Neoclassical realism

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By Colin Elman and Michael A. Jensen

Source: Williams, P. D. (Ed.). (2008). Security studies: an introduction. London: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group.

Central theme

Suggest that what states do depends in large part on influences located at the domestic level of analysis.

Dynamics

Employs a ‘transmission belt’ approach to foreign policy, which illustrates how systemic pressures are filtered through variables at the unit-level to produce specific foreign policy decisions.

Agree that distribution of capabilities is a good starting point for the analysis of foreign policy decision-making.

Pressures from the international system are often unclear and indeterminate. International arena is murky and difficult to read, threats and opportunities are not easily identifiable and the range of possibilities open to statesmen for meeting strategic goals is practically infinite.

These challenges are mitigated by variables at the unit-level which often intervene between the international system and state behaviour to determine the precise nature and direction of a state’s foreign economic and military policy.

 NCR

Under-balancing theory

Theory of under-balancing by Randall Schweller (2006) is a good example of the ‘transmission belt’ approach. Schweller starts with a central tenet of structural (neo) realism, which posits that how states behave in international politics is foremost determine by relative distributions of material power in the international system. Schweller notes that how states choose to react to threatening accumulations of power depends on the degree to which they embody structural realism’s unitary actor assumption.

Unified at elite & societal levels

Fragmented states

Decision makers find it easy to recognize threats & carry out appropriate balancing strategies to counter them.

Decision makers cannot come to an agreement on the nature of a threat or how best to deal with it & state apparatus lacks necessary extractive power to tap society for the resources needed to restore a balance of power.

Levels of analysis

The levels of analysis in this case is useful to help one understand the theory of neoclassical realism. The factors at the individual level of analysis plays a vital role in influencing the type of foreign policy decisions made by key decision makers. In particular, the perception of key decision makers. There are four common characteristics of perceptions.

We tend to see opponents as more threatening than they may actually be. The nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran have alarmed many Americans. One survey found that 71% of Americans considered Iran a threat to regional stability and 77% saw North Korea in the same way. By contrast, in the other 20 countries surveyed, only 40% believed Iran to be a force for instability and just 47% perceived North Korea in that light.

We tend to see the behaviour of others as more planned and coordinated than our own. During the cold war, Americans and Soviets were mutually convinced that the other side was orchestrating a coordinated global campaign to subvert them. Perhaps more accurately, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (1979:1202) has described the two superpowers as behaving like “two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other whom he assumes to have perfect vision.” Each, according to Kissinger, “tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, foresight, and coherence that its own experience belies.”

We find it hard to understand why others dislike, mistrust, and fear us. President George W. Bush captured this overly positive sense of self during a press conference when he pronounced himself “amazed that there’s such misunderstanding of what our country is about that people would hate us. . . . Like most Americans, I just can’t believe it because I know how good we are.” Others are less sure of Americans’ innate goodness. One recent survey found that 60% or more of poll respondents in countries as diverse as Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, and Russia thought that the
United States posed a military threat to them.

We and others tend to have similar images of one another. Between countries and even between leaders, it is common to find a mirror-image perception. This means that each side perceives the other in roughly similar terms.

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