Among books on international relations theory, this is one of the most important works to be published in recent years. Daniel Deudney synthesizes traditional IR theory with the logic of republican politics, producing a book that is as creative and original as it is erudite and sophisticated.
Deudney's principal intellectual contribution arises from his argument that the institutions and practices of republicanism—political freedom, popular sovereignty, and limited government—offer considerable promise of transcending the security threats stemming from both anarchy and hierarchy. In an anarchic international system, the prerequisites of security encourage competition and war. At the other end of the spectrum is hierarchy, which manifests itself as empire and/or domestic tyranny, both of which are prone to repression, rebellion, and violence. Deudney's suggested remedy is “negarchy,” a systemic alternative in which the political constraints associated with republican rule check the dangers of unfettered competition as well as the excesses that often accompany stark power asymmetries: “Republican political orders are defined and configured as the systematic negation of pure power politics that mark the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy” (p. 15).
Deudney probes the intellectual roots of republican security theory, convincingly demonstrating that it is not far removed from the traditions of liberalism and realism. Liberalism recognizes the benefits of mutual constraint; theorists linking peace to liberal democracy, commercial interdependence, or institutional networks all highlight the salience of power-checking mechanisms. They have, however, tended to neglect systemic and material contexts. Although contemporary realists are more mindful of structural incentives, they have abandoned their earlier concerns with the threats to security arising from domestic tyranny.
Deudney reclaims the importance of material concerns by developing the notion of violence interdependence—a basic measure of the ability of actors to do physical harm to each other. Geography, topography, transportation and weapons technology, and state size are among the most important variables determining violence interdependence. As violence interdependence has increased, republican polities have had to increase their size to remain viable—from democratic city-state, to constitutional nation-state, to federal republic. Spatial and technological demands have driven the institutional innovations—such as the compound republic—that made possible continental federations of the size and scope of the United States.
Bounding Power also brings back to theoretical center stage the fact that “governments can themselves pose as severe a security threat” as anarchy (p. 46). America's Founding Fathers, for example, were at least as concerned about domestic tyranny as they were about foreign invasion—hence, a constitutional separation of powers despite its potentially adverse consequences for the conduct of U.S. statecraft. Moreover, “extremes of hierarchy and anarchy feed upon one another” (p. 55). Domestic repression provokes rebellion and civil war, contributing to international anarchy. Meanwhile, the external threats stemming from systemic anarchy encourage the centralization of power inside states.
To check the dual and interconnected dangers of anarchy and hierarchy, republican security theory looks to “socially constructed practices and structures of restraint” that bound power within states and cobind them to each other (p. 4). Domestically, popular sovereignty and institutional checks and balances prevent dangerous concentrations of power in the hands of government. Internationally, republics are particularly well suited to fashion interstate unions and other institutions of mutual restraint. Pursuing strategies of cobinding not only enables republics to avoid excessive centralization at home but also comes naturally inasmuch it entails only the replication of “their fundamental constitutional arrangements on a more extensive spatial scale” (p. 58).
Amid the nuclear age and its intense violence interdependence, Deudney argues, republican strategies for producing security are more needed than ever: “As power potentials bound upward, security comes from new configurations of power bounding” (p. 267). He is, however, guarded in his assessment of the likelihood that a republican global order is in the offing, locating himself in between the “tragic worldview” of realism and the “postsecurity agendas and relentless optimism” of liberalism (p. 270).
The author follows his theoretical exploration of republicanism with a magisterial survey of its intellectual and institutional origins. He ranges from the early political associations of ancient Greece and Rome to the maturing republican formations of Europe to the rise of the United States as a constitutional states-union. These historical chapters are carefully executed and well integrated with the book's theoretical apparatus.
The book frustrates on two counts. First, it is more complicated than it needs to be. To be sure, Deudney charts new theoretical terrain and is justified in generating new concepts to do so. But he effectively develops his own vocabulary, requiring that readers clear fairly high barriers to entry. Mastering the turgid terminology is well worth the challenge, but the task is unnecessarily onerous.
Second, Deudney might have gone further in drawing out the implications of his study for today's global challenges. The response of the United States to international terrorism, for example, raises profound and pressing questions about the ongoing feedback loop between external anarchy and domestic hierarchy. But this topic gets precious little attention.
In similar fashion, the concluding chapter might have addressed a host of contemporary issues, including the changing nature of republican practices within the European Union; the likely fate of the network of international institutions erected by the West during the Cold War; and the prospects for spreading republican international orders to parts of the world yet to embrace republican politics at home. Instead, Deudney closes with a somewhat esoteric reflection on “nuclear one worldism.”
These shortcomings notwithstanding, Bounding Power is destined to become a classic work of IR theory, blending with remarkable innovation and insight the long tradition of republican theory with the field's more familiar paradigms.
