Power in International Relations
The planned book synthesises and expands on my previous studies on the concept and analysis of power in International Relations. By placing the usage of power in its historical and theoretical contexts, it applies conceptual analysis with three aims. First, it makes a consistency check of prevalent conceptualisations. It can be shown that e.g. realism - the main theory underlying explanations in academia, media and politics - has widened its analysis of power in a way to become theoretically inconsistent. Second, it analyses the role of the concept of power in political discourse. Practitioners need a measure of power to assign rank and privilege in international politics - when there is no objective measure. The diplomatic struggle over the right definition of power is consequential for politics: if e.g. we agree that international rank is to be based on soft not military power, that definition affects political aims and the nature of international competition. Third, power analysis used to combine political theory about the nature of order and personal autonomy, with explanatory theory about the cause/effect of influence and domination. That link got lost over time, losing from sight that our research findings affect both at the same time. The book will propose ways to reconstruct a conceptualisation of power that is context-sensitive and consistent. A research stay at Cornell University with its specific expertise will support the drafting of the book.
Final report
The sabbatical’s main aim was to advance with a book project under contract with Cambridge University Press on Power and International Relations. For this, Cornell University offered me a research stay, affiliating me both to the Department of Government and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies with their regular research seminars.
Before my stay at Cornell, I had two guiding ideas for the book that were supposed to provide parallel threads. One was inspired by concept analysis and was intended to more or less historically guide the reader through the development of the different approaches to power in the history of ideas within International Relations (which always includes developments from other social sciences). But there was a second more analytical line, too. I have argued for some time that power analysis is best understood by distinguishing and then analysing the relation between the different domains of analysis within which power is used. I distinguish three such domains or sites that make a significant difference for understanding power. A first site is ontological, where the understanding of power is connected to our understanding of the very nature of politics, order and the human condition. A second site is explanatory. Here, power is used either as the explanans, often akin to some version of cause or disposition, or as the explanandum, then often likened to states of domination. I have established a 2x2 matrix that provides a typology of these approaches according to the level of analysis (micro versus macro) and their domain (ontological/constitutive and explanatory). A third site is unusual in some disciplines, but typical for policy-connected ones: it is the practical domain, in which the analysis of power moves to the level of decision-makers themselves and their ways to assess and deal with the role of power in world affairs. Put differently: the first domain deals with power in our very understanding of the social world; the second uses power to explain that world; and the third reflects on the actual usage and meaning of power within the social practices typical to International Relations, mainly war and diplomacy. The main line of the book was historical, introducing the three sites and the differences they make, when they became prominent in the intellectual history of the discipline.
The research stay at Cornell University therefore allowed me to discuss the project with colleagues. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I ended up re-focusing the book’s outline by combining these two lines in a different manner. The early chapters were not to be simply on realism for its historical antecedence and importance. Instead, a close analysis of Hans Morgenthau’s work would become the paradigmatic backdrop against which to develop the three different sites in which power analysis is used in International Relations. Realism, in particular in Max Weber and his followers in International Relations (Hans Morgenthau, Raymond Aron), is the one point where the three domains are still combined, although not as coherently as the tradition claims. In this way, I aimed at using realism to introduce the three domains, and not vice versa. Hence, my first chapter became three chapters, an entire Part I in which I use Morgenthau’s realism as a backdrop to develop the logic of the different domains and their difficult inter-relationship for a coherent conceptualisation, understanding and analysis of power.
Part II, again three chapters, then runs a mainly analytical approach by being organised according to the domains, yet keeping one idea of intellectual history by analysing them in the historical order in which they appeared. Therefore, chapter 4 starts with the explanatory domain. It discusses the different approaches and their limits, be they informed by Lukes’ famous typology or approaches that see the power of constitutive identity processes, such as gender or race. The critique would include the tendency to overload power (in macro approaches), or to conflate it with a mistaken view of causation (in micro approaches). A fifth chapter then deals with the ontological domain, in particular in the reception of Foucaultian analysis and revival of a political realist tradition, as well as its critics who do not wish to reduce politics to an understanding of power however conceived. And finally, a sixth chapter gives the practical domain a performative twist. For, even if we cannot find a measure of power despite all attempts, politicians and observers come up with measures. There is no measure of power, but a power of measure – and a power politics to define that measure. In this twist, scholar no longer imitate practice in self-observing its power; they use sociological approaches to observe the practices and rituals of power. A conclusive chapter wraps up the discussion by outlining the different research paths before us on the basis of re-discussing the different ways power relates to our understanding of politics.
