Abstract
This chapter delineates how the normative imperatives of human society evolved over time and how it has poised the States of the contemporary world into inevitable sets of rules diluting the color, contour, and vices of anarchy. This fundamental change is the cardinal element that dictates the states to behave in a certain way. At the outset of the chapter, the holistic theoretical proposition is presented founded on the ontology mentioned above, reviewing the relevant literature and focusing on the concept of power. At the end of the section, eight core takeaways of the holistic theoretical proposition are underlined. In the subsequent sections, the proposition is contrasted vis-à-vis major IR theories, and a detailed review of literature on the calculation of the power of the actors is presented. These simultaneous literature reviews and contrast discern the specificity of the proposition in the existing literature. The proposition is the central contribution of this book, and it is testified in this work through some empirical studies.
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Notes
- 1.
Tang (2010) posits that “international politics has always been an evolutionary system; non-evolutionary approaches will be intrinsically incapable of shedding light on the evolution of the system.” He explains how the grand theories have developed over time and how theories fit for one epoch will be inapplicable in another.
- 2.
The term is taken from Robinson (1999, p. 309). See the infographic 1 created by Lori Lewis depicting what happens on the internet in a minute for a few top applications. Taken from http://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-minute-2018/, accessed on 12 Nov 2021.
- 3.
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production, while the Second used electric power to create mass production, and the third used electronics and IT to automate production. Now, a Fourth Industrial Revolution is occurring—the digital revolution. This is the most powerful one and is turning the world virtually into a global village, causing profound implications in every sphere of human life.
- 4.
Bull (2002, p. 19) notes that, until the nineteenth century, no system existed that incorporated the world as a whole. The proposition presented in this chapter contends that the world began to be a place for all after the decolonization following the Second World War and has become purely globalized during the last three to four decades.
- 5.
See also (Tellis 2001, pp. 1–9), who explain in their own way the present momentous transition occurring in the world, which requires understanding the power of the nations through a new lens. They refer to Daniel Bell’s prediction of this, back in 1973, in their ground-breaking study entitled “The coming of the Post-Industrial Society”.
- 6.
Indebted for this infographic to LoriLewis and OfficallyChadd.
- 7.
Compare Keohane and Nye (1987, p. 749), who made a similar point and argue that “practices or interests which are accepted in one period become downgraded or even illegitimate in a latter period because of normative evolution.” North (1989, p. 53) points out that the demise of slavery is not merely explicable under an interest group model, i.e., the normative dictate generated at that time was the prime reason for the change.
- 8.
Cox (1981, cited in Keohane 1988, p. 391) finds the American hegemony in the current world a “coherent conjunction or fit between configuration of material power, a prevalent collective image of world order (including certain norms) and a set of institutions which administer the order with certain resemblance of universality.” He seems to have recognized the confluence of material and normative power, but their conception remains myopic only for the American hegemony. We today need to consider how the major players behave in the international milieu and the role of the lesser States in it, which the holistic theoretical proposition offers.
- 9.
This comparison relates to the First and Second Gulf Wars, elaborated later in this chapter.
- 10.
Tang (2005) provides some examples of how the concern for reputation implicated the leader’s policymaking.
- 11.
Explanation of the holistic power follows in this chapter.
- 12.
USSR—Union of Russian Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union).
- 13.
While the importance of the other two indicators may be familiar with the readers, the term climate power may appear alien. As such, it is necessary here to clarify what climate power means. Every single stone of development of any country depends on energy. Traditionally, the energy source had been carbon-intensive, but due to global concern on climate change, the energy source that deters economic competitiveness has become a strategic issue. Recognizing this, Viola et al. (2012) argue that there are three pillars of power in the contemporary world: military, economic, and climate. They conceptualize superpowers, great powers, and middle powers in the realm of climate issues. China, the USA, and the EU are superpowers, whereas India, Brazil, Japan, Russia, and South Korea are great powers, they argue. With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, all the countries have a specific cap to emit greenhouse gases. This delimits the climate power of the States within the normative imperatives in this domain. As the competitiveness of the economies depend on the cost of the energy, the emission cap and competence in generating green energy constitute a vital pillar of State power in the contemporary world.
- 14.
See “What is Soft power”, available at https://softpower30.com/what-is-soft-power/, accessed on 18 August 2018.
- 15.
One of the recent examples is that despite stark competition in the security domain, India and China has repeatedly aligned themselves in climate politics.
- 16.
National power in the military domain had been a riddle all over the history. In the history books, we frequently find examples that a smaller army defeated a bigger one. Immanuel Kant attributed this to an elusive notion of national morale, which multiplies the power of a particular group of armies.
- 17.
In his first book, published in 1948, Mearsheimer proposed eight factors, adding a ninth in his second book, published in 1954.
- 18.
By this notion Waltz (1979) meant only material capability.
