Farewell to Anarchy: The Myth of International Anarchy and Birth of Anarcophilia in International Relations

Paul-Erik Korvela

doi:10.7227/r.21.1.3

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the conceptual history of international anarchy. The argument purported here is that even though the idea of international anarchy is often seen as very central for the academic discipline of international relations, the concept is in fact not found from the forerunners or classics of the discipline. The assumption of international anarchy is commonly seen as a defining feature of a Realist school of international relations. Yet, the concept and especially its “Realist” implications are not to be found in the classics of Realism, from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes. The idea of “international anarchy” emerges quite tentatively during the First World War, in the writings of theoreticians like Dickinson and Spiller. But even then it does not carry the neo-Realist overtones of international anarchy as permanent condition of international relations. It is only in the 1980’s that the discipline starts to huddle around this concept.

Highlights

The discipline of international relations (IR) huddles to a large extent around the concept of international anarchy
Scholars like Hedley Bull who were among the founders of the so-called English School of international relations, with its focus on history and theory, paid attention to the concept already earlier but their aim was to establish that the presumed anarchy of international sphere is not incompatible with society
When we look at the conceptual history of international anarchy, both semasiology and onomasiology, we find that the first mentions of the term surface during the First World War, around 1916

Summary

Introduction

The discipline of international relations (IR) huddles to a large extent around the concept of international anarchy. The idea is central to the discipline and it is found in basically every textbook and introduction to the study of international politics It is seen as deriving from the assumed classics of the discipline, especially those early writers like Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes that are considered the forerunners of the Realist school of IR. Scholars like Hedley Bull who were among the founders of the so-called English School of international relations, with its focus on history and theory, paid attention to the concept already earlier but their aim was to establish that the presumed anarchy of international sphere is not incompatible with society. The aim of this article is to show that international anarchy was not central even for the so-called classics of Realism, where it is thought to originate

The Myth of International Anarchy as Part of Realist Tradition

Anarchy is what misreading classics makes of it