Perpetual Westphalia? Exploring Westphalian and Non-Westphalian Politics Through Aleatory

Materialism

The majestic portal which leads from the old world into the new world-

Leo Gross1

…new Philosophy calls all in doubt,The Element of firs is quite put out;

The Sun is lost, and th’earth, and no mans witCan well direct him where to looke for it.

-John Donne.2

Writing about historical consensus on the ‘Thirty Years’ War,’

Nicola Sutherland argues: ‘the Thirty Years War is a largely

factitious conception which has nevertheless become an

indestructible myth.’3 Although Sutherland is referring to the

common emplotment of the Thirty Years War as the end of ongoing

conflict between the Habsburg and Valois dynasties, her words

could easily be used to sum up the way the war’s conclusion- the

Treaty of Westphalia- has become the foundational myth of

international relations. This foundational myth, a common thread

within academic International Relations and the practice of

international politics, states that Westphalia- particularly in regard

to the recognition of sovereign autonomy- instituted the modern

1 Gross, L., (1948), ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948’, American Journal of International Law, 42(1), pp. 20-41, p. 28-29.2 Donne, J., (1611), ‘An Anatomy of the World’, (available at: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/643.html) (accessed on: 27/02/2011).3 Sutherland, N.M., (1992), ‘The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the structure of European Politics’, EHR 107, p. 587.

practice of sovereignty.4 As such, Westphalia is understood as the

point at which sovereignty is distinguished from other forms of

authority, rendering state sovereignty the only source of properly

political authority.5 This distinction between legitimate state

authority and other, illegitimate authority continues to form the

‘normative core of international law,’6 as well as being the sine qua

non of much modern IR theory. Indeed, thinkers as dissimilar as

Hans Morgenthau7 and Friedrich Kratochwil8 share the assumption

that Westphalia was the point where modern international politics

was born. This is not to say that there have not been dissenting

views. Martin Wight, for example, locates an evolutionary process

whereby the modern states system came into being over the three

centuries following the failure of church reform in the late 15th

Century, culminating in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.9

Similarly, Benno Teschke has demonstrated that, although the 4 For the treatment of this issue, see for example Arrighi, G., (1994), The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times, (London, Verso), pp. 36-47.Kratochwil, F., (1986), ‘Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System’, World Politics, 34(1), pp. 27-52.Ruggie, J.G., (1983), ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis’, in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics, (New York, Columbia University Press), pp. 131-157. Wight, M., (1977), ‘The Origins of Our States-System: Chronological Limits’, in M. Wight (ed.), Systems of States, (Leicester, Leicester University Press), pp. 129-153.5 Onnekink, D., (2009), ‘The Dark Alliance Between Religion and War’, in D. Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion After Westphalia, 1648-1713, pp. 1-15 (Farnham, Ashgate), p. 2.6 Brown, S., (1992), International Relations in a Changing Global System: Toward a Theory of the World Polity, (Boulder, Westview), p. 74.7 Morgenthau, H., (1967), Politics Among Nations, 4th Edition, (New York, Alfred Knopf), p. 299.8 Kratochwil, F., (1986), ‘Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System’, World Politics 34(1), pp 27-52.9 Wight, M., (1977), ‘The Origins of Our States-System: Chronological Limits’, in H. Bull (ed.), Systems of States, (Leicester, Leicester University Press), pp. 129-152.

origins of the modern international system can be found in social,

political and economic developments, they are intrinsically tied to

the transformation of property relations in the modern European

(particularly the English) economy.10 Where there has been a

challenge to this orthodoxy, it has often been ambivalent and

unconvinced. The writings of Stephen Krasner are a case in point,

in which he has argued that the Treaty of Westphalia both was11

and was not12 a significant point of rupture within the history of

‘the international.’ What is more, where he does acknowledge the

problems inherent in the Westphalian account of the origin of

international relations, it is to suggest slight revisions to the thesis

rather than to question the practice of identifying the origins of the

international system. It seems that Krasner’s approach to

Westphalia is symptomatic of the discipline as a whole; the actual

origins of the modern international system are less important than

the way a ‘mythic foundation’ acts as a condition of possibility for a

particular type of account of the international system.

In light of this, rather than assessing the validity of the claims

made by the ‘Westphalian thesis,’13 this paper examines

10 Teschke, B., (2002), ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations From Absolutism to Capitalism’, European Journal of International Relations 8(1), pp. 5-41. 11 Krasner, S.D., (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, (Princeton, Princeton University Press).12 Krasner, S.D., (1993), ‘Westphalia and All That’, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, J. Goldstein & R.O. Keohane (eds.) pp. 235-264 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), p. 235.13 Benno Teschke has produced a fantastically erudite and rigorously researched analysis of the emergence of the modern international system in The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations

Westphalia’s role as the mythic origin of the international system.

It is the contention of this paper that the dominant approach to

temporality within IR is dependent on a point of rupture between

past and present, represented by the Peace of Westphalia, marking

a transition from pre-modern to modern international systems. This

paper argues that the assumption of a point of rupture between

pre-modern and modern international systems is the hallmark of a

modernist philosophy of history, in which the present is radically

separated from the past.14 This rupture marks a break with

tradition in the light of a self-grounding modernity, implying for

international relations the move from the historical past to a

relatively static, unchanging international present. If this is not an

analytically neutral concept, nor is temporality ethically neutral- it

constitutes the normative horizon of modern politics. Although this

has a great many implications, given the constraints under which

this paper is being written, it is only possible to address some of

them. As such, the paper will proceed by identifying and outlining

three corollaries of IR’s ‘Westphalian moment’:

a) A temporal thesis- Westphalia acts as a device whereby the

modern international system is distinguished from the pre-

modern by a radical rupture or break.

(London, Verso, 2003).14 Lowenthal, D., (1985), The Past is a Foreign Country, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. xxiv.

b) A spatial thesis- Westphalia (that which is constitutive of the

international) marks the birth of territory as the sole basis of

international political order.

c) A political thesis- Westphalia implies a particular normative

orientation to the practice of politics and a normative lens

through which political community and organization are

viewed.

Once the implications of Westphalian idealism have been

established, this paper goes on to explore the implications of Louis

Althusser’s ‘aleatory materialism’ for looking at International

Theory without the origin myth provided by Westphalian and post-

Westphalian narratives. Aleatory materialism offers us the capacity

to think in terms of the primacy of practice and do away with the

idealistic foundations of the IR canon that lock us into certain

suppositions about where and how practices of politics must take

place.

