Inside the American State: Reconciling Structural and Interpretive Analyses within a Critical Realist Perspective

Abstract

The objectives of this chapter are both practical and theoretical. At the practical level, the purpose of this chapter is to contribute to a better understanding of how the US decided to go to war against Iraq in 2003. In its approach to this question, however, the chapter also pursues a theoretical objective. Specifically, with increasing challenges to the once hegemonic political realism, it has become clear that states cannot be understood exclusively as monadic rational actors. Instead, their internal decision-making processes must also be studied (Wight, 2007).