Tilly argues that we can compare states to organised crime groups. We can draw this analogy because organised crime groups 'protect' people for a profit and at the same time engineer the threat. States, like organised crime, use physical violence to make a profit - they cash in on a market for 'protection'. At the same time, however, they create part of the market for protection. As he says, states are racketeers as they produce both the protection and the price. (Do they set the price? surely this is negotiated and there are different 'markets' for protection). Governments threaten their own populations with war abroad and repression if they don't pay up. (171). Tilly also subscribes to the view that a legitimate government is one that can make a credible threat to its population - "legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a particular authority". (171)
Tilly then discusses the rise of European states and the central role played by war in this process. To summarize the argument briefly, states expanded their monopoly of violence by making war against internal and external groups (the line was blurred). The eradicated competitors in the market for violence and established physical control over territories. He uses France and Britain as examples - the Tudor's ability to crush the autonomous power of the Churches was an important step towards the monopolization of organised violence in the English state. Eventually territorial states competed with one another and the common institution of inter-state conflict developed and intensified the war-making impulse. To make war, states needed to extract revenues and to do this they created bureaucracies able to continuously tax populations.
Another important way in which states resembled organised crime groups was the protection they offered key capital producing enterprises. By allowing some wealthy sections of the population to profit from peaceable order and the suppression of competitors, states were able to access finance and credit, which substantially improved their war-making ability. Heavy borrowing was usually followed by the expansion of the extractive apparatus to repay those loans. Access to credit and regular taxation were processes that followed one another. As he says, "In the long run the quest [for power] inevitable involved them [states] in establishing regular access to capitalists who could supply and arrange credit and imposing one form or another of regular taxation on the people and activities within their spheres of control". (172). And: "War, state apparatus, taxation and borrowing advanced in tight cadence" (180).
So War-Making stimulated State-making are interdependent. Tilly makes an interesting argument at the end of the paper. In many third world states, the nexus between war making and state making has been broken. States can obtain the means for war-maing from outside through arms transfers and economic aid - meaning that they same negotiations between citizenry and state over the right 'price' for protection did not occur. Third World States can repress their population with greater impunity as they are less dependent upon the revenues generated by their populations for war-making potential.
There is another implicit argument here about why states are so similar. Many institutional experiments in Europe perished (Hanseatic League) because they could not raise the revenue to fight wars and survive. The bureaucratic territorial state proved especially effective at raising war-making potential (assisted by changes in military technology) and to survive, other entities were forces to emulate this institutional arrangement. "European States built up their military apparatuses through sustained struggles with their subject populations and by means of selective extension of protection to different classes within those populations". (186).
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Good evening everyone,
Last time we met we looked at how realism applied to the study of international security. Ben discussed that many theories of international relations generally are theories of international security due to the centrality of security concerns to states and we continue that journey today. Although the title of today's lecture is 'Alliances and Balancing', I will also, if I get time, talk about Liberialism and Constructivism in the context of their predictions regarding alliances and balancing because we didn't get to cover those theories last week.
A discussion of alliances generally talk about two questions - why do states ally with one another (i.e what causes alliances) and why do they endure or break-down. Alliances are also hypothesised to both increase and decrease the probability of war. Do alliances cause wars? Do they cause states to act aggressively? Do they drag major powers into costly and peripheral conflicts? These are important contemporary questions, as the survival of NATO and SEATO despite the collapse of Russia as a common threat is surprising to some commentators.
Realism is a handy departure point, because the relationship between alliances and balancing according to many realist scholars such as Waltz and Walt is fairly straightforward. in addition, realism make quite specific predictions about what causes alliances to form, what causes them to dissolve, and the circumstances under which they are likely to lead to war. According to realists such as Kenneth Waltz, states use alliances as a means to balance capabilities in the international system. More specifically, states use alliances to balance the capabilities of a preponderant actor in the world system when they are unable to balance them internally (i.e build their own military forces) or the costs of balancing are higher than the costs of aligning with other countries. The difference between internal and external balancing is me building the guns and tanks to match you guns and tanks and me joining forces with another country to equal out, or exceeed, the guns and tanks that you have. On the other hand, realists argue that the distribution of power, or the balance of power, causes states to ally with one another. Unbalanced power is threatening to everyone. We should be familiar with the logic from Mearshiemer's article. Because states cannot be 100% certain about the intentions of other states, they act check the emergence of hegemons or preponderant powers. In other words, when it looks like one state is gaining an ascendancy, other states band together, they ally, to balance its power. They aggregate their military capabilities. Alliance patterns are broadly predictable by looking at the concentrations of power in the international system. So in this way, the distribution of capabilities in a system is a cause of alliance patterns.
To summarise then, a key argument of realist scholarship is that states ally with other states as a means to balance capabilities and ensure their security. Balancing can be achieved through one of two means, internally and externally. When internal balancing is not possible, or is has less utility than external balancing, states will band together to check the power of a dominant state. There is an important distinction here. Structural realists such as Waltz argue that states balance capabilities, regardless of who has them.
