The balance of power and the power struggles of the polis
| Date | 01 October 2021 |
| Published date | 01 October 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220942876 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220942876
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(3) 429 –447
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220942876
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The balance of power and the
power struggles of the polis
Kevin Blachford
Baltic Defence College, Estonia
Abstract
The balance of power is fundamental to the discipline of international relations, but
its accuracy in explaining the historical record has been disputed. For international
relations, balance of power theory represents a distinct approach which details the
behaviour of states to counter hegemonic threats within an anarchic system. This article
reimagines the balance of power tradition by highlighting its early modern foundations.
Through providing a historical contextualization of the balance of power, this article
shows how republican thinkers sought to balance against concentrations of power in
order to safeguard political liberty. Early modern republics grappled with the challenge
of maintaining a division of power within the polis in a co-constitutive relationship
with the international. A republican polis could not secure liberty if under external
domination or if the polis itself expanded to imperial proportions. Imperial expansion
and the martial politics this entailed have traditionally been understood as incompatible
to the safeguarding of political liberty. Recognizing this republican influence can uncover
the co-constitutive connections between the internal power dynamics of the polis and
the international sphere.
Keywords
Balance of power, early modern history, international theory, republicanism
Introduction
The balance of power is one of the oldest and most established theories within interna-
tional relations (IR), but it is a theory that is open to a wide and bewildering range of
interpretations. IR scholars have looked to the balance of power as a theory used to
describe both an equilibrium of power and as a term synonymous to power politics
(Haas, 1953; Wight, 1979: 168–185). Critics have long attacked the concept for meaning
Corresponding author:
Kevin Blachford, Baltic Defence College, Riia 12, 51010, Tartu, Estonia.
Email: Kevin.Blachford@baltdefcol.org
942876IPT0010.1177/1755088220942876Journal of International Political TheoryBlachford
research-article2020
Article
430 Journal of International Political Theory 17(3)
‘almost anything’ (Pollard, 1923: 58), while for realists, the balance of power is central
to the theorizing of power relations. Modern realism looks to the balance of power as a
theory used to defend a Westphalian ‘golden age’ of enlightened statesmen following
realist principles of balancing behaviour (Schweller, 2009: 249). The questionable his-
torical accuracy of this myth (Schroeder, 1994) has not prevented realism claiming a
mantle on balance of power theory. Revisionist accounts of the balance of power, how-
ever, have argued that it also contains liberal elements (Boucoyannis, 2007) and can be
traced to a republican tradition (Deudney, 2007). This interpretation of the balance of
power rests on the influence of classical republican ideas of active citizenship, civic
virtue, mixed constitutions and the restraints of checks and balances on power (Andersen,
2016; Devetak, 2013; Hendrickson, 2018). These republican ideas remain a part of mod-
ern IR theory but have been widely neglected due to the ahistorical accounts of systemic
approaches. Modern interpretations of the balance of power within IR present a utilitar-
ian theory of cost–benefit analysis which seeks to depoliticize the political sphere by
examining only the ability of states to extract and mobilize resources (Nexon, 2009a).
This systemic take on the balance of power neglects the lessons of domestic checks and
balances because they are seen to operate in different contexts. The balance of power is
therefore treated largely as a law of state behaviour. This article breaks new ground by
arguing that the balance of power was a normative ideal for republican authors con-
cerned with the political liberty of the polis. Early modern republicans sought to reject a
view of divinely conferred, monarchical rule that was exclusive and unaccountable both
within the polis and across the international sphere.
IR has developed the balance of power as a distinctly international theory. In doing so,
the origins of balancing power within the polis as a check on tyranny have been neglected.
But Alfred Vagts (1948) argued that the domestic context of checks and balances ‘pre-
ceded the balance of power among states’ (p. 94). Genealogies of the balance of power
have traced the idea of balancing against the accumulation of power back to the city-
states of republican Florence and Venice (Butterfield, 1973; Janzekovic, 2019; Little,
2007). Scholars have also developed the balance of power by looking to some of its earli-
est proponents found in republican theorists such as Machiavelli (Gilbert, 1965; Nicolson,
1954; Sullivan, 1973; Waltz, 2001) and Guicciardini (Butterfield, 1966; Ghervas, 2017;
Gilbert, 1965). Francesco Guicciardini has also been acknowledged within IR as a major
influence on the development of balance of power as a theory (Knutsen, 1992: 58–60;
Luard, 1992: 2; Wight, 1979: ix–xii). For Guicciardini, the balance of power was a way
to maintain an equilibrium of power that would safeguard political liberty. Although
Thucydides inspired the work of Guicciardini, Thucydides did not use terms such as bal-
ance or equilibrium; and as Knutsen (2007) argues, it was Guicciardini who was the first
to use the balance of power in a modern sense. These republican beginnings are signifi-
cant because the republics of Florence and Venice were the first actors to link the checks
and balances within the polis to a balance in foreign affairs (Arcidiacono, 2011; Vagts,
1948: 99). As Guicciardini (1998) argued, ‘internal good order and the rule of law would
be of little use if the city were subject to being overcome by force’ (p. 199). Linking
power contestation within the polis to the international shows that political liberty is
dependent on preventing the accumulation of power from unaccountable sources of
domination.
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