Westphalia and the History of IR Theory:

Within IR theory, the Treaty of Westphalia is regarded as a decisive

‘tipping point’ within the long transition between pre-modern and

modern international relations. It is considered the decisive point

at which the ‘soft-textured’ overlapping authorities of the medieval

era were replaced by the state of sovereign equality central to

modern international politics.15 In many cases, this has been used

as a means of justifying the exceptionalism of the modern

international system; through which IR’s disciplinary distinction

from History can be established. Although Herbert Butterfield, and

many others associated with the English School, have suggested

that IR theorists should engage more critically with the historian’s

task of ‘elucidat[ing] the unlikeness between past and present,’16

the way that most IR theorists have approached this task is through

asserting the radical incommensurability of past and present,

emphasizing the way in which the ‘Christian unity of the medieval

world seem[s] remote and alien.’17 Within the discipline of IR, this

is a remarkably common way of approaching the emergence of the

international system. Even the most historical-sociologically

inclined thinkers, including the nuanced and sophisticated

accounts of Justin Rosenberg18 and John Ruggie19 incorporate a

structural discontinuity between modern and pre-modern

international relations. Perhaps the most radical critique of the

modernism implicit within IR’s emplotment of the onset of

modernity has come from the wholly a-historical approach taken by

structural realism, with practitioners of this theoretical school

arguing that the nature of international politics has essentially

15 Walker, R.B.J., (2010), After the Globe, Before the World, (London, Routledge), p. 131.16 Butterfield, H., (1949), The Whig Interpretation of History, (London, Bell), p. 10.17 Wight, M., (1979), Power Politics, (Harmondsworth, Penguin), p. 24.18 Rosenberg, J., (1994), The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations, (London, Verso).19 Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity’.

been static since the emergence of the Sumerian City States

system circa 3,500BC.20 However, given the manifold reasons to

reject the philosophy of history implicit in structural realism,21

there is reason to suggest that neo-realism does not offer a

desirable remedy to the temporality found within Westphalian IR. It

does, however, give us cause to question why IR theory has not

situated itself within the totality of human history and engaged

more fully with the ‘long view of history.’22

In accepting the notion of a discontinuity between modern and pre-

modern international politics, IR employs a modernist philosophy of

history. Although IR is a specifically 20th Century endeavor,23 it

utilises a method of separating the past from the present that has

been in operation since the early modern period. Although a

detailed discussion of how and where International Relations

theory is modernist, is not possible here, John Ruggie has identified

the core modernist assumptions of both realist power balancing

theories which rely on the notion of a new self-relating equilibrium

20 Buzan, B. & Litle, R., (2002), ‘International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations’, in Hobden, S. & Hobson, J.M., (eds.), Historical Sociology of International Relations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 200-220.21 For an excoriating critique of the assumptions of neo-realism, see Ashley, R.K., (1984), ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’, International Organization 38(2), pp. 225-286.Cox, R.W., (1987), ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, in R.O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics, pp. 204-255.22 Buzan, B., & Little, R., (2000), International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations, (Oxford, Oxford University Press), p. 2.23 Schmidt, B.C., (2002), ‘On the History and Historiography of International Relations’, in W. Calsnaes, T. Risse and B.A. Simmons, (eds.), Handbook of International Relations, (London, Sage).

at the heart of the European society24 and idealist theory which

locates the new international order at the heart of projects such as

Abbe St. Pierre’s institutionalist plan for peace and the Perpetual

Peace enshrined in the writings of Immanuel Kant.25 All of this is to

create an artificial divide between the past and the present.26 In

this, International Relations participates in what Jurgen Habermas

called the ‘project’ of enlightenment, whereby systematic efforts

were conducted ‘to develop objective science, universal morality

and law, and autonomous art, according to their inner law.’27

Conceptualizing a rupture between past and present, which first

emerged in renaissance humanism,28 was a representational

schema deeply ingrained in early modern political theory’s attempt

to understand the origins of political authority. During this period,

the dominant understanding of the nature and origins of law were

reformulated as Thomistic natural law interpretations were

challenged by the collapse of medieval cosmology under the weight

of the nominalist-scholastic controversy.29 Although the transition

from natural law to positive law understandings of political

24 Anderson, M.S., (1963), Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713-1783, (London, Longmans) identifies the Treaty of Utrecht as the point at which self-balancing European powers was first instituted.25 Hinsley, F.H., (1963), Power and the Pursuit of Peace, (London, Cambridge University Press), chapter 2 & 4.26 Hobden, S., (1998), International Relations and Historical Sociology, (New York, Routledge), p. 21.27 Habermas, J., (1981), ‘Modernity and Postmodernity’, New German Critique 22, p. 9.28 Kellner, H., (1980), ‘A Bedrock of Order: Hayden White’s Linguistic Humanism’, History and Theory, 19(4), p. 5.29 Gillespie, M.A., (2008), The Theological Origins of Modernity, (Chicago, Chicago University Press), p. 11.

authority was not marked by the neat discontinuity some accounts

suggest,30 it is fair to say that the political thought of the early

modern period was driven by the question of how and where to

found political authority given the apparent inadequacy of hitherto

dominant theological justifications.31 Given that it was also heavily

influenced by the political consequences of reformation32 and the

subsequent necessity to re-think the political foundations of the

polis, the nature of Christendom and the relationship between

political authority and religion, it is clear that the political-

theoretical landscape of the day was governed by questions about

how and where political authority was to be founded.

In light of this, there is a need to see modern international politics

not as an era or epoch, but as a practice of distinguishing the

present from the past as a way of making claims about the

foundations of legitimate authority. This way of understanding

modernity has emerged from attempts by historians of ideas to

come to terms with the developments of early modern thought.

30 Rather than simply being an invention of early modernity, this intellectual foment was a key element of ‘the nominalist revolution’ in late medieval philosophy, having a significant impact on the political thought of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham, among others. See for example van Caenegem, R., (1988), ‘Government, Law and Society’, in J.H. Burns (ed.) The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c. 350-1450, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 174-210.31 The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is symptomatic of this approach. Hobbes founds the authority of positive law as an inescapable corollary of a reasoned argument from first principles. The univocal, anthropogenic law of the leviathan replaces the hierarchical orders of law found in medieval political thought. 32 Gorski, P.S., (1999), ‘Calvinism and State Formation in Early Modern Europe’, in G. Steinmetz (ed.), State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn, (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), pp. 147-181.

During the enlightenment, it was accepted that the transition to

modernity was one of triumph, as great minds threw off the

shackles of superstition and established a new understanding of the

world based on reason.33 However, by the 20th Century this

narrative was contested by intellectual historians such as Etienne

Gilsen and Karl Löwith, who argued that the apparent ‘early

modern revolution’ was based not on reason, but on the

secularization of late medieval theological concepts.34 This thesis

was in turn challenged by scholars such as Hans Blumenberg who

argued that modernity was in fact a project, wherein a self-

founding modernity created distance and separation from the

past.35 According to this view, the transition to modernity was not

simply the move from one worldview or era to another, but an

attempt to create self-grounding meaning and authority in a world

from which God is absent, or at best capricious. Whilst this project

of modernity utilized a number of concepts, devices and themes

from late medieval thought (nominalism was the philosophical and

theological leitmotif of both the late middle ages and early

modernity) the period should be thought of in terms of the

replacement of theological and hierarchical understandings of law,

authority and knowledge claims with self-founding authorities.36

33 Gillespie, M.A., (2008), The Theological Origins of Modernity, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), p. 11.34 Löwith, K., (1949), Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press). 35 Blumenberg, H., (1989), The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press).36 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, p. 12.

