This chapter suggests paths along which the futures of international relations as subject matter and International Relations as an academic discipline may develop. First, it stresses that the division between the ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ or ‘non-traditional’ agenda is intended as a device to facilitate learning for new students of international relations. Second, it outlines how novel intellectual developments in the field are shaping its future trajectory, with a specific focus on the continued development of a ‘Global IR’; IR’s increasing intellectual engagement with the sociology of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and STEM subjects as sources of conceptual innovation; and recent attempts to define the International as a condition of interactive multiplicity in an effort to clarify its distinctive contribution to the wider social sciences. Finally, the chapter notes that thinking about the future itself is becoming increasingly central to the discipline, with methods of counterfactual analysis, social imaginaries of future histories and utopian idealisations emerging as important theoretical and political projects.

This chapter reflects on the tradition of Western political thought known as realism. Its main purpose is to identify who realists are, and to explain what realism is in the study of international relations. The first part of the chapter introduces students to some important thinkers, both ancient and modern, ascribed to the realist tradition. It also identifies two broad strands of realist thought: ‘classical’ and ‘structural’ or ‘neorealist’. The second part investigates attempts to conceive realism as a unified theory and practice of international relations. It highlights realism’s central concepts of the state and anarchy before reflecting on realism’s normative dimension.

This chapter presents the outlines of a constructivist understanding of world politics. We begin with a discussion of state identity and explore how identity defines and bounds state actions. To illustrate this concept, we address issues central to the study of world politics: change, governance and security. Overall, our goal is to present a textured, layered understanding of the international realm based on a notion taken for granted in much of IR theory, meaning. Constructivism is the newest but perhaps the most dynamic of the main theories of international relations. Unlike liberalism and realism (see Chapters 2 and 3), which have taken their bearings from developments in economic and political theory, constructivism – like Critical Theory (see Chapter 4) – is rooted in insights from social theory (e.g. Berger and Luckmann 1967; Giddens 1984) and the philosophy of knowledge (Golinski 2005; Hacking 1999; Searle 1995).

In sharp contrast to dominant (Waltzian) understandings in contemporary IR, I argue that anarchy neither is an ordering principle nor has determinate effects – and therefore is not central to the structures of international societies. Anarchy, understood as the absence of a government, is not an ordering principle. (It tells us one way in which a system is not ordered.) Understood as the absence of hierarchy, anarchy is not the ordering principle of international systems. (For example, great power states systems are defined by the hierarchical superiority of states over nonstate actors and of great powers over lesser powers.) Furthermore, the absence of a government has no determinate effects (which I show both by identifying a wide range of consequences of the absence of a government and by looking at the empirical case of simple immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies). I also show that framing the absence of an international government as anarchy, and making anarchy a core concept in IR, is largely attributable to the impact of Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979).

One of Waltz’s major contributions was the idea that political structures can be specified, in a rough first approximation, by ordering principle, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities – an understanding that remains largely taken-for-granted in contemporary IR. This chapter shows, however, that this tripartite conception can neither accurately nor fruitfully depict the structure of three simple anarchic systems: the Hobbesian state of nature, immediate-return forager societies, and great power states systems. In fact, Waltz’s depiction of great power states systems, his implicit model of a generic international system, is wildly inaccurate on all three of his dimensions of structure. Great power states systems, rather than lack hierarchy, are structured by the hierarchical superiority of states and great powers. Great powers, states, and nonstate actors perform different political functions. And the standard Waltzian account of the distribution of capabilities as a matter of the number of great powers (“polarity”) is about as useful as depicting the distribution of wealth in a society by the number of billionaires.

This chapter argues that looking at how Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler approached the state of nature brings to the fore where the two political leaders converge and where they diverge. Sharing a belief in the existence of a quasi-Hobbesian state of nature, they disagree how to respond politically to that state of nature. Whereas Hitler thought that domestically the state of nature could be overcome through a strong state and through strong communitarian bonds holding people together, and whereas internationally he believed peoples simply had to live with the continued existence of an unregulated state of nature, Trump’s conclusions are different. He puts little faith in the existence of the state. Yet he believes that both domestically and internationally the state of nature can be tamed through an intricate web of power relationships within groups as well as between groups that creates a relatively stable system. Trump is part of two quintessential American traditions rather than of fascism: the Mafia subculture of New York City and the extreme individualism of Ayn Rand. The concept of fascism thus ultimately distorts our understanding of today’s America.

