The Curious Concept of Politics in Realism

If turning to Morgenthau seems at first glance an inauspicious place to uncover the role of ideas in classical realism, then in many eyes looking at his concept of politics may seem a doubly unpromising point of departure. Indeed, however diverse the positions in contemporary IR may be, there is almost universal agreement that one of the greatest weaknesses of Morgenthau's thinking (and that of immediately postwar realism in general), lies in its remarkably narrow understanding of politics. While liberal institutionalists,⁷

social constructivists,⁸ historical sociologists,⁹ political economists,¹⁰ and even “neoclassical” realists¹¹ may diverge widely on the nature of realism and its place in the future development of IR theory, they are largely united in the conviction that a concern with political economy, the impact of domestic structures, or the influence of culture and identity, all appear remarkably marginal (or at best inadequately developed and unsystematically theorized) within “classical” realism, and that a broader, more sociologically and institutionally rigorous theory of the structure, dynamics, and multiple determinants of politics at the domestic level is essential for the further development of IR theory, whether “realist” or not.

There is little doubt that Morgenthau proposes a very constricted vision of politics. In Politics Among Nations, for example, he argues that “a nation is not normally engaged in international politics when it concludes an extradition treaty with another nation, when it exchanges goods and services with other nations, when it cooperates with another nation in providing relief from natural catastrophes, and when it promotes the distribution of cultural achievements throughout the world.”¹²

Such an unambiguous statement seems only to confirm suspicions concerning the narrowness of the realist vision and its obvious—and increasing—inadequacy as a basis for thinking about world politics.¹³

Explanations of the narrowness of classical realism's understanding of politics abound in discussions of IR, and form a key element in accounts of the evolution of the field. Most commonly, it is traced to the historical conditions of realism's ascendance, particularly to the dominance of “high politics,” diplomacy, and military conflict at the conclusion of World War II and the onset of the Cold War.¹⁴

Under these conditions, it is argued, realism's narrow vision of political relations is comprehensible, if ultimately unsatisfactory. To still others, classical realism's concern with human nature—in particular its concern with an elemental lust for power—overwhelmed any sustained concern with social and historical trajectories and the importance of political structures.¹⁵ From yet another perspective, the assumption of the state as a unitary rational actor precluded by analytic fiat the need to inquire more deeply into the complexities of state structure, domestic preferences, and action,¹⁶ while still other accounts locate its origins in realism's uncritical adoption of the classical liberal divide between politics and economics.¹⁷ Whatever the explanation, however, the narrowness of the classical realist vision of politics is seen as a symbol of its limited theoretical bases and utility, and the evolution of the field of IR is again presented as a process of moving beyond these limits toward a more sophisticated theory of international politics.

Yet the narrowness of Morgenthau's realist understanding of politics can also be seen as posing a particularly intriguing puzzle. As a series of recent studies have revealed, a closer look at Morgenthau's intellectual biography sits uncomfortably with his adoption of such an obviously naïve and simplistic view of politics. Trained in the complexities of legal and state theory spanning thinkers from Hans Kelsen to Otto Kircheimer, Morgenthau was personally engaged in the highly politicized legal struggles of Weimar Germany and was well aware of the complex relationship between law, institutions, culture, and politics.¹⁸

Deeply influenced by the sociology of Max Weber,¹⁹ and familiar with the neo-Marxist work of the Frankfurt School,²⁰ he could scarcely have been unaware of the complexity of political life and its economic and cultural dimensions. Schooled in continental philosophy and profoundly affected by the legacy of Nietzchean and post-Nietzschean philosophy,²¹ Morgenthau was also intimately familiar with the complex German debates surrounding the nature of politics, and he was particularly involved in the intense and sophisticated disputes surrounding the “concept of the political” developed by the controversial jurist Carl Schmitt.²²

Seen in this light, it hardly seems likely that Morgenthau could have been oblivious to the fact that he proposed an extraordinarily constricted—in fact, largely counterintuitive—view of the political realm; and it seems equally difficult to avoid the view that the conventional explanations of this narrowness seem suspiciously easy. I suggest that rather than being the result of historical constraints, philosophical myopia, or methodological strictures, Morgenthau's narrowing of the political sphere is not an oversight. Rather than ignoring the obvious breadth of political life or the complexity of the concept of “the political,”²³

the limited conception of politics is part of a sophisticated intellectual strategy seeking to address the centrality of power in politics without reducing politics to an undifferentiated sphere of violence, to distinguish legitimate forms of political power, to insulate the political sphere from physical violence, and to discern the social structures that such a strategy requires to be successful. Far from being alien to the concerns of historical sociology, oblivious to the importance of domestic social and political structures, or obtuse regarding ethical issues, the narrow concept of politics in Morgenthau's realism is in fact the outcome of a philosophically complex historical and ethical sociology of modern politics.

Power, Interest, and Politics

In unravelling the nature of politics in Morgenthau's realism, it is useful to begin by noting the strong emphasis he places on the importance of the concept of politics, and on the autonomy of politics as a sphere of action and understanding. In what is perhaps the most oft-quoted phrase in the history of IR, Morgenthau's “second principle of political realism” holds that its core lies in the definition of politics as “interest defined in terms of power.” “This concept,” he argues, is crucial if one is to make sense of international politics, for it

Yet despite the almost iconic status that “interest defined as power” has assumed in presentations of realist theory, a close examination of Morgenthau's discussion quickly reveals that power and interest are actually remarkably flexible and indeterminate concepts. The forms taken by interest and power, and the relationship between them, are fluid and only foundational in the broadest possible sense. In his “third principle of political realism,” for example, Morgenthau discusses this fluidity in terms worth quoting at length. Realism, he argues,

The objects of “interest,” it turns out, are almost limitless. Literally anything could in principle be an interest. A similar indeterminacy applies to power. As he puts it:

