Uneven and combined development: convergence realism in communist regalia?

Abstract

Leon Trotsky’s notion of ‘uneven and combined development’ (UCD) has been gaining traction as an explanatory theory of international relations over the past decade, notably in work by Justin Rosenberg and Alexander Anievas. The idea that the uneven sequencing of economic development between countries affects both their relative power relationships and domestic political stability, in particular, carries prima-facie intuitive plausibility. The potential consequences for international stability of such relative power shifts and domestic upheavals suggest, furthermore, that there may be significant explanatory payoffs from this line of investigation. At the same time, however, the UCD intuition raises other questions about causal foundations and theoretical affiliations. What accounts for the sequencing of uneven development, for example? And how exactly do both relative power shifts and domestic political instability elevate war risks? This paper will address these lacunae, by demonstrating that – at the level of its underlying micro-foundations – UCD can be understood as a compound of catch-up convergence growth theory and security-dilemma realism. Such a recognition paves the way, in turn, for a fruitful application of UCD to contemporary questions in international politics.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 A note on the title: UCD is not a ‘communist’ theory, of course; the former simply provides historical-materialist explanation while the latter advances a totalitarian-normative prescription. Nonetheless, its progenitor – Leon Trotsky – was a prominent, influential communist, and that association has undoubtedly coloured the intellectual exchange between UCD and other IR theories, realist and liberal alike, many of which were formulated during the struggle against Soviet communism. But also – and even more importantly – the juxtaposition of ‘convergence realism’ against ‘communist regalia’ was syntactically satisfying.

2 Intended as a further-developed successor to its predecessor – also published in CRIA – just over a decade ago (see CRIA 22:1 (2009)).

3 Noting UCD’s potential to provide ‘a general theory of socio-economic dynamics’, see Löwy 1981, 87. Attempting the incorporation of UCD as an explanatory theory of IR are (among others) Rosenberg 2006, 307-40; Rosenberg 2010, 165-89. Identifying UCD as a superior explanation for why deepening post-Cold War interconnectedness has led not the progressive ascent of ‘global governance’ and associated collapse of national boundaries, inequalities, and rivalries that utopian globalization theories had forecast, but rather a lack thereof (and often the opposite), see Rosenberg 2005, 2-74. For pre-existing identifications of a relationship between UCD and structurally-based realisms, see (among others) Glenn 2012, 75-95; Rosenberg 2013, 183-230. Drawing parallels between UCD-style arguments and Stein Rokkan’s accounts of uneven state development, meanwhile, see Kommisrud 2009.

4 Foundational neorealist works incorporate this imperative in their own terms. For Waltz (1979, 74-77, 127-28) states are ‘socialized’ into responding to the competitive pressures of an anarchic system structured by relative power; for Mearsheimer (2001, 31), states are ‘rational’ – albeit not omniscient – in their survival efforts vis-à-vis a dangerous external environment. For discussion, see Thies 2010, 689-717.

5 Such vectors exist in historically specific contexts, of course: Anievas and Nisancioglu 2013, 78-102; Shilliam 2009, 69-88. Nonetheless, there are also causal generalisations that can be drawn, as this article goes on to argue (and as one of the preceding co-authors similarly argues elsewhere): Allinson and Anievas 2009, 47-67.

6 This process of ‘polarization and spread’ is described in more detail in Gilpin 1975, 47-59. Note too that Gilpin himself recognised (1981, 93) the common ground between his dynamic realism and Marxist international thought, given that both ‘explain the dynamics of IR in terms of the differential growth of power among states’ (albeit with different accounts of underlying motives). For discussion of such overlaps in contemporary empirical context, see Glenn 2016.

7 For an argument that IR’s focus on (static) Waltzian polarity theory over (dynamic) Gilpinian approaches has hampered our ability to explain change in the international system, see Wohlforth 2011, 499-511. Recently attempting to explain various international outcomes, such as interstate conflict – or the absence thereof – with reference to dynamic power shifts are (among others): Chadefaux 2011, 228-53; Debs and Monteiro 2014, 1-31; Montgomery 2016; Edelstein 2017; Shifrinson 2018; MacDonald and Parent 2018. This is not solely realist terrain, moreover; constructivists are also concerned with theorising power shifts (specifically the legitimising rhetorical steps that rising powers take in a bid to stave-off the counter-balancing expected by realism): Goddard 2018.

8 Adam Smith (1976[1775], 141), for example, argued that: ‘…nothing seems more likely to establish…equality of force than the mutual communication of knowledge and of all sorts of improvements which an extensive commerce from all countries to all countries naturally, or rather necessarily, carries along with it’.

