establishes a sharp contrast between this ‘cooperative’ dynastic balancing process and
the attempt by the great powers in the nineteenth century to institutionalize and
maintain an intersubjectively agreed equilibrium within Europe. Although Waltz
inconsistently makes some provision for this process of conscious balancing in the
context of bipolarity, with references to arms-control agreements between the
United States and the Soviet Union, for example, his theoretical orientation ensures
that mutual cooperation of this kind is rigorously eschewed in the context of
multipolarity.
Historical periodization
Waltz’s TIPdoes not attempt to offer any kind of periodization of world history. It
can be argued that Waltz, and indeed realists in general, tend to downplay, or even
negate, the idea of periodization because they operate within what Wight identified
as the ‘realm of recurrence and repetition’.^44 It follows that for critics, TIP illus-
trates what Linklater calls ‘the immutability thesis’, while for Osiander, it provides
‘impressive testimony to the virulence of today’s discourse of eternity’.^45 By the same
token, Teschke argues that Waltz’s theory is inherently ahistorical because it pre-
supposes the existence of ‘one transhistorical “covering law”’ and, as a consequence,
‘history turns into a non-problem’.^46 There is obviously some truth to this claim,
because, as demonstrated earlier, Waltz’s theory even erodes the boundary line
between pre-history and history, usually associated with the emergence of the state.
However, as Waltz sees it, anarchy stretches across this timeline and encompasses
relations amongst tribes in pre-historic times as well as relations amongst the many
different types of units with state-like structures that have emerged across the course
of history. Despite the abundant evidence of Waltz’s clear commitment to iden-
tifying and accounting for continuity in international politics, it is not true to suggest
that he eschews all conception of change. In terms of the big picture, he accepts
that, in principle, anarchy can give way to hierarchy and bipolarity can give way to
multipolarity, but there is no way that this recognition of the potential for political
transformation and change can translate into even an embryonic theory of historical
change. Waltz is crystal clear that his theory can only account for continuity and it
becomes necessary to examine a different level of analysis to account for a move
from anarchy to hierarchy or from bipolarity to multipolarity.
Another obstacle to thinking about periodization arises from Waltz’s peculiar
usage of functional differentiation. By confining functional differentiation purely to
the political sphere, Waltz is able to eliminate it from the international and link it
exclusively to hierarchy, by his logic of linking anarchic structure and the generation
of ‘like units’ as discussed above. Although Waltz drew on sociological ideas (mainly
Durkheim) for key parts of his theory, his reading of them eliminated much of their
content. The result was that only an impoverished rendition of differentiation theory
got discussed in IR. Differentiation theory is one of the central approaches in both
Sociology and Anthropology. At the risk of some oversimplification, it can be
represented as embodying three distinct types of differentiation:
298 The paradox of parsimony