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Sovereignty, Survival and the Westphalian Blind Alley in International Relations

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Sovereignty, Survival and the Westphalian Blind Alley in International Relations Review of International Studies (1999), 25, 217–231 Copyright © British International Studies Association Sovereignty, survival and the Westphalian blind alley in International Relations DAREL E. PAUL1 Abstract. That states are sovereign units interacting under conditions of anarchy has long been the core assumption of the discipline of International Relations. Operating largely with an anthropomorphic conceptualization of the state, ‘statists’ create a stunted ontology of the international system dominated by the concepts of state survival and an assumed state survival interest. By constituting sharp lines of demarcation between being and non-being, between ‘life’ and ‘death’, statists ignore a host of more subtle changes in the ontological status of states which are ill-treated by reference to ‘survival’. This Westphalian ontology leads ultimately to a dead end, for such a definition rejects from the outset an ontology of overlapping political authorities in a single territory but at distinct scales which is characteristic not only of the present international system but of the so-called Westphalian era as well. Introduction That states are the primary actors on the international stage, sovereign units inter- acting under conditions of anarchy, has long been the core assumption of the discipline of International Relations. It is shared today among most mainstream scholars in the field, whether neorealist, neoliberal or constructivist. I refer to those approaches which build their theories around sovereignty and the sovereign state as ‘statist’. The statist ontology has been taken to task on many occasions by con- structivists seeking to demonstrate the importance of intersubjective meanings, constitutive rules and norms, and institutions in the international arena.2 They have focused particularly on the institution of sovereignty as central to the social identi- ties of states.3 In doing so, however, constructivists have bypassed an even deeper 1 I would like to thank Raymond Duvall, Glenda Morgan, Himadeep Muppidi, Hans Nesseth, Ido Oren, Richard Price, the participants of the Minnesota International Relations Colloquium, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this article. All shortcomings remain my own. 2 Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie, ‘International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State’, International Organization, 40 (1986), pp. 753–75; Alexander Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, 41 (1987), pp. 335–70, and ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: the Social Construction of Power Politics,’ International Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 391–425; David Dessler, ‘What’s at Stake in the Agent-Structure Debate?’, International Organization, 43 (1989), pp. 441–73; Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, ‘Institutions and International Order’, in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 51–73; Emanuel Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics,’ European Journal of International Relations, 3 (1997), pp. 319–63. 3 See for example the collection of essays in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.), State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 217 218 Darel E. Paul critique of the statist ontology, one directed at the very definition of the state and at its core animating principle, the ‘survival interest’. Statists operate with a largely anthropomorphic conceptualization of the state. The language of ‘survival’ and ‘survival interest’ indeed implies the existence of a living corporeal entity. The result is an ontology constituted by sharp lines of demarcation between being and non-being, between ‘life’ and ‘death’. This ignores a host of more subtle changes in the ontological status of states which are ill-treated by reference to ‘survival’. For example, when the United Kingdom granted autonomy to the British Dominions, did Canada, Ireland, Australia and the other self-govern- ing colonies only then come into existence? When Bavaria joined the Prussian- dominated North German Confederation in 1871 to create the German Empire, did Bavaria cease to exist? Now that the euro has been introduced, will the separate states of the European Union ‘disappear’? Statists tend to rely on sovereignty to answer such questions, for it is the sovereign state which is the foundation of their ontology. However, there is something more fundamental than sovereignty which defines a state’s existence. The British Dominions, prior to the 1931 Statute of Westminster, were clearly not sovereign yet exercised domestic authority and possessed a definite international capacity and personality, even holding membership in the League of Nations. Non-sovereign Bavaria exchanged ambassadors with sovereign states after the creation of the German Empire and signed treaties with them, a right which it exercised extensively from 1871 to 1918. Other diffuse polities such as the United Provinces of the Netherlands, the early United States, the German Bund, the Swiss Confederation, the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, not to mention contemporary federal states and even some decentralized unitary ones, are cases whose central and member states both exist(ed) and exercise(d) international capacities, the latter without the stamp of sovereignty. If it is true that ‘to be’ is not equivalent to ‘to be sovereign’, the very notion of a state survival interest becomes muddled to say the least. In an anthropomorphized world of corporeal states, the line between life and death is rather sharp, with an easily assumed actor preference for life. Absent such a state, and the difference between sovereignty and non-existence becomes instead a large zone of transition where preferences for one or another mode of being are not at all obvious. It may even be that federation, as among the thirteen confederated states of North America, or a pooling of sovereignty, as among the fifteen members of the Euro- pean Union, is a strategy precisely to promote state survival (albeit in a non- sovereign form), not renounce it. As Daniel Deudney notes in his study of the ‘Philadelphian system’ of the pre- Civil War United States, ‘Not every authoritative political order, state apparatus, territorially distinct polity, or internationally recognized sovereign is a real-state.’ 4 By claiming otherwise, statists create an ontology which confuses being with the terms of being. The source of these difficulties lies in what this paper calls the ‘Westphalian blind alley’. By defining the state as the sovereign Westphalian state, a monopolist of the use of legitimate force within a circumscribed territory, statists follow a pathway which ultimately leads to a dead end, for such a definition rejects 4 Daniel H. Deudney, ‘The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, circa 1787–1861’, International Organization, 49 (1995), p. 193. Sovereignty, survival and the Westphalian blind alley 219 from the outset an ontology of overlapping political authorities in a single territory but at distinct scales.5 The article is organized into four sections. The first two lay out the charge of statism against the rationalist approaches of neorealism and neoliberalism as well as against an unlikely bedfellow, the constructivist approach of Alexander Wendt. The third section demonstrates how both rationalists and Wendtian constructivists find themselves in the Westphalian blind alley and illustrates the deficiencies in con- ceiving of states as living beings with an interest in survival. Finally, the article critiques a promising constructivist escape route from this blind alley and offers instead a structural definition of the state capable both of incorporating a complex and nuanced geography of overlapping states and ultimately of offering Inter- national Relations a framework for studying states sovereign, post-sovereign and non-sovereign. The statist approach I: Rationalism Both broad rationalist approaches in International Relations, neorealism and neoliberalism, have been upbraided for their narrow approach to the discipline. John Ruggie and Rodney Bruce Hall and Friedrich Kratochwil have ably demonstrated neorealists’ inability to comprehend the medieval era of overlapping states and authority rights and claims, an anarchy without sovereignty. Richard Ashley has shown how the neorealist/neoliberal commitment to what he calls the ‘heroic practice’ simultaneously commits rationalists to an interpretation of the world through sovereignty, and thus makes them incapable of speaking of international relations outside the framework of anarchy and sovereignty. Rob Walker has demon- strated the neorealist affinity for ‘the theme of Gulliver’, a penchant for seeing any international system different from the Westphalian one as simply a larger or smaller reproduction of the very same system of sovereign states, rather than one based on a relation other than sovereignty.6 5 Scale is a geographical term meaning ‘the level of geographical resolution at which a given phenomenon is thought of, acted on or studied . the focal setting at which spatial boundaries are defined for a specific social claim, activity or behaviour’. See John Agnew, ‘The Dramaturgy of Horizons: Geographical Scale in the “Reconstruction of Italy” by the New Italian Political Parties, 1992–95’, Political
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