Bringing the National Interest Back In: Lessons for Neorealism from the Former Soviet Area

Robert M. Cutler

Abstract:
This article sets out an analytical international-theoretical perspective drawing upon events in the former Soviet areas during first half of the 1990s. The argument develops in four parts. An introduction establishes the purpose of the project and justifies it. The next part of the article inspects the intellectual genealogy the marriage of neorealism to neoliberalism under the tent of rational choice theory. It traces objections to that betrothal back to the depsychologization of logic nearly a century ago by Bertrand Russell, and insists rather on the role of cognition and consciousness in world politics. The third part of the article focuses on the former Soviet area, so as to develop the theoretical and practical significance of the sphere of finance in particular. It demonstrates the surprising agreement on some basic issues between a major neorealist application of regime theory (Krasner) and a particular variant of historical materialism (Cox). It also illustrates the practical utility of this synthetic approach for national interest analysis, and it justifies the epistemological basis for this. The last section of the article sketches avenues for the further development of this approach and provides an answer to the question why recent variants of neorealism have inexcusably neglected the national interest as an analytical category. The reply to that question sketches a basis for considering geography and demography to be the first principles of the study of international politics; it likewise establishes the place of the international financial sphere in such a theoretical framework.
The full text of this journal article is available.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Emerging Entente Cordiale between Neorealism and Neoliberalism

2.1. Problematizing Relative vs. Absolute Gains

2.2. Misconceptions behind Rational Choice Theory

3. The Intersection of Policy and Research Concerns

3.1. The Principal Question for Policy and Research

3.2. Its Practical Solution

3.3. Its Theoretical Significance

4. Conclusion

4.1. Post-Soviet International Relations in the Context of Current Social Science Theory

4.2. Environment and Agency in International Space-Time

Suggested citation for this webpage:
Robert M. Cutler, “Bringing the National Interest Back In: Lessons for Neorealism from the Former Soviet Area,” Cosmos: The Hellenic Yearbook of International Relations 1 (1995): 61–89; reprinted in S. Brown, R.M. Cutler, M. Evangelista, R. Gilpin, J.D. Grieco, P. Ifestos, S.D. Krasner and A. Platias, International Relations Theory at a Crossroads (New York: Caratzas, 1996); available at <http://www.robertcutler.org/download/html/ar95cos.html>, accessed 16 December 2024.

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Bringing the National Interest Back In

Lessons for Neorealism from the Former Soviet Area[1]

The category of “national interest” has recently enjoyed a renaissance in certain fields of discourse on international relations. “Bringing the state back in” has been a strong trend in recent comparative political studies, despite the increasing importance of supranational and transnational (as well as subnational) actors.[3] Moreover, the state remains the juridical foundation upon which modern international law and international relations are inevitably based. The reason for the renaissance of this concept in policy-oriented U.S. geopolitical thinking is of a different origin. It has been a response to the need to redefine an American role in international affairs after the end of the Cold War, and to produce a programmatic justification for reducing that role. The concept of “national interest,” which predates that of “national security,”[4] is assuming again its proper place in American political discourse. It should do so too in the theory of international relations. For various reasons this has not happened as widely as might be justified. The present article investigates those reasons and proposes a solution to the problem: for even in a world where the international system may appear to be moving “beyond sovereignty,”[5] the category of national interest retains a special significance. With that in mind, this article concludes by proposing systematic schematic framework based upon the citation of Wolfers taken for the epigraph above.

Introduction

North American theorists of international relations often invoke policy relevance as a criterion of value ancillary to scientific truth, but paradoxically neither neore-

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alists nor neoliberals have had much to say about the “national interest.”[6] The silence of the neorealists is all the more notable, insofar as Kenneth Waltz himself wrote in Theory of International Relations that “to say that a state seeks its own preservation or pursues its national interest becomes interesting only if we can figure out what the national interest requires a country to do.”[7] If contemporary neorealists are silent about “national interest,” is this because they find it uninteresting? According to Waltz, if they find it uninteresting, this must be because they have been unable to figure out what the national interest requires a country to do. Neorealists may respond that self-preservation is a necessary and sufficient answer to this question, but an attentive reading of Waltz discloses the emphasis on “figur[ing] out what the national interest requires a country to do.” Moreover, Morgenthau also argues that self-preservation is a necessary but insufficient answer. Explaining his famous definition of power in terms of interest, Morgenthau underlined the essential salience of time and space, without which there are in fact no international relations at all: “the kind of interest determining political action in a particular period of history depends upon the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated.”[8] The silence of the neorealists in this regard is in fact symptomatic of a deeper theoretical malaise.

What is that malaise? The healthy methodological pluralism that emerged from critiques of neorealism in the 1980s has become a cacophony of increasingly mutually unintelligible, if not mutually intolerant, theoretical approaches. In this intellectual anarchy, those research programs which do not have access to sufficient resources are being crowded out. Unmarketable methods and approaches are then downsized, shut down altogether, or acquired by foreign paradigms. Many practitioners of different theoretical approaches are at least as concerned with intellectual mergers as they are with the epistemological balance-sheet of the resulting conglomerate. The marketplace of ideas is international relations theory is threatened by a tendency to evolve from monopolistic competition into oligopoly, and from oligopoly into oligopsony: that is, the research programs left after this consolidation are increasingly the only consumers of new intellectual commodities, of which they control the market and can specify the technical characteristics. The capacity for dialogue and translation among multiple traditions, so characteristic of the subfield in the 1980s, is being lost. On the part of practicing theorists, the taproot of this behavior runs even deeper than differing conceptions over the nature of “science” or the methodology of research programs. It has to do with the real world.

Some approaches born of the Cold War era remain partly valid, but their claim to universality has fallen with the Berlin Wall. For example, the school of “neoliberal institutionalism” is built largely on the study of the economic interactions of advanced capitalist states.[9] Its application to the international relations of the

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Soviet successor states seems quite problematic. The position of Russia as “first among equals” in the former Soviet area, together with the Russian distinction between the “near abroad” and “far abroad,” complicates the applicability of pre-existing models. The splitting up of the Soviet state, not to mention ethnic divisions within the newly independent states, compounds the theoretical issues. The newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union are likewise cases in point. The need to (re)define national interest is evidently not unique to the United States, where the overt discourse on “national interest” certainly runs much deeper than formulaic neorealist invocations of state self-preservation.[10] Over a dozen new states in the former Soviet area are all seeking, like the United States, a way to define their national interest as a basis for formulating a foreign policy. In addition they are seeking to accelerate the process of state-building while simultaneously attempting the transition to what in the West is called “democracy and the market.” It is, further, of more than passing relevance that they are not governed by institutionalized bureaucratic structures that hold the monopoly on the exercise of physical coercion over a contiguous territory, as are the Americas and most of Europe.[11]

There are three ways for the analyst to grasp what is going on in the former Soviet area. One is to follow events from day to day, another is to seek the broader perspective through grand theory, and the third is to combine the first two. This last option, the most difficult yet potentially the most promising, adduces events in the former Soviet area to the (re)construction of an international-theoretical perspective that is not parochial to North America. Such a project animates the present article. The argument here develops in four parts. This introduction establishes the purpose of the project and justifies it. The next part of the article inspects the intellectual genealogy the marriage of neorealism to neoliberalism under the tent of rational choice theory. It traces objections to that betrothal back to the depsychologization of logic nearly a century ago by Bertrand Russell and insists on the role of cognition and consciousness in world politics, as expressed by Arnold Wolfers in the epigraph adopted for this article above. The third part of the article focuses on the former Soviet area to develop the theoretical and practical significance of the sphere of finance in particular. It demonstrates the surprising agreement on some basic issues between a major neorealist application of regime theory (Stephen Krasner) and a particular variant of historical materialism (Robert Cox). It also illustrates the practical utility of this synthetic approach for national interest analysis, and justifies the epistemological basis for this. The last section of the article sketches avenues for the further development of this approach, places it in the context of current trends in social science theory, and provides in this context, an answer to the question why recent variants of neorealism have inexcusably neglected the national interest as an analytical category. As the beginning of an antidote, it sketches a basis for consid-

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ering geography and demography to be the first principles of the realist study of international politics, and it establishes the place of the financial sphere, so important to the post-Soviet republics, in such a theoretical framework.

