Daniel H. Nexon

Relations Before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics

In recent years, paradigmatic debates in International Relations (IR) have focused on questions of epistemology and methodology. While important in their own right, these differences have obscured the basic divide in the discipline between substantialism, which takes entities as primitives, and relationalism, which takes processes of social transaction as the basic building blocks of theory. We argue that while both approaches can be fruitful, theories of processes and relations are better suited to address certain questions, most notably those involving change in global politics. Drawing on work in International Relations, sociology and philosophy, we examine what such theories entail and discuss areas of research for which they are especially suited.

What's at Stake in the American Empire Debate

Scholars of world politics enjoy well-developed theories of the consequences of unipolarity or hegemony, but have little to say about what happens when a states foreign relations take on imperial properties. Empires, we argue, are characterized by rule through intermediaries and the existence of distinctive contractual relations between cores and their peripheries. These features endow them with a distinctive network-structure from those associated with unipolar and hegemonic orders. The existence of imperial relations alters the dynamics of international politics: processes of divide and rule supplant the balance-of-power mechanism; the major axis of relations shift from interstate to those among imperial authorities, local intermediaries, and other peripheral actors; and preeminent powers face special problems of legitimating their bargains across heterogeneous audiences. We conclude with some observations about the American empire debate, including that the United States is, overall, less of an imperial power than it was during the Cold War.

Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics

Constructivists attack the social theory of Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (TIP), arguing its positions on change, agent-structure interaction and culture are irrevocably flawed. We argue that many of these criticisms are mispecified, as they overlook the structural-functionalist assumptions of Waltz’s theory. Seen in this light, structural realism specifies mechanisms of change, provides a plausible account of agent-structure interaction; and is less ‘materialist’ and ‘rationalist’ than its critics suppose. Most fundamentally, recognizing Waltz’s sociological commitments reinforces his insight that reductionist theories cannot account for international order. An appreciation of TIP’s structural-functionalist sensibilities also helps us to understand the flaws of the theory, and provides constructivists with a clearer departure point for a reformulated systems theory of international politics.

The Balance of Power in the Balance

This article reviews four recent books on balancing and the balance of power. Both in isolation and when taken together, they provide strong analytical and empirical warrants against the proposition that balance of power equilibria represent the “normal condition” or “natural tendency” of international relations. They also reflect the growing dissensus among realists concerning how to conceptualize and operationalize the key concept of “balancing.” The author argues that their analysis implies a tripartite distinction between balance of power theory, theories of power balances, and theories of balancing. Recognizing this distinction undermines many objections to expanding the concept of balancing to include “nontraditional” variants, but it also helps elucidate why we should eschew describing nontraditional balancing through the language of hard and soft balancing. Even a more expansive conception of balancing, however, fails to insulate balance of power theory against mounting disconfirming evidence. While one might be able to salvage a “weak” variant of balance of power theory, realists are probably better off adopting a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to power-political competition. The entire field would benefit from treating “balancing” and the “balance of power” as objects of inquiry in their own right, rather than as the province of realist theory.

International theory in a post-paradigmatic era: From substantive wagers to scientific ontologies:

Concerns about the end of International Relations theory pivot around at least three different issues: the fading of the ‘paradigm wars’ associated with the 1990s and early 2000s; the general lack of any sort of ‘great debate’ sufficient to occupy the attention of large portions of the field; and claims about the vibrancy of middle-range theorizing. None of these are terribly helpful when it comes to assessing the health of International Relations theory. We argue that international theory involves scientific ontologies of world politics: topographies of entities, processes, mechanisms, and how they relate to one another. Understood this way, the state of International Relations theory looks strong: there is arguably more out there than ever before. Ironically, this cornucopia helps explain concerns regarding the end of International Relations theory. In the absence of a ‘great debate,’ let alone ways of organizing contemporary International Relations theory, this diversity descends into cacophony. We submit that three major clusters of international theory are emerging: choice-theoretic, experience-near, and social-relational. These clusters map onto two major axes of contention: (1) the degree that actors should be treated as autonomous from their environment; and (2) the importance of thickly contextual analysis. These disputes are both field-wide and high-stakes, even if we do not always recognize them as such.

