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ABSTRACT
This article traces how the major paradigms in international relations have viewed power over the past 40 years. It argues that theorizing in the 1970s began a bifurcation that served to split the vison of power between two extremes: a hard-power pole on one side (Realism) and a soft-power pole on the other (Neoliberalism and Constructivism). It further argues that scholars who have studied international power have merely been engaged in hovering around the mean, and have always embraced the belief that power was not a binary concept. Rather than looking to the theoretical poles for the true face of international power, scholars are best off embracing a smarter middle or Cosmopolitan view of power.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. My focus on contestation of power relations will be in the context of the three major paradigms in IR: Realism, Neoliberalism and Constructivism. While power analysis is much more varied than a tripartite paradigmatic organization, there are important lessons to be learned in looking at the IR debate over power within its three main theoretical visions. In fact, in what is an authoritative book on power analysis in IR, Baldwin (Citation2016) organizes his study of power according to the three paradigms.
2. I have chosen to approach the contestation of power from a soft versus hard-power perspective. This is just one way of analyzing power in international relations, but it is an important one given that much of the current debate on power in IR centers on just this issue. However, the debate has not as fully embraced the relevance of the deeper logic of the paradigms of IR. This article does. Moreover, we will leave the definition of these two types of power (not to be confused with the more conventional faces of power identified by Barnett and Raymond Citation2005) within a simple continuum that runs from the pole of hard power to the pole of soft power, so as not to distract from the main narrative of this article, which is to evaluate visons of power in IR scholarship. On definitions of hard and soft power, see Gallarotti (Citation2011).
3. Of course this idea of building theory within an assumed universe was also prevalent in the natural sciences, where theories were developed in environments such as vacuums and simulations.
4. This tendency toward binary scholarship has also manifested itself over the past several decades in the form of a methodological schism which has pitted political scientists who do more textual and institutional work against other practitioners who do quantitative studies and formal modeling.
5. In Baldwin’s (Citation2016) analysis of the concept of power in IR, he treats these three works as prominent manifestations of the three paradigmatic visions of power.
6. On conventional approaches to crucial case analysis, see Eckstein (Citation1975); Gerring (Citation2004, p. 347); and King et al. (Citation1994, p. 209–12).
7. The fifth edition (1978) of the book was used for this textual analysis, as it was the last revision completed by Morgenthau as the sole author.
8. Morgenthau reflects a moral vision of politics that manifests itself throughout his lifelong body of work, sometimes more starkly in some works (e.g. Scientific Man, 1967) than in others. Revisionist scholarship on his theory of politics highlights the vigorous ethical orientation that permeates his body of work. Although national interest is compelling, it must always be accountable to ‘strict moral limitations’ (Murray Citation1996, p. 81). On Morgenthau’s moral vision of politics, see especially Murray (Citation1996) and Lebow (Citation2003).
9. This logic is further developed in chapter 9 (Morgenthau Citation[1948] 1978, 154, p. 155).
10. Deviations from the peace norm were legitimate to the extent that they countered illegitimate uses of force (responses to imperialism or expansionism). In this context, Morgenthau notes that European states generally approved of the Balkan and Belgian revolts, as well as the Prussian and Sardinian aggression to unite Germany and Italy, respectively. Here, he refers to the legitimacy of force in the service of self-determination (Morgenthau Citation[1948] 1978, 226, p. 227).
11. It is with this concept of moral community of nations as a necessary condition for lasting peace that Morgenthau comes closest to Carr’s own Utopianism.
12. In these chapters, however, he does nothing to undermine his arguments that soft power factors are crucial elements in the nexus of national power.
13. This is one of the many poignant manifestations of the specter of the Cold War on Morgenthau’s thinking. His idea of universal nationalism reflects the evangelical battle between liberalism and communism.
14. This fear is the driving force behind the book itself. The specter of all-out war between two superpowers in a nuclear world is the very challenge inspiring Morgenthau, as both a social scientist and a human being.
15. Murray (Citation1996, 104) identifies a pervasive view in Morgenthau’s works that suggests that national interest incorporates ‘an obligation to self-limitation and tolerance.’ Lebow (Citation2003, p. 233) argues that Morgenthau always believed that influence and power ultimately depended on wisdom and ethical sensibility.
16. The norms promoting peace and stability are raised to a far greater extent under the new balance, according to Morgenthau, because of new ‘technological developments’ that have enhanced the destructiveness of war (nuclear weapons) and also have enhanced the need for cooperation among states to solve national problems (he cites the environment, food security, natural resources, and population control) (Morgenthau Citation[1948] 1978, p. 541).