The Emerging Entente Cordiale between Neorealism and Neoliberalism

This part of the article is divided into two sections. The first section reviews some recent attempts in the rational choice tradition to problematize and make comparable what Waltz has called relative and absolute gains. Some questions are raised about the procedures used, which inform the second section of this part of the article. That second section examines and criticizes the application by rational choice of a philosophically inappropriate system of mathematics. That criticism establishes the basis for the return, in the last part of the article, to the first principles of realism, viz., the situation of states in time and space, rather than in a timeless continuum having no reference to actual geography.

Problematizing Relative versus Absolute Gains

The two dominant schools of North American international relations theory, neoliberalism and neorealism, are in the process of formulating an entente cordiale according to which they seek to define their differences in a common language drawn from rational choice theory. The most important such difference is the dispute over relative vs. absolute gains.[12] This dispute is closely related to Keohane's distinction between specific and diffuse reciprocity, which seems to have fallen into disuse.[13] Keohane elaborated that distinction in order to argue that cooperation could have a continuing temporal basis. This was important to him because the “neoliberal institutionalist” research program, which he advocated at that time, criticized neorealism for “fail[ing] to theorize about variations in the institutional characteristics of world politics.”[14] Keohane relied upon a sociological definition of “international institution,” in particular reference “to a general pattern or categorization of activity or to a particular human-constructed arrangement, formally or informally organized.”[15] This definition was perhaps too universal: it would be difficult to find a counterexample to “a particular human-constructed arrangement, … informally organized.” Even such a counterexample could still be an institution, because it would be up to the theorist to make the determination and such a counterexample could still fall under the “categorization of activity” term of Keohane's definition.

Nevertheless, this definition offered Keohane two clear advantages. The first was that an international institution could now refer to a formal organization, an international regime, or a convention.[16] The second was that it enabled him to

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argue that cooperation itself might be an institution, and thus to adduce Axelrod's work on the Prisoner's Dilemma to a neoliberal institutionalist argument against neorealism.[17] This enabled the following argument. If Keohane could assert that neorealists considered cooperation a one-shot deal, then even iterated one-shot deals like those Axelrod studied would, given Keohane's definition of institution, be evidence in favor of neoliberal institutionalism. The shortcoming of this brave attempt is most evident in Keohane's unsuccessful treatment of sovereignty. In order to undergird his own critique of neorealism, he emphasized Ruggie's demonstration of sovereignty as an historically evolved practice. Keohane was then able to show that sovereignty falls under the “convention” rubric of his own enlarged definition of “institution”[18] and to criticize the neorealists for their “reification” of the state.[19] However, he thus enabled sovereignty to be treated as a property that could be possessed by states, alienated from its “owner,” and even transferred like a title deed. It is appropriate to refer to this conceptual development as the “commodification” of sovereignty. By seeking to include too many phenomena under the category of “institution,” Keohane enlarged its extension beyond the scope of a debate over specific vs. diffuse reciprocity. By so doing, he invited a neorealist rejoinder invoking individualist rational choice methodology, itself perfectly at home with commodities and owners and transfers of title.[20]

Powell's assertion that one state suffers a relative loss when it and another state have unequal absolute gains, is at least open to question.[21] The plausibility of this premise is due partly to the imprecision of the language used. It assumes, without demonstration, that relative and absolute gains are somehow commensurable, i.e., that they can be assigned a common metric. It assumes, like Snidal, that there is some basis for comparing relative and absolute gains, or for treating them similarly. Waltz's text has consecrated the relative/absolute usage, even though this is inverted from what common sense would impose. Specifically, neorealists are typically concerned with things that are not “fungible” or not easily disaggregated, such as security or sovereignty. These are things that are hence integral and indivisible, thus absolute. Neoliberals are typically concerned with things which can be more easily aggregated, disaggregated and counted, such as gains to trade. Such things are hence relative rather than absolute. This is not a cute rhetorical point but rather an observation with direct implications for the propriety or impropriety of various metrics and measurements upon security and economy.

It is not evident that relative gains and absolute gains (i.e., security goods and economic goods) are members of the same class of phenomena. Snidal nevertheless seeks to make them mutually convertible by problematizing them through an additive relationship. Now, different states have varying political structures and social stratifications. It therefore stands to reason that some members of a polity have more to lose than others. That would mean that security goods are in fact

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unequally distributed among a state's population. However, Snidal asserts as a postulate, without justification, that there is an even per capita distribution of those relative gains (i.e., of security goods!) across the members of the populations of the states concerned. Reflecting the theory-driven bias of the rational-choice approach, he suggests no empirical measure of the distribution of security goods across a state's population. He offers only a demonstration, based upon his unsupported postulate, that cooperative gains are equally distributed among states in multi-player situations.[22] It is difficult to see this demonstration as more than tautology. Snidal purports to show that an actor's increasing concern with relative gains (i.e., security goods) leads all games which he treats (Harmony, Stag Hunt, Coordination, and Chicken) to transform into Prisoner's Dilemma. However, this result is actually an artefact of his definition of the payoff matrix of combined absolute and relative gains, and that matrix is nothing but an expression of the additive relationship he postulated between absolute and relative gains in the beginning. This feature of his argument represents a manifestation of the rational-choice approach's tendency to confound a priori and a posteriori.[23] Snidal presents no empirical evidence to suggest that his elaborate schema predicts real life: unless we take it for granted that Prisoner's Dilemma is real life (as do the neorealists), in which case any reference to empirical international reality is indeed superfluous. That all games transform into Prisoner's Dilemma is no proof of his premise, but rather testimony to the ingenuity of the neorealist research program.

It is not evident that such a postulate describes the situation of the Soviet successor states, who are still seeking to consolidate their sovereignty and state apparatus. It is possible that such a situation is unnatural. It is possible that North American theories of international relations, derived in abstraction from empirical reality and applied mainly to analyze limited behavioral spaces of OECD member-states, are adequate and accurate descriptions of the vast majority of international phenomena. To take as the point of departure, that international life is nasty, brutish, and short, represents, however, no proof. Yet it is neither necessary nor productive wholly to discard either neorealism or neoliberalism. What is required, rather, is to recontextualize them in the methodological pluralism where they developed, the conceptual ferment of the 1980s, the most fertile recent period in North American international relations theory. Toward this end, it useful to point out some apparently overlooked fallacies of “rational choice,” using which approach the neorealists and neoliberals have already begun to outline the dimensions of a shared intellectual hegemony.

The Shortcomings of Rational Choice Theory

The rational choice approach in political science takes its cue from Friedman's exposition of the virtues of what he calls “positive economics.”[24] According to

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Friedman, positive economics is independent of any ethical position or normative judgment and also independent of normative economics (which cannot, however, be independent of it). Friedman's programmatic statement strongly affected the development of methodology in economics and forms the basis for the “rational choice” school in political science. However, this seemingly straightforward position confounds a remarkable number of philosophical misunderstandings. The relationship between assumptions and conclusions is one of these. It is worthwhile briefly to develop this point, since neorealist and neoliberal approaches are increasingly using rational choice methodology as a language of mutual communication.

