(RESUMO) SCHIMIDT, Brian The Political Discourse of Anarchy

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B. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of 
International Relations (Albany: State University of New York, 1998) 
 
Overview 
Critical historiography of IR. Employs a (Foucauldian) genealogical approach. Focuses 
on the “political discourse of anarchy” and the way in which the concept/discourse of 
anarchy has structured the history of IR. 
Core Assumption 
‘Traditional’ historiographies tend to reduce the field to successive disciplinary 
paradigms (idealist, realist, and behavioral periods) providing a false sense of coherence 
and continuity. Specifically, he takes issue with two orthodox assumptions: 
1. History of field can be explained in terms of a classical tradition (i.e. 
that realism is a direct intellectual descendant of Hobbes, Machiavelli, 
etc.) 
2. Real-world events causally influence field’s development (i.e. 
Hoffman’s argument). Schmidt does not deny that there is a relationship 
between academic IR and empirical events, but that this relationship is 
tangential and requires demonstration. 
Historiography 
A. Prehistory of IR [19th and early 20th century] 
In early 1900s international legal scholarship dominated by a theory of state 
sovereignty as entailing both an internal and an external component. This juristic (or 
monistic) view of sovereignty depicted the state as an expression of supreme authority 
over territorially defined political community. When logically extended to international 
realm, gave rise to a view of sovereign independent states existing in a condition of 
anarchy. 
B. Interwar Period 
Orthodox historiographies represent the interwar period as when the idealist side of 
the field’s first great debate emerged. Many academic historians also assume that WWI 
marked the official birth of field of IR. Yet the field was largely continuous with pre-war 
theoretical discourse of the state. This theoretical discourse did undergo change during 
the interwar period, most notably with the emergence of a theory of pluralism. For 
instance, Harold Laski argued against the monistic view of state as a centralized polity 
acting coherently in international realm. For Laski, the state constituted a decentralized 
polity, composed of many groups. Pluralism dismantled then-dominant metaphor 
whereby state assumed to be an individual with abstract moral and legal personality. 
C. Early Realists 
In light of failure of the League of Nations to prevent WWII, renewed focus on 
analysis of power politics. Realist theories rooted in earlier political discourse of anarchy 
and international politics as a realm of sovereign state actors. Greatest distinction is that 
realists sought to accentuate the disordering effects associated with struggle for power. 
Attempted to construct a sharp contrast between interwar scholars and themselves. E.H. 
Carr is typically credited with being responsible for creating image of interwar IR 
discourse as idealist in character, in that he depicted a fundamental contrast between 
utopia and reality. Yet Schmidt argues his purpose was not to dichotomize the history of 
the field but to establish the fact that utopia and reality are the two facets of political 
 
science. Carr never suggested that realism or power were sufficient for understanding 
world politics, but that one must find the appropriate balance between power and 
morality. Hans Morgenthau criticized Carr’s synthesis of realism and utopianism as 
untenable since based on a ‘relativistic, instrumentalist conception of morality.’ Still, 
Morgenthau’s theory of realism was both a theory of power and a theory of morality. 
 
Conclusion/Summary 
Schmidt attempts to demonstrate that the actual history of the field is 
fundamentally different from the dominant image portrayed by academic practitioners. 
He suggests that the concept of anarchy is more a function of internal disciplinary debate 
(meaning of anarchy contingent on theoretical understanding of sovereignty) than a self-
referential empirical fact of the external world. The First Great Debate [idealist-realist 
debate] serves as a convenient frame of reference denoting birth of field but overlooks 
that there was never a coherent group of scholars during interwar period who adhered to 
an ‘idealist paradigm.’ In Schmidt’s view, interwar discourse was informed not by an 
idealized view of the international system, but by a pluralist critique of the monistic 
theory of sovereignty. Pluralism modified traditional understanding of sovereignty 
(internal vs. external) and forced a re-conceptualization of the state not based on strict 
separation of domestic and international affairs. This is continuous with present-day 
functionalism, transnationalism and complex interdependence, and with the differing 
notions of sovereignty reproduced in the debate between neo-realism and neo-liberal 
institutionalism in the post-Cold War era. 
 
Critique 
- For Schmidt, IR theory must be based on a theory of the state. Does 
this insistence on centrality of sovereignty (and therefore concept of 
anarchy) simply reproduce the dominant framework within which IR 
theories should be couched, i.e. centering around questions of state 
sovereignty, anarchy and its mitigation? In other words, what does 
this centrality imply for the scope of IR research? 
 
Take-Away Points/Questions 
- How did the monistic view of sovereignty contribute to reification of 
inside/outside and thus IR subfield distinction? 
- In what way did real-world events shape the evolution of the 
discipline? 
- If the First Great Debate between idealists and realists is a myth, what 
should we do with this observation? Did post-WWII realists set up 
interwar theories as ‘straw men’ in much the same way that many 
subsequent scholars set up realist theories as ‘straw men’?