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Section 1: Influences
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Module 6: Secondary Ideas
Module 7: Achievement
Module 8: Place in The ...
Section 3: Impact
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Module 10: The Evolving ...

Module 11: Impact and ...
Module 12: Where Next?
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Robert D. PutnamBowling Alone
Ways In To The Text
Key Points
The American academic Robert D. Putnam was born in 1941 and grew up in Ohio.
His experience of small-town life there may have helped him develop his theories on
social capital.
Putnams approach in Bowling Alone was unique because he saw social capital not
in terms of interactions between individuals, as previous sociologists had done, but
in terms of an individuals engagement with civic life.
Bowling Alone remains one of the most frequently cited works of social science. Not
only has it found an audience in many areas, including politics and academia, but it
has also attracted interest from the wider public.
Who is Robert D. Putnam?
Born in 1941, Robert D. Putnam grew up in a small Midwestern town in the United
States. His parentsa schoolteacher and a builderwere moderate Republicans
who both participated actively in civic life. Speaking of his hometown, Port Clinton,
Ohio, Putnam said, I was really blessed in growing up in a place that had a lot of
social capital.1 It is possible that the models of civic engagement (the ways of
working to make a difference to the quality of life in a community) that Putnam
experienced during his formative years sparked his interest in the subject, which
forms the major theme of Bowling Alone.
Putnam left his small town for the suburbs of Philadelphia, receiving his
undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College. He won a Fulbright Scholarship to
study at Oxford University and received both his masters and doctorate from Yale.
He began his career as a professional academic at the University of Michigan,
moving to Harvard University in 1979. Here, in addition to his teaching duties,
Putnam also served as dean of Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government. He
wrote Bowling Alone during his tenure at Harvard, publishing it first as an article in
the quarterly academic publication Journal of Democracy2 and then expanding it to
book length.
Raised as a Christian in the Methodist Church, Putnam converted to Judaism when
he married his wife, Rosemary, in 1963. He has said that part of his attraction to the
religion is the "unique and intense community" he sees in Jewish life.3
What Does Bowling Alone Say?
Robert D. Putnam writes in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community, published in 2000, that his aim is to promote (and perhaps
contribute to) a period of national deliberation and experimentation about how we
can renew American civic engagement and social connectedness in the twenty-first
century.4 The work documents the decline of civic engagement in the United
States and the consequent reduction in social capital.
Social capital has long been recognized as the grease that oils the wheels of society.
It facilitates trust, creates bonds among neighbors, even helps boost employment.
Putnam defines it as the "connections among individualssocial networks and the
norms of reciprocity [give and take] and trustworthiness that arise from them.5
Putnam did not invent the notion of social capital, but he did treat it in a novel way.
Other sociologists had applied the concept to individuals interactions with each
other. But Putnams work introduces a conceptual twist: instead of looking for social
capital in the context of individuals and groups, he takes a broader view, examining
the social capital generated by peoples engagement with the civic life of their
towns or cities.6
Putnam analyzed various measuresvolunteering, attendance at town meetings,
membership of formal organizations, and even the throwing of informal dinner
partiesto demonstrate that levels of engagement have fallen since the end of
World War II. In the same time frame, Americans distrust of their government
increased.
In Putnams view, the sport of bowling exemplifies this theme perfectly: while the
number of people who go bowling has increased in the past two decades, the
number participating in bowling leagues has decreased. Bowling alone may
provide exercise, but it does not afford any outlet for social interaction or the kinds
of civic discussions that can occur in groups.
Having established the framework of civic disengagement, Putnam turns to a core
question of his book: whoor whatshould take responsibility for the decline in
social capital in the United States? Like a detective sifting through the evidence,
Putnam considers a list of suspects. He notes that pressures of time and money, the
disintegration of the family unit, and the rise of mass media and television have all
contributed to the reduction of social capital. But the real culprit, he decides, is
change over generations.
Putnams novel analysis struck a chord with readers. In his view, the storm that his
ideas provoked demonstrated that he had unwittingly articulated an unease that
had already begun to form in the minds of ordinary Americans.7
Putnams research has spurred other academics to explore the impact of social
capital on civic life. And by writing in plain, accessible English, Putnam opened up
the discussion of civic disengagement to a wide population of readers and thinkers.
Why Does Bowling Alone Matter?
It would be difficult to overstate the impact of Bowling Alone, which has become
one of the most frequently cited social science publications of the past half-century.
Putnams ideas have been applied to a variety of social challenges, ranging from
health debates to the resolution of disputes. His advice has been sought by political
leaders of all stripesfrom current US president Barack Obama to former president

George W. Bush; from former British prime minister Gordon Brown to Libyan dictator
Muammar Gadaffi. President Bill Clinton even referenced Putnams ideas in his 1995
State of the Union address.
Putnams book persuaded the academic community that social capital was indeed
in decline. This reset the starting point in the debate over social capital. And so,
rather than arguing about whether social capital was declining, academics moved
on to consider the reasons behind this decline. Putnam contended that generational
change had fueled Americas civic disengagement. Not everyone agreed with this
analysis and some began to search for other explanations.
More recently, researchers influenced by Putnam have employed his concept of
social capital, and his research methods, to better understand problems outside
those discussed in Bowling Alone, including immigration, health care, and even the
civic life of other countries.
Putnams work continues through the Saguaro Seminar, an initiative he founded in
1995 at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government. Its website
says the Saguaro Seminars mission is to improve social capital measurement and
data and to investigate ways to build social capital in a changing world across
several domains.8
A decade and a half after its publication, Bowling Alone remains essential reading
for anyone interested in social capital and civic engagement.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What reputation does Putnam have today?
Analyze: How significant is civic engagement today?
Apply: How does Putnams work have relevance to social and political policy?
Notes
C-SPAN Booknotes, Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone, C-SPAN Booknotes (December
24, 2000), http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=159499-1, accessed
February 19, 2015.
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 6578.
Mark K. Smith, "Robert Putnam," The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education,
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/putnam.htm, accessed February 19, 2015.
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 28.
Putnam, Bowling Alone, 19.

Alejandro Portes, "Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,"
Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1819.
Harvard Kennedy School, The Saguaro Seminar,
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/, accessed February 20, 2015.
Module 1:The Author And The Historical Context
I was really blessed in growing up in a place that had a lot of social capital.
Robert D. Putnam, C-SPAN Booknotes
Key Points
Bowling Alone is one of the most cited social publications of the past 50 years.
Putnams childhood in Port Clinton, Ohio, exposed him to lots of different models of
civic engagement.
By the 1990s, many peopleincluding not only Putnam, but also President Bill
Clintonfound it increasingly apparent that Americas social bonds were weakening.
Why Read This Text?
In the 2000 best seller Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community, Robert D. PutnamMalkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard
Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Governmentcharts the rise and fall of civic
engagement in the United States. Putnams work focuses on the importance of
social capitalthe connections between individuals, and the social networks, trust,
and reciprocity (give and take) that such connections involve.1
According to Putnam, social networks foster a generalized reciprocity, best summed
up as, Ill do this for you without expecting anything specific back from you, in the
confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.2
Bowling Alone became a best seller in the US and has since gained wide
international importance. Its impact has been enormousindeed, it was one of the
most repeatedly cited social science publications of the past 50 years. The ideas in
the text have been applied to various social issues, including health dialogues and
settling disputes. Putnams definition of social capital and his method of
quantitative analysis have been used by subsequent studies of social capital and
community disengagement.
Author's Life
Putnam is the child of a schoolteacher mother and a builder father, both of whom
were moderate Republicans and active in civic life. He describes his parents as
great examples of the long civic generation.3 The small town where he grew up
Port Clinton, Ohiohe characterizes as an area high in social capital, where people
trusted and looked after each other.4 Being raised in a place where the benefits of
civic engagement were apparent clearly had a lasting effect on Putnam, planting
the seeds of an idea that became the central theme of Bowling Alone.
Putnam received his undergraduate degree from the prestigious Swarthmore
College in the suburbs of Philadelphia and completed his postgraduate education at
the universities of Oxford and Yale. Around the time of his marriage to Rosemary in
1963, Putnam converted to Judaism, his wife's religion. He has spoken about how he
was drawn to the "unique and intense community" of the religion.5 While Bowling
Alone is not a religiously inspired text, it is possible that the strong civic culture
shared in Jewish communities may have furthered Putnams interest in the topic.
Putnam wrote Bowling Alone during his tenure at Harvard University, where he has
taught since 1979. Some of the examples of civic participation in the book focus on
his personal experiences in his New England neighborhood. Before working at
Harvard, Putnam taught at the University of Michigan.
Author's Background
Throughout Bowling Alone, Putnam says that social capital in the US is declining as
civic engagement wanes: Americans are less likely to vote, volunteer their time,
attend church, and even have friends over for dinner. In fact, during the early
1990s, voter turnout had declined by nearly a quarter from the level it had been at
in the 1960s. Attendance at public meetings had also plummeted in the previous
two decades and the number of volunteers in organizations such as the Boy Scouts
of America and the Red Cross had also gone down.6 So, in a broad sense, the text
comes out of the post-World War II American experience of a gradual decline in civic
engagement since the 1960s.
In the 1990s this issue finally began to gain a significant amount of attention. In his
1995 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton lamented the fraying of
community bonds. Like Putnam, Clinton noted the drop in attendance at Parent
Teacher Association gatherings, town hall meetings, and at the places where
children played sport. Clinton said, "The great strength of America ... has always
been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to
work together to find common ground."7
Key Questions
Synthesize: List some of the likely sources of inspiration for Putnams interest in
civic engagement.
Analyze: What were some possible sources of declining social capital in the US?
Apply: Is the issue of declining social capital of as much relevance today?
Notes
The American Interest, "Bowling with Robert Putnam," The American Interest 3, no.
3 (2008), http://www.the-american-interest.com/2008/01/01/bowling-with-robertputnam/, accessed February 19, 2015.
The American Interest, "Bowling with Robert Putnam."
Mark K. Smith, "Robert Putnam," The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education,
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/putnam.htm">http://www.infed.org/thinkers/putnam.h
tm, accessed February 19, 2015.
Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 6578.
William J. Clinton, "State of the Union Address (January 24, 1995)," in WEEKLY
COMPILATION OF PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS, ed. National Archives.
Module 2:Academic Context
The term social capital itself turns out to have been independently invented at
least six times over the twentieth century, each time to call attention to the ways in
which our lives are made more productive by social ties.1
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone
Key Points
Civic engagement has always been of great interest in the discipline of politics.
Nineteenth-century historian Alexis de Tocqueville may be considered the
forefather of the concept of social capital, although that particular term was not
used until 1916 when it was introduced by L. J. Hanifan.
Like his academic predecessors, Putnam considers social capital in a positive light.
But unlike prior academics, he focuses specifically on social capital at the town/city
level.
The Work In Its Context
Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community, did not create the concept of social capital. As he acknowledges, the
term "turns out to have been independently invented at least six times over the
twentieth century, each time to call attention to the ways in which our lives are
made more productive by social ties."2
The discipline of politics has always concerned itself with the wider subject of civic
engagementon a national or a community level. In fact, the first use of the phrase
social capital occurred not in an academic context, but in a governmental one.
In a 1916 handbook for teachers, a supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia
named L. J. Hanifan argued that successful schools relied on community
involvement.3 Hanifan believed that people are more likely to get involved when
doing so adds to their social capital: those tangible substances [that] count for
most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social
intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit.4 But
Hanifans new term attracted little attention and the phrase largely disappeared for
decades, to be intermittently rediscovered at various points during the second
half of the twentieth century.5
Overview Of The Field
Robert Putnam frequently and favorably cites the nineteenth-century French
historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville throughout Bowling Alone.
Tocqueville is best known for his text Democracy in America. Published in two
volumes in 1835 and 1840, it presents a study of Americas egalitarian ideals and
flourishing democratic system. Putnam describes Tocqueville as being the patron
saint of contemporary social capitalists6 because of the light he shines on the civic
life of the US, which at the time was still a very young country. Or, as modern
cultural sociologist and ethnographer Paul Lichterman puts it, Tocqueville still is the
most prominent single theoretical muse for social capital.7
Tocqueville praises Americas active civic life, noting the frequency with which
Americans attend meetings to discuss and debate a range of issues. This level of
civic engagement, Tocqueville believed, encouraged a transparent democratic
system, which in turn gave citizens more incentive to participate in the process,
further strengthening the democracy. Or, in Tocquevilles words, Feelings and ideas
are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed only by the
reciprocal action of men one upon another.8 Tocquevilles work is clearly a cultural
forerunner of Bowling Alone.
Academic Influences
More recently, a number of influential authors have also advanced the concept of
social capital. Economist Glenn Loury believed the concept could help explain how
social positioning impacts employment opportunities. Social theorist Pierre Bourdieu
focused on the social and economic resources embedded in social networks.
Sociologist James Coleman argued that social capital helps with productive activity
because a group with high levels of trust among its members can accomplish more
than a group lacking that trust.9 Putnam follows the trend established by his
academic predecessors, viewing high stocks of social capital as generally beneficial
facilitating trust, creating employment opportunities, and providing economic
value.
But Putnam puts forward a novel conceptual approach in his work. Rather than
seeking social capital in the context of individuals and groups, he assumes a more
expansive viewpoint, looking at the social capital produced by peoples participation
in civic life in their towns or cities.10
Like many of the authors who have written about social capitalincluding Hanifan,
Loury, and ColemanPutnam is an American and his work focuses on the American
experience. He draws all of his data from the United States, and several of the
community organizations he focuses on, such as marching bands, the Parent
Teacher Association, and the Elks social club, are uniquely American.
Key Questions
Synthesize: When was the term social capital first used, and by whom?
Analyze: Why is the work of Tocqueville so relevant to a study of Putnam?
Apply: Do you think social capital is strictly an American concept, given its origins in
studies of the American political system?
Notes
Paul Lichterman, Social Capital or Group Style? Rescuing Tocquevilles Insights on

Civic Engagement, Theory and Society 35, no. 56 (2006): 534.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969),
515.
Glenn C. Loury, "A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences," in Women,
Minorities and Employment Discrimination, ed. Phyllis A. Wallace and Annette M.
LaMond (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, l977); Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of
Capital," in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed.
John G. Richardson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1986); James S.
Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital," American Journal of
Sociology 94 (1988): 95120.
Module 3:The Problem
A society characterized by generalized reciprocity [give and take] is more efficient
than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than
barter. If we dont have to balance every exchange instantly, we can get a lot more
accomplished. Trustworthiness lubricates social life. Frequent interaction among a
diverse set of people tends to produce a norm of generalized reciprocity.
Key Points
Putnams text launches four separate inquiries: Has social capital in the United
States declined? If so, why? Does it matter? What can be done to rebuild social
capital?
At the time when Putnam was writing, most people argued that social capital was a
highly beneficial and necessary component of community, with limited negative
side effects.
Putnam largely built upon the arguments and assumptions of the mainstream
debate, but he was the first to expand the notion of social capital from the
individual to the civic level.
Core Question
Five years before Robert D. Putnam published Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community, he wrote an article in the quarterly academic
publication Journal of Democracy titled Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social
Capital.1 In the article, Putnam pointed to the declining membership of friendly

fraternal organizations and the Parent Teacher Association as evidence that
Americans were becoming increasingly disengaged from their communities.2 The
article generated a great deal of publicityinitially complimentary, but later critical,
with one headline claiming, Bowling Alone is Bunk.3 The critics central argument
was that by looking only at established, formal organizations, Putnam had
overlooked the connections that may be formed by participating in new groups, or
by an ad hoc, or more informal, involvement in civic life.4
There was some truth in these negative views, as even Putnam acknowledged. The
claims in his 1995 article rested on slender evidence and he later admitted he had
relied on flawed data, due to a calculating error.5 When he set out to amend and
expand the article into the book-length study Bowling Alone, he broadened his
research to include newer organizations and gatherings as informal as private
dinner parties.
He wanted the book to answer four questions:
Is civic engagement in America indeed declining?
If so, what began this trend?
What ramifications does it have for society?
What can be done to rebuild social capital?
The Participants
When Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, social scientists generally agreed that social
capital was a positiveand highly importantphenomenon. The French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu, for example, characterized it as the profits that amass from group
membership. James Coleman, an American sociologist, suggested that a densely
populated community will have a large amount of social capital, which will facilitate
trust among its members and make the community more productive. The economist
Glenn Loury believed that social capital could help explain how social positioning
impacts employment opportunities. Finally, sociologist Mark Granovetter argued
that a person with a broad social network would have a better chance of finding out
about employment opportunities.6
Occasionally, one of these researchers hinted that social capital could also have a
downside. For instance, in his widely cited article Social Capital in the Creation of
Human Capital, Coleman recognized that social capital had the potential to be
harmful. For instance, people within a group might show a lack of tolerance to
people outside. Yet he still focused almost exclusively on its benefits.7
The Contemporary Debate
Putnam acknowledged that the writers who explored social capital before him had
done a great deal of important research: "Much of my argumentand indeed, much
of this bookinvolved simply integrating masses of relevant research that had
already been honed by experts in a dozen separate fields over several decades."8
Indeed, Putnam references his predecessors and contemporaries ideas throughout
Bowling Alone.
Putnams argument that social capital creates safe and productive neighborhoods
recalls Colemans belief that social capital encourages high levels of trust within a
community.9 Coleman had earlier presented this argument in an article that focused
on the mostly Jewish wholesale diamond market of New York, whose traders
intermarry, live in the same community in the Brooklyn area of the city, and attend
the same synagogues. When negotiating a sale, one diamond trader will often hand
over a bag of stones to another merchant for inspection. They do this without
putting in place any formal insurance arrangements and the merchant receiving the
goods could easily steal the gems or substitute inferior stones for the merchandise
received. But such deceit does not seem to occur, largely because the merchants
are tied through family, community, and religious affiliation. If a merchant were
caught stealing or cheating, he would risk severing all those ties.10
Similarly, Putnams discussion of economic prosperitywhich suggests that the
right social networks can help individuals get aheadwere points earlier made by
Loury and Granovetter, who respectively argued that black people have trouble
getting jobs because of their parents typically low socioeconomic status, and that
individuals with wider social networks will acquire information relevant to job
hunting more easily.11
Bowling Alone also arguably conforms to Colemans pattern of admitting that social
capital has potentially harmful effects but focuses overall on its upside. Putnam
dedicates 65 pages of Bowling Alone to the benefits of social capital. As he sees it,
they range from better health and education outcomes to greater economic
productivity and democratic participation. He devotes only 13 pages to a discussion
of the possible disadvantages of social capital, including solidarity within the group
to the exclusion of others, or antagonism and intolerance toward people who are
outside of the group.
Putnam departs from his predecessors in the way he broadens the concept of social
capital. Previous analyses tended to focus on the relationship of an individual with
his or her social network. In Bowling Alone, Putnam discusses social capital in terms
of the level of civic engagement displayed in Americas towns and cities.12 His
bigger-picture analysis of social capital represented a fresh research approach.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the general opinion within academia of social capital at the
time when Putnam was writing Bowling Alone.
Analyze: How do Putnam and Coleman present a similar conception of social

capital?
Apply: Name some other examples of social capital that encourage high levels of
trust within communities.
Notes
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 6578.
Putnam, Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital."
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital," in Handbook of Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing
Group, 1986); James S. Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,"
American Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): 95120; Mark S. Granovetter, "The
Strength of Weak Ties," American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973), 136080.
Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital."
Putnam, Bowling Alone.
Coleman, "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital."
Glenn C. Loury, "A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences," in Women,
Minorities and Employment Discrimination, ed. Phyllis A. Wallace and Annette M.
LaMond (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, l977); Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak
Ties."
Module 4:The Author's Contribution
[My] aim is to promote (and perhaps contribute to) a period of national deliberation
and experimentation about how we can renew American civic engagement and
social connectedness in the twenty-first century.