Although it is incorrect to read this period as a simple process

whereby positive law simply replaced natural law- there is reason

to suggest that the dominant ideas of the early modern period were

those in the voluntarist tradition of natural law37 (the

nominalist/voluntarist challenge to Thomistic natural law did

require a new way of understanding the nature of law and authority

in the world.38) In order to ground this new form of authority, early

modern thought developed an understanding of positive law rooted

in natural law.39 No-one epitomizes this philosophy better than

Thomas Hobbes, who located the absolute necessity of the

authority of the sovereign source of positive law in an argument

made through natural law.40

The conception of modernity as a self-grounding project underwent

a revival in the 18th and 19th Centuries, when it became inextricably

linked to a particular normative and political project. It was in 18th

and 19th Centuries that the ‘international problematic’ as

understood by contemporary international relations emerged.41 In

particular, it was intimately connected to the sovereign state. As

37 Oakley, F. (1961), ‘Medieval Theories of Natural Law: William of Ockham and the Significance of the Voluntarist Tradition’, The American Journal of Jurisprudence 6, pp. 72-73.38 The relationship between nominalism and the rise of humanism is becoming increasingly established in the history of science. See for example Koyré, A., (1957), From Closed World to Infinite Universe, (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press) & Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age.39 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, p. 19.40 Hobbes, T. (1994), Elements of Law: Natural and Positive, (London, Penguin), p. 254.41 Patomaki, H., (2002), After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re)construction of World Politics, (London, Routledge),

Constantin Fasolt has argued, the freedom of the modern state is

defined in terms of both spatial and (most importantly) temporal

freedom.42 The modern nation state is intimately connected to the

‘auto-production’ of modernity, through which the modern idea of

sovereignty (and its corollary ideas such as citizenship, rights and

the rule of positive law) as a regulative norm, is founded not only

through spatial borders, but also borders in time. Indeed, this

rupture in time is primary, acting as a condition of possibility of

spatial border practices.43 Only in asserting man’s freedom from

the tradition and custom that governed past politics can the

authority of self-grounding human freedom associated with the

modern nation state be founded.

As such, this form of temporality has both theoretical and political

implications. It is intrinsically tied to the nation state and the

sovereign order as a way of understanding the world. Indeed,

‘professional’ history-44 with which political science shares a

number of common intellectual and institutional origins- is

intimately tied to the emerging nation state, with the pioneers of

modern historical explanation engaged in telling national

histories.45 Knowledge about the past becomes the search for 42 Fasolt, C., (2004), The Limits of History, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press), p. 7.43 Walker, R.B.J., (2006), ‘Lines of Insecurity: International, Imperial, Exceptional’, Security Dialogue, 37(1), pp. 65-82.44 That is to say historical explanation carried out in Universities following the rise of History as a profession in 19th Century Germany. 45 For an interesting discussion of this, see Harrison, R., Jones, A. & Lambert, P.A., (2004)‘The institutionalization and organization of history’, in P. Lambert & P. Schofield (eds.), Making History: An introduction to this history and practices

power and independence, through which the project of modern

authority is continually re-founded.46 International Relations, a

discipline which finds its intellectual roots in the 19th Century,47

participates in this intellectual project, drawing upon the legacy of

the enlightenment and the idea of an international order comprised

of states in their proper place.48 The conceptual apparatus of

International Relations theory has statist, rationalist and nationalist

origins and the ‘myth of Westphalia’ is a significant condition of

possibility for this mode of emplotment.

As such, the temporality of political modernity is not simply a

means by which the present is defined as radically different to the

past; it also shapes the normative horizon of international politics.

The cleavage between past and present implicitly contains a set of

theses about how man is to behave in the world.49 In particular, it

places the territorially bounded state (as part of a states-system,

within which borders mark the boundary between the jurisdiction

of sovereign authorities) at the centre of the normative frame.

Within this normative frame, both ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’

of a discipline’, (London, Routledge), pp. 9-25.Lambert, P., (2003), ‘The Professionalisation and Institutionalisation of History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner & K. Passmore, (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice, (London, Arnold), pp. 42-60.46 Fasolt, The Limits of History, pp. 13-14.47 Knutsen, T., (1992), A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester, Manchester University Press).Walker, After the Globe, p. 41, n.10.48 Koskenniemi, M., (2001), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 20.49 Walker, After the Globe, p. 32.

readings of the world share a common understanding of the nature

and location of politics.50 This at once makes the state the sine qua

non of politics in the Westphalian system and- in emphasizing the

institution of sovereign authority as the origin of the modern

international system- de-politicises borders as sites where politics

is performed.51 The self-foundation of modern political authority

also makes clear normative prescriptions (and, conversely

proscriptions) about the nature and location of legitimate politics.

Within ‘Westphalian order,’ the state is the sole legitimate source

of political authority and- as such- delegitimizes political practices

taking place in other forms and in other contexts. The processes

and temporalities through which activities are designated as

‘properly political’ are inherently political processes themselves!

The idea that modernity is an era, a move from the past to the

present, obscures the contingency of this political order. Within IR,

there is a tendency to read the emergence of the modern

international system teleologically,52 which simultaneously

naturalises and depoliticizes ‘Westphalian’ order. In light of this, it

is important to recognize the emergence of modern states as

specific practices whereby political authority was legitimized as a 50 Fasolt, The Limits of History, p. 15.51 Walker, After the Globe, pp. 32-33.52 John Hobson identifies two tendencies within International Relations Theory- Chronofetishism and Tempocentrism – which he argues is responsible for naturalizing the modern international system. Hobson, J.M., (2002), ‘What’s at Stake in ‘Bringing Historical Sociology Back Into International Relations? Transcending ‘Chronofetishism’ and ‘Tempocentrism’ in International Relations’, in S. Hobden & J.M. Hobson (eds.), Historical Sociology of International Relations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), pp. 3-41.

response to the concrete intellectual and political problems of the

age. As Hidemi Suganami has argued, the practice of sovereignty-

in both Schmittian and Kelsonian guises- is based in the mutual

imbrication of sovereignty and the ‘possibility of arbitrary

violence.’53 This practice emerged as a response to the conflicts of

the late 16th and early 17th Centuries54 and the difficulties of

establishing a foundation for legal authority after the demise of

Thomism.55 However, if modernity is not the move from one era to

another, but the foundation of authority in the present through the

establishment of the radical alterity of the past, these foundations

are as much the root of present political order as they are the

historical origins of the modern international system. The corollary

of this is that there is clear scope for a re-assessment of the way

that foundational practices constitute political order.

