The politics of international theory: reading Waltz 1979 as a classic

Abstract

No book on international relations has generated more debate over the past three decades than Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (hereafter TIP) published in 1979.2 Today, the book is widely regarded as a modern classic.3 It continues to be extensively cited in the study of international relations by admirers as well as critics, and few university students would be able to take an introductory course on international relations without becoming acquainted with Kenneth Waltz’s so-called neorealist – or structural realist – theory, although many will only learn about the theory from textbooks, often written by authors critical of Waltz’s theory, and only a small minority will read the book cover-to-cover. TIP leaves us with no testable hypotheses about the nature or processes of interna-tional relations. Its methodological assumptions are complex, at times foggy, and its sparse and minimalist framework has been proven partly irrelevant and partly wrong, even by scholars taking their point of departure in realist assumptions. Yet the book has had an enormous impact on thinking about international relations, and it continues to be an indispensable starting point for anyone wishing to discuss, develop or apply a realist perspective on international relations. Despite its continued importance to the study of international relations, the positionof Waltz’s structural realist theory within the discipline of International Relations (IR) is changing. Neorealism no longer plays a central role in the debates regarding how to explain and understand international relations or what the discipline of IR is or ought to be.4 One would be hard pressed to find a recent article in any one of the top ten journals on international relations, which uses neorealism as its analytical framework. Instead ‘Waltz 1979’ has become a standard reference in modern realism, rather like ‘Carr 1939’, ‘Morgenthau 1948’ – or ‘Waltz 1959’: everybody knows it, few have read it, and virtually no one uses it as point of departure for analysing international relations. In 1979, following a decade of political, normative and academic obscurity, TIPmarked the cool, calm and collected return of realism to the centre stage, in both practical-political and scholarly debates about international relations. During the next two decades neorealism played a major role in debates about how to explain and understand international relations5 before being edged out by a new generation of ‘post-neorealist’ realists.6 The result for neorealism was, however, not marginalization but canonization. Attacks became fewer and further between and celebrations of the contribution made by Waltz are now the order of the day.7 TIP has become a classic.