Key Points
Putnams primary aim in Bowling Alone is to promote awareness of the decline of
social capital in the United States. He wants to spark debate and incite
experimentation to reverse this trend.
The authors comprehensive argument about the level of civic engagement in
Americas towns and citiesand the data behind this argumentbroke new ground
in the subfield of social capital.
Bowling Alone incorporated and built upon previous work done on social capital and
civic engagement, but in many ways it remains a novel text.
Author's Aims
Robert D. Putnam begins Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community by establishing that Americans have become increasingly disengaged
from civic life since the end of World War II. They volunteer less, vote less
frequently, attend church less often, and even throw fewer dinner parties for their
friends.
After establishing the problem by analyzing these trends, Putnam examines the
causes and consequences of weakening social bonds. He also discusses what
Americans can do to reverse the trend of disengagement.
The concepts of social capital and civic disengagement did not originate with
Bowling Alone. The novelty lies in Putnam's comprehensive argument that
community engagement was declining in the US and his identification of the
reasons for this decline. While previous analyses of social capital had mainly
focused on the relationship of an individual with his or her social network, Putnam
looked at social capital generated by civic engagement within Americas towns and
cities.1
Approach
Putnam sticks quite rigidly to his analysis of civic disengagement. Recognizing the
risk that nostalgia about past levels of civic engagement may distort the facts,
Putnam decided to count things.2 He does indeed delve into the facts and figures
relevant to civic participation, such as newspaper readership, hours spent
volunteering, and dinner parties hosted. Similarly, Putnam presents quantifiable
statistics relating to the beneficial effects of social capital in many aspects of our
lives, such as health, education, and the economy. Perhaps in a deliberate attempt
to promote continued civic connectedness and help rebuild social capital, Putnam
directs readers to two websites with which he is affiliatedwww.bowlingalone.com
and www.bettertogether.org.
To an extent, Putnams inquiries about social capital in America resemble his 1993
work on the importance of social capital for democracy in Italy. That 20-year study
focused on government and civic engagement in various regions of Italy. However,
once Putnam turned his attention to the decline in social capital in the United States
perhaps because it was an area he knew well, being his home countryhe broke
new ground. In Bowling Alone he focuses on the impact of civic engagement on
the performance of government, as well as on the outcomes for health, economics,
and education. He stated, The norms and networks of civic engagement also
powerfully affect the performance of representative government.3
Contribution In Context
Putnam was not the first person to articulate the concept of social capital. That
honor belongs to L. J. Hanifan. A state supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia in
1916, Hanifan noted, The individual is helpless socially, if left to himself. If he
comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be
an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs
and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement
of living conditions in the whole community.4
To an important extent, Putnam can be seen as continuing the intellectual trend
begun by Hanifan and taken up by later authors such as Glenn Loury, Pierre
Bourdieu, Mark Granovetter, and James Coleman. Putnam drew on their arguments
and similarly recognized that social capital can help create employment
opportunities, foster trust, and provide economic value. However, Putnam diverged
from previous intellectual trends in the field of social capital in several important
ways. First, because he equated social capital not with individual interactions but
with the interactions between citizens and the towns and cities in which they live.
Second, because he made a comprehensive argument that the American
community was in trouble. And, finally, because he attempted to identify the
reasons for the worrisome decline in social engagement.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize Putnams main aim in Bowling Alone.
Analyze: Assess the ways in which Putnams study differs from previous works on
declining civic engagement in the United States.
Apply: Can you think of ways in which civic connectedness can be promoted in
todays modern age?
Notes
Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 2.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas
[W]e Americans need to reconnect with each other. That is the simple argument of
this book.
Key Points
Putnam discusses four key themes throughout Bowling Alone: social change in the
US; the value of social networks; the factor(s) responsible for the decline in social
capital; and, finally, the potential for renewal and regeneration of community.
The main argument of the text is that Americans need to start rebuilding their social
capitalthey need to begin reconnecting with each other.
Putnam has been praised for making Bowling Alones key ideas very accessible.
Key Themes
Robert D. Putnam defines social capital as "connections among individuals social
networks and the norms of reciprocity [give and take] and trustworthiness that arise
from them.1 He makes it clear at the start of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community that social capital will be the central focus of the
work. In Putnams analysis, social capital is often the lens through which Americans
view social change.
Bowling Alone addresses four particular themes related to social capital:
social change in America
the worth of social networks
the aspect(s) that underpin the reduction in social capital
the possibilities to renew and regenerate community in the US.
From the outset, Putnam argues that Americans have changed the ways in which
they relate to each other and to the institutions of their common civic life. These
changes have led to more disengagement, which means less social capital. He
writes that we Americans need to reconnect with each other. That is the simple
argument of this book.2
Social networks have value, in Putnams view, and social contactswhether they
arise from participation in formal organizations or from informal interactionshave
a positive impact on the productivity of individuals and groups.3
He also clearly demonstrates the negative results of civic disengagement. To
understand how Americans can reverse this trend and reconnect with each other,
he looks into the reasons why they have become less engaged.
Exploring The Ideas
Putnam investigates the themes of social change in America and the value of social
networks repeatedly and in a variety of ways throughout Bowling Alone. He sets the
stage with a series of stories about declining civic engagement in the United States:
the closing of a bridge club, school marching band uniforms that go unused due to
low interest in the activity, a defunct knitting league. One of these anecdotes
inspired the title of the book: Putnam found that people were bowling on their own,
doing without the camaraderie of the traditional league format. Putnam highlights
one member of a local bowing league in Michigan who donated a kidney to a fellow
bowler.4 If they hadnt been involved in the league, the men would never have met.
As Putnam concludes, the fact that they bowled together made all the
difference.5
Putnam then moves from the anecdotal (views based on personal accounts) to the
empirical (views based on evidence). To do this he uses statistics, graphs, and pie
charts to point out the decline in civic engagement in political, religious,
philanthropic (acting to promote the good of others), and social groups.
Having established the framework of civic disengagement, Putnam then introduces
a core question of his book: whoor whatshould take responsibility for Americas
declining social capital? Like a detective sifting through the evidence, Putnam
assesses a list of varied suspects. He considers constraints on time and money, the
fragmentation of the family unit, and the increasing importance of mass media and
television as all playing a part in the reduction of social capital. Its worth noting
that Putnam was writing before the smartphone was everywhere, or he surely would
have added the Internet to this list. But the real culprit, he decides, is what he calls
generational change.
People born before World War II were unusually civic-minded. Putnam suggests that
the heightened sense of civic obligation in wartimefrom both those in uniform and
those on the home fronthelped foster social solidarity and shaped an entire
generation of people. These people were prepared to ask not what your country
can do for youask what you can do for your country,6 in the stirring words of
President John F. Kennedys 1961 inaugural address. By 1965 disrespect for public
life, so endemic in our history, seemed to be waning, Putnam observes.7 More
parents wanted their children to go into politics than ever before; more people
trusted their neighbors.
This, however, has not been the case for subsequent generations.8 Putnam
suggests that the decline in civic engagement began when the Baby Boomersthe
nickname for Americans born after World War II, a period that saw a significant
increase in the birth ratebegan to come of age, in the late 1960s.
The final theme of Bowling Alone is renewal and regeneration: how Americans can
create social capital and once again engage with their communities. Putnam
outlines a variety of solutions to civic ills, ranging from youth participation in welldesigned service-learning programs (where people learn skills while doing work that
benefits the community) to the introduction of electronic communication and
entertainment that will reinforce community engagement.
Language And Expression
Bowling Alone is a highly accessible work. Reviewers have praised the book for its
readability, clear arguments, and unpretentious prose. Perhaps because of this
accessibility, the book became a national best seller. For more analytical readers,
Bowling Alone also contains detailed appendices setting out the data Putnam relied
on to build his arguments. Putnam claims to have included them to convince
skeptical readers, but the majority of the information would likely remain
unintelligible to readers outside of the academic world.9
If anything, Putnams aims were perhaps too sweeping. While he dedicates over 100
pages to tracking down the culprit behind Americas civic disengagement, the
solution he presents is little more than an afterthought, discussed in 12 pages
toward the end of the book.
Arguing for reconnection, Putnam claims he wants to contribute to the national
discussion about renewing civic engagement. But he does not offer any
comprehensive or substantial answers to readers who themselves want to
encourage more Americans to engage with their communities.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the four main themes advanced by Putnam in Bowling Alone?
Analyze: Do you agree that generational change constitutes a significant factor
behind the decline in social capital in the United States?
Apply: What are some potential solutions for overcoming a lack of social capital
within a society?
Notes
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (January 20, 1961),
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/ask-not.htm, accessed 17 March, 2015.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 6:Secondary Ideas
The movement of women out of the home and into the paid workforce is the most
portentous social change of the last half century.
Key Points
One of the main secondary ideas in Bowling Alone is the distinction between
bridging and bonding social capital.
Because of a lack of reliable nationwide data, Putnam does not strongly emphasize
the difference between these two types of social capital.
Putnam also engages in a brief, underdeveloped discussion of whether the entry of
women into the paid workforce has had an impact on the decline in civic
engagement.
Other Ideas
An important secondary idea in Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community is the distinction between bridging and bonding
social capital. As Putnam explains, Of all the dimensions along which forms of
social capital vary, perhaps the most important is the distinction between bridging
(or inclusive) and bonding (or exclusive).1
According to Putnam, bridging social capital looks outward and encompasses people
from a broad social spectrum.2 The Civil Rights Movement, youth service groups,
and religious organizations are examples of bridging social capital.3 Bonding social
capital, in contrast, is likely to be inward-looking and to reinforce exclusive
identities and homogenous groups.4 Bonding social capital derives from
organizations such as those affiliated with a particular ethnic group, church-based
reading groups, or elite country clubs.5
Bonding and bridging social capital serve different ends, but both can be useful.
Putnam notes that, "Bonding social capital is good for undergirding specific
reciprocity [give and take] and mobilizing solidarity.6 The tight network of an
ethnic area, for instance, can provide social and psychological support to its
members. It may even help with financing a market and providing reliable labor for
local entrepreneurs.7 In contrast, bridging social capital helps to circulate
information and provide links to external assets.8 Although bonding social capital
may create strong in-group loyalty, it may also create out-group antagonism, or
hostility, and even foster anti-liberal tendencies.9
Exploring The Ideas
Putnam acknowledges that because he was unable to find reliable, comprehensive,
nationwide measures of social capital that neatly distinguish bridgingness and
bondingness, he has chosen not to differentiate the two types in Bowling Alone.10
So the reader cannot know whether the social capital he writes of is created by
bonding (which Putnam, like others, recognizes can promote illiberal tendencies) or
bridging, which most authors seem to recognize as a force for good.
In an academic context, a distinction between bridging and bonding social capital
would provide a conceptual framework through which we might identify the
potential benefits and pitfalls of each type of social capital. However, lacking the
relevant data, Putnam has made the wise decision not to distinguish between the
two types of social capital in Bowling Alone.
The distinction that Putnam does draw between bridging and bonding social capital
could be a product of his own understanding of the changing nature of social
capital. Putnam has admitted that when he was writing his 1995 article, he believed
that social capital would always have a beneficial impact on society. Later, he
recognized that some social networks could, in fact, be detrimental to society.11
Overlooked
One argument Putnam makes in Bowling Alone seems both underdeveloped and
overlooked. In the third section of the book he lists factors that may be responsible
for the greatly diminished level of civic engagement in America. Buried in a

subsection called Pressures of Time and Money is the idea that the entry of
women into the workforcewhich Putnam calls the most portentous [that is,
important and serious] social change of the last half century12may have
contributed to civic disengagement.
By engaging in unpaid community activities such as volunteering with the Parent
Teacher Association, stay-at-home mothers contributed significantly to Americas
social capital. But when women entered the paid workforce they no longer had the
leisure time to be as heavily involved in such activities. Crucially, men did not pick
up the civic slack.
Putnam acknowledges that paid employment significantly reduces civic
involvement: Full-time work reduces female volunteering by 50 percent.13 Yet
despite such data, he concludes that womens participation in the workforce did not
severely weaken civic engagement. He notes that between 1965 and 1985, even
stay-at-home mothers reduced their civic participation.14 In Putnams view, women
entering the workforce may account for no more than 10 percent of the
responsibility for civic decline. In contrast, he believes the effects of television to be
25 percent responsible.15
Little academic attention has been paid to this point, though it has gained some
traction in the popular media. Margaret Talbot, a staff writer for The New Yorker
magazine, questioned Putnams conclusion. She argued that womens participation
in the workforce must be more relevant to the decline of social capital than Putnam
suggests. Talbot wrote that women have traditionally been more avid social
capitalists then men and now have much less free time to exercise that avidity.16
She proposed that this aspect of Bowling Alone has remained underexplored
because Television viewing certainly makes a more politically palatable target than
women's paid labor. Not many of us leap to the defense of couch potato-ism as a
civic virtue, whereas quite a few of us defend the expansion of autonomy and
opportunity for women.17
Rather than suggesting that we rush to restore the level of civic engagement that
we had in the past, Talbot notes, It may be that with women in the paid labor force,
we will never enjoy quite the level of associational life we had in the 1950s. And in
the end that trade-off may be worth it.18
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the different types of social capital, and how can these be
differentiated?
Analyze: How does the distinction between the two different kinds of social capital
aid our understanding of civic engagement in America?
Apply: Do you believe that women entering the workforce had as relatively small an
impact on the level of social capital in America as Putnam purports?
Notes
Putnam, Bowling Alone, 23, 358.
The American Interest, "Bowling with Robert Putnam," The American Interest 3, no.
3 (2008), http://www.the-american-interest.com/2008/01/01/bowling-with-robertputnam/, accessed February 19, 2015.
Margaret Talbot, "Who Wants to Be a Legionnare?" New York Times , June 25, 2000,
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/06/25/reviews/000625.25talbott.html, accessed
February 19, 2015.
Talbot, "Who Wants to Be a Legionnare?"
Talbot, "Who Wants to Be a Legionnare?"
Section 2: Ideas
Module 7:Achievement
The picture in the UK is not as dramatic as that painted by US academic Robert

Putnam. Informal social networks, membership of community organisations and
voluntary groups appear to have held up relatively well
Ben Rogers and Emily Robinson, The Benefits of Community Engagement: A Review
of the Evidence
Key Points
Putnams Bowling Alone struck a chord with readers in general, while also inspiring
academics and influencing American policymakers.
The authors previously published article on a very similar subject helped encourage
interest in the book and probably contributed to its positive reception.
While some of Putnams findings may apply in other cultural and political contexts,
the main limitation of Bowling Alone is its unwaveringly American focus.
Assessing The Argument

In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D.
Putnam articulates his concern that social capital has been declining as civic
disengagement has been rising in America. The concepts of social capital and civic
disengagement are not new, but his novel analysis resonated with readers. As
Putnam admits, the storm his ideas provoked showed that he had unwittingly
articulated an unease that had already begun to form in the minds of ordinary
Americans.1
Making use of previously unanalyzed data from a study over a number of years by a
large advertising agency, the DDB Needham Life Style Survey on the social habits of
Americans, Putnam documented an unprecedented level of civic disengagement. By
shedding light on new data, Putnams research likely helped other academics
interested in the lifestyles of Americans. And by writing in plain, accessible English,
Putnam opened up the discussion to a wide population of thinkers.
The concepts in Bowling Alone inspired part of President Bill Clintons 1995 State of
the Union address, provoking a national debate about the state of American
society.2 Leaders in other disciplines have also looked to Bowling Alone to see how
an increase in engagement might help solve some of societys problems. In the field
of medicine, for example, thought leaders have looked at the impact social capital
can have on health outcomes, with studies linking good social capital to success in
lowering binge drinking and smoking, among other benefits.3
Achievement In Context
In 1995, five years before publishing the book Bowling Alone, Putnam wrote an
article on the same subject. That articlealso called Bowling Alone (only the
subtitles of the book and the article differ)attracted a wide readership, which
greatly influenced the books reception and ultimate success.
Putnam has acknowledged that his 1995 article hit home with Americans who had
witnessed their bowling alleys and socially oriented Elks clubs close for lack of
patrons. Those Americans had also seen their once-frequent dinner parties and card
games become more sporadic.4 Younger Americans are increasingly uninterested in
activities like these. But Putnams observations on community life would chime
particularly with Americans old enough to remember a different civic culture in the
United States.
When he turned the article into a book-length study, Putnam added more examples
of community involvement. He focused the majority of them on activities that
recalled an earlier era: the bridge club, bowling leagues, and sewing and knitting
circles. These were not activities in which younger people took part. So Putnam
clearly knew the demographics of the people who had read and cited his Bowling
Alone article.
Putnam has acknowledged that the general public and an academic audience may
have different concerns around social capital. In an email written to a friend before
the books publication, Putnam suggested that academics were more interested in
seeing evidence that social capital was actually declining. The general population,
on the other hand, was already convinced of the decline and wanted to know what
could be done to reverse the trend.5 The fact that his book has sections devoted to
proving the decline of social capital, as well as suggestions about how to strengthen
American civic engagement, indicates that Putnam sought to satisfy both audiences
and he succeeded. Bowling Alone has become both a best seller and one of the
most cited social science publications of the past 50 years.6
Limitations
As the full title, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,
suggests, Putnams book focuses on the experience of social capital and civic
engagement within the United States. Some of the examples of civic participation
he refers toleague bowling, membership of the Elks club, attendance at a
Veterans of Foreign Wars gatheringare unique to, or at least originated in, the
United States. However, it is possible to draw parallels. In a country such as the
United Kingdom, for instance, readers may be able to equate bowling with darts,
while Australian readers may liken the Veterans of Foreign Wars club to their own
countrys defense force support organization, the Returned and Services League.
Nevertheless, a UK government report noted that while social scientists and
politicians have become concerned with community disengagement, The picture in
the UK is not as dramatic as that painted by US academic Robert Putnam. Informal
social networks, membership of community organisations and voluntary groups

appear to have held up relatively well 7 While this is not a critique of Putnams
text as such, it helps to illuminate one limitation of the book: its analysis is less
relevant in a country whose social capital and civic engagement trends do not
closely resemble Americas. For example, Japan, Sweden, and the Netherlands have
actually seen their levels of social capital increase slightly.8 Finally, some of the
arguments that Putnam makes are irrelevant in certain cultural and/or political
contexts. His discussion about the importance of social capital for democracy, for
example, would be irrelevant in a country that has an autocratic ruler with
uncontrolled power.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Which factors contribute to Bowling Alones popularity among readers?
Analyze: What are the different perspectives that a lay audience and an academic
audience may have with regards to social capitaland why?
Apply: Do you think that Bowling Alone could still potentially have important insights
for non-democratic countries?
Notes
Simon Szreter and Michael Woolcock, "Health by Association? Social Capital, Social
Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health," International Journal of
Epidemiology 33, no. 4 (2004): 651.
Thomas H. Sander and Robert D. Putnam, "Still Bowling Alone?: The Post-9/11 Split,"
Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (2010): 916.
Harvard University Department of Government, "Robert Putnam," Department of
Government, Harvard University, http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/robertputnam, accessed February 19, 2015.
Ben Rogers and Emily Robinson, The Benefits of Community Engagement: A Review
of the Evidence (London: Home Office Active Citizenship Centre, 2004), 11.
David Halpern, Social Capital (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005).
Section 2: Ideas
Module 8:Place In The Author's Work

[Making Democracy Work is] a classic in political science.
New York Times Book Review
Key Points
Putnams chief focus throughout his lifes work has been civic engagement and
social capital.
Although it was not his first great success (or his last), Bowling Alone remains a
milestone in Putnams career.
His two best-known, most highly regarded works are Bowling Alone and the 1993
book Making Democracy Work.
Positioning
By the time Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community was
published in 2000, Robert D. Putnam was already one of Americas leading social
scientists. He held a professorship at Harvard University, and had served as dean of
its prestigious John F. Kennedy School of Government. His previous book, 1993s
Making Democracy Work, had been very well received. Yet despite these
achievements, Bowling Alone marked a milestone in Putnams career. It became a
national best seller and is one of the most cited social science publications of the
past half-century, alongside Making Democracy Work.
Putnam has a long-standing interest in the concept of social capital. Making
Democracy Work examined the impact that civic engagement has on good
government.1 The 20-year study, which focused on government and civic
engagement in various regions of Italy, concluded, The norms and networks of civic
engagement also powerfully affect the performance of representative
government.2 In Bowling Alone, Putnam returns to the idea that civic engagement
is important for good government. But in this later work he expands his inquiry
considerably. He considers whether civic engagement in America has actually
declined, why it has declined, and what can be done to encourage Americans to
become more engaged.
Putnam still retains his interest in Americas social capital. In 2003 he published
Better Together: Restoring the American Community with co-author Lewis Feldstein.
Better Together focused on exceptional cases in which creative social
entrepreneurs [are] moving against the nationwide tide and creating vibrant new
forms of social connectedness.3 From 2003 to 2008, Putnam was involved in a
major five-year study that explored the impact of social diversity on social capital.
Putnam concludedsomewhat controversiallythat increased immigration and

social diversity reduces trust, solidarity, and social capital.4
Integration
Putnams body of work can certainly be considered coherent and unified.
Nevertheless, there are slight variations in each of his works on social capital.
While Making Democracy Work focused on social capital and civic engagement, it
argued that social capital is likely to be fostered by participation in horizontal
networks, not vertical networks. A horizontal network brings together groups of
equal status and power and includes neighborhood associations, choral societies,
and sports clubs.5 In contrast, vertical networks link unequal groups in a
relationship of hierarchy and dependence.6 Examples of vertical networks include
the Mafia. The social capital benefits in a horizontal network are unlikely to be found
in a vertical network, because such relationships cannot sustain social trust and
cooperation.7 Despite the overlap in research interests between Making Democracy
Work and Bowling Alone, Putnam does not consider the distinction between
horizontal and vertical networks in the latters discussion of social capital.
Putnams 1995 article Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social Capital is in
many ways a blueprint for the book, touching on many of the themes he expanded
on in the later work. However, while the article created something of a sensation, it
also generated a backlash. Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson and
political science professor Everett Carll Ladd criticized Putnam for not considering
that civic engagement may take different forms.8 For instance, while people no
longer bowl in leagues, youth football has become more popular. Putnam appears to
explicitly address these criticisms in the book, expanding his reach to less formal
forms of engagement and providing a wealth of empirical proof (based on factual
evidence) to convince his show me readers.9
Significance
Putnams body of work has been highly influential in academic circlesa quick look
at the number of times his work has been cited confirms this. He has helped steer
academic research of social capital, and the arguments made in Bowling Alone have
been tested in other countries such as Germany and Slovenia. While Putnam has
now written 14 books, there is no doubt that Bowling Alone and Making Democracy
Work are the more important texts in terms of establishing his academic reputation.
Putnams influence also extends beyond academia and into the political arena. The
Bowling Alone article inspired passages of President Bill Clintons 1995 State of
the Union address, and politicians across a broad political spectrumfrom President
George W. Bush to Vice President Al Gore in the US, from British prime minister
Gordon Brown to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafihave spoken to Putnam about
his work.10 Indeed, on several occasions Putnam has urged the American
government to improve its understanding of the state of Americas social capital. It

is little wonder that the Sunday Times in Britain called Robert Putnam the most
influential academic in the world today.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Discuss the significance of Bowling Alone in relation to Putnams overall
career.
Analyze: What are some of the chief differences between Bowling Alone and
Putnams earlier works?
Apply: If Bowling Alone were written today, do you think it would attract the same
degree of attention and accolades?
Notes
Robert D. Putnam, Robert Leonardi, and Raffaella Nanetti, Making Democracy Work:
Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 2.
Robert D. Putnam and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American
Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), x.
Harvard Kennedy School Insight, "Robert Putnam on Immigration and Social
Cohesion" (February 11, 2008), http://www.hks.harvard.edu/newsevents/publications/insight/democratic/robert-putnam, accessed June 7, 2013.
Putnam, Leonardi, and Nanetti, Making Democracy Work, 173.
Everett C. Ladd, The Data Just Dont Show Erosion of Americas Social Capital,
The Public Perspective (June/July 1996); Robert J. Samuelson, Bowling Alone is
Bunk, Washington Post, April 10, 1996.
Madeleine Bunting, "Capital Ideas," The Guardian, July 18, 2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/18/communities.guardiansocietysupplem
ent, accessed February 19, 2015; Louis Uchitelle, Lonely Bowlers, Unite: Mend the
Social Fabric; A Political Scientist Renews His Alarm at the Erosion of Community
Ties, New York Times, May 6, 2000,
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/06/arts/lonely-bowlers-unite-mend-social-fabric-
political-scientist-renews-his-alarm.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm, accessed June 7,