There is a particular need to re-assess the bordering processes of

the international system in the 21st Century. Not only might this

prove useful in highlighting the implications of the bordering

practices through which borders are created and sustained,56 but it

could also help change the way that some major problems in

international politics are approached. Particularly prominent

53 Suganami, H., (2007), ‘Understanding Sovereignty Through Kelsen/Schmitt’, Review of International Studies, 33 pp. 511-530, p. 530.54 Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, p. 72.55 Gillespie, Theological Origins of Modernity, pp. 253-254.56 This topic has been discussed at some length in Walker, R.B.J., (1992), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

amongst these is the question of the authority of the state in the

21st Century world. International Relations theorists obsesses about

the move ‘beyond Westphalia,’ using language which suggests that

the early 21st Century marks a period of epochal change,57 but

perhaps this is to fall into the same error as those accounts

addressing the transition between the medieval period and

modernity. If transition takes place in the changing location of and

practices of founding political authority, it is on these issues that

analysis must focus. There is historical precedent for this situation,

in which political authority has not been coterminous with the

dominant economic forms or organisation, particularly because, as

Benno Teschke has argued, the rise of the modern, international

market was not only compatible with, but existed in a symbiotic

relationship with the modern state.58 Rather than assuming

opposition of interests between the state as locus of authority in

the modern political world and global markets or civil society,59 it is

necessary to address the way that this relationship entails a

mutually co-dependent grounding of legitimate political authority.60 57 See for example Linklater, A., (1998), The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the Post-Westphalian Era, (Oxford, Polity).Held, D., (2004), A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics & Politics, (London, Routledge).58 Teschke, The Myth of 1648, p. 23.Teschke, ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States’, p. 38.59 See for example Gilpin, R., (1987), The Political Economy of International Relations, (Princeton, Princeton University Press), p. 10.Castells, M., (1996), The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture; Volume 1, The Rise of the Network Society, (Oxford, Blackwell).Cerny, P., (1996), ‘International Finance and the Erosion of State Policy Capacity’, in P. Gummett (ed.), Globalization and Public Policy, (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar).60 This is not a new argument in International Political Economy circles, as Mann, M., (1993), ‘Nation-states in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, not Dying’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and

Although it is not possible to enter into a fuller discussion of this

issue here, it is the supposition of this author that if the issue were

approached from this perspective, the ‘globalisation debate’ and

the analysis of the changing role of the state may have a somewhat

different- and significantly more productive- outcome.

Philosophical Idealism in International Relations Theory:

At this point, it is worth examining in greater detail the extent to

which IR has inherited a philosophical idealist worldview.

Refracted through the lens of early modern international law and

the influence of German philosophers and jurists such as Hegel,

Schmitt and Kelsen, philosophical idealism has come to assume a

dominant position within modern IR theory. Although the origins of

idealist thought in IR theory can be found in the influence of this

legal and juridical thought on IR, it was brought into the discipline

in two distinct ways: the role of early modern international law in

defining and delimiting ‘the international’ as a sui generis form of

law and the influence of German legal thought on the sociological

formalism of early realist thought within IR. Although these

theories tend to be associated with very different approaches to IR,

Sciences, 122(3), pp. 115–40 indicates. What is new however, is making this argument through the problem of temporality, modernity and the practice of locating legitimate political authority. This would bring questions of political foundation to a debate which has usually been conducted in sociological and/or economic terms. There is certainly reason to suggest that a debate conducted in a political theoretical register would have a greater impact on International Relations theory, overcoming the tendency for this issue to be marginalized as an ‘IPE matter.’

they share a common set of philosophical assumptions, which leads

them to define ‘the international’ in similar ways.

Legal thinking has had a profound, and often underestimated,

influence on the way that IR has come to terms with the world. Of

particular importance is the centrality of early modern

international legal thought such as that of Pufendorf, Vattel and

Kant, in shaping the horizons of the discipline;61 evidence of their

influence on the contemporary discipline of academic International

Relations can be found in its continued engagement with these

thinkers.62 The formative processes whereby international law was

codified and promulgated have gone hand-in hand with the way we

understand the modern state; the Treaty of Westphalia (as the

point at which the principle of sovereign equality was formally

recognized) is both of central importance to the development of

international law and the emergence of modern international

politics.63

61 See for example Suganami, H., (1989), The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals, (Cambridge, Cambridge University press), p. 13.62 See for example Wight, M., (2005), Four Seminal Thinkers in International Relations: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant and Mazzini, G. Wight & B. Porter (eds.), (Oxford, Oxford University Press).Wight, M., (1991), International Theory: The Three Traditions, (Leicester, Leicester University Press).Linklater, A., (1982), Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, (Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan)Koskenniemi, M., (2001), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870-1960, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). 63 Knutsen, T.L., (1992), A History of International Relations Theory, (Manchester, Manchester University Press), p. 115.Teschke, B., (2003), The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations, (London, Verso).

The theoretical discourse of the state in late 19th and early 20th

Century social, political and legal thought also had a significant

influence on early IR theory. This is an argument that Brian

Schmidt makes in The Political Discourse of Anarchy, in which he

contends that the ‘pre-history’ of the discipline of international

relations has had a significant impact on IR, where “the theoretical

discourse of the state tacitly laid the groundwork for the political

discourse of anarchy.”64 In early 20th Century intellectual culture,

heavily influenced by Hegel and Weber, the study of the state was

the study of man’s modern condition: the modern state was both

the teleological culmination of man’s progress and the guarantor of

modern life.65 As Anna Haddow has argued, the nascent discipline

of Political Science (and by extension, International Relations), at

least in the USA, shared a lot of the philosophical assumptions of

(particularly German) legal and historical thought.66 It appears that

not only is there a close relationship between the theory of the

state outlined in 19th Century historical, legal and political enquiry

and early theories of international relations, but there is also a

close relationship between the philosophical assumptions of fin de

siècle social and political thought and early international relations

theory.

64 Schmidt, B.C., (1998), The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, (Albany, SUNY Press), p. 45.65 Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory, pp. 148-150.66 Haddow, A., (1939), Political Science in American Colleges and Universities, 1636-1900, (New York, Appleton-Century Company).

Another key way in which (particularly German) legal thinking was

brought into IR was through the sociological concepts pioneered by

Max Weber. “The key conceptualization of politics, definitely in

International Relations but arguably also in social theory generally,

is Max Weber’s.”67 Weber’s theoretical project was dominated by a

desire to develop a nomothetic theory of the way in which social

organization takes place, developing his ‘ideal typical’ approach to

social theory- treating ‘the political’ (as he would any other facet of

social existence) as an abstraction that can be made to analyse any

society.68 Students of Weber’s approach proved instrumental in

defining the methods and limits of the discipline69 as early IR

theorists such as Hans Morgenthau adopted Weber’s ideal types as

a cornerstone of their conception of ‘the international’ and firmly

ensconced Weber at the heart of IR.70 Although Carl Schmitt offers

a slightly different theory of sovereignty to Weber- replacing the

monopoly of political violence with the sovereign decision- the

implications are similar. The idea that sovereignty resides with the

power that can declare and enforce a state of exception, a self-

67 Neumann, I.B. & Sending, O.J., (2007), ‘”The International” as Governmentality’, Millenium- Journal of International Studies 35, p. 679.68 Weber’s approach to the ideal type is most clearly articulated in Weber, M., (1976), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (London, Allen & Unwin), p. 28.69 Neumann & Sending, ‘The International as Governmentality’, p. 682. 70 Guzzini, S., (1998), Realism in International Relations and International Political Theory: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold, (London, Routledge), p. 26.See also Williams, M.C., (2004), ‘Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism and the Moral Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization 58(3), pp. 633-665.

grounded legal order71 is based on a similar theoretical basis to

Weber’s and has influenced much the same theorists.72As has been

argued elsewhere,73 this does not just define ‘the international’ as a

clearly demarcated sphere of action, but it also implies a certain

type of politics will take place in the international sphere: the

politics of struggle and rationalisation. It is worth noting here

Weber’s insistence on the relativity of political values: Weber- and

the most Weberian of IR theorists, Hans Morgenthau- was quick to

point out that his nomothetic theory of ‘the political’ was relevant

only to the specific cultural and historical context of the period in

which he was writing.74 Nonetheless, the influence of Weber- albeit

a particular reading of Weber- has led to the dominance of a vision

of international politics in which conflict, tension and dispute at the

level of the state are the sine qua non of ‘the political.’75 Despite

the insistence of Weberians that Weber’s methodologies were

historically sensitive, they have entrenched a particular set of

interests and concerns at the heart of IR theory: that of the

nationalist state.

