The Realism Reader

Colin Elman, Michael Jensen, Colin Elman, Michael Jensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317937128
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Realism Reader provides broad coverage of a centrally important tradition in the study of foreign policy and international politics. After some years in the doldrums, political realism is again in contention as a leading tradition in the international relations sub-field.

Divided into three main sections, the book covers seven different and distinctive approaches within the realist tradition: classical realism, balance of power theory, neorealism, defensive structural realism, offensive structural realism, rise and fall realism, and neoclassical realism. The middle section of the volume covers realism's engagement with critiques levelled by liberalism, institutionalism, and constructivism and the English School. The final section of the book provides materials on realism's engagement with some contemporary issues in international politics, with collections on United States (U.S.) hegemony, European cooperation, and whether future threats will arise from non-state actors or the rise of competing great powers.

The book offers a logically coherent and manageable framework for organizing the realist canon, and provides exemplary literature in each of the traditions and dialogues which are included in the volume. Offering substantial commentary and analysis and including enhanced pedagogy to facilitate student learning, The Realism Reader will provide a 'one-stop-shop' for undergraduates and masters students taking a course in contemporary international relations theory, with a particular focus on realism.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315858579-1

The Realism Reader provides broad coverage of a centrally important tradition in the study of foreign policy and international politics. After some years in the doldrums, political realism is again in contention as a leading tradition in the international relations sub-field. Realism’s return has been accompanied by the continuing development of several distinct variants within the tradition.

This chapter provides an introductory overview of the Realism Reader, describes the realist research tradition, and explains the organization of the volume.¹ The book offers a logically coherent and manageable framework for organizing the realist canon, and provides exemplary literature in each of the traditions and dialogues that are included in the volume. The volume does not seek to reproduce or replace any of the excellent volumes and essays that cover and critique elements of the political realist tradition.² Rather, the Realism Reader is intended to provide a “one-stop-shop” for students taking a course in contemporary international relations theory, with a particular focus on realism. It is also envisioned as a resource for graduate students taking broader survey classes, and looking for a structure to bring together the considerable body of realist material that any such survey should encompass.

We do not, of course, claim to provide selections from every leading exemplar in every realist research program. Choosing and organizing the material that was available from such a rich and varied tradition was no easy task, and we often found ourselves having to decide between several equally worthy archetypes. Nevertheless, we believe that the material that is included provides the substantive content of the programs and dialogues being covered, and is representative of the broader range of material that could not be incorporated into the volume.

Organization of the book

Following this introductory chapter, the Realism Reader is divided into three main sections. The longest part of the book covers seven different and distinctive approaches within the realist tradition: classical realism, balance of power theory, neorealism, defensive structural realism, offensive structural realism, rise and fall realism, and neoclassical realism. The middle section of the volume covers realism’s contributions on critiques leveled by liberalism, institutionalism, and constructivism and the English School. The final section of the book provides materials on realism’s engagement with some contemporary issues in international politics, with collections on United States (U.S.) hegemony, European cooperation, and whether future threats will arise from non-state actors or the rise of competing great powers.

Paradigmatism and the study of international politics

The coverage of the research approaches in the first section of the book employs a mid-level typology which avoids the one-size-fits-all generalities of realism’s critics. Critics of realism have a tendency to overstate the extent to which all realist theories comfortably fit within a single unified aggregate. The construct is too general to be used for theory description or appraisal, and ascribes common substance to fundamentally different theories. By confusing a general worldview with the hard cores of its associated research programs, the overarching approach taken by realism’s critics shifts assessment away from different theories’ conceptual and empirical content to the extent to which they cleave to the larger construct. In addition, by conflating all realism into a single construct, critics miss the weaknesses of the constituent research programs, which a more fine-grained analysis would distinguish. These include the internal inconsistencies of defensive structural realism, the empirical difficulties that trouble offensive structural realism, and the tautologies of neoclassical realism.

