Abstract
The recent recovery of an empirically and ethically richer realist tradition involves an explicit contrast with neorealism's more scientistic explanatory aspirations. This contrast is, however, incomplete. Although Waltz's theoretical work is shaped by his understanding of the requirements of scientific adequacy, his empirical essays are normatively quite rich: he defends bipolarity, and criticizes US adventurism overseas, because he believes bipolarity to be conducive to effective great power management of the international system, and hence to the avoidance of nuclear war. He is, in this sense, a theorist divided against himself: much of his oeuvre exhibits precisely the kind of pragmatic sensibility that is typically identified as distinguishing realism from neorealism. His legacy for a reoriented realism is therefore more complex than is usually realized. Indeed, the nature of Waltz's own analytical endeavour points towards a kind of international political theory in which explanatory and normative questions are intertwined.
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Notes
The revival of realism and, in particular, its contrast to neorealism therefore shadows an earlier discussion of the relationship between neorealism and political realism (see Ashley, 1981; Spegele, 1987; Walker, 1987).
Many of these essays have recently been republished in Waltz (2008).
My choice of the term ‘international political theory’ reflects the way in which descriptive/explanatory and normative projects are intertwined, in Waltz’s empirically oriented essays as in realism more broadly. I follow Brown (2002, pp. 3, 11–14) in rejecting the categorical distinction between these projects as unsustainable.
Levine (2013) doubts that realism fully merits being termed ‘critical’. Other terms that have been used are ‘reflexive’ realism (Steele, 2007) and ‘progressive’ realism (Scheuerman, 2011; Schuett, 2011).
Although Waltz himself sometimes employs the term ‘international political theory’ (see Waltz, 2008, pp. xii, 92), he uses it to connote the theory of international politics, not a project with a distinctively normative component.
Waltz’s argument here shows little awareness of the broader context of debates about the nature and purpose of theory in the emerging discipline of International Relations (see Guilhot, 2011).
Waltz variously contrasts theory/theories to thought, analysis, approaches, accounts, theory applications and explanations, without systematically clarifying the relationship between them.
Waltz's interest in US foreign policy at this time reflected not only his concern to preserve the stability of great power order, but also his interest in the comparative politics of foreign policy (see Waltz, 1967).
Waltz was, though, a much earlier critic of the war than Kissinger (see Schwartz, 2011, p. 127).
Although I am aware of no evidence to this effect, it may be that Waltz, like Kissinger, sought a place in a new administration and tailored his argument to that end (see Schwartz, 2011, p. 128).
Waltz himself notes that people who read his theoretical work tend to ignore his non-theoretical work (Halliday and Rosenberg, 1998, p. 373).
Waltz (2008, p. 80) asserted retrospectively that ‘[t]heories cannot remove the uncertainty of politics, but only help us to comprehend it’.
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Acknowledgements
A previous version of this article was delivered at workshop ‘Reorienting Realism: Context, Crisis and Critique’, held June 23-24, on ‘The Indispensable Theory? The Theory and Practice of Realism from the Scottish Enlightenment to the Present', University of Edinburgh, June 2012. I am grateful to the editors for comments.
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Humphreys, A. Waltz and the world: Neorealism as international political theory?. Int Polit 50, 863–879 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2013.34