The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism in International Relations
| Author | Stefano Guzzini |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066104047848 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism in
International Relations
STEFANO GUZZINI
Danish Institute for International Studies and Uppsala University
The present article argues that the discipline of international relations is
bound to repeat its rounds of debates about realism as long as the
underlying dynamic intrinsic to the realist tradition is not understood.
Whereas present debates tend to criticize contemporary realists for
going astray (an unhappy conjuncture, as it were), this article claims that
there exists a systematic theoretical problem with the way realist theoriz-
ing has developed within international relations, and consisting of two
fundamental dilemmas. The first or ‘identity dilemma’, the choice
between distinctiveness and determinacy, results from the characteristics
of the central concept ‘power’ — realists either keep a distinct and single
micro–macro link through concepts of power/influence which provides
indeterminate explanations or they improve their explanations, but must
do so by relaxing their assumptions, thereby losing distinctiveness. The
second or ‘conservative dilemma’, the choice between tradition and
justification, results from the fact that realism is a form of practical
knowledge, which needs some form of justification other than the
recourse to mere tradition. Hence, realists either update the practical
knowledge of a shared diplomatic culture while losing scientific credi-
bility or, reaching for logical persuasiveness, cast their maxims in a
scientific mould which distorts the realist tradition. Realism in inter-
national relations is fated to return to these dilemmas until it abandons
its own identity as derived from the ‘first debate’ between realism and
idealism. By doing so, however, it would be free to join a series of meta-
theoretical and theoretical research avenues which it has so far left to
other schools of thought.
K
EY
W
ORDS
♦realism ♦power ♦constr uctivism ♦power–money
analogy ♦positivism
After the end of the Cold War, realism has been again on the defensive.1A
first debate was triggered by a piece John Vasquez (1997) published in the
European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2004
SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 10(4): 533–568
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066104047848]
American Political Science Review. In this blunt attack, Vasquez argued that
realists reject the systematic use of scientific criteria for assessing theoretical
knowledge. Vasquez charged (neo)realism either for producing blatantly
banal statements or for being non-falsifiable, i.e. ideological. A second
debate followed an article by Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik (1999) in
International Security. Realists were asked to accept that their recent work
was good only because they have incorporated ideas and causal variables
from other approaches. Here, realism is not denied scientific status. But by
being allotted a small and usually insufficient terrain on the academic turf,
realism becomes structurally dependent on a division of theoretical labour
defined elsewhere.
Whereas these debates tended to focus on realism’s recent developments,
this article argues that they are but the latest manifestations of two intrinsic
and enduring dilemmas of realism in International Relations (IR). I will call
them the ‘identity dilemma’ and the ‘conservative dilemma’.
As I will expose in more detail, realism’s identity or determinacy/
distinctiveness dilemma results from the fact that classical realists, when
making more determinate empirical claims, usually relied on explanatory
elements which were not genuinely realist. Much of the ‘richness of the
realist tradition’ stems from these wider sources. As this article will show, the
reason is to be found in the indeterminacy of its central concept of power,
which can simply not bear the theoretical weight assigned to it. As long as
realism needed no exact delimitation (its vocabulary being often confused
with the discipline of IR at large), this was of little theoretical consequence.
But in times of open theoretical debate, this necessary eclecticism leads to a
dilemma: contemporary realism may be distinct from other approaches at
the price of being theoretically indeterminate. It may also produce more
determinate hypotheses which are then indistinguishable from (or worse,
subsumable by) some other approaches in IR. In other words, while Legro
and Moravcsik are right in their critique, they stop short of drawing the full
consequences. They ultimately persist in the belief that realism, properly
defined, can serve as an adequate explanatory theor y. I claim that realist
ambiguities are not accidents of recent realist research, but necessary
consequences of an enduring theoretical dilemma.
Following Kissinger’s (1957: Ch. XI) analysis of Metternich, I propose to
call the second enduring dilemma of realism the ‘conservative’ or justifica-
tion/tradition dilemma. Faced with criticism of realism’s scientific character
or its findings, I will argue that realists have been repeatedly tempted to lean
towards less stringent understandings of their own theory’s status. Realism
then refers to a philosophical tradition or more generally to ‘an attitude
regarding the human condition’ (Gilpin, 1986: 304). Yet, when realists want
to retreat to a more ‘traditionalist’ position, they are caught by a dilemma
European Journal of International Relations 10(4)
534
which has existed since its beginnings in IR. Despite Morgenthau’s (1946)
early insistence on the intuitions of statesmen and the ‘art’ of politics,
realism derived much of its appeal from its claim to understand reality ‘as it
is’ rather than as it should be (Carr, 1946). But ever since the foreign policy
maxims of realpolitik have ceased to be commonly shared knowledge or
understood as legitimate politics, realism cannot refer to the world as it is
and rely on its intuitive understanding by a responsible elite. Instead, it
needs to justify the value of traditional practical knowledge and diplomacy.
To be persuasive, such a justification comes today in the form of controllable
knowledge. Moreover, since realism self-consciously refers to the world ‘as it
is, not as we would like it to be’ (Mearsheimer, 2001: 4), it necessarily
requires a kind of objective status. In other words, by avoiding justification,
realism loses its persuasiveness in times of a rational debate it decides not to
address. Alternatively, by consistently justifying a world-view that should be
natural and taken for granted, realist defences testify to realism’s very
demise. Today, there is no way back to a time when realism needed little
justification.
In a last section, I draw some implications from these two dilemmas. I will
argue that IR realism is fated to return to these dilemmas if it does not give
up its own identity of the so-called first debate between realism and idealism.
It is this relentlessly reproduced opposition which has generally impov-
erished IR realism as a branch of political realism — political realism is
defined not only by its counter-position to a (utopian) ‘ideal’, whether or
not this has really existed in IR, but also to an ‘apparent’ masking of existing
power relations. It is a twofold negation, both anti-idealist and anti-
conservative. By concentrating on its practical knowledge, not its explana-
tory theory, and getting out of the ‘first debate’, IR realism would be free to
join in a series of meta-theoretical and theoretical research avenues, which it
has heretofore left to other schools. The need to defend IR ‘realism’ as such
seems, therefore, too costly on strictly intellectual grounds — for realists,
but also for IR at large.
The Identity Dilemma — the Choice Between Determinacy and
Distinctiveness
Which Realism?
In a general move to get realism out of the Waltzian straightjacket, it has
become a commonplace to point to the diversity of realist writings, old and
new (e.g. see Brooks, 1997; Guzzini, 1998), and this for good reasons.
Realists are often at pains to recognize themselves in the portrayal of their
detractors. Showing the ‘richness of the tradition’ can justifiably undermine
some of the criticism.
Guzzini: The Enduring Dilemmas of Realism
535
To continue reading
Request your trial