Abstract
During the 1980s, non-state, private actors, such as multinational corporations and international banks, disappeared from studies in International Political Economy (IPE), while most attention was focused on the state. The re-emergence of the state as an autonomous, influential actor worthy of theoretical attention was in response to a period of scholarship when, to quote Stephen Krasner, ‘students of international relations & multi-nationalized, transnationalized, bureaucratized, and transgovernmentalized the state until it [had] virtually ceased to exist as an analytic construct.’2 By the mid-1980s the pendulum had swung back in favour of a state-centric approach; today this perspective is again under assault as scholars attempt to gain a greater understanding of the domestic/international nexus. This study challenges the primacy of the state as an analytical construct. The theory advanced here reintroduces the ‘revolutionary’ potential identified by Richard Leaver in the opening quotation in the early work of IPE, including non-state actors and ‘the possibility of inquiring into the triadic relationship between the form of the state, the structure of the society over which it exercised its theoretical sovereignty, and the patterns of international behaviour that were generated in the interaction of these state-society complexes.’3
The neo-realist construction of IPE [with its] particular reaffirmation of the importance of the state is doubly worrying, for not only are non-state actors pushed into the background in this construction of the international domain, but there is also no place left for investigations of the contribution of ‘private actors’ in shaping the social structures which lie behind state apparatuses. … Within this straitjacket, one could not go beyond simple categorizations of state apparatuses … Hence possibilities which were once open for constructing an international political economy capable of linking the changing behavior of states to their evolving social structures fell to others, most especially the historical sociologists.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Richard Leaver, ‘Restructuring in the Global Economy: From Pax Americana to Pax Nipponica?’, Altematives 14 (1989), p. 440.
Stephen D. Krasner, ‘State Power and the Structure of International Trade’, World Politics 28 (1976), p. 317.
Nicolas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989)
Richard E. Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority: Authority and the Authoritative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach, The State, Conceptual Chaos, and the Future of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989), p. 14.
Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978)
Peter Katzenstein, Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976)
Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981)
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
G. John Ikenberry and David A. Lake, ‘Introduction: Approaches to Explaining American Foreign Economic Policy’, Special Issue International Organization 42 (1988), p. 12.
Jacek Kugler and William Domke, ‘Comparing the Strength of Nations’, Comparative Political Studies 19 (1986), pp. 39–69
Alan C. Lamborn, ‘Power and the Politics of Extraction’, International Studies Quarterly 27 (1983), pp. 125–46
A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, ‘Davids and Goliaths: Predicting the Outcomes of International Wars’, Comparative Political Studies 11 (1978), pp. 141–80.
Evenly B. Davidheiser, ‘Strong States, Weak States: the Role of the State in Revolution’. Comparative Politics 24 (1992). pp. 463–75.
James N. Rosenau, ‘The State in an Era of Cascading Politics: Wavering Concept, Widening Competence, Withering Colossus, or Weathering Change?’, in James A. Caporaso (ed.) The Elusive State: International and Comparative Perspectives (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), p. 19.
Michael Loriaux, ‘Comparative Political Economy as Comparative History’, Comparative Politics 21 (1989), p. 373.
See Robert Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: the Logic of Two-Level Games’, International Organization 42 (1988), pp. 427–60. A recent application is Leonard J. Schoppa’s ‘Two-level Games and Bargaining Outcomes: Why Gaiatsu Succeeds in Japan in Some Cases but not Others’, International Organization 47 (1993), pp. 353–86. Early work in the negotiation-analytic approach was begun by Howard Raiffa in The Art and Science of Negotiation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). Further elaboration has followed in the work of James Sebenius in Negotiating the Law of the Sea: Lessons in the Art and Science of Reaching Agreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), and ‘Challenging Conventional Explanations of International Cooperation: Negotiation Analysis and the Case of Epistemic Communities’, International Organization 46 (1992), pp. 323–65.
J.P. Nettl, ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, World Politics 20 (1968), p. 566.
Bruce Andrews, ‘Social Rules and the State as a Social Actor’, World Politics 27 (1975), p. 523.