Realists use the example of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. States in Western Europe and the United States used a combination of Internal and External balancing to create a balance of power and improve their security. States in Eastern Europe allied with the Soviet Union
Realists also make predictions about when alliances are likely to endure, and when they are likely to break down. As we might expect, when the common threat that caused the alliance to form in the first place dissapears, so too does the reason for allying, causing the alliance to break down.
Moving onto the first reading, realism also has something to say about when alliances are likely to lead to war and when they are not. Snyder and Christiansen argued that when offensive capabilities are perceived to have the advantage, alliances act like chain gangs. Recall the distinction made by Robert Jervis in last week's readings between offensive and defensive military capabilities. When one country in the alliance goes to war, others jump off the precipice with it. The logic behind this argument is that, when offense is perceived to have the advantage, states must act quickly (even pre-emptively) because if they don't their ally might be hastily defeated, altering the balance of power and lowering the probability that the alliance can prevail in a conflict. Snyder and Christiansen argue that a perception of offensive advantage, shaped by the experience of German-French wars in the 1870s, explains why European states jumped into war in 1914.
When defence is perceived to have the advantage, Snyder and Christainsen argue that we are likely to see more buck-passing between allies and a greater hesitancy to go to war. Because offensive states will have to invest proportionally more into their victory and other states are likely to be able to hold their own without external help, states in the Alliance can afford to watch on and allow costs to absorb before jumping in themselves.
Last time we met we looked at how realism applied to the study of international security. Ben discussed that many theories of international relations generally are theories of international security due to the centrality of security concerns to states and we continue that journey today. Although the title of today's lecture is 'Alliances and Balancing', I will also, if I get time, talk about Liberialism and Constructivism in the context of their predictions regarding alliances and balancing because we didn't get to cover those theories last week.
A discussion of alliances generally talk about two questions - why do states ally with one another (i.e what causes alliances) and why do they endure or break-down. Alliances are also hypothesised to both increase and decrease the probability of war. Do alliances cause wars? Do they cause states to act aggressively? Do they drag major powers into costly and peripheral conflicts? These are important contemporary questions, as the survival of NATO and SEATO despite the collapse of Russia as a common threat is surprising to some commentators.
Realism is a handy departure point, because the relationship between alliances and balancing according to many realist scholars such as Waltz and Walt is fairly straightforward. in addition, realism make quite specific predictions about what causes alliances to form, what causes them to dissolve, and the circumstances under which they are likely to lead to war. According to realists such as Kenneth Waltz, states use alliances as a means to balance capabilities in the international system. More specifically, states use alliances to balance the capabilities of a preponderant actor in the world system when they are unable to balance them internally (i.e build their own military forces) or the costs of balancing are higher than the costs of aligning with other countries. The difference between internal and external balancing is me building the guns and tanks to match you guns and tanks and me joining forces with another country to equal out, or exceeed, the guns and tanks that you have. On the other hand, realists argue that the distribution of power, or the balance of power, causes states to ally with one another. Unbalanced power is threatening to everyone. We should be familiar with the logic from Mearshiemer's article. Because states cannot be 100% certain about the intentions of other states, they act check the emergence of hegemons or preponderant powers. In other words, when it looks like one state is gaining an ascendancy, other states band together, they ally, to balance its power. They aggregate their military capabilities. Alliance patterns are broadly predictable by looking at the concentrations of power in the international system. So in this way, the distribution of capabilities in a system is a cause of alliance patterns.
To summarise then, a key argument of realist scholarship is that states ally with other states as a means to balance capabilities and ensure their security. Balancing can be achieved through one of two means, internally and externally. When internal balancing is not possible, or is has less utility than external balancing, states will band together to check the power of a dominant state. There is an important distinction here. Structural realists such as Waltz argue that states balance capabilities, regardless of who has them.
Realists use the example of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. States in Western Europe and the United States used a combination of Internal and External balancing to create a balance of power and improve their security. States in Eastern Europe allied with the Soviet Union
Realists also make predictions about when alliances are likely to endure, and when they are likely to break down. As we might expect, when the common threat that caused the alliance to form in the first place dissapears, so too does the reason for allying, causing the alliance to break down.
Moving onto the first reading, realism also has something to say about when alliances are likely to lead to war and when they are not. Snyder and Christiansen argued that when offensive capabilities are perceived to have the advantage, alliances act like chain gangs. Recall the distinction made by Robert Jervis in last week's readings between offensive and defensive military capabilities. When one country in the alliance goes to war, others jump off the precipice with it. The logic behind this argument is that, when offense is perceived to have the advantage, states must act quickly (even pre-emptively) because if they don't their ally might be hastily defeated, altering the balance of power and lowering the probability that the alliance can prevail in a conflict. Snyder and Christiansen argue that a perception of offensive advantage, shaped by the experience of German-French wars in the 1870s, explains why European states jumped into war in 1914.
When defence is perceived to have the advantage, Snyder and Christainsen argue that we are likely to see more buck-passing between allies and a greater hesitancy to go to war. Because offensive states will have to invest proportionally more into their victory and other states are likely to be able to hold their own without external help, states in the Alliance can afford to watch on and allow costs to absorb before jumping in themselves.
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