Kenneth Waltz is not a neorealist (and why that matters)

LaRoche, Christopher David; Pratt, Simon

doi:10.1177/1354066117696561

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“… 17. I share in this sense the ambition of some other recent attempts to re-evaluate Waltz’s theory as a theory that deviates from rather than embraces the use of positivist social science in IR (see Booth, 2014; LaRoche and Pratt, forthcoming; Wæver, 2009). …”

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confidence: 78%

The ethics of neorealism: Waltz and the time of international life

Lundborg

2018

European Journal of International Relations

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This article addresses the question of what it means to think of a distinctly international ethics by developing a radical reinterpretation of Waltzian neorealism from a Derridean deconstructive perspective. The core argument of the article is that Derridean deconstruction effectively explains why there is an ethics of neorealism in the first place, and why this ethics cannot be easily overcome. Underpinning this argument is a notion in Derrida’s philosophy of survival as an unconditional affirmation of life, which finds an equivalent in Waltz’s theory of international life in the anarchic system. On this basis, I claim that Waltz’s theory is ethical, not despite its focus on the structural conditions of survival, but precisely because of it. Moreover, the article shows how this notion of ethics renders universal ethical ideals, beyond relations of violence, not only impossible, but undesirable. They are undesirable because to actually fulfil them would be to undermine the conditions that make international life possible in the first place. In this way, various attempts to theorize the meaning and implications of international ethics that hold on to the notion of ethical ideals beyond relations of violence become untenable. Instead of aspiring towards such ideals, the article concludes, international ethics should be thought of as an unconditional affirmation of the incalculable future that structures international life and inevitably exposes it to the worst forms of destruction, but also enables the making of responsible decisions.

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confidence: 78%

The ethics of neorealism: Waltz and the time of international life

Lundborg

2018

European Journal of International Relations

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“…Waltz's approach to explanatory theory was broadly sociological. See Goddard and Nexon 2005;Waever 2009; Jackson 2016, 123-25;LaRoche and Pratt 2018. See also his own comments in Waltz 1986;Waltz 1997a;Waltz 2004, 98-99. My argument thus has consequences for how we understand both Waltz's body of work and IR as he influenced it.…”

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confidence: 98%

“…Waltz's approach to explanatory theory was broadly sociological. See Goddard and Nexon 2005; Wæver 2009; Jackson 2016, 123–25; LaRoche and Pratt 2018. See also his own comments in Waltz 1986; Waltz 1997a; Waltz 2004, 98–99.…”

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confidence: 99%

“… 22 See a critical discussion of Waltz's fact-value distinction in Levine 2012, 136–43. On Waltz's hedging about verification, see LaRoche and Pratt 2018, 160–62. On comparing theory to other theory, not data, Waltz later drew on Lakatos 1970.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Waltz rejected positivism for non-normative reasons. Jackson 2016, 123–25; LaRoche and Pratt 2018. Strauss also embraced an idiosyncratic cannon, comprising ancient, medieval and early modern ‘Western’ texts, along with Jewish and Islamic sources.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Kenneth Waltz's approach to reading classic political theory and why it matters

MacKay

2020

Int. Theory

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How did Kenneth Waltz read canonical theoretical texts? Waltz understood himself first as a political theorist and remained committed to interpreting political thought throughout his career. This paper briefly delineates Waltz's method for reading political theory. I identify four elements of Waltz's approach: it was purposive, explanatory, textualist, and anti-esoteric. First, he thought texts could best be linked to one another and compared purposively, by aligning the questions they asked. Second, he understood the primary purpose of theoretical texts to be explanatory: normativity was a secondary concern. Third, he was a relatively strict textualist, taking little interest in historical context. Fourth, he took no account of esoteric writing. I then track his intellectual influences, through his graduate training and early academic career. I show this set of methodological tenets was, taken together, largely his own invention. I argue Waltz's reading method shaped his own theoretical work, providing concepts and informing his structural and parsimonious style of theory. I track these effects in his later theory-building project in Theory of International Politics. By extension, I suggest, his approach influenced much of postwar International Relations theory, both in terms of its specific conceptual toolkit and its approach to theory as such.

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Decolonization and the Reclamation of Ontological Multiplicity: Toward the Rescripting of the History of Ideas in International Relations

Kumar H.M.

2023

Decolonizing Grand Theories

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Kenneth Waltz is not a neorealist (and why that matters)

Cited by 7 publications

References 52 publications

The ethics of neorealism: Waltz and the time of international life

The ethics of neorealism: Waltz and the time of international life

Kenneth Waltz's approach to reading classic political theory and why it matters

Decolonization and the Reclamation of Ontological Multiplicity: Toward the Rescripting of the History of Ideas in International Relations

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