also be expected that different domestic conditions, including different historical
trajectories and varying political conditions, affect the process. The homogenizing
effects of competition and socialization are limited in other ways. First, one approach
to competing is to innovate, to develop new institutional and other solutions that
are superior to existing solutions.^31 The special form of cooperation in the European
Union, for example, can be seen as such an innovation which is neither a new
regional state, nor a mere case of interstate collaboration. When such collaboration
- including its modifications of the institution of sovereignty – is pushed as a
European answer to international competition, this process has led to heterogeneity
rather than homogeneity.^32 Furthermore, the concept of socialization is not very
clear. The scope and depth of socialization is not discussed by Waltz; who or what
gets socialized to which extent (depth) and in which areas (scope)? States in the same
system can be socialized to different roles (‘trading states’ or ‘warrior states’); in short,
competition and socialization may lead towards heterogeneity rather than homo-
geneity.^33 Marxist scholars (Amin, Trotsky) argue in favour of a logic of hetero-
geneity based on the notion of uneven capitalist development; English School
scholars (Jackson) note that self-help can be circumscribed by international norms
so that a struggle for survival is not on the agenda. If international norms delegitimize
conquest by war and the change of borders without the consent of the parties
involved, and if such norms are effective, then the argument about competitive
struggle for survival carries little weight.^34
If the international-political system is not always one of self-help struggle for
survival, the argument that system structure is about power and nothing else drops
out.^35 We should hold on to the structural realist idea that international forces help
shape domestic environments and that domestic processes help shape systemic
conditions, but we need a richer concept of international (and domestic) structure
in order to better analyse the interplay between international and domestic and vice
versa. This is a hazardous undertaking for sure; it risks conflict with the Durkheimian
roots of Waltz’s concepts;^36 more seriously, it risks creation of theoretical frame-
works that are less parsimonious and therefore closer to rich description. But it is
needed in order to understand where the world is headed.
I propose three elements of international structure: economic power, political-
military power, and international norms. Economic poweris possessed by those
able to produce wealth in a world dominated by capitalism. Many structural realists
will want to subsume economic power under other forms of material power; the
two are linked, of course, but they are also analytically and institutionally separate.
There is an economic logic of the market which is different from the political-
military logic of the state. Political-military poweris the ‘realist’ element in the
international structure, that is, power embodied in control over political institutions
and the means of violence. Finally, there are norms, rules, and ideas – in short
international norms. As emphasized in recent constructivist analysis (and for quite
some time by the English School), ‘collective expectations about proper behaviour
for a given identity’ shape ‘the national security interests or (directly) the security
policies of states’.^37
112 Structural realism and changes in statehood