Introduction

Abstract

It has long been argued that world politics is characterised above all by egotistical states operating in an anarchical environment. From the celebrated works of Hans J. Morgenthau to the much praised restatements by David Fromkin and Hedley Bull, commentators have stressed the power drive of nation-states operating without higher authority.¹ In these classical treatments emphasis is placed on the independence of states, on their drive to maximise power as both ends and means, and even on the morality of normally evil action when done in pursuit of the national interest.² Thus the approach to world politics which dominated its study at least in the United States, if not in the West generally, emphasised conflict, competition, and unilateral exercise of power. The sociology of ‘realism’ is especially understandable in the case of Morgenthau who, as a German Jewish émigré, was reacting to the brute force of Nazism as well as the tradition of legalistic liberalism which had dominated much Western scholarship in the 1919–39 period.³