Alternatives 27 (2002), 429-457

Tropical Anarchy:
Waltz, Wendt, and the Way We
Imagine International Politics
Aaron Beers Sampson*
This article considers the dangers of positing anarchy as the fun
damental fact of international politics. Like Helen Milner, I suggest
that "clarification of this central concept in international relations
is important since such a key term should not be used without
knowing what is meant by it."1 Unlike Milner, however, I argue that
the discourse of international politics employs a particular con
ception of anarchytropical anarchythat portrays the inter
national system as "primitive." As a result, the foundation upon
which much of the discipline rests is not anarchy but rather an
image of primitive society popularized by British social anthropol
ogists during the 1930s and 1940s.
The dangers of employing claims about a supposedly primitive
society as the foundation for analysis are threefold. First, as anthro
pologists have long since realized, primitive systems and societies
are inventions that no longer serve as valid categories of classifica
tion. Second, by transforming what was once the explicit concern
of social anthropology into an implicit theoretical assumption, we
prejudge the nature of international politics. Third, using primi
tive society as the starting point for scholarship creates an
inescapable logic that reduces possible policy responses to a simple
choice: either maintain the primitive status quo or civilize the
world. Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics selects the first
option; Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics
chooses the second.
Waltz and Wendt present flip sides of the same coin: both
imagine the international system as primitive. To illustrate this
claim, the following article is divided into three sections. Section 1
School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW,
Washington D.C. 20016-8071, USA; e-mail: aasampson@hotmail.com

429

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details how Waltz transposed a preexisting theory of primitive soci

ety to the international system. This requires a brief excavation of
British social anthropology from A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's studies
of Oceania to later representations of African political systems by
Meyer Fortes, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Siegfried Nadel. Waltz, I
argue, derived all three components of his theory of international
politics (ordering principles, functional differentiation, and the
distribution of material capabilities) from a theory of primitive
society published by Nadel in 1957.2
Section 2 considers the implications of this transposition. At
first glance, one might find it ironic that a theory "necessarily
based on the great powers" and "states that make the most differ
ence" owes its existence to anthropological fieldwork in Africa.3 A
closer reading, however, reveals more than irony. Waltz's appropri
ation of a theory originally intended to help colonial administra
tors control primitive African societies produces an image of inter
national politics that privileges power over progress, equilibrium
over change, and preventative measures over curative ones.
Section 3 examines the legacy of this appropriation and how it
continues to shape our interpretations of international politics.
This legacy is particularly evident in the writing of Alexander
Wendt, whose social theory represents the most significant attempt
to refit Waltzian realism for the twenty-first century. Unfortunately,
Wendt's uncritical acceptance of primitive society as the baseline
for analysis reproduces anthropological debates of the 1930s and
1940s by effectively reversing the oppositions mentioned above. By
stressing progress over power, change over equilibrium, and cures
over prevention, Wendt revives notions of the "white man's bur
den" and mission dvilisatrice that Waltz and social anthropology rel
egated to the junk pile.
Tropical Anarchy
The international system is anarchic. Affirmations appear from all
sides, from every theoretical persuasion.4 Anarchy, one scholar
declares, is the "Rosetta stone of International Relations."5 Yet the
meaning of anarchy is highly ambiguous.6 Different scholars define
anarchy in different ways. Some regard anarchy as a lack of politi
cal order; others use the term to denote the absence of govern
ment or central authority.
One can avoid this confusion by reading anarchy as a trope,
rather than a natural state of affairs. What I mean is this: underly
ing these dueling definitions is a common set of representative
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figures that posits the international system as primitive. Anarchy

becomes tropical the moment it is steered away from its proper or
literal meaning and deployed instead to signify particular images
like the state of nature, stag hunts, and Africa both past and pre
sent. Thus, while scholars may define anarchy variously, the primi
tive images that anarchy evokes remain constant.7
Primitive societies have long intrigued theorists of inter
national politics.8 None of these theorists, however, challenge the
catagorization of systems, societies, or peoples as primitive. Unlike
anthropology, which since the 1960s has questioned the "ambigu
ous and inconsistent" notion of primitive society, the field of inter
national politics continues to recycle definitions constructed nearly
a century before.9
In early anthropology and social theory, primitive systems are
portrayed as decentralized, disorganized, and anarchic; modern
ones are centralized, well organized, and hierarchic. Primitive sodeties are simple, traditional, uncivilized, premodern, and function
ally undifferentiated; they resemble nonvertebrates like "polyps"
or, if they are slightly segmented, "earthworms."10 Modern soci
eties, on the other hand, are complex, advanced, civilized, and
functionally differentiated; they have skeletons, central nervous
systems, discrete organs, and heads with the capacity to think and
act rationally (unlike primitive societies, where actions are prod
ucts of passionate reflexes). Primitive peoples are described as
devoid of individuality, remarkable only through their homogene
ity. Emile Durkheim calls them hordes. Quoting the findings of
Gustav Lebon, he observes that even the skulls of primitive peoples
are the same: "The Andamans and the Todas are all alike. We can
almost say the same for the Greenlanders. Five Patagonian crania
that Broca had in his laboratory are identical." On the other hand,
Durkheim continues, "among civilized people, two individuals are
distinguishable from each other at a glance, and no preparation is
needed for such an observation."11
Each of these binary oppositions is embodied in our use of
anarchy. When scholars describe the international system as anar
chic, these are the categories anarchy activates. To illustrate what I
mean, let us consider one preliminary example. In his exchange
with John Ruggie in Neorealism and Its Critics, Waltz portrays inter
national politics as a "mechanical solidarity" where individual units
remain functionally undifferentiated. The term mechanical solidarity belongs to Durkheim, who coined it as a means of differenti
ating primitive from modern societies. Actors in a mechanical soli
darity display no individual consciousness, no distinguishable
personal characteristics. Their actions are "passionate and in great
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Tropical Anarchy

part non-reflective." 12 This solidarity is mechanical because it is

analogous to "the cohesion which unites the elements of an inani
mate body, as opposed to that which makes a unity out of the ele
ments of a living body." 13
Durkheim locates the second type of solidarity in advanced
societies characterized by a division of labor:
Whereas the previous type implies that individuals resemble each
other, this type presumes their difference. The first is possible
only in so far as the individual personality is absorbed into the
collective personality; the second is possible only if each one has
a sphere of action which is peculiar to him; that is, a personality.
. . . This solidarity resembles that which we observe among the
higher animals. Each organ, in effect, has its special physiog
nomy, its autonomy. And, moreover, the unity of the organism is
as great as the individuation of the parts is more marked.
Because of this analogy, we propose to call the solidarity which is
due to the division of labor, organic. 14
According to Waltz, Durkheim is "an able guide to the elusive
prey." 15 His distinction "between societies of mechanical and of
organic solidarity," Waltz explains, "correspond[es] respectively to
the anarchic order of international politics and the hierarchic
order of domestic politics." 16 International society, in other words,
is primitive. It is functionally undifferentiated; its actors lack dis
tinct individual personalities; one unit is the same as the next. Con
trast this with domestic politics and one finds the reverse: special
ization, personalities, a division of labor. Nation-states are modern
not because they have achieved some level of socioeconomic devel
o p m e n t but because their internal structure is hierarchic. Thus
even Idi Amin's Uganda, where Ugandans "must have felt their
lives becoming nasty, brutish, and short, quite as in Thomas
Hobbes's state of nature," is an organic solidarity thanks to Amin's
position in the domestic division of labor. 17
Some accuse Waltz of misreading Durkheim. Jeremy Larkins
believes that "Durkheim's social theory does not, despite the claims
of neorealists, fit into the neorealist paradigm." 1 8 For our pur
poses, it does not matter whether Waltz's neorealism is Durkheimian or not. What matters is that Waltz (and also Ruggie) thinks
it is. But Durkheim's name is engraved on only one of the flag
stones we must lift to understand the workings of tropical anarchy.
Between him and Waltz and Wendt, the authors of our two IR the
ory titles, stand three other figures who rarely appear in accounts
of the international system: Meyer Fortes, S. F. Nadel, and their
mentor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.

