Agency versus Structure in A. J. P. Taylor's Origins of the First World War

Abstract

origins of the First World War, which engaged A. J. P. Taylor's attention over the course of fifteen years, reveal his underlying approach to international relations. Fundamentally a 'realist', defined as someone who emphasizes the primacy of Anssenover Innenpolitik and the key role of power, he regarded the First World War as a preventive war that Germany was willing to fight, or at least risk, in an attempt to forestall a negative shift in the balance of power. At a deeper level, however, Taylor is at odds with realism. He describes the leaders of Austria-Hungary and Germany whom he holds primarily responsible for the war as acting on the basis of seriously flawed and irrational conceptions of the national interest. Such an explanation is more consistent with 'constructivist' approaches to international relations that stress the role of identities and inter-subjective understandings, and the particular constructions of interests to which they lead. Taylor makes no attempt to reconcile these different approaches, nor does he indicate that he is aware either of the contradictions between them or of the different assumptions they make about the relative importance of agency and structure. Taylor see-saws back and forth between viewing the war's origins from the perspective of actors that is, as a problem of foreign policy and from the system level and its focus on the 'rules' governing actors' behaviour. He is puzzled by the success of cthe system' at keeping the peace by resolving a series of warthreatening crises prior to 1914, and is at something of a loss to explain why the outcome of the July crisis should have been different. System dynamics, which encourage us to think about European international relations as a non-linear and open system, suggest one possible answer to this question. Taylor's most scholarly treatment of the First World War, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, is also his first investigation of its origins.1 He devotes a twenty-page chapter to the subject, half of which focuses on the July crisis. The other half and the three preceding chapters describe the development of the European alliance system, colonial disputes and agree-