ABSTRACT
For this purpose, the three major paradigms in IR theory – neorealism, institutionalism and constructivism – are the obvious starting points and interlocutors. Of these, it is (neo)realism that is often seen as having the most prestigious history. The neorealists stress the centrality of material factors in explaining international life. International relations are basically a function of the distribution of power within an anarchic international system, and it is the structure of that system which conditions the behaviour of its primary units, the states (see Waltz 1979 for the pre-eminent treatment of the topic; useful discussions of key realist tenets are given by Grieco 1997; Guzzini 1998; and Keohane 1986). As a consequence, in neorealist argumentation ideational factors are given only scant attention; states have fixed preferences and unproblematic – or ‘unvarying and acontextual’, as Jepperson et al. (1996: 43) have put it – identities (see also Ashley 1986: 277). For realists, the name of the game – the struggle for power – is well known to all of the participants in the international system, entailing full commonality also between the actors (Little and Smith 1988b: 3). What is more, the anarchic nature of the international system ensures that states are always interested in preserving their own freedom of manoeuvre, thus making them averse to legally binding normative entanglements that would jeopardize their sovereignty and consequent autonomy (for a useful discussion of the role and nature of anarchy in international relations along these lines, see Young 1989: 37-38). Therefore, for realists, institutions do not really make a difference at the international level (Abbott and Snidal 2001: 14; Grieco 1988: 485; Krasner 1983b: 10; Mearsheimer 1994/95). Instead, they are ‘mere surface reflections of underlying processes that involve the dynamics of power’, and their relevance is mainly diagnostic, as the changes in them can be helpful in ‘gauging the evolution of the structure of power in international society’ (Young 1989: 60, 61; see Mearsheimer 1994/95 for a full exposition of this argument).