For, besides pushing me to strengthen the analytical rather than the historical logic of the book (even though both are still present), my research at Cornell convinced me to develop much more the relation between our understandings of politics and the conceptualisation of power as a way to draw the different takes on power together. A first take on this appeared in a book chapter on International Political Sociology and in my piece on power in International Relations forthcoming in the Oxford Encyclopedia online. I will use this discussion as a wrap-up in the conclusive chapter.
All this implies that more research for drafting the book was and is needed. Given the choice to either sit down in isolation to finish the book as I had originally envisaged it, or to engage the ideas of my colleagues, I decided for the latter and started drafting anew. The research stay allowed me to write a first draft of Part I, where I could handsomely profit from Cornell’s Olin library for access to many of Morgenthau’s early German and French publications, otherwise difficult to come by. Besides this, I started more research on chapter 4 and the conclusion, as mentioned above. I am grateful that the research stay has offered me the possibility to dare a more ambitious project.
At the same time, it allowed me to link up with the power research at Cornell. Professors Jill Frank and Peter Katzenstein ran a seminar on power, informed by their respective research fields, i.e. classical philosophy and International Relations. My own research was integrated into the syllabus and I was invited to present and discuss it over 2 weeks with the students and seminar leaders. In return, I closely read a new book manuscript on Protean Power, edited by Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Antalova Seybert. I commented on it both at Cornell and at the book panel dedicated to it at the annual convention of the International Studies Association in Baltimore, where I was the invited discussant. Cambridge University Press has published the volume in January 2018. It is fair to say that my input was quite substantial in the revisions.
No research can take place without previous and future commitments. Out of the publications during the sabbatical, let me mention mainly one. I took time out to draft and indeed publish an article-long rejoinder to a forum on my The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social mechanisms and foreign policy identity crises, where I answered critics from political geography (John Agnew, UCLA), geopolitical theory (Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University), qualitative methodology and process-tracing (Jeffrey Checkel, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) and critical security studies (Jennifer Mitzen, Ohio State University). The editors of the journal Cooperation and Conflict decided to make the Forum open access (see the following for a comprehensive list of all publications, also those not yet mentioned).
Before my stay at Cornell, I had two guiding ideas for the book that were supposed to provide parallel threads. One was inspired by concept analysis and was intended to more or less historically guide the reader through the development of the different approaches to power in the history of ideas within International Relations (which always includes developments from other social sciences). But there was a second more analytical line, too. I have argued for some time that power analysis is best understood by distinguishing and then analysing the relation between the different domains of analysis within which power is used. I distinguish three such domains or sites that make a significant difference for understanding power. A first site is ontological, where the understanding of power is connected to our understanding of the very nature of politics, order and the human condition. A second site is explanatory. Here, power is used either as the explanans, often akin to some version of cause or disposition, or as the explanandum, then often likened to states of domination. I have established a 2x2 matrix that provides a typology of these approaches according to the level of analysis (micro versus macro) and their domain (ontological/constitutive and explanatory). A third site is unusual in some disciplines, but typical for policy-connected ones: it is the practical domain, in which the analysis of power moves to the level of decision-makers themselves and their ways to assess and deal with the role of power in world affairs. Put differently: the first domain deals with power in our very understanding of the social world; the second uses power to explain that world; and the third reflects on the actual usage and meaning of power within the social practices typical to International Relations, mainly war and diplomacy. The main line of the book was historical, introducing the three sites and the differences they make, when they became prominent in the intellectual history of the discipline.
