Correspondence Peter D FeaverGunther HellmanRandall L SchwellerJeffrey W TaliaferroWilliam C WohlforthJeffrey W Legro andAndrew Moravcsik

Brother Can You Spare a Paradigm(Or Was Anybody Ever a Realist)

To the Editors (Peter D Feaver writes)

In ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik craft a curiouslyrigid doctrine for realism and then puzzle over why the eld is crowded with apos-tates1 The answer I propose is that the church of realism can be a bit more catholicthan Legro and Moravcsik claim Legro and Moravcsik have written out of the bookof realism a crucial insight that informs most realist theories (at least implicitly) andhave thereby inadvertently excommunicated too many of the faithful But they arewrong in a productive way and correcting their mistake points in the direction of afruitful research agenda for scholarsmdashrealists and antirealists alike

165

Peter D Feaver is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University He thanks Christopher GelpiHein Goemans Joseph Grieco Ole Holsti Robert Keohane Stephen Krasner Jeffrey Legro Andrew Morav-csik and David Welch for their helpful comments and suggestions on rening the letter

Gunther Hellmann is Professor of Political Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University FrankfurtGermany He is grateful to Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik as well as to Rainer Baumann andWolfgang Wagner for clarifying comments on a rst draft and to Ulrich Gross for editorial assistance Healone is responsible for any remaining distortions

Randall L Schweller is Associate Professor of Political Science The Ohio State University He is the authorof Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitler rsquos Strategy of World Conquest (New York ColumbiaUniversity Press 1998) He would like to thank the following people for their helpful comments JeffreyLegro Edward Manseld Andrew Moravcsik and Amy Oakes

Jeffrey W Taliaferro is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University He thanks Bernard FinelBenjamin Frankel John Gould and Jennifer Sterling-Folker for comments on various drafts

William C Wohlforth is Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund A Walsh School ofForeign Service at Georgetown University

Jeffrey W Legro is Associate Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of VirginiaAndrew Moravcsik is Professor of Government at Harvard University They thank Peter Feaver GuntherHellmann Randall Schweller Jeffrey Taliaferro and William Wohlforth for extended exchanges which ledto important revisions of earlier drafts of this reply

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55

International Security Vol 25 No 1 (Summer 2000) pp 165ndash193copy 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Briey Legro and Moravcsik fail to understand that realist theories are as much aboutthe consequences of behavior as about the determinants of behavior Legro and Moravcsikcan be forgiven for missing this because most realist analyses jump to how thedistribution of power causes some outcome and gloss over the prior question aboutthe consequences for a state of ignoring the distribution of power But the probabilitythat ldquounrealisticrdquo behavior will suffer adverse consequences is the key causal mecha-nism that makes the ldquorealistrdquo behavior predictable in the rst place Legro and Morav-csik are right that realists have been notoriously sloppy about specifying how thiscausal mechanism works but sloppiness is no reason to jettison it altogether Realisttheories cannot work without it

Realists expect that some states will act for all the reasons that Legro and Moravcsikwish to credit to the liberal institutional or epistemic alternative theories Realistssimply expect that those states that persist in doing so provided that this leads themto act in a way contrary to power-dictated interests will suffer for it The acid test ofmost realist theories is not whether states conform to realpolitik principles but whetherthose states that do not conform are worse off than those that do

This at least is why Thucydides Hans Morgenthau and others are still realists eventhough they clearly embrace what Legro and Moravcsik declare to be blasphemousclaims for realists (1) the possibility that domestic politics inuences the way the stateacts in international relations and (2) the possibility that nonmaterial factors likecultural norms or international institutions shape outcomes of interstate behaviorCuriously Legro and Moravcsik ignore how even those realists they endorse fail to hewto the dogma they have laid out for realism

Thucydides assigned great explanatory weight to nonmaterial factors such as pridehow else could he explain the Meliansrsquo disastrous decision to persist in resisting AthensLikewise Morgenthau saw his function as advising statesmen to learn and obey therules of international power politicsmdashrules that liberal democracies such as the UnitedStates were prone not to follow because public opinion shaped state policy and theAmerican psyche was prone to moralism In other words Morgenthau believed thatstate behavior was subject to domestic political determinants and that state preferencescould be shaped by nonmaterial factors By Legro and Moravcsikrsquos standards Morgen-thau was not a realist

Even Kenneth Waltz the paradigmatic Legro-Moravcsik orthodox realist slips intothe fold only through a casual reading of his use of the economic metaphor of themarket Waltz meets their test of realist orthodoxy (but only in Theory of InternationalPolitics and not say when he is theorizing about foreign policy in Foreign Policy andDemocratic Politics) when he predicts systemic outcomes based on the assumption thatstates will act as if they were preservation maximizers The ldquoas ifrdquo assumption iswarranted in economics because in relatively short order (and provided there is freecompetition) the market will punish (bankrupt) or select out (buy out) rms that donot pay attention to the bottom line States Waltz asserts understand that the interna-tional system works the same way and so we can jump right to predicting systemoutcomes as the net result of states conforming to systemic pressures

What if a state does not conform to systemic pressures Waltzrsquos answer points to thecausal mechanism that drives his balance-of-power theory The system will punish thestate and the state may even disappear Waltz clearly expects relatively few states to

International Security 251 166

be so foolish but he does not (cannot) rule it out Waltzrsquos rst hypothesis then andthe one tied closest to his theoretical core is that the system will punish states thatviolate system constraints his auxiliary hypothesis which ironically is not groundedin his theoretical core is that few states will do it Yet there is no room for the rsthypothesis in Legro and Moravcsikrsquos church of realism

Realism theorizes about the consequences of state action that realists expect will be(in some instances) domestically driven and ideationally shaped The mark of a realisttheory then is not whether it is expecting that states are acting according to theLegro-Moravcsik postulates but rather whether it is expecting that states that do notact according to those postulates suffer in some way Once scholars correct for Legroand Moravcsikrsquos mistake many of their alleged apostates can be welcomed back intothe fold Indeed the realist eld is crowded once more

Crowded but not triumphant for three important tasks remain (1) operationalizingldquopunishmentrdquo to admit more careful empirical tests of this key causal mechanism (2)addressing the most important empirical challenge to realism the democratic efcacyargument and (3) resolving a lingering internal paradox within most realist theories

Legro and Moravcsik (and other critics) are correct that realists have been sloppy indevising and conducting empirical tests but the critics fail to identify the real problemThe key realist causal mechanism of ldquosystem constraintsrdquo or ldquosystem punishmentrdquo isundertheorized and has yet to be satisfactorily operationalized Most realists are vagueon how system constraining occurs Is it through repeated interactions through thespread of learning about ldquobest practicesrdquo through war and defeat on the battleeld orthrough some vague security version of the ldquohidden handrdquo Do theorists model it byadding another branch to the game tree or by some other device Because all socialscience is probabilistic we do not expect it to be automatic but how systematic aresystem constraints really

Even where the theoretical grounds for systemic constraints would be obvious sayin the area of military defeat it is no easy task to come up with a common codingEveryone would agree that Hitler rsquos Germany suffered ldquosystem punishmentrdquo and somemight agree that the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan as did the United States inVietnam (recall that Morgenthau the realist was one of the earlier Vietnam War critics)But has the United States been ldquopunishedrdquo for postndashCold War adventurism It is hardto say because realists have yet to provide a clearly dened way of measuring punish-ment or system constraints However it is operationalized punishment will have to bemore nuanced than the most draconian measure of the total disappearance of a par-ticular nation-state Surely Germany was ldquoselected outrdquo at least twice in the twentiethcentury even though a Germany existed on maps throughout Focusing on the fate ofregimes (and maybe even leaders) strikes me as a fruitful place to start although evenhere there are pitfalls to avoid surely we cannot ask realist theories to pretend that weare unaware that regimes often come and go for nonrealist reasons

At the same time the coding of system punishment must be sensitive to the obviousdanger of tautology in which unwise behavior is coded as unwise because it is mani-festly unsuccessful whereas successful outcomes are traced back to behaviors that arethen coded as ldquowisely realistrdquo It is here that I nd a potentially fruitful intersectionbetween my approach and the Legro-Moravcsik enterprise They may have taken usfurther down the road to establishing a clearer set of criteria for determining whether

Correspondence 167

the behavior (not the theory) can be properly determined as realist or not I wouldhesitate to declare a grand consilience between our approaches without further reec-tion but at rst glance it appears that one could use Legro-Moravcsik criteria todistinguish state behavior that accords with realist dictates and my criterion to deter-mine whether the theory was realist (ie whether it conformed to the realist expectationthat ignoring those dictates spells trouble for states)

Rening and adequately operationalizing these concepts however is only the begin-ning Realism still must address a second challenge how to account for the set ofempirical anomalies identied by the so-called democratic efcacy school2 This litera-ture purports to document ways in which democracies systematically outperformnondemocracies in the hurly-burly of international relations Democracies appear to bemore likely to prevail in war more likely to prevail in crises more reliable alliancepartners and so on The jury is still out as to whether this literature has adequatelycontrolled for the fact that since 1815 the two principal system actorsmdashGreat Britainand the United Statesmdashhave been democracies But if this literature withstands scrutinythen realist theories have a problem The seriousness of the problem depends onwhether democracies are somehow better at responding to system constraints orwhether democracies consistently out system constraints but are not punished for itThe former would indicate that many realist theories are wrong about the way demo-cratic institutions complicate the process of reading and responding to system con-straints the latter would indicate that the core causal mechanism of realism is wrongperiod at least for the temporal domain under study What we may be witnessing isnot the refutation of the realist paradigm but rather the gradual narrowing of thetheoretical domain under which realist causal mechanisms are likely to function3

Even if they meet the empirical challenge realists must also address a third challengethis one more of a theoretical puzzle If realists expect some states to out realistprinciplesmdashindeed expect democratic states to be prone to do somdashand if the numberof those states grows exceedingly large is it not possible that at some point most statesare not behaving according to system constraints If that happens what is left of thesystem to enforce the constraint Can a universe of system-ignoring democraciesliterally invent a novel set of system constraints Constructivists have no problem

2 The term is from Christopher Gelpi and Joseph M Grieco ldquoDemocracy Crisis Escalation andthe Survival of Political Leadersrdquo unpublished manuscript Duke University 1999 See also DavidLake ldquoPowerful Pacists Democratic States and Warrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 86No 1 (March 1994) pp 24ndash37 James D Fearon ldquoDomestic Political Audiences and the Escalationof International Disputesrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 88 No 3 (September 1994)pp 577ndash592 Dan Reiter and Alan Stam ldquoDemocracy War Initiation and Victoryrdquo American PoliticalScience Review Vol 92 No 2 (June 1998) pp 377ndash390 and Ajin Choi ldquoDemocracy Alliances andWar Performance in Militarized International Conicts 1816ndash1992rdquo PhD dissertation Duke Uni-versity forthcoming3 This latter point underscores a weakness in the Spanish Inquisition approach to theory devel-opment that Legro and Moravcsik appear to champion Most likely realist theories are not entirelyright or entirely wrong Rather realist causal mechanisms are likely to obtain under certain scopeconditions and unlikely to obtain when those scope conditions are not present Those scopeconditions may be more prevalent during some eras or in some geopolitical congurations thanin others

International Security 251 168

be so foolish but he does not (cannot) rule it out Waltzrsquos rst hypothesis then andthe one tied closest to his theoretical core is that the system will punish states thatviolate system constraints his auxiliary hypothesis which ironically is not groundedin his theoretical core is that few states will do it Yet there is no room for the rsthypothesis in Legro and Moravcsikrsquos church of realism

Realism theorizes about the consequences of state action that realists expect will be(in some instances) domestically driven and ideationally shaped The mark of a realisttheory then is not whether it is expecting that states are acting according to theLegro-Moravcsik postulates but rather whether it is expecting that states that do notact according to those postulates suffer in some way Once scholars correct for Legroand Moravcsikrsquos mistake many of their alleged apostates can be welcomed back intothe fold Indeed the realist eld is crowded once more

Crowded but not triumphant for three important tasks remain (1) operationalizingldquopunishmentrdquo to admit more careful empirical tests of this key causal mechanism (2)addressing the most important empirical challenge to realism the democratic efcacyargument and (3) resolving a lingering internal paradox within most realist theories

Legro and Moravcsik (and other critics) are correct that realists have been sloppy indevising and conducting empirical tests but the critics fail to identify the real problemThe key realist causal mechanism of ldquosystem constraintsrdquo or ldquosystem punishmentrdquo isundertheorized and has yet to be satisfactorily operationalized Most realists are vagueon how system constraining occurs Is it through repeated interactions through thespread of learning about ldquobest practicesrdquo through war and defeat on the battleeld orthrough some vague security version of the ldquohidden handrdquo Do theorists model it byadding another branch to the game tree or by some other device Because all socialscience is probabilistic we do not expect it to be automatic but how systematic aresystem constraints really

Even where the theoretical grounds for systemic constraints would be obvious sayin the area of military defeat it is no easy task to come up with a common codingEveryone would agree that Hitler rsquos Germany suffered ldquosystem punishmentrdquo and somemight agree that the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan as did the United States inVietnam (recall that Morgenthau the realist was one of the earlier Vietnam War critics)But has the United States been ldquopunishedrdquo for postndashCold War adventurism It is hardto say because realists have yet to provide a clearly dened way of measuring punish-ment or system constraints However it is operationalized punishment will have to bemore nuanced than the most draconian measure of the total disappearance of a par-ticular nation-state Surely Germany was ldquoselected outrdquo at least twice in the twentiethcentury even though a Germany existed on maps throughout Focusing on the fate ofregimes (and maybe even leaders) strikes me as a fruitful place to start although evenhere there are pitfalls to avoid surely we cannot ask realist theories to pretend that weare unaware that regimes often come and go for nonrealist reasons

At the same time the coding of system punishment must be sensitive to the obviousdanger of tautology in which unwise behavior is coded as unwise because it is mani-festly unsuccessful whereas successful outcomes are traced back to behaviors that arethen coded as ldquowisely realistrdquo It is here that I nd a potentially fruitful intersectionbetween my approach and the Legro-Moravcsik enterprise They may have taken usfurther down the road to establishing a clearer set of criteria for determining whether

Correspondence 167

the behavior (not the theory) can be properly determined as realist or not I wouldhesitate to declare a grand consilience between our approaches without further reec-tion but at rst glance it appears that one could use Legro-Moravcsik criteria todistinguish state behavior that accords with realist dictates and my criterion to deter-mine whether the theory was realist (ie whether it conformed to the realist expectationthat ignoring those dictates spells trouble for states)

Rening and adequately operationalizing these concepts however is only the begin-ning Realism still must address a second challenge how to account for the set ofempirical anomalies identied by the so-called democratic efcacy school2 This litera-ture purports to document ways in which democracies systematically outperformnondemocracies in the hurly-burly of international relations Democracies appear to bemore likely to prevail in war more likely to prevail in crises more reliable alliancepartners and so on The jury is still out as to whether this literature has adequatelycontrolled for the fact that since 1815 the two principal system actorsmdashGreat Britainand the United Statesmdashhave been democracies But if this literature withstands scrutinythen realist theories have a problem The seriousness of the problem depends onwhether democracies are somehow better at responding to system constraints orwhether democracies consistently out system constraints but are not punished for itThe former would indicate that many realist theories are wrong about the way demo-cratic institutions complicate the process of reading and responding to system con-straints the latter would indicate that the core causal mechanism of realism is wrongperiod at least for the temporal domain under study What we may be witnessing isnot the refutation of the realist paradigm but rather the gradual narrowing of thetheoretical domain under which realist causal mechanisms are likely to function3

Even if they meet the empirical challenge realists must also address a third challengethis one more of a theoretical puzzle If realists expect some states to out realistprinciplesmdashindeed expect democratic states to be prone to do somdashand if the numberof those states grows exceedingly large is it not possible that at some point most statesare not behaving according to system constraints If that happens what is left of thesystem to enforce the constraint Can a universe of system-ignoring democraciesliterally invent a novel set of system constraints Constructivists have no problem

2 The term is from Christopher Gelpi and Joseph M Grieco ldquoDemocracy Crisis Escalation andthe Survival of Political Leadersrdquo unpublished manuscript Duke University 1999 See also DavidLake ldquoPowerful Pacists Democratic States and Warrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 86No 1 (March 1994) pp 24ndash37 James D Fearon ldquoDomestic Political Audiences and the Escalationof International Disputesrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 88 No 3 (September 1994)pp 577ndash592 Dan Reiter and Alan Stam ldquoDemocracy War Initiation and Victoryrdquo American PoliticalScience Review Vol 92 No 2 (June 1998) pp 377ndash390 and Ajin Choi ldquoDemocracy Alliances andWar Performance in Militarized International Conicts 1816ndash1992rdquo PhD dissertation Duke Uni-versity forthcoming3 This latter point underscores a weakness in the Spanish Inquisition approach to theory devel-opment that Legro and Moravcsik appear to champion Most likely realist theories are not entirelyright or entirely wrong Rather realist causal mechanisms are likely to obtain under certain scopeconditions and unlikely to obtain when those scope conditions are not present Those scopeconditions may be more prevalent during some eras or in some geopolitical congurations thanin others

International Security 251 168

the behavior (not the theory) can be properly determined as realist or not I wouldhesitate to declare a grand consilience between our approaches without further reec-tion but at rst glance it appears that one could use Legro-Moravcsik criteria todistinguish state behavior that accords with realist dictates and my criterion to deter-mine whether the theory was realist (ie whether it conformed to the realist expectationthat ignoring those dictates spells trouble for states)

Rening and adequately operationalizing these concepts however is only the begin-ning Realism still must address a second challenge how to account for the set ofempirical anomalies identied by the so-called democratic efcacy school2 This litera-ture purports to document ways in which democracies systematically outperformnondemocracies in the hurly-burly of international relations Democracies appear to bemore likely to prevail in war more likely to prevail in crises more reliable alliancepartners and so on The jury is still out as to whether this literature has adequatelycontrolled for the fact that since 1815 the two principal system actorsmdashGreat Britainand the United Statesmdashhave been democracies But if this literature withstands scrutinythen realist theories have a problem The seriousness of the problem depends onwhether democracies are somehow better at responding to system constraints orwhether democracies consistently out system constraints but are not punished for itThe former would indicate that many realist theories are wrong about the way demo-cratic institutions complicate the process of reading and responding to system con-straints the latter would indicate that the core causal mechanism of realism is wrongperiod at least for the temporal domain under study What we may be witnessing isnot the refutation of the realist paradigm but rather the gradual narrowing of thetheoretical domain under which realist causal mechanisms are likely to function3

Even if they meet the empirical challenge realists must also address a third challengethis one more of a theoretical puzzle If realists expect some states to out realistprinciplesmdashindeed expect democratic states to be prone to do somdashand if the numberof those states grows exceedingly large is it not possible that at some point most statesare not behaving according to system constraints If that happens what is left of thesystem to enforce the constraint Can a universe of system-ignoring democraciesliterally invent a novel set of system constraints Constructivists have no problem

