Description
Kenneth Waltz’s writings are often cited as the reification of the international as his theory of balance of power ostensibly has both its cause (anarchy) and effect (balance of power) operating at the international level. Domestic processes, it seems, are irrelevant. Yet, there exists in his theorising an international social theory that, albeit little explored, does connect the two: the observation that survival-seeking behaviour is a result of anarchy. However crude this international social theory is, this paper argues that instead of neglecting it as a part of Waltz’s broader reification of the international, only by disentangling it can the recent scholarly wave of international social theorising correctly carry forward Waltz’s important identification of the causal significance of anarchy while precisely rectifying what its proponents deem his theorising limits. The paper shows one way to do so through (re)juxtaposing Waltz’s theorising with the theory of uneven and combined development.
