Woman, the State, and War
| Author | Jean Bethke Elshtain |
| Published date | 01 June 2009 |
| Date | 01 June 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809104640 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
WOMAN, THE STATE, AND WAR 289
Woman, the State, and War
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Abstract
Does ‘gender’ as a category of analysis or as a central feature of a logic of explanation
alter in signifi cant ways Kenneth Waltz’s famous ‘levels of analysis’ as developed in his
classic, Man, the State, and War? One overriding claim of feminist international relations
has been that ‘gender’ alters all levels of analysis; thus, changing ‘man’ to ‘woman’ in
the formulation ‘man, the state, and war’ signifi cantly transforms our understanding of
international relations. I evaluate this claim critically by assessing the adequacy of feminist
formulations on each of Waltz’s levels of analysis and, further, by unpacking Waltz’s
own understanding of these levels. I conclude that Waltz remains enormously helpful in
deconstructing reductionist accounts, especially on the ‘fi rst level’ of analysis, but that his
own account is problematic insofar as it insists on a ‘structural analysis’ sundered from
his levels 1 and 2, namely, wars fl ow from human nature or, alternatively, from the domestic
ordering of states. I point out that Waltz himself leaves some ‘wiggle room’ in his book
that permits one to ‘plug in’ features of the fi rst two levels of analysis that are critical to
understanding the structural level. In other words, all three levels must be in play if one is
to craft a compelling explanatory framework.
Keywords: causes of war, feminist international relations, gender, human nature, levels of
analysis, Man, the State, and War, reductionism, K. N. Waltz, women and war
In the late 1980s, a conference – the fi rst of its kind – was held at the University of
Southern California under the rubric ‘Woman, the State, and War’, playing off the title
of Kenneth Waltz’s enduring work in political and international relations theory.1 The
premise guiding this conference was that questions of states and wars are substantially
altered if viewed through the prism of the category gender. My book, Women and
War , published in 1987, played a role in defi ning and generating this particular line
of inquiry, and it was also in play at the conference.2
There was, however, a deep ambivalence at work in my book. I was never convinced
that defi ning the state as a gendered category helped us to account for very much
where statecraft and war were concerned. One needed to ask then, and needs to ask
now: what new insights, theoretical advances, conceptual categories does ‘gendering’
the state offer? The burden of this paper is devoted to meditating on this question by
deploying Waltz’s ‘levels of analysis’ as developed in his classic works.
Let us put several items on the table here at the outset. I am not going to be
concerned, in this paper, with the empirical realities of women and political life,
national and international. For example: there are women who wield offi cial political
authority – and that is a more signifi cant number all the time – even as women are
© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Vol 23(2): 289–303
[DOI: 10.1177/0047117809104640]
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