2013.
Section 3: Impact
Module 9:The First Responses
[Lessons] of trust and solidarity, of developing an I into a we, do not strengthen
democracy when the trust, solidarity, and the we are such that they do not go
beyond the group in question.
Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein, "Bad Civil Society"
Key Points
There were four main criticisms of Putnams 1995 Bowling Alone article, many of
which were also applied to the book that followed: that he employed circular logic;
that he ignored various social trends; that he assumed involvement in an
association to be necessarily positive; and that he placed too much emphasis on the
responsibility of the individual to remedy the decline in Americas social capital.
The 2000 book Bowling Alone can largely be seen as an acceptance of, and
response to, these criticisms.
In expanding the argument, Putnam employed more empirical (evidence-based)
data to support his arguments, which largely convinced the former skeptics.
Criticism
While Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community became a national best seller and attracted glowing reviews in major US
newspapers and other publications, the book received a mixed reception in
academic circles. Putnams critics generally came from academic backgrounds
themselves, strongly suggesting that the debate around his work stems from
intellectual differences. There were four main criticisms, as outlined below.
First, critics said that Putnam employed circular logicwhere a person begins by
assuming the truth of the arguments end point, without providing evidence to back
up the conclusion. Alejandro Portes, chair of the Department of Sociology at
Princeton University, suggests that Putnams argument makes social capital both a
cause and an effect:1 social capital creates outcomes that benefit a community,
such as economic development. And if a community has those outcomes, Putnam
infers that it also has social capital.2 While Portes leveled his original criticisms at
Putnams 1995 article, the book-length study suffers from the same problem.
Further, the book makes claims such as, For North Carolina to see educational
outcomes similar to Connecticuts ... residents could do any of the following ...
double their frequency of club meeting attendance ... or attend church two more
times per month.3 Putnam presents these statistical formulas even as he admits
that he has not established what causes what.4
Second, Putnam has been criticized for ignoring, or quickly dismissing, social trends
that run counter to his argument. For instance, American sociologist Robert
Wuthnow claims that while some forms of social capital have declined, society has
evolved newer ways of connecting with friends and neighbors, such as
volunteering.5 Feminist scholars argue that Putnam relies too heavily on formal acts
of participation, such as voting, while ignoring the more informal forms of
participation and connectedness that women traditionally prefer.6
Throughout Bowling Alone, Putnam argues that participation in clubs and voluntary
associations strengthens democracy by teaching people how to debate issues with
civility, among other things. But Canadian sociologists Simone Chambers and Jeffrey
Kopstein dispute Putnams assumption that civic participation will produce the sort
of social capital that will enhance, rather than weaken, democracy.7 Chambers and
Kopstein coined the term bad civil society, noting that involvement with an
association may not always be a positive thing. After all, the Mafia is an association,
as is the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.8
Perhaps most importantly, Putnams critics say he has placed too much
responsibility for remedying Americas civic disengagement on the individual, and
not enough on government.9 This criticism is of particular importance, because it
could influence debate in both academic and policy-making circles about how to
rebuild social capital.
Responses
Many ideas that Robert Putnam explores in Bowling Alone appeared five years
earlier in his article Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social Capital.10 This
article received a huge amount of publicity and was followed by a critical backlash.
Putnam accepted and responded to many of those criticisms as he was writing his
book.
One of the harshest critics was the political scientist Everett Carll Ladd, who cited
an increase in charitable contributions to argue that civic engagement in America
had actually increased since the 1960s.11 Putnam squarely addresses Ladds
counterargument in Bowling Alone, observing that while the sheer number of
contributions may have increased, the total amount of these gifts has shrunk as a
percentage of the countrys total income.
And does writing a check generate social capital? Putnam thinks not. He argues that
while membership in community organizations has increased, most members have
no personal involvement with the organizations they nominally belong tothey
merely make donations. In expanding the Bowling Alone article into his book,
Putnam relied on additional data taken from the membership lists of various
community organizations and data from the DDB Needham Life Style Survey, a
study undertaken by a large advertising agency that ran over many years. This data
demonstrated that active involvementmeasured by the number of people
attending meetings and holding leadership positionshas fallen dramatically.
Conflict and Consensus
Putnams detractors made some good points and he acknowledged as much,
wondering whether he had overstated his case in the article. Perhaps the trends in
community participation had not fallen as much as he had actually thought.12 In
fact, Putnam has since admitted that the claims in his 1995 article were based upon
rather slim evidence, and the following year he also realized he had relied on flawed
data.13 In the book, Putnam attempts to silence his critics by using empirical
evidence to show sweeping trends of civic disengagement that have not been
remedied by community involvement in a non-traditional area. The most valuable
tool at his disposal, Putnam notes, was the DDB Needham Life Style Study.
To a large extent, Putnams revisions in the Bowling Alone book appeared to
convince skeptics. One critic acknowledged that while many of the claims in
Putnams article had been cast in doubt, by adding in large, new data-sets and
squeezing them dry, Putnam not only salvaged his argument, he gained the high
ground.14
Key Questions
Synthesize: What were the principle criticisms leveled against Bowling Alone?
Analyze: Discuss how civic engagement can actually have a dark side.
Apply: Do you agree with Putnams perspective that it is largely up to the individual
to promote social capitalor is this primarily a responsibility of the government?
Notes
Portes, "Social Capital, 19.
Robert Wuthnow, "United States: Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?," in
Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, ed.
Robert D. Putnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 60.
Dietlind Stolle and Marc Hooghe, "Inaccurate, Exceptional, One-Sided or Irrelevant?
The Debate About the Alleged Decline of Social Capital and Civic Engagement in
Western Societies," British Journal of Political Science 35, no. 01 (2005): 154.
Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein, "Bad Civil Society," Political Theory 29, no. 6
(2001): 838.
Chambers and Kopstein, "Bad Civil Society," 838.
William Maloney, Graham Smith, and Gerry Stoker, "Social Capital and Urban
Governance: Adding a More Contextualized Top-Down Perspective," Political
Studies 48, no. 4 (2000): 80220.
Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 6578.
Alan Wolfe, "Bowling with Others," New York Times, October 17, 1999,
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/17/reviews/991017.17wolfet.html, accessed
February 20, 2015.
C-SPAN Booknotes, Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone, C-SPAN Booknotes (December
24, 2000), http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=159499-1, accessed
February 19, 2015.
Claude S. Fischer, "Bowling Alone: Whats the Score?, Social Networks 27, no. 2
(2005): 15567.
Section 3: Impact
Module 10:The Evolving Debate
Since 2000, the Seminars mission has been to both improve social capital
measurement and data and to investigate ways to build social capital in a changing
world across several domains.
Harvard Kennedy School, The Saguaro Seminar
Key Points
Putnams argument that social capital was declining in America was largely
accepted. This shifted the debate to why it was falling.
While not a school of thought per se, in the area of social capital research, people
often refer to a Putnam school approach.
Putnams findings in Bowling Alone have been applied to a diverse range of fields
and geographic areasproving that the text has relevance beyond the arena of
political science in the United States.
Uses And Problems

Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
Community persuaded the academic community that social capital was indeed in
decline. This reset the starting point for social capital debates. Rather than arguing
about whether social capital was declining, academics moved on to consider the
reasons behind this decline. Putnam suggested that generational change had fueled
Americas civic disengagement. Not everyone agreed with this analysis and some
began to search for other explanations.
Similarly, some challenged the solutions Putnam suggested for increasing Americas
stock of social capital. The book Social Capital: Critical Perspectives on Community
and Bowling Alone collects essays all of which credit Putnam with effectively
demonstrating that American civic life has dramatically changed since the 1950s.
Yet it questions other aspects of his thesis.1 One essay argues that Putnams work
does not adequately appreciate how economic forces can cause civic
disengagement. Another says that Putnam too easily dismisses the possibilities of
electronic communication to generate social capital.
Schools Of Thought
Bowling Alone remains one of the most frequently cited social science publications
of the past 50 years. There is no shortage of writers, academics, and thinkers who
identify with, and have been influenced by, the book.
Because Putnams text is relatively recent, it has not created a comprehensive new
school of thought. However, within the area of social capital research, some
academics refer to the Putnam school approach. Essentially, the school consists of
scholars who accept Putnams definition of social capital, and try to reproduce the
quantitative research methods (using statistical or mathematical data) Putnam
employed to measure various aspects of social capital.2 Quantitative research
generally collects data through tests or surveys and should be capable of being
replicatedmeaning the same type of study can be reproduced many times.3
Disciples of the Putnam school, such as Laura Morales, who studies social capital
and immigration, and Dutch academic Peter Geurts, have employed his concept of
social capital and his research methods to better understand problems that are not
raised in Bowling Alone. While Putnams text focuses on social capital in the United
States, Putnam school sociologists have applied its ideas to Eastern European states
and other countries.
More recently, the Putnam school has turned its attention to the impact of ethnic
diversity on social capital. In part, Putnam himself has spearheaded this line of
inquiry. But other devotees, including Dutch sociologist Maurice Gesthuizen, have
undertaken quantitative research that focuses on the impact of immigration in
nations as diverse as Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, and England.4
In Current Scholarship
The most faithful, and arguably the most influential, disciples of Bowling Alone and
its ideas are the staff of the Saguaro Seminar, an initiative founded by Putnam in
1995 at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. The saguaro cactus plant, which grows in American deserts, plays a
diverse role that allows it to make its ecosystem a better place: birds nest in it,
vines grow on its branches, and Native Americans have lived off its fruit. Putnam
sees the saguaro as the plant embodiment of the social capital concept.
Unsurprisingly, the Saguaro Seminar essentially mirrors the ideas and beliefs
expressed by Putnam in Bowling Alone. For example, its website explains that social
capital is important because communities with higher levels have better health and
education outcomes, as well as less crime and violence.5 Like Bowling Alone, the
Saguaro Seminar website attributes the fall in social capital to factors such as urban
sprawl, increased television watching, and generational changes in behavior.6 A
section of the website designed to answer frequently asked questions about social
capital draws repeatedly on Putnams research.
The Saguaro Seminar has been of significant political influence within America. The
organization has successfully lobbied the US government to measure social capital
in its Current Population Survey.7 In 1997, before he became president of the United
States, Barack Obama attended some Saguaro Seminar workshops. After his
election in 2008 he appointed former Saguaro Seminar staff to senior positions in
the White House, where he draws on ideas and skills he learned about during the
workshops.8
Key Questions
Synthesize: How did Bowling Alone alter the social capital debate within the US?
Analyze: What does the Putnam school refer to, and why is this significant?
Apply: Do you think a Republican American president would be just as influenced
and inspired by the work of Putnam and the Saguaro Seminar as Barack Obama has
been?
Notes
Scott L. McLean, David A. Schultz, and Manfred B. Steger, eds, Social Capital:
Critical Perspectives on Community and "Bowling Alone (New York: New York
University Press, 2002), 11.
Jonathan Grix, "Introducing Students to the Generic Terminology of Social Research,"
Politics 22, no. 3 (2002): 181.
John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
Approaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008), 149.
See, for instance, Maurice Gesthuizen, Tom Van Der Meer, and Peer Scheepers,
Ethnic Diversity and Social Capital in Europe: Tests of Putnam's Thesis in European
Countries, Scandinavian Political Studies 32, no. 2 (2009): 12142. While this study
refutes Putnams conclusions, it does utilize aspects of his definition of social capital
and quantitative methods to test the impact that ethnic diversity has on social
capital.
Harvard Kennedy School, The Saguaro Seminar,
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/, accessed February 20, 2015.
Harvard Kennedy School, The Saguaro Seminar.
Social Capital Blog in participation with the Saguaro Seminar, "Advances in Social
Capital Measurement," https://socialcapital.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/advances-insocial-capital-measurement/, accessed March 18, 2015.
Daniel Burke, "Saguaro Seminar Stays with Obama," Christianity Today, June 12,
2009, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/juneweb-only/123.55.0.html?
start=19, accessed February 19, 2015.
Section 3: Impact
Module 11:Impact And Influence Today
"Social capital has been vaunted as the next big idea in social policy and health.
Kwame McKenzie, Rob Whitly, and Scott Weich, Social Capital and Mental Health
Key Points
Fifteen years have passed since the release of Bowling Alone, yet it remains a key
text for anyone interested in social capital and civic engagement.
The work challenges the role of electronic communication in developing social
capital and the potential harmful effects that involvement with certain associations
might have on democracy.
The books findings have been applied to the field of health science, where the
reception has been generally positive, even if some skepticism exists.
Position
Some 15 years after the publication of Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of American Community, the book is still an important read for
anyone interested in social capital and civic engagement. This suggests that,
despite the objections raised when the ideas first appeared in a 1995 article, the
academic community regards Putnams work favorably.
One area of ongoing debate concerns the issue of involvement in associations and
whether this may promote a type of social capital that is harmful to democracy.
Throughout Bowling Alone, Putnam argues that participation in clubs and voluntary
associations strengthens democracy, because members learn how to debate issues
in a polite and civil way. But authors such as the Canadian sociologists Simone
Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein have argued that Putnam too readily assumes that
civic engagement will benefit democracy.1 This discussion comprises part of a wider
discourse on the benefits and potential downsides of social capital.
When Putnam published the book in 2000, the Internet had not yet assumed the
dominant place it occupies in our lives today. Still, Putnams text has become part of
the debate about the role of electronic communication in developing social capital.
Bowling Alone does contain some observations about the benefits and pitfalls of
electronic communication. Putnam recognizes that the anonymity provided by the
Internet has the potential to foster discussions in which every participant is on an
equal footing. But he argues that it also inhibits interpersonal collaboration and
trust by removing the helpful social cues we get from face-to-face interactions.2
Moreover, while Putnam says that the Internet can help people mobilize politically,
he also suggests that the single-issue focus of many Internet-based groups can
reduce social cohesion by giving rise to a kind of virtual sameness.3 Recent studies
have speculated that the Internet might increase political participation in countries
where there is political apathy and declining voter turnout. Here, the Internet may
serve as an alternative to traditional voluntary and civic associations, promoting a
convenient and efficient form of sociability.4
Interaction
Bowling Alone is still relevant to a broad range of social problems. References to the
book appear frequently in contexts ranging from community building to the
settlement of disputes to health care.
Putnams text has had extensiveand rather unexpectedapplications, particularly
in the field of health sciences. Putnam touches on the health benefits of social
capital in a 10-page section of the book and this relatively brief discussion caught
the eye of Richard Wilkinson, a researcher who compares disease processes
between animal and human populations. Wilkinson first applied Putnams idea of
social capital to the field of public health in his book Unhealthy Societies.5 Today, a
vast amount of research exists on the role social capital plays in health outcomes.
Studies have linked social capital to improvements in child development, lower
susceptibility to binge drinking, and sustained participation in anti-smoking
programs.6 Research into the link between social capital and mental health noted
that "social capital has been vaunted as the next big idea in social policy and
health. Some studies suggest that high levels of social capital also lead to
improved mental health outcomes.7
The Continuing Debate
Public health researchers have applied the concept of social capital in much the
same way as their colleagues have done in the social sciences. Academics generally
seem to accept that social capital has benefits. But some skepticism still remains
over what the works that purport to show a link between good health and social
capital really demonstrate. Critics say the health outcomes in such research may
depend on their context and may not be broadly applicable.8 Furthermore, some
authors have argued that social capital may actually have negative impacts on
healthfor instance, people who spend time with an unhealthy circle of friends may
form unhealthy habits themselves.9
The solutions Putnam puts forward in Bowling Alone continue to present a challenge
to academics and researchers. Putnam claims that giving young people a civic
education can restore social capital. So he sets out a challenge for Americas
parents, educators, and, above all, Americas young adults to make sure that
within the next decade young people coming of age will be as engaged with their
community as their grandparents were at the same age.10 He issues similar
challenges to Americas clergy and theologians to encourage religious participation,
and to media moguls and journalists to promote electronic communication that
reinforces community.11 Only right at the end of Putnams discussion about
restoring social capital does he challenge government, calling on administrators and
politicians to find ways to make sure that more Americans participate in public
life.12 While Putnam places little emphasis on the role of government in creating
social capital, some authors, such as city planning expert Mildred Warner and British
academic William Maloney, have claimed that government policies are critical to
promoting the social capital that allows for community development.13
Key Questions
Synthesize: In what fields and subfields do Bowling Alones ideas continue to be
debated?
Analyze: How does the social capital debate have relevance for health science?
Apply: In what other non-social science fields do you think Putnams findings on
social capital could prove relevant?
Notes
Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein, "Bad Civil Society," Political Theory 29, no. 6
(2001).
See Marko M. Skoric, Deborah Ying, and Ying Ng, "Bowling Online, Not Alone: Online
Social Capital and Political Participation in Singapore," Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 14, no. 2 (2009); Caroline J. Tolbert and Ramona S. Mcneal,
Unraveling the Effects of the Internet on Politcal Participation? Political Research
Quarterley 56, no. 2 (2003): 17585.
Simon Szreter and Michael Woolcock, "Health by Association? Social Capital, Social
Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health," International Journal of
Epidemiology 33, no. 4 (2004): 651.
Szreter and Woolcock, "Health by Association?, 651.
Kwame McKenzie, Rob Whitly, and Scott Weich, "Social Capital and Mental Health,"
British Journal of Psychiatry 181, no. 4 (2002): 280.
Mildred Warner, "Building Social Capital: The Role of Local Government," Journal of
Socio-Economics 30, no. 2 (2001): 18792; William Maloney, Graham Smith, and
Gerry Stoker, "Social Capital and Urban Governance: Adding a More Contextualized
Top-Down Perspective," Political Studies 48, no. 4 (2000).
Section 3: Impact
Module 12:Where Next?
Public audiences almost never ask whether [civic disengagement] is true, because
it rings true to their own experience.

Key Points
While it is likely that Bowling Alone will continue to be very relevant, if the United
States experienced an upswing in civic participation, then its arguments might
come to seem dated.
In the future, the text will probably have an impact on big debates about
immigration and electronic communication. In fact, these debates have already
begun with regard to the Internet.
Bowling Alone remains one of the most cited social works of the past half-century
and has been credited with stimulating academic debate over social capital and
civic engagement.
Potential
It seems likely that Robert D. Putnams Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community will always have a place among the most influential social
science publications. Students of social capital will continue to find it a must-read.
Indeed, even 15 years after its publication, the work not only continues to be
relevant, but is also being applied to new social problems.
If an upswing in civic participation actually did happen, however, then Bowling
Alone may become less relevant. After the 9/11 attacks of 2001, Putnam copublished an article suggesting the tragedy had increased civic engagement.1
However, this increased engagement happened only in certain sections of the US
population, namely, the white upper classes. As the article stated, If the United
States is to avoid becoming two nations, it must find ways to expand the post-9/11
resurgence of civic and social engagement beyond the ranks of affluent young white
people.2 If such an expansion occurred, Putnams work would probably remain as
useful a tool in interpreting the causes of civic engagement as it has been in
interpreting the current state of disengagement.
Future Directions
Some researchers are already beginning to apply Putnams ideas about social
capital and civic disengagement to the issue of immigration. In 2007, seven years
after he published Bowling Alone, Putnam announced the controversial conclusion
that, in the short term, ethnic diversity reduces social capital.3 National identity
never remains static and voters often talk about immigration as one of their top
concerns, so we can expect that in the years to come even more researchers will
study the impact of immigration on social capital.
Analysts of the influence of the Internetelectronic communications and online

social networksmay also apply the ideas Putnam put forward in Bowling Alone.
Putnam writes briefly about the role of the Internet, but future researchers will want
to study in much greater detail how electronic media impact the fabric of our
society.
Finally, the most faithfuland arguably most influentialof Putnams disciples, the
staff of the Saguaro Seminar, will carry on and advance the core messages of
Bowling Alone. The Saguaro Seminar has already had great political influence in
Americafor example, through its successful lobbying of the US government to
measure social capital in its nationwide surveys. The group will no doubt continue to
be influential in the future.
Summary
Bowling Alone swiftly became a best seller in the United States and it has since
gained international recognition. As one of the most repeatedly referenced social
publications of the past 50 years, it has had a profound impact. Bowling Alone has
been credited with greatly stimulatingand in fact advancingacademic debate
about social capital and civic engagement.
Previous studies of social capital generally focused on an individual and his or her
interaction with a group. In Bowling Alone, Putnam broadened the discussion to
examine social capital in terms of the level of civic engagement in Americas towns
and cities. His national analysis of social capital had astonishing breadth and
showed a novel research approach. He was also the first academic to incorporate
data from the DDB Needham Life Style Surveya set of data assembled by a large
advertising firm over a number of yearsinto his research.
The reach, appeal, and success of Bowling Alone went far beyond academic circles.
Putnam felt the book had real impact because he "had unwittingly articulated an
unease that had already begun to form in the minds of many ordinary Americans.4
This unease, he believed, stemmed from the decline in the nations social capital;
Americans were becoming increasingly disengaged from their communities. By
presenting ideas that were interesting to the population at large and doing it in
simple, accessible prose, Putnam was able to attract a general interest audience.
Putnam's ideas have been applied to a variety of social challenges ranging from
health science to the resolution of disputes. Current and former heads of state, such
as Tony Blair, Muammar Gaddafi, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, have sought
Putnams advice and have been influenced by him. Bowling Alone will undoubtedly
continue to be a seminal text for yearsif not decadesto come.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What possible factor could contribute to the diminishment of Bowling