2 The term is from Christopher Gelpi and Joseph M Grieco ldquoDemocracy Crisis Escalation andthe Survival of Political Leadersrdquo unpublished manuscript Duke University 1999 See also DavidLake ldquoPowerful Pacists Democratic States and Warrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 86No 1 (March 1994) pp 24ndash37 James D Fearon ldquoDomestic Political Audiences and the Escalationof International Disputesrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 88 No 3 (September 1994)pp 577ndash592 Dan Reiter and Alan Stam ldquoDemocracy War Initiation and Victoryrdquo American PoliticalScience Review Vol 92 No 2 (June 1998) pp 377ndash390 and Ajin Choi ldquoDemocracy Alliances andWar Performance in Militarized International Conicts 1816ndash1992rdquo PhD dissertation Duke Uni-versity forthcoming3 This latter point underscores a weakness in the Spanish Inquisition approach to theory devel-opment that Legro and Moravcsik appear to champion Most likely realist theories are not entirelyright or entirely wrong Rather realist causal mechanisms are likely to obtain under certain scopeconditions and unlikely to obtain when those scope conditions are not present Those scopeconditions may be more prevalent during some eras or in some geopolitical congurations thanin others

International Security 251 168

answering in the afrmative but realists surely are inclined to answer in the negativeRealists after all do argue that some state goals (though not all as Legro and Moravcsikappear to argue) are irreducibly conictual Part of the system constraint derivesdirectly from this fact and so realists expect it to be always operating even if mutedYet realists also expect some states to resist the system and realists make no specicarguments about how many realistic states are needed to enforce the constraintsRealists in brief wafe on the issue and critics are right to demand greater clarity

Critics should not however stir up needless religious wars as Legro and Moravcsikhave done They claim that realist theories must reject any explanation of state behaviorthat references domestic politics or ideational factors On the contrary realists under-stand that those factors shape state behavior Where realists and nonrealists partcompany is in their differing expectations of the consequences of state action thatderives from domestic politics or ideational factors Understanding this points interna-tional relations scholars in the direction of a fruitful research agenda focused onanswering questions about the theoretical purchase and empirical scope of realismrsquoskey causal mechanism system constraint Such a catechism I hope would appeal evento the most scrupulous of antirealist clerics

mdashPeter D FeaverDurham North Carolina

To the Editors (Gunther Hellmann writes)

In their recent article Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik1 argue that ldquoself-styledrdquorealists have signicantly contributed to the ldquodegenerationrdquo of the realist paradigm bypursuing a strategy of theoretical minimalism As a result ldquothe malleable realist rubricnow encompasses nearly the entire universe of international relations theory (includingcurrent liberal epistemic and institutionalist theories) and excludes only a few intel-lectual scarecrows (such as outright irrationality widespread self-abnegating altruismslavish commitment to ideology complete harmony of state interests or a world state)rdquo(p 7) Thus with some laudable exceptions everybody appears to be a realist thesedaysmdashand nobody (pp 18ndash19 54) According to Legro and Moravcsik minimalistrealism leaves the study of international relations in a deplorable state because inter-national relations as a science thrives on paradigmatic precision In their view scholarsgenerally agree that (1) it is useful to distinguish among ldquobasic theoriesrdquomdashalternativelycalled ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo ldquoparadigmsrdquo ldquoresearch programsrdquo or ldquoschoolsrdquomdashbecausethey ldquohelp in structuring [second-order] theoretical debates guiding empirical researchand shaping both pedagogy and public discussionrdquo (pp 8 9) (2) these basic theoriesare dened in terms of a set of fundamental ldquocorerdquo assumptions and (3) the conceptualfruitfulness of a paradigm ldquodepends on at least two related criteria coherence anddistinctivenessrdquo (p 9 emphasis in original)

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 at p 8 All subsequent citations are given by page numbers in thetext

Correspondence 169

There are at least two ways to read and criticize Legro and Moravcsikrsquos call forparadigmatic precision First from an ldquooutsider rsquosrdquo perspective their article can be readas an exercise in rhetoric their own statements to the contrary (p 7) notwithstandingThe thrust of their argument is the equivalent of an unfriendly takeover in the businessworld The liberalepistemicist bid involves dening and delimiting the ldquoproperrdquoborders of the territory that realists can rightly claim thereby expanding the jurisdictionof liberal and epistemic rule Paradigmatic battles such as these however tend to occurin an anarchic realm of science where the knowledge dilemma assumes the role of thesecurity dilemma in international relations If realists could rightly claim more knowl-edge territory paradigmatic liberals epistemicists institutionalists and idealists arelikely to perceive that there is less knowledge for them to claim As a result each sidecharges its opponents with lacking ldquocoherencerdquo ldquodistinctivenessrdquo and other sorts ofepistemological ammunition Sometimes the sides even engage in battle that predict-ably leaves all sides concerned worse off For an outsider therefore it is difcult tounderstand why Joseph Grieco Stephen Van Evera and Stephen Walt should bedoomed to adhere to the maximalist realism that Legro and Moravcsik prefer To besure in operating on premises that expand the range of traditional realist assumptionsGrieco Van Evera and Walt have been moving into territory to which others haverecently laid claim But their ldquoconceptual stretchingrdquo of realism (p 55) appears to beno worse than the conceptual squeezing of minimalist idealism into maximalist liber-alism and epistemicism Just as some realists have ldquolearnedrdquo to include variables thathave traditionally been beyond their scope so (some) idealists have learned to limittheir claims in line with ldquorationalistrdquo premises traditionally associated with realism2

Whether what both sides are doing is conceived of as scientic progress as a mereprogression of scientistsrsquo work or as ldquotheoretical degenerationrdquo is a matter of scientictaste In any case all these scholars appear to have learned something

Therefore if Walt wants to call himself a ldquorealistrdquo whereas Legro and Moravcsikprefer to call themselves ldquoepistemicrdquo and ldquoliberalrdquo respectively so be it Because this isessentially a labeling exercise not much harm can be done To think otherwise onemust believe in both the possibility and the probability of establishing objective criteriafor arriving at ldquounchanging setsrdquo of paradigmatic core assumptions Yet one does nothave to point to much ldquoevidencerdquo beyond the history of international relations ingeneral and its great debates in particular to grasp that this is an (empirically corrobo-rated) illusion Moreover Moravcsik has himself given reasons why his version ofliberalism had to be invented in the rst place From his perspective ldquoliberal IR theoryrdquohad traditionally consisted of ldquodisparate views held by lsquoclassicalrsquo liberal publicistsrdquo orhad been dened ldquoteleologicallyrdquo Instead of such ldquosecond-best social sciencerdquo Morav-csik proposed the development of ldquoa general restatement of positive liberal IR theoryrdquo3

2 Legro and Moravcsik obviously stand in the idealist tradition even though they reject ldquoidealismrdquoas an insufciently precise category for paradigmatic reformulation (see p 54) Other scholarsdisagree arguing that idealism may indeed be reconstructed as a ldquodistinct paradigmrdquo See AndreasOsiander ldquoRereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory Idealism Revisitedrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 42 No 3 (September 1998) pp 409ndash432 at p 4123 Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously A Liberal Theory of International PoliticsrdquoInternational Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997) pp 514 515

International Security 251 170

At around the same time that the rst versions of Moravcsikrsquos paradigmatic recon-struction appeared Arthur Stein had reconstructed the liberal tradition in an alternative(though far less ldquorigorouslyrdquo paradigmatic) manner4 Surprisingly or not these tworeconstructions of liberalism did not take note of each other Thus there are neitherldquounchangingrdquo nor intersubjectively agreed-upon sets of ldquoliberalrdquo (or realist) premisesThere are only competing narratives of ldquotraditionsrdquo as Alasdair MacIntyre denes themldquoA tradition not only embodies the narrative of an argument but is only recovered byan argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conict with otherargumentative retellingsrdquo5

Second Legro and Moravcsikrsquos call for paradigmatic rigor can also be criticized froman ldquoinsider rsquosrdquo perspective Given that Legro and Moravcsik evade specifying theirphilosophy of science position it remains unclear which scholars generally agree withtheir view that it is useful to distinguish between ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo (such as theirrealist liberal or epistemic paradigms) and ldquosecond-order theoriesrdquo6 I for examplewould put myself outside that consensus at least in the way that Legro and Moravcsikdescribe the relationship between these two types of theories To be sure the distinctionbetween different layers of belief (broadly dened and here including both ldquorst-orderrdquoand ldquosecond-orderrdquo theories) is not only widespread but includes scholars who maydisagree on fundamental epistemological questions But it is far from obvious that theline has to be (or even can be) drawn in the way that Legro and Moravcsik suggestIndeed powerful arguments can be made that paradigmatic rigor is more of a hin-drance than a help

Legro and Moravcsik repeatedly suggest that ldquomultiparadigmatic synthesesrdquo areldquodesirablerdquo and ldquoeven imperativerdquo In their view however the ldquounavoidable rststep is to develop a set of well-constructed rst-order theoriesrdquo with ldquoa rigorousunderlying structurerdquo Ignoring this necessity ldquoonly muddies the waters encouragingad hoc argumentation and obscuring the results of empirical testsrdquo (p 50) Yet wasanybody ever a coherent ldquoparadigmatistrdquo (ie a scholar adhering ldquormlyrdquo [p 18] to axed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic core assumptions) Al-though Legro and Moravcsik do not raise this question explicitly their (more or less

4 See Arthur A Stein ldquoGovernments Economic Interdependence and International Coopera-tionrdquo in Philip E Tetlock Jo L Husbands Robert Jervis Paul C Stern and Charles Tilly edsBehavior Society and International Conict Vol 3 (New York Oxford University Press 1993)pp 241ndash324 The rst version of Moravcsikrsquos paper was ldquoLiberalism and International RelationsTheoryrdquo Working Paper No 92ndash6 (Cambridge Mass Center for International Affairs HarvardUniversity 1992)5 Alasdair MacIntyre ldquoEpistemological Crises Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Sci-encerdquo Monist Vol 60 (1977) p 461 Regarding the invention of research programs as intellectualprojects that start with ldquoadumbrationrdquo see Imre Lakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology ofScientic Research Programmesrdquo in Lakatos and Alan Musgrave eds Criticism and the Growth ofKnowledge (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1970) p 1326 Some of the core concepts that Legro and Moravcsik use (eg ldquoparadigmrdquo) are associated withThomas S Kuhn whose position on science Legro and Moravcsik obviously do not share SeeKuhn The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1962) ImreLakatos one of the most vocal critics of Kuhn in the 1960s is another source referred to often SeeLakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology of Scientic Research Programmesrdquo pp 91ndash196However even though Legro and Moravcsik appear to sympathize with the philosophy of scienceespoused by the latter they hesitate to identify themselves clearly as Lakatosians

Correspondence 171

implicit) answer seems to be ldquoyesrdquo Yet their list of these model paradigmatists isshort as far as realism is concerned and shorter still for liberal institutionalist andepistemic paradigmatists (cf pp 18ndash19 10ndash12) Moreover the list of real realists in-cludes names that many scholars might have difculty including on the same list ofscholars who adhere rmly to the coherent and distinct set of realist core assumptionspreferred by Legro and Moravcsik Kenneth Waltz Robert Gilpin Robert Keohane andRobert Powell just to mention four do not show up together on many other lists ofnondegenerating realists7 This listing may appear even more odd when scholars whoprefer to associate themselves with realism such as Stephen Van Evera are explicitlyexcluded and listed instead among both the liberal and the epistemic paradigmatists(p 34) Following Legro and Moravcsik this may mean either that Van Evera holdsincoherent views well beyond his minimalist realism or that liberalism and epistemi-cism are not as ldquodistinctrdquo as suggested8 So Legro and Moravcsik appear to be sayingthat scholars such as Keohane and Van Evera misperceive how their beliefs truly cohereKeohane calls himself a ldquoneoliberal institutionalistrdquo but he is actually a realist inimportant respects Van Evera considers himself a ldquorealistrdquo when in fact he holds beliefsthat clearly identify him as a liberal epistemicist

The Keohane and Van Evera examples show that coherence is not as clear-cut aconcept as Legro and Moravcsik imply9 It is thus self-defeating to ask for a ldquoproperparadigmatic denitionrdquo (p 47) Doing so only encourages the myth that paradigma-tism (ie the adherence to a rigorously dened set of coherent and distinct coreassumptions of a paradigm) is possible and desirable Many pre- and post-Lakatosianworks in philosophy in general and in the philosophy of science in particular stressthat such a call is unwise because much of the experience about the ways human beings(scholars included) operate linguistically and cognitively speaks against it The best thatall human beings can hope for is understanding based on an acknowledgment thatthere will always (and necessarily) be different ways of looking at things10

7 There is one unspecied qualication as to the placement of Robert Keohane who the authorssay is ldquonot a realistldquo in rdquoother sensesrdquo except for the role that he attributes to hegemons ininternational economic institutions (p 19) In an exchange of e-mails Moravcsik stated that I ammisconstruing their position in not sufciently distinguishing between ldquopeoplerdquo and ldquoargumentsrdquoThis may indeed be the case even though I think that their presentation may justly be describedas inviting such misperceptions (cf pp 18ndash45) Yet even if I grant this distinction my main criticismapplies There is no independent paradigmatic agency that states authoritatively and intersubjec-tively what can properly be called a ldquorealistrdquo (or a ldquoliberalrdquo) ldquoargumentrdquo8 Cf also Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriouslyrdquo in which Van Evera is listed once amongldquocommercial liberalsrdquo (p 530 n 59) and once among ldquorepublican liberalsrdquo (p 532 n 69) Read inconjunction with Legro and Moravcsikrsquos International Security article ldquoTaking Preferences Seri-ouslyrdquo provides further evidence of the difculty of attaching ldquoproperrdquo labels to ldquocoherentrdquo andldquodistinctrdquo paradigms In the International Organization article for instance Moravcsik appears toput Legro in the ldquoconstructivistrdquo camp (p 539 n 99) The International Security article howeverdistinguishes between ldquoepistemic theoryrdquo (which is where Legro would now apparently alignhimself) and a sort of ldquoconstructivismrdquo (associated mainly with Alexander Wendt) which accord-ing to Legro and Moravcsik cannot be considered a ldquodiscrete international relations paradigm ortheoryrdquo (p 54 n 134)9 For a philosophical discussion of the concept of coherence see Elijah Millgram ldquoCoherenceThe Price of the Ticketrdquo Journal of Philosophy Vol 97 No 2 (February 2000) pp 82ndash9310 This view can be called ldquoWittgensteinianrdquo or ldquopragmatistrdquo (in the way Richard Rorty describespragmatism) For an interpretation of Wittgenstein along these lines see Judith Genova Wittgen-

International Security 251 172

Moravcsik and Legro therefore are right in calling for ldquosynthesisrdquo They are wronghowever in considering the development of ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo an ldquounavoidablerst steprdquo in such an undertaking (p 50) Their ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo cannot be ldquorigor-ouslyrdquo separated from the underlying ldquoworld picturesrdquo that Ludwig Wittgensteinsays form ldquothe inherited background against which [I] distinguish between true andfalserdquo11 But beliefs such as these world pictures are ldquofoundationsrdquo different fromLegro and Moravcsikrsquos ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo They form ldquothe rock bottom of my[Wittgensteinrsquos] convictionsrdquo because ldquoone might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole houserdquo12 This conception of mutual support of differ-ent layers of belief is at odds with a conception of science that hopes for ldquopoten-tially falsifying theoretical counterclaimsrdquo (p 12) Moreover it is supported by thekind of science that Legro and Moravcsik seem to appreciate Philip Tetlock forinstance has recently ldquotestedrdquo cognitive theories about judgmental biases and errorsamong international relations experts His results revealed that these experts are nodifferent from nonexperts in their judgmental biases They too ldquoneutralize disso-nant data and preserve condence in their prior assessments by resorting to a com-plex battery of belief-system defenses that epistemologically defensible or notmakes learning from history a slow process and defections from theoretical camps ararityrdquo13

Paradigmatism therefore shows the wrong way if one is seriously interested inadvancing understanding of international politics This is not to say however thatparadigmatic pragmatism may not be useful Few (if any) scholars would deny thatdifferent ldquoschools of thoughtrdquo or ldquotheoretical traditionsrdquo can be usefully distinguishedin international relations Yet what scholars tend to share whether they call themselvesldquorealistsrdquo or ldquoliberalsrdquo is not an ldquounchanging setrdquo of identical core assumptions butwhat Wittgenstein calls ldquofamily resemblancesrdquomdashcharacteristics that reveal they some-how belong together But these characteristics do not allow for an analytical denitionof what might constitute some ldquorealistrdquo or ldquoliberalrdquo essence in terms of necessary andsufcient conditions It merely implies that individuality and similarity can be thought ofas useful surrogates for generality and identity

In the criticism of others there is of course the widespread practice that RichardRorty has called ldquohermeneutics with polemical intentrdquo14 Yet the deconstructivist im-pulse alluded to here obviously is not what Legro and Moravcsik have in mind Insteadtheir vocabulary (eg ldquonontrivialrdquo and ldquoexplicitrdquo [p 7] ldquounambiguousrdquo ldquorigorousrdquoand ldquoconsistentlyrdquo [p 9] and ldquotesting theories and hypotheses drawn from different

stein A Way of Seeing (New York Routledge 1995) A succinct summary of Rortyrsquos pragmatistepistemology is provided in Rorty ldquoNon-Reductive Physicalismrdquo in Rorty Objectivity Relativismand Truth Philosophical Papers Vol 1 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1991) pp 113ndash12511 Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty eds GEM Anscombe and GH von Wright (OxfordBlackwell 1969) sect 94 (emphasis added)12 Ibid sect 24813 Philip E Tetlock ldquoTheory-Driven Reasoning about Plausible Pasts and Probable Futures inWorld Politics Are We Prisoners of Our Preconceptionsrdquo American Journal of Political Science Vol43 No 2 (April 1999) pp 335ndash366 at p 33514 Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1979) p 365

Correspondence 173

implicit) answer seems to be ldquoyesrdquo Yet their list of these model paradigmatists isshort as far as realism is concerned and shorter still for liberal institutionalist andepistemic paradigmatists (cf pp 18ndash19 10ndash12) Moreover the list of real realists in-cludes names that many scholars might have difculty including on the same list ofscholars who adhere rmly to the coherent and distinct set of realist core assumptionspreferred by Legro and Moravcsik Kenneth Waltz Robert Gilpin Robert Keohane andRobert Powell just to mention four do not show up together on many other lists ofnondegenerating realists7 This listing may appear even more odd when scholars whoprefer to associate themselves with realism such as Stephen Van Evera are explicitlyexcluded and listed instead among both the liberal and the epistemic paradigmatists(p 34) Following Legro and Moravcsik this may mean either that Van Evera holdsincoherent views well beyond his minimalist realism or that liberalism and epistemi-cism are not as ldquodistinctrdquo as suggested8 So Legro and Moravcsik appear to be sayingthat scholars such as Keohane and Van Evera misperceive how their beliefs truly cohereKeohane calls himself a ldquoneoliberal institutionalistrdquo but he is actually a realist inimportant respects Van Evera considers himself a ldquorealistrdquo when in fact he holds beliefsthat clearly identify him as a liberal epistemicist