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Radcliffe-Brown: A Natural Science of Primitive Society

T h e study of primitive peoples began "first in the h o p e of utiliz
ing them as a kind of time-machine, as a peep into our own his
toric past, as providing closer evidence about the early links in
the great Series." 19 These initial studies were highly speculative
affairs. Armchair anthropologists like James Frazer and Edward
Tylor conducted n o fieldwork a n d interviewed n o primitives.
Many never even left England. For information, they relied on
classical literature supplemented by the accounts of missionaries
and explorers.
This changed in the 1920s, when A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and
Bronsilaw Malinowski stood the field of anthropology on its head.
Working among the small-scale, bounded groups of Australia and
Oceania, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski advocated a "functional"
approach to primitive society. Theory, they insisted, must be
grounded in systematic observation. This meant intensive fieldwork of least a year or more. Functionalists also exchanged
diachronic, historical explanation for synchronie, ahistorical analy
sis. The lack of historical data in primitive societies, RadcliffeBrown explained, led to conjecture, imagination, and pseudoscientific speculations that "are not merely useless but are worse
than useless. " 20 As a result, instead of attempting to reconstruct the
evolutionary origins of particular regions or people as Frazer and
Tylor had done, functionalists "effectively assimilated all history to
that which could only be imperfectly known and excluded it from
the field of analysis." 21 For Radcliffe-Brown this meant replacing
the historical search for unverifiable origins with the synchronie
study of verifiable laws of social organization. 22
According to Anthony Giddens, "the transfer of the concept of
function to anthropology, through the agency of Radcliffe-Brown
and Malinowski, was directly connected to the repudiation of
evolutionary theories." 2 3 This statement is misleading. Although
Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski may have switched Darwin for
Spencer and Comte, both remained evolutionists at heart. RadcliffeBrown acknowledged that he had "all his life accepted the hypoth
esis of social evolution . . . as a useful working hypothesis in the
study of society."24 H e also believed that social evolution, like bio
logical evolution, was defined by two features: the process of diver
sification and the development of more complex structures. 2 5
Radcliffe-Brown defined social anthropology "as the compara
tive theoretical study of forms of social life amongst primitive peo
ples." 26 Both he and Malinowski agreed on the need for empirical
observation, functional analysis, and comparative methods. They

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Tropical Anarchy

disagreed, however, on most everything else. Radcliffe-Brown never

even accepted the functionalist label. In 1940 he declared:
This Functional School does not really exist; it is a myth invented
by Professor Malinowski. . . . There is no place in natural science
for "schools" in this sense, and I regard social anthropology as a
branch of natural science.27
After Malinowski's death, he suggested that functionalism be
renamed Malinowskianism, and he reminded colleagues that
"names ending in -ism do not apply to scientific theories." 28
Radcliffe-Brown was particularly repulsed by two aspects of Mali
nowskianism. First, he disliked Malinowski's fascination with culture.
For Radcliffe-Brown, a science of culture was impossible. 29 "We do
not observe a culture," he wrote, "since that word denotes, not any
concrete reality, but an abstraction, and as it is commonly used a
vague abstraction." 30 Taking his cue from Durkheim, RadcliffeBrown confined his work to objective, observable p h e n o m e n a .
"Social structures," he wrote, "are just as real as are individual
organisms." 31 Like Durkheim's social facts, Radcliffe-Brown's social
structures were empirical realities to be studied as things. 32
Second, Malinowski never articulated a system capable of
ordering primitive societies. As a result, everything within a culture
was functional. This led Raymond Firth, one his first students, to
ask: "[I]f everything is connected to everything else, where does
the description stop?" 33 For another anthropologist, Malinowski's
monographs "recall the spiritual: 'The toe bone is connected to
the foot bone, The foot bone is connected to the ankle bone,'
etc.very just, but not a theory of anatomy." 34
Structural-functionalism solved this problem. Like the organs
of the human body, parts within a social structure were seen to per
form specific functions that worked to maintain the structural con
tinuity of the whole. This "provided an articulation of functional
ist notions . . . more coherent and detailed than anything achieved
previously." 35 The articulation owed much to Durkheim. Indeed,
Durkheim's works have been without doubt the most important
single influence upon the development of functionalism in the
present century, in spite of the fact that the only significant
explicit discussion of "functional explanation" offered by him
occupies no more than a few short pages in The Rules of Sociological Method?6
Durkheimian sociology was "the most important influence
on Radcliffe-Brown's thinking." 3 7 He reportedly conducted field
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435

expeditions with L'Anne Sociologique under his arm. 3 8 In a 1912 let

ter to Marcel Mauss, he "proclaimed his 'complete agreement' with
the Durkheimian 'view of sociology' and took credit for being 'the
first person to expound those views in England.'" 3 9 Years later,
Meyer Fortes claimed that many of Radcliffe-Brown's "most fruitful
hypotheses have arisen from testing Durkheimian theories in the
field."40
Rules of Sociological Method introduced Radcliffe-Brown to functionalism and the belief that theories are rendered scientific
through empirical observation. 4 1 The Division of Labor, however,
shaped his understanding of primitives. Indeed, "the role of The
Division of Labor m his interpretation of 'primitive' social forms is
absolutely critical." 42 As a whole, Durkheimian sociology provided
Radcliffe-Brown with "an essentially optimistic vision of the possi
bility of man's self-realization in a properly-ordered society." 43
Progress, which Radcliffe-Brown defined as "the process by which
human beings attain greater control over the physical environ
ment," formed an essential component of his approach to primi
tive society. 44
The Next Generation: From Oceania to Africa
"No living scholar," declared Fortes in the 1949 introduction to a vol
ume published in honor of Radcliffe-Brown's retirement, "has had
so decisive an influence on the development of social anthropology
as A. R. Radcliffe-Brown."45 Although Fortes intended this as a trib
ute, the reference to "no living scholar" is telling since by 1949 Malinowski was dead and the field of social anthropology had made a
decisive turn toward the structural-functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown.
During the 1920s, Malinowski dominated anthropological
research. In the mid-1930s, however, the study of primitive society
shifted from the small-scale social systems of Oceaniawhich sel
dom numbered more than a hundred individualsto the compar
atively huge, extended political systems of Africa. In southern
Sudan, E. E. Evans-Pritchard estimated the population of the Nuer
at more than three h u n d r e d thousand. In West Africa, Fortes put
the size of the Ashanti at half a million. Among the often isolated,
bounded island communities of Oceania, anthropologists had little
trouble separating one society from the next; in Africa, on the
other hand, drawing such lines was impossible. Fortes and EvansPritchard observed:
These overlapping fields of political relations stretch almost indef
initely, so that there is a kind of interlocking even of neighboring
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Tropical Anarchy