Alones relevance in years to come?
Analyze: Analyze the relationship between immigration debates and discussions of
social capital.
Apply: Do you think that Bowling Alone will be most relevant among academics,
policy-makers, or the general public in future years?
Notes
Thomas H. Sander and Robert D. Putnam, "Still Bowling Alone?: The Post-9/11 Split,"
Journal of Democracy 21, no. 1 (2010): 11.
Sander and Putnam, "Still Bowling Alone? 14.
Madeleine Bunting, "Capital Ideas," The Guardian, July 18, 2007,
ent, accessed February 19, 2015.
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Autocracy: system of government in which one person holds unlimited, uncontrolled
power over all others of the group or state.
Baby boomers: generation of Americans born in the post-World War II era
approximately 1946 to1964when there was a significant and noticeable increase
in the birth rate.
Bonding social capital: social capital refers to the connections between individuals,
and the social networks, trust, and reciprocity that such connections involve.
Bonding social capital, which Robert D. Putnam describes as tending to be inwardlooking and reinforcing exclusive identities, can include, for example, ethnic
organizations, church-based reading groups, and elite country clubs.
Bowling leagues: organized teams of local bowlers who meet regularly to play
against one another over the course of the sports season.
Boy Scouts of America: a popular American youth organization established in 1910.
Today it has an estimated 2.7 million youth members, aided by around a million
adult volunteers.
Bridging social capital: social capital refers to the connections between individuals,
and the social networks, trust, and reciprocity that such connections involve.
Bridging social capital, specifically, is outward-looking and encompasses people

from a broad social spectrum. The Civil Rights Movement, youth service groups, and
religious organizations are all examples of bridging social capital.
Circular logic: form of reasoning where the reasoner begins by assuming the truth of
the arguments end point, without providing additional evidence to back up the
conclusion.
Civic engagement: involvement of the citizenry in their states political process and,
more broadly, in the trends and issues likely to affect them.
Civil Rights Movement: in the United States, a movement mainly of the 1950s and
1960s. Activists and ordinary people came together to stage extensive protests
against racial segregation and discriminationparticularly in the American South.
DDB Needham Life Style Study: annual survey that has been conducted in the
United States since 1975. The survey contains over 500 questions on diverse
activities, interests, and opinions. Putnam was particularly interested in questions
such as how often respondents attended club meetings, volunteered, entertained
friends at their homes, or went on picnics.
Elks: American fraternal order and social club founded in 1868 and with close to one
million members today.
Ethnographer: someone who scientifically studies people and their cultures.
Horizontal networks: bringing together of groups of equal status and power, such as
neighborhood associations, choral societies, and sports clubs.
Journal of Democracy: journal published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. A
leading forum for scholarly analysis on democracy, it observes and critiques
democracy movements worldwide, and is widely reprinted in multiple languages.
Judaism: monotheistic religion founded over 3,500 years ago in the Middle East.
Today its practitioners, Jews, are largely concentrated in Israel and the United
States, with smaller populations in dozens of other countries around the world.
Ku Klux Klan: white supremacist group in the United States, dating back to the
1860s. It originally directed its hatred and/or violence toward the African American
population in the country, but has since broadened its focus to different ethnic
minorities.
Mafia: organized crime organization operating in many countries throughout the
worldnotably in Italy and the United States. It is often involved in activities such
as protection racketeering (providing security to businesses for a fee, often against
their will and outside the force of the law).
Methodist: Christian Protestant Church founded in Great Britain in the eighteenth

century by John Wesley. Its emphasis on missionary work meant that the Church
expanded throughout the British Empire and the United States.
9/11 attacks: four attacks on the United States staged on September 11, 2001 and
coordinated by the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda. The attacks resulted in almost
3,000 deaths.
Parent Teacher Association (PTAs): formal organizations consisting of parents,
teachers, and other school staff, with the purpose of encouraging parental and
community participation in schools. They are prominent in numerous countries
globally.
Quantitative research: data-collection method used in the natural and social
sciences. It involves the systematic investigation of observable phenomena through
the use of statistical, mathematical, or computational techniques.
Red Cross: international humanitarian organization founded in 1863.
Saguaro Seminar: ongoing research project founded by Robert D. Putnam in 2000.
Its mission is to improve social capital measurement and data and, more broadly, to
consider various means to build social capital in the modern world.
Service-learning programs: initiatives that combine formal instruction with related
service in the community.
Social capital: connections between individuals, and the common civic values that
influence a society, and the nature, extent and impact of these.
State of the Union Address: annual speech delivered by the president of the United
States to Congress, notable for, usually, discussing the condition, progress, and
future trends of the country.
Vertical networks: networks that link unequal agents in a relationship of hierarchy
and dependence. The Mafia is a good example of a vertical network.
Veterans of Foreign Wars: American non-profit service organization designed to
provide supportboth financial and non-financialto members and veterans of the
US military services.
White supremacy: type of racism where believers are convinced white people are
superior to people of other racial backgrounds.
World War II (193945): global war that involved all of the worlds great powers and
numerous other countries around the globe. The war resulted in an estimated 5085
million deaths.
People Mentioned in the Text
Tony Blair (b. 1953) was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007.
Pierre Bourdieu (19302002) was a French sociologist, philosopher, and
anthropologist. He was known particularly for his book Distinction: A Social Critique
of the Judgment of Taste and more broadly for his research on power dynamics in
society.
Gordon Brown (b. 1951) was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to
2010.
George W. Bush (b. 1946) was 43rd president of the United States, in office from
2001 to 2009.
Simone Chambers is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and
director of the Centre for Ethics. Her work looks at issues of democratic theory,
ethics, secularism, civility, and the public sphere.
Bill Clinton (b. 1946) was 42nd president of the United States, in office from 1993 to
2001.
James Coleman (192695) was an American sociologist and former president of the
American Sociological Association. Coleman is considered one of the first people to
have used the phrase social capital.
Lewis Feldstein was a frequent collaborator with Robert D. Putnam on publications
and projects related to civic engagement in the American community. He is co-chair
of the Saguaro Seminar along with Putnam, and former president of the New
Hampshire Charitable Foundation.
Muammar Gaddafi (19422011) was dictator of Libya from 1969 to 2011.
Maurice Gesthuizen is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at
Radboud University, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. His research focuses on the
causes and consequences of inequality in education.
Peter Geurts is associate professor of research methods and statistics at the
University of Twente in the Netherlands. He focuses particularly on large-scale
surveys of citizen participation in local and national communities.
Al Gore (b. 1948) was the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to
2001.
Mark Granovetter (b. 1943) is an American sociologist and Joan Butler Ford
professor and chair of sociology at Stanford University. His primary research
interests include the interaction of people, social networks, and social institutions
and how these all shape one another.
L. J. Hanifan (18791932) was American state supervisor of schools in rural West

Virginia. His 1916 paper on the importance of community involvement in schools is
credited with introducing the concept of social capital.
John F. Kennedy (191763) was the 35th president of the United States, in office
from 1961 to 1963.
Jeffrey Kopstein is professor of political science at the University of Toronto, as well
as director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies. Kopsteins research
focuses on inter-ethnic violence, the voting patterns of minority groups, and antiliberal tendencies in civil society.
Everett Carll Ladd (193799) was an American political scientist who worked at the
University of Connecticut. He is best known for his collection and analysis of public
opinion polls.
Paul Lichterman is currently professor of sociology and religion at the University of
Southern California. He is a cultural sociologist and ethnographer, studying
American political and religious associations.
Glenn Loury (b. 1948) is Merton P. Stoltz professor of the social sciences and
professor of economics at Brown University. He is particularly well known for his
research on welfare economics, the economics of income distribution, and his
controversial views on racial disparities.
William Maloney is professor of politics at Newcastle University. His current studies
focus on comparative research on interest group politics in Europe.
Laura Morales is a professor in the Department of Politics and International
Relations at the University of Leicester, whose research looks particularly at social
capital and immigration.
Barack Obama (b. 1961): is the 44th president of the United States, serving from
2009 to the present.
Alejandro Portes is a Cuban-American sociologist and chair of the Department of
Sociology at Princeton University. His research concentrates mainly on immigration
to the United States.
Robert Samuelson (b. 1945) is an American journalist who has been writing about
economics since 1976, most recently in a weekly column for the Washington Post.
Alexis de Tocqueville (180559) was a French political thinker and historian and is
most famous for his work Democracy in America, which analyzes the strengths and
weaknesses of the American political system of the time.
Mildred Warner is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at

Cornell University. Her research looks at local government service delivery and
economic development.
Richard Wilkinson (b. 1943) is a British social epidemiologist and professor emeritus
of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham. His co-authored book with
Kate Pickett, titled The Spirit Level, demonstrates the relation between equality of
wealth in society and better health.
Robert Wuthnow (b. 1946) is an American sociologist who is most widely known for
his work on the sociology of religion. As well as being Gerhard R. Andlinger professor
of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology at Princeton University, he is
also director of Princetons Center for the Study of Religion.
Works Cited
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Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Forms of Capital." In Handbook of Theory and Research for
the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson. Connecticut: Greenwood
Publishing Group, 1986.
Bunting, Madeleine. "Capital Ideas." The Guardian, July 18, 2007. Accessed February
19, 2015,
ent.
Burke, Daniel. "Saguaro Seminar Stays with Obama." Christianity Today, June 12,
2009. Accessed February 19, 2015,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/juneweb-only/123.55.0.html?start=1.
Chambers, Simone, and Jeffrey Kopstein. "Bad Civil Society." Political Theory 29, no.
6 (2001): 83765.
Clinton, William J., "State of the Union Address (January 24, 1995)." In WEEKLY
COMPILATION OF PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS, edited by National Archives.
Coleman, James S. "Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital." American
Journal of Sociology 94 (1988): 95120.
Creswell, John W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods
Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008.
C-SPAN Booknotes. Robert Putnam: Bowling Alone. C-SPAN Booknotes, December
24, 2000. Accessed February 19, 2015. http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?
SID=159499-1.
Fischer, Claude S. "Bowling Alone: Whats the Score? Social Networks 27, no. 2
(2005): 15567.
Gesthuizen, Maurice,, Tom Van Der Meer, and Peer Scheepers, Ethnic Diversity and
Social Capital in Europe: Tests of Putnam's Thesis in European Countries.
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Granovetter, Mark S. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology 78,
no. 6 (1973): 136080.
Grix, Jonathan. "Introducing Students to the Generic Terminology of Social
Research." Politics 22, no. 3 (2002): 17586.
Halpern, David. Social Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.
Harvard Kennedy School. The Saguaro Seminar. Accessed February 20, 2015.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/.
Harvard Kennedy School Insight. "Robert Putnam on Immigration and Social
Cohesion," February 11, 2008. Accessed June 7, 2013.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/insight/democratic/robertputnam.
Harvard University Department of Government. "Robert Putnam." Department of
Government, Harvard University. Accessed February 19, 2015.
http://www.gov.harvard.edu/people/faculty/robert-putnam.
Ladd, Everett C. The Data Just Dont Show Erosion of Americas Social Capital.
The Public Perspective (June/July 1996).
Lichterman, Paul. Social Capital or Group Style? Rescuing Tocquevilles Insights on
Civic Engagement. Theory and Society 35, no. 56 (2006): 52963.
Loury, Glenn. A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences." In Women,
Minorities and Employment Discrimination, edited by Phyllis A. Wallace and Annette
M. LaMond. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, l976.
Maloney, William, Graham Smith, and Gerry Stoker. "Social Capital and Urban
Governance: Adding a More Contextualized Top-Down Perspective." Political
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McKenzie, Kwame, Rob Whitly, and Scott Weich. "Social Capital and Mental Health."
The British Journal of Psychiatry 181, no. 4 (2002): 2803.
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University Press, 2002.
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Robert KeohaneAfter Hegemony
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Key Points
Born in Chicago in 1941, Robert O. Keohane is one of the most important scholars of
international relationsthe study of the relationships between nation states and
organizationsof the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
In his 1984 book After Hegemony, Keohane first analyzes neorealism, a school of
thought based on the assumption that nations find themselves compelled to act in
their own self-interest according to the prevailing structures of power. He then
presents a neoliberal theory of international relations, according to which
international relations can be conducted on cooperative principles without the
influence of a dominant international power.
The neorealist-neoliberal debate was the most important in the field of international
relations throughout the 1980s and 1990s. After Hegemony offered a key
contribution to the debate.
Who is Robert Keohane?

Robert O. Keohane is one of the most important and influential international
relations scholars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He was born
in the American city of Chicago in 1941 to politically active parents, and developed
an interest in politics from a young age. He studied politics at Shimer College,
affiliated to the University of Chicago, before moving on to graduate work at
Harvard University where he obtained his PhD in 1966. He has since held a number
of teaching positions and has written widely on international relations. His book
After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy is a central
work in the field, having laid out a theory of international relationsneoliberalism
that has been widely used since its publication.
Keohane later honed his theory further in works such as Two Cheers for
Multilateralism,1 co-authored with his frequent collaborator Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and
International Institutions: Two Approaches,2 among others.
Building on the theory developed in After Hegemony, Keohanes work can perhaps
be divided into two strands.
He has written on the evolution and functioning of different international regimes
(roughly, sets of principles, norms and decision-making procedures agreed by a
number of nations) in articles such as The Regime Complex for Climate Change,
co-authored with David G. Victor3 and Punctuated Equilibrium in the Energy
Regime Complex, which he co-authored with Jeff Colgan and Thijs Van de Graaf.4
More recently, Keohane has turned his attention to questions about the status of
American hegemony (that is, dominance) and to the role of the United States as a
leader in global affairs. His paper Hegemony and After: What Can Be Said about
the Future of American Leadership? is a good example of his research in this area.5
Currently, Keohane is professor of international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in the United
States. His long list of honors includes the Centennial Medal from the Harvard
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Susan Strange Award from the
International Studies Association and several honorary doctorates.6 He received the
Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order in 1989.7
What Does After Hegemony Say?
After Hegemony lays out a neoliberal theory of international relations. Neoliberalism
is based on the idea that states can cooperate even without the influence and
support of a single dominant power, known as a hegemon, as long as they obtain
absolute gainsthat is, cultural or economic benefits gained as the result of acting
on a decision.
Cooperation usually takes place through the decision of states to join an
international regime. Crucially, this means that cooperation is neither forced on a
state, nor is cooperation the result of a hegemonor dominant powertaking the
lead in the creation and continuation of a regime. According to this theory,
cooperation is a more potent factor in the relations between states than neorealist
theory allows.
Keohane develops this line of thought in After Hegemony. First, he explains the flaws
in the realist theory of international relations, according to which international
relations are based on competition, self-interest and aggressive pragmatism.
Keohane presents the evidence to support his argument that cooperation takes
place even without the supporting influence of any single, dominantly powerful
nation. Realist theory, he argues, cannot explain this.
Neoliberal theory, on the other hand, lets us understand how states come to
cooperate. It is a theory that takes account of certain key points:
Rational choicethe idea that human behavior is driven by logical decisions
designed to be beneficial
Functionalismthe theory that states have sufficient interests in common to arrive
at similar decisions and further integration
Bounded rationalitythe theory that rational behavior is limited by the amount of

information we have, by how much information the mind is capable of processing,
and by the time required to think something through.
International cooperation is founded on the development of international regimes

institutions governing law, trade agreements, military pacts, and the like. States
have a rational expectation that others will respect a regime they have freely joined
by rational choice. And the interests of the states making up that regime should
then converge, according to functionalism.8 Finally, bounded rationality will come in
to play, affecting the expectations of that group of states.
Importantly, Keohane does not argue that states put the common good before their
self-interest when they participate in an international regime. For those states,
cooperation through an international regime is, indeed, their self-interest in action.
This implies that the sovereignty of a state is not reduced when it joins a regime
mutual suspicions have simply been overcome by shared interests.9 International
regimes, therefore, do not change the nature of international relations. Without any
central authority to impose any kind of law, they remain in a state of anarchy, with
no authority compelling them one way or another. A regime simply alters the
expectations of self-interested states, making cooperation between them possible.
Having explained this, Keohane goes on to apply his neoliberal theory of
international relations.
The decline of American hegemony, he says, has not stopped cooperationa
position he supports by comparing case studies of regimes of trade and money on
one hand, and the consumers oil regime on the other.10
According to Keohane, the trade and monetary regimes survived the decline of the
United States in the 1970s for two reasons. First, these regimes were
institutionalized; in other words, there were institutions underpinning both regimes.
Second, the members of these two regimes wanted them to survive because of the
benefits they gained from them. In contrast, the consumers oil regime failed during
the oil crises of the 1970s because there was no mechanism for their members to
cooperate. Following on from Keohane, the success of the trade and monetary
regimesand the sharp contrast with the failure of the consumers oil regime
proves that regime participants can choose to cooperate freely. This is the case,
even if their core interests are at stake.
Why Does After Hegemony Matter?
Throughout the 1980s, there was a debate in the field of international relations
between neorealist and neoliberal scholars with competing views about the nature
of relations among states. Following the publication of the political theorist Kenneth
Waltzs Theory of International Politics in 1979, neorealism emerged as the

dominant theoretical model. Waltz developed a clear and well-structured neorealist
theory of international relations grounded in scientific methods of gathering and
analyzing data that lent it an unmatched authority.11
When Keohane published After Hegemony in 1984, he was looking to offer a new,
neoliberal approach to the study of international relations as a direct challenge to
Waltzs theory. As such, since its publication After Hegemony has become the
starting point for neoliberal thought. Students and scholars of international relations
alike have to read the work in order to understand one of the core debates of
international relations: the debate between neorealist and neoliberal thought.
Keohanes theory continues to be one of the most relevant theoretical approaches
to explain how states interact with each other and why they act the way they do.12
Considering the number of works either founded on, or opposed to, the arguments
presented in the book, it is necessary to engage with it even if you wish to disagree
with Keohanes analysis.
Furthermore, After Hegemony offers an excellent example of how to formulate a
theoretical model that can be used to explain actual events. At the outset of After
Hegemony, for example, Keohane looks at the existing theoretical model he is
looking to dismantle, carefully dealing with its theoretical core rather than making a
caricature of it.
He then builds his own theory, making sure that it is grounded in pre-existing ideas,
while presenting its own interpretation. This ensures that, although Keohanes new
theory is entirely original, its roots are nonetheless in the existing literature. Finally,
After Hegemony tests the theory presented through detailed case studieson
international institutions like trade and monetary regimes and the 1970s oil crises
and so brings together both theory and data. The book is useful, then, for those who
want to see how and why social science helps us to understand human and social
behavior.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the key arguments presented by Keohane in After Hegemony?
Analyze: Why is After Hegemony a key text in the history of international relations?
Apply: What examples of cooperation and discord can we see in todays world
economy?
Notes
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Two Cheers for Multilateralism, Foreign
Policy 60, no. 1 (1985): 14867.
Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Two Approaches, International

Studies Quarterly 32, no. 4 (1988): 37996.
Robert O. Keohane and David G. Victor, The Regime Complex for Climate Change,
Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 1 (2011), 724.
Jeff Colgan, Robert O. Keohane and Thijs Van de Graaf, Punctuated Equilibrium in
the Energy Regime Complex, The Review of International Organizations 7, no. 2
(2012): 11743.
Robert O. Keohane, Hegemony and After: What Can Be Said about the Future of
American Leadership? Foreign Affairs 1, no. 4 (2012): 15.
Curriculum Vitae, Princeton University, accessed January 4, 2015,
http://www.princeton.edu/~rkeohane/cv.pdf.
Curriculum Vitae, Princeton University.
Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 834.
Keohane, After Hegemony, 4964.
See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979).
Daniel Maliniak et al., TRIP Around the World: Teaching, Research, and Policy Views
of International Relations Faculty in 20 Countries (Williamsburg, VA: Teaching,
Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project, 2012), 27.
There is no doubt that [Keohane] has been a pivotal figure in inspiring a whole
generation of graduate students to examine regimes in a vast array of issue-areas
in international relations. He has provided a theoretical framework and a set of
hypotheses that others have used to expand the empirical scope of international
relations theory in the subfield of international political economy, which is now
thriving in the discipline as a whole.
Martin Griffiths, Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations
Key Points
Published in 1984, After Hegemony is one of the most important texts in the field of
international relations and is central to understanding neoliberal thoughtfounded
on the assumption that, among other things, cooperation between nations is
possible even without the influence of a dominant power standing to benefit the
most.
Keohane was born into a family of social scientists with an interest in politics, and
this affected his education and career choices.
The political environment of the United States in the 1980s and Keohanes previous
written work with Joseph S. Nye, Jr. influenced After Hegemony.
Why Read This Text?