The particular set of philosophical concepts through which

International Relations theorists view the world is a direct 71 Schmitt, C., (2003), The Nomos of the Earth: in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, (New York, Telos Press), p. 73.72 Clohesy, A.M., Isaacs, S. & Sparks, C., (2009), Contemporary Political Theorists in Context, (London, Routledge), p. 39.73 Williams, ‘Why Ideas Matter in International Relations’.74 Hobson, J.M. & Seabrooke, L., (2001), ‘Reimagining Weber: Constructing International Society and the Social Balance of Power’, European Journal of International Relations 7 (2), pp. 239–74.75 Neumann & Sending, ‘The International as Governmentality’, p. 689.

inheritance of this philosophical idealist tradition. If the

philosophical idealism of late 19th Century Germany represents a

particular set of interests, then the international political theory

built on these ideas shares these interests. Concepts such as the

state, international anarchy and sovereignty which are often

considered irreducible starting points for the investigation of

international politics are not then neutral starting points for the

investigation of world politics, but ideologically located

foundations. The basic premises of International Relations are

rooted in the particular predispositions of this tradition in such a

way that it is very difficult to depart from them and still be

classified as ‘doing IR.’ Indeed, it is from this tradition that

international political theory has inherited its liberal76 as well as its

statist characteristics.77 Likewise, the persistence of nationalist

assumptions within International Relations is a function of the

discipline’s heavy debt to a late 19th Century intellectual culture

beholden to nationalist themes and tropes.78 The inside/outside 76 Irrespective of the divide between ‘realist’ and ‘liberal’ theories of international politics, IR has a much broader foundation in the political philosophical assumptions of liberal theory. See for example Schmidt, B.C., (1998), The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, (New York, SUNY Press).77 Prichard, A., (2010), ‘Deepening Anarchism: International Relations and the Anarchist Ideal’, Anarchist Studies, 10(2), pp. 29-57.78 See for example the early American realist thinkers and their intellectual inheritance from Schmitt and German formalist sociology. Not only was their thought heavily legalistic in its outlook (that is to say based in the juridical philosophy which undergirds theories of power and the state in late 19th Century thought), but it was inherently tied to the nationalist tropes inherent within late 19th and early 20th Century German sociological and legal thought.Niebuhr, R., (1960), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, (New York, Charles Schribner’s Sons).Morgenthau, H.J., (1965), Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, (Chicago, Phoenix Books).Morgenthau, H.J., (1978), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf).

formulation through which domestic and international politics are

counterposed,79 has similar origins. The nation state and the

concept of sovereignty that goes hand-in glove with it, has become

something of the sine qua non of IR. This has had a sclerotic effect

on the forms of social and political organisation the discipline

recognizes in the world, but it has also fundamentally conditioned

the way that we ask questions about the political world. It is not

simply that enlightenment critique has not been extended to the

liberal societies within which the enlightenment has taken place,80

but that the idealism of Western liberalism has obscured and

occluded forms of organization and political possibility within the

world. John Meyer and Ronald Jepperson wonder at ‘a surprising

feature of the modern system [which] is how completely the

Western models dominate world discourse about the rights of

individuals, the responsibilities and sovereignty of the state, and

the nature of preferred organizational forms,’81 but this should be

hardly surprising considering the hegemonic power of Western,

idealist modernity. But this does not mean that the problem simply

goes away. As Jens Bartelson and Rob Walker have argued, if they

are to overcome these problematic elements of international

thought, International Relations theorists will have to re-examine

79 Wight, M., (1960), ‘Why is there no international theory?’, International Relations, 2(1), pp. 35-48.Walker, R.B.J., (1992), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).80 Foucault, M., (1984), ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader, (New York, Pantheon Books), pp. 32-50.81 Meyer, J.W., & Jepperson, R., (2000), ‘The Actors” of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction of Social Agency’, Sociological Theory 18 (1), p. 106.

the foundations of international theory in order to propose

alternatives.82 As such, if IR is to overcome these problematic

elements of mainstream international thought, in both theory and

practice,83 it must look outside the philosophical idealism that

constructed this problematic. Despite hinting at the Eurocentrism

of the IR canon, I hope that, given the subject of this conference

and the philosophical resources available to me as a scholar in a

Western social science institution, I will be excused if I suggest

another Western tradition of thought might be a useful way of re-

thinking some of the idealisms that predominate within our

discipline! Despite being Western, this tradition is a subversive

one. If we are to believe Louis Althusser & Antonio Negri,

materialism exists as the ‘hidden history’ or ‘unspoken Other’ that

possesses the potential to unsettle the dominant narrative of

Western modernity. It is to the materialist tradition that I must now

turn.

The Return to Materialism:

82 Bartelson, J., (2009), Visions of World Community, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 21.Walker, R.B.J., (2010), After the Globe, Before the World, (London, Routledge). 83 Overcoming ‘the international problematic’ as understood in 20th and 21st Century context, has become a central feature of contemporary IR theory, with ‘Critical’ International Relations Theory attempting to envision new forms of community that cannot be conceived within ‘the international’ as we currently understand it.See for example Shaw, M., (2000), Theory of the Global State: Gobality as an Unfinished Revolution, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Bartelson, Visions of World Community.Walker, After the Globe.Linklater, A., (2011), The Problem of Harm in World Politics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).

Materialism, like Marxism, is not a body of theory, to be accepted

or rejected as a whole, but a philosophical tradition that can act as

a ‘foundation stone’84 for philosophy in the present. The 20th

Century materialism espoused by Althusser is not one of ‘causal’ or

necessary relations, but a materialism of the contingent and the

aleatory. As such, it should not be confused with the crude

reduction of reality to the atomic, as has characterized ‘post-

Aristotelian’ materialism.85 As Bertrand Russell has stressed,

‘traditional’ or ‘atomistic’ materialism has been challenged by

Einstein’s theories of relativity; the traditional philosophical notion

of substance persisting through time is untenable following the

merger of time into ‘space-time.’86 In light of this, the notion of

substance and individualistic metaphysics- manifest as mechanistic

atomism87- integral to classical materialisms must be replaced with

a relational ontology of forces. In a curious manner, this places

contemporary materialism in line with both 20th Century physics88

and the pre-Socratic metaphysics of Stoic, Cynical and Megarian

84 Althusser, L., (1990c), ‘Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy’, G. Lock (trans.), Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other Essays, G. Elliott (ed.), (London, Verso), p. 230. Lenin, V.I., (1960), ‘Our Programme’, in Collected Works, (Moscow, Progress Publishers), pp. 211-212.85 Olssen, M., (2006), Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education, (London, Paradigm), p. 207.See also Laruelle, F., (2001), ‘The Decline of Materialism in the Name of Matter’, Pli 12, pp. 33-40.86 Russell, B., (1925), ‘Introduction: Materialism Past and Present’, in F.A. Lange (ed.) The History of Materialism, E.C. Thomas (trans.), pp. v-xix, (London, Kegan Paul).87 Particularly representative of this tradition is Thomas Hobbes, for whom an individualistic philosophy and a mechanistic atomism went hand in hand.Skinner, Q., (1999), ‘Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 7(1), pp. 7-8.88 Heisenberg, W., (2000), Philosophy and Physics: The Revolution in Modern Science, (London, Penguin).

thought.89 This is not a materialism of the necessary or the

teleological, but one of contingency, freedom and the encounter.