peoples, and while we can see that this people is distinct from
that, it is not easy to say at what point, culturally or politically,
one is justified in regarding them as distinct units. 46
Fortes, Nadel, and Evans-Pritchard all studied u n d e r Malinowski. When his brand of functionalism ran aground in Africa,
however, all three defected to Radcliffe-Brown. 47 Structural-functionalism soon "provided the essential analytic underpinning for
the two major cooperative efforts of the Radcliffe-Brownian mode:
African Political Systems . . . and African Systems of Kinship and
Marriage."48 Each text contained monographs by Fortes, Nadel,
Evans-Pritchard, Max Gluckman, I. Schapera, Audrey Richards,
and Radcliffe-Brown. Neither volume even mentioned Bronislaw
Malinowski. 49
Yet Radcliffe-Brown's framework still needed adjustments.
Faced with amorphous societies of several hundred thousand indi
viduals, younger anthropologists redefined social structure as an
abstraction, rather than a real, observable entity. "A comparative
study of political systems," explain Fortes and Evans-Pritchard in
African Political Systems, "has to be on an abstract plane where social
processes are stripped of their cultural idiom and are reduced to
functional terms." 5 0 This contradicts Radcliffe-Brown's preface to
the very same volume. Indeed, "the difference in tone, definitions
and emphasis between Radcliffe-Brown's preface to African Political
Systems and the introduction by Evans-Pritchard and Fortes has
been often commented upon." 5 1
In his preface, Radcliffe-Brown declares that the type of
abstraction described by Fortes and Evans-Pritchard "is of course
an abstraction just as 'carnivore' or 'ungulate' is an abstraction,
but it is an abstraction only a little way removed from reality." 52 A
later essay by Fortes, on the Ashanti, however, reveals just how far
removed he and others were from Radcliffe-Brown's original thesis:
When we describe structure, we are already dealing with general
principles far removed from the complicated skein of behavior,
feelings, belief, etc., that constitute the tissue of actual social life.
We are, as it were, in the realm of grammar and syntax, not of
the spoken word. We discern structure in the "concrete reality"
of social events only by virtue of having first established structure
by abstraction from "concrete reality."53
The same passage reappears thirty years later in Waltz's Theory of
International Politics (but more about this below).
African Political Systems marked the first attempt to link social
anthropology and political theory. The text divides African polities
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437

into two general categories, A and B. Group A includes "societies

with centralized authority, administrative machinery, and judicial
institutionsin short, a government." 5 4 Group B consists of
acephalous or "stateless" societies "which lack centralized authority,
administrative machinery, and constituted judicial institutionsin
short which lack governmentand in which there are no sharp
divisions of rank, status, or wealth." 55 In the biological jargon of
structural-functionalism, these societies lack "legislative, juridical
and executive organs" and their members exhibit "no clearly
defined status or function." 56
Group B baffled social anthropology. Evans-Pritchard's treat
ment of the Nuer, for instance, is remarkably tentative despite his
promise "to discover the principles of their anarchic state." The
Nuer political system, he concludes, "operates largely, we think,
through the institution of the feud." And again, two pages later:
T h e balanced opposition of political segments is, we believe,
largely maintained by the institution of the feud which permits a
state of latent hostility between local communities, but allows also
their fusion into a larger group." 5 7
In the end, Evans-Pritchard decides the acephalous state "is far
from chaotic. It has a persistent and coherent form which might be
called 'ordered anarchy.'" 5 8 This "ordered anarchy" rests "on the
right of self-help" and is "sustained by a distribution of the com
mand of force corresponding to the distribution of like, but com
petitive, interests among homologous segments of the society." 59
Thus primitive anarchic states live in "a more or less p e r m a n e n t
state of war, broken by seasonal periods of truce." 6 0 They have,
explained Fortes,
no "tribal" government or "tribal" citizenship, no centralized
State exercising legislative, administrative, juridical and military
functions in the interests of the whole society. Until British rule
made them the subjects of a foreign State, obliged to render cer
tain services and to obey certain laws and entitled in return to
protection and freedom of movement, it was dangerous for any
body to travel outside his own community.61
S. F. Nadel: The Accidental Neorealist
Raising structure to the level of an abstraction also changed the
composition of individual units. According to Radcliffe-Brown,
"the components of social structures are h u m a n beings, and a
structure is an arrangement of persons in relationships institution
ally defined and regulated." 6 2 For Fortes and Nadel, structure
came to connote the relationships between abstract offices or roles,
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Tropical Anarchy

rather than human individuals. 63 In spite of this shift, Nadel's The

Theory of Social Structure remained "one of the clearest statements of
the theoretical paradigm of the Radcliffe-Brown school." 64 Fortes
described it as "one of the great theoretical treatises of twentiethcentury social anthropology"; it put "the theory of social structure
on a new plane." 6 5
Interestingly, The Theory of Social Structure begins, like Waltz's
Theory of International Politics, with a definition of theory. According
to one definition, theories are interconnected propositions that
predict and explain empirical facts, "Needless to say," Nadel
observes, "only the most advanced sciences have reached this level
of explanatory theory-building." 6 6 But theory can also be under
stood in another, less ambitious sense. Here, theories do not pre
dict or explain anything; they serve, rather, as conceptual schemes
or logical frameworks that map out pictures of relevant structural
relationships or p h e n o m e n a . Nadel defines structure as "an
ordered arrangement of parts, which can be treated as transposable, being relatively invariant, while the parts themselves are vari
able." 67 When properly specified, structural theory yields an
"abstract, purely positional picture," where parts are arranged in
terms of their positions relative to one another. 6 8
To achieve this purely positional picture, Nadel relies on three
distinct levels of abstraction. The first level produces abstract rela
tionships by identifying recurring patterns within varying modes of
concrete behavior. Waltz summarizes this in three words: "Social
ization reduces variety." 69 The second level moves us from a con
crete population of individuals to abstract actors. Societal rules and
norms do not just create institutionalized patterns of behavior, they
also specify the type of individuals who can or must act in particu
lar relationships. Individuals become abstract actors by virtue of
the roles they enact. Together, Nadel explains, the first two levels
of abstraction reveal the "pattern or network of relationships
obtaining 'between actors in their capacity of playing roles relative
to one another.'" 7 0
But Nadel is unhappy with this conclusion. "Though this and
similar definitions are basically correct," he writes, "they conceal
serious methodological difficulties; for a satisfactory theory of
social structure on this basis presupposes an adequate theory of
roles, and none has yet been advanced in any systematic fashion." 71
Consequently, much of The Theory of Social Structure is dedicated to
building a theory of roles. Because Nadel's theory of roles is com
plex, I will discuss only those parts needed to reach the third level
of abstraction. It is important to remember, however, that his the
ory of structure depends upon his theory of role. It is impossible to
have one without the other.
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According to Nadel, "role concepts" bridge the gap between

society and the individual by defining human beings as "bundles of
qualities." But not all roles are role concepts. Bicyclist, for instance,
would not be a useful role concept because it implies n o specific
bundle of qualities. Individuals in role concepts are committed to
all the "rules of the game." It is not clear what rules a bicyclist
would be committed toother than perhaps wearing a helmet and
obeying basic traffic laws.
Roles that do not suggest further characteristics or bundles of
qualities are role labels. Labelslike bicyclist, Londoner, member of an
audience, and so onhave no solid core of firmly interconnected
characteristics. Nadel advises his readers to beware of such labels
since they can disfigure a theory. 72 Waltz makes a similar point in
Theory of International Politics, a t j . A. Hobson's expense. Hobson,
Waltz claims, misidentifies "capitalist state" as a role concept and
then attempts to infer outcomes. "To try to do that," writes Waltz,
amounts to overlooking the difference between these two state
ments: "He is a troublemaker." "He makes trouble." The second
statement does not follow from the first one if the attributes of
the actors do not uniquely determine outcomes. Just as peace
makers may fail to make peace, so troublemakers may fail to
make trouble. 73
Expressed differently, one cannot abstract patterns of behavior
from poorly specified roles.
Properly specified role concepts alone, however, would not
solve Hobson's problem because one cannot predict outcomes from
attributes "if outcomes depend on the situations of the actors as
well as on their attributes." 74 This leads us to Nadel's third level of
abstraction: sketching a "purely positional picture" of society by
emptying roles and relations of their qualitative attributes. Accord
ing to Nadel, the "criterion" for defining a positional picture must
"enable us to synthesize the efficacy of roles and relationships in
numerous situations, and must do so on the grounds of some
acceptable principle of relevance." 75 Nadel identifies two principles:
The first applies to roles in which there is no "dissociation," that
is, to roles which we know to involve specific relationships with
actors in other roles, and which are rendered incomparable only
by the qualitative diversity of the relationships. The criterion
here is the differential command over one another's actions."76
This criterion holds for systems of "dependent" roles such as
patron-client, father-child, or teacher-student. Each of these roles
imply specific relationships with Others acting in reciprocal roles.
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Tropical Anarchy

