The More Things Change ...

Abstract

Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Changes in International Politics. By K. J. Holsti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 372 pp., $70.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-83403-1), $25.99 paper (ISBN: 0-521-54192-1). Should we celebrate the end of history, the obsolescence of major war, and the retreat of the state? Or must we cower before the coming chaos and clash of civilizations, while reminiscing fondly about the good old days of the Cold War? Whether dispensing good cheer or dour pessimism, many of the most widely read authors writing about international relations in recent years have agreed about one thing—the future will be discontinuous with the past. In Taming the Sovereigns , K. J. Holsti seeks to douse such fevered speculations with a survey of institutional change in international politics over the past several centuries. Holsti concludes that the foundations of the Westphalian order remain firmly in place. Even though different components of the international institutional system have evolved in varied ways, the overall picture is one of incremental change in the direction of greater complexity rather than transformation. This continuity is all to the good, given that, according to Holsti, the existing institutional order has a “moderating influence” (p. 307) on state behavior (hence the title), which allows for historically unprecedented levels of peace and prosperity. The conceptual foundations of Holsti's study reflect the influence of so-called “English School” thinkers such as Martin Wight (1978) and Hedley Bull (1977). Although agreeing with realists that international politics is anarchic in structure, Bull conceived of states not as atomistic utility maximizers but as pragmatic social agents capable of working out mutually acceptable rules and practices. The resulting institutional order served to avert, or at least to dampen, the Hobbesian war of all against all that realists wrongly considered the inevitable product of international anarchy. The English School thus occupies an interesting intermediate position in contemporary paradigmatic debates—combining realism's state-centric assumptions with liberalism's optimistic conclusions about the prospects for international cooperation. According to …