This materialism offers the opportunity to re-orient International

Relations, as well as social sciences more generally along properly

materialist lines.

Constituent Power and Constituted Power in International Relations Theory:

In order to fully appreciate the materialist position, it is necessary

to understand the distinction between two types of power:

constituent power and constituted power. These are usually

considered in juridical terms, with constituted power used to refer

to a legal or juridical order and constitutive power indicate the

processes within which this authority is grounded.90 Within

Western political thought, constituent power- the power that makes

world order is suppressed and ignored, whilst juridical power, the

power that merely regulates existing order is placed at the centre

of analysis. Indeed, this very schema originates in political and

philosophical attempts to challenge the apparent neutrality of legal

orders.91

89 See for example Deleuze, G., (2004), The Logic of Sense, M. Lester with C. Stivale (trans.), (London, Continuum), p. 143, p. 147, p. 161, n.1.90 Negri, A., (1999), Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press), p. 10.91 These theories of power have been developed within French and Italian Marxism as a means of challenging Leninist assumptions about political action. See for exampleVirno, P. & Hardt, M., (eds.), (2006), Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press).

The understanding of the relationship between constitutive power

and social order that has been adopted by IR theory is one that, in

focusing on concepts such as sovereignty and ‘the international’,

highlights juridical order over and above the practices that produce

it. These constitutive processes only come to light when disturbing

the dominant order; this creates the image of a world in which a

stable international order- comprising of institutions (such as

sovereignty, the law) and organizations (such as the state)- is

interrupted by the operation of constitutive power. Events, such as

the formation of the state92 and revolutions within the international

system are exceptions to the normal order of the international

system. Temporary periods of exceptional politics such as the

‘twenty years’ crisis’ spoken of by E H Carr93 or the ‘interregnum’

the international system entered after the Cold War94 are

exceptions to the norm; the sovereign order prevails except during

periods of exceptionalism.

Althusser & Orthodox Marxism

In rejecting International Relations’ focus on the institutional

existence of ‘the international,’ Althusserian Marxism offers a 92 The acceptance of Machiavelli’s writings about the constitutive power inherent in the formation of the state is a case in point.93 Carr, E.H., (2001), The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919-1939, (New York, Harper Collins).94 Cox, M., Booth, K. & Dunne, T., (1999), ‘Introduction’, in The Interregnum: Controversies in World Politics, 1989-1999, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)

similar challenge to IR as it does to classical or orthodox Marxism

(whatever that might be). As Marx outlines in The German

Ideology, the distinctive feature of his own work- in

contradistinction to idealism in general and (in particular) that of

both Hegel and the young Hegelians- is not just the assertion that

the juridical, political and religious order are unjust (such critique

can be found in many places), but that to pose the questions of

politics and life in these terms is fundamentally misleading.95

Hitherto existing, or bourgeois, sciences had concerned themselves

with superstructural factors, completely ignoring the productive

base that was ultimately responsible for the existence of

institutions such as the law.96 Marx argues that to ask questions

about the state or the law as an abstract entity is illegitimate as

they can only be comprehended in terms of the material conditions

of their existence.97 Marx’s key contribution to materialist

philosophy is to reject the idealism of German philosophy and the

juridical thought that is implied by this, replacing this with a focus

on the productive means through which man provides for his own

subsistence. This re-orients the relationship between constituent

power and constituted power in such a way that it treats the

production of social and political order not as an exception, but as

95 Marx, K. & Engels, F., (1987), The German Ideology: Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, (London, Lawrence and Wishart).96 Marx, K., (1859), ‘Introduction’ in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (Available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm), (Accessed on: 01/05/2011).97 Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Marx in his Limits’, in Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987, (London, Verso), p. 55.

something that needs to be understood as part of its regular

operation.

The majority of Marxist IR theory has been based around a

deterministic reading of the relationship between ‘base’ and

‘superstructure.’98 This reflects much of the literature on Marx’s

philosophy in which the mode of production (comprised of both

‘means’ and ‘relations’ of production) is seen to determine the

superstructure ‘in the last instance.’99 Within IR, engagements with

Marxism have broadly taken three forms. The first of which is

historical sociological, with authors such as Fred Halliday,100 Justin

Rosenberg101 and Benno Teschke102 writing Marxist-inspired

historical sociological analyses of the international system. The

second is in international political economy, where authors such as

Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi have utilized Marxian

ideas to develop a theory of international politics in which the

global economy acts as driver of world politics.103 Finally, Critical 98 This idea was first developed in the preface of Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. It has subsequently become a point of contention for Marx, K., (1859), ‘Preface’, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (available online at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm), (accessed on: 12/04/2011).99 Olssen, M., (2004), ‘Foucault and Marxism: Rewriting the theory of historical materialism’, Policy Futures in Education 2(3), p. 256.100 Halliday, F., (1994), Rethinking International Relations, (Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan).101 Rosenberg, J., (1994), The Empire of Civil Society: Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations, (London, Verso).102 Teschke, B., (2009), The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations, (London, Verso).103 See for example Wallerstein, I., (2004), World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, (Durham, Duke University Press).Arrighi, G., (2009), The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Time, (London, Verso).

Theory and Gramscian approaches have utilized Marxian analysis

to develop theories of international politics that eschew the

instrumental or ‘problem-solving’ focus of traditional theory and

attempt to develop critical, transformative approaches to

international politics.104 These approaches, unlike traditional theory

which re-enforce existing world order, self-consciously follow

Marx’s ‘Eleventh Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach,’ seeking to change

the world rather than simply to interpret it.105 Despite the success

of these approaches in making ‘elbow room’ for Marxist theory

within the discipline of IR, they have almost exclusively relied on

approaches that have offered an economic determinist reading of

Marx. In these accounts, ‘the international’ is but a superstructural

epiphenomenon, with international politics merely reflecting the

dominant mode of production of any given historical situation. By

way of contrast to this, Althusser’s materialism rejects the division

These theorists have also utilized the writings of Lenin, V.I., (2010), Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (London, Penguin).104 The distinction between traditional and critical theorizing was first brought into being by Max Horkheimer in his essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, in Horkheimer, M., (1999), Critical Theory: Selected Essays, (London, Continuum), pp. 188-243.It was first applied to International Relations in Cox, R.W., (1981), ‘Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millenium: Journal of International Relations 10(2), pp. 126-155.Other examples of this approach in International Relations include:Gill, S., (1993), Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Linklater, A., (2007), Critical Theory and World Politics: Citizenship, Sovereignty and Humanity, (London, Routledge).Neufeld, M., (1995), The Restructuring of International Relations Theory, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Roach, S.C., (2010), Critical Theory of International Politics: Complementarity, Justice and Governance, (London, Routledge).105 Marx, K., (1845), Theses on Feuerbach, (available online: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm), (accessed on: 12/04/2011).

of the world into productive base and epiphenomenal

superstructure.