At this point, a degree of confusion might seem appropriate, for these extremely broad visions of power and interest seem logically to lead not to a narrow conception of politics, but to an extremely broad one.²⁷

If all interests are indeterminate, and all forms of power are multiple and contextual, then surely this implies that all realms of life in and through which interests are formulated and power is exercised are political, and that what is required is an extremely broad—almost pervasive—vision of politics rather than its opposite. In fact, it might even be argued that Morgenthau's understanding of power and interest has its closest analogues in social theories more commonly associated with the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, with their very broad understanding of power and the political field, rather than with the narrow understanding of politics that realism stands accused of adopting.²⁸ But despite the obviousness of this conclusion, it is not the path that Morgenthau chooses to follow, and his reasons for not doing so are central in understanding the concept of politics in the realist theory he develops. But before turning to these issues, it is useful to examine briefly the most prevalent ways in which they have been treated in IR theory.

The Specificity of Politics

Broadly speaking, Morgenthau's definition of politics as “interest defined as power” has been given two interpretations in IR theory, neither of which comes fully to terms with the complex position he stakes out. The first of these interpretations tends to reduce realism to a form of materialism. Here, both interest and power are defined primarily in material—and particularly military—terms, and international politics becomes characterized as a struggle for material power. As Mearsheimer succinctly put it in an oft-quoted statement of this theme: “Realists believe that state behavior is largely shaped by the material structure of the international system.”²⁹

The adequacy of this materialism as the foundation for the study of IR has been a source of continual debate within the field and is often presented as marking a fundamental divide between realists and their critics—particularly social constructivists who stress the importance of ideational phenomena.³⁰

However, as evidenced in the definitions of power and interest cited above, a reduction of “interest defined as power” to predominantly material forms of each clearly does not do full justice to Morgenthau's realist understanding of politics. Confirmation of this point is provided by Morgenthau himself, who felt the need to stress the role of diverse forms of power precisely because of the tendency to reduce power to its material aspects. As he put it in a discussion of his revisions to the fourth edition of Politics Among Nations: “Against the misunderstanding of the central element of power, which, after having been underrated to the point of total neglect, now tends to be equated with material strength, especially of a military nature, I have stressed more than before its immaterial aspects, especially in the form of charismatic power, and have elaborated the discussion of political ideologies.”³¹ Material power and the pursuit of material interest are indeed central, but neither power nor interest can be reduced to material forms. To do so does little justice to the multiple, fluid, and relational view of power and interest Morgenthau puts forward. Nor, importantly, does it account for the claim that politics is a specific sphere that is distinguishable from the pursuit of material interest characteristic of, for example, the economic sphere.

The question of the specificity of politics is also important when considering the second common interpretation of realism. In this view, the definition of politics as “interest defined as power” is seen in essentially instrumentalist terms: if power is a necessary means for the pursuit of interests, then power becomes an end in itself. As a necessary instrument to the achievement of any given interest, power itself becomes a universal interest and, therefore, as Ruggie summarizes this view, “whatever the ends that leaders may seek to achieve, their doing so is mediated and constrained by all states deploying their power to pursue their own ends, so that power itself becomes the proximate end of any state's foreign policy.”³²

On the surface, an instrumentalist interpretation of realism seems more satisfactory; and it certainly captures the open-ended and multiple character of interests and power more fully than does a reductionist materialism. However, in reducing realism to a form of instrumentalism, this view also fails to account for the specificity of politics, and to address the question of why politics constitutes the autonomous sphere that Morgenthau insists it does. If the definition of politics is “interest defined as power,” and power is just an instrument for the achievement of other interests, then what differentiates the political sphere from any other realm of social life in which power is essential to the successful pursuit of a given interest? In the economic sphere, for example, the pursuit of economic power is essential for the acquisition of wealth. But if this is the case, what is unique about the political sphere as opposed to that of the economic, and why does Morgenthau explicitly differentiate the political from the economic sphere? In short, if the pursuit of any interest requires power, and power becomes an end in itself in any sphere of social life, then “interest defined as power” applies equally to all social spheres and ceases to be uniquely useful as a concept for distinguishing political phenomena from other forms of social interaction. Politics, accordingly, would again become an extremely broad sphere, not a conspicuously narrow one. While an instrumentalist definition may tell one something about the realist stress on power as a means to the realization of interests, it fails to specify what is distinctively political about the sphere of politics in realist theory.

On closer examination, the most prevalent understandings of politics in Morgenthau's realism fail to come to terms with either its conceptual specificity, or to explain his remarkably limited definition of the sphere of politics. Similarly, neither explanation provides a satisfactory account of the relationship between power and interest that is at the heart of Morgenthau's realist conception of politics. These considerations seem to leave open two possible options. From one perspective, they might be seen as still further evidence of the inadequacy of realism, and yet another reason to consign it firmly to the theoretical (pre)history of IR. A second position, however, is to take these apparent inconsistencies as inspiration for a deeper investigation of the realist vision of politics. Taking this path requires a broader engagement with philosophical roots, intellectual lineage, and political context underlying Morgenthau's realism. At the heart of this context is Morgenthau's debt to the social theory of Weber, his fundamental engagement (again shared with Weber) with Nietzchean philosophy, and his engagement with the political consequences of this legacy as they were expressed within the tumultuous setting of Weimar Germany. When placed in these contexts, Morgenthau's realist concept of politics and the remarkably narrow definition of political phenomena that he develops emerge as sophisticated and self-conscious attempts to deal with the relationship between politics, power, and violence.

The Weberian Legacy

While it has for some time been common to see Morgenthau as standing within a tradition of realpolitik initiated by Weber,³³

it is only recently that the depth and breadth of the Weberian legacy in realism has become a focus of detailed attention.³⁴ In the context of Morgenthau's understanding of politics, this legacy has two related aspects: a methodological stance and a philosophical vision of the specificity of politics as a sphere of social life. Each—and the less well-recognized relationship between them—is central in understanding the limited and specific vision of politics in his realism.