Robert O. Keohanes After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
Economy is one of the classic texts of neoliberalism in international relations.
Keohane was not the first person to use the term neoliberalism, because the
theory first emerged back in the 1930s.1 Nevertheless, he did play a key role in
updating the concept and applying it to the field of international relations. The text
is original because of how Keohane presents neoliberalisms key principles, as well
as how he presents a methodical analysis of the international system. Keohane was
inspired by a number of international relations scholars, among them the political
scientists Stanley Hoffmann, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Kenneth Waltz.
After Hegemony is an indispensable guide to the study of international relations
generally, and remains the most important neoliberal work in the field, laying out
the theorys key principles perfectly clearly. These are:
International institutions and structures can operate in the absence of a hegemon (a
dominant state) enforcing an agenda.
International regimes (sets of principles, norms and decision-making procedures
agreed by a number of states) foster cooperation.
Cooperation is not as uncommon as those who take the neorealist positiona
school of thought that assumes international relations to be founded on principles of
self-interest and pragmatism)would suggest.
The book was an overwhelming success. After Hegemony remains one of the most
popular works in the field of international relations, with over 8,000 academic
citations at the time of writing.2 As a school of thought, neoliberalism is one of the
most popular theoretical approaches to the study of international relations,3 and for
this reason, Keohane has been considered to be among the most influential scholars
of international relations for the past 20 years.4
Author's Life
Robert O. Keohane was born in the city of Chicago in the American state of Illinois,
in 1941, to politically left-leaning parents. Both were social scientists, his father a
teacher at Chicago and Shimer colleges and his mother a high school teacher.
Keohanes parents were also involved in local politics through the Democratic Party.
His university education and early career were influenced by his parents political
activism. His work reflects traditional liberal ideas, particularly those connected to
the benefits of cooperation and openness in the world economy.
Keohane entered Shimer College, affiliated to the University of Chicago, at the age
of 16 to study politics, and went on to do graduate work at Harvard University.5
After completing his PhD on the politics of the United Nations General Assembly,6
he became an academic. During a distinguished career, Keohane has worked at
Swarthmore College, Stanford University, Brandeis University, Harvard University,
and Duke University. Currently, he is professor of international affairs at the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.7
Keohanes ideological and educational background was reflected in After Hegemony
a book that helped to initiate neoliberalism as a school of thought in international
relations.
Author's Background
Keohanes first book was Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition,
published in 1977 and co-authored with Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Many of the ideas
developed in After Hegemony have their roots in this work. Keohane finished After
Hegemony, his first book as sole author, in January 1984, when he was a professor
at Brandeis University, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Keohane received a grant from
the German Marshall Fund of the United States while researching and writing After
Hegemony, and financial support from Stanford University and Brandeis University,
the two institutions where he worked, while preparing the manuscript. He has been
based on the east coast of the United States throughout most of his career, save for
an eight-year stint living in California.
In some ways, when the book was first published in 1984, the United States was a
less turbulent place, both politically and socially speaking, than it had been in the
1960s. The Vietnam War was over and the United States and China had normalized
diplomatic relations. American economic hegemony (dominance) was being
challenged by other states, however, notably Japan and Germany, and the rightwing administration of President Ronald Reagan had ended its attempts to ease
hostilities with another major world power, the Soviet Union and had started a
political strategy aiming to minimize Soviet influence in international affairs. The
impact of all these developments can be seen in Keohanes work.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the importance of After Hegemony for neoliberalism in

particular and international relations in general?
Analyze: To what extent was After Hegemony the result of the environment in which
Keohane was writing?
Apply: How does neoliberalism explain contemporary international relations?
Notes
Taylor C. Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse, Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy
to Anti-Liberal Slogan, Studies in Comparative International Development 44, no. 2
(2009): 137161.
Robert Keohane, After Hegemony, Google Scholar, accessed May 13, 2015,
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?
cites=560052273688874574&as_sdt=20005&sciodt=0,9&hl=en.
Maliniak, TRIP Around the World, 49.
Conversations with History: Robert O. Keohane, University of California, Berkeley,
March 7, 2008, accessed May 26, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=5foxGFXNl-s.
Theory Talk #9: Robert Keohane, Theory Talks, May 29, 2008, accessed May 26,
2013, http://www.theory-talks.org/2008/05/theory-talk-9.html.
Keohanes intellectual path to answering the question at the back of his mind in
the early 1960s has moved from a direct challenge to realism to an attempt to
accommodate its emphasis on the importance of power and self-interest in
explaining the conduct of states. His answer is that, yes, power and self-interest are
important, but writers such as Waltz, Gilpin and other structural realists exaggerate
the degree to which the international system is anarchical. It is not.
Key Points
After Hegemony was published in a context of declining American power and

questions about whether international cooperation really was possible.
Keohanes work was an important part of the debate between neorealism and
neoliberalism in international relations.
Classical idealist authors (who believe that international relations need not be
founded on self-interest and pragmatism) and contemporary neorealist scholars
(who believe that the behavior of states is largely dictated by the international
structure) both influenced Keohanes work.

Economy was published at a time when American economic hegemony (that is, its
unrivaled dominant position) over the Western blocthe United States, Western
Europe, and those nations with similar political and economic systemswas being
eroded.
Even though nobody contested the leading position of the United States in military
and political affairs, new economic powersmost notably Japan and Germany
were undermining its economic supremacy, which explains the reference to the
phrase world political economy in the title.
The United States was not sure whether to continue to provide support to the
Bretton Woods systema system of international monetary management that had
underpinned economic growth in the Western bloc since the end of World War II. A
debate took place on the question of whether economic cooperation among
Western powers could continue without American hegemonythat is, American
dominanceor not. Keohanes book, discussing whether economic cooperation at
an international level could be maintained without the United States shouldering the
burden of taking a leading role, contributed to this debate.
After Hegemony addresses two of the chief areas of interest in international
relations following the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1971 and
the oil crises of 1972 and 1979, when the price of oil increased in the wake of
political events in the Middle East, leading to economic difficulties in the West. In
this context, the first question of whether states might cooperate to create a stable
economic environment without the influence of a hegemon (the United States, in
this case) was very important. Keohane established that this was, indeed, possible.
Second, many political scientists were preoccupied with the question of whether
cooperation between self-interested states in periods of economic crisis was
possible. Again, Keohane showed that this was also possible. These were two
important contributions to neoliberal thought in the field of international relations.
Although Keohane built on ideas that already played a part in discussions

concerning international relations, he contributed to the development of these ideas
even before After Hegemony was published.
When After Hegemony was published in 1984, neoliberalism was becoming one of
the most important theoretical approaches to international relations. Since the late
1970s, neorealist thinking had generally been accepted in international relations
circles.
Neorealists tended to focus on security matters. Yet over time, it became clear that
the economy was, in fact, an important part of a states security. Economic
performance was a key factor in determining military strength and how powerful a
country was seen to be. Neorealist thought also emphasized relative gainsthe idea
that a decision can be considered a good one so long as it delivers a comparative
advantage. A states overall power, then, was dependent on its relative superiority
over other states.
Neoliberalisms focus on absolute gainsthe idea that a decision can be thought
successful if it simply brings some benefit to a nationchallenged this argument.
While neoliberals like Keohane did not challenge the idea that the international
system was anarchicalmeaning that there is no higher authority and that states
are the core units of analysis in international relationsthey differed significantly
from neorealists on the question of whether international cooperation was a key
feature of that international system.
There had been, then, an ongoing debate between neorealists and neoliberals.
While both agreed on the nature of the international system and the main actors in
it, they differed in terms of their understanding about how these actors responded
to the existing structure. Both were looking to shift a view that everyone could
agree on towards a different theoretical model. After Hegemony is central to this socalled neo-neo debate, because it confirmed Keohane as one of the leading
scholars of the neoliberal school of thought in international relations.
Academic Influences
The key concept Keohane presents in After Hegemony is that cooperation among
states is possible even without a dominant power acting in its own interest to
sustain it. Keohane decided this through a combination of empiricalthat is,
practical and scientificobservation and theoretical concepts, building on the work
of international relations scholars such as Philip Noel-Baker and Alfred Zimmern.
Both believed in idealist theory, suggesting that cooperation among states was both
possible and desirable.
Keohane saw that economic cooperation among Western states had clearly survived
the end of the American hegemony that had existed in the years of the Bretton
Woods system. Neoliberal authors such as Ernst B. Haas, Stephen D. Krasner, John
Ruggie and Oran R. Young had been working to develop these ideas when After
Hegemony was published. But Keohanes book clearly and systematically organized
their thoughts, while also expanding on their ideas in that process. This positioned
After Hegemony as one of the classic texts of neoliberalism in international
relations.
Keohane seemed to have had a specific audience in mind when writing his book,
looking to engage both scholars of international relations, and social scientists
working on issues related to inter-state cooperation. However, After Hegemony does
not seem to have been significantly shaped by the expectations of this audience,
other than the international relations terminology the book contains.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was the economic and scholarly context when After Hegemony
was published?
Analyze: To what extent did Keohanes work build on existing scholarly debates, as
well as traditional idealism?
Apply: How does neorealism explain contemporary international relations?
Notes
There are no citations in this module.
A state worries about a division of possible gains that may favor others more than
itself. That is the first way in which the structure of international politics limits the
cooperation of states. A state also worries lest it become dependent on others
through cooperative endeavors and exchanges of goods and services. That is the
second way in which the structure of international politics limits the cooperation of
states.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics
Key Points
After Hegemony looks at whether states can cooperate when there is no single
dominant power, or hegemonan important component of neoliberal thought.
Keohane was part of a group of neoliberal scholars who challenged the dominant
neorealist view in the 1980s.
The debate between neoliberalism and neorealism continues today.
Core Question
The core question Robert O. Keohane tries to answer in After Hegemony:
Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy is whether or not
cooperation among states is possible in the absence of a hegemon (a single,
dominant power) to sustain that cooperation. His argument is that it is. A closely
related question, then, is how, precisely, cooperation might take place in those
circumstances.
Cooperation at the international level is difficult to achieve because of the problems
created by states self-interest, the pursuit of relative gains, and the existence of
free ridersthat is, states who benefit from international cooperation, but who do
not contribute to it. Scholars who think that cooperation is only possible if there is a
hegemon maintain that itthe dominant statehas the most to gain from
international cooperation, which is why it is willing to support it in spite of these
problems.1 With After Hegemony, Keohane makes the case that this is not
necessarily true, and that there are other reasons why states might cooperate even
without the persuasive influence of a dominant state. Chief among them is the
existence of international regimes that foster cooperation.
The Participants
After Hegemony was published as a contribution to the debate between supporters
of neorealism and supporters of neoliberalism as to the most useful theoretical
approach to the study of international relations.
Keohane was already one of the most prominent neoliberal scholars thanks to Power
and Interdependence, a book he co-wrote with the political theorist Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
in 1977. He wrote After Hegemony in order to lay out the main doctrines of
neoliberal theory. In this Keohane was successful. The book became a classic
neoliberal text and made Keohane the most popular neoliberal author in the field of
international relations.2
Given the context of the debate to which it was responding, Keohanes book did not
emerge in a vacuum. Most notably, it dealt in detail with the political theorist
Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics, considered the founding neorealist
text. In his 1979 book, Waltz argued that the structure of the international system
was defined by a lack of leadership and governing authorityanarchy, in other
words.3 Since this structure was anarchical, cooperation among states was difficult
to achieve, especially in the absence of a hegemon providing stability to the
international system and bearing some of the costs associated with cooperation.4
Rejecting neorealisms views on the ways in which anarchy affects state behavior,
especially cooperation, Keohane used After Hegemony to go against a central
element of neorealist thought. But Keohanes book also shows the influence of other
authors working on neoliberalism and international regimes.
The concept of the international regime as an institution of obligations and laws
had been introduced to the field of international relations by the scholar John
Ruggie.5 And Keohane accepted the political theorist Stephen D. Krasners definition
of international regimes as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and
decision-making procedures around which actors expectations converge in a given
area of international relations.6 Interdependence among states, a concept Keohane
and Nye had already popularized in the 1970s,7 was another central element of
Keohanes neoliberalism.
After Hegemony was also built on the school of functionalisma theory, founded on
the argument that integration on the state level is driven by common interests,
developed by the American political scientist Ernst B. Haas to explain European
integration.8 Among the other key authors discussing the importance of the
hegemon in international relations were the realist thinker Robert Gilpin and the
political economist Charles P. Kindleberger. Keohanes book, therefore, condensed
and brought order to ideas that were being proposed and discussed by many
thinkers.
After Hegemony reinforced Keohanes position as one of the central figures in the
debate between neorealists and neoliberals. Neorealists such as the political
scientists Robert J. Art, Joseph M. Grieco, and Kenneth Waltz continue to disagree
with Keohanes views on cooperation among states. Neoliberals such as the political
scientists Robert Axelrod and Lisa Martin, meanwhile, build their work around the
ideas developed in After Hegemony. Although the debate is yet to be settled, it is
fair to say that it is not as central to international relations as it was in the 1980s.
Today, neoclassical realisma school of thought that argues that the structure of
the international system, perceptions of this structure, and domestic developments
determine state behavioris the most active realist school of thought confronting
neoliberalism. Neoclassical realism draws on both neorealism (a school founded on
the theory that state behavior is decided by the structure and constraints of the
international system) and traditional realism (a school founded on the theory that
international politics are defined by competition among states seeking to achieve
relative gains). Although neoclassical realism focuses on structural explanations of
state behavior, it does acknowledge that ideology and domestic factors help to
explain it.
Neorealism may still be widely used by international relations scholars, but it is
neoliberalism that continues to be the main liberal theory of international relations.
Today neoliberalism and realism are understood to be different explanations of

relations among states.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was the main question that After Hegemony sought to answer?
Analyze: Why do neoliberal scholars think that neorealism is wrong?
Apply: What examples of cooperation can we see in todays non-hegemonic
international relations?
Notes
See Robert Powell, Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The NeorealistNeoliberal Debate, International Organization 48, no. 2 (1994): 31344.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 889.
Waltz, International Politics,194210.
Theory Talk #9: Robert Keohane, Theory Talks, May 29, 2008, accessed May 26,
2013, http://www.theory-talks.org/2008/05/theory-talk-9.html.
Stephen D. Krasner, Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as
Intervening Variables, International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 186.
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 1.
See Ernst B. Haas, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces,
19501957 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958).
Without ignoring the difficulties that beset attempts to coordinate policy in the
absence of hegemony, this book contends that non-hegemonic cooperation is
possible, and that it can be facilitated by international regimes.
Economy
Key Points
Keohane tries to show that cooperation among states is possible even without the
support of a dominant power, or hegemon.
After Hegemony challenges neorealist thought, presents a neoliberal theory, and
finally applies that theory to real-world case studies.
Keohanes book was published in the context of debates between neorealism and
neoliberalism about how best to explain relations among states.
Author's Aims
Robert O. Keohanes main aim in After Hegemony was to show that cooperation
among states in the absence of a hegemon (dominant power) is possible.1 Keohane
also wanted to show how the international institutions known as regimes help with
this cooperation, even if states tend to act in their own self-interest. The book is
almost entirely devoted to this purpose.
By focusing on showing that cooperation is possible even if there is no hegemon,
Keohane was trying to challenge the neorealist notion that cooperation exists
primarily because the hegemon can benefit from it. He wanted to show that actors
(states) seeking to obtain absolute gains were able to cooperate to maximize their
power, even if there is no hegemon forcing them to do so.
More broadly, Keohane wanted to explain why the relative decline of the United
States in the 1970sespecially following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system
of international monetary managementwould not lead to confrontation, at least
not in the Western bloc.
Keohane believed that international regimes initiated during the period of American
hegemony would survive the end of this hegemony thanks to the cooperative
behavior they had helped to develop and sustain. He wanted to show that while
there were many theoretical elements to the book, there was real-world evidence of
the validity of these theories.
Approach
Keohane divided his arguments in After Hegemony into three main sections and a
conclusion. The first sectionchapters 1 to 3lays out the key ideas behind the
neorealist model of international relations, the principle alternative theoretical
model to neoliberalism, including neorealist conceptions of how the international
system is supposed to work and the supposed need for a hegemon to help facilitate
cooperation.
The second sectionchapters 4 to 7contains Keohanes explanation of why and
how cooperation can result from the existence of international regimes even in the
absence of a hegemon and regardless of whether states have perfectly matching

goals. This section sets out the main assumptions of Keohanes neoliberal
theoretical model for analyzing international relations.
The third sectionchapters 8 to 10investigates these ideas in practice by
analyzing how cooperation worked after World War II, following the decline of
American hegemony from the mid-1960s, in the context of the trade and monetary
regimes of advanced industrialized countries, and in the context of the lack of a
regime governing oil trading during the 1970s. The final section sets out Keohanes
conclusions.
Keohane engages directly with previous scholarship on the subject rather than
constructing a new theory without taking into account other views or context. To
address the question of whether international cooperation is feasible in the absence
of a hegemon, Keohane unpicks and criticizes the neorealist argument that
cooperation in such circumstances is almost impossible because states are
inherently self-interested. His primary target here is the political scientist Kenneth
Waltz and his Theory of International Politics (1979). Keohane then provides a
neoliberal theory that explains why cooperation can exist in the absence of a
hegemon, set out in such a way that the two different theories can be easily
compared. Finally, Keohane tests this theory in practice, making sure that evidencebased chapters examining a series of case studies follow on from the previous,
theory-building section. His approach to dismantling the key elements of
neorealism, then, is scientific and systematic, constructed so that he cannot be
accused of focusing on some aspects of neorealism while conveniently overlooking
others, and also focusing on the inner workings of the international system.
Keohane is successful in doing what he set out to do in After Hegemony. The book
develops the basic ideas of neoliberalism, making clear why it is a valid theoretical
explanation of international politics. The book clearly defends the idea that
cooperation among states does not depend on the presence of a hegemon.
Keohanes argument is that cooperation results from the existence of international
regimes that encourage collaboration by creating stability and by reducing both
uncertainty about the behavior of other states, and the charges incurred when
making international transactions.2 Keohanes research built on ongoing studies
into the role that international regimes play in promoting cooperation such as those
of the international relations scholars Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and John Ruggie. Indeed, the
journal International Organization, consistently ranked as one the most cited
international relations journals by the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI),3
published a special issue4 on international regimes less than two years before
Keohane published his book in 1984. Authors such as the political scientist Ernst B.
Haas and the scholars Stephen D. Krasner and Oran R. Young contributed to this
volume. This shows that After Hegemony was part of a broader discussion on
cooperation in international politics.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was Keohane trying to achieve by writing After Hegemony?
Analyze: To what extent does Keohane follow the scientific method in his book?
Apply: What are the most important international regimes today?
Notes
For a list of international relations journals covered by the SSCI, see
http://science.thomsonreuters.com/cgi-bin/jrnlst/jlresults.cgi?PC=SS&SC=OE.
Benjamin, J. Cohen, et al., International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 185510.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas
When shared interests are sufficiently important and other key conditions are met,
cooperation can emerge and regimes can be created without hegemony.
Economy
Key Points
After Hegemony argues that international regimes help states to cooperate, even
without the influence of a hegemona dominant power.
Keohane proposes that the main drivers behind cooperation are rational choice,
functionalism, and bounded rationality.
The work has a coherent structure and clear language, making it easy to follow.
Key Themes
In After Hegemony Robert O. Keohane explores whether cooperation among states
is possible in the absence of a hegemon and, if so, how.
He defines hegemonic powers as those having control over raw materials, sources
of capital, control over markets, and competitive advantages in the production of
highly valued goods.1 In Keohanes view, hegemonic structures provide leadership

that other independent states consent to, having come to the conclusion that the
arrangement is to their benefit. In After Hegemony, Keohane demonstrates that it is
possible for states to cooperate without a hegemon since nations with shared
financial and trading interests increasingly find that interdependence is to their
benefit.
The main themes of After Hegemony are:
The review of hegemonic power systems
The facilitation of non-hegemonic cooperation by international regimes
The decline of power in the United States in the final quarter of the twentieth
century.
Exploring these three themes, Keohane built on pre-existing and ongoing political
thought and international relations scholarship, especially idealism (the school of
thought that international politics can be defined by peace and cooperation if states
seek to achieve relative rather than absolute gains) and neoliberalism. His work was
unique, however, in the way the book treats these key themes: After Hegemony
offered a coherent, systematic theory of international relations and neoliberalism,
designed to go beyond any particular place or time.
Exploring The Ideas
After Hegemony can be understood as an argument against neorealism. Neorealism
claims cooperation requires a hegemon and that this is the only way cooperation
can be guaranteed without states competing to become the hegemon themselves.
Keohane was dissatisfied with this explanation of cooperation, having observed the
United States during a period of apparent decline in the late 1970s.
While acknowledging that the international system could be characterized by
anarchya potentially chaotic lack of any governing authorityKeohane argues
that cooperation is possible, thanks to the existence of international regimes, that
is, agreed norms, principles, and decision-making procedures, which give states the
incentive to create institutions that foster cooperation and reduce the likelihood of
discord.
Keohane suggests that international regimes evolve from situations in which states
have already concluded that cooperation is desirable and, even if the regime had
been created when there was a hegemon in place, they would survive the decline of
the hegemon itself, given the benefits the regime could offer. In essence,
international regimes create cooperative situations by adjusting the expectations of
their members until they find a mutually satisfying expectation. This process brings
together self-interested states that would otherwise find it difficult to sustain regular
cooperation.
Keohanes themes emerge out of a discussion of the flaws of neorealism, in which

he lays out the main elements of neoliberal theory. Keohane combines these
concepts to support neoliberalisms claims about cooperation.2 First, he explains
the flaws behind realisms view that cooperation is occasionally possible and almost
never occurs in the absence of a hegemon, while pointing out that there is, in fact,
good evidence to show that cooperation often occurs in the absence of a
hegemon.3 For example, cooperation in the areas of trade and monetary policy
survived the decline of the United States as a hegemon because states were able to
keep cooperating using international bodies such as the United Nations or the
Bretton Woods system. According to Keohane, realist claims that cooperation
without a hegemon does not exist, then, cannot be entirely credible.
Second, Keohane makes it clear that cooperation can exist as long as there are
international regimes bringing states together. He proposes that there are three
main drivers behind cooperation:
Bounded rationalitythe idea that rational behavior occurs within the limits of the
information available to us, our capacity to process it, and by the time it takes to
make a decision based on what we understand
Rational choicethe decisions we make to further our own interests
Functionalismthe theory that common interests drive integration based on similar
decisions.4
Keohane explains rational choice as the opportunity for states to engage in
cooperation if it allows them to maximize their own power and wealth. The costeffectiveness of international regimes facilitating cooperation makes them attractive
to those states that may otherwise refuse to cooperate for selfish reasons.
Moreover, the principles, rules, and procedures that international regimes create are
attractive to rational states, because they help establish predictable behavior in
other states. Finally, Keohane explains that through bounded rationality,
international regimes increase the information that their members have about
specific issues and also the positions held by other members. Since decisions taken
by states are invariably affected by bounded rationality, members of a regime will
value both the supplementary information the regime gives them and the limits the
regime imposes on the behavior of other states.
Keohane divides After Hegemony into three main parts. In the first part, he
discusses neorealism and hegemony in international relations, with special
reference to the world economy. In the second part, Keohane analyses regimebased cooperation and focuses on rational choice, functionalism and bounded
rationalitythe three key drivers that make it easier for regimes to cooperate. In
the third part, the author uses observable evidence to analyze post-hegemonic
cooperation concerning trade and money, which he contrasts with non-cooperation