Consequently, this criterion is designed for centralized or hier

archic systems in which, to borrow a line from Waltz, "some are
entitled to command; others are required to obey." 77
Roles in anarchic decentralized systems, however, imply no spe
cific Other. This is what puzzled the authors of African Political Systems. In systems where, to borrow from Waltz again, "none is enti
tled to command; n o n e is required to obey," a different criterion
applies. 78 Nadel explains:
The second criterion, though it applies to the first case also, is
meant to overcome the "zones of indeterminacy" in actor-public
relationships. In order to do this we reinterpret the 'roles played
relative to one another' of individuals so that they have an extra
neous reference point; this can be found in the differential command over existing benefits or resources.^

By reinterpreting roles in terms of their relative command over

existing material resources and benefits (hereafter, crb), "the blan
keting collectivities then drop out, being replaced by a series of
role to role relations for exampledoctor (crb) > merchant (crb)
> priest (crb) = poet (crb)." 8 0 In anarchic, primitive systems, the
key reference point is n o t function but command over material
capabilities. O n e unit becomes the same as the next the moment
blanketing collectivities or functional attributes drop out. Theory of
International Politics puts it this way: "For anarchic systems, the cri
terion of systems change derived from the second part of the defi
nition drops out since the system is composed of like units." 81
We have now identified the three components needed to
define structure: ordering principles (hierarchic or anarchic),
functional differentiation of units, and the distribution of material
capabilities. In anarchic systems, functional differentiation drops
out leaving a "purely positional picture" based on the distribution
of command over material resources, or power. "And if, in view of
this," Nadel concludes,
it is argued that the "social structure" I am envisaging is little
more than a power, authority or status structure, I would reply
that this seems to me the only "dimension" both sufficiently
abstract for our purpose and still sufficiently relevant, in the
sense of being important in human and social existence.82

Theory of International Politics, or Out of Africa?

By this point it should be clear that the three components of
Nadel's theory of supposedly primitive social structure also form
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441

the backbone of Waltz's theory of international politics. 83 This has

serious implications. By relying on a preexisting theory of primitive
society to explain international politics, Waltz becomes entangled
in the logic of tropical anarchy and is left with only two options:
transform the system or maintain the status quo. After weighing
the lessons of colonialism, he selects the latter.
Waltz's dreary assessment of his own field helps explain his
eagerness to explore other disciplines. In a 1975 literature review
entitled "Theory of International Relations," he complains:
The sorry condition of theory, made writing this essay a dis
heartening task. I undertook it in the belief that to say where we
stand may help us to move forward. To that end, I have tried
always to apply strict definitional standards and not to find cheer
by loosely terming descriptive and analytic work "theory" in
order to be able to say that we have good theory because occa
sionally such work is done well.84
Among "the depressing features" of theory, he lists small gains in
explanatory power, the failure of anything to accumulate, and the
same sorts of "summary and superficial" criticisms and errors. 8 5
There is nothing wrong with an interdisciplinary approach. Yet
Waltz's repeated attempts to justify his borrowing suggest he is on
the defensive. "Even though substance is different," he explains,
borrowing across fields is legitimate if the two fields are homol
ogous. It is likeness of form that permits applying theories and
concepts across disciplines. In that kind of borrowing lies a pos
sibly important contribution of systems theory . . . the possibility
of applying similar theories to different realms.86
And again, a few pages later:
Structural theories . . . gain plausibility if similarities of behavior
are observed across realms that are different in substance but
similar in structure, and if differences of behavior are observed '
where realms are similar in substance by different in structure.
This special advantage is won: International-political theory
gains credibility from the confirmation of certain theories in
economic, sociology, anthropology, and other such nonpolitical
fields.87
Waltz is clearly borrowing across fields, but why social anthro
pology? The answer is structural-functionalism's preoccupation
with primitive society and the extent to which it fit within the exist
ing tradition of realist thinking. There is a considerable amount of
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confusion about the character of Waltz's theory, "which is seen as

structuralist by some and individualist by others." 88 Rereading
Waltz though the lens of social anthropology suggests his theory is
neither structuralist nor individualist; it provides, rather, a struc
tural-functionalist account of the international system.
Only structural-functionalism enables Waltz to avoid reductionism, for it is "as reductionist to explain state behavior solely with ref
erence to anarchical structures as it is to explain international sys
temic outcomes solely with reference to state preferences."89 Since
one can reduce up as well as down, pure structuralism and pure
individualism are equally reductionist. Both leave any unexplained
variance to residual categories. Structural-functionalism, on the
other hand, has no residual categories. This enables Waltz to
explain the self-perpetuating nature of the international system
while straddling the agent-structure divide.
Yet Waltz never uses the structural-functionalist jargon of Talcott Parsons, and this casts a long shadow over a recent attempt to
identify him as a closet Parsonian. "Waltz never deploys Talcott
Parsons or other significant structural-functionalists while eluci
dating his theory," write Daniel Nexon and Stacie Goddard, "which
would appear to create serious problems for our claims."90 But
Nexon and Goddard's problem is more basic. Simply put, one
need not be a Parsonian to be a structural-functionalist. In fact,
after separating the specter of Parsons from structural-functionalism,
one quickly realizes that Waltz deploys a trio of significant struc
tural-functionalists: Nadel, Fortes, and Radcliffe-Brown.
At several points, Waltz says his framework is structuralfunctionalist. In Theory of International Politics, he embarks on a dis
cussion of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to draw attention to "the
familiar structural-functionalist logic by which consequences be
come causes."91 And later, in 1986, he reminds Robert Keohane that
in "structural-functional logic behaviors are selected for their con
sequences."92 In both cases, Waltz refers readers to Arthur Stinchcombe's explanation of functional causal imagery.
Stinchcombe provides a clue to the workings of Theory of
International Politics and its links with social anthropology. "By a
functional explanation," he explains, "we mean one in which the
consequences of some behavior or social arrangement are essen
tial elements of the causes of that behavior."93 Thus functional
analyses are appropriate in circumstances of "equifnality" or
"whenever we find uniformity of the consequences of action but
great variety of the behavior causing those consequences."94 Equi
fnality typically occurs in biological or social systems that "try to
pursue their goals in the face of uncertainty and variability of the
environment." 95
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After concluding that a systemic approach to international pol

itics is warranted due to the repeated occurrence of unintended
consequences, Waltz turns to the General Systems Model (GSM).
Cybernetics uses GSM to handle equifinality in social systems. For
GSM to work, feedback loops must convert outputs into new inputs,
thereby creating a given pattern of movement: "By such a defini
tion, feedback operates only within an organization; that is, the
notion of feedback has no precise, distinct, technical meaning out
side of a hierarchical order." 96 Feedback loops require something
akin to a thermostat to regulate outputs with inputs. But the inter
national system has no such order; there is no thermostat to keep
international politics from getting too hot. GSM is a dead end.
Structural-functionalism and social anthropology, on the other
hand, provide a theoretical framework capable of handling condi
tions of equifinality in primitive anarchic systems. Thus, after dis
patching GSM, Waltz grounds his conception of structure on the
writings of Nadel and Fortes. Due to the importance of the follow
ing passages, both for Waltz's own theory and the argument devel
oped here, I quote them at length; the citations within the square
brackets belong to Waltz:
But if attributes and interactions are omitted, what is left? The
question is answered by considering the double meaning of the
term "relation." As S. F. Nadel points out, ordinary language
obscures a distinction that is important in theory. "Relation" is
used to mean both the interaction of the units and the positions
they occupy vis--vis each other [1957, 8-11], To define a struc
ture requires ignoring how units relate with one another (how
they interact) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to
one another (how they are arranged or positioned). Interac
tions, as I have insisted, take place at the level of the units. How
units stand in relation to one another, the way they are arranged
or positioned, is not a property of the units. The arrangement of
the units is a property of the system.
By leaving aside the personality of actors, their behavior, and
their interactions, one arrives at a purely positional picture of
society. Three propositions follow from this. First, structures may
endure while personality, behavior, and interactions vary widely.
Structure is sharply distinguished from actions and interactions.
Second, a structural definition applies to realms of widely differ
ent substance so long as the arrangement of parts is similar [cf.
Nadel, 104-109], Third, because this is so, theories developed
for one realm may with some modification be applicable to other
realms as well. 9 '
T h e same paragraph reads somewhat differently in Waltz's
1975 article:
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Tropical Anarchy

In the most illuminating work on social structure yet written, S.