The most straightforward element of this limitation lies in the influence that Weber's philosophy of social science had on Morgenthau. Weber's method of ideal-types had sought to provide a means of classifying different social spheres according to their specific logics. By distinguishing these spheres (as ideal types) the analyst can abstract specific logics of action from the totality of social life and then examine how they struggle, interpenetrate, and fuse in the production of concrete practices, as for example, in Weber's classic analysis of the role of radical Protestant morals and aesthetics in the rise of the economic logic of capitalism.³⁵

The influence of this view on Morgenthau is obvious; as he puts it, “Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs. He thinks in terms of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks in terms of interest defined as wealth; the lawyer of the conformity of action with legal rules…. the political realist asks ‘How does this policy affect the power of the nation?’ (Or of the federal government, of Congress, of the party, of agriculture, as the case may be).”³⁶

Part of the narrowness of the concept of politics is, therefore, an analytic device: an attempt to specify politics as an ideal-type as referring particularly to structures of governance. Yet it is clear that this designation alone is not enough to account for conceptual specificity of politics or its delineation as an autonomous sphere. If the focus of the political realist is on how a particular policy increases, for example, the “power of agriculture,” there is no exclusive connection between this and governmental structures. Nor is it clear why this political sphere should be separated from, for example, cultural spheres that support particular interests: for instance, a belief in the importance of rural agriculture in maintaining national identity. Once again, the defining concept of the political realist—interest defined in terms of power—appears strangely amorphous and ill-defined. It seemingly applies to almost any actor, any interest, any form of power, in any given sphere. It either depends on a content that is smuggled in after the definition (interest as the “national” interest, or power as “governmental” power), or to be completely lacking in content.

Coming to terms fully with the specificity of politics requires a further appreciation of how the roots of this concept lie not in Weber's methodology, but in his political philosophy and the Nietzschean aspects of that philosophy.³⁷

Weber begins from the postulate of value-pluralism: there are no transcendental standards that can provide a ground for conduct, and in modernity individuals are left only with the choice between warring “gods and demons.”³⁸ In this disenchanted context, all value choices and the actions that follow from them are inescapably political in the sense that they involve claims about values that are irresolvable by appeal to a transcendent authority, and thus inevitably carry with them the possibility of contestation and conflict with competing visions. But as Warren has insightfully argued, this does not mean that Weber collapses into a facile relativism; as he puts it:

Politics is thus identified by its specific duality: an indeterminacy that makes it at one and the same time a realm of power and inevitable struggle and a realm of openness and self-determination. For Weber, the maximization of the positive potential entailed by this value relativity required a differentiation and separation of value spheres at both the conceptual and the social levels. To quote Warren: “Weber does not seek one set of value criteria to ground all others because he sees cultural progress in the differentiation of value spheres, none of which are primary and each of which has its own distinctive kind of rationality and criteria or propriety. This is true for economics, aesthetics, erotic life, language, intellectual life, social life, and so on. Each sphere is necessary for a fully human life, and it would be inappropriate to universalize the standards of one sphere to all others. One does not judge art by logical consistency, love by utility, or righteousness by efficiency.”⁴⁰

This is, as Warren nicely summarizes it, is “politicized neo-Kantian liberalism”:⁴¹ it adopts Kant's differentiation of spheres of knowledge (the empirical, the aesthetic, the moral), but rather than grounding them transcendentally, it legitimates these categorical distinctions politically and ethically in terms of the possibilities of human freedom, and consequentially in terms of social differentiation that will allow the maximization of that freedom.

Seen in light of this Weberian heritage, the specificity of politics in realism becomes clearer. Power and struggle are intrinsic to human life. Politics is the sphere of contest over the determination of values and wills—an undetermined realm in which the struggle for power and domination is pure (without content) and thus potentially limitless. The specificity of the political sphere thus lies in power as an interest in itself. Politics, as an autonomous sphere, has no intrinsic object of interest; it is literally lacking in any concrete “interest” except the pursuit of power. This indeterminacy stands in contrast to other social spheres that possess concrete interests, forms of power, and limits that politics does not; for example, the economic sphere has a specific logic of interest (material gain) and a dominant form of power (control over material resources) that define its operation and give it a particular set of limits. Paradoxically, it is the unlimited nature of politics that is the basis of its conceptual specificity, and the basis of the distinction between the political sphere and other social spheres.⁴²

Yet the essential emptiness of politics also represents its promise and positive potential. The quest for power without a fixed interest leaves those interests open to transformation and revision and is, thus, the condition of change and progress. As a realm without a fixed interest, politics becomes the sphere of activity uniquely concerned with the consideration, generation, and transformation of common interests and understandings: the sphere where the fundamental meanings and values of social life are contested and determined. The lack of fixed understandings of the good and the true is the condition of modern politics, and the basis of its distinctiveness as a realm of freedom, creativity, and change.