17. As a counterweight to the destabilizing effects of nationalism and total war, Morgenthau cites the rise of liberalism and the enlightenment as new developments that have generated an enhanced ‘intellectual and moral energy [that has sustained the] search for alternatives to war and international anarchy’ (Morgenthau Citation[1948] 1978, p. 393). Post enlightenment society has shown an ‘increased humaneness and a civilized disposition toward human relations’ (Morgenthau Citation[1948] 1978, p. 392).
18. Murray (1990, 96) sees this vacillation as an ‘expedient to clarify the issues.’
19. Of course, they would not impeach other forms of hard power, such as economic power. Nor would they formally embrace certain components of soft power such as attraction. But their emphasis on cooperation and the limits of confrontation overlaps extensively with a fuller vison of soft power. See Gallarotti (Citation2010, Citation2011).
20. That Neoliberals embrace a softer vison of power than Realists is hardly in question. While Power and Interdependence did not use the term ‘soft power,’ the book (as discussed below) has extensive references to sources of influence that accord with the concept of soft power. Baldwin (Citation2016) in fact discusses the concept of soft power in the context of Neoliberalism.
21. In fact, the authors (viii) state that the purpose of the book is to ‘put into a broader context the classic Realist analysis that Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations … had bequeathed to the current generation.’
22. Gallarotti (Citation1991) surveys the scholarship on these points. Rather than reproduce a lengthy list, the reader is referred there.
23. As with the other canons, Wendt has predecessors. Onuf in World of Our Making (Citation1989) basically introduced Constructivism into the field of IR. Nonetheless, Wendt’s work, because it gets closer to a mainstream IR epistemology seems to have become the standard reference for the paradigm. Onuf comes from a more Wittgensteinian tradition of the role of linguistics as sources of socialized ideation. Surveys support this pecking order (Maliniak et al. Citation2014).
24. Baldwin (Citation2016, 143, p. 153) questions the extent to which power is important in Constructivism at all, the nuance of Constructivism’s culturally constructed vision of power, and the clarity of the use of ‘materialism’ as a source of power. But according to Baldwin is does reaffirm Wendt’s attempt to constitute a vision that departs from ‘brute material forces’ and embraces the influence of ‘norms, values, institutions, ideas, identities, and cultural contexts.’ And hence, any concept of power derived from Constructivist logic would embrace soft power as an alternative to the hard power posited by Realists. While Berenskoetter (Citation2007) argues that Wendt fails to provide a clear conceptualization of power, it is indeed clear from the narrative about influence in the book that Wendt sets himself squarely into a vision of soft power, and proceeds to define this vision in contradistinction to Realist visions of military (hard) power.
25. Axelrod (Citation1984) has carefully analyzed the differing cycles that can emerge in strategic interaction in game theoretic contexts. Socialization can cut both ways in a strategic context.
26. The literature on threat perception and decisionmaking in IR is extensive. Some especially illuminating readings in both these areas are Jervis (Citation1976, Citation2017) and Stein (Citation2013).
27. In case studies on power seeking that span history and issue-areas, Gallarotti (Citation2010a) demonstrates that soft power could have significantly enhanced the influence of nations whose leaders were predominantly swayed by the allure of hard power (i.e. victims of a power curse in the context of a hard–soft power nexus).
28. See Gallarotti (Citation2010) for an attempt to build such a vision.
29. Gallarotti (Citation2010) goes on to do a crucial case analysis of the great traditional canons of political Realism as well (Thucydides, Hobbes and Machiavelli), and shows a similar inclusive Cosmopolitan vision of power rather than a strictly Realist vision.
30. Gallarotti (Citation2010) demonstrates a number of historical cases in which economic hard power was an important source of emulation.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Giulio M. Gallarotti
Giulio M. Gallarotti is Professor of Government, Tutor in the College of Social Studies and member of the faculty of the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University. He has also been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Economic Theory at the University of Rome (1994) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Columbia University (2018-present). He has published the following books: The Anatomy of an International Monetary Regime: The Classical Gold Standard 1880-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010), Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Emerging Powers in International Politics: The BRICS and Soft Power (edited with Mathilde Chatin–London: Routledge, 2017), and The Rise of the Guardian State and the History of Monetary Diplomacy 1867-Present (Routledge, forthcoming). In addition, he has published numerous articles in leading journals across five disciplines: economics, politics, law, history, and business.
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