How ‘realistic’ should global political theory be? Some reflections on the debate so far
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215626940 |
| Author | David Miller |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
Journal of International Political Theory
2016, Vol. 12(2) 217 –233
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215626940
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How ‘realistic’ should
global political theory be?
Some reflections on
the debate so far
David Miller
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
This article reviews the recent debate on realism in political theory (including the
articles in this symposium) and examines its implications for global political theory.
It distinguishes two versions of realism – contrasted, respectively, with political
utopianism and political moralism – and argues that the second of these realisms fails
to be sufficiently realistic by the standards of the first. In particular, it exaggerates
the extent of political disagreement within domestic societies and underestimates the
unifying force of national identities. In international relations, by contrast, disagreement
over values runs deeper, and the pursuit of national interest remains a serious obstacle
to co-operation, as classical international realists insisted. Current proposals for global
democracy and global distributive justice therefore run into serious difficulties over
agency and legitimacy: who might have reason and capacity to create the institutions
needed to deliver these goals, and how could these institutions be rendered legitimate
in the eyes of global publics?
Keywords
Global democracy, global justice, international realism, legitimacy, national identity,
political disagreement, political realism
Introduction
There is an air of paradox about the suggestion that it is time for global political theory
to ‘get real’. After all, ‘realism’ has long been regarded as providing the most revealing
way to look at international politics: even those who want to move beyond it feel the
Corresponding author:
David Miller, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, New Road, Oxford OX1 1NF, UK.
Email: david.miller@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
626940IPT0010.1177/1755088215626940Journal of International Political TheoryMiller
research-article2016
Article
218 Journal of International Political Theory 12(2)
need to say something in response to mid-twentieth century authors such as Niebuhr
(1940, 1953), Morgenthau (1954) and Waltz (1959), for whom relations between states
were chiefly characterized by conflicts of power and interest. Going back still further, the
international realm was memorably characterized by Hobbes (1985) as a state of per-
petual (hot or cold) war, in the absence of an overarching sovereign to keep its constitu-
ents in awe:
… in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are
in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons
pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the
Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture
of War. (1985: 187–188)
Hobbes also explained what made this state of affairs tolerable: each sovereign
‘solves’ the basic political problem – getting us out of the dismal state of nature – for its
own subjects, and although there are undoubtedly downsides to an international order
made up of antagonistic states, these are not so great as to propel us towards instituting a
global sovereign. We would therefore have to imagine some catastrophic series of events
– intense global warming perhaps, or the arrival of aliens like those in the film
Independence Day – in order to make submission to such a sovereign a rational necessity
as Hobbes understands it.
Even if Hobbes, or his latter-day followers, only saw one half of the truth about inter-
national relations, to say that what we need to do is take ‘realism’ as applied to domestic
politics and transpose it to the international sphere must sound (to use the English ver-
nacular) a bit like carrying coals to Newcastle. But perhaps the recent spate of academic
writing on global justice is so deformed by utopian thinking as to require this corrective?
If so, we had better first be sure that the proposed remedy is sound, when applied to poli-
tics in general. So is there an identifiable political outlook that we can label ‘realist’, as
some have claimed (see, for example, Galston, 2010; Philp, 2012; Rossi and Sleat, 2014;
Sleat, 2013: esp. chapters 2 and 3), or is what we find instead a series of critiques with
little in common other than their distaste for liberal political theory in the manner of
Rawls? Before we can decide whether realism should be encouraged to ‘go global’, we
need to be clearer both about the substance and about the merits of realism as applied in
its original context, domestic politics (other assessments include Baderin, 2014;
Finlayson, 2015; Floyd, 2010; Honig and Stears, 2011; Horton, 2010).
Two concepts of realism
The term ‘realism’ has multiple uses in moral and political philosophy (see Risse (2016)
for a discussion of ‘moral realism’, for example), but for present purposes, I want to dis-
tinguish two broad senses of the term that I will refer to later as realism1 and realism2 (my
distinction has something in common with, although is not exactly the same as, the dis-
tinction that Baderin, 2014 draws between ‘detachment’ and ‘displacement’ realism). In
the first of these, ‘realism’ is to be contrasted with utopianism. It counsels us to pay atten-
tion to how things actually are in the world, and to adjust any political recommendations
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