Morgenthau shares this understanding of politics. Politics, in principle, has no limits—it lacks defined objects of interest or resources of power. Its limits lie only in the confrontation between divergent wills, interests, and the forms of power they can wield. To return to Morgenthau's illustration of “nonpolitical” issues cited at the outset of this article, both legal (extradition) and trade relations are not political because they are conducted within largely shared and settled structures of agreement on the appropriate norms, rules, and procedures. The political struggle for power—the struggle over foundational principles, values, and so on—does not prevail in these relations (unless one actor is explicitly using them to these ends). By contrast, because it has no specific object to govern its interests or its potential forms of power, politics is an almost limitless field of struggle and domination. As Morgenthau repeatedly makes clear, the conceptual specificity of politics applies across all political realms; at this level, there is no fundamental distinction between domestic and international politics. The primary difference between the two lies in the social resources—institutional and ideational—available for the limitation of the negative logic of politics, and the exploitation of its positive capacities. As he puts it, “The essence of international politics is identical with its domestic counterpart,” a symmetry “modified only by the different conditions under which this struggle takes place in the domestic and the international spheres.”⁴³

This recognition allows one to make sense of Morgenthau's claim that as an ideal-type purely “political” man would be a “beast”: as a sphere without content or limits, politics is potentially a remarkably destructive dimension of human action.⁴⁴

Yet at the same time, politics is the protean center of social life, and Morgenthau views the indeterminacy of politics as a potentially positive phenomenon, representing the possibility of change, and as a core principle of democracy. As he characterized this ethic in direct contrast to that of Nazism: “The doctrine of democracy starts with the assumption that all citizens are potentially capable of arriving at the right political decision and that, consequently, nobody has a monopoly of political wisdom to which, at least potentially, the others would not have access…. Philosophic relativism, political pluralism, the protection of minorities of all kinds and with respect to all kinds of activities are therefore the earmarks of democratic theory and practice.”⁴⁵

The limitless nature of politics is thus the source of both its perils and its possibilities.⁴⁶

Politics is an extraordinarily dangerous sphere. By understanding its essence—its narrow conceptual specificity—it is possible to see the logic of political conflict, and the possibilities for its amelioration. Political conflict cannot be reduced to conflicts of material interest and calculation.⁴⁷ It is far more fundamental; indeed elemental. Rather than wishing away this conflict, it is necessary to recognize its nature and attempt to exploit its positive potential. It is here that the importance of limits in realism becomes clearer. The process of conceptual limitation is linked to political practices of limitation. Far from precluding a broad analysis of political life, the narrow definition of politics becomes the foundation of a sophisticated sociological and institutional analysis, in which a limited conception of politics is deployed in an attempt to constrain the destructive capacities of the logic of politics, while retaining its possibilities for creativity. This requires discerning the structures and practices that support this goal, identifying those that are lacking, and developing a strategy to maximize the promise of politics and limit its perils.

In Morgenthau's thinking, this realist strategy of limitation develops along three dimensions. First, he defines politics and political power as separate from other forms of power, particularly physical violence. This provides the basis for a limitation on the legitimate use of violence within the sphere of domestic politics. Second, he seeks to foster the development of other social spheres whose forms of interest and power can balance those of politics, minimizing the attraction of its violent potential and counteracting its capacities. Third, he attempts to insulate these spheres from each other. The spheres of morality, law, and economics must be insulated against the intrusion of the logic of limitless domination characteristic of politics, while the openness of the political sphere must be defended against its subsumption within these other spheres. In actuality, these structures and strategies of limitation will always be partial, and political practice will always involve the interpenetration of different spheres and the struggle between them. But this interpenetration must always take place against the background of their basic separation, a separation that is essential for the operation of an ethical and balanced political order.

The Insulation of Politics from Violence

The obvious dilemma accompanying Morgenthau's famous claim that “all politics is power politics” is that it risks reducing politics to nothing but a struggle for power, and rendering the application of any and all forms of power and coercion equally legitimate in the struggle. Indeed critics have long claimed that this is the logical conclusion of realist theory: that ultimately might equals right. However, Morgenthau's limitation of the concept of politics represents, in fact, an attempt to respond precisely to this dilemma. In the context of Weimar, these were not abstract questions. The reduction of politics to violence and the assertion of its essential—even defining—role in politics was found across the political spectrum.⁴⁸

On the Left, for example, theorists such as Sorel had developed a powerful vision of the role of violence in politics that threatened to render the two indistinguishable. But of even greater concern to Morgenthau was the position developed on the Right, particularly the concept of the political developed by Schmitt.

As Scheuerman has superbly demonstrated, an engagement with Schmitt's thinking constitutes a continuing “hidden dialogue” within Morgenthau's thought.⁴⁹

Schmitt, too, had argued that the essence of the “concept of the political” lay in its emptiness, in its fundamentally creative absence of limits and lack of natural determination by other interests characteristic of other spheres. Paradoxically, however, he concluded that the essential openness of politics as a concept meant that in concrete terms the essence of politics lay in the capacity to determine definitively the rules, norms, and values of a society. Sovereignty, Schmitt consequently defined as the capacity for “decision”: the ability to make ultimate decisions in cases of fundamental contestation, where no prior rule could provide the solution. All rule-bound orders (such as legal systems) thus ultimately depend on a capacity for decision that itself stands outside of the given structure of rules. In his criticisms of legal positivism, for example, Schmitt argues that the application of any rule requires the existence of a prior rule that determines which particular rules are to apply to which particular instance. This rule structure is inherently indeterminate: no rule can cover definitively all of the different instances to which different rules might apply. At some level, there must simply be a decision. To say that this decision must itself be governed by rules is only to defer the problem, for even if it were itself determined by a prior set of rules, these rules themselves would require adjudication and decision. If the process were not to go on infinitely, ultimately a position of final decision, itself undetermined by rules, must exist. Sovereignty, Schmitt declared, is therefore a “pure decision, emerging out of nothingness”: the provision of a concrete content within the indeterminacy that is the essence of the political.⁵⁰ Therein, he argued, “resides the essence of the state's sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide.”⁵¹

The political, correspondingly, was defined by the social conditions under which such sovereign acts of decision became viable. The essence of this condition lay in the basic division between those who belonged to a political order and those who did not; a distinction that was ultimately one between friend and enemy.⁵²

In Schmitt's view, friendship and enmity provide the foundational structure of allegiance, of solidarity, that underpin the capacity for effective decision. The commonality of friendship—and the limits prescribed by enmity—define the parameters within which values can be decided upon and the decisions of a “sovereign” actor or institution accepted by the society at large. Such a commonality, he argued, is ultimately inextricable from enmity—from a group that is “not us”—and from the possibility of life and death struggle with that enemy. A sovereign order—quite literally sovereignty in itself—is defined by the existence of such a center of decision and the acceptance of its decisions by the relevant group within an overarching structure of friendship and enmity.