The Keohane and Van Evera examples show that coherence is not as clear-cut aconcept as Legro and Moravcsik imply9 It is thus self-defeating to ask for a ldquoproperparadigmatic denitionrdquo (p 47) Doing so only encourages the myth that paradigma-tism (ie the adherence to a rigorously dened set of coherent and distinct coreassumptions of a paradigm) is possible and desirable Many pre- and post-Lakatosianworks in philosophy in general and in the philosophy of science in particular stressthat such a call is unwise because much of the experience about the ways human beings(scholars included) operate linguistically and cognitively speaks against it The best thatall human beings can hope for is understanding based on an acknowledgment thatthere will always (and necessarily) be different ways of looking at things10

7 There is one unspecied qualication as to the placement of Robert Keohane who the authorssay is ldquonot a realistldquo in rdquoother sensesrdquo except for the role that he attributes to hegemons ininternational economic institutions (p 19) In an exchange of e-mails Moravcsik stated that I ammisconstruing their position in not sufciently distinguishing between ldquopeoplerdquo and ldquoargumentsrdquoThis may indeed be the case even though I think that their presentation may justly be describedas inviting such misperceptions (cf pp 18ndash45) Yet even if I grant this distinction my main criticismapplies There is no independent paradigmatic agency that states authoritatively and intersubjec-tively what can properly be called a ldquorealistrdquo (or a ldquoliberalrdquo) ldquoargumentrdquo8 Cf also Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriouslyrdquo in which Van Evera is listed once amongldquocommercial liberalsrdquo (p 530 n 59) and once among ldquorepublican liberalsrdquo (p 532 n 69) Read inconjunction with Legro and Moravcsikrsquos International Security article ldquoTaking Preferences Seri-ouslyrdquo provides further evidence of the difculty of attaching ldquoproperrdquo labels to ldquocoherentrdquo andldquodistinctrdquo paradigms In the International Organization article for instance Moravcsik appears toput Legro in the ldquoconstructivistrdquo camp (p 539 n 99) The International Security article howeverdistinguishes between ldquoepistemic theoryrdquo (which is where Legro would now apparently alignhimself) and a sort of ldquoconstructivismrdquo (associated mainly with Alexander Wendt) which accord-ing to Legro and Moravcsik cannot be considered a ldquodiscrete international relations paradigm ortheoryrdquo (p 54 n 134)9 For a philosophical discussion of the concept of coherence see Elijah Millgram ldquoCoherenceThe Price of the Ticketrdquo Journal of Philosophy Vol 97 No 2 (February 2000) pp 82ndash9310 This view can be called ldquoWittgensteinianrdquo or ldquopragmatistrdquo (in the way Richard Rorty describespragmatism) For an interpretation of Wittgenstein along these lines see Judith Genova Wittgen-

International Security 251 172

Moravcsik and Legro therefore are right in calling for ldquosynthesisrdquo They are wronghowever in considering the development of ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo an ldquounavoidablerst steprdquo in such an undertaking (p 50) Their ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo cannot be ldquorigor-ouslyrdquo separated from the underlying ldquoworld picturesrdquo that Ludwig Wittgensteinsays form ldquothe inherited background against which [I] distinguish between true andfalserdquo11 But beliefs such as these world pictures are ldquofoundationsrdquo different fromLegro and Moravcsikrsquos ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo They form ldquothe rock bottom of my[Wittgensteinrsquos] convictionsrdquo because ldquoone might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole houserdquo12 This conception of mutual support of differ-ent layers of belief is at odds with a conception of science that hopes for ldquopoten-tially falsifying theoretical counterclaimsrdquo (p 12) Moreover it is supported by thekind of science that Legro and Moravcsik seem to appreciate Philip Tetlock forinstance has recently ldquotestedrdquo cognitive theories about judgmental biases and errorsamong international relations experts His results revealed that these experts are nodifferent from nonexperts in their judgmental biases They too ldquoneutralize disso-nant data and preserve condence in their prior assessments by resorting to a com-plex battery of belief-system defenses that epistemologically defensible or notmakes learning from history a slow process and defections from theoretical camps ararityrdquo13

Paradigmatism therefore shows the wrong way if one is seriously interested inadvancing understanding of international politics This is not to say however thatparadigmatic pragmatism may not be useful Few (if any) scholars would deny thatdifferent ldquoschools of thoughtrdquo or ldquotheoretical traditionsrdquo can be usefully distinguishedin international relations Yet what scholars tend to share whether they call themselvesldquorealistsrdquo or ldquoliberalsrdquo is not an ldquounchanging setrdquo of identical core assumptions butwhat Wittgenstein calls ldquofamily resemblancesrdquomdashcharacteristics that reveal they some-how belong together But these characteristics do not allow for an analytical denitionof what might constitute some ldquorealistrdquo or ldquoliberalrdquo essence in terms of necessary andsufcient conditions It merely implies that individuality and similarity can be thought ofas useful surrogates for generality and identity

In the criticism of others there is of course the widespread practice that RichardRorty has called ldquohermeneutics with polemical intentrdquo14 Yet the deconstructivist im-pulse alluded to here obviously is not what Legro and Moravcsik have in mind Insteadtheir vocabulary (eg ldquonontrivialrdquo and ldquoexplicitrdquo [p 7] ldquounambiguousrdquo ldquorigorousrdquoand ldquoconsistentlyrdquo [p 9] and ldquotesting theories and hypotheses drawn from different

stein A Way of Seeing (New York Routledge 1995) A succinct summary of Rortyrsquos pragmatistepistemology is provided in Rorty ldquoNon-Reductive Physicalismrdquo in Rorty Objectivity Relativismand Truth Philosophical Papers Vol 1 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1991) pp 113ndash12511 Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty eds GEM Anscombe and GH von Wright (OxfordBlackwell 1969) sect 94 (emphasis added)12 Ibid sect 24813 Philip E Tetlock ldquoTheory-Driven Reasoning about Plausible Pasts and Probable Futures inWorld Politics Are We Prisoners of Our Preconceptionsrdquo American Journal of Political Science Vol43 No 2 (April 1999) pp 335ndash366 at p 33514 Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1979) p 365

Correspondence 173

Moravcsik and Legro therefore are right in calling for ldquosynthesisrdquo They are wronghowever in considering the development of ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo an ldquounavoidablerst steprdquo in such an undertaking (p 50) Their ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo cannot be ldquorigor-ouslyrdquo separated from the underlying ldquoworld picturesrdquo that Ludwig Wittgensteinsays form ldquothe inherited background against which [I] distinguish between true andfalserdquo11 But beliefs such as these world pictures are ldquofoundationsrdquo different fromLegro and Moravcsikrsquos ldquorst-order theoriesrdquo They form ldquothe rock bottom of my[Wittgensteinrsquos] convictionsrdquo because ldquoone might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole houserdquo12 This conception of mutual support of differ-ent layers of belief is at odds with a conception of science that hopes for ldquopoten-tially falsifying theoretical counterclaimsrdquo (p 12) Moreover it is supported by thekind of science that Legro and Moravcsik seem to appreciate Philip Tetlock forinstance has recently ldquotestedrdquo cognitive theories about judgmental biases and errorsamong international relations experts His results revealed that these experts are nodifferent from nonexperts in their judgmental biases They too ldquoneutralize disso-nant data and preserve condence in their prior assessments by resorting to a com-plex battery of belief-system defenses that epistemologically defensible or notmakes learning from history a slow process and defections from theoretical camps ararityrdquo13

Paradigmatism therefore shows the wrong way if one is seriously interested inadvancing understanding of international politics This is not to say however thatparadigmatic pragmatism may not be useful Few (if any) scholars would deny thatdifferent ldquoschools of thoughtrdquo or ldquotheoretical traditionsrdquo can be usefully distinguishedin international relations Yet what scholars tend to share whether they call themselvesldquorealistsrdquo or ldquoliberalsrdquo is not an ldquounchanging setrdquo of identical core assumptions butwhat Wittgenstein calls ldquofamily resemblancesrdquomdashcharacteristics that reveal they some-how belong together But these characteristics do not allow for an analytical denitionof what might constitute some ldquorealistrdquo or ldquoliberalrdquo essence in terms of necessary andsufcient conditions It merely implies that individuality and similarity can be thought ofas useful surrogates for generality and identity

In the criticism of others there is of course the widespread practice that RichardRorty has called ldquohermeneutics with polemical intentrdquo14 Yet the deconstructivist im-pulse alluded to here obviously is not what Legro and Moravcsik have in mind Insteadtheir vocabulary (eg ldquonontrivialrdquo and ldquoexplicitrdquo [p 7] ldquounambiguousrdquo ldquorigorousrdquoand ldquoconsistentlyrdquo [p 9] and ldquotesting theories and hypotheses drawn from different

stein A Way of Seeing (New York Routledge 1995) A succinct summary of Rortyrsquos pragmatistepistemology is provided in Rorty ldquoNon-Reductive Physicalismrdquo in Rorty Objectivity Relativismand Truth Philosophical Papers Vol 1 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1991) pp 113ndash12511 Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty eds GEM Anscombe and GH von Wright (OxfordBlackwell 1969) sect 94 (emphasis added)12 Ibid sect 24813 Philip E Tetlock ldquoTheory-Driven Reasoning about Plausible Pasts and Probable Futures inWorld Politics Are We Prisoners of Our Preconceptionsrdquo American Journal of Political Science Vol43 No 2 (April 1999) pp 335ndash366 at p 33514 Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1979) p 365

Correspondence 173

paradigmsrdquo and ldquoempirical progress or degeneration of a paradigmrdquo [p 10]) suggeststhat they consider themselves part of a larger scientic enterprise associated with ImreLakatosrsquos ldquosophisticated falsicationismrdquo Paradigmatic pragmatism would bid good-bye to such falsicationist ambitionsmdashbe they ldquonaiumlverdquo or ldquosophisticatedrdquomdashbecause theydivert too much intellectual energy from the enterprise of increasing our understandingAs Joseph Nye once said ldquo[Liberal theory] should not be seen as an antithesis to Realistanalysis but as a supplement to it International relations theory is unnecessarilyimpoverished by exclusivist claims and by forgetting its history Both Realist and Liberaltheories have something to offer Our current predicament is too serious to ignoreeitherrdquo15 We would do well to heed this advice with regard to all paradigmatic ldquoismsrdquo

mdashGunther HellmannFrankfurt Germany

To the Editors (Randall L Schweller writes)

In ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik attempt todiscredit the realist credentials of virtually every living self-styled realist under the ageof fty1 Defensive and neoclassical realists are charged with the crime of subsumingantirealist arguments in their midrange theories thereby muddying the sacred andpreviously pristine realpolitik waters In fact recent realist research has been faithfulto the paradigmrsquos core principles precisely because it has not advanced unicausalexplanations of complex phenomena In so doing it has restored the theoretical richnessof realism that was abandoned by structural realism The moral of the story is (and Imean this in a purely professional not personal way) Never let your enemies dene you

Legro and Moravcsik mischaracterize realism as a paradigm based solely on theobjective material capabilities of states To be sure power and conict are essentialfeatures of realism as Legro and Moravcsik assert Realists posit a world of constantcompetition among groups for scarce social and material resources2 This is not tosuggest however that realists deny the possibility (indeed existence) of internationalcooperation politics by denition must contain elements of both common and conict-ing interests collaboration and discord Rather the realm of international politics ischaracterized by persistent distributional conicts that are ldquoclosely linked to power asboth an instrument and a stakerdquo3 Consequently the most basic realist proposition isthat states must recognize and respond to shifts in their relative power things often goterribly wrong when leaders ignore power realities

15 Joseph S Nye Jr Peace in Parts Integration and Conict in Regional Organization 2d ed(Lanham Md University Press of America 1987) p ix

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Further references appear in parentheses in the text2 See Randall L Schweller and William C Wohlforth ldquoPower Test Evaluating Realism in Re-sponse to the End of the Cold Warrdquo Security Studies Vol 9 No 3 (Spring 2000) pp 69ndash733 Robert Jervis ldquoRealism Neoliberalism and Cooperation Understanding the Debaterdquo Interna-tional Security Vol 24 No 1 (Summer 1999) pp 44ndash45

International Security 251 174

These realist premises however do not preclude the introduction of additionaltheoretical elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity do-mestic politics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assump-tions and causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions andmicrofoundations4 Moreover realism is not strictly a structural-systemic theory it maybe applied to any specied domain and conict group5

Legro and Moravcsik will have none of this however Their monocausal formulationof the paradigm would effectively prevent realists from saying anything (or anythingworthwhile) about for instance international institutions domestic politics differencesin the nature of hegemonic rules and regimes ethnic conict variation in state interestsand intentions and perceptions of power More important none of these elements couldbe used in the construction of realist theories Indeed if Legro and Moravcsik had theirway realists would have to cede the entire subject of international cooperation to liberalinstitutionalist and epistemic theorists6 Thus although Legro and Moravcsikrsquos formu-lation of realism may ldquofacilitate more decisive tests among existing theoriesrdquo (p 46)realism as they have designed it would surely lose every one of them Moreover toembrace Legro and Moravcsikrsquos ldquomaterial capabilitiesrdquo version of realism one mustdismiss the entire canon of realist theory prior to the appearance of Kenneth WaltzrsquosTheory of International Politics and most realist research that has followed it7

Of course no one should be surprised that Legro and Moravcsikmdashwho may becounted among realismrsquos most vociferous detractorsmdashwould like to put realism in atheoretical straitjacket Like foxes guarding the chicken coop Legro and Moravcsikwant us to believe that they are sincerely troubled by the current ldquoill healthrdquo of realismIronically the true enemies of realism are as they see it not liberals constructivists orMarxists but rather theoretically confused andor extremely devious contemporaryrealists who have appropriated (outright stolen) other paradigmsrsquo core assumptionsand have cleverly managed to trick everyone into believing that they are distinctlyrealist arguments Is it possible that Legro and Moravcsik the most unlikely of realistsaviors have come to praise and reinvigorate realism not to bury it One does nothave to be a skeptical realist to dismiss this as a credible motive

To restore realismrsquos lost paradigmatic distinctness and coherence Legro and Morav-csik carve up international relations theory into four paradigms realist institutionalistliberal and epistemic8 They then boldly lay out the core assumptions of each paradigmwhich they use as unbending yardsticks of paradigmatic faithfulness The veracity oftheir central claim that contemporary realism suffers from incoherent and contradictoryexpansion rests entirely on their specication of these core theoretical assumptions and

4 For an insightful discussion of neorealismrsquos missing microfoundation see Markus FischerldquoMachiavellirsquos Theory of Foreign Politicsrdquo in Benjamin Frankel ed Roots of Realism (LondonFrank Cass 1996) pp 272ndash2795 See for instance Barry R Posen ldquoThe Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conictrdquo in Michael EBrown ed Ethnic Conict and International Security (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press1993) pp 103ndash1246 Regarding international cooperation Legro and Moravcsik write ldquoExplaining integrative as-pects [of interstate bargaining] requires a nonrealist theoryrdquo (p 15)7 Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1979)8 Marxism widely considered one of the three pillars of international relations theory along withliberalism and realism is no longer a paradigmatic landlord but instead a mere tenant

Correspondence 175

elements and more important on their view of what is and is not consistent with thesepremises Are their views on each paradigmrsquos ldquohard corerdquo so compelling that we cannally expect consensus to be reached within the discipline on these abstruse Laka-tosian matters I think not

Consider their description of the liberal paradigm as ldquotheories and explanations thatstress the role of exogenous variation in underlying state preferences embedded indomestic and transnational state-society relationsrdquo (p 10) Although novel this concep-tion bears little resemblance to the conventional view of international liberalism Tra-ditional liberal themes such as Wilsonian collective security international integrationthe voice of reason historical progress universal ethics and the importance of ideasand ldquoright thinkingrdquo leaders have been unceremoniously excised from the paradigmThis is no mere oversight I have witnessed rsthand the rage of contemporary liberalswhen a realist utters the phrase ldquoliberal idealismrdquo This primitive liberal beast we aretold has long been extinct Liberals have evolved into ldquopreference variationrdquo theoristsIdeas and idealism are now the exclusive property of the epistemic paradigm Likewiseinternational institutions of the kind that Woodrow Wilson and Cordell Hull champi-oned and that contemporary liberal thinkers such as Robert Keohane explored (Doesanyone remember neoliberal institutionalism) are no longer elements of liberalismthey now belong to the institutionalists It was all a case of mistaken identity Orperhaps we are witnessing the theoretical equivalent of Wilsonian self-determinationInstitutions and ideas have exited the liberal paradigm to stake out their own paradig-matic space Whatever the case may be I am unpersuaded by such semantic sleight ofhand Such recasted liberalism begs the question Is anybody still a liberal (or willingto admit it)

Whereas liberals are permitted to evolve into ldquopreferencerdquo theorists realists must notstray from their traditional and coherent ldquopowerrdquo roots and this is precisely the crimeof neoclassical realists9 Yet even a cursory reading of the extant realist literature showsthat precisely the opposite is true Consider the issue of the variation in state interests(preferences or goals) which Legro and Moravcsik believe I have smuggled into therealist paradigm They insist that I have misread Hans Morgenthaursquos discussion ofimperialist and status quo policies which they claim refers to statesrsquo strategies and notto their interests or preferences True Morgenthau says that state interests are denedin terms of power (whatever that means) but he obviously does not believe that theinterests intentions and goals of states remain xed and uniform On the various aimsof states he writes ldquoA nation whose foreign policy tends toward keeping power andnot toward changing the distribution of power in its favor pursues a policy of the statusquo A nation whose foreign policy aims at acquiring more power than it actually hasthrough a reversal of existing power relationsmdashwhose foreign policy in other wordsseeks a favorable change in power statusmdashpursues a policy of imperialismrdquo10

9 Curiously however they conclude with a plea for ldquomultiparadigmatic synthesisrdquo which theytrumpet as an improvement over ldquomonocausal maniardquo and ldquounicausal paradigmsrdquo What is acontemporary realist to do We are ridiculed either for incorporating distinct elements of otherparadigms or should we become reformed sinners for embracing monocausal mania10 Hans J Morgenthau Politics among Nations The Struggle for Power and Peace 4th ed (New YorkAlfred A Knopf 1967) pp 36ndash37

International Security 251 176

Using almost identical language I dened status quo states as ldquosecurity maximizers(as opposed to power maximizers) whose goal is to preserve the resources they alreadycontrol Revisionist states by contrast seek to undermine the established order forthe purpose of increasing their power and prestige in the system that is they seek toincrease not just to maintain their resourcesrdquo I also pointed out that ldquorevisionist statesneed not be predatory powers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquoAs for the sources of these preferences I simply reiterated the arguments by RobertGilpin and Morgenthau model realists according to Legro and Moravcsik that statusquo powers ldquoare usually states that won the last major-power war and created a newworld order in accordance with their interests by redistributing territory and prestigerdquoIn contrast revisionist powers are typically those states that lost the last major-powerwar andor have increased their power after the international order was establishedand the benets were allocated11 Unlike Wilsonian liberals I make no moral judgmentsabout the two types of states There are no good and bad states only ldquohavesrdquo and ldquohavenotsrdquo There is absolutely no difference between Morgenthaursquos discussion of status quoand imperialist policies and my discussion of status quo and revisionist states Mor-genthau refers to these different national goals as policies whereas I call them ldquostateinterestsrdquo This nonissue is the entire foundation of Legro and Moravcsikrsquos claim thatI am not a realist

