A Non-Realist Theory of Sovereignty?: Giddens' The Nation-State and Violence

Anthony Giddens , A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism Volume 2: The Nation-State and Violence (Oxford: Polity Press . 1985).

I owe this formulation to Simon Bromley.

Perry Anderson's reviews of Mann's and Runciman's works, albeit not rendered in an international relations idiom, contain stimulating theoretical criticisms of the 'power political' perspective implicit in their historical analyses. See 'Those in Authority'. Times Literary Supplement (12 December 1996), and 'Societies '. London Review of Books (6 July 1989). respectively. Paul Caminack, concentrating on the domestic activities of the state, has delivered a strong polemical challenge to the status and coherence of arguments for 'state autonomy', See 'Bringing the State Back In? ', British Journal of Political Science (April 1989). And within international relations, unease has been expressed over what is seen as an uncritical take-up of realist arguments by some historical sociologists - notably Michael Mann. See Anthony Jarvis. 'Societies, States and Geopolitics: Challenges from Historical Sociology', Review of International Studies (Vol. 15, July 1989), pp. 281-93.

Giddens would probably argue that this insistence distinguishes his use of the term 'surveillance' from that of Foucault: '... Foucault's "bodies" are not agents ...', The Constitution of Society (Oxford : Polity Press, 1984), p, 154.

Giddens, op. cit., in note 1, p. 57.

This absence has been noted recently by Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism (Basingstoke: Macmillan , 1990), p. 142.

For the contexts, see Hedley Bull , The Anarchical Society ( Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 36 and 12 respectively.

De Sully proposed a territorial redivision of the European continent into equal portions to produce an equilibrium of ambition and capability among the resultant states. For detailed summaries of these plans, see F.H. Hinsley. Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).

Giddens, op. cit., in note I, p. 104. Traditional empires knew no 'international' dimension since they expanded territorially to encompass their needs.

'Since Bismarck's time, every war between great powers has ended with a revolution on the losing side, whether erupting from forces within the defeated state or imposed by the victors ..." Martin Wight, Power Politics, Second Edition (Harmondswonh: Penguin, 1986), p. 92.

Which is of course why the first transnational extension of capitalist social relations beyond Europe had to be accompanied by military power- organised first by the companies themselves and subsequently by the imperialist state.

Montesquieu, De l'esprit des Lois, cited in Wight, op. cit., in note 10, p. 243.

For example, 'Permanent Arms Economy' theories of military spending.

See Kenneth Waltz , 'Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power ', in Robert O. Keohane (ed.). Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press. 1986), pp, 128-29.

It is also, of course, an affront to other states, a block on the administrative power of other state-organisations and a dangerous hole in the global apparatus of political power.

V.I. Lenin , The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution (1917).

Giddens, op. cit., in note I, pp. 332-33.