieter Wolf and Michael Zürn (eds), Die neuen Internationalen Beziehungen: Forschungsstand und Perspektiven in Deutschland (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003).
64. Giere, Perspectivism, p. 61
65. Giere, Science, pp. 84-96
66. Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 43-59.
67. Cartwright, The Dappled World.
68. Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison (eds), Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
69. Waltz, TIP, p. 13.
70. Wæver and Ingvar Hansen, Teori, Praksis og fredelige Atomvåben. The present quote is taken directly from the recording of the interview (00:37:44-00:39:00).
71. Waltz, TIP, p. 9.
72. Systematic effects of variation in domestic political structure is demonstrated in Kenneth N.Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967) - although not using much of the structuralist terminology of the later 1979 book.K.N.
73. Waltz, TIP, pp. 81-4.
74. John Ruggie, Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis, World Politics, 35(2), 1983, p. 266.
75. Ruggie therefore denotes the first 'deep structure', and Buzan et al. proceed to subdivide the 'structural level' into 'deep structure' and 'distributional structure' and talk about 'tiers' of structure (Logic, Fig 4.2 on p. 79).
76. Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 190.
77. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 30-1.
78. Waltz, TIP, p. 82.
79. Waltz, TIP, pp. 91, 118.
80. Waltz, TIP, pp. 117, cf. p. 10.
81. Waltz, TIP, p. 121.
82. Mearsheimer's article in this issue ('Reckless States and Realism') illustrates this contrast very accurately
83. The extended version of this article discusses TIP's two diagrams as well as a graphic depiction of Waltz's structure that I have previously developed - and why none of these answer the demand.
84. Waltz, Reflections, p. 329.
85. Waltz, TIP, pp. 7-8, 13-17, 123-8.
86. Waltz, TIP, p. 123.
87. Waltz, Neorealism, p. 3. Except for the first sentence,the same passage is found on p. 56 in International Politics Is Not Foreign Policy, Security Studies, 6 (1996), pp. 54-7.
88. Waltz, Neorealism, p. 4.
89. Interview by Wæver and Hansen, Teori, Praksis (recording 00:29:10-00:30:23); cf. also International Politics Is Not Foreign Policy, p. 56.
90. Waltz, Neorealism, p. 6. Here, Waltz therefore refuses the identification of himself as 'defensive realist', and tries to have his own theory placed as prior to this divide - a divide that strictly runs not between two theories, but between different applications of one theory.
91. Waltz, Neorealism, p. 2; International Politics Is Not Foreign Policy, p. 57.
92. Waltz, Evaluating Theories, p. 916.
93. Cf. Mearsheimer, Tragedy.
94. Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp 1-216
95. Gideon Rose, Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy, World Politics, 51(1), 1998, pp. 144-72
96. Brian Rathbun, A Rose by Any Other Name: Neoclassical Realism as the Logical and Necessary Extension of Structural Realism, Security Studies, 17(2), 2008, pp. 294-321
97. Colin Elman, Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist Theories of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, 6(1), 1996, pp. 7-53.
98. Keohane, Neorealism and its Critics.
99. Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 6.
100. The most serious problem from TIP (chapter 4) is that variables at the unit level will not have constant effects - under different structural conditions, the same will be different. At first, it seems plausible and defensible to add a domestic level, because TIP is explicit about structures only constituting pressures and possibilities, whereas the actual reaction of states depends on various other factors. (Structure has to be studied in its own right as do units, TIP, p. 78.) So why not add a theory for that next step? Because it is not in accordance with the conception of structural theory. These are not variables to tally, they are levels interacting in a more complicated manner.
101. In Lakatosian terms, this is obviously a case of avoiding 'naive falsificationism' and instead using seeming anomalies for further theory development. However, despite having written about the relationship between Lakatos and neoclassical realism (Randall L. Schweller, 'The Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism, in Elman and Elman, Progress, pp. 31-48), in Unanswered Threats Schweller does not even consider the possibility that structural realism as such could be under pressure.
102. These days mainstream IR seems to be moving towards middle-range theory, developing ad hoc explanatory models for specific purposes (and calling them a theory). Only it happens in slightly different ways for (post-)neorealists and others. Non-neorealists generally make specific theories for an isolated question, implicitly assuming that the background system is 'passive'. The descendants of Waltz, in contrast, retain an understanding of an 'active' system, but thereby they get both a systemic and a unit level theory - with advantages and the added challenge of how to relate the two.
103. E.g. Stephen van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (New York: Cornell University Press, 1997), especially pp. 7-9.
104. Ole Wæver, Figures of International Thought: Introducing Persons instead of Paradigms, in Neumann and Wæver, Masters in the Making, pp. 1-38
105. Wæver, Rise and Fall
106. Ole Wæver, Still a Discipline after all these Debates? in Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (eds), IR Theories: Discipline and Diversity? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 288-308.
107. Richard K. Ashley, The Poverty of Neorealism, in Keohane, Neorealism and its Critics, pp. 255-300.
108. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics,1: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
109. Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998).
110. Waltz, Evaluating Theories, p. 913.
111. Cf. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
112. Ole Wæver, The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline, International Organization, 52(4), 2005, pp. 687-727.
113. In the 1980s-90s the mainstream did not use Waltz's kind of theory, or correlation logic, but rational choice modelling - a way to partly accommodate and still stay more positivist than Waltz. Even this is now increasingly replaced (again) by large-n data studies and middle-range theory, a further decline of theory. The place of theorists of all stripes is in mainstream journals and departments.
114. Fearon and Wendt, Rationalism vs. Constructivism.
115. Waltz, Introduction in Realism and International Politics (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. vii-xiv; quoting from p. vii.