independently in their own right. So, although Waltz insists that we need a theory
of international politics, he presumably accepts that we must also have a theory of
the international economy and a theory of international society.
Although this assessment is sustainable by a textual analysis of TIP, it is difficult
to come away from the book without sensing that Waltz, while acknowledging the
existence of other systems, at the same time also privileges the political system. One
critique along these lines argued that the international political system is only a
specific sector of a multi-sectored international system and that we require a
distinctive lens to observe each sector. It acknowledged the utility of using a specific
lens to highlight what is going on within a particular sectoral system, because we
can thereby reduce the complexity of the whole to manageable proportions, but
also pointed to the danger of ‘sectoral blindness’, a condition associated with the
tendency for any given discipline to focus exclusively on one sectoral system, losing
sight of the fact that this sector is necessarily abstracted from a larger whole.^17 It can
be questioned whether it is possible to delineate clearly a sectoral system, given that
these systems in the real world are inextricably interwoven. Indeed, it can be
suggested that ‘the distinction between sectoral boundaries is to be found as much
in the equipment of the observer as in the thing observed’.^18 Is it indeed valid to
establish a theory that is restricted to a specific sectoral system? These various
concerns moved the present authors to explore the varieties of system that are clearly
international without being political,^19 in the process picking up on the historical
literatures about the extensive economic systems of the ancient and classical worlds.
From Goddard and Nexon’s perspective, the analytical/ontological distinction
effectively deals with Buzan’s concerns, but this solution is unlikely to satisfy those
historical materialists who argue that the very idea that the distinction between
political and economic systems can be grasped in terms of distinct analytical
constructs fails to recognize that this move itself is embedded in and promotes the
historical construction of capitalism.^20 In other words, this particular historical
materialist perspective views the opening up of a divide between politics and eco-
nomics as a product of capitalism. Following the ideas of Polanyi and Wolf,
Rosenberg argues, for example, that whereas pre-capitalist relations rested on
personalized domination, where there was no separation between politics and
economics, capitalism is associated with the emergence in the nineteenth century
ofan impersonal state and a depoliticized and inherently universalizing global
economic market.^21 As the result of this development, it has been argued by Wood,
that ‘the totalizing logic and the coercive power of capitalism become invisible’.^22
Moreover, it follows that because of the inability of conventional International
Relations theorists to penetrate this logic, they become doomed to participate in its
reproduction.
Acknowledging Rosenberg’s initiative as ‘pioneering’, Teschke has gone on to
argue that the idea of a clear structural break at this historical juncture, while
‘conceptually compelling’, has to be examined in much more historical detail if the
emergence of the modern state system, characterized by depersonalized states and
states-system and a depoliticized market is to be comprehended. Modernity is not
292 The paradox of parsimony