Friedman defines a theory as a language plus a body of substantive hypotheses. The language is a set of tautologies without substance that serve only as a conceptual filing system. The substantive hypotheses are empirically meaningful only insofar as the categories that are used to construct them are themselves useful in analyzing a particular class of problems. To a reader familiar with the history of mathematics, it is evident that Friedman models his concept of theory as contentless tautology on the “logicist” school of mathematics originated by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, and in particular on the logicist concept of the role of truth-functions in mathematics. However, Friedman misunderstands this school. His approach consequently misinterprets and misapplies it. It makes three basic errors which follow one from the other, with unfortunate consequences.[25]

The first error is an overmathematization of the problems. This has developed from the implication that natural language is merely descriptive and therefore insufficient, from which it is a short step to conclude that it is unnecessary.[26] Friedman and his followers argue that the technical formalization of substantive hypotheses is all that is needed to express the research problem and make it amenable to solution. This is a misunderstanding of the mathematical logicists. Friedman and the rational-choice school seem unaware that the logicists did not seek to build their science upon the single cornerstone of truth-functions. Rather, Frege and Russell believed that their “truth-functions” in some respects represented certain features of natural languages, and in other respects idealized and amplified those features. Truth-functions were therefore useful for some purposes and not for others; they were not the necessary and sufficient expression of “logicized” mathematics. Moreover, the logicist program in mathematics was an admitted failure on its own terms. It was a failure because it has been admitted that mathematics cannot be derived from logic, ever since Russell himself discovered set-theoretical antinomies (paradoxes such as “Does the set that contains all sets which do not contain themselves, contain itself?”). The second and third errors result from this misunderstanding.

The second error occurs when Friedman counterposes pure vs. applied theory: logicism knows no analogous problem of pure vs. applied mathematics. For the

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logicists, the “problem” of pure vs. applied mathematics is identical with the problem of the structure and function of pure mathematics, viz., their (failed) attempt to derive mathematics from logic.[27] The third error is in Friedman's attempts, faithful to his misunderstanding and misapplication of logicism, to seek to justify a derivation of economics from logic. His explicit separation of pure from applied theory amounts to the confounding of a priori and a posteriori principles that plagues the rational-choice approach in political science. “Rational choice” makes the testing of hypotheses the criterion for judging the correctness of deduction; this is equivalent to the confounding of a priori with a posteriori. Many social scientists, not just those in the rational-choice tradition, routinely derive a posteriori conclusions and then present them as a priori assumptions.[28]

What we have here is an outstanding example of how misapplied mathematical techniques deform the ways in which social realities are represented. It has occurred because the epistemological premises on which the theorists constructed their schematic representations, do not coincide with the ontological foundations of the school of mathematics that they seek to apply.[29] Russell, in the turn-of-the-century Cambridge tradition, exerted his entire philosophical and mathematical effort toward establishing the divorce of logic from psychology.[30] Yet the actors studied by social and political science, however these actors are defined, have consciousness and the possibility of a will.[31]

The Intersection of Policy and Research Concerns

Following the first introductory part of this article, the second part pointed out some blind spots in the newly combined neorealist/neoliberal perspective. It traced this development in North American international relations theory directly back to the depsychologizing of logic by British philosophers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Theirs was the project that established the context in which Popper, reacting against deterministic historical materialism, could formulate falsificationism as an explicit method for theory testing. That in turn gave rise to Kuhn's conception of scientific revolution, which was based on natural science but had great influence in social science and among behaviorists in the 1970s in particular.[32] This third part of the article pursues a discussion of the financial sphere, showing why it is the key problem for the newly independent states in former Soviet area, and explaining why partial disciplinary approaches (including various political science theories) have been insufficient to comprehend this. It spells out the practical solution to the theoretical conundrum that this policy problem illuminates: the recognition of a “meso-economic” level of analysis that takes the state into account as an ensemble of legal regimes that mediate between domestic social and political formations on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the norms of the international system. Finally, it sets

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two major schools of international relations theory into relation with one another, those established by Krasner and by Cox. Specifically, it systematizes their surprising complementarity as revealed in previous empirical work.

The Principal Question for Policy and Research

A Soviet successor state reflects the interests of the peoples living on its territory only to the degree that the polity is penetrated from the “bottom up” by the basic elements of national power, viz., human demography and economic geography, and the ability to convert these into political resources. That “conversion process” develops at different rates in different places.[33] Rarely, however, have states been as much at the mercy of their international environment as are the Soviet successor states today. There is indeed a race between these governments' penetration of their own societies and their own penetration by the international system.[34] The key question for policy should be, and the most interesting question for theory must be: Which international instruments (multilateral institutions, international regimes, and noninstitutionally coordinated bilateral policies) can optimize the financial-economic stabilization in the Soviet successor states, promoting political arrangements for cooperative security, and how? The effective deployment and use of these instruments, by all international actors concerned, requires an accurate understanding of the general situation. That understanding is in turn contingent upon two components, one internal and one external. The internal component is: To the degree that the behavior of the Soviet successor states follows from policy directives implemented to achieve defined goals, how does the inheritance from the Soviet period complicate the desired stabilization? The external component is: To the degree that the behavior of the Soviet successor states is merely an aggregate of ad hoc responses to events over which they have no control, how can international norms and constraints contain conflict among the post-Soviet republics by stably organizing relations among them? Existing approaches to the subject are partial and unsystematic. These approaches derive from the fields of international relations, international law, and international economics.

1. In the field of international law, it is now clear that even such a supposedly “social-system-invariant” body as Western telecommunications law is integrated into national legal systems from which it cannot be severed. There have been problems developing these systems even in Central and Eastern Europe. As recently as the early 1990s, specialists from the European Community thought that German law could be grafted onto the Polish system, which had an interwar legal culture historically grounded in German experience. It was quickly discovered that German accounting law, for example, was inappropriate to enterprises in a post-centrally planned economy. The attempt to use the Austrian legal system as a model for “modernizing” Hungarian law encountered similar difficulties.

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The difficulty of developing financial law in Czechoslovakia was complicated by the fact that the last professor of accounting in the country had retired in 1947! Specialists in comparative law have broached this problem only by creating frameworks for economic adjustment programs. Specialists in international law have broached it only by creating of frameworks and rules for the negotiation of arbitration arrangements. If there are such problems in Central and Eastern Europe, the difficulties of states in the former Soviet area can only be much more severe.

2. In the field of international economics, converting centrally planned economies into market economies has had some success in Central and Eastern Europe. However, the situation in the former Soviet area is another matter entirely.[35] The only two perspectives that the discipline of international economics provides are transformation of a centrally planned economy into a market economy and as development of a “typical” developing country.[36] However, the present situation in the former Soviet area cannot be treated as an instance of either generalization. The problems in applying “shock therapy” to the Russian Federation only illustrate the point.[37] The increasing literature on the unique problems of post-Soviet transitions has not, however, led to the elaboration of a new paradigm.[38] Such a paradigm would have to recognize the relative autonomy of the state vis-à-vis society,[39] the state being defined to include the ensemble of domestic legal regimes. Macroeconomic issues such as international borrowing and currency reform are linked to foreign trade reform and the creation of banking systems.[40] These latter are in turn constrained by the international regimes of the global economy; yet they are connected with microeconomic issues such as privatization and foreign direct investment through national systems of accounting, property, inheritance, contract, and bankruptcy law.
 

3. In the field of international relations, political scientists are divided between adherents to Popper's exegesis of Russell on the methodology of social science and adherents to Wittgenstein's critique of logical positivism. The frequent result is a dialogue of the deaf of mathematically vs. linguistically oriented theorists which does not get down to empirical analysis.[41] Even regime theory, which of all schools did the most to overcome that philosophical opposition (before being re-appropriated by the neorealists and neoliberals who generated its orthodox variety), has not made great strides toward the analysis required here: this for two reasons. The first is that practitioners of regime theory have not in general taken account of the reciprocal influence between international and national legal regimes.[42] The second is that these scholars usually overlook the crucial importance of transnational currency and financial relations, especially private transfers. Currency and financial relations are vital for the Soviet successor states, and private capital flows greatly exceed grants and loans from international institu-

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tions and other governments.[43] Western theorists of international relations, who are mostly specialists on relations among the OECD countries, do not see that the Soviet successor states' historical experience makes their external relations qualitatively different from those of “developed market economies”; or they do see it yet can do nothing about it. Area specialists can do little to clarify the matter because they are relatively untrained in the discipline's theoretical disputes, nor do they usually have the background to make their findings relevant to specialists in economics and law.[44]

International relations theorists toward the end of the Cold War traditionally tried to explain the foreign international economic policy of, for example, Poland and Hungary, as the result of their place in the structure of the international system (e.g., the bipolar world) combined with the norms of the international economic system (into which they sought to integrate themselves). This represented a nascent combination of neorealism and neoliberalism (a Keohane-school of regime theory) for the purpose of explaining neomercantilist behavior by the East European states (viz., state power used for economic ends). The evolution of Yugoslavia's relations with the IMF and the World Bank, for example, foreshadows the political conditionality that the IMF imposed upon reforming economies in Central and Eastern Europe after 1976 (when the IMF revised its Articles following the downfall of the Bretton Woods System). The IMF repeatedly over time (in 1953, 1961, 1965, and 1973) became a political resource in the hands of domestic Yugoslav reformers. The 1965 episode foreshadowed the role that the IMF assumed in Eastern Europe after the 1976 amendments which made conditionality on loans a key instrument of IMF influence on the reform of the recipient countries' domestic system. Especially from the mid-1980s on, the Western powers differentiated among East European countries and sought to use the IMF to promote decentralization and marketization in countries already moving in that direction.