“The Empire Will Compensate You”: The Structural Dynamics of the U.S. Overseas Basing Network

Many commentators refer to the U.S. overseas network of military installations as an “empire,” yet very few have examined the theoretical and practical significance of such an analogy. This article explores the similarities and differences between the basing network and imperial systems. We argue that American basing practices and relations combine elements of liberal multilateralism with “neo-imperial” hegemony. Much, but far from all, of the network shares with ideal-typical empires a hub-and-spoke system of unequal relations among the United States and its base-host country “peripheries.” But Washington rarely exercises rule over host-country leaders and their constituents. Historical examples suggest that this combination of imperial and non-imperial elements has rendered the United States vulnerable to political cross-pressures, intermediary exits, and periodic bargaining failures when dealing with overseas base hosts. Moreover, globalizing processes, especially increasing information flows and the transnational networking of anti-base movements, further erode U.S. capacity to maintain multivocal legitimation strategies and keep the terms of its individual basing bargains isolated from one another. Case studies of the rapid contestation of the terms of the U.S. basing presence in post-Soviet Central Asia and post-2003 Iraq illustrate some of these dynamics.

US military diplomacy in practice

Airmen understand Airmen, and thats where the partnership begins. General Mark A. Welsh, Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, speech to the Air Force Association Air Power Working Group, Washington DC, May 20, 2013. Quoted with his permission. In their Introduction to this volume, Sending, Pouliot, and Neumann argue that “if we want to account for changes in diplomatic practices by virtue of the proliferation of actors involved in diplomatic work, the question of how and why different actors do diplomacy must be central.” In this chapter, we discuss US defense diplomacy with the aim of providing answers, however partial, to this question. The significance of studying US military diplomacy should require little elaboration. The United States is currently the dominant military power in the world. Its power projection capabilities are unprecedented in human history. As Barry Posen argues, for the past few decades the US military has possessed “command of the global commons,” that is, it “gets vastly more military use out of the sea, space, and air than do others … it can credibly threaten to deny their use to others … and … others would lose a military confrontation for the commons if they attempted to deny them to the United States.” This condition rests on raw US military might, but “two important Cold War legacies contribute to U.S. command of the commons – bases and command structure.” Indeed, US primacy “is further secured by the world-wide U.S. base structure and the ability of U.S. diplomacy to … secure additional bases and overflight rights.” Bases and overflight rights, though, reflect simply one dimension of the extensive system of alliances and partnerships built by the United States. Indeed, a significant degree of contemporary global security governance operates within and through this US-centered network. Our analysis draws on a variety of sources, including interviews and the personal experiences of the authors. It builds on two basic wagers: first, “routine diplomacy is a matter of network construction and maintenance” and second, the content of those networks – the meanings actors attach to or impose on them – reflects and shapes the conduct of diplomacy. In this sense, an analysis of the meanings that US military and civilian officials attach to their diplomacy provides insight into the practice of US primacy.

Beyond anarchy: logics of political organization, hierarchy, and international structure

Many scholars now argue for deemphasizing the importance of international anarchy in favor of focusing on hierarchy – patterns of super- and subordination – in world politics. We argue that only one kind of vertical stratification, governance hierarchy, actually challenges the states-under-anarchy framework. But the existence of such hierarchies overturns a number of standard ways of studying world politics. In order to theorize, and identify, variation in governance structures in world politics, we advocate a relational approach that focuses on three dimensions of hierarchy: the heterogeneity of contracting, the degree of autonomy enjoyed by central authorities, and the balance of investiture between segments and the center. This generates eight ideal-typical forms: national-states and empires, as well as symmetric and asymmetric variants of federations, confederations, and conciliar systems. We argue that political formations – governance assemblages – with elements of these ideal types are likely ubiquitous at multiple scales of world politics, including within, across, and among sovereign states. Our framework suggests that world politics is marked by a heterarchy of nested and overlapping political structures. We discuss broad implications for international-relations theory and comparative politics, and illustrate our approach through an analysis of contemporary China and the evolution of the British ‘Empire’ in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The global transformation: more than meets the eye

Buzan and Lawson’s The Global Transformation establishes that many of the basic parameters of world politics originated in the ‘long 19th century’. Despite finding much to admire in their book, we are concerned that it lacks an explicit theory of change. In its drive to highlight the novelty and exceptionalism of the 19th century, it offers insufficient guidance on two key issues: first, how international relations scholars should situate Buzan and Lawson’s ‘global transformation’ in existing debates over transhistorical processes; and, second, how they should apply lessons from that transformation to understanding emergent trends in the contemporary world. We argue that a more explicit study of causal factors might help account for why the 19th century was unusual. We conclude with thoughts about how the field should proceed after The Global Transformation . In particular, it points to how concatenating changes could profoundly alter international politics – an approach we term ‘Exotic International Relations’. Buzan and Lawson’s book therefore serves as a marker for the importance of systematically theorizing how radical potentialities for transformation might rearrange existing structural assemblages in world politics.

Zeitgeist? The new idealism in the study of international change

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