Althusser Against Orthodox Marxism: The Critique of

Determinism

Marx’s economic determinism has been subject to considerable

contestation and revision, from contemporaries such as Joseph

Bloch,106 to modern thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix

Guattari,107 and Michel Foucault, who has criticised Marx’s political

economy for its affinities with the liberal political economy of the

19th Century- resembling very closely the type of ‘meta-economics’

employed by David Ricardo.108 Central to this resemblance is the

idea that the ‘social, political and spiritual’ processes of life are

determined by the ‘deeper’ or ‘underlying’ reality of the economic

base.109 The relationship between base and superstructure is one of

model and copy,110 a feature of Marx’s philosophy that is inherently

Platonic. In this context, it is helpful to think of Platonism as a

doctrine that suggests that everyday reality is determined by a

106 Olssen, M., (2004), ‘Foucault and Marxism: Rewriting the theory of historical materialism’, Policy Futures in Education 2(3), p. 455.107 See for example Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., (2004), Anti Oedipus, (London, Continuum). 108 Foucault, M., (2001), ‘Interview with Michel Foucault’, in J.D. Faubion (ed.), Michel Foucault: Power, pp. 239-297, (London, Penguin), p. 269.109 Marx develops this idea most strongly in Marx, K., (1904), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, N.I. Stone (trans.), (London, International Library Publishing Company), pp. 11-12.110 Williams, R., (1980), Problems in Materialism and Culture, (London, Verso), p. 33.

deeper metaphysical reality;111 consequently, the understanding we

have of the world and the things in it can takes one of two forms:

an imperfect appreciation of surface illusions (in Marx’s case

ideology112) or a direct engagement with the ‘thing in itself’113 (in

Marx’s case his critical political economy114). This forms the basis

of the Marxist critique of ideology, where the imperfect ideological

view of the world is replaced by an appreciation of the world in

terms of a non-ideological perspective.

By way of contast, thinking ‘beyond’ ideology is anathema to

Althusser. Where Althusserian Marxism differs from more orthodox

Marxisms is in its rejection of the directionality of the relationship

between base and superstructure. It was in the face of the practice

of identifying concrete historical laws (most commonly associated

with the ‘official’ historical materialism of Marxist-Leninist

parties)115 that Althusser sought to develop his non-deterministic

theory of Marxism. Although Althusser accepts Marx’s critique of

the philosophical idealism of legal and political theory that employs

111 Plato’s discussion of the forms in the analogy of the cave in The Republic is central to this. Plato, (2007) The Republic, H.D.P. Lee & D. Lee (trans.), (London, Penguin), book VII.112 Marx, K. & Engels, F., (1987), The German Ideology: Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy, (London, Lawrence and Wishart).113 This Kantian terminology would be familiar to Marx but not, naturally, Plato.114 Perhaps the most substantive development of this approach can be found in Marx, K., (2004), Capital: Critique of Political Economy vol. 1, B. Fowkes (trans.), (London, Penguin); Marx, K., (2006), Capital: Critique of Political Economy vol. 2, D. Fernbach (trans.), (London, Penguin); Marx, K., (2006), Capital: Critique of Political Economy vol. 3, D. Fernbach (trans.), (London, Penguin).115 Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, in Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987, (London, Verso), pp. 253-254.

the juridical as a frame of reference, Althusser does not accept that

the economic should be determinate ‘in the last instance’; arguing

instead that ‘anything can be determinate in the last instance

(which is to say that anything can dominate).’116 Here, it is

important to note that Althusser regarded himself as ‘following in

the footsteps of Marx and Engels,’ quoting Friedrich Engels who

said: “one must not think that the economic situation is cause, and

solely active, whereas everything else is only passive effect.”117 An

example of this can be found in Marx’s writings on the ancient

world, where the politics of Ancient Greece and the religion of

Ancient Rome displaced the mode of production as determining

Greek and Roman society in the last instance.118 In any case, what

is important here is that Althusser overturns a dominant

interpretation of the relationship between ‘base’ and

‘superstructure’ as deterministic through developing a theory of

overdetermination. The next section will explore Althusser’s theory

of overdetermination as well as its implications for the study of

international politics.

Overdetermination and ‘the international’:

116 Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 263.117 Friedrich Engels, quoted in Sinclair, A., (2010), International Relations Theory and International Law: A Critical Approach, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 73.118 Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 263.

In order to describe social systems ‘without origin,’ thereby

eradicating the problem of economic reductionism, Althusser

developed a theory of overdetermination.119 Although

overdetermination was a concept first developed by Sigmund

Freud,120 it formed the centerpiece of Althusser’s writing on

structure and causation,121 later being adopted by Mark Olssen

(among others) to explain structure and cause in Foucault’s

writings.122 The concept of overdetermination encourages us to

think of the world in terms of multiple open causal systems.

Although within any given causal mechanism,123 every level makes

a causal contribution, the relative importance of each varies on a

case-by-case basis. Both Althusser’s theory of overdetermination

(and the theory of causation employed by Foucault), suggest that

119 Althusser’s motivations were political as well as theoretical. As well as challenging the predominance of dogmatic “Bolshevik Marxism” within Marxist scholarship, his writings were also a thinly-veiled attack on the hegemonic influence of Leninist politics within the French Communist Party. His thoughts on this subject are most elaborately elucidated in:Althusser, L., (2006), ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, Philosophy of the Encounter: Later Writings- 1978-1987, (London, Verso). 120 Freud, S., (1976), The Interpretation of Dreams, (London, Harper Collins).121 Althusser, L., (1969), ‘Contradiction and Overdetermination’, in For Marx, (London, Penguin).122 Olssen, Materialism and Education, p. 54.It should be immediately clear that Olssen’s reading of Foucault is a particular one, not only locating Foucault as a materialist, but also attributing to Foucault a form of causal theory. Whilst most Foucauldian theorists argue that Foucault is explicitly not a causal theorist, Olssen contends that this assertion can only be maintained if we operate within the classical definition of causation as efficient cause. By way of contrast, materialist thought (including Olssen’s reading of Foucault) allows us to pose the ‘problem’ of causation in a way that utilizes contemporary complexity science (and the concept of cause implicit in this) as the basis for a new approach to causation in a similar way that classical conceptions of causation were/are undergirded by the mechanistic physics of Newtonian science.123 To adopt a term (if not necessarily its full meaning) borrowed from Bhaskar, R., (1979), A Realist Theory of Science, (London, Verso).

we should view social relations as complex systems124 which cannot

be thought of in terms of either autonomous, closed systems or

base-superstructure logics, where a multifarious social field is

determined by one central causal determination.

An Althusserian approach to the autonomy of the international

argues neither that the international is an autonomous sphere, nor

that it can be wholly reduced to a deeper reality. Its liminal

existence between casua sui and wholly determined renders the

international a set of social relations without origin.