The neorealist school captures the salience of the place of countries such as Poland and Hungary in a spatially and temporally situated bipolar international structure. The neoliberal school provides a way of integrating that with the analysis of global political economy. However, such a combination of Keohane-type and Waltz-type theories, of which the mathematical formalization is the basis of the current adaptation of rational choice, does not explain international behavior when it comes to the Soviet Union. Indeed, once the Soviet Union started to change and fall apart, the bipolar assumption upon which the explanatory power of Waltz's theory rested, also fell apart. Even structural realism is insufficient to this explanatory task, because it still falls short of the ability to explain systemic structural change. Only an international relations theory that takes account of regimes as both objects and subjects is sufficient, particularly since the case can be

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made that international regimes contributed to the disintegration of the USSR by offering incentive structures for subnational actors in the Soviet Union itself. However, the biggest problem experienced by the reforming economies in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-1991 (also evident when one looks at the Soviet attempt to accede to the GATT) is that they did not, and in the main still do not, have the domestically established legal regimes under which firms in market systems are accustomed to operating: systems of accounting law, property law, inheritance law, insurance law, and contract law. Such domestic legal regimes are inextricably melded together among themselves and with the governance of a national economy, and the development of the national economy is overtly proclaimed by many Soviet successor states to be the principal component of their national interest.

Its Practical Solution

In the present geo-economic world, the national interest of these states is still being formed just as the states themselves are still being formation. The national interest, in particular, is being defined through the legislative process in the writing of the laws just mentioned. The analytical solution is to define a mesoeconomic level of analysis as the ensemble of national legal regimes and the national policies complementing them. These national regimes and domestic policies together represent the interface between the national economy (and society) of the individual state on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the dominant norms of the international political order. In this context a combination of Krasner's approach and Cox's approach is appropriate for studying how these post-Soviet republics are going to and are in the process of defining their own national interests. Conceptually central here is the sphere of finance, specifically transnational currency and financial relations. Intergovernmental cooperation in this sphere is often a response to private capital flows and an attempt to control its effects. Currency and financial issues represent the intersection between macroeconomic policy on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the interface between the national and international legal regimes in the economic field. This is so not only for the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union but also for Central and Eastern Europe.

Three issues embody the link between internal and external components of the key question stated above. These are (1) the coordination of foreign direct investment including the laws that govern it, (2) the role of international institutions in macroeconomic stabilization, and (3) currency and trade cooperation. They are central because the national systems of law framing mesoeconomic activity must not conflict with dominant international political norms if national policies in the respective areas are to be effective. The mesoeconomic level, representing the

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interface between international and national legal regimes involves such issues as foreign trade reform, creation of national systems of banking and insurance, and accounting, inheritance, and property law. Microeconomic policy areas such as privatization and price reform are linked to mesoeconomic issues of developing systems for accounting law, property ownership, inheritance law, contract law, and bankruptcy law.[45] Macroeconomic policy areas such as convertibility and other currency matters, as well as international borrowing are linked to mesoeconomic issues of developing foreign trade, banking, and insurance systems.[46]

It is important to spell out how well Krasner and Cox dovetail, because their complementarity is counterintuitive. Krasner would not grant the privileged position that Cox gives to economic production as a motive force behind the creation and re-creation of international systems. However, like Cox, he uses the term structure to mean the transnational organization of economic production. Moreover, Krasner's anticipates an historical sociology of international orders, and such a sociology is one of Cox's main contributions. Cox's approach, unlike Krasner's, incorporates a version of regime theory that carries a transformational logic of international norms. However, like Krasner, Cox uses a transformational logic of international structure. Indeed, his definition of structure complements Krasner's idea of international order.[47]

Cox anticipates how international orders affect international financial regimes, and spelling out how this happens is one of Krasner's main contributions. In particular, Krasner's concern with the ensemble of international financial institutions as constituting an international regime for official capital transfers can be conceptually integrated into Cox's approach by treating states as constellations of social forces that have themselves evolved under the influence of international capital flows. Moreover, the international regime for unofficial or private capital transfers holds even greater significance for the evolution of social forces. Questions of domestic legal regimes are thus joined. Domestic social forces in all the post-Soviet republics are still formulating and implementing these various laws should be, through their own political processes also not fully institutionalized. Such an approach is therefore certainly relevant to the post-Soviet case. Moreover, it is consonant with Waltz's definition of the “units” in domestic politics as “institutions and agencies [that] stand vis-à-vis each other in relations of super- and subordination.”[48]

Table 1 summarizes the intersection between Krasner's typology of domestic orders and Cox's typology of international orders. It is this intersection which demonstrates the complementarity of the two approaches in practice. The category of international relations that encompasses this analytical intersection of Cox and Krasner's approaches is financial relations, one of the four principal categories of international politics defined in the conclusion to second section of

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this article. This rubric includes both private and state activity as well as intergovernmental cooperation, over such issues as currency and multilateral trade.[49] Indeed, intergovernmental cooperation in currency and financial matters is more and more frequently an attempt to control the effects of massive private capital flows. (The European Monetary System is a case in point.) To repeat: The sphere of international financial behavior, broadly construed as here defined, represents the intersection between macroeconomic policy on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the interface between international and national legal regimes in the economic field.

The future of international relations among the Soviet successor states, and of their individual relations with the rest of the world will depend on how the formerly constituent republics define their national interests and seek to realize them in the international economy. Those definitions are now ongoing in the states concerned through legislative processes that are under the influence of social forces and social formations, which are themselves in turn evolving under the influence of foreign direct and private and public investment and other international contacts. (This proposed framework has already been successfully applied to an analysis of Soviet behavior vis-à-vis the major international financial institutions during the late 1980s and early 1990s.[50])

Its Theoretical Significance

Recent debate in international relations theory has highlighted the promise of a scientific-realist epistemology embedded a transformational approach to international structure, but little empirical work has been undertaken in this direction. One important why is that current attempts to conceptualize a transformational approach to international structure have been rather silent about norms. One fundamental requirement of moving from theory to empirical

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research is therefore to clarify the place of norms and how they are to be treated. Recent developments in international relations theory have demonstrated the theoretical possibilities for a scientific-realist epistemology embedded a transformational approach to international structure. I follow Peter Winch's demonstration that a proper theory of knowledge for social-science research requires a definition of structures, norms, and behaviors; and that any two of these can form the basis of an analytical framework for studying the third.[51] David Dessler's guidelines on what a transformational theory of international structure may look like in operational terms correspond impeccably Winch's requirements for a social-science epistemology.[52] [Addendum: He first of all makes clear that the transformational model involves a notion of what structure is, which is different from the positional approach to international structure. What Dessler calls "resources" ("the physical attributes that comprise 'capability'") are equivalent to what Winch calls structures. (This is not to be confused with Dessler's own view of structure as "the social forms that preexist action, … a set of materials that is `appropriated' and `instantiated' in action." What Dessler calls physical resources is not far from what Waltz calls capabilities, but Waltz considers the "distribution" of those capabilities to be the definition of structure whereas Dessler does not. Dessler, "What's at Stake," p. 452.) Dessler also observes that a transformational model of international politics must be predicated also on a theory of agency: what he calls "action" consists of what Winch calls behaviors. (Ibid., pp. 453-54. Dessler consequently emphasizes (pp. 455 70) recent regime theory's emphasis on constitutive and regulative rules. Compare Wendt and Duvall, "Institutions and International Order," pp. 58-66, on constitutive principles, i.e. of structure) and organizing principles, i.e. of systems.) Finally, what he calls "rules" ("the media through which [nations] communicate with one another and coordinate their actions") are the same as what Winch calls norms.] Dessler, for example, distinguishes between the positional and transformational approach to international structure. It is appropriate also to introduce the distinction between positional and transformational approaches to change in international norms alongside this distinction in approaches to change in international structure. Indeed, with these two dichotomies it becomes possible to understand better and to systematize the differences among several leading theorists of international relations theory and the “schools” they may be said to represent. Table 2 does precisely that.