F. Nadel points out that the inadequacy of ordinary language
obscures a distinction that is important in theory [1957, 8-11].
"Relation" is used to mean both the interaction of the units and
the positions they occupy vis--vis each other. To define a struc
ture requires ignoring how units relate with each other (how
they interact) and concentrating on how they stand in relation to
each other (how they are arranged or positioned). By abstracting
from unit attributes and interactions, one arrives at a purely
positional picture of society.98
Nadel appears once again in Waltz's 1986 exchange with J o h n
Ruggie:
Structures would then no longer show us a purely positional pic
ture of society. Ruggie would lower the level of abstraction by
adding to structures more information about the characteristics
of units and of unit-level processes. Structure, properly defined,
is transposable [cf. Nadel 1957: 104-109]."
Not only is Waltz's definition of structure derived from Nadel,
but the structure Waltz employs is Nadel's. This is why it is so impor
tant for structure to be transposablebecause Waltz is transposing
Nadel's structure onto the international system. 100 This is signifi
cant because it is structure, after all, that makes it possible to
explain a "small number of big and important things." 101
Transposable structures and positional pictures only become
possible at a high level of abstraction. To explain this sort of
abstraction, Waltz invokes Fortes's line about structure being the
realm of grammar and syntax, rather than the spoken word. 102 This
implies that "states" in Theory of International Politics are abstract
offices or roles similar to the "role concepts" discussed earlier. In
fact, if we agree that Waltz is indeed transposing Nadel's theory,
"states" must be regarded as roles because Nadel's theory of social
structure presupposes his theory of roles. O n e cannot be trans
posed without the other. Having carefully studied The Theory of
Social Structure, Waltz was well aware of this. Indeed, the discussion
of domestic roles, offices, and functions that immediately follows
Waltz's articulation of structure seems to bear this out. 1 0 3
By setting up international politics as an anarchic system of
functionally undifferentiated units governed by the principle of selfhelp and the distribution of material capabilities, Waltz's system
mirrors social anthropology's representation of primitive African
political systems. Positing international politics as primitive, how
ever, limits potential policy responses to a simple choice: "Systems,"
Waltz declares, "are either maintained or transformed." 104
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Waltz finds transformation enticing. The risks inherent in selfhelp situations can often be avoided by transforming an anarchic
system into a hierarchic one. There are precedents: "If might does
not make right, whether among people or states, then some insti
tution o r agency has intervened to lift them out of nature's
realm." 105 Waltz is referring to colonialism. As he retells it, Britain
and France "intervened" to "pacify" Africans and lift them out of
"nature's realm." For Waltz, the position of the British and French
Empires is analogous to that of the United States of the Cold War
period: "England claimed to bear the white man's burden; France
spoke of her mission civilisatrice. In like spirit, we [the United
States] say that we act to make and maintain world order." 106
Waltz rejects transformation for two reasons. First, hierarchy
comes at a price. Britain and France tried to turn anarchic systems
into hierarchic ones and ruined their empires in the process. If a
primitive society,
because of internal disorder and lack of coherence, is unable to
rule itself, no body of foreigners, whatever their military force at
command, can reasonably hope to do so. If insurrection is the
problem, then it can hardly be hoped that an alien army will be
able to pacify a country that is unable to govern itself.107
Second, transformation may not be desirable. This is a curious
argument for a realist, but it fits nicely with the relativism of structural-functionalism. Powerful states, Waltz explains,
do not act only for their own sakes. They also act for the world's
common good. But the common good is defined by each of
them for all of us, and the definitions conflict. One may fear the
arrogance of global burden-bearers more than the selfishness of
those who tend to their own narrowly defined interests.108
This is the lesson Waltz draws from colonialism. It is the same lesson
upon which colonial administrators and social anthropologists
based the policy of indirect rule. Instead of trying to directly lift
primitive societies out of nature's realmas the British did in India
and the French in Senegalindirect rule prized order and control.
"By the time the Scramble for Africa took place," writes Mahmood
Mamdani, "the turn from a civilizing mission to a law-and-order
administration, from progress to power, was complete." 109 This shift
led colonial authorities to privilege power over progress, equilib
rium over change, and preventative measures over curative ones. 110
Waltz brings his point home with a parable. Gullivers, he tells
us, are always more or less tightly tied, and military might does not
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assure political control. In the bipolar Cold War world, there were
two Gullivers: the United States and the Soviet Union. From its
position of power, the United States could follow the example of
previous Gullivers and shoulder the global burden. That would
mean seeking to transform, or civilize, the Lilliputians by imposing
a "decent" and "proper world order."111 If, however, we have
learned the lessons of South Africa, India, Madagascar, Algeria,
and Vietnam we would retain control by shirking any burdens that
come our way. The solution, then, is the detached management of
world affairs and maintenance of the status quo.
Waltz's account of international politics clearly resonates with
many of its readers. His theory, however, mirrors the theories of
primitive society constructed by social anthropologists during the
colonial era. There were serious reasons to question the assump
tions and conclusions of such theories then. There are even more
reasons to question them now.
Anarchy Is What (Some) States Make of It
When Waltz describes the international system as anarchic, he con
veys much more than the absence of political authority. His use of
the term anarchy is intended, rather, to activate the binary opposi
tions and images of 'primitive' society reified by British social
anthropology. To Waltz, these oppositions and images are a point
of departure. The same can be said of Alexander Wendt, for he,
too, is caught in the logic of tropical anarchy. Wendt, however,
selects option twosystem transformationby privileging progress
over power, change over equilibrium, and cures over prevention.
The result is a return to la mission civilisatrice and the social anthro
pology of Radcliffe-Brown.
Although Wendt does not seem to realize it, he and Waltz
describe the current state of international politics in similar terms.
Waltz believes self-help "is necessarily the principle of action in an
anarchic order," yet notes that the international system is "flecked
with particles of government."112 Wendt sees the international sys
tem as a Lockean anarchyrather than a Hobbesian oneyet
admits that it is "in many respects still a self-help culture" caught
somewhere between the "law of the jungle" and the "rule of
law."113 Both, in other words, regard the contemporary inter
national system as an ordered anarchy similar to the primitive
politcal systems of social anthropology. Wendt's interest in system
transformation, however, produces a social theory that strips away
the abstractions of Nadel and Fortes while leaving the foundation
of social anthropology's approach to primitive society intact.
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In Social Theory of International Politics, units and structures are

