International relations theory

Abstract

HE IMAGE OF states as unitary actors has been particularly unhelpful for policy makers and analysts dealing with the most pressing recent problems on the international stage. Consider the civil wars in central Africa and the former Yugoslavia, the role of refugees in the relationship between the United States and Cuba, the sorting out of the pieces of the former Soviet Empire, and the links between international terrorism and the warlord systems in Somalia and Afghanistan: all these issues point to the dramatic international effects of internal political disunity. These are particularly dramatic cases involving the search for state identity; but in fact, as Thomas Hobbes argued more than three centuries ago, the struggle to create coherent communities is a critical political issue faced by all states. Thomas Hobbes is a central progenitor of the realist perspective in the study of international relations and is often identified with the treatment of states as analogous to individuals in the state of nature.1 Importantly, however, while the Hobbesian notion of the “war of all against all” is frequently invoked in the study of international relations, Hobbes develops his political realism primarily in the domestic context. The central problem that Hobbes addresses is how a large group of individuals with diverse and competing interests can create a political community that facilitates cooperative behavior and constrains