concerning oil.
After Hegemonys coherent structure offers a great example of how international
relations can be a social science. Keohane first presents and analyses a theory that
he seeks to disproveneorealism. He then presents his own theoryneoliberalism
laying it out through a detailed explanation founded on an engagement with the
theory he wishes to disprove (neorealism). Finally, Keohane tests his theory through
case studies, as we have just seen. In this way, Keohane develops a neoliberal
explanation of international relations, both in theory and in practice.
Although Keohane uses terms that are common in the field of international relations,
the text sets out theoretical principles in a clear and organized way so as not to
overwhelm the reader with (social) scientific jargon. This makes the book easily
accessible to a general audience, while still being extremely interesting to experts
and scholars interested in international relations.
The fact that Keohane received the second-ever Grawemeyer Award for Ideas
Improving World Order5a lucrative award bestowed by the University of Louisville
in the United Stateslargely in response to the themes developed in After
Hegemony, proves his ability to reach beyond a specialized audience, while also
developing a theoretically rich analysis of relations among states.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the key ideas that underpin Keohanes neoliberal theory of
Analyze: To what extent is Keohanes neoliberal theory a valid explanation to
understand relations among states?
Apply: What evidence do we have of shared interests and interdependence in
todays international trade and monetary regimes?
Notes
After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy,
Princeton University Press, accessed January 4, 2015,
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/1322.html.
Section 2: Ideas
Architects of regimes anticipate that the regimes will facilitate cooperation. Within
the functional argument being constructed here, these expectations explain the
formation of the regimes.
Economy
Key Points
A secondary theme in After Hegemony refers to reasons why states construct and
respect international regimes. Specifically, they create rules and show how the
interests of different states are similar.
Post-hegemonic cooperation is underpinned by expectations that regimes will lead
states to abide by their rules and redefine their own self-interest.
After Hegemonys chapter on the oil regime of the 1970s has been relatively
neglected.
Other Ideas
An important secondary idea in Robert O. Keohanes After Hegemony is the question
of why states build international regimes in the first place, and decide to abide by
their rules. Keohane suggests that there are principally two reasons. First,
international regimes create rules that other states are expected to abide by, and
will respect in the future, even if there is a change in government.1 According to
neoliberalism, rules are essential for a regime to operate because they identify
expectations of behavior and define the principles on which a regime rests. For
example, in the case of a trade regime, it is expected that participating states will
abide by the rules of not imposing tariffs on imported goods to weigh trade in their
favorand that they will be sanctioned if they do. Significantly, regimes create longterm commitments that future governments of member states must follow. This
means that the future is more predictable, because rules will be respected even if
there is a change in government.
Second, international regimes develop through the understanding that participating
states are similarly self-interested. So states build regimes and abide by their rules
for both selfish and sympathetic reasons. This combination strengthens
international regimes, because they rely on a combination of coercion and an
understanding that states have similar interests.2 Although states share the goal of
maximizing their own power and wealth, this self-interest does not necessarily lead
to conflict and can be served in many different ways. Cooperation in international
regimes can help states achieve these goals. As long as international regimes are a
more cost-effective means of increasing power and wealth than other alternatives,
then states will opt for them.
Keohane also suggests that the regular interaction encouraged by international
regimes results in empathy developing between states. Well-functioning regimes
and those around them will benefit from this empathy. Others will eventually realize
that the maximization of power and wealth can be achieved through other states in
the regime maximizing their own power and wealth as well. While self-interest does
not entirely disappear, it is supplemented by an interest in another state improving
its own situation too.
Exploring The Ideas
By employing theories of rational choice, functionalism, and bounded rationality,
Keohane clarifies why international regimes are built on the rational expectation
that states will abide by their rules, with functionalism laying out how those regimes
can strengthen everybodys interests being interlinked. Bounded rationality is then
used to explain how international regimes influence the expectations of states.3
The secondary idea related to the interaction between egoism and empathy,
meanwhile, is developed in detail in chapter 7. While explaining why and how
bounded rationality helps foster cooperation, Keohane argues that it also leads to a
redefining of self-interest. Crucially, a redefinition does not imply that self-interest
disappears. Rather, self-interest is redefined so as to include the notion that what is
beneficial for one member of the regime is also beneficial for the others. This is
where self-interest brings selfishness and empathy together. A state contributing to
the maintenance of a regime is still pursuing its self-interestbut it understands
that its self-interest should incorporate the interests of other parties in the regime,
too.4
This secondary theme also underpins the books key themes and in this way the
works overall argument becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Without
including this subordinate idea, Keohanes book would have been less convincing in
presenting the bigger case for neoliberal thought.
Overlooked
After Hegemony is one of the most widely read and referenced international
relations books of the past 30 years.5 Its main ideas and claims have been
discussed in detail. Nonetheless, chapter 10, The Consumers, Oil Regime, 1974
81,6 has received less attention than the rest of the book. This is understandable,
because the chapter presents a specific case study to support the books argument.
Since almost all scholars discussing After Hegemony have engaged with its
theoretical rather than its empirical content, most of them have not considered it
necessary to discuss this case study. The chapters particular focusthe failure by
advanced industrialized countries to create a well-functioning oil regime following
the oil crises of the 1970salso makes it unlikely that it will receive more attention
in the near future. Were there to be a focus on this neglected chapter, it would likely
be in relating it to one of the main concerns of contemporary international politics:
how to ensure energy security.
Cooperation among oil consumers has been uneven at best since the period
covered in Keohanes chapter. Focusing on the period of relative cooperation prior to
the 1970s and the period of non-cooperation between 1974 and 1981as Keohane
did in chapter 10 of After Hegemonywould strengthen the argument that the
presence of a hegemon is not the main reason why states cooperate. A hegemon
was not necessary for states to cooperate in the trade and monetary regimes, but it
was necessary for cooperation among oil consumers. So we must consider factors
other than hegemony to explain why cooperation does or does not occur.
Meanwhile, the intense scrutiny that After Hegemony has received since it first
appeared in 1984 means it is unlikely that its content or significance will be
reconsidered in the coming years. Cooperation through international regimes is one
of the main characteristics of contemporary international politics. Keohane
powerfully argued that both international regimes and cooperation are possible with
(or, more importantly, without) a hegemon.
Since Keohane wrote his book, there have been periods of American-Soviet
bipolarity (that is, international dominance has been shared), US hegemony, and
also a decline of American power due to the rise of China. This rise has been
clearest in the economic field. And yet cooperation as a result of the work of
international regimes has continued. In this context, it is not particularly likely that
Keohanes work will be reconsidered.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the main secondary theme of After Hegemony?
Analyze: Why do states build international regimes and decide to abide by them
even if there is no hegemon?
Apply: How do international regimes facilitate cooperation between the United
States and China?
Notes
See Google Scholar, JSTOR and other academic search databases.

Section 2: Ideas
Yet institutions are often worth constructing, because their presence or absence
may determine whether governments can cooperate effectively from common ends.
It is even more important to seek to maintain the valuable international institutions
that continue to exist if they did not exist, many of them would have to be
invented.
Economy
Key Points
After Hegemony helps us to understand better the reasons why states cooperatea
theme explored by Keohane in previous works.
Keohanes book has been very influential in the field of international relations, and it
still has an impact on this social science today.
The main limitation of this workits offer of a grand theory that is not universally
applicableis a problem with the social sciences in general.
The ideas presented by Robert O. Keohane in After Hegemony that offer an
alternative to neorealism are useful to academics, students, people interested in
international relations, and policymakers alike. The debate between neoliberalism
and neorealism became one of the key features of international relations during the
1980s, with Keohane and the political scientist Kenneth Waltzthe father of
neorealismbeing the main drivers of these two differing viewpoints.
Furthermore, international relations scholars and other social scientists have found
the discussion of international regimes and cooperation useful to our understanding
of the reasons why states work together both to foster global governance, and to
put rules and regimes in place in order to solve problems. For students of
international relations, After Hegemony is an essential introductory text to
understand neoliberalism and international politics theory. Policymakers,
meanwhile, find that After Hegemony contributes to our understanding of how
cooperation among states might be encouraged.
Keohanes ideas can be traced back to his earlier works. Two in particular stand out.
In 1977, Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. published Power and Interdependence:
World Politics in Transition, a work which explained how international regimes affect
state behavior and evolve by creating interdependence among actors. Regimes
create links among actors that are capable of going beyond simple government
control.1 Later, in 1982, Keohane published the article The Demand for
International Regimes, which argued that rational choice theory helped explain
why self-interested actors could create international regimes.2 Examples of such
regimes are those created to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, or to fight climate change. This is a central aspect of the argument
Keohane later made in After Hegemony.
Keohanes ideas and themes, therefore, built on both the traditional idealism
underpinning much previous work on international relations, including his own. At
the same time, they were part of a greater body of work being produced by Nye and
other international relations scholars writing on international regimes and
cooperation during the 1970s and 1980s.
After Hegemony is still an influential book, as are other works either written or coedited by Keohane. Neoliberalism continues to be one of the three main theoretical
approaches to the study of international relations, along with neorealism and
constructivism3an approach founded on the idea that since international relations
are socially constructed, interactions are the result of the ways in which states
understand themselves and others.
As for Keohane, he is considered the second most influential international relations
scholar of the past 20 years after the political scientist Alexander Wendt.4 To a large
extent, this is probably the result of the continuing relevance of After Hegemony
and related works he has subsequently published. After Hegemony has been cited
almost 8,000 times to date, which is an impressive tally for a work on the subject.
Overall, After Hegemony and these related works have helped Keohane to become
one of the defining figures of contemporary international relations, and to become
influential even beyond this field. His ideas about how cooperation in the absence of
a hegemon can exist, and how international regimes help collaboration among
states, continue to be debated and tested. Furthermore, the perceived decline of
the United States as a hegemonic power since the turn of the millennium has
reignited interest in the role of international regimes in fostering cooperation among
states. Following a brief period of increased American power in the 1990s, there is a
perception that Chinaand other emerging powers such as Brazil, Iran, or India
might challenge American dominance. As a result, there are debates in the United
States, the European Union, and elsewhere about how these powers might be
integrated into existing international regimes. A new edition of Keohanes After
Hegemony was published in 2005, showing that it is still relevant in the context of
these debates.
Limitations
In writing After Hegemony, Keohane wanted to create a theory of international
relations that would be applicable regardless of time and place. Certainly, his theory
has withstood the test of time relatively well. International regimes continue to be
created and many countries continue to respect them. In spite of there not being a
definite hegemon today, international regimes have nonetheless become a central
feature of international relations.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that there is a limitation in this book. Although it is
grounded in the analysis and interpretation of observable evidence according to
scientific methods, After Hegemony does flirt with becoming a grand theorythat
is, it hints at a universal quality that it does not necessarily possess.
The theory of neoliberalism presented by Keohane cannot be applied to all cases.
Indeed, there are examples of regimes malfunctioning, as in the case of Iraq in the
early 2000s, where the administration of US President George W. Bush accused the
Iraqi regime of possessing weapons of mass destruction. This turned out not to be
the case. The international financial regime failing to prevent a global recession in
2007 to 2011the purpose it was specifically set up to preventis another clear
example.
Even though Keohane tried to minimize the limitations of his theory, he did this by
following the social scientific method, which ultimately meant he was trying to
overcome one of the greatest shortcomings of social science. Social scientists
analyze human beings and society rather than nature. Therefore, social scientific
findings are not as easy to generalize as the findings from natural science, given
that human beings and society do not act following fixed patterns.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the main achievements of Keohanes work?
Analyze: Why does Keohanes work continue to be influential today?
Apply: What international regimes are most successful today and why?
Notes
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 21.
Robert O. Keohane, The Demand for International Regimes, International
Organization 26, no. 2 (1982): 32555.
Maliniak et al., TRIP Around the World, 49.

Section 2: Ideas
The theory presented here is relevant to any situation in world politics in which
states have common or complementary interests that can only be realized through
mutual agreement.
Economy
Key Points
Keohane continued developing neoliberalism after the publication of After
Hegemony, both as a theory and in actual analysis of its application.
After Hegemony sits as the most important book in Keohanes overall body of work.
Keohane is still considered to be a central figure in international relations.
Positioning
Following the 1984 publication of After Hegemony, Robert O. Keohane continued to
refine neoliberalism as a theory of international relations. His work falls neatly in the
neoliberal school of thought. Works such as Power and Governance in a Partially
Globalised World (2002) and Legalization and World Politics (2001), co-edited with
the political scientist Judith L. Goldstein, build upon the key themes of neoliberalism
laid out in After Hegemony.
Keohans thinking about neoliberalism has evolved, but this is not surprising
considering the changes in the international system since 1984, the year the book
was first published. Indeed, the end of the Cold War (a decades-long period of great
diplomatic tension between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union
and its allies) and the economic rise of countries such as China, have shifted the
international system from a bipolar world (that, is a world where dominance is
shared by opposing powers) to a unipolar or multipolar onedepending on ones
perspective. However, Keohanes main body of work still revolves around the idea
that international regimes do foster cooperation among states, regardless of the
presence of a hegemon or otherwise.
Building on his own theoretical contributions to the field of international relations,
Keohane has also developed work on particular regimes. Most notably, he has built
on the empirical chapter on the oil regimeor lack ofof the 1970s included in
After Hegemony. He has written about the evolution of the energy regime1 and
closely related regimes such as the one centered on climate change.2 With this
work, Keohane has moved beyond grand theory and concepts and into specific case
studies and empiricism, or observable evidence. As a result, his body of work has
become more holistic, bringing theory and practical analysis more closely together.
Recently, Keohane has also been engaged in debates about the nature of the power
of the United States, and whether it remains a hegemon. This is an ongoing debate
among scholars and practitioners of international relations.
When Keohane wrote After Hegemony, the bipolarity that characterized the Cold
War was a key feature of the international system. But the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the emergence of America as the sole superpowera hegemonhas
changed the nature of the debate. This situation appears to have ended in the early
2000s, however, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Since then, the US has started two costly interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, a
global War on Terror, and has been wracked by an economic crisis that began in
2007. The same period saw China emerge as a major economic and industrial
powerhouse, which raised questions of whether it was capable of challenging
American hegemony. In recent publications, Keohane has been undecided as to
whether the United States continues to be a hegemon today. Even if it is not,
however, he still believes that it will carry on playing a central role in global affairs.3
Integration
Although After Hegemony was the first work Keohane wrote alone, it was not his
first publication. This was Power and Interdependence, which he co-authored with
the political scientist Joseph S. Nye, Jr. in 1977. Power and Interdependence was a
text that firmly established the two as proponents of the neoliberal school of
thought in international relations. Although neoliberal thought first emerged as an
economic theory as long ago as the 1930s, Keohane and Nyes contribution was to
apply its central principles to international relations theory.
In the 40 years between 1966 and 2006, Keohane published 39 articles or book
chapters, edited or co-edited 13 books and co-authored three books, among other
works on single subjects. It took him seven years to write After Hegemony and in
that time he also managed to publish seven articles in prestigious academic
journals. This is an impressive academic output.4 In the context of so many
publications, After Hegemony is a mid-career publicationbut clearly the work of a
mature thinker. Keohanes body of work offers support, derived from observable
evidence, of the neoliberal argument that regimes facilitate cooperation among
states whose respective self-interests might be reconcilable. Indeed, many of
Keohanes publications have looked to apply and then refine neoliberalism as a
theoretical model, particularly following the end of the Cold War. In 2012, Keohane
published the article Hegemony and After in the international relations journal
Foreign Affairs. In it, he argued that the decline of American power should not
prevent nations from cooperating, as long as international regimes still function.5

Evidently, Keohane still believes in the neoliberal theory he presented over 30 years
ago.
Significance
Keohanes work as an international relations theorist has gained him considerable
respect in his field of study. International Organization, one of the top international
relations journals and home to important debates between neorealist and neoliberal
scholars in the 1980s and 1990s, has established an annual Robert O. Keohane
Award for the best young scholar to publish on international organizations.6 This
award is a testament to the importance of Keohanes body of work to the field of
Of all his publications, After Hegemony is by far his most successful. When Keohane
received the prestigious Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial
Medal in 2012, he was described as one of the most influential and respected
theorists of world politics and power and a founding father of the modern field of
international political economy, a subfield of international relations.7
Google Scholar, meanwhile, indicates that After Hegemony has been cited in
academic journals more than 8,000 times at the time of writing,8 making it one of
the most successful books in the field of international relations. The only text on
international relations theory that has been more successful than After Hegemony is
Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics (1979), which has been cited nearly
12,000 times.9
Key Questions
Synthesize: What themes has Robert Keohane developed following the publication
of After Hegemony?
Analyze: To what extent has Keohanes body of work shaped international relations?
Apply: Can existing international regimes accommodate the rise of China?
Notes
Jeff Colgan et al., Punctuated Equilibrium in the Energy Regime Complex, The
Review of International Organizations 7, no. 2 (2012): 11743.
Robert O. Keohane and Kal Raustiala, Towards a Post-Kyoto Climate Change
Architecture: A Political Analysis, in Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy:
Implementing Architectures for Agreement, edited by Joseph E. Aldy and Robert N.
Stavins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 372400.
Robert O. Keohane, Hegemony and After: What Can Be Said about the Future of
American Leadership? Foreign Affairs 1, no. 4 (2012): 15.

See Keohane, Hegemony and After.
See The Robert O. Keohane Award, Cambridge Journals, accessed July 10, 2015,
http://jnls.cup.org/journal.do?jid=INO#.VZ5devlViko.
Harvard Graduate School Honors Daniel Aaron, Nancy Hopkins and Others,
Harvard Magazine, May 23, 2012, accessed March 31, 2015,
http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/05/harvard-graduate-school-centennialmedalists-2012.
Robert Keohane, After Hegemony, Google Scholar, accessed on May 13, 2015.
Kenneth Waltz, Google Scholar, accessed May 19, 2015,
cluster=7694130487730532041&hl=en&as_sdt=0,9.
Section 3: Impact
By and large, the constructivists under review would concur with such a
characterization [of world politics]. Their critique of neorealists and neoliberals
concerns not what these scholars do and say but what they ignore: the content and
sources of state interests and the social fabric of world politics.
Jeffrey T. Checkel, The Constructive Turn in International Relations Theory
Key Points
After Hegemony has been criticized for its lack of analysis of domestic politics and
for failing to properly explain how gains from cooperation are distributed.
Keohane has been willing to engage with his critics to defend his arguments.
Ultimately, it is generally agreed that neorealist and neoliberal thought can co-exist.
Criticism
Economy has been the subject of three main criticisms.
First, a common criticism of neoliberalism in generaland including After Hegemony
comes from international relations scholars such as Jeffrey Checkel, who subscribe
to neither neorealist nor neoliberal viewpoints. Checkel argued that the differences
between neorealism and neoliberalism were minimal, since both believe that the
international system is anarchical in nature, assume that states are self-interested,
and argue that cooperation is possible under certain circumstances.1
A second, and perhaps more pertinent criticism, is that After Hegemony fails to take
into account domestic politics. This critique is valid as domestic politics never really
features in Keohanes analysisbut it should be noted that his field is international
relations, not international-domestic relations. With the end of the Cold War
following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the influence of domestic politics
on state behavior became a more popular area of inquiry as an increasing number
of scholars felt free to focus on areas other than the rivalry of states that defined
the Cold War. As more data on domestic politics from a greater number of countries
became available, meanwhile, new theoretical approaches pointed out the
importance of domestic aspects of decision-making processes.2
Moreover, criticism of the book on the basis that it does not pay sufficient attention
to domestic politics, or on the similarities between neorealism and neoliberalism,
comes from authors who ground their arguments in other theoretical perspectives.
They do not necessarily mean that Keohanes arguments are wrong. They
emphasize, rather, aspects of international politics that After Hegemony and
neoliberalism do not necessarily focus on.
Responses
Robert O. Keohanes initial response to criticism of After Hegemony was to refine his
arguments, explaining aspects that might not have been sufficiently clear in the
original text. Along with Joseph S. Nye, Jr., co-author of Power and Interdependence
(1977), Keohane explained the benefits of multilateralism for all states in general
but, more crucially, for superpowers.3 In addition, he investigated how cooperation
need not impinge on sovereignty or affect a states desire to be self-interested.4
More generally, Keohane reiterated why the study of international regimes was
necessary, regardless of ones theoretical and methodological approach to
international relations.5 Keohane was open to discussing the merits of neoliberalism
in general, and After Hegemony in particular.
Following its publication, there was a critical dialogue on the similarities and
differences between neorealism and neoliberalism. In the introduction to an edited
volume on neorealism, Keohane emphasized that theory was necessary to
understand international politics and that neorealism offered a persuasive
explanation of state behavior.6 This showed his willingness to recognize that other
theories were valid to the study of international relations. Indeed, following the end
of the Cold War, and seven years after the publication of After Hegemony, Keohane
was willing to explore how neorealism and neoliberalism affected each other,7
despite the perception that the collapse of the Eastern bloc was a victory for
liberalism.