The classification presented in Table 2 is quite straightforward and commonsensical. For example, Waltz's theory is much better at explaining continuity in structure and norms than change in either. He seems to exclude almost definitionally the possibility of structural transformation and does not even invoke that of normative transformation. Waltz, who cannot explain the transformations of international systems because his logic does not admit them, also does not explain change in international norms. [Addendum: John Gerard Ruggie, "Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis," in ibid., p. 152. Waltz's dismissal of this crucial period in the formation of the modern state system in Europe shares several fallacies with Wallerstein's world system analysis, criticized in Aristide R. Zolberg, "Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link," World Politics, 33:2 (January 1981), pp. 253 81. Zolberg's evaluation adds weight to Wendt's assessment that both Waltz and Wallerstein "treat … their primitive units, in [Wallerstein's] case the structure of the world system, as given and unproblematic" and "reify system structures in a way which leads to static and even functional explanations of state action." Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem," pp. 348; emphasis in the original omitted. John Gerard Ruggie, "International Structure and International Transformation: Space, Time, and Method," in Czempiel and Rosenau (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, p. 22, endorses this assessment.] He is therefore categorized as positional-struc-

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tural and positional-normative. Indeed, Waltz would have to deny that the break-up of the USSR and the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe represent either a structural or a normative transformation of the international system. In a reply to critics written before the Soviet Union started to disintegrate, Waltz appropriates a distinction of Durkheim's to suggest that a supposed transition from “mechanistic solidarity” to “organic solidarity” in the international community meets criteria he defined earlier for systemic transformation. [Addendum: Not even the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) moved international society "from a condition in which like units are weakly held together by their similarities to one in which unlike units are united by their differences." (Kenneth Waltz, "Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics," in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 326.) Waltz excludes almost definitionally the possibility of structural transformation while not even invoking that of normative transformation.] Yet by that same definition we will always have a “self-help” system—that is, there will be no transformation of either norms or structure—so long as every state continues to perform all functions of the state. One can only ponder the significance of the fact that not all post-Soviet states are successfully performing all those functions. To suggest that they are therefore not states according to Weber's criteria cited above would fly in the face of international practice and only create a tautological box here.[53]

Ashley's approach is positional-structural and transformational-normative, because he explains how international norms change and international structure remains the same. Krasner's application of regime theory is transformational-structural and positional-normative, because he explains how international structure changes and international norms remain the same. Specifically, he explains the attitudes of states toward the New International Economic Order by use of a “second-image” logic, i.e., as a result of their place in the international order. [Addendum: What differentiates Krasner from earlier regime theoretical approaches is his analysis of the NIEO's consequences and his emphasis on it as a conceptually integrated intellectual construct. He underlines repeatedly that the NIEO integrated a range of beliefs about trade and development, and that this was an important source of the strength of its political challenge to "global liberalism." This feature of the NIEO allowed it to be easily disseminated and cognitively internalized. From Krasner's logic it follows that the competition between the capitalist and the socialist systems led to the former's victory and the latter's defeat for essentially the same reasons why an East-West confrontation over international trade regimes would follow Krasner's analysis of the conflict between "global liberalism" and the New International Economic Order (NIEO) proposed by the Third World. [Addendum: This is not the only explanation. Neoliberal institutionalists may argue that the CMEA broke down because its weak executive and organizational bureaucracy failed to create common interests among its members. For a suggestion promoting this line of argument, see Robert O. Keohane, "Neoliberal Institutionalism: A Perspective on World Politics," in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), p. 5.] The socialist bloc, like the Third World, used international forums to seek to insert its institutions and procedures into international law. Moreover, in his study of NIEO, Krasner asserts that "Third World support for international regimes is based on authoritative, rather than market, principles and norms" and results from "Third World weakness and vulnerability stemming from a paucity of resources that can be used externally, and from fragile domestic political and social institutions that cannot adjust to shocks." One can imagine a similar argument, according to which the relative impotence of the CMEA countries vis vis the general international system conditioned the construction and evolution of the socialist international trade regime.] Krasner's positional-normative theory leads him to conclude that the existing norms of what he calls “global liberalism” (the West's trading system) in the international system are virtuous, with a few exceptions that do not alter the main thrust of his argument. Finally, Cox's approach is transformational-structural and transformational-normative, because he seeks to explain how both international structure and international norms change.

Conclusion

This conclusion addresses two points. The first places contemporary international relations theories, and their shortcomings as revealed by inspection of the former Soviet area, into the context of recent social science theory generally. It becomes clear that the fundamental point of difference between the social and physical sciences, often unrecognized, is that the objects of social science research are sentient and have consciousness whereas those of physical science research do not. The applicability of a depsychologized logic to the creation of knowledge about objects having consciousness and the power of ratiocination should, at a minimum, be highly questionable. In particular, social scientists who continue to follow Russell and Friedman in applying criteria developed to study entities without psychology, to entities having consciousnesses not subject to experimental control,

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will soon find, after their first successes now evident, that Ptolemaic epicycles on their premises will be increasingly necessary.[54] The English philosophers also provided the context for the development of Wittgenstein's thought and the idiosyncratic interpretation of that thought by his students and their followers, including the consequences of that critique of Russell for the social sciences, such as Winch's mentioned earlier. Winch's approach in turn is generally consistent with, though not inevitably linked to, the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss, itself is a close cousin to the European post-structuralism that depsychologized literature and authorship, giving us the deconstructionst principle which is Ashley's point of departure.

The second point addressed in this conclusion recalls the second part of this article, where the origins of neorealism and neoliberalism were recalled. It was explained there how the merger of neoliberalism with neorealism, using rational-choice theory as the instrument of the leveraged buy-out, was, despite its impressive formal results, unsound. The depsychologization of theory, following in a line from Russell's depsychologization of logic, was shown to be a fundamental reason for that. Applied to the study of international relations, that depsychologization results in an abstraction of actually existing states from their spatial and temporal contexts.[55] As Kratochwil has noted, historically oriented approaches can overcome the limitations of structural theories that “fail to suggest further avenues for research beyond the original market analogy and utility-maximizing actions under constraints.”[56] The task now is to bring space and time back into the theoretical conceptualization of international studies, without losing the indisputable logical rigor enforced by the mathematical techniques adopted by emerging neorealist-neorealist condominium. (Note that retaining the logical rigor does not obligate one to adopt the mathematical techniques.) Bringing space and time back into international relations theory permits the integration of the most creative theoretical approaches now available, including original neorealism. The framework for such a synthesis is sketched.