once again real, observable entities. Theories are determined,
Wendt explains, by the ontological status of agents and structures.
Individualists and structuralists therefore regard either agents or
structures as "ontologically primitive." Structurationists, on the
other hand, view agents a n d structures as "co-determined" or
"mutually constituted." 114 This may make sense to a scientific real
ist who believes "states are people too." 115 But Waltz and Wendt are
talking about very different types of agents and structures. For
Waltz, units and structures are abstractions. As such, they cannot
constitute anything. Failing to realize this, Wendt commits the
same mistake made by Radcliffe-Brown in the preface to African
Political Systems: he confuses the abstract realm of grammar and syn
tax with the concrete world of the spoken word.
Wendt's confusion stems largely from what h e interprets as
Waltz's failure to articulate a theory of roles. "The index for Theory
of International Politics," Wendt remarks, "contains n o entry for
'role,' and Waltz discounts its closest approximation, 'functional
differentiation,' on the ground that it is reducible to the distribu
tion of power." 116 I have already shown that one cannot transpose
Nadel's theory of structure without also transposing his theory of
roles. In Theory of International Politics, states are analogous to
abstract offices or roles. This poses a problem for scientific realists
who regard states as concrete, human individuals. In Wendt's
world, "state" cannot be a role. For Wendt, states take on roles,
while for Waltz, states are roles.
By positing states as real people capable of assuming different
roles, Wendt opens u p the possibility of system transformation. H e
also edges himself one step closer to Radcliffe-Brown. Like RadcliffeBrown, Wendt is interested not in how social systems can be main
tained but in how they evolve. "Once a Lockean culture has been
internalized," he argues,
there is little chance of it degenerating into a Hobbesian one,
and similarly for a Kantian into a Lockean . . . if there are any
structural changes, they will be historically progressive. Thus,
even if there is no guarantee that the future of the international
system will be better than its past, at least there is reason to think
it will not be worse.117
Change, in other words, is unidirectional. O n e moves from a
Hobbesian to a Lockean to a Kantian culture of anarchy. In cul
tural time, like evolutionary time, there is n o going backstates
begin at the same point, head in the same direction, and pass
through the same stages. Change, moreover, means more complex
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Tropical Anarchy

structures, functional differentiation, and specialization. "Although

in most cultures roles are functionally differentiated," writes
Wendt, "anarchy makes it difficult to sustain role asymmetry until
the problem of violence is mitigated, and so I propose that at the
core of each kind of anarchy is just one subject position: in Hobbesian cultures it is 'enemy,' in Lockean 'rival,' and in Kantian
'friend.'"118 The first part of that passage comes right out of Waltz;
the second part is a subtle attempt to introduce functional differ
entiation into the international system. I will explain.
For Wendt, an anarchic system where violence remains unmit
igated is homogenous. It lacks role asymmetry, has limited func
tional differentiation, and is populated by enemies. Putting aside
the question of whether enemy, rival, and friend are adequate role
conceptsNadel would say they are labels and therefore meaning
lessthese three roles define the various anarchies of Wendt's sys
tem. As roles, they are analogous to states in Theory of International
Politics. The core subject position in a Hobbesian anarchy is enemy;
it is impossible for any other positions to exist. That is not the case
for a Lockean anarchy, where rivals and enemies coexist. In a Kant
ian anarchy, or the highest stage of cultural evolution, one finds all
three roles.
According to Wendt, states on the upper rung of the evolu
tionary ladder internalize the role of friend and develop collective
identities. Thus the North Atlantic states "have consistently oper
ated as a security 'team'" even though "friendship concerns na
tional security only, and need not spill over into other issue
areas."119 But why, in a system of friends, are states worrying about
collective security arrangements at all? The answer is simple: there
is always an Other in Kantian anarchy.
By the third and highest level of internalization, states in a
Kantian anarchy develop a "we-feeling" or "in-group identity." But
an in-group identity cannot exist in isolation. There must also be
an out-group. If Wendt's formulation is correct, friends, rivals, and
enemies populate the same system. This marks a significant depar
ture from a system populated by only enemies. Because Wendt
regards friends, rivals, and enemies as distinct roles, a Kantian sys
tem is functionally differentiated in ways that a Hobbesian system
is not.
In Social Theory of International Politics, only "advanced" states
achieve the highest stage of social evolution. This produces a social
theory of international politics that is remarkably un-international.
Wendt remarks that the index of Theory of International Politics has
no entry for role. Discounting Montezuma and the Aztecs, one
might say the same of Wendt's social theory for the entire "Third
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World." Indeed, Wendt's text is largely an attempt to explain how

Europe and the United States pulled themselves out of "nature's
realm." It tells us how NATO and Europe evolved into complex
social kinds through a process dubbed "cultural selection." There
is n o mention of non-Western social kinds. It is n o t even clear
whether African or Asian states could "evolve" without the help of
bigger, more powerful benefactors.
So anarchy, it seems, is only what some states make of it. Power
relations, writes Wendt, "play a crucial role in determining the
direction in which this evolution unfolds. . . . In this light, then
. . . power can be seen as 'the ability not to learn.'" 1 2 0 Thus the
"burden" of structural transformation, the responsibility of "teach
ing" the rest of the world how to evolve, falls squarely on the shoul
ders of great powers. Less powerful states have little or no hope of
transforming the international system on their own: "A powerful
state engaging in prosocial policies will have more impact on the
identities of weak states than vice-versa."121
Wendt isolates four variables to explain why states might engage
in prosocial policies. Like Radcliffe-Brown, he wishes to identify
social forces capable of explaining why some groups become more
"civilized" than others. His first three variablesinterdependence,
common fate and homogeneityall draw explicitly on the
Durkheimian notions of dynamic density, functional differentiation,
and the division of labor. "A division of labor," Wendt explains,
increases the extent to which actors are interdependent and suf
fer a common fate, both of which we have seen can be causes of
collective identity formation. Homogeneous actors lack "natural"
functional complementarities and as such will have less incentive
to create a sense of community, particularly if they are relatively
self-sufficient actors like states.122
None of this is particularly novel. It represents a late-twentiethcentury reformulation of the shift from mechanical to organic soli
darity. Wendt suggests his fourth variable, self-restraint, holds "the
essence of civilization." 123 A democracy like the United States, he
declares, exhibits self-restraint because it will never invade the
Bahamas. Although Wendt seems to have forgotten about the Amer
ican invasion of Grenada, the message is clear. Only Western-style
democracies are predisposed to self-restraint. Only Western-style
democracies possess the essence of civilization. In Durkheimian
terms, self-restraint means rationality or the capacity to reflect. In
mechanical solidarities, remember, primitive societies act on
the basis of passionate reflex. That is why Durkheim calls them
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Tropical Anarchy

mechanical, because they lack the mental capacity needed for selfrestraint and proper reflection.
By arguing that "anarchy is what states make of it," Wendt sug
gests that powerful, civilized states have the capacity to lift weaker,
primitive states out of the heart of darkness and into the light of
democratic peace. Thus superpowers like the United States should
shoulder the global burden of civilizing international society. This
reverses Waltz's conclusion. Waltz seeks system maintenance and
equilibrium; Wendt seeks transformation. Waltz privileges power
over progress; Wendt suggests the opposite. Waltz stresses the pre
ventative role of Gullivers in international politics; Wendt focuses
on the curative aspects of pro-social Western democracy.
* * *