Ultimately, neither neorealism nor neoliberalism can claim to be definitive. Instead,
we must continue to think of them as theories. Cooperation, as neoliberal thought
argues, has been a feature of international politics for centuries, even in the
absence of a hegemon. As much as neorealist theory is often understood to be in
opposition to neoliberal thinking, it does not argue that cooperation is impossible; it
merely states that it is difficult to achieve and to maintain, particularly in the
absence of a hegemon who will most benefit from cooperation and will therefore
urge this course out of self-interest. Indeed, there are scholars who maintain that
neoliberalism and neorealism are not too dissimilar. They can be said to be
committed to a rationalist analysis of international relations that gives central roles
to states, assumes that the international system is anarchical, and shares an
emphasis on the usefulness of international institutions.8 Therefore, neorealisms
criticism of neoliberalism in general, and Keohanes work in particular, is not based
on a fundamental disagreement about the nature of international relations, but
rather on how it is understood.
Acknowledgement of criticism of his work did not lead Keohane to modify his
opinions, however. In articles, books and other publications released in the years
after the publication of After Hegemony, Keohane refined his argument, but did not
alter it.
Furthermore, the second edition of After Hegemony, published in 2005, remained
unchanged apart from a new preface.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the main criticisms of Keohanes theory of international
relations?
Analyze: To what extent are these criticisms valid?
Apply: How does domestic politics affect international relations?
Notes
See Jeffrey T. Checkel, The Constructive Turn in International Relations Theory,
World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998): 32448.
Stephan Haggard, Book Review: After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the
World Political Economy, Worldview Magazine 28, no. 4 (1985): 256.
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Two Cheers for Multilateralism, Foreign
Policy 60, no.1 (1985): 14867.
Robert O. Keohane, Reciprocity in International Relations, International
Organization 40, no. 1 (1986): 127.
Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Two Approaches, International

Studies Quarterly 32, no. 4 (1988): 37996.
Robert O. Keohane, Realism, Neorealism and the Study of World Politics, in
Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by Robert O. Keohane (New York: Columbia
Robert O. Keohane, Institutional Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold
War, in Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, edited by David
A. Baldwin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 269300.
Filippo Andreatta and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Which Synthesis? Strategies of
Theoretical Integration and the Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate, International Political
Science Review 31, no. 2 (2010): 20727.
Section 3: Impact
By seeking to specify the conditions under which institutions can have an impact
and cooperation can occur, institutionalist theory shows under what conditions
realist propositions are valid. It is in this sense that institutionalism claims to
subsume realism.
Lisa Martin and Robert O. Keohane, The Promise of Institutionalist Theory
Key Points
After Hegemony was useful for international relations scholars from the moment it
was published, and continues to be so today.
New variations of realism are still challenging, and being challenged by, After
Hegemony and liberalism.
Contemporary debates between neorealism and neoliberalism are mostly
intellectual.
Uses And Problems
In the years following its 1984 publication, Robert O. Keohanes After Hegemony:
Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy was key to the evolution of
international relations as a field of inquiry. Although the theoretical debate between
neoliberalism and neorealism began before the publication of After Hegemony, the
book could be considered the first text to present the neoliberal case clearly and in
detail. Much of the neoliberal thought that followed it, therefore, was founded on
the ideas it proposedand the work became one of the focal points of neorealist
critiques of neoliberalism.
Meanwhile, a new theoretical approach, constructivisma theory founded on the

principle that since international relations are social constructions they can be
explained by considering the ways states perceive themselves and othersbecame
popular in the early 1990s. Constructivism engaged the ideas presented in After
Hegemony and criticized the limitations of both neoliberalism and neorealism.
Keohane remains influential. As a leading neoliberal scholar, based at a prestigious
school, he has taught his theory to hundreds of students, and influenced many more
in his field. More importantly, a number of political scientists, among them Charles
Lipson, Lisa Martin, Kenneth Oye, and Duncan Snidal, who are all attached to
prestigious centers of learning in the United States and the United Kingdom, have
sought to refine Keohanes theory.1 They accept neoliberalisms main points and
have tried to apply his theory to specific concepts or to new case studies.
Schools Of Thought
Just over three decades after publication, After Hegemony is still relevant. The
theoretical framework it offered fueled both an intellectual and a policy debate in
the United States about the role international institutions played in fostering
cooperation with the Soviet Union and the wider Eastern bloc. After the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1989, the United Nations and other institutions became even
more central to global governance by leading initiatives in cooperation. In short,
Keohanes call for international cooperation had an impact on how the United States
viewed cooperation with its Cold War opponent, the Soviet Union.
Cooperation among states has widened and broadened: new international regimes
have appeared in areas such as counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, financial
governance, and trade. These international regimes now include more states and
cover more issues. After Hegemonys ideas provide a theoretical basis for scholars
studying global governance, international regimes, and international institutions. In
particular, the debate over the need or otherwise of a global hegemon to ensure
cooperation in international regimes continues today. After Hegemony still plays an
important role in this debate.
Keohanes text still engages with realism, both in its neorealist form and in its most
recent reincarnations:
Neoclassical realisma combination of neorealist and realist thought
Offensive realisma theory developed out of the idea that the structure of
international relations encourages states to behave aggressively, so increasing the
likelihood of conflict
Defensive realisma theory founded on the idea that the structure of international
relations encourages states to think about their security, similarly increasing the
likelihood of conflict.
Contemporary realist thinkers such as John Mearsheimer, the founder of offensive

realist theory, and the political scientists Randall Schweller, Stephen Walt, and
William Wohlforth, all maintain that cooperation among states is uncommon and
extremely difficult to achieve without a hegemon. For them, this only occurs when it
helps states achieve their self-interested goals. For Keohane, of course, self-interest
is not the only consideration for states when they cooperate.
Today, a wide range of scholarship engages with the same issues discussed in After
Hegemony. The debate between liberal-idealist and realist interpretations of
international affairs is nothing new; dating back to the 1920s, it has been a central
feature of the theoretical landscape of international relations for decades. Today,
the debates continue both in the academic world and in policy debates. These
debates tend to pit realists against idealists, in a general sense. This is certainly
evident in policy debates following the end of the Cold War and after 9/11the
terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.
The debate in the public sphere between liberals and conservatives, however, does
not quite reflect the conflict in the academic world, where the opposing positions
are neorealist and neoliberal. Constructivists, meanwhile, who claim that
international relations are social constructs anyway, critique both. On the neorealist
side of the debate are scholars like John Mearsheimer, Randall Schweller, Stephen
Walt and William Wohlforth. For them, of course, cooperation in the absence of a
hegemon is unlikely. On the neoliberal side of the debate are a group of prominent
scholars who look to Keohane as a source of inspiration. These include the political
scientists Robert Axelrod, Charles Lipson, Lisa Martin, Kenneth Oye and Duncan
Snidal.
Keohanes book has also influenced scholars working on international regimes and
international institutions such as the political scientists Judith Goldstein, Beth
Simmons, and Anne-Marie Slaughter. A survey of international relations scholars
conducted in 2012 estimates that 28 percent of the literature in the field draws on
liberal thought. Only realism is more popular in the literature.2 Neoliberalism is
therefore a significantly influential approach to the field.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What contribution does After Hegemony make to international relations
today?
Analyze: Why is the debate between neorealism and neoliberalism still continuing?
Apply: To what extent has the United Nations been successful in promoting
cooperation among states?
Notes
See Charles Lipson, Why Are Some International Agreements Informal?

International Organization 45, no. 4 (1991): 495538; Lisa L. Martin, Interests,
Power, and Multilateralism, International Organization 45, no. 4 (1992): 76592;
Kenneth Oye and James Maxwell, Self-interest and Environmental Management,
Journal of Theoretical Politics 6, no. 4 (1994): 593624; Duncan Snidal, Relative
Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation, American Political Science
Review 85, no. 3 (1991): 70126.
Section 3: Impact
These works [After Hegemony and Power and Interdependence] set the stage for
what has become a standard disciplinarian assumption about the phenomenon of
economic interdependence Yet this assumption rests upon questionable,
normative assumptions about individual cognition and domestic politics that have
remained largely unexcavated.
Jennifer Sterling-Folker, Neoclassical Realism and Identity
Key Points
After Hegemony is still relevant today, despite changes in the international order.
The book has informed debates beyond international relations, most notably in
international law.
Keohanes work is useful for debates about the role of the United States in
international affairs.
Position
Economy is still relevant over 30 years after publication; aside from a new preface,
the second edition, published in 2005, was unchanged from the original. This is
remarkable, given the extent to which international politics has changed since the
book was first published in 1984. At that time, Japan and Germany were considered
to be challengers to the economic dominance of the United States. By 1994, when
only the United States was considered a superpower, this was not the case. Today,
China appears to be Americas only hegemonic challenge due to its growing
economic wealth, industrial capacity, and military prowess. Despite this, however,
cooperation among states continues to persistthanks in large part to the role of
international regimes.
As the books argument is founded on data drawn from the study of international,
rather than domestic, affairs and politics, cultural contexts are not relevant.
Furthermore, Keohane made clear that although he used a case study of Western
industrialized countries to exemplify this argument, his reasoning was applicable far
more generally.1 Those who believe in neoliberal thought do not consider their ideas
to be a Western construct, only applicable to a single cultural context, and After
Hegemony reflects this assumption.
Interaction
After Hegemony is still particularly relevant in two ways. First, it continues to inform
theoretical debates in the discipline of international relations as a key work that
discusses one of the most popular theories of international politics. Second,
Keohanes book still defines discussions surrounding the question of why states
cooperate even when there is no clear dominant power.
Arguably, After Hegemonys greatest influence on disciplines other than
international relations has been on international law. Following Keohanes analysis
of how and why international regimes help cooperation between states to happen,
international lawyers have been working on building a coherent framework to
explain why and how international law helps states that are looking to cooperate.2
Some international lawyers even consider international law a regime in its own
right.3 Others agree with Keohane that international law can affect state behavior
even after the end of hegemony.4 After Hegemony provided a useful framework for
those working on the uses of international law in fields such as environmental law
and trade law to discuss their ideas.
The books influence beyond academia has been more indirect. Along with the work
of other international relations scholars, Keohanes After Hegemony (and related
publications) form a body of work that argues persuasively for the benefits of
international regimes in fostering cooperation that profits the United States. The
fact that political scientists such as Stephen D. Krasner, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and AnneMarie Slaughter, all important contributors to the discussion that the work provoked,
have all held influential positions with different American administrations, suggests
that the text has influenced American foreign policyand international politics as a
result.
The debate between neorealists and neoliberals has been enhanced by the
development of new theories of international relations, most notably constructivism,
with its emphasis on the socially constructed nature of international relations. In this
debate among different theoretical traditions, international cooperation and regimes
remain a key issue. The text is particularly useful, because it is the model of
neoliberal thought in this field.
After Hegemony is still vital and current, thanks in no small part to the renewed
relevance of realist thought and its vision of states acting pragmatically in the
pursuit of their self-interest. This is seen in a number of areas:
Neoclassical realismwhich believes that states act according to how power is
distributed in the international system, and how that system is perceived
Offensive realismaccording to which the international system provokes states to
aggression
Defensive realismaccording to which the international system causes states to
concentrate on their security, with destabilizing effects.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and end of the Cold War, realism
was considered by many to be obsolete. Works such as the political scientist Francis
Fukuyamas The End of History and the Last Man5 or the neoliberal scholar G. John
Ikenberrys After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of
Order after Major Wars6 exemplified the widespread belief that economic liberalism
had displaced other ideologies and theories, due to its defeat of fascism and
communism and the spread of democracy and markets. However, neoclassical
realism, offensive realism, and defensive realism offered coherent theories that
became increasingly popular after the 9/11 terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
and the unilateral response of the administration of President George W. Bush.
Neoliberal and neorealist thought, then, found themselves in opposition again.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the contributions of After Hegemony beyond international
relations?
Analyze: To what extent does After Hegemony speak to current debates about the
role of the United States in international affairs?
Apply: To what extent do contemporary international regimes operate independently
of US power?
Notes
Anne-Marie Slaughter, International Law and International Relations Theory: A Dual
Agenda, The American Journal of International Law 87, no. 2 (1993): 20539.
Nico Krisch, International Law in Times of Hegemony: Unequal Power and the
Shaping of the International Legal Order, The European Journal of International Law
16, no. 3 (2005): 369408.
Colm Campbell, Wars on Terror and Vicarious Hegemons: The UK, International
Law, and the Northern Ireland Conflict, International and Comparative Law
Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2005): 32156; Slaughter, International Law and International
Relations, 20539.
See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press,
1992).
See G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the
Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Section 3: Impact
Keohanes thoughts on both the conditions under which states co-operate with
each other and the role of institutions in facilitating co-operation have evolved from
seeking to challenge the explanatory adequacy of the realist paradigm to a more
nuanced accommodation with the insights of structural realism. Whether this
constitutes progress or regress in the study of international organization remains a
hotly debated issue, but there is no questioning the pivotal importance of Keohanes
work in raising it.
Key Points
After Hegemony looks like it will still be relevant in the future, given its prominent
position in the teaching of international relations.
It is likely that neoliberal scholars will continue to build on the ideas contained in the
book as they develop their own work.
After Hegemony is essential reading for people interested in learning about
Potential
Economy is an essential text on international relations students reading lists around
the world. This means it is very likely to continue to be an influential text in the field
of international relations and even beyond this academic discipline, supported as it
is by a growing body of work building on its key ideas. Since Keohane is still
considered one of the most influential contemporary international relations
scholars,1 and neoliberalism continues to be a popular theory of international
relations,2 it is also likely his ideas will continue to influence research.
Scholars of international relations who subscribe to neoliberal thought are likely to

continue to be employed by Western governments, and will continue to influence
the foreign policy of states that play a large role in shaping the international
system.
Finally, Keohane remains an active scholar, writer and teacher. Since he has not
altered the fundamentals of his approach to the study of international politics, he
will continue to spread the ideas that underpin After Hegemony.
Neoliberal scholarship since the publication of After Hegemony has mostly been
devoted to understanding better the ways in which international regimes foster
cooperation, with scholars focusing on specific issues such as security, the
environment, and human rights.3 These academics have also been the main driving
force behind the development of the study of global governance, the processes by
which problems of international security and financial stability, and so on, might be
solved. This is an area that has become very popular since 9/11the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001. This means the core ideas of After Hegemony will
continue to be applied in the futureif not significantly developed.
Future Directions
Current supporters of neoliberalism in general, and Keohanes After Hegemony in
particular, still support and spread its key notions. Neoliberals believe that
international regimes promote cooperation. Furthermore, they believe that
international regimes do not require a hegemon to exist and operate, and that
cooperation is not as uncommon as the rival school of thought, neorealism,
suggests. The influence of Keohanes After Hegemony is therefore essential to
understanding the intellectual foundations of authors who will continue to develop
neoliberal theory. New authors working in the neoliberal tradition appear to be
faithful to After Hegemony.4 The text has not been reinterpreted to date, and is
unlikely to be so in the near future.
As for neoliberalism itself, it remains one of the three most popular approaches to
the study of international politics. Along with neorealism and constructivism, it is
one of the theoretical approaches most international relations scholars identify with,
one of the theoretical approaches most commonly taught in class, and one of the
most published.5 The influence of neoliberalism among students, scholars and
practitioners of international relations has not decreased since the publication of
After Hegemony. If anything, it has actually increased.
Summary
After Hegemony is one of the key texts of neoliberalism in international relations.
Since neoliberalism continues to be one of the most influential theoretical
approaches for those engaged in the study and the practice of international politics
alike, no scholar of international relations can properly understand this field without
knowing the arguments the book makes.
After Hegemony is second to none in laying out the key principles of neoliberalism:
International regimes do not need a hegemon to operate.
International regimes foster cooperation.
Cooperation is not as uncommon as other theories, especially neorealism, suggest.
Keohane, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of
the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social
Science and the American Philosophical Society,6 is one of the key figures of
contemporary international relations. After the political scientist Alexander Wendt,7
he is considered the most influential scholar of international relations over the past
20 years.
After Hegemony is Keohanes best-known text. It is original and impactful in laying
out the key principles of neoliberal thought coherently, logically and clearly. And it is
a key text promoting the status of neoliberalism as a valid alternative to the
neorealist thought that characterized the theory of international relations in a world
shaped by the Cold War.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why is After Hegemony still relevant today?
Analyze: To what extent is After Hegemony likely to remain relevant in the future?
Apply: How do you think the principles outlined in After Hegemony could be
successfully applied to the classroom environment?
Notes
Maliniak et al., TRIP Around the World, 12, 27, 47.

Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Absolute gain: a means by which international actorsstates and organizations
decide what is in their interests, weighing up the total effects of a decision and then
acting accordingly.
Anarchy: a situation of leaderlessness. Sovereign states exist in an anarchic world
because they have no authority compelling them one way or another.
Bipolar: a distribution of power in the international system; a bipolar system has
power concentrated in two states, whereas a unipolar system has only one pole
(also known as hegemony); a multipolar system has power concentrated among
three or more states.
Bounded rationality: a social science concept that says that levels of rationality are
constrained by limits on the amount of available information, on the capacity of the
human mind to process information, and on the amount of time it takes to make a
decision.
Bretton Woods: a system of monetary and financial management established in
1945. The system collapsed in 1971.
Cold War (194791): a period of tension between the US and the Soviet Union. While
the two blocs never engaged in direct military conflict, they engaged in covert and
proxy wars and espionage against one another.
Communism: a political ideology that relies on the state ownership of the means of
production, the collectivization of labor, and the abolition of social class.
Conservative: a person, party or other institution holding values considered to be
traditional and less open to change.
Constructivism: one of the three most widely applied theoretical approaches to the
study of international relations. Its key tenet is the notion that international relations
are socially constructed. Therefore, interactions among actors (typically states) are
the result of the ways in which these actors understand both themselves and
others.
Counterterrorism: the activities, especially military and political, undertaken in order
to combat terrorism.
Defensive realism: a theory of international relations that builds on neorealism. It
maintains that the structure of the international system makes states focus on their
own security, thus increasing the likelihood of conflict.
Democracy: a system of government in which the ruler or rulers of a state are

elected by the people, who can also participate in government through other
channels such as referenda.
Empiricism: the belief that knowledge is derived from the study of observable
evidence.
Eastern bloc: One of the two main groups of states during the Cold War the other
being the Western bloc. The Eastern or Soviet bloc comprised the Soviet Union,
Eastern Europe, and other countries with a similar economic and political system in
Africa, the Americas, and the Asia Pacific.
European Union: a political and economic family of institutions that govern the
legal, economic, and political union of 28 European States.
Fascism: a system of government typically based on nationalism and racism and
marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, total control of the economy
and society, and the prevention of any opposition through acts of terror and
censorship.
Free rider: a person, state or other actor who receives the benefits of a public good
without contributing to its production.
Functionalism: a theory of international relations that argues that the needs and
common interests of state and non-state actors drive integration.
Global governance: the process of interaction among state and non-state actors to
solve transnational problems and to prevent those problems from arising in the
future.
Grand theory: an abstract theory where analytical and formal organization of
concepts happens ahead of using observable evidence.
Hegemon: a social group, especially a political state, that has achieved a position of
dominance over all the other states.
Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over
others. When a state achieves dominance over all other states they are considered
a hegemon.
Idealism: a theoretical approach to international relations according to which
international politics can be defined by peace and cooperation if states seek to
achieve relative rather than absolute gains.
International regime: a set of principles, norms, and decision-making procedures
agreed by a number of actors (usually states) who explicitly or implicitly agree to
abide by them.
International relations: an academic discipline focusing on the study of relations

among states and other actors active at the international level.
Liberalism: a theory that argues that international politics can be defined by peace
and cooperation if states seek to achieve absolute rather than relative gains.
Market: a physical or nominal institution that allows buyers and sellers of goods and
services to interactdirectly or through intermediariesand exchange products for
other products or, more commonly, money.
Multilateralism: a situation in which multiple states, organizations or other actors
work together to achieve a common goal.
Multipolar: a distribution of power in the international system; a bipolar system has
Neoclassical realism: a theory of international relations that mixes elements of
realism and neorealism, according to which state behavior is decided by the
structure of the international system, perceptions of this structure, and domestic
developments.
Neoliberal: a person who adheres to the theory of neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism: a theory of international relations according to which states should
be concerned with absolute rather than relative gains. Focusing on absolute gains,
neoliberalism allows for cooperative behavior among states to take place.
Neorealism: a theory of international relations according to which state behavior is
the result of the structure of the international system and the constraints it poses
on its actors.
Neorealist: a person who adheres to the theory of neorealism.
9/11: on September 11, 2001, two commercial airliners hijacked by Islamic
fundamentalist terrorists were flown into the World Trade Center, New York, killing
approximately 3,000 people. A third hijacked airliner was crashed into the Pentagon
and a fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania.
Nuclear nonproliferation: the measures taken to prevent the spread of nuclear
weapons.
Offensive realism: a theory of international relations that, building on neorealism,
maintains that the structure of the international systems makes states behave
aggressively, thus increasing the likelihood of conflict.
Oil crises: two crises in 1973 and 1979 resulted from a sudden increase in the price
of oil due to political developments in the Middle East. The crises slowed down
economic growth and pushed up inflation in the West.
Positivism: a perspective in the philosophy of science. It holds that information must
be obtained by sensory experience (what is seen and heard in the real world). Laws
are derived from these observations and tested through experimentation.
Pragmatism: an approach to beliefs or actions that values them in terms of
outcomes.
Rational choice: a social science-based theory that is based on the idea that human
behavior is driven by logical decisions taken to maximize ones own interest.
Realism: a theory of international relations arguing that international politics are
defined by competition among states seeking to achieve relative gains.
Relative gain: a means by which international actors determine their interests in
respect of power balances, while disregarding other key factors, like economics.
Sovereignty: the supreme authority or rule of a governing body over a defined
territory, usually a state.
Soviet Union: a federal communist republic officially known as the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) that existed between 1922 and 1991.
Superpower: a very powerful and influential nation, this is a term often used to refer
both to the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when they were
the two most powerful nations in the world.
Unipolar: a distribution of power in the international system; a bipolar system has
United Nations: an intergovernmental organization established in 1945 to promote
and support peace and cooperation among states. Its remit has expanded over the
decades, and now covers issues such as climate change, sustainable development,
human security and terrorism.
United Nations General Assembly: the main deliberative, policymaking and
representative organ of the United Nations, which makes decisions on important
mattersincluding peace and security.
Vietnam War (195575): a Cold War conflict between the United States and the
communist forces of North Vietnam. In 1973, the US signed a peace treaty and
withdrew its forces from South Vietnam, which collapsed two years later.
War on Terror: a military campaign initiated by the administration of President