By focusing on Morgenthaursquos use of the terms ldquoimperialistrdquo and ldquostatus quordquo Legroand Moravcsik neglect to point out that Henry Kissinger also referred to revolutionaryand status quo states EH Carr distinguished satised from dissatised powers ArnoldWolfers divided states into status quo and revisionist categories and Raymond Aronsaw eternal opposition between the forces of revision and conservation Are we tobelieve that all these realists shared Morgenthaursquos conceptualization of these terms asstrategies and not interests (or goals) of states12

There is a good reason why realists have traditionally distinguished between satisedstates that merely seek to keep their power and preserve the established order anddissatised states that desire to increase their power and change the status quo Theassumption that states seek power tells us little or nothing about state preferences aimsinterests or motivations Because power is useful for achieving any national goal wecannot make accurate foreign policy predictions without specifying the purposes ofpower13 Power can be used to threaten others attack them take things from them andprevent them from doing things they would otherwise do (eg US containmentpolicy) Conversely power can be used to make others more secure and to enable themto reach goals that they otherwise could not achieve (eg the Marshall Plan) Legroand Moravcsik insist that realists must ignore these differences in the aims of powerAdherence to this stricture however would render the concept of power virtuallymeaningless and entirely useless for constructing theories of foreign policy14

11 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) pp 24ndash2512 For specic references see ibid p 215 n 2013 This is not entirely the same as saying that we must specify the scope and domain of powerthat is power to do what with respect to whom See David A Baldwin Economic Statecraft(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985) pp 18ndash2414 In contrast theories of international politics do not require specication of the purposes of power

Correspondence 177

Although Legro and Moravcsikrsquos arguments have some worth they are largelyunpersuasive and ultimately irrelevant Even if everything they say is correct and itsurely is not what is their point If self-described realists are producing theoreticallyinteresting and important research does it matter what we label it If contemporaryrealism is really repackaged liberalism Marxism and institutionalism what has pre-vented members of these theoretical perspectives from generating similar works Whyhave faux realists beaten them to the punch Does anyone really care

mdashRandall L SchwellerColumbus Ohio

To the Editors (Jeffrey W Taliaferro writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsikrsquos article ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo seeks tocontribute to ongoing debates over how international relations theorists should evalu-ate different research traditions and theories1 They contend that contemporary realismldquonow encompasses nearly the entire universe of international relations theory (includ-ing current liberal epistemic and institutionalist theories) and excludes only a fewintellectual scarecrows (such as outright irrationality widespread self-abnegating altru-ism slavish commitment to ideology complete harmony of state interests or a worldstate)rdquo (p 7) Only a return to a narrow and rigorous formulation of realism they arguecan reestablish the distinction between it and other paradigms However Legro andMoravcsikrsquos analysis does not allow realism to ldquoassume its rightful role in the study ofworld politicsrdquo (p 55) Instead it champions a return to what Stephen Van Evera callsldquoType IIrdquo realism a body of theory barren of testable hypotheses on the causes of warand the conditions for peace2 In addition Legro and Moravcsik fundamentally misstatethe role of elite perceptions and domestic constraints in neoclassical realismmdasha body ofrealist foreign policy theory3

Drawing upon Imre Lakatosrsquos methodology of scientic research programs (MSRPs)Legro and Moravcsik submit that a conceptually productive research program shouldhave at least two related attributes4 First the research programrsquos core assumptionsshould be logically coherent (p 9) Second the core assumptions must distinguish it

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Subsequent references and citations from this article appear inparentheses in the text2 Stephen Van Evera Causes of War Power and the Roots of Conict (Ithaca NY Cornell UniversityPress 1999) pp 9ndash113 For the distinction between theories of foreign policy and theories of international politics seeFareed Zakaria From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1999) pp 14ndash18 and Colin Elman ldquoHorses for Courses Why NotNeorealist Theories of Foreign Policyrdquo Security Studies Vol 6 No 1 (Autumn 1996) pp 12ndash174 Imre Lakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology of Scientic Research Programsrdquo in Lakatosand Alan Musgrave eds Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1970) pp 131ndash132 See also Donald Moon ldquoThe Logic of Political Inquiry A Synthesis ofOpposed Perspectivesrdquo in Fred I Greenstein and Nelson W Polsby eds Handbook of PoliticalScience Vol 1 (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1975) pp 131ndash228

International Security 251 178

elements and more important on their view of what is and is not consistent with thesepremises Are their views on each paradigmrsquos ldquohard corerdquo so compelling that we cannally expect consensus to be reached within the discipline on these abstruse Laka-tosian matters I think not

Consider their description of the liberal paradigm as ldquotheories and explanations thatstress the role of exogenous variation in underlying state preferences embedded indomestic and transnational state-society relationsrdquo (p 10) Although novel this concep-tion bears little resemblance to the conventional view of international liberalism Tra-ditional liberal themes such as Wilsonian collective security international integrationthe voice of reason historical progress universal ethics and the importance of ideasand ldquoright thinkingrdquo leaders have been unceremoniously excised from the paradigmThis is no mere oversight I have witnessed rsthand the rage of contemporary liberalswhen a realist utters the phrase ldquoliberal idealismrdquo This primitive liberal beast we aretold has long been extinct Liberals have evolved into ldquopreference variationrdquo theoristsIdeas and idealism are now the exclusive property of the epistemic paradigm Likewiseinternational institutions of the kind that Woodrow Wilson and Cordell Hull champi-oned and that contemporary liberal thinkers such as Robert Keohane explored (Doesanyone remember neoliberal institutionalism) are no longer elements of liberalismthey now belong to the institutionalists It was all a case of mistaken identity Orperhaps we are witnessing the theoretical equivalent of Wilsonian self-determinationInstitutions and ideas have exited the liberal paradigm to stake out their own paradig-matic space Whatever the case may be I am unpersuaded by such semantic sleight ofhand Such recasted liberalism begs the question Is anybody still a liberal (or willingto admit it)

Whereas liberals are permitted to evolve into ldquopreferencerdquo theorists realists must notstray from their traditional and coherent ldquopowerrdquo roots and this is precisely the crimeof neoclassical realists9 Yet even a cursory reading of the extant realist literature showsthat precisely the opposite is true Consider the issue of the variation in state interests(preferences or goals) which Legro and Moravcsik believe I have smuggled into therealist paradigm They insist that I have misread Hans Morgenthaursquos discussion ofimperialist and status quo policies which they claim refers to statesrsquo strategies and notto their interests or preferences True Morgenthau says that state interests are denedin terms of power (whatever that means) but he obviously does not believe that theinterests intentions and goals of states remain xed and uniform On the various aimsof states he writes ldquoA nation whose foreign policy tends toward keeping power andnot toward changing the distribution of power in its favor pursues a policy of the statusquo A nation whose foreign policy aims at acquiring more power than it actually hasthrough a reversal of existing power relationsmdashwhose foreign policy in other wordsseeks a favorable change in power statusmdashpursues a policy of imperialismrdquo10

9 Curiously however they conclude with a plea for ldquomultiparadigmatic synthesisrdquo which theytrumpet as an improvement over ldquomonocausal maniardquo and ldquounicausal paradigmsrdquo What is acontemporary realist to do We are ridiculed either for incorporating distinct elements of otherparadigms or should we become reformed sinners for embracing monocausal mania10 Hans J Morgenthau Politics among Nations The Struggle for Power and Peace 4th ed (New YorkAlfred A Knopf 1967) pp 36ndash37

International Security 251 176

Using almost identical language I dened status quo states as ldquosecurity maximizers(as opposed to power maximizers) whose goal is to preserve the resources they alreadycontrol Revisionist states by contrast seek to undermine the established order forthe purpose of increasing their power and prestige in the system that is they seek toincrease not just to maintain their resourcesrdquo I also pointed out that ldquorevisionist statesneed not be predatory powers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquoAs for the sources of these preferences I simply reiterated the arguments by RobertGilpin and Morgenthau model realists according to Legro and Moravcsik that statusquo powers ldquoare usually states that won the last major-power war and created a newworld order in accordance with their interests by redistributing territory and prestigerdquoIn contrast revisionist powers are typically those states that lost the last major-powerwar andor have increased their power after the international order was establishedand the benets were allocated11 Unlike Wilsonian liberals I make no moral judgmentsabout the two types of states There are no good and bad states only ldquohavesrdquo and ldquohavenotsrdquo There is absolutely no difference between Morgenthaursquos discussion of status quoand imperialist policies and my discussion of status quo and revisionist states Mor-genthau refers to these different national goals as policies whereas I call them ldquostateinterestsrdquo This nonissue is the entire foundation of Legro and Moravcsikrsquos claim thatI am not a realist

By focusing on Morgenthaursquos use of the terms ldquoimperialistrdquo and ldquostatus quordquo Legroand Moravcsik neglect to point out that Henry Kissinger also referred to revolutionaryand status quo states EH Carr distinguished satised from dissatised powers ArnoldWolfers divided states into status quo and revisionist categories and Raymond Aronsaw eternal opposition between the forces of revision and conservation Are we tobelieve that all these realists shared Morgenthaursquos conceptualization of these terms asstrategies and not interests (or goals) of states12

There is a good reason why realists have traditionally distinguished between satisedstates that merely seek to keep their power and preserve the established order anddissatised states that desire to increase their power and change the status quo Theassumption that states seek power tells us little or nothing about state preferences aimsinterests or motivations Because power is useful for achieving any national goal wecannot make accurate foreign policy predictions without specifying the purposes ofpower13 Power can be used to threaten others attack them take things from them andprevent them from doing things they would otherwise do (eg US containmentpolicy) Conversely power can be used to make others more secure and to enable themto reach goals that they otherwise could not achieve (eg the Marshall Plan) Legroand Moravcsik insist that realists must ignore these differences in the aims of powerAdherence to this stricture however would render the concept of power virtuallymeaningless and entirely useless for constructing theories of foreign policy14

11 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) pp 24ndash2512 For specic references see ibid p 215 n 2013 This is not entirely the same as saying that we must specify the scope and domain of powerthat is power to do what with respect to whom See David A Baldwin Economic Statecraft(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985) pp 18ndash2414 In contrast theories of international politics do not require specication of the purposes of power

Correspondence 177

Although Legro and Moravcsikrsquos arguments have some worth they are largelyunpersuasive and ultimately irrelevant Even if everything they say is correct and itsurely is not what is their point If self-described realists are producing theoreticallyinteresting and important research does it matter what we label it If contemporaryrealism is really repackaged liberalism Marxism and institutionalism what has pre-vented members of these theoretical perspectives from generating similar works Whyhave faux realists beaten them to the punch Does anyone really care

mdashRandall L SchwellerColumbus Ohio

To the Editors (Jeffrey W Taliaferro writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsikrsquos article ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo seeks tocontribute to ongoing debates over how international relations theorists should evalu-ate different research traditions and theories1 They contend that contemporary realismldquonow encompasses nearly the entire universe of international relations theory (includ-ing current liberal epistemic and institutionalist theories) and excludes only a fewintellectual scarecrows (such as outright irrationality widespread self-abnegating altru-ism slavish commitment to ideology complete harmony of state interests or a worldstate)rdquo (p 7) Only a return to a narrow and rigorous formulation of realism they arguecan reestablish the distinction between it and other paradigms However Legro andMoravcsikrsquos analysis does not allow realism to ldquoassume its rightful role in the study ofworld politicsrdquo (p 55) Instead it champions a return to what Stephen Van Evera callsldquoType IIrdquo realism a body of theory barren of testable hypotheses on the causes of warand the conditions for peace2 In addition Legro and Moravcsik fundamentally misstatethe role of elite perceptions and domestic constraints in neoclassical realismmdasha body ofrealist foreign policy theory3

Drawing upon Imre Lakatosrsquos methodology of scientic research programs (MSRPs)Legro and Moravcsik submit that a conceptually productive research program shouldhave at least two related attributes4 First the research programrsquos core assumptionsshould be logically coherent (p 9) Second the core assumptions must distinguish it

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Subsequent references and citations from this article appear inparentheses in the text2 Stephen Van Evera Causes of War Power and the Roots of Conict (Ithaca NY Cornell UniversityPress 1999) pp 9ndash113 For the distinction between theories of foreign policy and theories of international politics seeFareed Zakaria From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1999) pp 14ndash18 and Colin Elman ldquoHorses for Courses Why NotNeorealist Theories of Foreign Policyrdquo Security Studies Vol 6 No 1 (Autumn 1996) pp 12ndash174 Imre Lakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology of Scientic Research Programsrdquo in Lakatosand Alan Musgrave eds Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1970) pp 131ndash132 See also Donald Moon ldquoThe Logic of Political Inquiry A Synthesis ofOpposed Perspectivesrdquo in Fred I Greenstein and Nelson W Polsby eds Handbook of PoliticalScience Vol 1 (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1975) pp 131ndash228

International Security 251 178

Using almost identical language I dened status quo states as ldquosecurity maximizers(as opposed to power maximizers) whose goal is to preserve the resources they alreadycontrol Revisionist states by contrast seek to undermine the established order forthe purpose of increasing their power and prestige in the system that is they seek toincrease not just to maintain their resourcesrdquo I also pointed out that ldquorevisionist statesneed not be predatory powers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquoAs for the sources of these preferences I simply reiterated the arguments by RobertGilpin and Morgenthau model realists according to Legro and Moravcsik that statusquo powers ldquoare usually states that won the last major-power war and created a newworld order in accordance with their interests by redistributing territory and prestigerdquoIn contrast revisionist powers are typically those states that lost the last major-powerwar andor have increased their power after the international order was establishedand the benets were allocated11 Unlike Wilsonian liberals I make no moral judgmentsabout the two types of states There are no good and bad states only ldquohavesrdquo and ldquohavenotsrdquo There is absolutely no difference between Morgenthaursquos discussion of status quoand imperialist policies and my discussion of status quo and revisionist states Mor-genthau refers to these different national goals as policies whereas I call them ldquostateinterestsrdquo This nonissue is the entire foundation of Legro and Moravcsikrsquos claim thatI am not a realist

By focusing on Morgenthaursquos use of the terms ldquoimperialistrdquo and ldquostatus quordquo Legroand Moravcsik neglect to point out that Henry Kissinger also referred to revolutionaryand status quo states EH Carr distinguished satised from dissatised powers ArnoldWolfers divided states into status quo and revisionist categories and Raymond Aronsaw eternal opposition between the forces of revision and conservation Are we tobelieve that all these realists shared Morgenthaursquos conceptualization of these terms asstrategies and not interests (or goals) of states12

There is a good reason why realists have traditionally distinguished between satisedstates that merely seek to keep their power and preserve the established order anddissatised states that desire to increase their power and change the status quo Theassumption that states seek power tells us little or nothing about state preferences aimsinterests or motivations Because power is useful for achieving any national goal wecannot make accurate foreign policy predictions without specifying the purposes ofpower13 Power can be used to threaten others attack them take things from them andprevent them from doing things they would otherwise do (eg US containmentpolicy) Conversely power can be used to make others more secure and to enable themto reach goals that they otherwise could not achieve (eg the Marshall Plan) Legroand Moravcsik insist that realists must ignore these differences in the aims of powerAdherence to this stricture however would render the concept of power virtuallymeaningless and entirely useless for constructing theories of foreign policy14

11 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) pp 24ndash2512 For specic references see ibid p 215 n 2013 This is not entirely the same as saying that we must specify the scope and domain of powerthat is power to do what with respect to whom See David A Baldwin Economic Statecraft(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985) pp 18ndash2414 In contrast theories of international politics do not require specication of the purposes of power

Correspondence 177

Although Legro and Moravcsikrsquos arguments have some worth they are largelyunpersuasive and ultimately irrelevant Even if everything they say is correct and itsurely is not what is their point If self-described realists are producing theoreticallyinteresting and important research does it matter what we label it If contemporaryrealism is really repackaged liberalism Marxism and institutionalism what has pre-vented members of these theoretical perspectives from generating similar works Whyhave faux realists beaten them to the punch Does anyone really care

mdashRandall L SchwellerColumbus Ohio

To the Editors (Jeffrey W Taliaferro writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsikrsquos article ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo seeks tocontribute to ongoing debates over how international relations theorists should evalu-ate different research traditions and theories1 They contend that contemporary realismldquonow encompasses nearly the entire universe of international relations theory (includ-ing current liberal epistemic and institutionalist theories) and excludes only a fewintellectual scarecrows (such as outright irrationality widespread self-abnegating altru-ism slavish commitment to ideology complete harmony of state interests or a worldstate)rdquo (p 7) Only a return to a narrow and rigorous formulation of realism they arguecan reestablish the distinction between it and other paradigms However Legro andMoravcsikrsquos analysis does not allow realism to ldquoassume its rightful role in the study ofworld politicsrdquo (p 55) Instead it champions a return to what Stephen Van Evera callsldquoType IIrdquo realism a body of theory barren of testable hypotheses on the causes of warand the conditions for peace2 In addition Legro and Moravcsik fundamentally misstatethe role of elite perceptions and domestic constraints in neoclassical realismmdasha body ofrealist foreign policy theory3

Drawing upon Imre Lakatosrsquos methodology of scientic research programs (MSRPs)Legro and Moravcsik submit that a conceptually productive research program shouldhave at least two related attributes4 First the research programrsquos core assumptionsshould be logically coherent (p 9) Second the core assumptions must distinguish it

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Subsequent references and citations from this article appear inparentheses in the text2 Stephen Van Evera Causes of War Power and the Roots of Conict (Ithaca NY Cornell UniversityPress 1999) pp 9ndash113 For the distinction between theories of foreign policy and theories of international politics seeFareed Zakaria From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1999) pp 14ndash18 and Colin Elman ldquoHorses for Courses Why NotNeorealist Theories of Foreign Policyrdquo Security Studies Vol 6 No 1 (Autumn 1996) pp 12ndash174 Imre Lakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology of Scientic Research Programsrdquo in Lakatosand Alan Musgrave eds Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1970) pp 131ndash132 See also Donald Moon ldquoThe Logic of Political Inquiry A Synthesis ofOpposed Perspectivesrdquo in Fred I Greenstein and Nelson W Polsby eds Handbook of PoliticalScience Vol 1 (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1975) pp 131ndash228

International Security 251 178

Although Legro and Moravcsikrsquos arguments have some worth they are largelyunpersuasive and ultimately irrelevant Even if everything they say is correct and itsurely is not what is their point If self-described realists are producing theoreticallyinteresting and important research does it matter what we label it If contemporaryrealism is really repackaged liberalism Marxism and institutionalism what has pre-vented members of these theoretical perspectives from generating similar works Whyhave faux realists beaten them to the punch Does anyone really care

mdashRandall L SchwellerColumbus Ohio

To the Editors (Jeffrey W Taliaferro writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsikrsquos article ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo seeks tocontribute to ongoing debates over how international relations theorists should evalu-ate different research traditions and theories1 They contend that contemporary realismldquonow encompasses nearly the entire universe of international relations theory (includ-ing current liberal epistemic and institutionalist theories) and excludes only a fewintellectual scarecrows (such as outright irrationality widespread self-abnegating altru-ism slavish commitment to ideology complete harmony of state interests or a worldstate)rdquo (p 7) Only a return to a narrow and rigorous formulation of realism they arguecan reestablish the distinction between it and other paradigms However Legro andMoravcsikrsquos analysis does not allow realism to ldquoassume its rightful role in the study ofworld politicsrdquo (p 55) Instead it champions a return to what Stephen Van Evera callsldquoType IIrdquo realism a body of theory barren of testable hypotheses on the causes of warand the conditions for peace2 In addition Legro and Moravcsik fundamentally misstatethe role of elite perceptions and domestic constraints in neoclassical realismmdasha body ofrealist foreign policy theory3

