The Problem of International Order and How to Think about It

This chapter argues that, to get at the issue of international order, one must first deal with the theoretical question of how politics works in the highly stylized world associated with the term anarchy—a world where security and thus power are the only things that matter, a world in which no effective international society can be said to exist. The workings of such an idealized world are worth examining not because the real world necessarily works the same way, but simply because that sort of analysis is a necessary point of departure for thinking about real world problems. Only when one understands how a highly stylized world of this sort works can questions about the role of various factors—international law, for example, or economic interdependence—be posed in any meaningful way. If the goal is to understand what difference those factors make—that is, whether they contribute to order—one needs to start with a certain preexisting frame of reference, one that only theoretical analysis can provide.