Philippe Schmitter, ‘Neo Corporatism and the State’, in Wyn Grant (ed.) The Political Economy of Corporatism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), p. 33.
Alexander E. Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization 41 (1987), p. 363.
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966); Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970); Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975); ‘Cultural Bias’, in Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982); How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
See, for example, the studies in Mary Douglas (ed.), Essays in the Sociology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982)
Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (New York: Basic Books, 1979)
Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: an Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)
Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, Dilemmas of Presidential Leadership: From Washington through Lincoln (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989)
Robert A. Atkins, Jr, Egalitarian Community: Ethnography and Exegesis (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991).
Way of life refers to ‘a viable combination of social relations … defined as patterns of interpersonal relations … and cultural bias [as] shared values and beliefs.’ Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), P. 1.
Jonathan L. Gross and Steve Rayner, Measuring Culture: a Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Organization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), p. 5.
Gross and Rayner, Measuring Culture, p. 5. Laswell and Kaplan make a similar point in their discussion of groups. For them, solidarity means an ‘integration of diversified perspectives (thinking and feeling together)’. It is not just a number of individuals making the same demand, but a demand that is being made on behalf of oneself and others. H.D. Lasswell and A. Kaplan, Power and Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950), pp. 30–1.
The same point is made by Atkins, Egalitarian Community, p. 65. Relations between grid and group are not necessary, or internal, meaning one can exist without the other. Master/slave is an example of a necessary relationship. See Andrew Sayer, Method in Social Science: a Realist Approach (London: Hutchinson Publishing, 1984), pp. 82, 84.
Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism: a Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979), pp. 39–40.
Granovetter correctly points out the undersocialized conception of human action developed by economists, and the oversocialized conception applied by some sociologists. Mark Granovetter, ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: the Problem of Embeddedness’, American Journal of Sociology 91 (November 1985), pp. 483, 487.
For a discussion of the type-concepts and the creation of typologies, see Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 43–6.
John C. McKinney, Constructive Typology and Social Theory (New York: Meredith Publishing, 1966), p. 18.
Victor C. Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), p. 16.
Andrew Strathern, The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 187–8.
Bill Berkeley, ‘An African Horror Story’, The Atlantic 272 (August 1993), p. 23.
Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958).
See Gary L. Downey, ‘Ideology and the Clamshell Identity: Organizational Dilemmas in the Anti-Nuclear Power Movement’, Social Problems 33 (1986), pp. 101–17
Emily Stoper, ‘The Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee: Rise and Fall of a Redemptive Organization’, in Jo Freeman (ed.) Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies (New York: McKay, 1983)
Andrea J. Baker, ‘The Problem of Authority in Radical Movement Groups: a Case Study of Lesbian-Feminist Organizations’, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 18 (1982), pp. 323–41.
These values are quite compatible with Jürgen Habermas’s ‘ideal speech situation’, wherein every individual has the same chance to initiate and to perpetuate a truth-claim; to call statements into question; to express attitudes, feelings, and emotions. Each individual has the same chance to permit and forbid so that the norms that bind only one party are excluded. External authority is bracketed. The only source of authority is the speaker himself or herself. If these conditions were fulfilled, and if the only decisions reached were those in which complete consensus were achieved, then we could say that the outcome was fair, was equitable, and would be philosophically justified. (See Jurgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis [Boston: Beacon Press, 1975].)
The difficulty is, how does one learn what is involved in making commitments unless one engages in the practice itself? Writes Onuf, ‘Why would one risk rule practice in the absence of rule consciousness?’ Onuf, World of Our Making, pp. 118, 120. This highlights the problem with Robert Axelrod’s ‘niceness’ rule. Why would someone use this rule on the first play of a game unless he or she had had ‘practice’ with it? The niceness rule already requires what is to be investigated, the effectiveness of norms. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
Robin Cantor, Stuart Henry and Steve Rayner, Making Markets: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Economic Exchange (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992)
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 94.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ward, V. (1998). Towards an International Theory of State—Non-state Actors: A Grid—Group Cultural Approach. In: Jacquin-Berdal, D., Oros, A., Verweij, M. (eds) Culture in World Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26778-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26778-1_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-69379-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-26778-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)