Stefano Guzzini

Structural power: the limits of neorealist power analysis

Realism explains the ruling of the international system through the underlying distribution of power among states. Increasingly, analysts have found this power analysis inadequate, and they have developed new concepts, most prominently structural power. The usage of structural power actually entails three different meanings, namely indirect institutional power, nonintentional power, and impersonal power. Only the first, however, is compatible with the current neorealist choice-theoretical mode of explanation. This is the basic paradox of recent power approaches: by wanting to retain the central role of power, some international relations and international political economy theory is compelled to expand that concept and to move away from the very theory that claims to be based on power. Neorealism does not take power seriously enough. At the same time, these extensions of the concept are themselves partly fallacious. To account simultaneously for the different meanings of structural power and to avoid a conceptual overload, this article proposes that any power analysis should necessarily include a pair or dyad of concepts of power, linking agent power and impersonal governance. Finally, it sketches some consequences of those concepts for international theory.

Securitization as a causal mechanism

The article seeks to offer a way forward in discussions about the status of securitization theory. In my reading, this debate has been inhibited by the difficulty of finding an appropriate version of ‘understanding/explanation’ that would be consistent with the meta-theoretical commitments of a post-structuralist theory. By leaving ‘explanation’ and/or all versions of causality to the positivist other, the Copenhagen School also left its own explanatory status often implicit, or only negatively defined. Instead, the present article claims that the explanatory theory used in securitization research de facto relies on causal mechanisms that are non-positivistically conceived. Using the appropriate methodological literature renders this explanatory status explicit, exposing the theory’s non-positivist causality and thus, hopefully, enhancing its empirical theory.

The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism in International Relations

The present article argues that the discipline of international relations is bound to repeat its rounds of debates about realism as long as the underlying dynamic intrinsic to the realist tradition is not understood. Whereas present debates tend to criticize contemporary realists for going astray (an unhappy conjuncture, as it were), this article claims that there exists a systematic theoretical problem with the way realist theorizing has developed within international relations, and consisting of two fundamental dilemmas. The first or ‘identity dilemma’, the choice between distinctiveness and determinacy, results from the characteristics of the central concept ‘power’ — realists either keep a distinct and single micro–macro link through concepts of power/influence which provides indeterminate explanations or they improve their explanations, but must do so by relaxing their assumptions, thereby losing distinctiveness. The second or ‘conservative dilemma’, the choice between tradition and justification, results from the fact that realism is a form of practical knowledge, which needs some form of justification other than the recourse to mere tradition. Hence, realists either update the practical knowledge of a shared diplomatic culture while losing scientific credibility or, reaching for logical persuasiveness, cast their maxims in a scientific mould which distorts the realist tradition. Realism in international relations is fated to return to these dilemmas until it abandons its own identity as derived from the ‘first debate’ between realism and idealism. By doing so, however, it would be free to join a series of metatheoretical and theoretical research avenues which it has so far left to other schools of thought.

The ends of International Relations theory: Stages of reflexivity and modes of theorizing

International Relations theory is being squeezed between two sides. On the one hand, the world of practitioners and attached experts often perceive International Relations theory as misleading if it does not correspond to practical knowledge, and redundant when it does. The academic study of international relations can and should not be anything beyond the capacity to provide political judgement which comes through reflection on the historical experience of practitioners. On the other hand, and within its disciplinary confines, International Relations theory is reduced to a particular type of empirical theory with increasing resistance to further self-reflection. Instead, this article argues that neither reduction is viable. Reducing theory to practical knowledge runs into self-contradictions; reducing theorizing to its empirical mode underestimates the constitutive function of theories, the role of concepts, and hence the variety of necessary modes of theorizing. I present this twofold claim in steps of increasing reflexivity in International Relations theory and propose four modes of theorizing: normative, meta-theoretical, ontological/constitutive and empirical.

European Economic and Monetary Union and the Crisis of European Social Contracts

“Maastricht is the end of the European welfare state.” “Europe is the last chance to save our welfare state in crisis.” On the one hand, the Union in general, and the Maastricht criteria in particular, are seen as accelerating the dismantling of the welfare state. “La revolte francaise contre l’Europe” in December 1995 stood out as one of the sharpest statements of this position.2 The strikes were directed against budget cuts, mainly affecting the public sector, which were justified by the need to comply with EMU criteria. On the other hand, the EU is very often presented as the only hope for protecting some form of European welfare state. Monetary union will guarantee a financial stability which no single country can hope to attain and future common standards will ease the risk of social dumping. This line of argument is adopted by most pro-welfare, pro-European political parties in Europe. These two opposed positions on the relation between the European Union and the crisis of the welfare state constantly confront each other. We will make the seemingly paradoxical claim that both arguments are true. The EU and EMU are a part of the problems of the European welfare state as well as a necessary and probable part of its solution.

