Realism, Change, and International Political Theory

Abstract

Much recent commentary on the theory of international politics has focused on the analysis of change and the continuing vitality of political realism. This paper argues that the philosophical dilemmas posed by the concern with change and by the claim to political realism are intimately related. The argument is pursued in the context of contrasting traditions of political realism, of the antithesis between structuralism and historicism in contemporary social and political theory, and of recent tendencies and controversies in the literature on neorealist theories of international politics. The paper concludes that political realism ought to be understood less as a coherent theoretical position in its own right than as the site of a great many interesting claims and metaphysical disputes. As there is no single tradition of political realism, but rather a knot of historically constituted tensions and contradictions, these tensions and contradictions might be reconstituted in a more critical and creative manner. This involves an examination of the way the core categories of international political theory depend upon a particular formulation of the relationship between identity and difference—a formulation which must be refused.