David A. Baldwin

The concept of security

Redefining ‘security’ has recently become something of a cottage industry. E.g. Lester Brown, Redefining National Security , Worldwatch Paper No. 14 (Washington, DC, 1977); Jessica Tuchman Matthews, ‘Redefining Security’, Foreign Affairs , 68 (1989), pp. 162-77; Richard H. Ullman, ‘Redefining Security’, International Security , 8 (1983), pp. 129-53; Joseph J. Romm, Defining National Security (New York, 1993); J. Ann Tickner, ‘Re-visioning Security’, in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Oxford, 1995), pp. 175-97; Ken Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies , 17 (1991), pp. 313-26; Martin Shaw, ‘There Is No Such Thing as Society: Beyond Individualism and Statism in International Security Studies’, Review of International Studies , 19 (1993), pp. 159-75; John Peterson and Hugh Ward, ‘Coalitional Instability and the New Multidimensional Politics of Security: A Rational Choice Argument for US-EU Cooperation’, European Journal of International Relations , 1 (1995), pp. 131-56; ten articles on security and security studies in Arms Control , 13, (1992), pp. 463-544; and Graham Allison and Gregory F. Treverton (eds.), Rethinking Americas Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (New York, 1992). Most such efforts, however, are more concerned with redefining the policy agendas of nation-states than with the concept of security itself. Often, this takes the form of proposals for giving high priority to such issues as human rights, economics, the environment, drug traffic, epidemics, crime, or social injustice, in addition to the traditional concern with security from external military threats. Such proposals are usually buttressed with a mixture of normative arguments about which values of which people or groups of people should be protected, and empirical arguments as to the nature and magnitude of threats to those values. Relatively little attention is devoted to conceptual issues as such. This article seeks to disentangle the concept of security from these normative and empirical concerns, however legitimate they may be.

Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies

Recent refinements in social science thinking about power could be used to revitalize this approach to understanding international relations. The relevance of scholarly work on the causal concept of power is explored with regard to the following topics: potential vs. actual power, interdependence, military power, positive sanctions, the zero-sum model of politics, and the distinction between deterrence and compellence. The tendency to exaggerate the fungibility of power resources, the propensity to treat military power resources as the1 “ultimate” power base, and the emphasis on conflict and negative sanctions at the expense of cooperation and positive sanctions, are still common in international relations scholarship. The most important need is for recognition that the absence of a common denominator of political value in terms of which different scopes of power can be compared is not so much a methodological problem to be solved as it is a real-world constraint to be lived with.

Interdependence and power: a conceptual analysis

Priority in the use of a novel meaning of a term is no cause for pride; in fact it betrays a lack of “terminological discipline†and a want of linguistic inventiveness–for when a writer creates or modifies a concept he ought also to coin a new word to denote it, rather than corrupt the language and spread confusion.

The Power of Positive Sanctions

Political science has made valuable contributions to the progressive clarification of the concept of power since World War II. In view of the attention political scientists have traditionally lavished on the concept of power, it seems fitting that they should help clarify it. Thanks to the efforts of such men as Harold Lasswell and Robert Dahl, many political scientists today are keenly aware of the need to define power in relational terms, to distinguish power relations from power resources, to specify scope, weight, domain, and so on. There is, however, one distinction that is rarely considered by political scientists—that between positive and negative sanctions. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this distinction and show how and why it matters.

Paradoxes of power

Money and power thinking about threats the power of positive sanctions the costs of power power and social exchange power analysis and world politics - new trends versus old tendencies interdependence and power - conceptual analysis.

The Sanctions Debate and the Logic of Choice

The debate over whether economic sanctions “work” is mired in a scholarly limbo. One writer contends that recent international relations scholarship has promoted optimism about the utility of such measures and sets out to challenge this trend,1 while another notes the pessimism that “pervades the sanctions literature” and proceeds to argue that it is unjustiaed.2 A third scholar cites the sanctions literature as an example of fruitless academic debate with little policy relevance.3 Such divergent readings of the scholarly literature are often explained by differences in ideology or fundamentally different theoretical orientations. This does not seem to be the case with respect to the sanctions debate. Under appropriate circumstances, it is quite possible for liberals, neoliberals, realists, neorealists, or globalists to argue in favor of using economic sanctions. If the sanctions debate is bogged down, the explanation does not seem to lie in the essentially contested nature of the subject matter. A second potential explanation is that scholars are talking past one another because they ask different questions, use different concepts, and set the discussion in different analytical contexts. In short, they are talking about different things. This article explores the second explanation. The basic paradox at the heart of the sanctions debate is that policymakers continue to use sanctions with increasing frequency, while scholars continue to deny the utility of such tools of foreign policy.4 Two explanations for this

Power and Social Exchange

This article examines the basic social science concepts of “power” and “social exchange” in order to determine the possibility and desirability of integrating them. It is argued that: (1) all exchange relationships can be described in terms of conventional power concepts without twisting the common-sense notions that underlie such concepts; (2) most–but not necessarily all–power relationships can be described in terms of exchange terminology; (3) there are some advantages to conceiving of power in this way; (4) recent social exchange theorists have neither illuminated nor recognized most of these advantages. After a preliminary examination of the concepts of “power” and “exchange,” the discussion focuses on the analytical and conceptual problems associated with volition, exchange media, asymmetry, sanctions, and authority.

Foreign Aid, Intervention, and Influence

Foreign aid can be “related” to intervention in many ways. Some argue, with Senator J. W. Fulbright, that aid tends to precede intervention and to increase the probability of intervention.1 Others would say that aid follows intervention, contending, for example, that American aid to Vietnam was evidence of a prior diplomatic commitment. Still others see aid as an alternative to intervention—if we give aid now we are less likely to have to intervene in the future. Another group would contend that the aid-giving process may constitute intervention. It is with the views of this last group that most of this article deals. In examining them, we shall focus on three topics: (i) the links between foreign aid and influence; (2) the links between particular types of aid and what is often called intervention; and (3) the possibility of functional equivalents for aid that do not involve intervention. There are some conceptual problems, however, that we must address first.

Power and International Relations: A Conceptual Approach

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the concept of power has not always been central to international relations theory. During the 1920s and 30s, power was often ignored or vilified by international relations scholars?especially in America. Power and International Relations explores how this changed in later decades by tracing how power emerged as an important social science concept in American scholarship after World War I. Combining intellectual history and conceptual analysis, David Baldwin examines powers increased presence in the study of international relations and looks at how the three dominant approaches of realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism treat power.

Inter-nation influence revisited:

Since 1950 social scientists have made impressive progress in clarifying and operationalizing the concept of power. The disciplines of psychology, sociology, and economics, as well as political science, have contributed to this undertaking. Strangely enough, students of international politics, who have traditionally invested so much time and effort in power analysis, have largely ignored this process. Although students of international politics have continued to analyze power relations and to reformulate the concept of power, they have remained relatively isolated from the thinking of other social scientists on this issue. International theorists2 have neither contributed to nor drawn on the power literature generated by other social scientists. Although there are exceptions to this rule, it is fair to say that one rarely finds references by students of international politics to the standard works on power by Lasswell and Kaplan