The research stay at Cornell University therefore allowed me to discuss the project with colleagues. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I ended up re-focusing the book’s outline by combining these two lines in a different manner. The early chapters were not to be simply on realism for its historical antecedence and importance. Instead, a close analysis of Hans Morgenthau’s work would become the paradigmatic backdrop against which to develop the three different sites in which power analysis is used in International Relations. Realism, in particular in Max Weber and his followers in International Relations (Hans Morgenthau, Raymond Aron), is the one point where the three domains are still combined, although not as coherently as the tradition claims. In this way, I aimed at using realism to introduce the three domains, and not vice versa. Hence, my first chapter became three chapters, an entire Part I in which I use Morgenthau’s realism as a backdrop to develop the logic of the different domains and their difficult inter-relationship for a coherent conceptualisation, understanding and analysis of power.
Part II, again three chapters, then runs a mainly analytical approach by being organised according to the domains, yet keeping one idea of intellectual history by analysing them in the historical order in which they appeared. Therefore, chapter 4 starts with the explanatory domain. It discusses the different approaches and their limits, be they informed by Lukes’ famous typology or approaches that see the power of constitutive identity processes, such as gender or race. The critique would include the tendency to overload power (in macro approaches), or to conflate it with a mistaken view of causation (in micro approaches). A fifth chapter then deals with the ontological domain, in particular in the reception of Foucaultian analysis and revival of a political realist tradition, as well as its critics who do not wish to reduce politics to an understanding of power however conceived. And finally, a sixth chapter gives the practical domain a performative twist. For, even if we cannot find a measure of power despite all attempts, politicians and observers come up with measures. There is no measure of power, but a power of measure – and a power politics to define that measure. In this twist, scholar no longer imitate practice in self-observing its power; they use sociological approaches to observe the practices and rituals of power. A conclusive chapter wraps up the discussion by outlining the different research paths before us on the basis of re-discussing the different ways power relates to our understanding of politics.
For, besides pushing me to strengthen the analytical rather than the historical logic of the book (even though both are still present), my research at Cornell convinced me to develop much more the relation between our understandings of politics and the conceptualisation of power as a way to draw the different takes on power together. A first take on this appeared in a book chapter on International Political Sociology and in my piece on power in International Relations forthcoming in the Oxford Encyclopedia online. I will use this discussion as a wrap-up in the conclusive chapter.
All this implies that more research for drafting the book was and is needed. Given the choice to either sit down in isolation to finish the book as I had originally envisaged it, or to engage the ideas of my colleagues, I decided for the latter and started drafting anew. The research stay allowed me to write a first draft of Part I, where I could handsomely profit from Cornell’s Olin library for access to many of Morgenthau’s early German and French publications, otherwise difficult to come by. Besides this, I started more research on chapter 4 and the conclusion, as mentioned above. I am grateful that the research stay has offered me the possibility to dare a more ambitious project.
At the same time, it allowed me to link up with the power research at Cornell. Professors Jill Frank and Peter Katzenstein ran a seminar on power, informed by their respective research fields, i.e. classical philosophy and International Relations. My own research was integrated into the syllabus and I was invited to present and discuss it over 2 weeks with the students and seminar leaders. In return, I closely read a new book manuscript on Protean Power, edited by Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Antalova Seybert. I commented on it both at Cornell and at the book panel dedicated to it at the annual convention of the International Studies Association in Baltimore, where I was the invited discussant. Cambridge University Press has published the volume in January 2018. It is fair to say that my input was quite substantial in the revisions.
No research can take place without previous and future commitments. Out of the publications during the sabbatical, let me mention mainly one. I took time out to draft and indeed publish an article-long rejoinder to a forum on my The Return of Geopolitics in Europe? Social mechanisms and foreign policy identity crises, where I answered critics from political geography (John Agnew, UCLA), geopolitical theory (Daniel Deudney, Johns Hopkins University), qualitative methodology and process-tracing (Jeffrey Checkel, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver) and critical security studies (Jennifer Mitzen, Ohio State University). The editors of the journal Cooperation and Conflict decided to make the Forum open access (see the following for a comprehensive list of all publications, also those not yet mentioned).