For Schmitt, the politics of the enemy are not normative.⁵³

They represent the essence of politics—of the concept of the political—in itself. In principle, individuals can come together to form a group around any particular interest, but they will only become properly political if they enter into a friend-enemy relationship where the group's ultimate willingness to engage in mortal struggle is at stake. In Schmitt's view, all functioning sovereignties are founded on this principle and capacity; those that do not possess it are unlikely to survive.⁵⁴ To this end, he recognized (and in many eyes advocated) the conscious use of myth and violence as a particularly effective means of creating the division between friend and enemy, and thus of political mobilization and the production of a viable and vibrant political order.⁵⁵

Morgenthau's thinking clearly bears the marks of his engagement with Schmitt. As discussed earlier, his understanding of politics as an undetermined realm of pure will reflects a similar position (and Nietzchean-Weberian heritage) on the specificity of politics, and he shares the view that the essence of sovereignty lies in the capacity for decision.⁵⁶

However the most important element of this relationship lies in the way that Schmitt's concept of the political provides a key position against which Morgenthau's understanding of a limited politics emerges.⁵⁷ The limited vision of politics can, in fact, be seen as a direct attempt to counter the Schmittian logic of enmity at both the conceptual and the social levels, and to avoid the radical realpolitik that is one potential outcome of the specific concept of politics he adopts.

As noted earlier, Morgenthau views democracy as based on the claim that there is no fixed idea of the right or the good, and that this openness is, paradoxically, itself the principle of democracy. Democracy, he asserts outright, is based on a “relativistic philosophy” and a “relativistic ethos” that is paradoxically protected by “certain absolute objective principles which legitimize majority rule but are not subject to change by it.”⁵⁸

While decision may be the essence of sovereignty, the indeterminacy that is the essence of politics is the principle of democratic sovereignty. This indeterminacy itself must be a value to be defended if it is to survive, and this may require the application of violence. But the only legitimate exercise of violence is in support of the principled openness that is the essence of politics.⁵⁹ This is the paradoxical role of the state, and the limit of its legitimate exercise of violence.⁶⁰ The capacity for coercion may be important (indeed essential) in upholding political structures, but it is not their essence. Violence is only legitimate to the extent that it insulates the political sphere from forms of power derived from physical violence: the state's capacity for violence balances all attempts to bring violence into the political sphere, but this violence is limited to the defense of that order, it is not the principle of its operation.

These concerns are clearly expressed in Morgenthau's distinction between political power and military power. “When we speak of power” he argues, “we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority, and between the latter and the people at large.”⁶¹

This is not merely an institutional distinction, it is a practical and ethical one: politics is a relationship of obligation and identification, and properly political domination takes this form and is constrained by these limits. By contrast “When violence becomes an actuality, it signifies the abdication of political power in favour of military or pseudo-military power.”⁶² The narrow conceptual definition of politics is here part of an attempt to distinguish the exercise of legitimate political power and domination, and particularly to insulate this sphere from the intrusion of physical violence and domination.⁶³

Seen in this light, the narrow definition of politics and its clear delineation from other social spheres is not only analytically or methodologically driven; it is a part of a comprehensive political philosophy. Equating political power with physical violence would violate the autonomy of the political, reducing it solely to one of coercion and thus destroying the autonomy of politics. By defining politics narrowly, Morgenthau seeks to distinguish the forms of power appropriate to politics, to limit their legitimate exercise within the political sphere, to insulate the political sphere to the greatest degree possible from other forms of power, interest, and domination, and to ensure that the openness and capacity for change that is the promise of politics is not foreclosed by the domination of the interests and power structures of other spheres. The conceptual specificity—and thus narrowness—of politics is part of an attempt to justify a political practice in which the indeterminacy of the political sphere is understood in both its positive and negative dimensions.

However, the effectiveness of this strategy requires more than just conceptual clarity concerning the specificity of the political. As Morgenthau was well aware, ideas alone are rarely powerful enough to prevail in social life;⁶⁴

for the limited understanding of political power itself to have power, it must possess viable social foundations and be supported by competing interests. In pursuit of these foundations for a politics of limits, Morgenthau invokes one of realism's most basic concepts: the balance of power.

The Balance of Power as a Strategy of Limitation

The idea of a balance of power and interest is justifiably recognized as a key theme in realism. In light of the argument above, however, it takes on a significance much broader than the narrow focus on the interstate balance of power that has so dominated discussions in IR. For Morgenthau, the idea of a balance of power and interest is as complex and vital at the domestic level as it is at the international. Indeed the two are closely linked. A balance of power at the domestic level supports a politics of limits that, in turn, supports a limited foreign policy and provides a more solid basis for a balance of power at the international level.

Here the conceptual distinctions find a social expression and a political meaning. Distinct social spheres (economic, legal, moral, aesthetic) operating within their specific logics and forms of power can act as limits on the logic of politics and on the reach of the political sphere. While actors in these spheres may be tempted to further their interests and power by dominating the political field, these actors will also resist attempts by the political sphere to encroach on their autonomy, and vice-versa. What results is a social balance of power and interests in which the existence of nonpolitical spheres provides limits on an interest in politics and generates forms of interest and realms of power with an interest in maintaining politics as a limited sphere. In short, the idea of politics as a distinct sphere is linked to a strategy of balancing social spheres and interests against one another to limit the reach of politics while also limiting the influence of other spheres on the political.⁶⁵