Post-Soviet International Relations in the Context of Current Social Science Theory

Partly due to the new institutional economics, the institutional approach has become a growth industry in social science in recent years.[57] According to this approach, institutions establish the boundaries of the possible forms of political participation, collective action, and political identity. Broadly speaking, we can delineate three approaches to the study of institutional creation and change that are pertinent to the study of post-Soviet affairs. The first approach draws directly on the works of Gerschenkron and of Huntington.[58] This approach focuses first on the material limits and timing of economic development, on how these affect political outcomes, and on how institutional arrangements constrain possibilities for collective action possibilities and facilitate peaceful change.[59] This is the only

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one of the three approaches which is really applied to the post-Soviet states.

The second approach interprets sees institutions as solutions to problems of collective action, and to failures of coordination and cooperation. In this view, institutions ensure Pareto-superior outcomes for participants by reducing transaction costs. However, inefficient institutions can and do exist. They can retard both political stability and economic growth.[60] Institutions are extremely important for explaining and understanding national and international affairs in post-Soviet states. This is the case as much in the field of international affairs among the newly independent post-Soviet states as it is in the domestic political and economic struggles of each. Indeed, if any social science field should be as strongly shaken by the collapse of the former Soviet Union as Soviet studies, then logically it should be international relations. As Gaddis has convincingly demonstrated, international relations theory and especially neorealism were largely built on the study of the Cold War.[61] It follows that the failure to predict the end of the Cold War should call into question a great many of the basic assumptions, premises, and theories of international relations. However, with but a few exceptions,[62] the field of international relations has tended in the past few years simply to ignore these problems and carry on regardless.

The second approach to institutions has been called into question by sociologists, who, just as rational-choice theorists bring an economic perspective, themselves bring an historical perspective.[63] This third approach focuses on institutions in a wider and more sociological sense. Institutions are seen not as “chosen structures” that facilitate specific outcomes; rather, they “structure choices” by limiting political action and stressing the path dependent nature of political and economic choices.[64] This approach holds the greatest promise for integrating international studies with the study of problems of ethnicity, which are so key to the post-Soviet context. Area-specific and case-study monographs on this subject have appeared; good theoretical work has also been carried out that innovatively applies social science theory from areas as diverse as game theory and international relations.[65] It is into this third approach that the framework elaborated in this article falls. It dovetails with the policy and research problem outlined in the third part of this article. What is necessary in the former Soviet area is to shift the level of political discourse about national interest from “possession goals ” to “milieu goals,” so that policy may follow.[66] This requires systematic study of the social basis of political movements and factions to determine which segments of societies in different republics may provide the social basis for common political effort. [67]

This article suggests a way to do that by setting the study of international relations on a structurationist foundation without discarding the demonstrated virtues of neorealism, and indeed by resetting them into their original realist context. It is appropriate to make explicit this connection with structuration theory: a specifi-

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cation of Winch's epistemology through categories defined by Dessler. Dessler makes clear that the notion of international structure pertinent to a transformational model of the international system involves a notion of structure different from the positional approach, one that is therefore not necessarily identical with Waltz's definition of structure as the “distribution of capabilities.” Specifically: What Dessler calls “resources” (“the physical attributes that comprise 'capability'”) are equivalent to what Winch calls structures. Dessler also observes that a transformational model of international politics must be predicated also on a theory of agency: what he calls “action” consists of what Winch calls behaviors. Finally, what he calls “rules” are the same as what Winch calls norms. Table 3 establishes that concordance and grounds the approach presented here in it. This approach provides a way to study the national interest that is intelligible in the context of contemporary international relations theory yet anchored in reality, especially non-OECD reality which theoreticians who pretend to universality ignore only at the peril of seeing their paradigm crash to the ground one day, as did orthodox neorealism when the Soviet Union disappeared. [68]

It is painful to admit that although political science has for its subject perhaps the most interesting domain of human action, the field as an academic discipline is one of the least original in the social sciences. One need only look at its intellectu-

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al history: from the early twentieth century until just after the Second World War, it was dominated by law-based institutional approaches. After these were found to be flawed in some ways, the discipline from the early 1950s through the late 1980s was dominated by approaches derived from sociology (of which Gabriel Almond's application of Parsons's structural-functional interpretation of Weber is the most direct example). Most recently, the failure of those approaches has given rise to a return to the institutional bases of politics on the one hand, and, on the other, a search to apply the methods and approach of economics. If political science is in fact one of the social sciences most dependent on other social sciences for its methods and indeed its substance, it makes little sense to stress one of these sciences (law, sociology, economics) at the expense of the others, particularly when this would create an imbalanced methodology. The final part of this conclusion sets out a way to combine the relevant social sciences explicitly and even-handedly in order to promote the systematic study of international politics.

Environment and Agency in International Space-Time

There are no politics without scarce resources over which to dispute or without people to do the disputing. From this it follows that the analysis of international politics must be grounded by studies of scarce resources and of human population. Scarce resources and human population have in common the fact of being dispersed across land. Without people living on land over which scarce resources are distributed, social science is impossible in that there are no phenomena to be the subject of which knowledge is created. This is not trivial. It implies an ontological claim of a universalist basis for the study of human society. That claim manifests in the mapping of the study of human space-time onto a restricted range of social science disciplines, the following in particular. Table 4 expresses that mapping, and it integrates the four fundamental instrumentalities for the international projection of state power enumerated by Thucydides: economics, finance, military, and ideology.[69] The study of international politics is really the study of the interaction and synthesis of these four elements: international economic affairs, international financial affairs, international ideological affairs, and international military affairs. Each of these is one modality of the deployment of political power internationally.

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Table 4 may be summarized in the following way. The two basic ontological and interdependent phenomena of international politics are environment(s) and agent(s). International relations theory studies human agency in the international environment. Geography is the study of the dispersion of scarce resources across land. Demography is the study of human population dispersed across land. Demography and geography are therefore the starting point for the empirical study of international politics.[70] They are about human existence and human agency in the international environment.

The two dimensions of the international environment are time and space. No area of social science theory is more fractionated, for example, than the study of nationalism and ethnicity; yet perhaps no single issue is more salient to the former Soviet area than the ethnic question. This is the area where recent social science thinking has had the most problems, for ethnicity not only exists in time and space, it is conditioned by time and space.

In general terms, all agency is exerted over space and time. The two dimensions of the human agent are behavior and cognition, which are realized through the manipulation of material and symbolic instruments. The human agent in the international environment is as a continuum of cognition and behavior, achieving cognition through symbolic instruments and behavior through material instruments. Behavior implies material instruments; cognition implies symbolic instruments. Use of material instruments (i.e., action) displays behavior; the essential character of behavior, agency mediated through material instruments, is appropriation. When exerted in time, we call it economic behavior; when over space, military behavior. Action through symbolic instruments (i.e., thought) presents cognition; and the essential character of cognition mediated through symbolic instruments is communication. When exerted in time we call this financial, which

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abstracts from economic behavior; when over space we call it ideological, which abstracts from military behavior.[71]

The essential aspect of time is memory; for this, human existence is requisite; its analysis is expressed through demographic study in the broadest sense. Demography is about humans existing in time, and appropriation over time through the use of material instruments is the economic sphere. Symbolic instruments such as money are then used to abstract, communicate, and rationalize the meaning of economic appropriation: this defines the sphere of finance.

The essential aspect of space is domain; for this, land is requisite; its analysis is expressed through geographic study in the broadest sense. Geography is about humans existing over space, and space may be appropriated through material instruments or through symbolic instruments. Human appropriation of space through material instruments is the military sphere. Symbolic instruments are used to abstract, communicate, and rationalize the meaning of that appropriation: this defines the sphere of ideology.