9 Even then, moreover, cross-border diffusion from previous leaders and/or current peers – particularly where a state may be the international leader in one economic sector, even as another state has achieved leadership in others – can combine with domestic factors to contribute to an eventual leader’s initial rise, so the entire process need not be dismissed as contingent. Pertinent cases include the movement of Protestant engineers from the still-Spanish Southern Netherlands to the Dutch Republic, the Dutch financing of early British industrialisation, and the British financing of early American industrialisation.

10 For a comprehensive overview of the roles of social networks, favourable institutions and policies, and ‘creative insecurity’ pressures in determining states’ achievement, sustainment, or relinquishment of technological leadership, see: Taylor 2016. On the contribution of institutions to development more broadly, see North 1990; Rodrik 2007. On ‘clustering’ as a particular basis for localised expertise sustainment, which can account for the continuation of productivity leadership even in the face of diffusion flows, see (for example) Porter 2000, 15-34. On the developmental significance of potential market size, see Murphy, Shleifer, and Vishny 1989, 1003-26.

11 Waltz (1996, 54-57) argued, of course, that his neorealism was solely a theory of international politics (not a theory of foreign policy). As other thinkers within the same tradition have observed, however, explaining how individual powers behave – that is, their strategy and policy – is central to also explaining the systemic-political outcomes that such powers bring about, e.g., Mearsheimer 2001, 11-12, 168-233.

12 As Hew Strachan (2001, 8) notes in his history of the origins of the war, the central problem for the stability of European great power relations after German unification was that ‘Germany’s position in Europe after 1871 was at once threatening and vulnerable – threatening because central Europe was now dominated by a major power, casting shadows over Russia to the east and France to the west, and vulnerable because the new state had long, exposed land frontiers in the same directions’. This is security dilemma logic in action.

13 Such socio-economic upheaval is consistent, meanwhile, with Marxist understandings of praxis; that is, workers’ efforts to improve their political and economic situation by overturning previous modes of governance and distributions of production. That said, the Marxist revolutionary tradition (with all of its attendant problems) can itself be understood as a side-effect of the uneven and combined development of modern Europe: Rosenberg 2020, 477-97. Insofar as domestic ideas can themselves shift – with consequences for foreign-policy preferences – as a consequence of material change, meanwhile, this may (re-)connect social constructivism (the ascendant post-Cold War paradigm) to its materialist priors.

14 Of course, there can be external belligerence even at times when domestic economic conditions are buoyant – consider US behaviour in the early 2000s – just as there can be developmental upheaval, with associated distributional implications, that do not produce a meaningful increase in bellicosity/militarism (witness Japan and West Germany through the 1950s-70s). Obviously, these examples all pertain to particular contingent circumstances – but then, all international circumstances are particular and contingent on some criteria. Either way, this article is not advancing a deterministic claim that domestic upheaval will always produce external belligerence or that such belligerence always requires domestic upheaval. The crucial point from a security-dilemma perspective, however, is that domestic distributional contestation increases the possibility of the state having greedy motives (and manifesting them as revisionist intentions).

15 These are more usefully holistic terms than ‘power transitions’ realism, since the latter implies a defined ‘transition’ of hegemonic dominance from one to another that is by no means necessitated by the conflict-inducing logic of differential power growth.

16 Indeed, for this reason, structural realism requires the possibility of domestically-sourced policy variation to explain the behaviours (such as conflict-initiation) endemic in anarchic international systems – but equally, such anarchic structure still then accounts for the prevalence of conflict: Rathbun 2008, 294-321. For exploration of the distinction between ‘greedy’ versus ‘security-seeking’ motives vis-à-vis ‘revisionist’ versus ‘status-quo’ intentions, see Glaser 2010. On why domestic ideas are necessarily central to international outcomes but without that recognition mitigating security dilemmas or overturning realist arguments, see Blagden 2018, 197-226.

17 There may be further questions in this debate for the exchange between offensive and defensive realism – specifically, does UCD’s account of revisionism contribute to the argument that states are primed for offence, as per offensive realism, or simply why they could be, hence the security dilemma (as per defensive realism)?

18 This is, of course, a hat-tip to both the Rathbun article cited above – itself an application of the famous Shakespearean quip to Gideon Rose’s seminal early articulation of neoclassical realism – and contemporary IR’s most prominent UCD theorist.

19 Note that thinkers contemporaneous to Trotsky identified these consequences of anarchy, e.g., Dickinson 2015[1916].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Blagden

David Blagden is Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of Exeter. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of relative power shifts, the technological and geographical determinants of strategic stability, and UK foreign and defence policy.