Foreign Policy without Diplomacy: the Bush Administration at a Crossroads:

The Bush administrations foreign policy hitherto suffers from a neglect of diplomacy. It has emphasised a strategy that combines unilateral and re-militarising elements. Security is conceived of in terms of a gated community writ large. Diplomacy is downgraded to alliance-building (conveniently misnamed multilateralism) for a policy already decided. Other countries are sheer objects, not subjects, within US foreign policy. The conception of order in international society is stripped of substantial components of justice or legitimacy, to which the US would accept being subjected itself. In short, there is a tendency to repeat the US cold war strategy which reversed Clausewitz, that is, where politics becomes the prolongation of war with other means. The article consciously bases its critique mainly on realist writers, simply to show that the present US foreign policy is debatable even in realist terms.

Introduction : 'What kind of theory - if any - is securitization?'

When international affairs seemed stuck in a state of (cold) war, how could politics regain its place? How could diplomacy get back to center stage, when it was asked to establish a common language for assessing (if disa-greeing about) events and finding compromises, while being, paradoxically, only able to function if such shared understandings already existed? As it happens, political practice gave some hints. German

What kind of theory – if any – is securitization?

One of the great appeals of securitization theory, and a major reason for its success, has been its usefulness as a tool for empirical research: an analytic framework capable of practical application. However, the development of securitization has raised several criticisms, the most important of which concern the nature of securitization theory. In fact, the appropriate methods, the research puzzles and type of evidence accepted all derive to a great extent from the kind of theory scholars bequeath their faith to. This Forum addresses the following questions: What type of theory (if any) is securitization? How many kinds of theories of securitization do we have? How can the differences between theories of securitization be drawn? What is the status of exceptionalism within securitization theories, and what difference does it make to their understandings of the relationship between security and politics? Finally, if securitization commands that leaders act now before it is too late, what status has temporality therein? Is temporality enabling securitization to absorb risk analysis or does it expose its inherent theoretical limits?

The ambivalent 'diffusion of power' in global governance

This volume brings together scholars in fields ranging from International Political Economy (IPE) to Foucauldian governmentality studies to shed light on the analysis of global governance.1 Such an undertaking is not new. Against the background of heavily IPE-dominated discussions in International Relations (IR) (the heyday of the journal International Organization), a first encounter took place in the theoretically rich 1980s. Analysts, later to be called constructivist had tried to use regime analysis as an opener for questions that were akin to a Foucauldian understanding of political order (Kratochwil and Ruggie, 1986; Kratochwil, 1988). In turn, some Foucauldian analysis met with regime analysis or derived approaches (see e.g. Ashley, 1989; Keeley, 1990). A second rapprochement occurred once the discipline had taken on the task to understand, explore and integrate constructivist thought within IR, during a decade stretching from the early to the later magna opera of that school (Kratochwil, 1989; Onuf, 1989; Wendt, 1999). By the time constructivism was accepted — visible in the official inclusion as one of the main schools of thought (Katzenstein et al., 1998) and in the emergence of authoritative programmatic syntheses (Adler, 1997; Ruggie, 1998; Guzzini, 2000a) — Foucauldian analysis again met various institutionalist and constructivist approaches to international governance, now also in the fields of ‘high politics’, such as international security. Timid at first (Prakash and Hart, 1999), this rapprochement recently became more substantial by reverting to an earlier focus on power (Guzzini, 1993, 1994; Barnett and Duvall, 2005b) and by developing an independent Foucauldian research programme on the international political order (Sending and Neumann, 2006; Hynek, 2008).

Calling for a less 'brandish' and less 'grand' reconvention

The Forum should not be too cosy, said the editors. But in many regards, Barry Buzans invitation to put to better use the resources of the English School makes criticism difficult. Who is going to oppose, in principle, a more concentrated effort in international theorizing, methodological pluralism, substantial openness to sister fields and disciplines, linked to a general endeavour for giving some coherence to the diverging theoretical interests? Moreover, who can criticize the very fact that somebody wants to pool existing resources for pursuing research, before seeing the outcome? Hence, the following remarks can hardly be against the open project as such, which I wish much success. It will be directed against some particular ways to fill it out, ways which are often, I think, not intended by Buzan himself. In other words, the discussion is as much about analysing Buzans paper as about pre-empting parti cular ways to read it. To caricature the position: if the project becomes understood as too English and US-targeted, too encompassing and too traditional, the English School might well remain an underexploited resource.