Drawing upon Imre Lakatosrsquos methodology of scientic research programs (MSRPs)Legro and Moravcsik submit that a conceptually productive research program shouldhave at least two related attributes4 First the research programrsquos core assumptionsshould be logically coherent (p 9) Second the core assumptions must distinguish it

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Subsequent references and citations from this article appear inparentheses in the text2 Stephen Van Evera Causes of War Power and the Roots of Conict (Ithaca NY Cornell UniversityPress 1999) pp 9ndash113 For the distinction between theories of foreign policy and theories of international politics seeFareed Zakaria From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1999) pp 14ndash18 and Colin Elman ldquoHorses for Courses Why NotNeorealist Theories of Foreign Policyrdquo Security Studies Vol 6 No 1 (Autumn 1996) pp 12ndash174 Imre Lakatos ldquoFalsication and the Methodology of Scientic Research Programsrdquo in Lakatosand Alan Musgrave eds Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1970) pp 131ndash132 See also Donald Moon ldquoThe Logic of Political Inquiry A Synthesis ofOpposed Perspectivesrdquo in Fred I Greenstein and Nelson W Polsby eds Handbook of PoliticalScience Vol 1 (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1975) pp 131ndash228

International Security 251 178

from alternative programs ldquoOnly in this way can we speak meaningfully of testingtheories and hypotheses against one another or about the empirical progress ordegeneration of a paradigm over timerdquo (p 10) Legro and Moravcsik divide the inter-national relations literature into four ldquoparadigmsrdquo or families of theories realismliberalism institutionalism and a so-called epistemic paradigm5 The rst three areldquorationalistrdquo because they assume xed and exogenous preference formation andbounded rationality The so-called epistemic paradigm is not rationalist because itstresses ldquoexogenous variation in the shared beliefs that structure means-ends calcula-tions and affect perceptions of the strategic environmentrdquo (p 11)

Legro and Moravcsikrsquos typology has at least four problems First their chargesagainst contemporary realism contradict their criteria for conceptually productive para-digms On the one hand Legro and Moravcsik fault Jack Snyder Randall SchwellerFareed Zakaria and other contemporary realists for allegedly appealing to the intellec-tual history of realism to justify an examination of unit-level variables They writeldquoEfforts to dene realism by reference to intellectual history in general and classicalrealism in particular are deeply awed The coherence of theories is not dened bytheir intellectual history but by their underlying assumptions and causal mechanismsrdquo(p 31) Yet Legro and Moravcsik base their entire critique of neoclassical realism on itssupposed deviance from the realist canon represented by the writings of EH CarrHans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz

Second Legro and Moravcsik err in claiming more coherence for their four para-digms than actually exists Realism institutionalism liberalism and the so-calledepistemic paradigm do not meet Lakatosrsquos criteria for coherent and distinct researchprograms Scholars disagree about the hard core and the negative heuristic of variousresearch programs Even those sympathetic to Lakatosrsquos MSRP disagree about thedenition of novel predictions the scope of the protective belt of auxiliary hypothesesand what constitutes a degenerative or a progressive problem-shift6 Consider forexample the common notion that rationality is a core assumption of both classicalrealism and contemporary realism

As others note rationality is not a core assumption of classical realism7 For exampleMorgenthaursquos six principles of political realism adopt rational reconstruction from theviewpoint of statesmen to understand foreign policy Nevertheless Morgenthau denes

5 Legro and Moravcsik base their critique of realism on Lakatosrsquos MSRP Like other internationalrelations theorists however they use the terms ldquoparadigmrdquo and ldquoresearch programrdquo interchange-ably Lakatos specically rejected Thomas Kuhnrsquos notion of dominant paradigms in favor of creatinga different approach to appraising scientic theories For concise discussions of how Lakatosrsquosviews contrast with Kuhnrsquos see Terrence Bell ldquoFrom Paradigms to Research Programs Toward aPost-Kuhnian Political Sciencerdquo American Journal of Political Science Vol 20 No 1 (February 1976)pp 151ndash177 and Paul Diesing How Does Social Science Work Reections on Practice (PittsburghUniversity of Pittsburgh Press 1991) p 346 For a defense of Lakatosrsquos MSRP and a criticism of its frequent misuse in the internationalrelations literature see Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman ldquoAppraising Progress in Interna-tional Relations Theory How Not to Be Lakatos Intolerantrdquo paper presented at the annual meetingof the American Political Science Association Atlanta Georgia September 3ndash6 19997 Miles Kahler ldquoRationality in International Relationsrdquo International Organization Vol 52 No 4(Autumn 1998) pp 919ndash941 and Ashley Tellis ldquoPolitical Realism The Long March to ScienticTheoryrdquo in Benjamin Frankel ed Roots of Realism (London Frank Cass 1996) pp 3ndash105

Correspondence 179

power as a ldquopsychological relationrdquo between weak and strong actors owing from ldquotheexpectation of benets the fear of disadvantage [and] the respect or love for men orinstitutionsrdquo8 Morgenthau categorically rejects the possibility of a deductive methodof rational inquiry Other classical realists share his ambivalence toward rationalism9

Similarly the microfoundations of neorealism are ambiguous Waltz claims that hisbalance-of-power theory ldquorequires no assumption of rationalityrdquo and that internationalstructure conditions state behavior through competition and socialization10 Otherneorealist theories do not assume uniformly conictual and xed state preferences overoutcomes Robert Gilpinrsquos hegemonic theory assumes that states are rational but it doesnot assume that states are strict utility maximizers with a xed and hierarchical set ofpreferences11 Robert Jervisrsquos conception of the security dilemma while drawing heavilyupon the prisonersrsquo dilemma and stag hunt also posits an important role for elitemisperceptions and miscalculation12 Instead of classifying realism as a ldquorationalistrdquoresearch program one might characterize the relationship between rational models andrealism as follows Different scholars embed realist assumptions in different theories ofsocial action to generate testable hypotheses Many realists borrow heavily from micro-economics and game theory but others incorporate insights from social and cognitivepsychology organization theory and history

Third Legro and Moravcsikrsquos four-part division of international relations theoryignores the often ambiguous dividing lines between particular research traditions Forexample they see neoliberal institutionalism as both distinct from and a theoreticalcompetitor of liberalism (p 10) This ignores the intellectual history of the eld and thecore liberal assumptions embedded in neoliberal institutionalism Institutionalism isclearly a third-image variant of liberalism despite valiant efforts by its proponents toportray it as a ldquomodicationrdquo of neorealism or as occupying a middle ground betweenliberalism and realism13 As Richard Little notes ldquo[Robert] Keohanersquos claim that theneo-liberal institutionalists are simply rening and strengthening neo-realist thought

8 Hans J Morgenthau Politics among Nations The Struggle for Power and Peace 3d ed (New YorkWW Norton 1964) p 279 Hans J Morgenthau Scientic Man versus Power Politics (Chicago University of Chicago Press1946) p 71 See also John Herz Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago University ofChicago Press 1951) p 16 and Arnold Wolfers ldquoThe Determinants of Foreign Policyrdquo in Wolfersed Discord and Collaboration Essays on International Politics (Baltimore Md Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Press 1962) pp 42ndash4510 Kenneth N Waltz ldquoReections on Theory of International Politics A Response to My Criticsrdquoin Robert O Keohane ed Neorealism and Its Critics (New York Columbia University Press 1986)p 118 and Waltz Theory of International Politics (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1979) p 12711 Robert Gilpin War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1981)pp 18ndash2512 Robert Jervis ldquoCooperation under the Security Dilemmardquo World Politics Vol 30 No 2 (October1978) pp 167ndash214 especially pp 181ndash183 and Charles L Glaser ldquoThe Security Dilemma Revis-itedrdquo World Politics Vol 50 No 1 (October 1997) pp 171ndash201 at pp 182ndash18313 See Robert O Keohane ldquoThe Demand for International Regimesrdquo International OrganizationVol 36 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 141ndash162 and Keohane After Hegemony Cooperation and Discord inthe World Political Economy (New York Columbia University Press 1984) chap 1 More recentlyneoliberal institutionalists have gone to great lengths to distance this body of theory from bothliberalism and realism See Celeste A Wallander Moral Friends Best Enemies German-Russian

International Security 251 180

fails to acknowledge however just how far removed he is from the realist perspectiveBy assuming that [international] regimes can be treated as collective goods in whicheveryone has a stake Keohane is working from an essentially liberal posturerdquo14

Finally what Legro and Moravcsik term the ldquoepistemic paradigmrdquo is not really acoherent research program at all Rather it is a residual category into which the authorsplace anything and everything that does not neatly fall into the other three paradigmsStandard operating procedures group misperceptions transnational networks culturaltheories and various critical theories (constructivism postmodernism feminism andneo-Marxism) do not share the same core assumptions These theories posit differ-ent causal mechanisms and different units of analysis They make widely divergentpredictions

Contemporary realism provides a set of baseline expectations about internationalpolitics from which analysts can examine unexpected outcomes This distinguishes itfrom competing schools of international relations theory Realist core assumptions tellscholars what to expect in broad terms International outcomes will match the relativedistribution of material resources As Aaron Friedberg notes however ldquoStructuralconsiderations provide a useful point from which to begin analysis of internationalpolitics rather than a place at which to end it Even if one acknowledges that structuresexist and are important there is still the question of how statesmen grasp their contoursfrom the inside so to speak of whether and if so how they are able to determine wherethey stand in terms of relative national power at any given point in historyrdquo15

Legro and Moravcsik fault neoclassical realists for positing an explicit role for eliteperceptions of material capabilities They assert ldquoWhile contemporary realists continueto speak of international lsquopowerrsquo their midrange explanations of state behavior havesubtly shifted the core emphasis from variation in objective power to variation in beliefsand perceptions of powerrdquo (pp 34ndash35 emphasis in original) It is worth noting that eliteperceptions and belief systems in neoclassical realism are intervening variables Beliefshave no autonomous inuence on statesrsquo foreign policies let alone on internationaloutcomes Rather elite perceptions serve as a conduit through which structural variablestranslate into foreign policy16

Legro and Moravcsik downplay the methodological reasons for examining elitedecisionmaking Any theory of foreign policy however must specify the mechanismthrough which explanatory variables translate into policy Often this involves a detailedexamination of how leaders actually perceived the current distribution of power as

Cooperation after the Cold War (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1999) chap 2 WallanderHelga Haftendorn and Robert O Keohane ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Wallander Haftendorn and Keo-hane eds Imperfect Unions Security Institutions over Time and Space (Oxford Oxford UniversityPress 1999)14 Richard Little ldquoThe Growing Relevance of Pluralismrdquo in Steve Smith Kenneth Booth andMarysia Zalewski eds International Theory Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge Cambridge Univer-sity Press 1996) p 8215 Aaron Friedberg The Weary Titan Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895ndash1905(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1988) p 816 Gideon Rose ldquoNeoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policyrdquo World Politics Vol 51 No1 (October 1998) pp 151ndash154

Correspondence 181

well as power trends William Wohlforthrsquos response to critics of realismrsquos ability toexplain the peaceful end of the Cold War is equally applicable here ldquoCritics of realismcontrast a simplistic view of the relationship between [relative] decline and policychange against a nuanced and complex view of the relationship between their favoredexplanatory variable and policy changerdquo17

In addition Legro and Moravcsik fault the inclusion of domestic variables in severalneoclassical realist theories They claim that such theories ldquoinevitably import consid-eration of exogenous variation in the societal and cultural sources of state preferencesthereby sacricing both the coherence of realism and appropriating midrange theoriesof interstate conict based on liberal assumptionsrdquo (p 23) All variants of contemporaryrealism hold that structural variablesmdashanarchy the relative distribution of power andpower trendsmdashare the primary determinants of foreign policy and international out-comes Realists do not claim that domestic factors exert no inuence whatsoeverRealists however do reject the notion that a statersquos domestic politics and ideology arethe primary determinants of its foreign policy

Legro and Moravcsik ask ldquoIs anybody still a realistrdquo According to their criteriathere are only a few ldquotruerdquo realists in the eld Scholars such as Van Evera WohlforthSnyder Zakaria and Schweller are really liberals with an identity crisis Has Legro andMoravcsikrsquos evaluation of realism really advanced the dialogue between realists andproponents of other research traditions No it has not Such broad-based externalattacks on research traditions rarely stimulate dialogue Critics of realism will alwaysnd fault with realist scholarship As Gilpin observes ldquoNo one loves a political real-istrdquo18

Does Legro and Moravcsikrsquos reformulation of realism generate testable hypotheseson the causes of war and the conditions for peace The answer is no Any behaviorshort of unilateral and unrestrained belligerence would be inconsistent with this ldquore-formulatedrdquo realism Finally will the authorsrsquo critique of contemporary realism andreformulation of its core assumptions stimulate innovative research Again the answeris no How many younger scholars would want to work in such a narrow and barrenresearch tradition Legro and Moravcsikrsquos article will no doubt be reprinted in variousedited volumes and occupy a prominent place on graduate seminar syllabi for years tocome Nonetheless let us be clear Legro and Moravcsik do not seek to revitalizerealism they seek to discredit it

mdashJeffrey W TaliaferroMedford Massachusetts

To the Editors (William C Wohlforth writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik have produced a learned rumination on contem-porary international relations scholarship and the role of realism within it that warrants

17 William C Wohlforth ldquoRealism and the End of the Cold Warrdquo International Security Vol 19No 3 (Winter 199495) pp 108ndash10918 Robert G Gilpin ldquoNo One Loves a Political Realistrdquo Security Studies Vol 5 No 3 (Spring1996) pp 3ndash4

International Security 251 182

well as power trends William Wohlforthrsquos response to critics of realismrsquos ability toexplain the peaceful end of the Cold War is equally applicable here ldquoCritics of realismcontrast a simplistic view of the relationship between [relative] decline and policychange against a nuanced and complex view of the relationship between their favoredexplanatory variable and policy changerdquo17

In addition Legro and Moravcsik fault the inclusion of domestic variables in severalneoclassical realist theories They claim that such theories ldquoinevitably import consid-eration of exogenous variation in the societal and cultural sources of state preferencesthereby sacricing both the coherence of realism and appropriating midrange theoriesof interstate conict based on liberal assumptionsrdquo (p 23) All variants of contemporaryrealism hold that structural variablesmdashanarchy the relative distribution of power andpower trendsmdashare the primary determinants of foreign policy and international out-comes Realists do not claim that domestic factors exert no inuence whatsoeverRealists however do reject the notion that a statersquos domestic politics and ideology arethe primary determinants of its foreign policy

Legro and Moravcsik ask ldquoIs anybody still a realistrdquo According to their criteriathere are only a few ldquotruerdquo realists in the eld Scholars such as Van Evera WohlforthSnyder Zakaria and Schweller are really liberals with an identity crisis Has Legro andMoravcsikrsquos evaluation of realism really advanced the dialogue between realists andproponents of other research traditions No it has not Such broad-based externalattacks on research traditions rarely stimulate dialogue Critics of realism will alwaysnd fault with realist scholarship As Gilpin observes ldquoNo one loves a political real-istrdquo18

Does Legro and Moravcsikrsquos reformulation of realism generate testable hypotheseson the causes of war and the conditions for peace The answer is no Any behaviorshort of unilateral and unrestrained belligerence would be inconsistent with this ldquore-formulatedrdquo realism Finally will the authorsrsquo critique of contemporary realism andreformulation of its core assumptions stimulate innovative research Again the answeris no How many younger scholars would want to work in such a narrow and barrenresearch tradition Legro and Moravcsikrsquos article will no doubt be reprinted in variousedited volumes and occupy a prominent place on graduate seminar syllabi for years tocome Nonetheless let us be clear Legro and Moravcsik do not seek to revitalizerealism they seek to discredit it

mdashJeffrey W TaliaferroMedford Massachusetts

To the Editors (William C Wohlforth writes)

Jeffrey Legro and Andrew Moravcsik have produced a learned rumination on contem-porary international relations scholarship and the role of realism within it that warrants

17 William C Wohlforth ldquoRealism and the End of the Cold Warrdquo International Security Vol 19No 3 (Winter 199495) pp 108ndash10918 Robert G Gilpin ldquoNo One Loves a Political Realistrdquo Security Studies Vol 5 No 3 (Spring1996) pp 3ndash4

International Security 251 182

discussion1 Their enterprise is so wide-ranging however that a full response wouldoccupy too much space in this journal for a debate that is in the nal analysis far fromthe immediate concerns of most readers Although I am among those whose workthey tar with the brush of ldquotheoretical degenerationrdquo I shall conne myself to twocomments

First Legro and Moravcsik face a contradiction between the twin purposes of theirarticle setting forth their particular vision for the eld of international relations andassessing a large body of scholarship As a consequence it is hard to see where theadvocacy ends and the detached appraisal begins They introduce a novel division ofthe eld into four theoretical paradigmsmdashrealism liberalism ldquoinstitutionalismrdquo andldquoepistemic theoryrdquomdashthat they simultaneously try to treat as ldquoestablishedrdquo (p 7) Estab-lished by whom When Their article is the rst place I encountered ldquoepistemismrdquo asan independent and encompassing theoretical paradigm The liberal paradigm theydiscuss appears to be liberalism as reformulated recently by Moravcsik2 And theirrendering of realism would exclude most scholarly works currently viewed asexemplars of that intellectual school For example in Theory of International PoliticsKenneth Waltz explicitly contradicts each of the three assumptions Legro and Morav-csik propose as denitively realist3 He does not assume xed conictual preferences(ldquothe aims of states may be endlessly varied they may range from the ambition toconquer the world to the desire merely to be left alonerdquo) He explicitly asserts thathis ldquotheory requires no assumptions of rationalityrdquo because structure affects statebehavior primarily through the processes of socialization and competition (Waltzrsquos isa structural theory after all not a theory of bargaining as Legro and Moravcsikclaim) And he does not equate power with material resources making a point ofincluding ldquopolitical stability and competencerdquo as basic elements in his denition of statecapabilities4

Legro and Moravcsik have recast the entire eld of international relations inventedtwo paradigms completely reformulated two others either expelled Waltzrsquos theoryfrom the realist corpus or else rewritten it and rendered a stern judgment of ldquodegen-erationrdquo on a large body of scholarship This is ambitious to put it mildly It would bemuch easier to respond to their assessment of recent realist scholarship if they hadoffered some standard of appraisal other than their particular proposal for reorganizingthe eld And it would be much easier to assess their proposed relabeling of paradigmsif they had presented it separately and made the case for it on its merits As it standsthe proposal is unclear on many matters including the status of theories that do notreduce world politics to ldquoa bargaining problemrdquo (p 51) the role of any theory positinga relationship between systemic material structure and actorsrsquo preferences and beliefsand the place of any factor that is systemic and material but not a ldquoresourcerdquo (egtechnology)

