Tropical Anarchy: Waltz, Wendt, and the Way We Imagine International Politics

This article considers the dangers of positing anarchy as the fundamental fact of international politics. Like Helen Milner, I suggest that clarification of this central concept in international relations is important since such a key term should not be used without knowing what is meant by it. (1) Unlike Milner, however, I argue that the discourse of international politics employs a particular conception of anarchy--tropical anarchy--that portrays the international system as As a result, the foundation upon which much of the discipline rests is not anarchy but rather an image of primitive society popularized by British social anthropologists during the 1930s and 1940s. The dangers of employing claims about a supposedly primitive society as the foundation for analysis are threefold. First, as anthropologists have long since realized, primitive systems and societies are inventions that no longer serve as valid categories of classification. Second, by transforming what was once the explicit concern of social anthropology into an implicit theoretical assumption, we prejudge the nature of international politics. Third, using primitive society as the starting point for scholarship creates an inescapable logic that reduces possible policy responses to a simple choice: either maintain the primitive status quo or civilize the world. Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics selects the first option; Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics chooses the second. Waltz and Wendt present flip sides of the same coin: both imagine the international system as primitive. To illustrate this claim, the following article is divided into three sections. Section 1 details how Waltz transposed a preexisting theory of primitive society to the international system. This requires a brief excavation of British social anthropology from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's studies of Oceania to later representations of African political systems by Meyer Fortes, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Siegfried Nadel. Waltz, I argue, derived all three components of his theory of international politics (ordering principles, functional differentiation, and the distribution of material capabilities) from a theory of primitive society published by Nadel in 1957. (2) Section 2 considers the implications of this transposition. At first glance, one might find it ironic that a theory necessarily based on the great powers and states that make the most difference owes its existence to anthropological fieldwork in Africa. (3) A closer reading, however, reveals more than irony. Waltz's appropriation of a theory originally intended to help colonial administrators control primitive African societies produces an image of international politics that privileges power over progress, equilibrium over change, and preventative measures over curative ones. Section 3 examines the legacy of this appropriation and how it continues to shape our interpretations of international politics. This legacy is particularly evident in the writing of Alexander Wendt, whose social theory represents the most significant attempt to refit Waltzian realism for the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, Wendt's uncritical acceptance of primitive society as the baseline for analysis reproduces anthropological debates of the 1930s and 1940s by effectively reversing the oppositions mentioned above. By stressing progress over power, change over equilibrium, and cures over prevention, Wendt revives notions of the white man's burden and mission civilisatrice that Waltz and social anthropology relegated to the junk pile. Tropical Anarchy The international system is anarchic. Affirmations appear from all sides, from every theoretical persuasion. (4) Anarchy, one scholar declares, is the Rosetta stone of International Relations. (5) Yet the meaning of anarchy is highly ambiguous. …