A paintng used to hang in the anteroom of former President

Kwame Nkrumah. The painting was enormous, and the main figure
was Nkrumah himself, fighting, wrestling with the last chains of colo
nialism. The chains are yielding, there is thunder and lightning in
the air, the earth is shaking. Out of all this, three small figures are
fleeing, white men, pallid. One of them is the capitalist: he carries a
briefcase. Another is the priest or missionary: he carries the Bible.
The third, a lesser figure, carries a book entitled African Political Systems: he is the anthropologist, or social scientist in general.124
At the beginning of this article I suggested reading anarchy as
a trope rather than a natural state of affairs. In the discourse of
international politics, I have argued, anarchy refers not its literal
definition but to a series of constructed relationships and repre
sentations. Through the use of binary oppositions like primi
tive/modern, passionate/rational, simple/complex, and uncivi
lized/civilized, claims about anarchy evoke images of supposedly
primitive society in the minds of students and scholars. While these
images have remained relatively constant over the last century, the
ways in which we deploy them have not.
Radcliffe-Brown's structural-functionalism offered "an essen
tially optimistic vision of the possibility of man's self-realization in
a properly-ordered society."125 He believed it would yield increased
knowledge of how primitive social structures evolved and provide
"a scientific basis for the control and education of native peo
ples."126 While control is first and foremost, it is tempered by the
element of progress and education.
The shift from the small, bounded groups of Oceania to the
large-scale, overlapping societies of Africa altered this vision. In
African Politics Systems, optimistic allusions to progress disappear in
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the wake of realist concerns for power and order. "We do not wish
to imply," write Fortes and Evans-Pritchard under the heading
"Aims of this Book," "that anthropology is indifferent to practical
affairs. The policy of Indirect Rule is now generally accepted in
British Africa. We would suggest that it can only prove advanta
geous in the long run if the principles of African political systems,
such as this book deals with, are understood."127 This brought African Political Systems into the realm of "applied anthropology," or
studies colonial administrators could use. Unlike Radcliffe-Brown,
the authors of African Political Systems were concerned not with
"native" education but with political control, particularly in regard
to the stateless, anarchic societies of Group B.
This change corresponded with broader shifts in British colo
nial philosophy. "In India, the actions which the British took to
prevent 'the dissolution of society' were essentially curative, in
Africa preventative."128 'The shift in perspective from the curative
to the preventative," explains Mahmood Mamdani, "was really one
from rejuvenating to conserving society. It was rather a turn
around: from a conviction that Europe had a 'civilizing mission' in
the colonies to a law and order obsession with holding the line."129
Waltz's neorealism picks up where British social anthropology
left off. His Theory of International Politics does nothing more than
transpose an outdated theory of primitive society to the inter
national realm. As a result, Waltz's representation of international
politics mirrors social anthropology's representation of African
politics circa 1950. Both systemsthe international and the Afri
canare "ordered anarchies" characterized by the lack of central
ized authority, like units with undifferentiated roles, and the prin
ciple of self-help. Like the authors of African Political Systems, Waltz
is interested in maintaining order and equilibrium. Progress takes
a back seat to power, equilibrium triumphs over change, and pre
ventative measures trump curative ones.
Wendt simply reverses these dichotomies, while leaving the
core category of "primitive" society intact. By peeling away the lev
els of abstractions constructed by Fortes, Nadel, and Waltz, Jie
reproduces anthropological debates of the 1930s and 1940s. Units
and structures become once again real, observable entities. Evolu
tion and increased functional differentiation are once more at the
center of analysis. Wendt also resurrects the missionary optimism
of Radcliffe-Brown and British India by stressing the ways in which
civilized, prosocial Western powers can transform a political system
from the law of the jungle to perpetual peace.
There are three reasons why we should question these primitive
representations of international politics. First, as a viable category
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of Western thought, primitive society collapsed decades ago. There

is no longer," reads an article from a 1964 issue of Current Anthropology, "an empirically or theoretically defensible ground for
dichotomizing all cultures or societies into the two broad cate
gories 'primitive' and 'civilized.'"130 Indeed, "hardly any anthro
pologists today would accept that this classic account of 'primitive'
society can be sustained. On the contrary, the orthodox modern
view is that there never was such as thing as 'primitive society.'"131
In both social anthropology and international politics, the clas
sic account of 'primitive' society has served similar ends. The sys
tems approach of Radcliffe-Brown, Fortes, Nadel, Evans-Pritchard,
Waltz, and Wendt presumes the scholar can somehow step outside
the field of analysis and observe the object of investigation with
unbiased, scientific objectivity. Yet every "purely positional picture"
shows the brush strokes of those who painted it. British social
anthropologists turned their microscopes on "primitive" societies
just as the British colonial empire began to crumble. Their theo
ries legitimated the desire to control and "reflected Britain's loss of
the self-confidence it once enjoyed as the first industrialized nation
and economic leader of the world."132
Waltz's neorealism emerged from a similar context: the appar
ent decline of a hegemon. Theory of International Politics "reaf
firmed the primacy of American power in the international sys
tem."133 And it, too, legitimated the need to control. "The urge to
explain," writes Waltz, "is not born of idle curiosity alone. It is pro
duced also by the desire to control, or at least to know if control is
possible."134
Second, by accepting the received account of primitive society,
we turn what was once an explicit concern (order in decentralized,
'primitive' societies) into an implicit theoretical assumption
(decentralized systems are primitive and anarchic). The binary
oppositions and biological analogies upon which this assumption is
based are deeply problematic. Failing to question this assumption
affects our ability to interpret events and leads us to prejudge inter
national politics as a primitive struggle of all against all.
Finally, tropical anarchy and the images of primitive society it
activates limit our range of policy responses to an overly simplistic
choice: maintain the status quo or civilize the world. This choice is
neither realistic nor desirable. It is not desirable because it pre
sumes only Western powers have the moral authority and material
capability to initiate meaningful change. It is not realistic because
the international system of the twenty-first century is no more
primitive than the African political systems of one hundred years
before.
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Notes
I would like to thank Randy Persaud, Paul Wapner, Mustapha Pasha, Louis
Goodman, and Siba Grovogui for their comments, criticisms, and encour
agement.
1. Helen Milner, T h e Assumption of Anarchy in International Rela
tions Theory: A Critique," Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 68.
2. S. F. Nadel, The Theory of Social Structure (Illinois: Free Press, 1957).
3. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGrawHill, 1979), 73.
4. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, for instance, trace each intellectual
tradition in international relations, described as "explaining" and "under
standing," to the concept of anarchy; see Hollis and Smith, Explaining and
Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 7.
5. Charles Lipson, "International Cooperation in Economic and
Security Affairs," World Politics 37 (1984): 22.
6. See Milner, note 1.
7. For a discussion of tropical theory, see Hayden White, Tropics of
Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Uni
versity Press, 1978); White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1973), 31-38; and Srinivas Aravamudan, Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and
Agency, 1688-1804 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 1-25.
8. See HansJ. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf,
1949), 211; Chadwick Alger, "Comparison of Intranational and Inter
national Politics," American Political Science Review 62 (1963): 406-419;
Roger D. Masters, "World Politics as a Primitive System," World Politics 16,
no. 4 (1964): 595-619; and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society, 2d ed. (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 57-62, 311.
Masters's paper was particularly influential during the 1960s and
1970s. In The Anarchical Sodety, Bull acknowledges his indebtedness to Mas
ters's "penetrating article" and agrees that "primitive anarchical societies
clearly have important resemblances to international society in respect to
the maintenance of order." He goes on to note, however, that the "differ
ences between international society and primitive stateless societies are
also remarkable." According to Bull, "stateless" societies differ because
they lack precisely defined territorial boundaries, are homogenous, use
magic and mysticism, and are of limited size. Bull's international society of
states, on the other hand, includes sovereign units with clear boundaries,
is culturally heterogeneous, belongs to the modern secular world, and
embraces every man, woman, and child. For these reasons, he concludes
that "stateless" African societies exhibit a degree of social "solidarity"
absent in the international realm.
9. Lois Mednick, "Memorandum on the Use of Primitive," Current
Anthropology 1 (1960): 441-445. See also Sol Tax, "'Primitive' Peoples,"
Current Anthropology 1 (1960): 441; and Francis L. K. Hsu, "Rethinking the
Concept 'Primitive,'" Current Anthropology 5, no. 3 (1964): 169-178.
10. See Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Sodety, trans. George
Simpson (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1947), 191, 175.
11. Ibid., 134, 135.
12. Ibid., 108.
13. Ibid., 130.

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14. Ibid., 131.

