Realism and Utopia by M.J.Ferreira

As a research area, International Relations is still in its youth. The evolution of a scientific field is often judged by the development of methodologies, theories and concepts. The autonomous construction of concepts by an academic field demands a thorough reasoning about epistemological and ontological questions. This degree of intellectual maturity is only attainable with the constitution of a scientific research community willing to underpin such efforts. The autonomization of a scientific area entails, frequently, a walk in a tortuous path, for the academic locus is one of the most fearful terrains for power and knowledge competition.

The scientific study of International Relations emerged from the ashes of World War I. Academics were asked to study the causes of conflict and war so that politicians could learn how to avoid and prevent them. Hence, it is fair to say that, since its inception, International Relations was related and compromised with reality. The founding fathers’ mission was to discover ways to improve the international society. A normative framework was always present, being truly seriously upheld by the first generation of International Relations’ investigators. Thus, they were politically and socially empowered not to describe reality but to work, think and be engaged on it. Later, and for that reason, they were accused of being idealists. Utopia became synonymous of thinking beyond existing reality.

This critic was built and reified by International Relations’ second-generation scholars, among which Edward Carr was one of the most significant personalities. Calling themselves realists, this second generation set a distinction between two types of internationalist thinkers: those who wrote about the so-called international reality and those who worked on normative hypothesis, meaning what international relations should be. The science evolved, framed by this distinction.
After World War II, realism gained a hegemonic status. Its theoretical beliefs became epistemologically and ontologically engrained in the form International Relations were thought and explained. The bipolar international system that followed contributed to empower such a vision.
Realism can be described through three simple words: states, anarchy and conflict. This kind of trilogy was perpetuated and is still present in the late 1970’s version of realism: Kenneth Waltz’s neo-realism.

The theoretical assumptions of the realist school constituted the framework for concepts construction (the proper word is, indeed, construction, for all science is a construction) in International Relations almost until the end of the century. One good example is the concept of power. Realism framed the concept of power in materialist terms. Power became identical to strength. Strength, measured by the possession of military instruments, was understood as the main attribute of states in their endless struggle to survive in a self-help international system. The immaterial dimension of power was considered extraneous. To construct concept, academic set aside factors considered irrelevant. In a positivist framework, to make science investigators must have independent analytical variables, along with causal mechanical relations and established truths.

When we analyse the realist framework for power we are led to assume that the purpose (the proper word is purpose, for all science has a purpose) is to reproduce the existence of a security dilemma among states as well as the quality of states as the main actors in international relations. Studies about the origins of war state that one of its most probable causes lies in the existence of a war industry that needs markets for its products. States are portrayed as consumers ready to be convinced about the goodness of a certain product. The persuasion process entails the subsistence of an aggressive environment, conveniently fed by private economic actors. Wars are often staged dramas, thrillers or comedies with a proper combination of puppets, fiction and reality. However, constructing international power from a materialist framework serves another purpose: depolitising the immaterial nature of power.

Power is fundamentally linked with obtaining results. Actors only get results if they are able to shape the environment that surrounds them. For that they need to have the capacity to determine how such environment thinks and acts. That kind of capacity is immaterial and is all about knowledge and asserting values. Power in different social fields cannot be understood without its normative content.
This normative dimension of power is especially important in International Relations, for its environment is devoid of state-like structures capable of imposing a social order to prevent anarchy. The inexistence of a super state turns international anomy a more credible image. An image easily presented by realists and neo-realists as the truth. Therefore, normative power is a way to construct order patterns on the international scene. However, realist scholars converse this argument, stating that it is precisely the inexistence of a social international order that empties norms of its relevancy. International values become the Utopia. International reality becomes depolitised, for it can only be managed and staged, and never modified.

Several authors, especially from the 1970’s forward, have tried to frame International Relations on new grounds. They claim that the international arena and the domestic environments are connected by what James Rosenau calls “linkage politics”. The increase of transnational flows among several kinds of actors is the background for the image of international interdependence. Following Alexander Wendt, international society is understood not as a given structure of relations but as a social construction open to change and evolution.

The transnationalist school of thought understands the concept of power as a product of material and immaterial elements. Special importance is given to the difference between power and influence. Power is to impose behaviour through control. Influence is to lead behaviour through persuasion.

To state that there is a linkage between international and domestic environments, and that both systems are socially constructed through coercion and persuasion equals to assert that order in the international scene cannot be maintained through international power balances or occasional international agreements. International order is assured through the existence of a normative hegemony. Such hegemony needs to be understood, exposed and questioned.

As an academic research area, International Relations is still in its youth. Its tortuous path towards scientific maturity is showing how norms do make a difference.