17

WALTZ AND WORLD HISTORY

The paradox of parsimony

Barry Buzan and Richard Little

Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (TIP) is one of the iconic texts in modern IR
literature. The theory has provoked fierce reactions from classical realists, through
liberal institutionalists to post-positivists. It also provided the springboard for an
ongoing and very lively theoretical debate both amongst contemporary realists, and
between them and neo-liberals, who are more than willing to work within Waltz’s
methodological framework. Our aim is not to contribute to either of these very
different responses, but rather to reassess TIPfrom a world historical perspective.
What that means is comparing the account offered by Waltz with the accounts of
the international system and its evolution offered by those who study history at the
system level.
What this perspective reveals is that TIPrepresents a much more limited theory
ofinternational politics than Waltz acknowledges. His starting position is that
throughout history the ‘texture of international politics remains highly constant,
patterns recur and events repeat themselves endlessly’.^1 He argues that to account for
these recurrent patterns it is necessary to seek out an unchanging factor in inter-
national politics that can be identified across the span of world history and he asserts
that what has persisted over time is the anarchic structure of the international political
arena and it is this unchanging structure that can be used to account for the enduring
behavioural patterns and texture of international politics. Indeed, in subsequent work
he went on to extend the argument by insisting that the ‘logic of anarchy obtains
whether the system is composed of tribes, nations, oligopolistic firms or street gangs’.^2
A world historical perspective fails to endorse Waltz’s view. Instead, it indicates
unequivocally that the texture of international politics is not constant and patterns do
not recur endlessly. Texture and patterns vary very considerably across time and space.
There have been times when the conditions laid out in Waltz’s theory have been
present, but they are very far from being as universal as Waltz implies. The argument
wemake, therefore, complements the one made by Ruggie in an early critique of