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Stefano Guzzini's study offers an understanding of the evolution of the realist tradition within International Relations and International Political Economy. It sees the realist tradition not as a school of thought with a static set of fixed principles, but as a repeatedly failed attempt to turn the rules of European diplomacy into the laws of a US social science. Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy concentrates on the evolution of a leading school of thought, its critiques and its institutional environment. As such it will provide an invaluable basis to anyo

The end of the Cold War demonstrated the historical possibility of peaceful change and seemingly showed the superiority of non-realist approaches in International Relations. Yet in the post-Cold War period many European countries have experienced a resurgence of a distinctively realist tradition: geopolitics. Geopolitics is an approach which emphasizes the relationship between politics and power on the one hand; and territory, location and environment on the other. This comparative study shows how the revival of geopolitics came not despite, but because of, the end of the Cold War. Disoriented in their self-understandings and conception of external roles by the events of 1989, many European foreign policy actors used the determinism of geopolitical thought to find their place in world politics quickly. The book develops a constructivist methodology to study causal mechanisms and its comparative approach allows for a broad assessment of some of the fundamental dynamics of European security.

Framed by a new and substantial introductory chapter, this book collects Stefano Guzzini's reference articles and some less well-known publications on power, realism and constructivism. By analysing theories and their assumptions, but also theorists following their intellectual paths, his analysis explores the diversity of different schools, and moves beyond simple definitions to explore their intrinsic tensions and fallacies. Guzzini's approach to the analysis of power - within and outside International Relations - provides the common theme of the book through which the theoretical.

Providing an introductory survey of the evolution of Realism in international theory, Guzzini argues Realism is the reference point of the internal history of IR and IPE, and study of the realist paradigm is key to understanding international history.

For Henry Kissinger, a stable international order is not only based on a balance of power, but also on a balance of identities, of "visions of itself ". How do our observational theories of international relations come to understand this practical maxim? This article shows that rationalist theories, methodological underpinnings fall short of satisfactorily addressing the issue, while constructivism's and post-structuralism's social ontology and relational understanding of identity provide a better starting point. And yet, when we return from the level of explanatory theory back to foreign policy practice, constructivist theorizing, precisely for its focus on identity, risks of being abused for the purpose of nationalist apologies of the very kind that makes a balance of identities impossible.

The concept of power derives its meanings and theoretical roles from the theories in which it is embedded. There is hence no one concept of power, no single understanding of power, even if these understandings stand in relation to each other. Besides the usual theoretical traditions common to International Relations and the social sciences, from rationalist to constructivist and post-structuralist approaches, there is, however, also a specificity of power being a concept used in both political theory and political practice. A critical survey of these approaches needs to cast its net wide to see both the differences, but also links across these theoretical divides. Realist understandings of power are heavily impressed by political theory, especially when defining the particular ontology of 'the political'. They are also characterized by their attempt, so far not successful, to translate practical maxims of power into a scientific theory. Liberal and structural power approaches use power as a central factor for understanding outcomes and hierarchies, while generally neglecting any reference to political theory and often overloading the mere concept of power as if it were already a full-fledged theory. Finally, power has also been understood in the constitutive but often tacit processes of social recognition and identity formation, of technologies of government, and of the performativity of power categories when the latter interact with the social world, that is, the power politics that characterize the processes in which we 'make' the social world. Relating back to political practice and theory, these approaches risk repeating a realist fallacy. Whereas it is arguably correct to see power always connected to politics, not all politics is always connected or reducible to power. Seeing power not only as coercive but also productive should neither invite us to reduce all politics to it, nor to turn power into the meta-physical prime-mover of all things political.

AbstractThis paper probes the attempt to use power analysis to link three domains: ontology, explanation, and the strategy of political actors. It shows how Katzenstein and Seybert develop an open social ontology that serves as the backdrop for explanations that need to be causal but indeterminate, and a cautious political practice. It exposes tensions in two important links. First, the open ontology becomes retranslated as an explanatory cause. Second, the call for being cautious because of 'unknown unknowns' may just as well invite strategies of doubling down in control power.