Yet this strategy of balancing contains a crucial paradox, and a vitally important corollary. In conditions of modernity, the processes of social differentiation must be balanced against their anomic and alienating consequences. In broad historical terms, the capacity for the individual exercise of power through a faith in the ultimate power (and judgment) of God that was a key plank in the moral economy of Christendom, providing even the most oppressed with a feeling of power. The breakdown of this moral economy of interest, along with the corresponding decline of cross-cutting and competing aristocratic hierarchies, destroyed the internal balance of power (and source of limitation) characteristic of feudal and early modern states.⁶⁶

The loss of belief in the power of the divine, and of an interest in religion, has left individuals in the anomic condition of modernity, and societal rationalization has increased this feeling of powerlessness. The progressive disempowerment created by bureaucratic political parties, conformist pressures of modern citizenship, and the alienating impact of large-scale industrial societies and capitalist production has led to a paradoxical rise in the mobilizing power of the state and an increase in the collective interest in, and power of, political logic. As Morgenthau puts it: “The growing insecurity of the individual in Western societies, especially in the lower strata, and the atomization of Western society in general have magnified enormously the frustration of individual power drives. This, in turn, has given rise to an increased desire for compensatory identification with the collective national aspiration for power.”⁶⁷

For Morgenthau, this process was at the core of the rise of fascism. As a philosophy that rejected a politics of limits, which identified the essence of the political with violence, conflict, and the casting of Others as enemies, and which sought to inject this logic as broadly as possible in a process of social mobilization, fascism represents the ultimate social expression of an unbounded politics. In a passage worth quoting at length, he argues:

While the existence of separate spheres and diverse forms of power and interest blunts the possibility of unified social expression of the will to power within the political sphere, it can also be the source of an (unlimited) political logic, giving rise to an international system of endemic and almost irreconcilable conflict. The logic of politics becomes merged with patterns of violence and enmity and extended destructively to all aspects of life, becoming the dominant logic of society as a whole and making its foreign policy wholly one of domination and conflict.

Morgenthau's concern with social balances, with playing off competing interests and limiting the political sphere, has clear affinities with liberal theories of the state, and he makes no attempt to conceal his admiration for liberal and republican systems of checks and balances at both the domestic and the international level.⁶⁹

But what marks Morgenthau's realism off from classical liberalism—and represents an under-recognized aspect of his critique of liberalism—is his insistence that a system of checks and balances, and of autonomous spheres, must continue to recognize the centrality of politics, and that balancing as a social strategy will only be effective if it is understood as a principled strategy, not a mechanistic process.⁷⁰ A failure to recognize these issues was at the heart of classical liberalism's inability to understand the nature of political relations, and its inability to cope with the rise of a “new nationalism” that reflected a shift in the structures of power and interest under conditions of modernity.⁷¹ In reducing the principle of social differentiation to a mechanistic process of material self-interest, and allowing the political sphere to be dominated continuously by the holders of economic power, liberalism not only lost the sense of conflict and power central to politics: it also lost the sense of indeterminacy and reform that is the positive potential of political conflict. Indeed, it even lost the ability to see that change was necessary and possible, and as a result it gave rise to movements (both domestically and internationally) that rebelled against this order.⁷² When this occurred, liberalism was incapable of mobilizing purely self-interested actors in defense of the liberal system itself.⁷³ Having reduced politics to the pursuit of material self-interest, classical liberalism failed to understand that liberal-democratic institutions required a commitment to the defense of the autonomy and value of the political sphere that could not be produced by pure self-interest. It was thus doubly and disastrously naïve, giving rise to a paradoxical and destructive synthesis of disenchantment and theology embodied in fascism, and consequently to the equation of politics with physical violence and total domination at both the domestic and international levels.

Morgenthau's conception of politics is not, therefore, just an analytic device: it is a moral and political project. Long-standing claims that his realism eschews morality, reduces freedom to determinacy, ignores domestic politics, and denies the possibility of progress are badly mistaken. This is not to say that his thinking is without difficulties. Taken in purely analytic terms, for example, his theory of distinct social spheres is certainly susceptible to many of the criticisms commonly levelled at Weberian-inspired methodologies. In particular, his presentation of separate social spheres as defined by specific logics—of economics solely with material gain, or eroticism as wholly with romantic love—risk obscuring rather than clarifying concrete practices. The economic and the romantic, for instance, were rarely far apart in the dynamics of dynastic marriage,⁷⁴

and the play of power across different social spheres continues to be central to the operation of actual practices and forms of domination. To present social reality in such clear-cut terms is to risk both analytic distortion and political naiveté.⁷⁵ It is also to court the charge that in their replication of, for example, the distinction between politics and economics underpinning classical liberal economics, these categories are by no means politically innocent.

Yet it is also important to note that Morgenthau does not assume that these categories and social spheres are natural or given. On the contrary, he is aware that they have evolved as separate spheres through a series of historical struggles and conflicts. The autonomy of religion, for example, developed as a consequence of the political-religious conflicts of the Thirty Years' War, while the division between politics and economics reflects the class struggle in which the rising bourgeoisie came to supplant the aristocracy.⁷⁶

He also well recognizes that the political sphere (like all others) is in reality never pure, and that all spheres interpenetrate in ways that reflect the structures of power and interest operating in different ways at different times and places.

