POWER IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION: How should we think about the relationship bet. the diff forms of power.

POWER is the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors
to determine their circumstances and fate.

 Realist view of power: the ability of states to use material resources to get others do what they
otherwise would not.
 Any discussion must include consideration of how, why and when some actors have power
over others.
 Analysis of power must include a consideration of how social structures and processes
generate differential social capacities for actors to define and pursue their interests and
ideals.

Two Analytical Dimensions

1. HOW POWER IS EXPRESSED: Kinds of social relations through which power works- polar
positions of social relations of interaction (an attribute of a particular actors and their
interactions) and social relations of constitution. (social process of constituting what actors are
as social beings: identities and capacities.)
o Power over- refers to actor’s exercise of control over others
o Power to- how social relations define who the actors are and what capacities do they
have
2. Specificity of social relations through which effects are produced.- power works are direct and
socially specific or indirect and socially diffuse.
o DAHL’s NO ACTION AT A DISTANCE
 A relation of power is knowable if and only if there is an observable and
traceable connection between A and B.
o Indirect/socially diffuse
 The possibility of power even the connections are detached and mediated. ;
power lies in the institutions

FOUR CONCEPTS OF POWER

1. COMPULSORY: Direct control by one actor over another.

 When A’s actions control B’s actions, even if unintentionally.
 Not limited to material resources, also entails symbolic and normative resources.
o Less powerful states are using legal norms to constrain the actions of powerful
(China-PHL)
o Weber: ‘’probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to
carry out his own will.’’
o Blau: ‘’influence over behavior through negative sanctions.’’
o Bachrach and Baratz: ‘’power still exists even those who dominate are not conscious of
how their actions are producing unintended effects.’’ (ie. Victims of collateral damage)
 2. INSTITUTIONAL: Actors’ Control Over Socially Distant Others
 Control of others in indirect ways
 Conceptual focus: Formal/informal institutions that mediate between A and B.
o A cannot possess the institutions that constrains/shapes B.
o A and B are socially removed from one another
o Hirschman: market forces can create dependent relationships that limit the weaker
actor’s choice.
o Keohand and Nye: how enduring systems exchange and interdependence can be
media of power.

3. STRUCTURAL: Direct and Mutual Constitution of the Capacities of Actors

 Concerns the determination of social capacities and interests.
 Operates even when there are no instances of A acting to exercise control over B.
 Master-slave/capital-labor relations.
o Structural positions do not necessarily create equal social privileges.
o Social structures shapes the self-understanding and self-interests of people.

4. PRODUCTIVE: Production of Subjects Through Diffuse Social Relations

 Entails more generalized and diffuse social processes.
 The constitution of all social subjects with all various social powers through systems of
knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general social scope.
 How the discourses and institutions of IR contingently produce particular kinds of actors
with associated social powers, self-understandings and performative practices.
o GLOBAL COMPACT- partnership between the private sector and international labors
and NGOS to promote good corporate managements under UN.

GOVERNANCE AND EMPIRE

 Global Governance- institutionalized coordination or collaboration of people’s and states’
activities in ways that achieve more desirable positive-sum outcomes.
 International Institutions are understood to be at the heart of global governances.
KEY QUESTIONS:
o What issues are of concern and which issues are not?
o What are the Governing biases of institutions?
o Up to what extent can great powers establish international institutions to further
preserve their interests?
 Gruber’s ‘’go-it-alone’’- weaker states are damned if they do and they don’t.
o How states are able to determine the content and direction of global governance?

AMERICAN EMPIRE
 FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE: U.S.’s ability and willingness to use its massive resources to shape
directly the actions of others.
 US as an empire? – because of its intentions
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION: A STATE OF THE ART ON AN ART OF
STATE
Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie

 International organization has always concerned itself with how modern society of nation
governs itself.
 The focus of the study has shifted from international institutions toward broader forms of
international institutionalized behavior, in term of international regimes. This shift reflects a
core concern over the problem of international governance (IG) a la Lakatos’s “progressive
problem shifts.” However, the research program should resolve anomalies and link up informal
devices of regimes with formal institutional mechanisms of IO.

FOUR MAJOR FOCI

1. Formal Institutions
a. IG is whatever IOs do.
b. Formal attributes of IOs (charters, voting procedures, committee structures) account for
what they do.
2. Institutional processes
FOCUS: actual decision making processes within an IO.
a. Formal arrangements of IOs explain what they do (Not sufficient)
b. The perspective became generalized to explore overall patterns of influence shaping
organizational outcomes, such as power and prestige of individual states, the formation
and functioning of the group system, organizational leadership positions, and
bureaucratic politics. Dependent variables have ranged from specific resolutions,
programs, budgets to broader voting alignment.
3. Organizational Role
FOCUS: actual and potential roles of international organizations in a more broadly conceived
process of international governance.
Three distinct clusters
1) Role of IO in the resolution of substantive international problems (preventive
diplomacy, peacekeeping, IAEA, restructuring North-South relations, etc.)
2) Long-term institutional consequences of the failures to solve substantive problems
through the available institutional means (integrationist or neofunctionalist variety)
3) International institutions reflecting or modifying characteristics of the international
system (IO as dispensers of collective legitimacy, agenda formation, forums for coalition
building, policy coordination; global dominance structure enhanced or undermined).