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravscik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55 Subsequent references to this article appear parenthetically in thetext2 Andrew Moravscik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously A Liberal Theory of International PoliticsrdquoInternational Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997) pp 513ndash5533 Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics (Reading Mass Addison-Wesley 1979)4 Ibid pp 91 118 131

Correspondence 183

To have been found to be ldquodegeneratingrdquo in terms of this particular vision of oureld is not especially troubling But neither is it particularly enlightening which bringsme to my second comment Legro and Moravcsik missed the essential research designand basic ndings of my work on the distribution of power and the Cold War Theydiscuss as my ldquotheoretical innovationrdquo the assertion that ldquoperceptions [of power] areexogenous variablesrdquo (p 39) In fact the work of mine they mention is concernedprimarily with examining national net assessment as a process that causally connectschanges in the distribution of capabilities with changed behavior My research did notnd that assessments of power were exogenous to the distribution of material capabili-ties On the contrary decisionmakersrsquo assessments appear to capture real power rela-tionships far better than the crude measures commonly used by political scientistsIndeed it is Legro and Moravcsikrsquos ldquotwo-steprdquo approach to research that insists on arigid divide between actorsrsquo beliefs and the distribution of power I never wrote thatldquoobjective power shifts lsquocan account neither for the Cold War nor its sudden endrsquordquo(p 39) Instead I showed that standard measures of the distribution of capabilities areinaccurate indicators of both national assessments and our best estimate of the realpower balance

Legro and Moravcsik are right that the absence of good measures of power is a majorproblem for many realist theories They might have added that comparable measure-ment problems confront theories of preferences or beliefs Legro and Moravcsik writeas if there is some well-established generalizable and predictive ldquoepistemicrdquo theorythat can explain the national assessments and associated state behavior that I found inmy research better than the admittedly weak realist theories I did employ Had suchwork existed and had I artfully subsumed it under a ldquorealistrdquo rubric Legro andMoravcsik would have something to write about But they mention no examples ofsuch a theory for the simple reason that no such theory existed when I researched theCold War and none exists now

One can defend the necessity of debating the merits of real schools of internationalrelations scholarship It is hard to see what value would be added by a new debateover imaginary ones

mdashWilliam C WohlforthWashington DC

Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik Respond

In ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo we examine some of the subtlest and most sophisticatedscholarly works in contemporary international relations each of which is explicitlypresented by its author as an application of ldquorealistrdquo theory1 Our point is simple Thecategory of ldquorealistrdquo theory has been broadened to the point that it signies little morethan a generic commitment to rational state behavior in anarchymdashthat is ldquominimal

1 Jeffrey W Legro and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo International Security Vol24 No 2 (Fall 1999) pp 5ndash55

International Security 251 184

realismrdquo Recent realist writings whether concrete empirical studies or abstract para-digmatic restatements jettison distinctive assumptions about power capabilitiesconict and sometimes even rationality Nothing distinguishes the recent innovationsin realist theory from the liberal studies of Michael Doyle and Bruce Russett theinstitutionalist approaches of Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin or epistemic analysesby Iain Johnston and Peter Katzenstein If we can no longer say what causal processesthe realist paradigm excludes we cannot say what it includes In sum realists confronta fundamental tension Dene realism broadly and one subsumes all rationalist theo-ries dene it precisely and one excludes much recent scholarship We conclude thatthe latter a reformulation is in order To demonstrate that a more distinctive paradig-matic foundation is feasible we set forth one potential set of core assumptions thoughthere have been and will be others ldquoLet the discussion beginrdquo so we thought

The response has been puzzling Defenders of realism are numerous vocal anduncompromising yet none of the ve rejoinders printed heremdashand none of manyunpublished communications including those connected with a round table at the 1998annual conference of the American Political Science Associationmdashdirectly challengesour central claim about the lack of theoretical limits on the concrete midrange expla-nations that recent realists advance To be sure there are myriad complaints about ournarrow paradigmatic standard our disrespect for intellectual history and our faultyphilosophy of sciencemdashnot to mention our purported intradisciplinary imperialism Weshall consider these below2 Far more striking however is what is missing

Readers might have expected at a minimum that a serious defense against ourcriticism would contain at least two critical points (1) a demonstration that recentmidrange empirical propositions advanced by self-styled realists do differ systemati-cally from midrange causal claims based on other paradigmsmdashfor example claimsabout the centrality of the democratic peace the mixed motives generated by economicinterdependence the consequences of credible commitments to international institu-tions and the systematic inuence of collective beliefs and (2) a proposal of alternativecore realist assumptions that do unambiguously distinguish realist empirical argumentsfrom the liberal institutionalist and epistemic alternatives These two points seem thevery least required of any successful defense of contemporary realism

Yet our ve respondents hardly touch on either issue Instead they quickly concedethat theoretical innovation in contemporary realism rests on concrete causal mecha-nisms largely identical to those of liberal institutionalist and epistemic theories andthat doing so violates the core assumptions of our reformulation of realismmdasha refor-mulation to which they offer no alternative Indeed insofar as our critics comment (ifonly in passing) on these concrete matters it is generally to support our positionLeaving aside minor quibbles and the instructive but idiosyncratic exception of GuntherHellmann all ve largely agree that paradigms are dened in terms of core assumptions

2 Our core claim is not that the paradigmatic borders of realism are slightly misplaced but ratherthat contemporary realism subsumes nearly all rationalist arguments about world politics Wetherefore do not address complaints about the precise borders or denition of alternative para-digms Discussion of the narrow denitional issues of the alternatives however interesting to ourcritics and ourselves does not affect the basic thrust of our argument

Correspondence 185

and that the three assumptions we set forthmdashrationality scarcity and the causal impor-tance of the distribution of material capabilitiesmdashare appropriate core assumptions ofrealism3

With our central claim essentially unanswered we are tempted to stop right hereYet a puzzle remains If defenders of recent realism accept the basic thrust of ourconcrete critique why so much heat Why do critics who question the need forcoherence in the denition of theoretical paradigms so vociferously defend currentusage of the word ldquorealismrdquo What is really at stake in this debate according to them

The answer is extraordinary Despite their claim to be concerned above all withconcrete implications and practical research our ve critics mount a defense on themost abstract possible terrain namely intellectual history and philosophy of scienceAll ve criticsmdashwith the (only partial) exception of Peter Feavermdashexplicitly assert thatit does not matter if theoretical paradigms are indistinct and incoherent This leads themto pose two challenges to our critique of realism (1) Isnrsquot our paradigmatic reformula-tion of realism so narrow that it excludes nearly all international relations theoristsincluding noted ldquorealistsrdquo and (2) arenrsquot paradigms just arbitrary labels without coher-ent intellectual foundations and therefore exempt from conceptual criticism If thesequestions are answered afrmatively wouldnrsquot it therefore be better to muddle throughwith incoherent but widely accepted paradigmatic labels rather than to propose coher-ent and distinct but necessarily more restrictive core assumptions After briey re-sponding to some important if ultimately secondary concerns advanced by FeaverWilliam Wohlforth and Randall Schweller about our exegesis of specic realist workswe devote the bulk of our response to these underlying theoretical and philosophicalissues

do we misstate specific realist argumentsBoth Schweller and Wohlforth take exception to our reading of their own work and ofrealism more broadly Each argues that his work meets our standard of realism becauseany change in interests (Schweller) or perceptions (Wohlforth) ismdashcontrary to our claimin the articlemdashsimply a reection of underlying shifts in the distribution of powerSchweller asserts that he like Hans Morgenthau makes status quo or revisionistinterests endogenous to power shifts notably victory and defeat in war Yet this isdifcult to square with Schweller rsquos broad claim that ldquothe most important determinantof alignment decisions is the compatibility of political goals not imbalances of power

3 Peter Feaver stresses ldquothe distribution of powerrdquo Randall Schweller notes that ldquorealists posit aworld of constant competition among groups for scarce social and material resourcesrdquo WilliamWohlforth agrees that realist work ldquocausally connects changes in the distribution of capabilitieswith changed behaviorrdquo Jeffrey Taliaferro afrms that ldquoall variants of contemporary realism holdthat structural variablesmdashanarchy the relative distribution of power and power trendsmdashare theprimary determinants of foreign policy and international outcomesrdquo Gunther Hellmann observesthat there is substantial agreement on the premises of realism One point of apparent disagreementis that some of our critics believe that an assumption of conicting interests somehow preventsrealism from discussing cooperation Not so as we discuss in ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo pp15ndash16

International Security 251 186

or threatrdquo4 Schweller rsquos focus on interests and power would not be innovative unlessinterests were somehow independent of power As we suggest in the article moreoverSchweller neither proposes a consistent theoretical link between the outcome of warand state interests nor consistently treats variation in state interests as a function ofpower5 Wohlforth maintains that his work is realist because it is ldquoconcerned primarilywith examining national net assessment as a process that causally connects changes inthe distribution of capabilities with changed behaviorrdquo He simply seeks to add thatsubjective assessments of top decisionmakers are better measures of ldquoreal powerrdquo thanldquothe crude measures commonly used by political scientistsrdquo6 True enough as far as itgoes but this claim raises a deeper and more critical paradigmatic question Whatdrives variation in decisionmaker perceptions The reasons uncovered by Wohlforthrsquosadmirably detailed and precise research we argue have less to do with a shift inmaterial capabilities than in a number of other exogenous essentially perceptual fac-tors Still in both cases readers must be the nal judges If the variation in perceptionsand interests documented by Schweller and Wohlforth is indeed driven overwhelm-ingly by variation in the distribution of power rather than by exogenous variation inintervening domestic politics collective beliefs or institutions these two scholarsshould be exempted from our criticism The force of our general argument would notthereby be blunted7

Feaverrsquos criticism is more fundamental He maintains that we misrepresent realismby focusing on the determinants rather than on the consequences of state behavior8

4 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) p 225 In Schweller rsquos analysis (ibid pp 23 32 35 37 94) victors became revisionist (Japan and Italy)or indifferent (United States) losers worked within the system (Weimar Germany) or opposed it(Hungary and the Soviet Union) State interests seem to vary for a variety of reasons such asdissatisfaction with institutional arrangements (Italy and Japan) the emergence of new leaders indomestic politics (Weimar vs Hitler rsquos Germany) andor the implementation of an entrenchedconictual worldview (Hitler as the heir to Bismarck and Wilhelm) and idiosyncratic collectiveunderstandings such as believing that victory (and status quo maintenance) was in fact a mistake(United States) There is no clear causal relation between power and interests let alone an explicitlyrealist one In his letter Schweller remains ambiguous ldquorevisionist states need not be predatorypowers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquo6 William C Wohlforth The Elusive Balance Power and Preferences during the Cold War (Ithaca NYCornell University Press 1993) p 10 ldquoFor statesmen accurate assessments of power are impos-sible For scholars accurate assessments practically mean a correct rendering of the perceptionsthat inform decisions Of course real material balances are related to these perceptions but we donot know how closelyrdquo This logic also raises the question of how one would ever know thatperceptions reect power if power can never be accurately measuredmdashexcept by inferring back-ward from outcomes7 It remains curiously contradictory however for Schweller and Wohlforth to insist that theirarguments are consistent with our conception of realism because they both go on to assert thatour reformulation is so narrow that no interesting theory could possibly stay within its bounds8 This is not precisely correct We point out that realism has much to say about the outcomes ofbargaining We simply point out that the anticipation of these outcomes should according torealists be the primary determinant of state behavior

Correspondence 187

Feaver concedes (more readily than we would) that realist theories of state behaviorare unpersuasive because states act for a wide variety of reasons Still he insists realistsassert that if a state fails to act in an appropriate ldquorealistrdquo manner the internationalldquosystemrdquo will punish it Feaver notes that there are empirical and theoretical problemswith this argument We know that states do not consistently balance and in part forthis reason the system does not always punish states Still this ldquoconsequentialistrdquoconception of realism Feaver concludes is (or ought to be) shared by all realists andprovides a potentially fruitful research agenda for the future

We agree that a research program about variation in the force of systemic constraintsis an attractive one and we applaud Feaverrsquos positive suggestions in this direction butwe believe that clarication of what is at stake theoretically requires that realists limittheir paradigmatic claims As Feaver suggests ldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism requires aformulation like the one we put forwardmdasha ldquobaselinerdquo realist theory of behaviormdashtohelp us calculate whether states are responding ldquoappropriatelyrdquo to external circum-stances and should be punished by the system if they are not For punishment to beconsistently imposed moreover most statesmen must share this view most of the time9

They must think like realistsmdashrealists that is in our narrower ldquobaselinerdquo sense Yetldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism also leaves unexplained Feaver concedes why some stateschoose initially to transgress ldquorealistrdquo normsmdashthe primary focus of the recent realistwritings we criticize Jack Snyder rsquos Hobbesian theory of imperialism Stephen VanEverarsquos domestic explanation of aggression Schweller rsquos ldquobalance of interestsrdquo andsimilar theoretical innovations say little about why the system responds in a certainwaymdashthe core of Feaverrsquos ldquorealistrdquo theory The theoretically innovative part of theiranalysis concerns instead divergences from ldquobaselinerdquo state behavior which involvedomestic coalitions international institutions and collective beliefs The clearest andmost useful way conceptualize such work is to say that realism predicts balancingbehavior and system punishment and therefore the absence of these behaviors createsanomalies that must be explained by other theories Ultimately therefore Feaverrsquosattractive research agenda is not an extension of realist theory because regimes in hisview can be punished or not punished for a variety of reasons both realist andnonrealist Instead Feaverrsquos agenda creates an attractive opportunity for syntheticresearch involving a number of clearly dened paradigms

We turn now to the two more fundamental theoretical and philosophical issues thenarrowness of our reformulation and our lack of delity to the intellectual tradition ofrealism

is our reformulation of realism so narrow as to be meaninglessAll ve critics complain that our reformulation of realist theory is restrictive10 The basisfor this objection we have seen is not that we misstate core realist assumptions Instead

9 Realist theory also needs to explain why other states choose to use their capabilities to punishldquobad statesrdquo in some instances but not othersmdashthat is whether states balance This is a criticalquestion to which our formulation of realism offers clear predictions whereas Feaverrsquos reformu-lation does not10 The critics exaggerate Our formulation in no way blocks realism from illuminating a varietyof topics (eg international institutions ethnic conict state interests and perceptions) as Schwel-

International Security 251 188

it is that realists should not be expected to conform consistently to paradigmaticassumptions This must be true our critics maintain because our denition seems toexclude many arguments by many scholars often thought to be ldquorealistsrdquo Hellmannposes the challenge baldly ldquoWas anybody ever a coherent lsquoparadigmatistrsquo (ie a scholaradhering lsquormlyrsquo to a xed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic coreassumptions)rdquo

Our critics are correct that few international relations theorists advance argumentsdrawn from only one paradigm but this response misunderstands both our argumentand the proper role of intellectual history in social science On the rst point let us beclear We do not criticize realists for combining causal factors drawn from disparateparadigms as our critics suggest Quite the opposite we are advocates (and in ourempirical work practitioners) of theoretical synthesis We criticize realists for labelingthe resulting synthesis as a progressive conrmation or extension of realist theory ratherthan as a demonstration of its limitations or as an evaluation of the relative weight oftwo theories

There is a deeper issue here which realists ignore at their peril In our view it is notindividual theorists who are ldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo instead individual arguments areldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo11 Neither we nor any other proponent of theoretical coherenceshould be asked to demonstrate that leading theorists have been ldquopurerdquo realists oranything else The critical exegetical issue is instead whether leading theorists consis-tently distinguishmdashor more precisely can coherently distinguishmdashrealist and nonrealistarguments Of those whom our critics cite as leading examples of ldquohybridrdquo theorynearly allmdashEH Carr Raymond Aron Hans Morgenthau Kenneth Waltz Robert JervisRobert Gilpin and Robert Keohanemdashdistinguish explicitly between realist and nonrealiststrands in their own thought Only a minoritymdashHenry Kissinger for examplemdashconsis-tently fails to do so12 Our argument is that contemporary realists fall increasingly intothe latter category

Still each of the ve critics asks Shouldnrsquot scholars reject outright any reformula-tionmdashand therefore any critiquemdashthat seems to be so at odds with the received intel-lectual history of ldquorealismrdquo This raises a more fundamental question Should scholarsemploy intellectual history rather than adherence to core assumptions as the measureof paradigmatic delity We now turn to this issue

why not treat paradigms as arbitrary labels for intellectual traditionsDespite a strong attachment to the ldquorealistrdquo label and acceptance of the conception ofparadigms based on core assumptions (Hellmann again excepted) all ve of our criticshint that paradigms are just arbitrary labels without coherent intellectual foundationsand should therefore be exempt from criticism Wouldnrsquot it be better our critics suggest

ler contends nor does it limit realism to ldquoany behavior short of unilateral and unrestrainedbelligerencerdquo as Taliaferro maintains For detailed examples see Legro and Moravcsik ldquoIs Any-body Still a Realistrdquo pp 15ndash16 52ndash5311 We plead guilty to muddying the waters by taking rhetorical advantage of references toindividualsmdashfor example ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo12 We believe that Kissingerrsquos concern with legitimacy and common values are only tangentiallyconnected with realism as reviewers of his most recent book have noted at length

Correspondence 189

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

and that the three assumptions we set forthmdashrationality scarcity and the causal impor-tance of the distribution of material capabilitiesmdashare appropriate core assumptions ofrealism3

With our central claim essentially unanswered we are tempted to stop right hereYet a puzzle remains If defenders of recent realism accept the basic thrust of ourconcrete critique why so much heat Why do critics who question the need forcoherence in the denition of theoretical paradigms so vociferously defend currentusage of the word ldquorealismrdquo What is really at stake in this debate according to them

The answer is extraordinary Despite their claim to be concerned above all withconcrete implications and practical research our ve critics mount a defense on themost abstract possible terrain namely intellectual history and philosophy of scienceAll ve criticsmdashwith the (only partial) exception of Peter Feavermdashexplicitly assert thatit does not matter if theoretical paradigms are indistinct and incoherent This leads themto pose two challenges to our critique of realism (1) Isnrsquot our paradigmatic reformula-tion of realism so narrow that it excludes nearly all international relations theoristsincluding noted ldquorealistsrdquo and (2) arenrsquot paradigms just arbitrary labels without coher-ent intellectual foundations and therefore exempt from conceptual criticism If thesequestions are answered afrmatively wouldnrsquot it therefore be better to muddle throughwith incoherent but widely accepted paradigmatic labels rather than to propose coher-ent and distinct but necessarily more restrictive core assumptions After briey re-sponding to some important if ultimately secondary concerns advanced by FeaverWilliam Wohlforth and Randall Schweller about our exegesis of specic realist workswe devote the bulk of our response to these underlying theoretical and philosophicalissues

do we misstate specific realist argumentsBoth Schweller and Wohlforth take exception to our reading of their own work and ofrealism more broadly Each argues that his work meets our standard of realism becauseany change in interests (Schweller) or perceptions (Wohlforth) ismdashcontrary to our claimin the articlemdashsimply a reection of underlying shifts in the distribution of powerSchweller asserts that he like Hans Morgenthau makes status quo or revisionistinterests endogenous to power shifts notably victory and defeat in war Yet this isdifcult to square with Schweller rsquos broad claim that ldquothe most important determinantof alignment decisions is the compatibility of political goals not imbalances of power