More importantly, however, Morgenthau's commitment to these categorical distinctions is more than just analytic: it is driven by a desire to maintain politics as an ethical principle or regulative ideal, and thereby to judge the extent to which it is capable of performing its role as an autonomous public sphere.⁷⁷

The autonomy of this public sphere is always problematic and can risk appearing almost utopian. Indeed Morgenthau's commitment to the autonomy of the political sphere often leads him to be deeply pessimistic in his appraisal of political developments. He is, for example, seriously concerned with the increasing penetration and domination of the political sphere by the economic in postwar America, and severely critical of the ways in which “scientific” and technical knowledge—not least in the increasing links of social sciences such as IR to policy formulation—threaten to dominate properly political debate.⁷⁸ These analyses may be overly pessimistic, or perhaps not. But by specifying the distinctiveness of politics, Morgenthau seeks to analyze how the autonomy of the political is threatened by domination by other spheres, and to point to the dangers—by no means irrelevant today—that this domination may entail.⁷⁹

Realism, Constructivism, and Collective Identity Formation

Placing Morgenthau's thinking in this broader context reveals a philosophic and political lineage often ignored in treatments of realism today, and challenges many—perhaps most—contemporary views about the foundations of realism and Morgenthau's place in the development of IR. Yet a recovery of this strand of realism is of more than just historical interest. It also has important implications for contemporary realism, and for IR theory more broadly. In this section, I explore some of these implications by looking briefly at a question that has come to occupy a prominent place in recent debates, that of collective identity formation. From the perspective of Morgenthau's realism, to open up the issue of collective identity formation is inescapably to open questions of ethics and requires an assessment of the relationship between political analysis, judgment, and action. These convictions sit uncomfortably, to say the least, with contemporary notions of analytic objectivity and social scientific responsibility that continue to stress the strict separation of fact and value, and that tend to dominate the positions of rationalists and many realists, as well as being at the center of debates over and within social constructivism. Indeed one of the most significant challenges arising from a reengagement with Morgenthau's realism lies in its claim that this vision of analytic neutrality is not a mark of scientific responsibility but is potentially a contribution to political irresponsibility.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common to claim that realism has clear affinities with (usually constructivist) theories of collective identity formation. Jervis, for example, holds that “Realism points to the reciprocal relationship between identities and conflict, arguing that conflict both grows out of and stimulates the perception of group differences,” and that “Social psychologists have long known that perceptions—and misperceptions—of what people have in common often grow out of conflicts as internal unity is gained by seeing others as the Other.”⁸⁰

Similarly, Sterling-Folker has drawn on recent work in sociobiology, where classical realist concerns with sin are replaced with Darwinian concepts of selection,⁸¹ to argue that a realist “rereading” of constructivism's understanding of collective identity formation can contribute to a deeper understanding of realism's core claims about the inherently oppositional, and often conflictual nature of inter-group relations—whether those relations are between state or nonstate (for example, ethnic) groupings.⁸² Perhaps most influentially, Mercer's treatment of “anarchy and identity” draws from social psychology, and social identity theory (SIT) in particular, to argue that because the individual only finds self-identity in the group, “people seek a positive self-identity that they gain by identifying with a group and by favorable comparison of the in-group with out-groups. These comparisons explain the pronounced tendencies for relative gains.”⁸³ By placing the formation of individual identity via group identity as prior to the relations between groups, this view adopts the constructivist principle that identity is constructed while denying that anarchy is what states make of it. In fact, he argues, “the more carefully one examines the question of state identity in anarchy, the stronger the assumption of egoism becomes.”⁸⁴

Yet Mercer's analysis also provides perhaps the clearest illustration of the contemporary importance of Morgenthau's concern with the relationship between conceptual clarity and political judgment. As Mercer acknowledges, the claim that individual-group identity formation processes are prior itself requires explanation. Indeed a careful look at his analysis reveals that the process of identity formation is underpinned by a more basic set of claims about the nature and role of concepts and categorizations in individual identity formation. “Categorization” or the “cognitive requirement for simplication,” he argues, is a “necessity” in social life and action. Categorization in turn involves comparison, and it is this necessary relationship between concepts and categories that ultimately explains the inescapably anarchic nature of intergroup relations. In light of its significance for the argument I have pursued above, this outcome is worth quoting at some length. As Mercer puts it: “Categorization explains comparison. When we categorize, we accentuate similarities within our group and differences between groups. Creating categories demands comparisons. These intergroup comparisons are not evaluatively neutral. Because our social group defines part of our identity, we seek to view our group as different and better than other groups on some relevant dimensions. In short, categorization is a cognitive requirement that demands comparisons; the motivational need for a positive social identity leads to comparisons that favor the in-group.”⁸⁵

This vision provides a direct link between the nature and role of concepts and the nature of relationships between social groups. Categorizations are necessarily comparisons, and comparisons are dichotomous: in/out, us/them. Relations between groups necessarily resemble the nature of the concepts that underlie their construction and inevitable opposition.

It is precisely these kinds of arguments, however, that motivate Morgenthau's detailed engagement with conceptual analysis and its contribution to political judgment and action, and it is in light of their consequences that his otherwise seemingly abstruse concerns with the concept of politics are clearly revealed. As I have shown, Morgenthau would deny neither the importance of conceptual constructions in action, nor the power of dichotomous or oppositional renditions of them. However, he argues that such understandings are radically and dangerously incomplete, potentially transforming claims about the nature of concepts into a claim about the nature of politics. It is exactly this move that Morgenthau finds in Schmitt, and it was precisely in an attempt to oppose an oppositional logic of identity formation—of politics as defined by the inescapable opposition of friend and enemy—that he develops his concept of politics. For Morgenthau, conceptual clarity is essential because it makes possible the political judgment that this stark form of division is not necessary and underwrites a responsible political opposition to it.

The importance of this issue can be brought out by looking at the question of judging actual political practices and strategies of identity formation. If, for example, the process of collective identity formation is necessarily oppositional, how is one to evaluate political strategies that seek consciously to manipulate and mobilize in-group/out-group animosities in the pursuit of political power? This poses directly the question of what it means to be a realist: if realism is the theory of power politics par excellence, does this mean that the height of political realism lies in the mobilization of social capacities and political power by casting Others—whether they be states or other collectivities—as enemies?