4. International Regimes
 REGIMES- governing arrangements constructed by states to coordinate their expectations and
organize aspects of international behavior in various issue-areas.
 This conception reflects the attempt to return to the traditional analytical core: IG.
 Regimes express both the parameters and the perimeters of IG.
  Events of the 1970s and beyond brought about the approach, along with the approach to
studying erosion of U.S. hegemony.
 Argument: Regimes continued to constrain and condition the behavior of states toward one
another, despite systemic change and institutional erosion.

CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

 Shifts in analytical foci accompanied by shifts in methodological approaches.
 Conflict and cooperation were seen to require two different approaches, but rational choice can
explain both conflict and cooperation, focusing on situational determinants not structural
determinants (This is analogous to neo-Marxist approach of world system framework). Regimes
are useful focal points for these approaches.

PROBLEMS IN THE PRACTICE OF REGIME ANALYSIS

 Some critiques: Ambiguous boundaries among regimes, threshold between non-regime and
regime.
o Regimes are conceptual creations not concrete entities, reflecting commonsense
understandings and preferences; this is a “contestable concept”
o Regime analysis is wracked by epistemological anomalies, debilitating clarity and
precision

Ontology Versus Epistemology

 International regimes defined as social institutions around which expectations converge in
international issue-areas.
 The emphasis is on convergent expectations; we know regimes by their principled and shared
understandings of desirable and acceptable forms of social behavior.
 The ontology of regimes rests upon a strong element of intersubjectivity. The prevailing
epistemological position is entirely positivistic, focusing on “objective” forces. In many cases,
actor behavior has failed to convey intersubjective meaning, while intersubjective meaning
seems to have had considerable influence on behavior.
 In simulated world actors are condemned to communicate through behavior, which is not true
in the real world. Options for dealing with the contradiction: 1) deny it somehow (no loger
works; intersubjective epistemologies too well developed) 2) formulate a rendition of the
intersubjective ontology compatible with positivist epistemology: use revealed preferences
method to reveal meaning (this simply shifts the problem into the realm of assumption). Thus
the third option…
 NORMS IN EXPLANATION International regimes are distinguished from other international
phenomena by their specifically normative element, which is in the Krasner definition of
regimes.
o Implications:
1) Norms do not “cause” behavior
2) Norms are counterfactually valid (no single counterfactual refutes a norm). Variable
(IV, DV, IntV) approach does not work.
3)Rationales and justifications for behavior by actors are important. Such
communicative dynamics may be influenced by extracontextual factors as state power.
The Hierarchy of Analytical Components How are the four elements of a regime
(principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures) ordered? Two ideas:
instrumentalism and coherence = strength. Instrumentalism presumes goals (norms) are
separate from means (rules), which is not true. Norms such as reciprocity are neither
means nor ends of a regime; they are the regime. The idea that coherence among the
four components indicate regime strength. This is wrong because actors not only
reproduce normative structures but also change them by their practice (this is the
structuration argument).

REGIMES AND ORGANIZATIONS to increase the research program’s contribution to

ongoing policy concerns, the research program needs to be linked with formal IO.
Approach such as “organizational-design” approach is useful (discerning what range of
international policy problems can best be handled by different kinds of institutional
arrangements, such as simple norms of coordination, reallocation of property rights,
authoritative control through formal organizations). An interpretive epistemology
emphasizes three additional dimensions of the organizational-design approach. 1)
Transparency of actor behavior and expectations important 2) legitimation of regimes
important 3) epistemic crucial (how knowledge become extensive or deepens in their
international arena is intensely political)

CONCLUSION Analytical focus in the study of international organization has not

floundered but progressively shifted the underlying concern of which has always been
how the modern society of nations governs itself. The currently ascendant regimes
approach is internally inconsistent, due to the tension between its ontological posture
and its prevailing epistemological practices. Thus, a more interpretive approach would
open up regime analysis to the communicative rather than merely referential functions
of norms in social interactions. International organizations can contribute to the
effectiveness of informal ordering mechanisms, such as regimes, by their ability to
enhance (or diminish) intersubjective expectations and normatively stabilized meanings.
They do this through transparency creation, focusing the legitimation struggle, and
devising future regime agendas via epistemic politics.