- 19.
i.e., the two to eight major States that Waltz argued to be only cognizable as a State, as discussed above.
- 20.
Noting these aspects, Mueller (1989) explained how war among the most advanced countries is disappearing. Even Waltz (1999, esp. p. 698) at the later stage compared to the first proposition of the neo-realism acknowledged that nuclear deterrence has made war too costly and peace more rewarding. The argument here is that these realities have created the space, as well as compelling them toward concentrating on finding solutions through other means, which is redefining the properties of their power.
- 21.
Walt (1998, p. 36) mentions that many experts follow this line of thinking today.
- 22.
The analogy refers to the human body. Both the head and hands are indispensable for the functioning of a human being. Hands are symbolic of might, the head for ideas.
- 23.
See Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) “why nations fail”—for an interesting account between the USA and other American countries.
- 24.
In his review of neoclassical realism, Tang (2009, p. 801) observes that competition for ideas features prominently in the strategic assessment and strategy formulation, whereas the State capacity features more prominently in strategy implementation. Tang (2005) earlier suggested that integrating structural and psychological factors could serve as a productive enterprise in understanding State behavior.
- 25.
As explained in the previous section.
- 26.
Although Waltz mentioned that four States (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Tibet) met involuntary ends in the last half century (1979, p. 137), none of them were actually UN members at the time of their dissolution.
- 27.
Osiander (2001) shows that, although the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648, the concept of sovereignty following the Westphalian principle was only firmly fixed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, since the principle originated from that treaty and was at least loosely followed until the nineteenth century, in this work, we consider it from the time of signing the treaty. Huntington (1993, p. 22) and many other scholars argue that the modern international system emerged with the Peace of Westphalia.
- 28.
See “Chained to Globalization” Foreign Affairs January/February 2020, available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2019-12-10/chained-globalization?utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=twofa&utm_content=20191220&utm_campaign=TWOFA%20122019%20Chained%20to%20Globalization&utm_term=FA%20This%20Week%20-%20112017, online accessed on 20 December 2019.
- 29.
Compare (Hopf 1998, p. 187), where he posits that the distribution of power cannot explain the alliance pattern that emerged after World War Two, and the ideological difference with the Soviet Union was the root cause of the development of this alliance. Subsequently, the Soviet threat was securitized in the western block, which cemented the alliance further, and that constructivist theories can explain it better.
- 30.
GNP—Gross National Product.
- 31.
Keohane and Nye (1987, p. 728) also clarified that both realism and the theories deriving from this school had the common ontology that orbited around a utilitarian view of the world where the actors pursue their own interests in response to incentives. The role of intangible elements like Ideas, norms, normative imperatives, and culture is absent from their theory too.
- 32.
Hopf (1998, pp. 177–178) mentions that “the notion that ideas are a form of power, that power is more than brute force, and that material and discursive power are related are not new. Mechel Foucault's articulation of the power/knowledge nexus, Antonio Gramsci's theory of ideological hegemony, and Marx Weber's differentiation of coercion from authority are all precursors to Constructivism's position on power in political life”. He adds that (p. 199) since, in Constructivism, power is both material and discursive, the States’ pattern of behavior should be understood as a result of material or economic power, which work in concert with the prevailing ideological structures, social practices, institutionalized norms and intersubjective webs of meaning.
- 33.
The arguments of Brown et al. (2002, p. 4) is notable in this regard: “It is a mistake to think that there is a timeless agenda of political questions that thinkers from all ages can be taken to be addressing; instead each thinker addresses the agenda of his or her own age in his or her own terms. It may be that their agendas can, in certain circumstances, be seen to be not dissimilar to ours, but this identification cannot be taken for granted; it has to be argued for on a case-by-case basis”.
- 34.
This book contains three individual case studies that use the concept of framing.
- 35.
An example has been cited earlier that the complete ideological collapse of the former USSR did not turn its comprehensive power to the level of zero, although it did reduce the same. Materially less powerful countries in the climate negotiation process, the AOSIS, could achieve remarkable gains from the Paris Agreement thanks to their normative power (Betzold 2010; Betzold et al. 2012). The withdrawal of the USA from the Paris Agreement under President Trump did not render the USA's climate power to the level of zero as its emissions remained the second-highest on the globe, so was its weight. Thus, this proposition is flawed.
- 36.
Through a search in the Chinese Academic Journal database, they found that the phrase first appeared in Chinese academia around 1997 but it genuinely embarked on academic discourses since 2001. Qi (2017, p. 225) posited that the term was first introduced in 1993 by Wang Huning, a former professor of Fudan University and current key adviser of President Xi Jinping.
- 37.
See the conclusion in this chapter.
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Sorkar, M.N.I. (2022). The Confines of Power in the Contemporary World: Holistic Theoretical Proposition. In: Power and Issue Framing in the Contemporary World. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9740-1_2
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