Suchergebnisse

The concept of anarchy is seen as the cardinal organizing category of the discipline of International Relations (IR), which differentiates it from cognate disciplines such as Political Science or Political Philosophy. This entry provides an analytical review of the scholarly literature on anarchy in IR, on two levels—conceptual and theoretical. First, it distinguishes three senses of the concept of anarchy: (1) lack of a common superior in an interaction domain; (2) chaos or disorder; and (3) horizontal relation between nominally equal entities, sovereign states. The first and the third senses of "anarchy"' are central to IR. Second, it considers three broad families of IR theory where anarchy figures as a focal assumption—(1) realism and neorealism; (2) English School theory (international society approach); and (3) Kant's republican peace. Despite normative and conceptual differences otherwise, all three bodies of theory are ultimately based on Hobbes's argument for a "state of nature." The discussion concludes with a summary of the key challenges to the discourse of international anarchy posed by the methodology of economics and economics-based theories which favor the alternative discourse of global hierarchy.

The category of anarchy is conventionally associated with the emergence of an autonomous discipline of International Relations (IR). Recently Donnelly (2015) has argued that anarchy has never been central to IR (hierarchy is more weighty). His criticism targets not just concepts of anarchy but theories of anarchy and thereby expresses an anti-theory ethos tacitly accepted in the discipline. As a form of conceptual atomism, this ethos is hostile to structuralist and normative theories. This paper aims to reinstate theoretical holism against conceptual atomism and to defend the enduring relevance of theories of international anarchy for IR. This is done by revisiting two classic, structuralist accounts of international anarchy articulated in Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (scientific structuralism) and Hedley Bull's Anarchical Society (normative structuralism). It will be shown that both represent coherent theoretical 'wholes' which reveal a more complex relationship between anarchy and hierarchy than supposed by critics, and which recognise the important connection between the structure of international anarchy (whose key players are states) and the value of freedom. The conclusion examines the prospects of normative theories of international anarchy and 'anarchical' freedom in a globalising world where state agency is being challenged.