Abstract
The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the decline of American economic hegemony since the late 1960s have given us cause to carefully reconsider Kenneth N. Waltz's Theory of International Politics, which have been subject to broad interpretation and severe criticism by manty scholars. However, thus far, only a few attempts have been made to shed light upon the relationship between several theoretical points of Waltz's theory.
The major purpose of this paper is to investigate this international political theory; to categorize it according to a scientific methodology, a systematic-structural analysis, and a stable bipolar system, and then to explain the connections among them.
The main points of Waltz's theory are as follows: (1) The principle of state action is self-help in an anarchic society as the absence of government. (2) States are functionally undifferentiated and have to perform similar tasks, however, the capabilities of their performance are varied greatly among them. (3) State power is a combination of the economic, military, and other capabilities, which cannot be sectored and separately weighed. (4) The structure of international system is defined as a configuration of power or the distribution of capabilities. (5) The international structure acts as a constraining and disposing force on state action. (6) State action is rational within a range of the structural imperative. (7) In a bipolar system it is much easier to reduce the uncertainty and complexity of state action. (8) Interdependence during the Cold War has been low at the international systems level because of the lack of economic penetration between the East and the West. (9) The reductive approach and the analysis of foreign policy should be excluded from systems theory. (10) Moreover, Waltz seeks to incorporate four scientific methodologies into his theory: (a) the hypothetical-deductive approach; (b) the definition of theory, structure, and relation as an explanatory power, a constraining force, and a positional picture respectively; (c) the effective and selective use of the economic theory of free and oligopolistic competition; (d) Emile Durkheim's depiction of mechanical societies.
These considerations in themselves, however, are preliminary to a further question, that is, how to reconstruct the relationship between the state and the international system. Both neorealists like Waltz and neoliberal institutionalists like Robert O. Keohane offer the key to understanding this new relationship.
The point I wish to emphasize is that the relationship between the structure of the international system and state action is similar to codetermined irreducibility. This approach called structuration theory in sociololgy requires us to lay the foundation for a theory of state action as well as to conceptualize the characteristics of systems structure.
Finally, I will put forth a number of proposals in order to meet these two requirements.