To summarize the point of this conclusion: The current crisis of social-science behavioralism in the field of international relations theory was first expressed in a panicked search of the extra-disciplinary literature on nationalism for conceptual tools. It is now being papered over by the further depsychologization of the conceptual apparatuses, as in the rational-choice marriage between neorealism and neoliberalism. Feyeraband's analysis of the varieties of justificationism explains that development. What he calls the probabilistic approach to justificationism, which is typical of statistics-oriented behavioralism, has lost much of its intellectual legitimacy. The move toward rational choice theory represents a choice in favor of what he calls the transcendental-idealist solution to justificationism. The alternative solution he enumerates is conventionalism; that is the epistemology undergirding the framework presented here.[72] The present article, seeking to bring time (demographic history) and space (geographic sociology) back into international relations theory without discarding the insights of realism and original neorealism, should therefore be seen as a first attempt to respond to that challenge of the failure of probabilistic behaviorism by re-introducing systematically and rigorously the multidimensional analysis of the national interest, which rational-choice risks reducing to mathematized “self-preservation.” If the approach described here, critical as it is of certain realist premises, seems in some respects more faithful to the original realists such as Thucydides and Morgenthau than the most recent neorealists are, then there is indeed cause for reflection.

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Notes

[Note 1] This article is based on a paper presented to the Workshop on International Relations Theory after the Cold War, held at the Institute of International Relations, Pantheois University (May 1994). It draws on material presented to the Seminar of the Center for the Study of Post-Communist Societies, University of Maryland (March 1992), an Annual Congress of the American Political Science Association (September 1993), and the Workshop on Social Science Theory and Post-Soviet Realities, The Harriman Institute, Columbia University (December 1994). For the last three opportunities, the author thanks Karen Dawisha, Edward Kolodziej, and Alexander Motyl. The author also thanks Mark Blyth and Alexander Wendt for detailed comments on a previous draft. This research was supported through a grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

[Note 2] Arnold Wolfers, “The Determinants of Foreign Policy,” in Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), p. 45.

[Note 3] See Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), for the origin of this literature.

[Note 4] See Arnold Wolfers, “National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol,” in Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, pp. 147–166. Required reading should also include Charles A. Beard, The Idea of National Interest: An Analytical Study in American Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1934); Nicholas J. Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics: The United States and the Balance of Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942); Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy, [1st ed.] (New York: Knopf, 1951); Lincoln P. Bloomfield, The United Nations and U.S. Foreign Policy: A New Look at the National Interest (Boston: Little, Brown, [1960]); and Wolfers, “The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference,” in Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, pp. 81–102.

[Note 5] Marvin S. Soroos, Beyond Sovereignty: The Challenge of Global Policy (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1986).

[Note 6] For an interesting exception, see Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978); compare Robert C. Johansen, The National Interest and the Human Interest: An Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980). More generally, see Joseph Frankel, National Interest (London: Pall Mall, [1970]).

[Note 7] Kenneth W. Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 134.

[Note 8] Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), p. 9.

[Note 9] Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); David A. Baldwin (ed.), Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

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[Note 10] Among many possible examples, including the existence of a policy journal entitled The National Interest, see Carroll J. Doherty, “Defining the National Interest: A Process of Trial and Error,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 52 (26 March 1994), 750–54.

[Note 11] This phrase consciously invokes Max Weber's famous definition in Politics as a Vocation, of “a state [as] a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (trans. and eds.), Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 78 (emphasis in the original).

[Note 12] Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 134.

[Note 13] Robert O. Keohane, “Reciprocity in International Relations,” International Organization 40 (Winter 1986), 1–27; reprinted in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), pp. 132–157.

[Note 14] Robert O. Keohane, “Neoliberal Institutionalism: A Perspective on World Politics,” in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, p. 9.

[Note 15] Robert O. Keohane, “International Institutions: Two Approaches,” in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, p. 162 (emphases omitted); article first published in International Studies Quarterly 32 (December 1988), 379–396.

[Note 16] Robert O. Keohane, “Neoliberal Institutionalism,” pp. 3–4.

[Note 17] Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

[Note 18] Robert O. Keohane, “Neoliberal Institutionalism,” in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, pp. 1–20.

[Note 19] Robert O. Keohane, “International Institutions,” in Keohane, International Institutions and State Power, pp. 158–179.

[Note 20] See also Robert O. Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes”; see further Joseph S. Nye, “Neorealism and Its Critics,” World Politics 40 (January 1988), 235–251; Keohane, “Alliances, Threats, and the Uses of Neorealism,” International Security 13 (Summer 1988), 169–176; Emerson M.S. Niou and Peter C. Ordeshook, “Realism versus Neoliberalism: A Formulation,” American Journal of Political Science 35 (May 1991), 481–511; Robert Powell, “Neorealism and Neoliberalism,” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994), 313–344. Compare Beverly Crawford, “The New Security Dilemma under International Economic Interdependence,” Millennium 34 (Spring 1994), 25–55.

[Note 21] Robert Powell, “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory,” American Political Science Review 85 (September 1991), 701–726; reprinted in David A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 209–233.

[Note 22] Duncan Snidal, “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 85 (December 1991), 1303–1320; reprinted in Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism, pp. 170–208.

[Note 23] On this tendency, see Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994).

[Note 24] Originally published in Milton Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1953); reprinted many places, including, in part, in Frank

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Hahn and Martin Hollis (eds.), Philosophy and Economic Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 18–35.

[Note 25] For support of this contention, see Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics: Or How Economists Explain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 103–118, who demonstrates Friedman's consonance with Popper's “strict falsificationism,” likewise descended from the Frege-Russell philosophy of mathematics. Bruce Caldwell, Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century (London: Unwin Hyman, 1982), pp. 173–188, refers to this complex as “methodological instrumentalism” and summarizes some important methodological critiques of Friedman, in addition to the epistemological ones explained above.

[Note 26] Even prominent theoreticians disposed to be friendly to neorealist versions of rational choice have commented that the benefits won at great theoretical cost have been all too modest. See, e.g., Stephen D. Krasner, “Toward Understanding in International Relations.” International Studies Quarterly 29 (June 1985), 141–43.

[Note 27] For this detail on the “logicist” school, see S. Körner, The Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1960), pp. 41–42, 51–53.

[Note 28] They do not even realize that physical scientists, whose mantle of rigor they seek to assume by invoking Kuhn's work on scientific revolutions, now discredited even in the natural sciences, would scoff at the notion of “testing” a theory by seeing whether it explains the data from which it is derived. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., enlarged (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Sciences (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966). Protestations about the difficulty of finding an “experimental situation” in the social sciences are not to the point here.

[Note 29] For example, Friedman naively suggests that there is a social science parallel to Gödel's theorem, and invokes this in favor of the logical rigor of his research program. However, if there were such a parallel, the philosophical logic of his derivation of “positive economics” from mathematics would be invalid. For the most accessible exposition of Gödel, see Ernst Nagel and James R. Newman, Gödel's Proof (New York: New York University Press, 1958).

[Note 30] Anthony Palmer, Concept and Object: The Unity of the Proposition in Logic and Psychology (London: Routledge, 1988).

[Note 31] Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).

[Note 32] A notable expression of this influence is Arend Lijphart, “The Structure of the Theoretical Revolution in International Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 18 (March 1974), 41–74.

[Note 33] Alexander J. Moytl, Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).

[Note 34] Compare Janice E. Thomson, “Explaining the Regulation of Transnational Practices,” in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.), Governance without Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 195–218.

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[Note 35] Jim Leitzel, “Western Aid and Economic Reform in the Former Soviet Union,” World Economy 15 (May 1992), 357–374.

[Note 36] Padma Desai, “Soviet Economic Reform,” Harriman Institute Forum 3 (December 1990), 1–12.

[Note 37] Padma Desai, “From the Soviet Union to the Commonwealth of Independent States,” Harriman Institute Forum 5 (April 1992), 1–15.

[Note 38] David M. Kemme, Economic Transition in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York: Institute for East-West Security Studies, 1992).

[Note 39] This term is consciously taken from Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).

[Note 40] Marie Lavigne, Financing the Transition in the USSR (New York: Institute for East-West Security Studies, 1990); Leah A. Haus, Globalizing the GATT (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1992).

[Note 41] The variety of approaches expressed in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press), is the best example of such diversity within the covers of a single book.

[Note 42] But see Manuel Guitian, Rules and Discretion in International Monetary Policy (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1992); and Volker Rittberger (ed.), Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

[Note 43] Susan M. Collins and Dani Rodrik, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the World Economy. (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1991).