Recent attempts to link realism and collective identity formation have tended to shy away from these considerations in favor of an analytic neutrality. Thus, in Mercer's formulation: “The application of SIT to international politics suggests that we are stuck in a self-help system. It does not show, however, that war, conflict, and misery are natural and inevitable products of international politics. National leaders can pursue policies that increase their neighbours' and their own security…. They can do what they want; their competition can be either cooperative or coercive.”⁸⁶

Similarly, in Sterling-Folker's view: “This does not mean that negative comparisons or intergroup competition must necessarily involve violence, since variance in access to natural resources and intergroup exposure also affect how much violence is a necessary component of group competition. Nor does it exclude the possibility that particular types of social practices might act as mitigating circumstances for intergroup violence. Yet neither possibility obviates the selection-by-competition logic operating across groups.”⁸⁷

This neutrality and indeterminacy is not without attractions, and these positions insist that division need not yield violent opposition. However, this neutrality is less satisfactory politically, for it begs the question of how (indeed if) such conceptions of realism are able to make judgments about—and take political stances toward—xenophobic political strategies. Morgenthau, by contrast, did not shy from a consideration of these issues. As I have shown, it is scarcely surprising that he did not do so, for his thinking was formed in an historical and political context where extreme formulations of in-group/out-group relations were linked to extremely violent political strategies at both the domestic and international levels, and where the ability to make judgments about those strategies was an essential element of political responsibility.

Morgenthau was well aware of the power of oppositional formations (and conceptual logics) of collective identity, of the need to recognize clearly the different social resources available for exploiting the positive potential of politics in these situations, and of the grim conclusions that might necessarily have to follow in the absence of those resources.⁸⁸

But ideas matter—and matter crucially—if the negative dimensions of politics are not to be mistaken for politics as a whole, and if its positive potential is to be realized. Here, the analytic and ethical come together, the one being neither reduced to, nor excluding, the other. Political realism cannot in this sense be defined by a view of objectivity defined as neutrality. It certainly requires a clear understanding of the nature of politics, and of the historical structures and limitations of a given situation; but responding to the dynamics of collective identity formation also requires a choice, and it is essential that this choice is underpinned by an ethos—an ethos that Morgenthau seeks to ground in the nature of politics itself.

As Morgenthau's engagement with Schmitt clearly demonstrates, he did not feel that the analyst could be wholly neutral in regard to the dynamics of collective identity formation and a politics of enmity. While it was essential to recognize objectively the dynamics and power relations involved in collective identity formation, and the intrinsic relationship between politics and power, it was equally essential to develop an ethical and evaluative stance toward these dynamics. If realism was not to descend into a crude realpolitik, and if a recognition of the centrality of power in politics was not to result in the reduction of politics to nothing more than power and violence, critical judgment was essential. To focus solely on an “objective” representation of existing practices in the name of social scientific method and a desire to avoid the intrusion of normative considerations in analysis is not a vision of political objectivity, nor of responsibility, that Morgenthau's realism could support.

Morgenthau's realist analysis of the concept of politics is part of an attempt to generate the “particular types of social practices” that might act to mitigate violent conflict and encourage nonviolent engagement. The idea of politics as a positive value—yoked to a principled commitment to a social balance of power designed to foster that openness and offset its negative potential—is a strategy to defend the positive potential of politics as a practical ethos, and to defend the public sphere as an arena for critical, pluralistic engagement. Power can certainly be generated by enmity and division; indeed this may be one of the most effective tactics of all, and one of the key strategies of power is to foreclose the political sphere and to limit debate through the mobilization of oppositional identities. But, for Morgenthau, one of the core commitments of a realist theory of international politics lies in a resistance to this process,⁸⁹

and the concept of politics correctly understood provides an ethical (fundamentally democratic) position from which, and in the name of which, strategies of enmity can be resisted in both domestic and foreign policy.

These issues also speak directly to controversies within contructivist theory, particularly those between “conventional” and “critical” constructivists.⁹⁰

Indeed it is possible to argue that Morgenthau's thought reflects a profound concern with questions of the social construction of politics that is of the greatest relevance for both contemporary constructivist theory and its opponents. For Morgenthau, all constructions of the social world are not equal, nor can they be studied wholly in a detached way. A “moderate” constructivism that focuses only on the question of better methods of social scientific explanation is not, in this view, more responsible as a result of this moderation: it is potentially politically irresponsible in its unwillingness to address and evaluate the consequences of different social constructions.

The idea that the world is comprised of nothing but competing constructions, and that the sole task of “objective” analysis is to describe these as best it can, would mean that the question of whether those constructions and conventions are positive or destructive would be by definition unanswerable. There would, for example, be little reason why Schmitt's mythological politics of enmity in all its destructive dimensions would in principle trouble a “positivist” constructivism if a mirroring of the operation of such a politics is all that social constructivism entails. Without a critical, ethical, and evaluative dimension, a focus on the social construction of practices risks becoming politically irresponsible, and stands in stark contrast to the deeply politicized understanding behind Morgenthau's apparently simple definition and delineation of politics.

Seen in this light, the concerns found in Morgenthau's conception of politics resonate (admittedly somewhat paradoxically given his status as a prophet of “power politics”) with a series of important moves to address the political and analytic consequences of a constructivist position. Wendt's stress on the importance of reflective judgment and the transformative potential opened up by the relational nature of identity, for example, could be seen as evoking many of the same concerns with the positive possibilities of the political sphere, and his recent questioning about “what is IR for?”⁹¹

harkens importantly back to the practical and normative concerns that Morgenthau placed as central “commitments of a theory of international politics.” In a similar fashion, the recent focus of theorists of argumentative rationality and discourse ethics on the importance of the public sphere make this connection even more explicitly.⁹² By stressing a realm of practice defined by a principled openness, and distinct from physical violence, these theorists explore some of the same terrain as Morgenthau's delineation of the positive dimension of politics. Perhaps even more strikingly, the explicit interest of some post-structuralist thinkers with the nature and ethics of “the political” engages with related questions in a similarly direct fashion.⁹³