Review of International Studies (2001), 27, 273–280 Copyright © British International Studies Association Which historical sociology? A response to Stephen Hobden’s ‘Theorising the International System’ DANIEL NEXON* In a recent article in the Review of International Studies, Stephen Hobden does a great service by initiating a critical evaluation of the potential for historical socio- logy in international relations theory. Hobden considers seminal studies by Michael Mann, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, and Immanuel Wallerstein, and concludes that each is inadequate for building an historical sociology of the international system.1 Articles such as Hobden’s are particularly important in international relations, where many major theories are dependent upon the assumptions and methods of other disciplines. From time to time, we need to ask, in a comparative manner, just how useful such methods and assumptions really are. However, I believe that Hobden ultimately does not pay detailed attention to the very assumptions and methods which drive the theorists he examines. While his criticisms of Skocpol and Wallerstein are largely persuasive, he fails to take seriously the sociological relationalist nature of Mann’s and Tilly’s work.2 Relationalism—which has emerged as a major paradigm in sociology, and parti- cularly in historical sociology—treats patterns of transactions as the starting point of social theory, as opposed to, for example, the elucidation of relatively autono- mous systems.3 Thus, neither Mann nor Tilly accept as legitimate the distinctions— between structure and norms, rational actors and social agents—upon which Hobden’s critiques of inconsistency and incompatibility are premised. While the fact that relationalists reject Hobden’s critical apparatus does not necessarily obviate his arguments, a serious engagement with Mann’s and Tilly’s relational assumptions might have forced him to better justify his own analytical and epistemological positions. In their present form, they are largely unpersuasive. Furthermore, Hobden bases his critiques on works with specific empirical puzzles that are related to, but not identical with, his concern for broader theorisation about * I would like to thank Maia Gemmill, Stacie E. Goddard, Patrick Jackson, Michael Mann and Charles Tilly for helpful comments and suggestions. 1 S. Hobden, ‘Theorising the International System: Perspectives from Historical Sociology’, Review of International Studies, 25:2 (1999), pp. 257–71. 2 M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992). Hobden also discusses work before Tilly’s relational turn (and thus not relevant to my argument). See C. Tilly, ‘Reflections on the History of European State Making’, in C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). 3 For an example of the high profile of relationalism in historical sociology, see the symposium on the utility of rational choice approaches to historical sociology which recently appeared in the American Journal of Sociology. In particular, see M. Sommers, ‘“We’re No Angels”: Realism, Rational Choice, and Relationality in Social Science’, American Journal of Sociology, 104:3 (1998), pp. 722–85. 273 274 Daniel Nexon the ‘international system’. As a consequence, he confuses what are (at worst) errors of omission with theoretical jaundice. In other words, Hobden elides what I believe is the most important issue raised by his critical review: the choice between relationalist and neofunctional systems approaches to the study of change in the international system. Sociological relationalism Hobden is correct when he notes that we need to move ‘beyond the ahistorical analysis’ so prevalent in ‘international theorising.’ 4 In doing so, he echoes a number of scholars who have focused upon the need to theorise change within and between ‘international systems.’ 5 What we mean by ‘change’, however, is not always clear. Hobden focuses on the need for a ‘coherent analysis of what constitutes an inter- national system’ as a critical step towards analysing change.6 However, relationalists would caution us to start with the prior question of what constitutes ‘change’ itself. In general, when international relations scholars analyse change they study processes which alter sociocultural entities or, to varying degrees, the patterns of relations between entities. In effect, this means that a major problem for studying change is theoretical reification: our tendency to treat processes and relations as substances. For example, we call relative stabilities in patterns of interaction ‘struc- tures’ and treat them as autonomous things, and we simplify international relations by treating agents—such as states, transnational organizations, or even individuals— as coherent, purposive entities.7 Likewise, functionalists and many neofunctionalists begin with systems, whose inner logics are the object of explanation. There are many good reasons for doing so, but when we want to explain alterations in these ‘things’ our own method of treating them as stable substances gets in the way.8 Relationalists attempt to solve this problem by taking processes and relations as the building blocks of analysis.9 Rather than begin with macrophenomena— structures and societies, for example—or microphenomena—agents or individuals— relationalists believe that the proper starting point of analysis is at the mesolevel: patterns of transactions themselves. For them, agent-centric theory ‘builds upon the myth of the person as some pre-existing entity,’ while ‘structuralism builds from the 4 Hobden, ‘Theorising’, p. 271. 5 See, for example, B. Buzan, C. Jones, and R. Little, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), and F. Kratochwil, ‘The Embarrassment of Changes: Neo-Realism as the Science of Realpolitik Without Politics’, Review of International Studies, 19:1 (1993), pp. 63–80. 6 Ibid., p. 269. 7 Many relationalists dispute the proposition that action is necessarily coherent—an assumption central to, for example, rational choice theory. See H. White, Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1992), p. 303. 8 See A. Abott, ‘Things of Boundaries’, Social Research 62 (1996), pp. 857–62. For a philosophical defense of this proposition, see N. Rescher, Process Metaphysics (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 64–7. 9 M. Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, 103:2 (1997), pp. 281–317. For an application to IR theory, see P. Jackson and D. Nexon, ‘Relations Before the States: Substance, Process, and the Study of World Politics’, European Journal of International Relations, 5:3 (1999), pp. 291–332 and Y. Lapid, ‘Culture’s Ship: Returns and Departures in International Relations Theory’, in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds.), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1997), pp. 5–11. Which historical sociology? 275 myth of society as some pre-existing entity’.10 Rather, relationalists propose that, ‘the very terms or units involved in a transaction’ are constituted by the changing roles ‘they play within that transaction’.11 Thus, any a priori commitment to agents or structures should be eschewed.12 In addition, reification and what we experience as ‘system closure’ are rather significant processes to be explained, or at least not assumed, by our methods. Hence, relational historical sociologists are not, as Hobden states, focused upon ‘examining the impact that multiple societies have on each other’.13 Mann rejects such categories, arguing that ‘societies are not unitary. They are not social systems (closed or open); they are not totalities’, and thus ‘because there is no bounded totality, it is not helpful to divide social change or conflict into ‘endogenous’ or ‘exogenous’ varieties’.14 For him ‘society’ is analytically better described as over- lapping and intertwining power networks.15 Tilly’s understanding of coercion and capital also follows this logic. As Hobden notes, coercion and capital are analytic categories representing social networks on the European landscape.16 In conjunction with processes of military-technical change, different constellations of coercion and capital were more successful than others. At the same time, the very coercion and capital networks within which actors were embedded—and which constituted their interests—were transformed (primarily) by political bargaining associated with warfare.17 Thus, processes immanent in social relations are what produce both states and the international system. These transactional relations are analytically prior to both international structures and agents, and they are both material and cultural in nature.18 It follows that relationalists are logically required to reject neopositivist variable analysis,19 where entities remain fundamentally unchanged while their variable attributes ‘interact, in causal or actual time, to create outcomes, themselves measurable as the attributes of fixed entities’.20 Causal interaction takes place among entities, and is not generated by the entities themselves.21