Structure

First nations must have resources, the physical attributes that com-
prise ‘capability.’ A military strategy requires military forces; mone-
tary policy, financial instruments; trade policy, the goods and physical
infrastructure of trade; and so on. Second, nations must have available
rules, the media through which they communicate with one another
and co-ordinate their action.78

For Dessler, the media, the social forms, or structure, that make social
action possible are ‘rules and resources’; essentially Giddens’ view of
structure. Moreover, he argues that his transformational model ‘shows
why all rules deserve structural status . . . ’79
Onuf takes a similar view, and his account is perhaps the most sophis-
ticated and most sustained treatment of structure as ‘rules and resources’
within IR theory.80 Onuf begins by accepting the importance of the lin-
guistic turn.81 Rules, in turn, are derived from language; hence if we
want to understand rules we should study language. Rather than turn
to Saussure, Onuf locates his approach in the speech act theory of John
Searle and J. Austin.82 From this, Onuf argues that rules and language
can never be separated, because ‘rules govern language’, and perhaps
more importantly, that they constitute each other.83 Indeed, Kubálková
argues that Onuf considers language to be primary, or more basic than
agents and structures.84 Onuf provides support for this view, arguing
that language is a universal feature of the human species, and hence rules
are an ever-present feature of the human condition and practice.85 This
means ‘to study international relations, or any other aspect of human
existence, is to study language and rules’.86
Wendt’s position on structure as ‘rules and resources’ is not as clear.
In his 1987 agent–structure article Wendt had originally suggested that
Bhaskar’s account of structure as social relations was preferable to that
of structure as ‘rules and resources’.87 Yet in this same piece he also
argues that ‘the deep structure of the state system, for example, exists
only in virtue of the recognition of certain rules and the performance of
certain practices by states . . .’88 By the time of his 1991 book review of
78 Dessler (1989: 453). 79 Dessler (1989: 463).
80 Kratochwil likewise adopts this perspective. However, Kratochwil is concerned only to
construct a framework around rules insofar as it suits his immediate purposes (Kratochwil,
1989: 11). Onuf, on the other hand is attempting to construct a general paradigm for IR
based on the primacy of rules.
81 Onuf (1989). 82 Austin (1975); Searle (1969).
83 Kratochwil (1989: 6); Onuf (1989; 47).
84 Kubálková (2001: 64). See also Onuf (1989: 23, 30).
85 Onuf (1989: 30). 86 Kubálková (2001: 64).
87 Wendt (1987: 357, fn. 57). 88 Wendt (1987: 359).

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