[Note 44] The last four paragraphs are based on a section from Robert M. Cutler, “The Contribution of the European Union, Its Institutions and Its Members to Cooperative Security for the Soviet Successor States” (Brussels: European Commission, forthcoming); the next two paragraphs summarize pp. 109–111 from Robert M. Cutler, “International Relations Theory and Soviet Conduct toward the Multilateral Global-Economic Organizations: GATT, IMF, and the World Bank,” pp. 106–135 in Deborah A. Palmieri (ed.), The U.S.S.R. and the World Economy (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1992).

[Note 45] Philippe Aghion, The Economics of Bankruptcy Reform (Washington, D.C.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1992).

[Note 46] See, for example, “The New Central Banks in the Republics of the Former U.S.S.R.” Central Banking 3 (Winter 1991–92), 12–25; Alexander Khandruew and Juri Morozow, “Die Reform des GUS-Bankensystems,” Die Bank (May 1992), 276–279.

[Note 47] The “structure of world order” for Cox is a binary variable, either hegemonic or nonhegemonic, where hegemony means “not just the dominance of one power but a special kind of dominance that involves some concessions to the interest of other powers such that all (or most) can regard the maintenance of the order as being in their general interest and can define it in terms of universality.” Robert W. Cox, “Production, the State, and Change in World Order,” in Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 42.

[Note 48] Waltz, Theory of International Relations, p. 81. [Addendum: For the domestic polity, it is possible to ground this approach normatively in the tradition of political theory that sees the basis of the state in its constitution rather than in the community of citizens. Nye observes that in this approach, as applied by Waltz, the unit-level "becomes a dumping ground hindering theory building at anything but the structural level." (Joseph S. Nye, Jr., World Politics, 60:2 (January 1988), p. 243. In this respect, Waltz's work suffers from the same impoverishment as does Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (New York: Wiley, 1970), whose ontology he consciously or unconsciously transfers to the study of international politics.]

[ page 87 ]

[Note 49] One of the few discussions that integrates this into a general approach is Susan Strange, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy (London: Frances Pinter, 1988).

[Note 50] The application referred to is Cutler, “International Relations Theory and Soviet Conduct,” of which see pp. 116–120 and nn., for a more detailed exposition of the material in the third and fourth paragraphs of this section of this article and the last two paragraphs of the previous section.

[Note 51] Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958).

[Note 52] David Dessler, “What's at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), 441–474.

[Note 53] Compare Louis Henkin, “Constructing the State Extraterritorially: Jurisdictional Discourse, the National Interest, and Transnational Norms,” Harvard Law Review 103 (April 1990), 1273–1305. Moreover, Waltz neglects a key point in Durkheim's discussion of what we would call the institutionalization of organic solidarity, viz., that voluntary cooperation creates unexpected duties. See Emile Durkhiem, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1933), p. 214.

[Note 54] Animals such as mice in Skinner boxes are not included in the category of sentient beings having consciousness and the power of ratiocination. The critique made here does not therefore necessarily apply to all the behavioral sciences but only to many of the social sciences.

[Note 55] This perspective dominated the subfield of comparative politics a quarter-century ago and found its clearest expression in Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry (New York: Wiley, 1970). The evolution of the subfield since then has recognized the errors of so extreme a methodological view. The subfield of international relations is now following that pattern.

[Note 56] Friedrich Kratochwil, “Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System,” World Politics 39 (October 1986), 52.

[Note 57] See James March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

[Note 58] Alexander Gerschenkron, Historical Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968).

[Note 59] Valerie Bunce, “Domestic Reform and International Change: The Gorbachev Reforms in Historical Perspective.” International Organization 47 (Winter 1993), 107–139; Jack Snyder, “International Leverage on Soviet Domestic Change,” World Politics 42 (October 1989), 1–30.

[Note 60] On political stability, see Robert Bates, Beyond the Miracle of the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); on economic growth, Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

[Note 61] John L. Gaddis, “International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,” International Security 17 (Winter 1992–93), 5–58.

[ page 88 ]

[Note 62] Such as Friedrich Kratochwil, “The Embarrassment of Changes: Neo-Realism as the Science of Realpolitik without Politics,” Review of International Studies 19 (January 1993), 63–80.

[Note 63] See, for example, Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth (eds.), Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

[Note 64] For example, D. Stark, “From System Identity to Organizational Diversity: Analyzing Social Change in Eastern Europe.” Contemporary Sociology 21 (May 1990), 299–304.

[Note 65] For a game theory example, see David Laitin, “Language and the State: Russia and the Soviet Union in Comparative Perspective,” pp. 129–169 in Alexander J. Motyl, ed., Thinking Theoretically about Soviet Nationalities (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). For an international relations example, see Jack Snyder, “Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State,” Survival 35 (Spring 1993), 5–26.

[Note 66] For this distinction, see Arnold Wolfers, “The Goals of Foreign Policy,” in Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration, pp. 73–76; see also Herbert C. Kelman, “Patterns of Personal Involvement in the National System: A Social-Psychological Analysis of Political Legitimacy,” in James N. Rosenau (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory, rev. ed. (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 276–288. [Addendum: Also, see further: Friedrich Kratochwil, "On the Notion of Interest in International Relations," International Organization, 36:1 (Winter 1981-82), 1-30.]

[Note 67] The question then becomes one of finding the means for enhancing their influence upon their national parliaments, through either national representation or lobbying, or through the currently moribund Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the States-Participant of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Intergovernmental cooperation in currency and financial affairs is the precondition for diminishing economic disequilibrium and thus political instability. Early international strategy seemed to neglect precisely this type of cooperation, which has until recently been absent among the Soviet successor states. See Michel Camdessus, “IMF Strategy for Economic Transformation in the Republics of the Former Soviet Union,” Foreign Policy Bulletin 2 (May-June 1992), 19–24. That trend of neglect may be finally in the process of being reversed. At the end of March 1995, Russia and Ukraine completed negotiations, under the aegis of the IMF, on the restructuring on their mutual debt.

[Note 68] For more detail on the Winch-Dessler correspondence, see Cutler, “International Relations Theory and Soviet Conduct,” pp. 117–118, and p. 133, nn. 45–46.

[Note 69] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, chap. 1, paragraph 13: “But as the power of Hellas grew, and the acquisition of wealth became more an objective [economics], the revenues of the states increasing [finance], tyrannies were by their means established almost everywhere [ideology] … and Hellas began to fit out fleets and apply herself more closely to the sea [military].” Recent literature of interest on Thucydides and international relations theory includes: Hayward R. Alker, Jr., “The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue,” American Political Science Review 82 (September 1988), 805–820; Daniel Garst, “Thucydides and Neorealism,” International Studies Quarterly 33 (March 1989), 3–27; Clifford Orwin, “Thucydides' Contest: Thucydidean 'Methodology' in Context,” Review of Politics 51 (Summer 1989), 345–364; and Laurie M. Johnson Bagby, “The Use of Abuse of Thucydides in International Relations,” International Organization 48 (Winter 1994), 131–153.

[ page 89 ]

[Note 70] If justification of this is needed, see inter alia, A.F.K. Organksi, World Politics, 2nd ed. rev. (New York: Knopf, 1968), chap. 7; Klaus Knorr (ed.), Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1976); Klaus Knorr and Frank H. Trager (eds.), Economic Issues and National Security (Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977).

[Note 71] Simon S. Kuznets, Economic Growth and Structure: Selected Essays, [1st ed.], (New York: Norton, 1965); Simon S. Kuznets, Toward a Theory of Economic Growth: With Reflections on the Economic Growth of Modern Nations (New York: Norton, 1968); Klaus Knorr, Military Power and Potential (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, Lexington Books, 1970); Klaus Knorr, The Power of Nations: The Political Economy of International Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1975).

[Note 72] Paul K. Feyerabend, “Popper's Objective Knowledge,” in Feyerabend, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Problems of Empiricism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 192–197, esp. pp. 193–194.

Dr. Robert M. Cutler [ website — email ] was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia since the late 1970s. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the print and electronic mass media in three languages.

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