Competition in World Politics

Abstract

Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: James Gillray, ʻThe Plumb-pudding in danger, or, State epicures taking un petit souper' (1805), public domain. 'World Politics as Competition': Norms and StructuresThis short conceptual history of competition as both a normative ideal and an analytical category shows that there is a much richer tradition of thinking about competition than the conventional IR literature assumes. Drawing on this brief account, we now turn to a more extended definition of what we understand to be a configuration of world politics in which competition is central. This, we argue, will possess both normative and structural features.A configuration of world politics in which competition is viewed to be central is in the first instance a world of notionally equal, sovereign states-even if, in practice, the key participants in international competition are a select group of "great powers" (Müller 2020). These share a common set of cultural expectations, and means of communication, that enable mutual observation and compari-'Competition' became a central concept in international theory in the late 1940s, when Hans Morgenthau distinguished two constellations of the balance of power -the "pattern of direct opposition" and the "pattern of competition"-in his first version of Politics Among Nations (Morgenthau 1948: 131-133). The Simmel-style "pattern of competition" describes a triadic structure, in which two imperialist powers compete in their domination of a third, smaller power. In the face of the Korean war, Morgenthau dedicated in subsequent editions an entire subsection to it, thus enhancing its status as a theoretical concept (Morgenthau 1954: 162-165) From this point on, students of international relations could relate the balance of power to competition by merely glimpsing at a classic's table of contents. However, Morgenthau's concept of competition and opposition are not as structuralist as his famous metaphor of billiard balls suggest. In fact, the "patterns" are a way to systemize the ways in which the balance of power can be sustained or disturbed; within these constellations, there can as well not be competition (Wendt 1992: 395-396; Little 2007: 93).Daniela Russ & James Stafford attention to both the symbolic and material dimensions of domination and struggle within world politics (Mérand/Pouliot 2008: 609). According to Bourdieu, fields are configurations of objective relations between positions (Bourdieu/Wacquant 1992: 97). These relations are always changing: "As a space of potential and active forces, the field is also a field of struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the configuration of these forces" (ibid: 101). The field concept conceives of international politics as a "competitive realm" as Waltz had done, but without making it into an ahistorical structure: the positions, borders, capitals and rules of the field are subject to the field's struggle (ibid: 99-100).Political scientists and sociologists began to diagnose "competition states" in the g...