3 Peter Feaver stresses ldquothe distribution of powerrdquo Randall Schweller notes that ldquorealists posit aworld of constant competition among groups for scarce social and material resourcesrdquo WilliamWohlforth agrees that realist work ldquocausally connects changes in the distribution of capabilitieswith changed behaviorrdquo Jeffrey Taliaferro afrms that ldquoall variants of contemporary realism holdthat structural variablesmdashanarchy the relative distribution of power and power trendsmdashare theprimary determinants of foreign policy and international outcomesrdquo Gunther Hellmann observesthat there is substantial agreement on the premises of realism One point of apparent disagreementis that some of our critics believe that an assumption of conicting interests somehow preventsrealism from discussing cooperation Not so as we discuss in ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo pp15ndash16

International Security 251 186

or threatrdquo4 Schweller rsquos focus on interests and power would not be innovative unlessinterests were somehow independent of power As we suggest in the article moreoverSchweller neither proposes a consistent theoretical link between the outcome of warand state interests nor consistently treats variation in state interests as a function ofpower5 Wohlforth maintains that his work is realist because it is ldquoconcerned primarilywith examining national net assessment as a process that causally connects changes inthe distribution of capabilities with changed behaviorrdquo He simply seeks to add thatsubjective assessments of top decisionmakers are better measures of ldquoreal powerrdquo thanldquothe crude measures commonly used by political scientistsrdquo6 True enough as far as itgoes but this claim raises a deeper and more critical paradigmatic question Whatdrives variation in decisionmaker perceptions The reasons uncovered by Wohlforthrsquosadmirably detailed and precise research we argue have less to do with a shift inmaterial capabilities than in a number of other exogenous essentially perceptual fac-tors Still in both cases readers must be the nal judges If the variation in perceptionsand interests documented by Schweller and Wohlforth is indeed driven overwhelm-ingly by variation in the distribution of power rather than by exogenous variation inintervening domestic politics collective beliefs or institutions these two scholarsshould be exempted from our criticism The force of our general argument would notthereby be blunted7

Feaverrsquos criticism is more fundamental He maintains that we misrepresent realismby focusing on the determinants rather than on the consequences of state behavior8

4 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) p 225 In Schweller rsquos analysis (ibid pp 23 32 35 37 94) victors became revisionist (Japan and Italy)or indifferent (United States) losers worked within the system (Weimar Germany) or opposed it(Hungary and the Soviet Union) State interests seem to vary for a variety of reasons such asdissatisfaction with institutional arrangements (Italy and Japan) the emergence of new leaders indomestic politics (Weimar vs Hitler rsquos Germany) andor the implementation of an entrenchedconictual worldview (Hitler as the heir to Bismarck and Wilhelm) and idiosyncratic collectiveunderstandings such as believing that victory (and status quo maintenance) was in fact a mistake(United States) There is no clear causal relation between power and interests let alone an explicitlyrealist one In his letter Schweller remains ambiguous ldquorevisionist states need not be predatorypowers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquo6 William C Wohlforth The Elusive Balance Power and Preferences during the Cold War (Ithaca NYCornell University Press 1993) p 10 ldquoFor statesmen accurate assessments of power are impos-sible For scholars accurate assessments practically mean a correct rendering of the perceptionsthat inform decisions Of course real material balances are related to these perceptions but we donot know how closelyrdquo This logic also raises the question of how one would ever know thatperceptions reect power if power can never be accurately measuredmdashexcept by inferring back-ward from outcomes7 It remains curiously contradictory however for Schweller and Wohlforth to insist that theirarguments are consistent with our conception of realism because they both go on to assert thatour reformulation is so narrow that no interesting theory could possibly stay within its bounds8 This is not precisely correct We point out that realism has much to say about the outcomes ofbargaining We simply point out that the anticipation of these outcomes should according torealists be the primary determinant of state behavior

Correspondence 187

Feaver concedes (more readily than we would) that realist theories of state behaviorare unpersuasive because states act for a wide variety of reasons Still he insists realistsassert that if a state fails to act in an appropriate ldquorealistrdquo manner the internationalldquosystemrdquo will punish it Feaver notes that there are empirical and theoretical problemswith this argument We know that states do not consistently balance and in part forthis reason the system does not always punish states Still this ldquoconsequentialistrdquoconception of realism Feaver concludes is (or ought to be) shared by all realists andprovides a potentially fruitful research agenda for the future

We agree that a research program about variation in the force of systemic constraintsis an attractive one and we applaud Feaverrsquos positive suggestions in this direction butwe believe that clarication of what is at stake theoretically requires that realists limittheir paradigmatic claims As Feaver suggests ldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism requires aformulation like the one we put forwardmdasha ldquobaselinerdquo realist theory of behaviormdashtohelp us calculate whether states are responding ldquoappropriatelyrdquo to external circum-stances and should be punished by the system if they are not For punishment to beconsistently imposed moreover most statesmen must share this view most of the time9

They must think like realistsmdashrealists that is in our narrower ldquobaselinerdquo sense Yetldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism also leaves unexplained Feaver concedes why some stateschoose initially to transgress ldquorealistrdquo normsmdashthe primary focus of the recent realistwritings we criticize Jack Snyder rsquos Hobbesian theory of imperialism Stephen VanEverarsquos domestic explanation of aggression Schweller rsquos ldquobalance of interestsrdquo andsimilar theoretical innovations say little about why the system responds in a certainwaymdashthe core of Feaverrsquos ldquorealistrdquo theory The theoretically innovative part of theiranalysis concerns instead divergences from ldquobaselinerdquo state behavior which involvedomestic coalitions international institutions and collective beliefs The clearest andmost useful way conceptualize such work is to say that realism predicts balancingbehavior and system punishment and therefore the absence of these behaviors createsanomalies that must be explained by other theories Ultimately therefore Feaverrsquosattractive research agenda is not an extension of realist theory because regimes in hisview can be punished or not punished for a variety of reasons both realist andnonrealist Instead Feaverrsquos agenda creates an attractive opportunity for syntheticresearch involving a number of clearly dened paradigms

We turn now to the two more fundamental theoretical and philosophical issues thenarrowness of our reformulation and our lack of delity to the intellectual tradition ofrealism

is our reformulation of realism so narrow as to be meaninglessAll ve critics complain that our reformulation of realist theory is restrictive10 The basisfor this objection we have seen is not that we misstate core realist assumptions Instead

9 Realist theory also needs to explain why other states choose to use their capabilities to punishldquobad statesrdquo in some instances but not othersmdashthat is whether states balance This is a criticalquestion to which our formulation of realism offers clear predictions whereas Feaverrsquos reformu-lation does not10 The critics exaggerate Our formulation in no way blocks realism from illuminating a varietyof topics (eg international institutions ethnic conict state interests and perceptions) as Schwel-

International Security 251 188

it is that realists should not be expected to conform consistently to paradigmaticassumptions This must be true our critics maintain because our denition seems toexclude many arguments by many scholars often thought to be ldquorealistsrdquo Hellmannposes the challenge baldly ldquoWas anybody ever a coherent lsquoparadigmatistrsquo (ie a scholaradhering lsquormlyrsquo to a xed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic coreassumptions)rdquo

Our critics are correct that few international relations theorists advance argumentsdrawn from only one paradigm but this response misunderstands both our argumentand the proper role of intellectual history in social science On the rst point let us beclear We do not criticize realists for combining causal factors drawn from disparateparadigms as our critics suggest Quite the opposite we are advocates (and in ourempirical work practitioners) of theoretical synthesis We criticize realists for labelingthe resulting synthesis as a progressive conrmation or extension of realist theory ratherthan as a demonstration of its limitations or as an evaluation of the relative weight oftwo theories

There is a deeper issue here which realists ignore at their peril In our view it is notindividual theorists who are ldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo instead individual arguments areldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo11 Neither we nor any other proponent of theoretical coherenceshould be asked to demonstrate that leading theorists have been ldquopurerdquo realists oranything else The critical exegetical issue is instead whether leading theorists consis-tently distinguishmdashor more precisely can coherently distinguishmdashrealist and nonrealistarguments Of those whom our critics cite as leading examples of ldquohybridrdquo theorynearly allmdashEH Carr Raymond Aron Hans Morgenthau Kenneth Waltz Robert JervisRobert Gilpin and Robert Keohanemdashdistinguish explicitly between realist and nonrealiststrands in their own thought Only a minoritymdashHenry Kissinger for examplemdashconsis-tently fails to do so12 Our argument is that contemporary realists fall increasingly intothe latter category

Still each of the ve critics asks Shouldnrsquot scholars reject outright any reformula-tionmdashand therefore any critiquemdashthat seems to be so at odds with the received intel-lectual history of ldquorealismrdquo This raises a more fundamental question Should scholarsemploy intellectual history rather than adherence to core assumptions as the measureof paradigmatic delity We now turn to this issue

why not treat paradigms as arbitrary labels for intellectual traditionsDespite a strong attachment to the ldquorealistrdquo label and acceptance of the conception ofparadigms based on core assumptions (Hellmann again excepted) all ve of our criticshint that paradigms are just arbitrary labels without coherent intellectual foundationsand should therefore be exempt from criticism Wouldnrsquot it be better our critics suggest

ler contends nor does it limit realism to ldquoany behavior short of unilateral and unrestrainedbelligerencerdquo as Taliaferro maintains For detailed examples see Legro and Moravcsik ldquoIs Any-body Still a Realistrdquo pp 15ndash16 52ndash5311 We plead guilty to muddying the waters by taking rhetorical advantage of references toindividualsmdashfor example ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo12 We believe that Kissingerrsquos concern with legitimacy and common values are only tangentiallyconnected with realism as reviewers of his most recent book have noted at length

Correspondence 189

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

or threatrdquo4 Schweller rsquos focus on interests and power would not be innovative unlessinterests were somehow independent of power As we suggest in the article moreoverSchweller neither proposes a consistent theoretical link between the outcome of warand state interests nor consistently treats variation in state interests as a function ofpower5 Wohlforth maintains that his work is realist because it is ldquoconcerned primarilywith examining national net assessment as a process that causally connects changes inthe distribution of capabilities with changed behaviorrdquo He simply seeks to add thatsubjective assessments of top decisionmakers are better measures of ldquoreal powerrdquo thanldquothe crude measures commonly used by political scientistsrdquo6 True enough as far as itgoes but this claim raises a deeper and more critical paradigmatic question Whatdrives variation in decisionmaker perceptions The reasons uncovered by Wohlforthrsquosadmirably detailed and precise research we argue have less to do with a shift inmaterial capabilities than in a number of other exogenous essentially perceptual fac-tors Still in both cases readers must be the nal judges If the variation in perceptionsand interests documented by Schweller and Wohlforth is indeed driven overwhelm-ingly by variation in the distribution of power rather than by exogenous variation inintervening domestic politics collective beliefs or institutions these two scholarsshould be exempted from our criticism The force of our general argument would notthereby be blunted7

Feaverrsquos criticism is more fundamental He maintains that we misrepresent realismby focusing on the determinants rather than on the consequences of state behavior8

4 Randall L Schweller Deadly Imbalances Tripolarity and Hitlerrsquos Strategy of World Conquest (NewYork Columbia University Press 1998) p 225 In Schweller rsquos analysis (ibid pp 23 32 35 37 94) victors became revisionist (Japan and Italy)or indifferent (United States) losers worked within the system (Weimar Germany) or opposed it(Hungary and the Soviet Union) State interests seem to vary for a variety of reasons such asdissatisfaction with institutional arrangements (Italy and Japan) the emergence of new leaders indomestic politics (Weimar vs Hitler rsquos Germany) andor the implementation of an entrenchedconictual worldview (Hitler as the heir to Bismarck and Wilhelm) and idiosyncratic collectiveunderstandings such as believing that victory (and status quo maintenance) was in fact a mistake(United States) There is no clear causal relation between power and interests let alone an explicitlyrealist one In his letter Schweller remains ambiguous ldquorevisionist states need not be predatorypowers they may oppose the status quo for defensive reasonsrdquo6 William C Wohlforth The Elusive Balance Power and Preferences during the Cold War (Ithaca NYCornell University Press 1993) p 10 ldquoFor statesmen accurate assessments of power are impos-sible For scholars accurate assessments practically mean a correct rendering of the perceptionsthat inform decisions Of course real material balances are related to these perceptions but we donot know how closelyrdquo This logic also raises the question of how one would ever know thatperceptions reect power if power can never be accurately measuredmdashexcept by inferring back-ward from outcomes7 It remains curiously contradictory however for Schweller and Wohlforth to insist that theirarguments are consistent with our conception of realism because they both go on to assert thatour reformulation is so narrow that no interesting theory could possibly stay within its bounds8 This is not precisely correct We point out that realism has much to say about the outcomes ofbargaining We simply point out that the anticipation of these outcomes should according torealists be the primary determinant of state behavior

Correspondence 187

Feaver concedes (more readily than we would) that realist theories of state behaviorare unpersuasive because states act for a wide variety of reasons Still he insists realistsassert that if a state fails to act in an appropriate ldquorealistrdquo manner the internationalldquosystemrdquo will punish it Feaver notes that there are empirical and theoretical problemswith this argument We know that states do not consistently balance and in part forthis reason the system does not always punish states Still this ldquoconsequentialistrdquoconception of realism Feaver concludes is (or ought to be) shared by all realists andprovides a potentially fruitful research agenda for the future

We agree that a research program about variation in the force of systemic constraintsis an attractive one and we applaud Feaverrsquos positive suggestions in this direction butwe believe that clarication of what is at stake theoretically requires that realists limittheir paradigmatic claims As Feaver suggests ldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism requires aformulation like the one we put forwardmdasha ldquobaselinerdquo realist theory of behaviormdashtohelp us calculate whether states are responding ldquoappropriatelyrdquo to external circum-stances and should be punished by the system if they are not For punishment to beconsistently imposed moreover most statesmen must share this view most of the time9

They must think like realistsmdashrealists that is in our narrower ldquobaselinerdquo sense Yetldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism also leaves unexplained Feaver concedes why some stateschoose initially to transgress ldquorealistrdquo normsmdashthe primary focus of the recent realistwritings we criticize Jack Snyder rsquos Hobbesian theory of imperialism Stephen VanEverarsquos domestic explanation of aggression Schweller rsquos ldquobalance of interestsrdquo andsimilar theoretical innovations say little about why the system responds in a certainwaymdashthe core of Feaverrsquos ldquorealistrdquo theory The theoretically innovative part of theiranalysis concerns instead divergences from ldquobaselinerdquo state behavior which involvedomestic coalitions international institutions and collective beliefs The clearest andmost useful way conceptualize such work is to say that realism predicts balancingbehavior and system punishment and therefore the absence of these behaviors createsanomalies that must be explained by other theories Ultimately therefore Feaverrsquosattractive research agenda is not an extension of realist theory because regimes in hisview can be punished or not punished for a variety of reasons both realist andnonrealist Instead Feaverrsquos agenda creates an attractive opportunity for syntheticresearch involving a number of clearly dened paradigms

We turn now to the two more fundamental theoretical and philosophical issues thenarrowness of our reformulation and our lack of delity to the intellectual tradition ofrealism

is our reformulation of realism so narrow as to be meaninglessAll ve critics complain that our reformulation of realist theory is restrictive10 The basisfor this objection we have seen is not that we misstate core realist assumptions Instead

9 Realist theory also needs to explain why other states choose to use their capabilities to punishldquobad statesrdquo in some instances but not othersmdashthat is whether states balance This is a criticalquestion to which our formulation of realism offers clear predictions whereas Feaverrsquos reformu-lation does not10 The critics exaggerate Our formulation in no way blocks realism from illuminating a varietyof topics (eg international institutions ethnic conict state interests and perceptions) as Schwel-

International Security 251 188

it is that realists should not be expected to conform consistently to paradigmaticassumptions This must be true our critics maintain because our denition seems toexclude many arguments by many scholars often thought to be ldquorealistsrdquo Hellmannposes the challenge baldly ldquoWas anybody ever a coherent lsquoparadigmatistrsquo (ie a scholaradhering lsquormlyrsquo to a xed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic coreassumptions)rdquo

Our critics are correct that few international relations theorists advance argumentsdrawn from only one paradigm but this response misunderstands both our argumentand the proper role of intellectual history in social science On the rst point let us beclear We do not criticize realists for combining causal factors drawn from disparateparadigms as our critics suggest Quite the opposite we are advocates (and in ourempirical work practitioners) of theoretical synthesis We criticize realists for labelingthe resulting synthesis as a progressive conrmation or extension of realist theory ratherthan as a demonstration of its limitations or as an evaluation of the relative weight oftwo theories

There is a deeper issue here which realists ignore at their peril In our view it is notindividual theorists who are ldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo instead individual arguments areldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo11 Neither we nor any other proponent of theoretical coherenceshould be asked to demonstrate that leading theorists have been ldquopurerdquo realists oranything else The critical exegetical issue is instead whether leading theorists consis-tently distinguishmdashor more precisely can coherently distinguishmdashrealist and nonrealistarguments Of those whom our critics cite as leading examples of ldquohybridrdquo theorynearly allmdashEH Carr Raymond Aron Hans Morgenthau Kenneth Waltz Robert JervisRobert Gilpin and Robert Keohanemdashdistinguish explicitly between realist and nonrealiststrands in their own thought Only a minoritymdashHenry Kissinger for examplemdashconsis-tently fails to do so12 Our argument is that contemporary realists fall increasingly intothe latter category

Still each of the ve critics asks Shouldnrsquot scholars reject outright any reformula-tionmdashand therefore any critiquemdashthat seems to be so at odds with the received intel-lectual history of ldquorealismrdquo This raises a more fundamental question Should scholarsemploy intellectual history rather than adherence to core assumptions as the measureof paradigmatic delity We now turn to this issue

why not treat paradigms as arbitrary labels for intellectual traditionsDespite a strong attachment to the ldquorealistrdquo label and acceptance of the conception ofparadigms based on core assumptions (Hellmann again excepted) all ve of our criticshint that paradigms are just arbitrary labels without coherent intellectual foundationsand should therefore be exempt from criticism Wouldnrsquot it be better our critics suggest

ler contends nor does it limit realism to ldquoany behavior short of unilateral and unrestrainedbelligerencerdquo as Taliaferro maintains For detailed examples see Legro and Moravcsik ldquoIs Any-body Still a Realistrdquo pp 15ndash16 52ndash5311 We plead guilty to muddying the waters by taking rhetorical advantage of references toindividualsmdashfor example ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo12 We believe that Kissingerrsquos concern with legitimacy and common values are only tangentiallyconnected with realism as reviewers of his most recent book have noted at length