15. Waltz, "Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to
My Critics," in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 323.
16. Ibid., 323.
17. Waltz, note 3, 103.
18. Jeremy Larkins, "Representations, Symbols, and Social Facts:
Durkheim and IR Theory," Millennium 23, n o . 2 (1994): 253. Larkins
claims that neorealism is not Durkheimian because "neorealism seeks to
understand international relations in terms of an international system
rather than a society." Although Larkins and Waltz have different concep
tions of international society, Waltz does, in fact, refer to the international
system as a society. See Waltz, note 3, 74,115; and Waltz, note 15, 326, 330.
19. Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1964), 18. See also J o h a n n e s Fabien, Time and the Other:
How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press,
1983).
20. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society.
Essays and Addresses (Illinois: Free Press, 1952), 3.
21. Nicholas Thomas, Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse, 2d ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 21.
22. Meyer Fortes, Time and Social Structure and Other Essays (London:
Athlone Press, 1970), 262.
23. Anthony Giddens, Studies in Social and Political Theory (New York:
Basic Books, 1977), 97.
24. George W. Stocking, "Radcliffe-Brown and British Social Anthro
pology," in Stocking, ed., Functianalism Historidzed: Essays on British Sodal
Anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 145.
25. Radcliffe-Brown, "On Social Structure," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute70 (1940): 1-12.
26. Radcliffe-Brown, note 20, 4.
27. Ibid., 4.
28. Radcliffe-Brown, "Functionalism: A Protest," American Anthropologist 51, no. 2 (1949): 320-322.
29. See Stocking, "Radcliffe-Brown," note 24,172.
30. Radcliffe-Brown, note 25.
31. Ibid.
32. See Adam Kuper, The Social Anthropology of Radcliffe-Brown (Lon
don: Routledge, 1977), 3-4.
33. Quoted in Stocking, After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 18881951 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 424.
34. Adam Kuper, Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School,
1922-1972 (New York: Pica Press, 1973), 38.
35. Giddens, note 23, 98.
36. Ibid., 97.
37. Kuper, note 34, 66.
38. Stocking, "Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Brown: Comparative Sociology at
Cambridge in 1910," in Stocking, ed., note 24, 106.
39. Ibid., 107.
40. Fortes, Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), viii.
41. See Giddens, note 23, 37-38, 97-99.

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42. Stocking, note 38, 109.

43. Kuper, note 34, 54.
44. Radcliffe-Brown, note 25.
45. Fortes, note 40, v.
46. Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 22.
47. Evans-Pritchard later redefected back to Malinowski.
48. Stocking, "Radcliffe-Brown," note 24, 179.
49. See Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46; and A. R. RadcliffeBrown and Daryll Forde, eds., African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (Lon
don: Oxford University Press, 1950).
50. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, eds., note 46, 3.
51. Kuper, note 34, 109.
52. Radcliffe-Brown, preface to Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46,
xii.
53. Fortes, note 40, 56.
54. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, eds., note 46, 5.
55. Ibid.
56. Evans-Pritchard, "The Nuer of the Southern Sudan," in Fortes and
Evans-Pritchard, note 46, 296.
57. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46, 296, 291, 293.
58. Ibid., 296.
59. Ibid., 14-15.
60. Gnter Wagner, "The Political Organization of the Bantu of Kavirondo," in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46, 197.
61. Fortes, "The Political System of the Tallensi of the Northern Ter
ritories of the Gold Coast," in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46, 241.
62. Radcliffe-Brown, introduction to Radcliffe-Brown and Forde, note
49, 82.
63. Kuper, note 34, 109.
64. Sally Falk Moore, Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on
a Changing Scene (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 37.
65. Fortes, "Siegfried Frederick Nadel, 1903-1956: A Memoir," in Nadel,
note 2, xv.
66. Nadel, note 2, 1.
67. Ibid., 8.
68. Ibid., 109.
69. Waltz, note 3, 76.
70. Nadel, note 2, 12. The passage quoted by Nadel is from Talcott
Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory.
71. Ibid.
72. Nadel, note 2, 46-47.
73. Waltz, note 3, 60-61.
74. Ibid.
75. Nadel, note 2, 114.
76. Ibid., 115 (italic in original).
77. Waltz, note 3, 88.
78. Ibid.
79. Nadel, note 2, 115 (italic in original).
80. Ibid., 117-118.
81. Waltz, note 3, 101.
82. Nadel, note 2, 121-122.

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83. Waltz's three-part definition of structure appears in Waltz, note 3,

100-101.
84. Waltz, "Theory of International Relations," in Fred Greenstein
and Nelson Polsby, eds., International Politics (Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1975),
1-2.
85. Waltz, ibid., 1-2; see also Waltz, note 3,18.
86. Waltz, note 3, 55.
87. Ibid., 123.
88. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2000) 29. Those who view Waltz as a struc
turalist include R. B. J. Walker, "Realism, Change, and International Polit
ical Theory," International Studies Quarterly 31 (1987) : 31: 65-86; Hollis and
Smith, note 4,; and Barry Buzan et al., The Logic of Anarchy (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993). Those who read Waltz as an individual
ist include Richard Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism," International Organization 38 (1984): 225-286; David Dessler, "What's at Stake in the AgentStructure Debate?" International Organization 43 (1988): 441-473; and
Wendt.
89. Daniel Nexon and Stacie Goddard, "Systematizing Realism?
Reclaiming Waltz's Systems Theory," paper presented to the International
Studies Association, 1999.
90. Ibid.
91. Waltz, note 3, 74.
92. Waltz, note 15, 330.
93. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Sodal Theories (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1968), 80.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid., 81; see also Giddens, note 23, 104-105.
96. Waltz, note 3, 57-59.
97. Ibid., 80.
98. Waltz, note 84, 46.
99. Waltz, note 15, 330.
100. Waltz claims theories developed for one realm are applicable to
another with "some modification." His modification of Nadel's theory is
minimal. Nadel focused on systems with multiple role positions (i.e., chief,
merchant, and elder). Waltz's system has only one role positionthe
"state." Interestingly, this "modification" actually renders the international
system more "primitive" (if such a thing is possible) because "primitiveness" is measured by the degrees of social homogeneity, complexity, role
diversification, and so on.
101. Waltz, note 15, 329; see also Waltz, note 3, 70.
102. Waltz, note 3, 80.
103. Ibid., 81-88.
104. Ibid., 111.
105. Ibid., 112.
106. Ibid., 200.
107. Ibid., 188-189.
108. Ibid., 205.
109. Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and
the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1996), 21.
110. Ibid., 50.

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111. Waltz, note 3, 200.
112. Ibid., I l l , 114.
113. Wendt, note 88, 10, 337.
114. Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations
Theory," International Organization 41, no. 3 (1989): 339.
115. Wendt, note 88, 215.
116. Ibid., 228.
117. Ibid., 312.
118. Ibid., 257-258.
119. Ibid., 297, 299.
120. Ibid., 331.
121. Ibid., 342.
122. Ibid., 356, 344.
123. Ibid., 359.
124. Johan Galtung, "Scientific Colonialism: The Lessons of Project
Camelot," Transition (1967): 13.
125. Kuper, note 34, 54.
126. Radcliffe-Brown, "The Present Position of Anthropological Stud
ies," in M. N. Srinivas, ed., Method in Social Anthropology: Selected Essays
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 93-94.
127. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, note 46, 1.
128. D. A. Low, Lion Rampant: Essays in the Study of British Imperialism
(London: Frank Cass, 1973), 68.
129. Mamdani, note 109, 50.
130. Hsu, note 9, 174; see also Mednick, note 9; and Tax, note 9.
131. Kuper, The Invention of 'Primitive' Society: Transformations of an Illusion (New York: Routledge, 1988), 7.
132. Henrika Kulick, The Savage Within: The Sodal History of British
Anthropology, 1885-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5.
133. Buzan et al., note 88,14.
134. Waltz, note 3, 6.

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