International Relations scholars are increasingly studying different forms of sub- and superordination in the international system through analytical lenses such as hierarchy, hegemony, or authority. Drawing on these debates, this introduction sets out to establish the concept of rule as the defining feature of order in the international realm. More specifically, we argue that the manifold conceptual approaches to sub- and superordination in the international should be understood as rich conceptualizations of one concept: rule. We define rule broadly as constellations of formally or informally institutionalized sub- and superordination with the aim of affecting the distribution of basic goods and influence and of stabilizing expectations, regardless of whether these constellations are primarily of sociocultural, economic, or military nature. With this, we aim at advancing a research agenda that defines rule as a systematic approach to studying international politics. By promoting the concept of rule, we aim to show that rule can serve both as an integrating and a diagnostic tool for the study of the international “beyond anarchy.”

The ideology of the rule of law posits a hierarchical relationship with law and rules in a position of authority over the subjects. In international affairs, this is represented by the popular view that international order follows once governments accept the authority of international law and institutions. The idea that states are subordinate to international law is central to the international rule of law, but it directly contradicts the equally popular image of international affairs as a domain of anarchy. Anarchy presumes that governments are not subordinate to any source of authority while the rule of law says that they are. The fact that two apparently fundamental assumptions of international theory are incompatible with each other suggests an urgent need to look closely at both. This chapter examines the ideology of the international rule of law and compares it with domestic notions of the rule of law and with the idea of international anarchy. Once the rule of law is understood as a language of political justification, we can begin to make sense of its position as a source of authority that is superordinate to governments.

Over thirty years ago, Frank Klink and I wrote a paper on anarchy, authority, and rule—the first of its kind and a touchstone for subsequent theorizing about states and their relations. We sought to rebut prevailing claims about anarchy as the absence of authority and replace these concepts with a scheme centered on conditions of rule in every society. We identified three forms of rule: hegemony (inspired by Gramsci), hierarchy (drawing on Weber), and heteronomy (inspired by Kant, drawing on liberal theory). We argued that the relations of states exhibit elements of all three forms of rule to the abiding advantage of some few states. There is today a great deal of interest in rule in international relations but less interest in our three-part conceptual scheme. Looking back, I believe it holds up in its own terms but works even better when situated in an overarching framework linking three types of speech acts, derivative types of rules, and correlative forms of rule. I erected this framework in World of Our Making (1989) and reprise it here. I conclude by showing how modernity has reinvigorated status to support sovereign equality, thereby conjoining hegemony and hierarchy in a durably heteronomous world.

In much of the developing world, legal titling – the registration of land ownership through a formal, judicial process – is viewed as a path to economic development and political order. The introductory chapter explains why legal titling is unlikely to fulfill this promise. It begins by making a case that the new institutional economics and public choice, which were developed and applied to date in mostly Western contexts, are useful in understanding political, economic, and social institutions in the Islamic world. We then introduce our theory of emergence and change in property rights, which explains the situations when we expect the government to define and enforce property rights, when self-governance of property rights can work, and why it is unlikely that legal titling will be feasible as a development strategy in a typical fragile state. We conclude by introducing our empirical study of Afghanistan. The highlights of the empirical study include fieldwork conducted by one of the authors in thirty villages in rural Afghanistan, which resulted in hundreds of interviews with ordinary villagers, customary village leaders, and local government officials.

Our theory can explain why governments do not define and enforce property rights. The political history of Afghanistan illustrates the persistence of non-emergence of legal property rights. We also seek to explain why the Hobbesian account of the world in which there can be no sense of justice and no concept of property without a state is mistaken. According to our theory, self-governance would substitute for the state as a source of property rights when organizations have local monopolies, when they possess the capacity to resolve conflicts over land disputes, when their key decision makers face constraints, and when the institutions for local collective action are inclusive. Chapter 5 investigates this claim. Using original evidence from fieldwork, we show that self-governance of property works well in rural Afghanistan because customary governance satisfies the above criteria. Our theory can also explain why the formal property regime remains ineffective nearly two decades after state building commenced in 2001. Importantly, the property institutions in rural Afghanistan are typically private property rights, not unlike property rights in Western contexts. The difference is that customary private property rights in Afghanistan are effective despite not having any legal recognition.

Although the American military record since 1945 has been pretty unimpressive, some argue, first, that the United States, aided perhaps by the attention-arresting fear of nuclear weapons, was necessary to provide worldwide security and thus to order the world, and, second, that the United States was vital in constructing international institutions, conventions, and norms, advancing economic development, and expanding democracy–processes, it is contended, that in various ways have ordered the world and crucially helped to establish and maintain international peace. However, it seems more plausible that the positive developments would mostly have happened even without much American security participation, and that, for the most part, world order has developed not from the machinations of the reigning superpower but from the aversion to international war embraced after World War II especially by developed countries. In fact, if the nearly 200 states that inhabit the world order come substantially to abandon the idea that international war is a sensible method for solving problems among themselves, the notion that they live in “anarchy” becomes misleading and could encourage undesirable policy developments. “World order” is based on a general aversion to international war and does not depend on the United States.