Correspondence 189

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

Feaver concedes (more readily than we would) that realist theories of state behaviorare unpersuasive because states act for a wide variety of reasons Still he insists realistsassert that if a state fails to act in an appropriate ldquorealistrdquo manner the internationalldquosystemrdquo will punish it Feaver notes that there are empirical and theoretical problemswith this argument We know that states do not consistently balance and in part forthis reason the system does not always punish states Still this ldquoconsequentialistrdquoconception of realism Feaver concludes is (or ought to be) shared by all realists andprovides a potentially fruitful research agenda for the future

We agree that a research program about variation in the force of systemic constraintsis an attractive one and we applaud Feaverrsquos positive suggestions in this direction butwe believe that clarication of what is at stake theoretically requires that realists limittheir paradigmatic claims As Feaver suggests ldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism requires aformulation like the one we put forwardmdasha ldquobaselinerdquo realist theory of behaviormdashtohelp us calculate whether states are responding ldquoappropriatelyrdquo to external circum-stances and should be punished by the system if they are not For punishment to beconsistently imposed moreover most statesmen must share this view most of the time9

They must think like realistsmdashrealists that is in our narrower ldquobaselinerdquo sense Yetldquoconsequentialistrdquo realism also leaves unexplained Feaver concedes why some stateschoose initially to transgress ldquorealistrdquo normsmdashthe primary focus of the recent realistwritings we criticize Jack Snyder rsquos Hobbesian theory of imperialism Stephen VanEverarsquos domestic explanation of aggression Schweller rsquos ldquobalance of interestsrdquo andsimilar theoretical innovations say little about why the system responds in a certainwaymdashthe core of Feaverrsquos ldquorealistrdquo theory The theoretically innovative part of theiranalysis concerns instead divergences from ldquobaselinerdquo state behavior which involvedomestic coalitions international institutions and collective beliefs The clearest andmost useful way conceptualize such work is to say that realism predicts balancingbehavior and system punishment and therefore the absence of these behaviors createsanomalies that must be explained by other theories Ultimately therefore Feaverrsquosattractive research agenda is not an extension of realist theory because regimes in hisview can be punished or not punished for a variety of reasons both realist andnonrealist Instead Feaverrsquos agenda creates an attractive opportunity for syntheticresearch involving a number of clearly dened paradigms

We turn now to the two more fundamental theoretical and philosophical issues thenarrowness of our reformulation and our lack of delity to the intellectual tradition ofrealism

is our reformulation of realism so narrow as to be meaninglessAll ve critics complain that our reformulation of realist theory is restrictive10 The basisfor this objection we have seen is not that we misstate core realist assumptions Instead

9 Realist theory also needs to explain why other states choose to use their capabilities to punishldquobad statesrdquo in some instances but not othersmdashthat is whether states balance This is a criticalquestion to which our formulation of realism offers clear predictions whereas Feaverrsquos reformu-lation does not10 The critics exaggerate Our formulation in no way blocks realism from illuminating a varietyof topics (eg international institutions ethnic conict state interests and perceptions) as Schwel-

International Security 251 188

it is that realists should not be expected to conform consistently to paradigmaticassumptions This must be true our critics maintain because our denition seems toexclude many arguments by many scholars often thought to be ldquorealistsrdquo Hellmannposes the challenge baldly ldquoWas anybody ever a coherent lsquoparadigmatistrsquo (ie a scholaradhering lsquormlyrsquo to a xed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic coreassumptions)rdquo

Our critics are correct that few international relations theorists advance argumentsdrawn from only one paradigm but this response misunderstands both our argumentand the proper role of intellectual history in social science On the rst point let us beclear We do not criticize realists for combining causal factors drawn from disparateparadigms as our critics suggest Quite the opposite we are advocates (and in ourempirical work practitioners) of theoretical synthesis We criticize realists for labelingthe resulting synthesis as a progressive conrmation or extension of realist theory ratherthan as a demonstration of its limitations or as an evaluation of the relative weight oftwo theories

There is a deeper issue here which realists ignore at their peril In our view it is notindividual theorists who are ldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo instead individual arguments areldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo11 Neither we nor any other proponent of theoretical coherenceshould be asked to demonstrate that leading theorists have been ldquopurerdquo realists oranything else The critical exegetical issue is instead whether leading theorists consis-tently distinguishmdashor more precisely can coherently distinguishmdashrealist and nonrealistarguments Of those whom our critics cite as leading examples of ldquohybridrdquo theorynearly allmdashEH Carr Raymond Aron Hans Morgenthau Kenneth Waltz Robert JervisRobert Gilpin and Robert Keohanemdashdistinguish explicitly between realist and nonrealiststrands in their own thought Only a minoritymdashHenry Kissinger for examplemdashconsis-tently fails to do so12 Our argument is that contemporary realists fall increasingly intothe latter category

Still each of the ve critics asks Shouldnrsquot scholars reject outright any reformula-tionmdashand therefore any critiquemdashthat seems to be so at odds with the received intel-lectual history of ldquorealismrdquo This raises a more fundamental question Should scholarsemploy intellectual history rather than adherence to core assumptions as the measureof paradigmatic delity We now turn to this issue

why not treat paradigms as arbitrary labels for intellectual traditionsDespite a strong attachment to the ldquorealistrdquo label and acceptance of the conception ofparadigms based on core assumptions (Hellmann again excepted) all ve of our criticshint that paradigms are just arbitrary labels without coherent intellectual foundationsand should therefore be exempt from criticism Wouldnrsquot it be better our critics suggest

ler contends nor does it limit realism to ldquoany behavior short of unilateral and unrestrainedbelligerencerdquo as Taliaferro maintains For detailed examples see Legro and Moravcsik ldquoIs Any-body Still a Realistrdquo pp 15ndash16 52ndash5311 We plead guilty to muddying the waters by taking rhetorical advantage of references toindividualsmdashfor example ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo12 We believe that Kissingerrsquos concern with legitimacy and common values are only tangentiallyconnected with realism as reviewers of his most recent book have noted at length

Correspondence 189

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

it is that realists should not be expected to conform consistently to paradigmaticassumptions This must be true our critics maintain because our denition seems toexclude many arguments by many scholars often thought to be ldquorealistsrdquo Hellmannposes the challenge baldly ldquoWas anybody ever a coherent lsquoparadigmatistrsquo (ie a scholaradhering lsquormlyrsquo to a xed set of unchanging coherent and distinct paradigmatic coreassumptions)rdquo

Our critics are correct that few international relations theorists advance argumentsdrawn from only one paradigm but this response misunderstands both our argumentand the proper role of intellectual history in social science On the rst point let us beclear We do not criticize realists for combining causal factors drawn from disparateparadigms as our critics suggest Quite the opposite we are advocates (and in ourempirical work practitioners) of theoretical synthesis We criticize realists for labelingthe resulting synthesis as a progressive conrmation or extension of realist theory ratherthan as a demonstration of its limitations or as an evaluation of the relative weight oftwo theories

There is a deeper issue here which realists ignore at their peril In our view it is notindividual theorists who are ldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo instead individual arguments areldquorealistrdquo or ldquononrealistrdquo11 Neither we nor any other proponent of theoretical coherenceshould be asked to demonstrate that leading theorists have been ldquopurerdquo realists oranything else The critical exegetical issue is instead whether leading theorists consis-tently distinguishmdashor more precisely can coherently distinguishmdashrealist and nonrealistarguments Of those whom our critics cite as leading examples of ldquohybridrdquo theorynearly allmdashEH Carr Raymond Aron Hans Morgenthau Kenneth Waltz Robert JervisRobert Gilpin and Robert Keohanemdashdistinguish explicitly between realist and nonrealiststrands in their own thought Only a minoritymdashHenry Kissinger for examplemdashconsis-tently fails to do so12 Our argument is that contemporary realists fall increasingly intothe latter category

Still each of the ve critics asks Shouldnrsquot scholars reject outright any reformula-tionmdashand therefore any critiquemdashthat seems to be so at odds with the received intel-lectual history of ldquorealismrdquo This raises a more fundamental question Should scholarsemploy intellectual history rather than adherence to core assumptions as the measureof paradigmatic delity We now turn to this issue

why not treat paradigms as arbitrary labels for intellectual traditionsDespite a strong attachment to the ldquorealistrdquo label and acceptance of the conception ofparadigms based on core assumptions (Hellmann again excepted) all ve of our criticshint that paradigms are just arbitrary labels without coherent intellectual foundationsand should therefore be exempt from criticism Wouldnrsquot it be better our critics suggest

ler contends nor does it limit realism to ldquoany behavior short of unilateral and unrestrainedbelligerencerdquo as Taliaferro maintains For detailed examples see Legro and Moravcsik ldquoIs Any-body Still a Realistrdquo pp 15ndash16 52ndash5311 We plead guilty to muddying the waters by taking rhetorical advantage of references toindividualsmdashfor example ldquoIs Anybody Still a Realistrdquo12 We believe that Kissingerrsquos concern with legitimacy and common values are only tangentiallyconnected with realism as reviewers of his most recent book have noted at length

Correspondence 189

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

to muddle through with somewhat incoherent but widely accepted labels rather thanto adopt a coherent and distinct set of assumptions Wohlforth makes the point lucidlyScholars he asserts should debate about ldquorealrdquo schools of international relations theory(ie schools that scholars currently recognize) rather than ldquoimaginaryrdquo schools (ieschools that scholars like us reconstruct on the basis of core assumptions) Intellectualpractice is to this extent its own justication Schweller asserts that all we have doneis to articially expand the liberal institutionalist and epistemic paradigmsmdasheven bothhe and Wohlforth charge conjure them up out of thin airmdashand cut back the realistparadigm accordingly Hellmann advances a philosophically more sophisticated variantof this argument Paradigms he argues are no more than transient collective agree-ments among scholars that cannot be judged by any objective standards Disparateindividual worldviews and cognitive biases inherently prevent any deeper agreementon an independent measure of ldquocoherencerdquo or ldquodistinctivenessrdquo Only naiumlve positivistscould believe otherwise For these reasons all ve critics conclude our strict standardof a paradigm dened by core assumptions is more of a hindrance than a help

We disagree for three major reasons First intellectual history is a poor standardagainst which to judge paradigmatic consistency We shall not belabor this point herebecause we defend it at length in the article and our critics do not address ourarguments Paradigms we maintained must be coherent to be useful while appeals totraditional authorities insulate traditional authorities from criticism and thereby per-petuate internal contradictions within traditions13

Second reliance on the authority of intellectual history creates contradictions Everyone of the scholars we criticize in the article and all but Hellmann among our presentinterlocutors accept that core assumptions are the proper means to dene a paradigmYet our critics want to have their cake and eat it too Realism they maintain is basedon a coherent set of core assumptions yet the realist tradition often legitimately divertsfrom those assumptions This evades an inescapable choice Either contradictions mustbe resolved in favor of coherence as we recommend or realists must somehow justifytheir use of social scientic concepts and languagemdashparadigms assumptions theorytesting and so on Anything less perpetuates confusion

Alone among our ve critics Hellmann grasps the full import of our criticism yethe boldly opts for tradition over coherence One can (and inevitably must) work withindistinct incoherent paradigms he argues but to do so one must abandon the twinillusions that paradigms are logically related to their core assumptions and that empiri-cal propositions derived from paradigms can be objectively conrmed or disconrmedThis relativistic (or as he prefers ldquopragmatistrdquo) position while not our own is at leastcoherent and defensiblemdashin contrast to a position that simultaneously invokes the needfor coherent assumptions and the authority of an incoherent tradition Yet Hellmanndemonstrates the departure from a conventional understanding of social science theoryrequired if our criticism is to be answered without a fundamental reformulation of

13 Accordingly all but the most relativist philosophies of science treat a theoretical paradigm asan ex post reconstruction (as does Imre Lakatos) rather than a subjectively apprehended intellectualtradition

International Security 251 190

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

realist theory Yet even Hellmann as we are about to see balks at consistently main-taining such a skeptical position

Third heavy reliance on intellectual history leaves our critics without a viable meansof structuring academic debates Consider the two positive alternatives they propose

The rst is offered by Schweller and Jeffrey Taliaferro If an explanation is partiallyrealist both recommend we should term any extension of it (whether constructed ofbaseline realist elements or not) a progressive improvement in realist theory Spe-cically Schweller argues that ldquorealistrdquo explanations may subsume unlimited ldquotheoreti-cal elements (eg variation in national goals state mobilization capacity domesticpolitics and the offense-defense balance) provided that these auxiliary assumptionsand causal factors are consistent with realismrsquos core assumptions and microfounda-tionsrdquo Taliaferro proposes that nonrealist factors can inuence state behavior withinrealist theory up to the point where ldquoa statersquos domestic politics and ideologyrdquo becomethe ldquoprimary determinants of its foreign policyrdquo

Is Schweller rsquos and Taliaferrorsquos alternative a more helpful way to structure theoreticaldebates than ours We think not for at least three reasons First their criteria are overtlybiased Why should all explanations that contain elements of realist theory be automat-ically designated ldquorealistrdquo rather than liberal institutionalist or epistemic14 Secondtheir criteria encourage the use of imprecise theoretical language Where a number ofdisparate factors combine to explain an outcome it is more helpful to report that ldquobothrealist and liberal factors explain some of the variationrdquo (or perhaps that ldquorealist factorsseem to best explain this aspect whereas institutionalist factors seem to best explain thataspectrdquo) as we propose rather than reporting that ldquorealism has been improved andconrmedrdquo as Schweller and Taliaferro propose Third their criteria still exclude fromthe realist canon most of the works we examined in our article Waltrsquos analysis of theCold War Joseph Griecorsquos analysis of Economic and Monetary Union Snyder rsquos analysisof imperialism Van Everarsquos analysis of aggression and not least Schweller rsquos analysisof the interwar ldquobalance of interestrdquo all give preponderant causal weight to domesticideational and institutional factors inconsistent with realist core assumptions15

Even Hellmannrsquos seemingly relativistic philosophy of science the second positivealternative to our proposal cannot long evade the central dilemma of contemporaryrealism Hellmann recommends that we renounce our faith in the objective content ofparadigms yet even he ultimately rejects his own counsel He offers instead a new wayforward termed ldquoparadigmatic pragmatismrdquo based on supposedly uncontroversialcategories ldquoFew (if any) scholars would deny that different lsquoschools of thoughtrsquo orlsquotheoretical traditionsrsquo can be usefully distinguished in international relations (basedon) lsquofamily resemblancesrsquomdashcharacteristics that reveal that they somehow belong to-

14 For an elaboration of this critique see Andrew Moravcsik ldquoTaking Preferences Seriously ALiberal Theory of International Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 51 No 4 (Autumn 1997)p 54215 By mentioning other paradigms we mean only to note that there are large bodies of explana-tionmdashfor example arguments about the democratic peace transnational interdependence inter-national institutions and collective beliefsmdashthat are plausibly viewed (to judge from their cohesivecore assumptions) as coherent theoretical alternatives to realism

Correspondence 191

getherrdquo So paradigms initially rejected by Hellmann (as sets of coherent assumptions)on fundamental philosophical grounds turn out to be helpful after all (in the form ofintellectual traditions) and are ldquosomehowrdquo despite individual worldviews and cogni-tive biases intersubjectively distinguishable And as we hope to have shown the resultis neither coherent nor uncontroversial Admirable philosophical sophistication cannotavoid the familiar pitfall ambiguous ill-dened categories dictated solely by intellec-tual tradition

what is at stakeWe close with a reminder of why paradigmatic coherence matters Our critics incor-rectly believe that the primary stake in this debate is the future of realism16 Yet ourarticle makes clear and we reiterate here that we do not seek to ldquobury realismrdquoArguments about power scarcity and capabilities whatever scholars choose to labelthem are indispensable to a proper understanding of world politics The more pro-found underlying issue is not the viability of the realist paradigm but the viability ofall paradigms based on ldquoismsrdquomdashliberal institutionalist epistemic or constructivist the-ory and whatever else There is after all another alternative to our proposal namelyto dispense with such paradigmatic labels altogethermdasha view with which Wohlforthand Schweller irt Many contemporary international relations theorists prefer to speakof rationalist versus sociological approaches Others dispense with all broader theoreti-cal labels Still others seek to reformulate international relations theory in terms offormal game theory This like Hellmannrsquos initial rejection of coherent paradigms is arespectable position But why do those who hold it so virulently defend the termldquorealismrdquo What is puzzling among our critics is the simultaneous defense of the realistrubric and rejection of any clear standard of paradigmatic coherence In defendingcurrent usage of the term ldquorealismrdquo despite its manifest incoherence our critics ignorethe growing threat to the language of paradigms itself

We are ultimately agnostics concerning optimal divisions among theoretical positionsin international relations theory17 Yet an informed choice surely depends in part onwhether more (if still not perfectly) coherent and distinct paradigms can be formulatedand whether they can then be synthesized in an empirically useful way Accordinglywe have started by challenging theorists including ourselves to formulate such para-digms None of these demands is specic to realism but realist theories will play anessential role in any paradigmatic debate18 To return full circle to our initial point any

16 This is clear from our criticsrsquo speculations about our motives Taliaferro warns ldquoLet us be clearLegro and Moravcsik do not seek to revitalize realism they seek to discredit itrdquo Schweller addsldquoLike foxes guarding the chicken coop Legro and Moravcsik want us to believe that they aresincerely troubled by the current rsquoill healthrsquo of realismrdquo This sort of outright speculation aboutmotives is neither relevant to scholarly debate nor as it happens correct17 We are heartened however to detect some signs of convergence that may make the choiceless urgent Recent writings by leading rational choice theorists for example offer a similardistinction between preferences and strategies and multistage synthesis involving preferenceformation interstate bargaining and institutional construction as suggested by our model CfDavid Lake and Robert Powell eds Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1999)18 For our criticisms of the overextension of other paradigms see Moravcsik ldquoTaking PreferencesSeriouslyrdquo 536ndash541 and Andrew Moravcsik ldquoIs Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

International Security 251 192

discussion of what realism can and cannot do necessarily must rest on a clear formu-lation of what realism is and what it is notmdasha task our ve respondents have essentiallyavoided The most useful step might therefore be for realists to accept the two chal-lenges that opened this essay Provide a defensible set of core realist assumptions andexplain precisely which midrange hypotheses they include and exclude Wouldnrsquotanyone see this as desirable Shouldnrsquot everyone care

mdashJeffrey W LegroCharlottesville Virginia

mdashAndrew MoravcsikCambridge Massachusetts

Constructivism and European Integrationrdquo Journal of European Public Policy Special Issue 2000ldquoThe Social Construction of Europerdquo pp 661ndash684

Correspondence 193

discussion of what realism can and cannot do necessarily must rest on a clear formu-lation of what realism is and what it is notmdasha task our ve respondents have essentiallyavoided The most useful step might therefore be for realists to accept the two chal-lenges that opened this essay Provide a defensible set of core realist assumptions andexplain precisely which midrange hypotheses they include and exclude Wouldnrsquotanyone see this as desirable Shouldnrsquot everyone care

mdashJeffrey W LegroCharlottesville Virginia

mdashAndrew MoravcsikCambridge Massachusetts

Constructivism and European Integrationrdquo Journal of European Public Policy Special Issue 2000ldquoThe Social Construction of Europerdquo pp 661ndash684

Correspondence 193