Overdetermination describes social spheres or sites of action (such

as ‘the international’) as supervenient upon other spheres, albeit in

such a way that it can neither be reduced to any of them, nor

treated as an autonomous sphere for analytical purposes. In

Althusser’s terms, this is the hallmark of a materialist philosophy;

in setting aside the question of origin and the problem of

foundation, materialist philosophy asks not about the origin,

124 Broadly defined, a complex system is one for which system-level ‘behaviour’ cannot be predicted through the study of its parts. In recent times, interest in complex social systems- developed through Foucauldian and Althusserian theory as well as rooted in other social theoretical foundations- has caused a considerable ‘overlap’ between social theory and science. Fractal geometry, non-Eucilidean geometry and chaos theory have all garnered attention from social theorists seeking to think of social social systems as complex entities.See for example Delanda, M., (2006), A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, (London, Continuum).Borch, C., (2011), Niklas Luhmann, (London, Routledge).Protevi, J., (2009), Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic, (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press), particularly part 1: ‘A Concept of Bodies Politic’.Urry, J., (2002), Global Complexity, (London, Polity).

meaning or telos of the international, but simply about its

performance.125

The international is not simply the product of one logic

(Westphalia)- be it competing sovereignties or capital- but the

result of multiple logics. In this regard, the type of international

system that might be envisaged through Althusser is distinctly non-

Westphalian. The Westphalian system is but one encounter amide a

series of encounters that comprise the multitextured space of

international politics. What is more, the relationship between these

causes and ‘the international’ is inherently non-linear: it is not

clear which of these are sufficient and which of these are necessary

to produce the modern international political system. All social

relations are, ultimately, contingent. The aleatory encounters that

forms the basis of the international could always be other than they

are. This is not simply to suggest that everything is wholly

indeterminate. Rather, global politics is both determined and

indetermined; neither wholly subject to deterministic laws, nor

wholly indeterminate. Philosophically, this is the difference

between complete indeterminacy and what is called hyperchaos.126

Whilst the international is not without foundation, its foundations

are loose and there is a considerable degree of ‘play’ between the

international system and its constituent parts.

125 Althusser, ‘Philosophy and Marxism’, p. 273.126 Meillassoux, Q., After Finitude, p. 53, 57-60, 63-64, 73-75.

The implication of this is that the site at which the international is

performed is- at base- a negativity or absence of being which

makes possible the freedom to be otherwise. However, this

freedom to be otherwise is not limited to relations between states.

Althusser’s conception of interlocking, overlapping overdetermined

social systems means that political change is non-linear, with

changes at one level of human activity impacting on others. This

form of causation not only means that ‘lower levels’ can cause

change at ontologically higher levels, but also that change at

higher levels can impact on those below it.127 For example, changes

in diplomatic practices in the early modern period played a role in

bringing the modern state into being and the rise of the absolutist

state acted as a condition of possibility for the onset of European

capitalism. Likewise, in contemporary context, the performance of

international financial markets impacts on the micropolitics of local

communities as the global economy goes through a period of

recession. Although many scientists and environmental

campaigners have been deeply critical of the efforts of the UNFCC

to deal with the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate

change, international agreements have had an impact on the way in

which business, industry and citizens interact with their

environment. Working in the other direction, from ‘macro’ to

‘micro’, we see the everyday performance of stock traders 127 Where the term ontologically higher is used, this refers only to scale. Althusser’s ontology is a ‘flat’ ontology insofar as no sphere of human activity is considered a priori to be supervenient on another. For more on flat ontologies, see Bryant, L.R., (2011, forthcoming), The Democracy of Objects, (Melbourne, Re:press).

comprising the overall ‘market.’ Similarly, the emerging practice of

capital accumulation in 17th Century England was responsible for

the development of the capitalist mode of production128- a set of

practices which ultimately changed the face of the international

system.129 In contemporary context, this suggests that it is not

immediately obvious where- or indeed when- the next major

transformation in international politics will arrive.

The twofold emphasis on practice (or encounter) and

overdetermination gets to the heart of the materialist ‘challenge’ to

Westphalian and post-Westphalian modes of politics. Althusser’s

position can ultimately be summed up as the rejection of the

juridical, idealist frame of reference that would seek to determine

the institutions of the social world a priori, replacing it with an

emphasis on constitutive power and the process which make and

sustain the world we live in. To put the problematique in terms

more commonly associated with Giorgio Agamben than Louis

Althusser: The central problem of a materialist politics (in the

Western tradition or otherwise) is not sovereignty, but

128 Although this is contestable, this is where Marx allocates the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. Marx, K., (1867), ‘Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation’, in Capital, S. Moore & E. Aveling (trans.), (Available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/), (accessed on: 03/05/2011).129 See for example Benno Teschke’s analysis of the origin of the modern international system. It is simultaneously the product of the sovereign authority of early modern absolutist government combined with the revolution in the mode of production that was the emergence of capitalism in 17th Century England. Teschke, B., (2002), ‘Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism’, European Journal of International Relations 8(5), pp. 5-48.

government.130 To the extent that Althusser subscribes to this

doctrine, it is hard to find a better summary of the contribution of

20th Century materialist philosophy to International Relations

Theory than this.

Conclusion:

For most IR theory, Westphalia marks the ‘mythic origin’ of the

modern international system. Although there are clear historical

inaccuracies in the Westphalian account,131 it persists as a

legitimating myth of the discipline because its significance is not

historical, but as a condition of possibility for modern International

Relations. This paper has sought to challenge the temporality of

this account on theoretical and political grounds, proposing that we

understand Westphalia not as a transition that international

relations has already gone through, but as a contingent encounter

that is continually performed and it is continually undergoing. The

assumption of periodization and the location of points of origin-

such as the move from the pre-modern to the modern- unduly

naturalises contemporary political practices, making them the

ineradicable horizon of modern international politics. In re-casting

the problem of modernity not in terms of the transition from one 130 Agamben, G., (2011), ‘Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy’, in G. Agamben et al. (eds.), Democracy in What State?, W. McCuaig (trans.), (New York, Columbia University Press), p. 4.131 See for example Teschke, The Myth of 1648.Osiander, A., (2001), ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and the Westphalian Myth’, International Organisation 55(2), pp. 251-287.

era to another, but as a transition in practices/ways that political

authority is founded, two corollaries immediately jump out. The

first is that we are to think about political (sovereign) authority not

as something that has historical foundation, but as something that

is continually and perpetually re-founded. If this is the case, the

institution of the authority of positive law, and the authorities that

undergird the modern international system, is not an historical

event, but an on-going process. The second implication of this is

that the potential of a politics beyond Westphalia should not be

understood as a move beyond ‘Westphalia,’ but a re-engagement

with the foundations of ‘Westphalian order.’ To paraphrase

Andreas Osiander, we cannot move ‘beyond Westphalia’ if

‘Westphalia’ is simply a particular way of articulating claims about

political authority and international order.132 It is these

foundational concepts that we must address when engaging with

questions about the transformation of political community, be it the

emergence of modern international relations or any move beyond

‘the international.’ Similarly, an International Relations looking to

escape its statist, nationalist foundations and seeking to address

questions about the spatial organization of the world, must also ask

questions about time and the way that certain types of political

authority and particular forms of knowledge claims about

international politics are founded through temporal claims about

the nature of modernity. To the extent that ‘Westphalia’- as a way

132 Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations and the Westphalian Myth’, p. 284.

of founding claims about legitimate political authority- marked the

beginning of international relations, it marks the continued

operation of the modern international system and will also mark its

end.