The mid-level typology offered in the Realism Reader also avoids the “every theory a research program” approach advocated by proponents of realism. While realism’s advocates are more likely to be familiar with the nuances and complexities of different theories rooted in the tradition, and more aware of the diversity that divides their fellow travelers, they are sometimes too willing to overstate the heterogeneity of the tradition. The number of new terms coined for different theoretical aggregates produces an effect that is as debilitating as the critics’ one-size-fits-all approach: a cacophony of claims to centrality for every innovation (Snyder 2002: 149–50).

Accordingly, the approach taken in this volume is to identify seven distinct research approaches. These were shaped by a combination of deductive arguments based on their shared core assumptions and logic, and inductive observations of how scholars commonly group themselves.³

Although there are significant differences among variants of realism, they largely share the view that the character of relations among states has not altered. Where there is change, it tends to occur in repetitive patterns. State behavior is driven by leaders’ flawed human nature, or by the preemptive unpleasantness mandated by an anarchic international system. Selfish human appetites for power, or the need to accumulate the wherewithal to be secure in a self-help world, explain the seemingly endless succession of wars and conquest. Accordingly, most realists take a pessimistic and prudential view of international relations (Elman 2001; though, for an unusually optimistic realist approach, see Glaser 1994/95, 1997, 2010).

In describing and appraising the realist tradition, it is customary to take a metatheoretic approach, which differentiates it from other approaches, and which separates realist theories into distinct sub-groups (see Elman and Elman 2002, 2003). Accordingly, accounts of twentieth-century realism typically distinguish political realist, liberal and other traditions, as well as describe different iterations of realist theory. This chapter distinguishes between seven different variants of realism—classical, balance of power theory, neorealism, rise and fall, neoclassical, offensive structural, and defensive structural realism.

The groupings can be differentiated by the fundamental constitutive and heuristic assumptions that their respective theories share. For example, they differ on the sources of state preferences, in particular on the mix of human desire for power and/or the need to accumulate the wherewithal to be secure in a self-help world.

Realism’s proponents argue that realist thinking extends well before the twentieth century, and often suggest that current theories are the incarnations of an extended intellectual tradition (e.g. Walt 2002: 198; Donnelly 2000). Hence, scholars make the—often disputed—claim that realist themes can be found in important antiquarian works from Greece, Rome, India, and China (e.g. Smith 1986; Haslam 2002: 14. See Garst 1989 for a contrasting view). Since this volume begins with twentieth-century classical realism, we need not dwell on this controversy. It should be noted, however, that, while realism’s interpretation of particular episodes have been disputed, even its critics (e.g. Wendt 2000) acknowledge that humankind has, in most times and in most places, lived down to realism’s very low expectations.

Classical realism

The ordering in the volume is not intended to suggest a strict temporal or intellectual succession. However, classical realism is usually held to be the first of the twentieth-century realist research programs. Classical realism is generally dated from 1939, and the publication of Edward Hallett Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Classical realists are usually characterized as responding to then dominant liberal approaches to international politics (e.g. Donnelly 1995: 179), although scholars (e.g. Kahler 1997: 24) disagree on how widespread liberalism was during the interwar years. In addition to Carr, work by Frederick Shuman (1933), Harold Nicolson (1939), Reinhold Niebuhr (1940), Georg Schwarzenberger (1941), Martin Wight (1946), Hans Morgenthau (1948), George F. Kennan (1951), and Herbert Butterfield (1953) formed part of the realist canon. It was, however, Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace that became the undisputed standard bearer for political realism, going through seven editions between 1948 and 2005.⁴

According to classical realism, because the desire for more power is rooted in the flawed nature of humanity, states are continuously engaged in a struggle to increase their capabilities. The absence of the international equivalent of a state’s government is a permissive condition that gives human appetites free rein. In short, classical realism explains conflictual behavior by human failings. Wars are explained, for example, by particular aggressive statesmen, or by domestic political systems that give greedy parochial groups the opportunity to pursue self-serving expansionist foreign policies. For classical realists, internat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Section One Realist research programs
• Section Two Critiques and responses
• Section Three Realist theories and contemporary international politics
• Index