George W. Bush of the United States following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, largely
conducted in the Middle East.
Western bloc: one of the two main groups of states during the Cold War, the other
being the Eastern or Soviet bloc. The Western bloc comprised the United States,
Western Europe, and other countries with similar economic and social systems.
World War II (193945): a six-year military conflict between the Axis forces
Germany, Italy and Japanand the Allied forcesthe Soviet Union, the United
Kingdom and the United States. It was the deadliest war in history, with over 60
million civilian and military casualties.
Robert J. Art (b. 1942) is a political scientist, currently the Christian A. Herter
Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University.
Robert Axelrod (b. 1943) is professor of political science and public policy at the
University of Michigan.
George W. Bush (b. 1946) was the 43rd president of the United States, from 2001 to
2009.
Jeffrey Checkel (b. 1959) is professor of international studies and Simons Chair in
international law and human security at Simon Fraser University. He is a leading
figure of the constructivist school of international relations.
Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952) is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford
University. He is one of the most prominent contemporary political scientists, having
argued in his book The End of History and the Last Man that the evolution of
humanity ends with liberal democracy and free market capitalism.
Robert Gilpin (b. 1930) is one of the central figures in the development of
international political economy as a sub-field of international relations. He is also
considered one of the main realists in contemporary international relations.
Judith Goldstein (b. 1952) is a political scientist, currently the Janet M. Peck
Professor at Stanford University.
Joseph M. Grieco (b. 1953) is a political scientist, currently professor at Duke
University.
Ernst B. Haas (19242003) was an American political scientist of German origin. He
is considered the founder of neofunctionalism in international relations. Taking the
example of the European Union, this theory explains that states create the
conditions for regional integration, which is then developed through the work of
other, non-state actors.
Stanley Hoffmann (b. 1928) is a political scientist, named the first Paul and
Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor at Harvard University. Hoffmann
developed a theory of regional integration labeled intergovernmentalism, which
suggests that the speed of integration among states depends on the actions of
national governments.
G. John Ikenberry (b. 1954) is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and
International Affairs at Princeton University. He is one of the most prominent
contemporary neoliberal scholars, as well as one of the foremost analysts of the
liberal principles of American foreign policy.
Charles P. Kindleberger (19102003) was one of the earliest political economists. He
also worked for the US government on several occasions, holding positions with the
Federal Reserve and the Department of State, among others.
Stephen D. Krasner (b. 1942) is an American international relations scholar who
served as a US Department of State official during the presidency of George W.
Bush. He wrote the most popular definition of international regimes, which he
describes as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision
making procedures around which actors expectations converge in a given area of
Charles Lipson (b. 1948) is a political scientist who is currently the Peter B. Ritzma
Professor in Political Science at Chicago University.
Lisa Martin (b. 1961) is a political scientist, who is currently professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
John Mearsheimer (b. 1947) is a political scientist, currently the R. Wendell Harrison
Distinguished Service Professor at Chicago University and a neorealist. He is the
pioneer of offensive realism, a contemporary reformulation of neorealism.
Philip Noel-Baker (18891982) was a British politician, diplomat, and academic who
received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959. He was involved in the creation of the
League of Nations, campaigned for nuclear disarmament for decades, and was one
of the first professors of international relations in the world, having been appointed
the Montague Burton Professor at the London School of Economics in 1924.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (b. 1937) is an American political scientist who served as an
intelligence and foreign policy official during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Along
with Keohane, he is considered the co-founder of neoliberalism in international
relations. Nye is also credited with having coined the terms soft power and smart
power.
Kenneth Oye (b. 1949) is a professor of political science and engineering at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Ronald Reagan (19112004) was the 40th president of the United States. He was in
office from 1981 to 1989.
John Ruggie (b. 1944) is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and
International Affairs at Harvard University. He is considered one of the leading
international relations scholars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,
having introduced the concepts of embedded liberalism and international
regimes to the field.
Randall Schweller is a professor of political science at Ohio State University.
Beth Simmons (b. 1958) is a political scientist who is the Clarence Dillon Professor
at Harvard University.
Anne-Marie Slaughter (b. 1958) is a political scientist and international lawyer who
was a director of policy planning at the US Department of State during the
presidency of Barack Obama. Currently she is president and CEO of the New
American Foundation.
Duncan Snidal is a professor of international relations at Nuffield College, University
of Oxford.
Stephen Walt (b. 1955) is a professor of political science at Harvard University.
Kenneth Waltz (19242013) was a key international relations scholar, and the
founder of neorealism with his book Theory of International Politics, published in
1979. He was also the author of Man, the State, and War, which discussed three
levels of analysis applicable to international politics: individual, state, and
international system.
Alexander Wendt (b. 1958) is currently the Mershon Professor of International
Security and professor of political science at Ohio State University, and is
considered one of the founding fathers of the constructivist school of international
relations. In a recent TRIP survey of International Relations scholars he was named
as the most influential scholar in the field over the past 20 years.
William Wohlforth (b. 1959) is a political scientist, currently the Daniel Webster
Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.
Oran R. Young (b. 1941) is an American international relations scholar and the
founding chair of the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change at the
American National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his work on
governance in international politics, especially environmental governance.
Alfred Zimmern (18791957) was a British political scientist. He was one of the first
professors of international relations, having been appointed the Montague Burton
Professor at the University of Oxford in 1930. Zimmern co-founded one of the oldest
international relations think tanksthe Royal Institute of International Affairs, now

known as Chatham House.
Works Cited
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Keohane, Robert O. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political
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Francis FukuyamaThe End of History and the Last Man
Ways In To The Text
Key Points
Francis Fukuyama is an academic with a background in political philosophy who
worked as an analyst at the think tank RAND Corporation and on the staff of the US
government.
The End of History and the Last Man was a response to the collapse of the Soviet
Union in 1991. Fukuyama saw this as the triumph of capitalism and liberal
democracy and called it the endpoint of history that would replace human conflict
with universal peace.
The text influenced Western foreign policy but has been undermined by world
events since publication. It remains under fire from critics who want Fukuyama to
update his theory to take into account political changes since 1992.
Who is Francis Fukuyama?

Francis Fukuyama was born in 1952 to a family of leading academics. His father was
a doctor of sociology while his Japanese grandmother founded the economics
department of Kyoto University and was the first president of Osaka City University.
Fukuyama followed in their footsteps, studying classics for his Bachelor of Arts
degree from Cornell University and political science for his Ph.D. from Harvard. He
was taught by influential political thinkers such as Allan Bloom, Jacques Derrida, and
Samuel Huntington (who became the fiercest critic of The End of History). Fukuyama
went on to spark worldwide debate with his controversial theory that political
systems shape human history, and that every society moves towards the sole
destination of liberal democracya political system that emphasizes human and
civil rights, free elections between competing political parties and adherence to the
rule of law.
Before becoming a career academic, Fukuyama worked as a political analyst at
RAND Corporation (Research ANd Development), an American think tank that aims
to influence policy through research and analysis. He also worked as deputy director
of the Policy Planning Staff at the US Department of State, where he specialized in
European and Middle Eastern affairs.
Fukuyama has taught at some of Americas leading universities, including Johns
Hopkins, George Mason and Stanford, and has worked as a fellow at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and the Center for Global Development. He also
sits on several powerful academic and non-academic advisory boards, including at
the RAND Corporation and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Fukuyama has published a string of important books but his most bold and
controversial remains 1992s The End of History and the Last Man.
What Does The End of History and the Last Man Say?
Francis Fukuyamas grand theory for explaining the post-Cold War world is that
history has a plot, and that its inevitable happy ending is liberal democracy. He
argues that human history is divided up into periods, with each one an improvement
on the last. The ultimate destination for everyone is Western-style democracy

because that is the best system for satisfying the human need for recognition and
equality. When all nations become capitalist democracies, he says, it will mark the
end of history.
Fukuyama wrote his landmark book in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War
between America and the Soviet Union. The End of History was published in 1992,
the same year that the Berlin Wallthe most potent symbol of the East-West divide
was finally demolished. It was also the year after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
which ended the global standoff between the two superpowers that had lasted since
World War II.
Fukuyama argues that the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves that liberal
democracy and capitalisman economic system that emphasizes the private
ownership of goodsare the best political and economic systems, with the fewest
flaws. In The End of History he claims that this triumph of Western liberalismthe
political philosophy that emphasizes freedom, equality and regularly contested
electionsrepresents a historical endpoint, a final stage that will replace war with
lasting, universal peace.
He is not specific about the timeframe for this process. He also acknowledges that
some countries face serious obstacles in changing how they operate. But
Fukuyamas fundamental argument is that all human societies evolve in the same
way, and that human history everywhere leads to liberal democracy.
Fukuyama draws heavily on the ideas of political philosophers of the past in order to
build his vision of the future. He revives and develops the famous dialogue between
influential nineteenth-century German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
and Karl Marx. Both thinkers agreed that a historical endpoint would come, but
disagreed on what it would be. Hegels view was that history is a continuing fusion
of ideas that lead to refinements in the way society is arranged. This evolution of
ideas means that good ideas survive and are, in turn, fine-tuned as people improve
society by degrees. Even contradictions, once discovered, lead to further tweaks
until spiritual enlightenment is reached. Marx rejected this idealism and favored a
more robust approach to the periodization of historyone in which revolution brings
about meaningful change.
Fukuyamas bold prophesy of the triumph of Western liberalism draws on a wider
body of political thought, beyond Hegel and Marx. He is particularly keen on
borrowing the concept of thymos from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. This
refers to a part of the human psyche (or soul) that drives people to aim for a fairer,
more equal way of life. Plato stated that humans, unlike other animals, require
recognition and continually struggle to achieve it. According to Fukuyama, only
liberal democracy can satisfy this human need. Another major influence on
Fukuyamas writing was Russian-born philosopher Alexandre Kojve, who offered a
twentieth-century interpretation of Hegel and believed that liberalism was the

ultimateand increasingly universalstage in world history.
Why Does The End of History and the Last Man Matter?
Fukuyamas controversial argument was made at a time of huge uncertainty around
the world over the future of international relations. The decades-long Cold War
between the United States and the Soviet Union had ended in 1991. The break-up of
the Soviet Union left the United States as the last superpower standing, and
seemingly the most dominant nation on the planet. Scholars such as Fukuyama and
his contemporaries in American universities were attempting to come to terms with
this immense change in the balance of world powerand to make difficult
predictions about its implications for the future.
From the outset, The End of History met with substantial criticism. Fukuyama drew
reactions from all parts of the political spectrum and was challenged immediately by
equally bold, contrasting viewpoints. The most notable came in The Clash of
Civilizations written by Fukuyamas former teacher at Harvard, the American
political philosopher Samuel Huntington. For Huntington, the deciding factor in
world politics would increasingly boil down to cultural differences. Fukuyama and
Huntington were often presented by the media as heading rival camps, each
offering a very different vision of what the future held in store for America and the
world.
The End of History and the Last Man remains an important reference point because
it had an impact on American and European foreign policy. It is generally agreed
that key events since publication undermine the books core argument (especially
the rise of China, which is opposed to liberalism, and the 2008 global financial
crisis). But Fukuyamas outlook remains an inspiration for many politicians. Critics
would welcome an updated grand theory in which Fukuyama explains how the
reality of the last two decadesincluding the relative decline of American power,
enduring human conflict, and the inability or refusal of some states to implement
democratic reformsfits into humankinds journey to the end of history.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the reputation of the author?
Analyze: How significant are his ideas?
Apply: How relevant is his end-of-history thesis today?
Notes
There are no citations in the Ways in to the Text.

The year 1989the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution and of the
ratification of the US Constitutionmarked the decisive collapse of communism as a
factor in world history The Soviet Union and PRC [Peoples Republic of China]
turned out not to be the atomized, dependent, authority-craving children that
earlier Western theories projected them to be. They proved instead to be adults who
could tell truth from falsehood, right from wrong, and who sought, like other adults
in the old age of mankind, recognition of their adulthood and autonomy.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Key Points
Fukuyama argues that the world is moving towards capitalism and liberal
democracy, and that this is the final stage of history, in which universal peace will
replace human conflict.
He was profoundly influenced by his studies of philosophy as an undergraduate and
brought those ideasalong with his experiences working for the think tank RAND
Corporation and the US governmentto his predictions for the post-Cold War world.
The text was written in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and at a time
when Fukuyama was allied with the neoconservativesa branch of American
politics devoted to the aggressive imposition of democracy and free-market
economics on the rest of the world.
Why Read This Text?

In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama sets out to explain
Americas victory in the Cold War and what it could mean for the future of relations
between states.
According to Fukuyama, capitalism and liberal democracy, with their emphasis on
civil rights, free elections, and private ownership, will dominate the post-Cold War
era. Other systems of government will be abandoned because they do not satisfy
the basic human need for recognition and equality. This inevitable spread of liberal
democracy is, he says, the endpoint of history and will see human conflict replaced
by a commitment to universal human rights.
Fukuyamas ideas reached beyond traditional academic circles to become part of a
wider debate in society and the media. The publication of The End of History and
the debate that followed have brought the author global fame.
There is an almost undeniable link between the theories Fukuyama sets out in his
text, and events in the real world. As John Gray, a philosopher and critic of
Fukuyama, pointed out, In a span of six years [Tony] Blair took Britain into war five
times,1 and [George W.] Bushs invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan has cost the
United States $1.4 trillion.2 All of this was done in the name of expanding Western
liberal democracy.
Fukuyamas theory has been debated by academics, politicians and policy-makers
and continues to be an important reference point in the study of international
relationsthe branch of political science that studies the interactions between
states, primarily in terms of their foreign policies.
Author's Life
Francis Fukuyama was born in Chicago in 1952, the only child of second-generation
Japanese immigrants. He grew up in New York City then studied for his Bachelor of
Arts degree in classics at Cornell University.
At Cornell he studied political philosophy under the noted American thinker Allan
Bloomthe first of a series of scholars who would have a profound effect on his
later work. It was Bloom who first introduced him to the ideas of ancient and
modern political philosophers, including Plato, whose ideas became central to
Fukuyamas own scholarship.
After Cornell, Fukuyama moved on to graduate studies in comparative literature at
Yale University. He spent six months in France, studying poststructuralismthe idea
that language and meaning are shifting and unstableunder influential philosopher
and author Jacques Derrida. But Fukuyama quickly became disillusioned with these
studies. He later explained, Perhaps when youre young you think that something
must be profound just because it is difficult and you dont have the self-confidence
to say this is just nonsense.3
Fukuyama switched to political science, earning a PhD at Harvard University. He
studied under Samuel Huntington, an eminent theorist on post-Cold War politics
who later presented the direct counterargument to The End of History.
After his PhD, Fukuyama worked for the American economic and foreign policy think
tank RAND Corporation (from 197980, 19839, 19956). He also worked for the
policy planning staff of the US Department of State (19812, 1989) as well as
teaching at the leading American universities Johns Hopkins, George Mason and
Stanford. These high-profile roles led to his ideas becoming well-known in politics
and the mainstream media.
Author's Background
Fukuyamas background with the US government and the RAND Corporation led to
him being considered a neoconservative. This is a school of thought that promotes
the global spread of democracy and free-market economics through a combination
of soft power (such as international organizations) and military force.
Fukuyama had worked twice in government with neoconservative politician and

academic Paul Wolfowitz; when Wolfowitz was Dean of the School of Advanced
International Studies at Johns Hopkins, he brought Fukuyama in as a professor. This
relationship added weight to the suggestion that Fukuyama shared Wolfowitzs
political outlook. In 2003, however, he distanced himself from the neoconservative
cause by criticizing the administration of US President George W. Bush and the Iraq
War.
When he wrote The End of History, Fukuyama was still working as a consultant for
RAND. He was preoccupied with the events of the times: the end of the Cold War,
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the United States rise to a position of
dominance in international relations. These developments followed nearly half a
century of simmering tensions between the capitalist United States and the
communist Soviet Union. Fukuyama drew on a long line of ancient and political
philosophy to place the current state of affairs in a historical context, and then make
predictions about the future.
The collapse of the Soviet Union largely discredited communisma political
ideology that relies on state ownership, collective labor and the abolition of social
class. It led to the view that whatever the merits of Marxist ideas, they had
spectacularly failed in practice. The revolutionary socialist philosopher Karl Marx
had stated that the endpoint of history would arrive when a stateless and classless
society finally overthrew capitalism. This would result in a workers utopia
characterized by absolute freedom. This was never actually achieved by any of the
communist states, including the Soviet Union.
Fukuyama identifies a world in which both the communist left and the authoritarian
right revealed a bankruptcy of serious ideas capable of sustaining the internal
cohesion of strong government.4 According to Fukuyama, every system for
organizing society contains fundamental contradictionsexcept liberal democracy.
While still flawed, it does not contain fundamental contradictionsin this sense, at
least, it is perfect.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the authors view of capitalism and liberal democracy? In what
historical context was the text written?
Analyze: In your view, are capitalism and liberal democracy superior to alternative
systems? Why or why not?
Apply: Have capitalism and liberal democracy definitively triumphed or do
alternative systems exist that can challenge them?
Notes
John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (New York:
Penguin, 2007), 97.
This figure is probably too low. It does not take into account any interest payable on
the money the United States needed to borrow to fund the war. Various opinions
place the true cost at somewhere between $2.4 trillion and $3 trillion. Congressional
Budget Office, Iraq and Afghanistan, accessed March 18, 2013,
http://www.cbo.gov/topics/national-security/iraq-and-afghanistan/cost-estimates.
Cited in Nicholas Wroe, Historys Pallbearer, Guardian, May 11, 2002, accessed
March 19, 2015,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/may/11/academicexperts.artsandhumaniti
es.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 2012),
39.
Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not openended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied
its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an end of
history: for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist
society. This did not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end,
that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them
would cease to be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further
progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of
the really big questions had been settled.
Key Points
The end of the Cold War led Fukuyama to argue that Marxism was utterly defeated
and that the spread of capitalist liberal democracy to all parts of the world was
inevitable.
The End of History employs the thoughts of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to
approach modern politics. The key notion is that human history moves forward
through the evolution of ideas.
Fukuyama also used Platos concept of thymosthe struggle for human recognition
to explain political development.
The purpose of international relations has always been to understand and predict
state action, and also to have a practical impact on policy. The aim of The End of
History and the Last Man was to provide a theoretical framework to explain the
events unfolding at the time of writing, and to predict the future of global affairs.
In the book, Francis Fukuyama sets out his ideas as to why the Cold War had ended
and what would happen next. For him, this was the dawn of an era in which human
society would finally settle on one political systemdemocracy and free market
capitalism.
Fukuyama argues that Marxismthe philosophy of Karl Marx that had led to
communismhad failed in both China and the Soviet Union. While a few pockets of
communism still remained around the world, on the whole it had vanished as a
credible threat to capitalism, the economic system favored by Western liberal
democracies.
Fukuyama argues that liberal democracya political system with an emphasis on
human rights, regular and free elections and adherence to the rule of law is the
final stage in the evolution of human history, and that it guarantees the triumph of
peace over war. Events will still occur, but there will be no progression from liberal
democracy to an alternative system because all other systems have been
exhausted; they have been tried, and found wanting. As he put it in a 1989 article
entitled The End of History?: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of
the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of
history as such: that is, the endpoint of mankinds ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government.1
The End of History stood out in the immediate post-Cold War debate among
international relations experts because Fukuyama drew his big ideas from classical
philosophy.
Most arguments of the 1990s were between the neorealists and the neoliberals.
Neorealists believed that all state action springs from the balance of power between
states. Neoliberals, on the other hand, thought that state action is governed by
agreed rules of economic cooperation. Fukuyama challenged both these schools of
thought by introducing arguments based on classical political philosophy.
Fukuyamas idea of a universal history has its origins in the works of German
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who was writing in the early 1800s.
Hegel believed that history moves through various periods. Each is an improvement
on prior eras, so the world moves toward a state of perfection. Marx was greatly
influenced by Hegel, and although they predicted different endpoints, they agreed
that one would occur.
For Hegel, history is a continuing blend of ideas that leads to refinements in the way
society is arranged. Even contradictions prompt changes, until spiritual
enlightenment is eventually reached. By contrast, Marx favored revolution as the
trigger for meaningful change. He believed revolution would overthrow the
oppression and inequality of capitalism and replace it with a stateless and classless
society in which workers are free.
Fukuyama also turns to the ideas of Plato, borrowing the ancient Greek
philosophers term thymos to describe the engine that drives history.
Thymos describes the part of us that separates us from all other animals
(sometimes described as our soul, sometimes as our psyche), identifying it as the
desire to be recognized.
For Fukuyama, history is not about understanding a series of events but a series of
refinements in the way people organize society. A society must satisfy the needs of
its people if it is to survive. Basic needs such as food and shelter must be satisfied,
but so must the demands of the thymos. Catering for an elusive aspect of the
human soul is difficult, argues Fukuyama, so the thymos is likely to remain
unfulfilled. This will force humanity to strive for perfect political systems.
Academic Influences
The End of History draws on the ideas of Hegel, Marx, and Alexandre Kojve, the
Russian-born politician and philosopher who coined the phrase end of history.
These thinkers claimed that human history is a long process of social improvements,
and that it has an endpoint. To explain constant change, Fukuyama also weaves in
Platos concept of the human pursuit of recognition and equality. Political systems
have ranged from aristocratic rule to fascism to communism, says Fukuyama, but
only liberal democracy has been able to satisfy the powerful human need and desire
dubbed thymos.
Once the Cold War had ended, debates over American supremacy and the future of
international relations became a feature in numerous publications. Perhaps the most
prominent were Foreign Affairsa journal for academics and others involved in
international relations; International Securityan important outlet for realist
scholars (who believe that states provide for their own security and share the goal
of survival) published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the
United States; and International Organizationa platform for liberals produced in
Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Fukuyama, however, published the essay that
would form the blueprint for The End of History in The National Interest, a relatively
new journal founded in 1985. The National Interest was specifically devoted to the
question of how America should act on the world stage and promote its own
interests abroad. It was less rarefied and more open to Fukuyamas unorthodox
ideas than its better-known rivals.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the academic context in which the text was written.
Analyze: Has US supremacy been good for the world? Why or why not?
Apply: Is thymos the driving force for all human beings?
Notes
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History? The National Interest 16 (summer 1989): 4.
Of the different types of regimes that have emerged in the course of human
history, from monarchies and aristocracies, to religious theocracies, to the fascist
and communist dictatorships of this century, the only form of government that has
survived intact to the end of the twentieth century has been liberal democracy.
Key Points
The End of History addresses the big question of why liberal democracy was proving
so successful, and whether it could be the final form of human government.
Fukuyamas ideas were borrowed from leading philosophers of the past, and were
applied to how world events might unfold in the aftermath of the Cold War.
The terms the end of history and the last man were taken from philosopher
Alexandre Kojve, who predicted the ultimate triumph of capitalism and liberal
democracy.
Core Question
In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama asks why liberal
democracy was so successful in the late twentieth centuryand whether it marked
the end of mankinds ideological evolution by being the final form of human
government.
The spread of democracy across the world was a hot topic in the study of
international relations during the 1990s, for two reasons:
The number of liberal democracies hit an all-time high of 61 by 1990.1
The Soviet bloc collapsed following the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, with most
former Soviet states and all of its satellite states switching to a democratic system.
This created a problem in the field of international relations, as long-cherished

theories had to be hastily rewritten or at least reappraised. For most of the 1970s
the theory of dtente (or thaw) was an attempt to relax tensions between the
United States and the Soviet Union. This was described by Raymond Garthoff of
American think tank the Brookings Institution as a phase of the Cold War, not an
alternative.2 In the US of the 1980s, under President Ronald Reagan, dtente had
been replaced by more open opposition to the Soviet system, but this too had now
gone. The world had become unipolaronly one superpower existed and that was
the United States. As America struggled to understand the world it had inherited, a
new theory was needed to make sense of this unexpected turn of events.
Fukuyama addresses the big question as to why liberal democracy was winning out
in more and more countries by examining it from two angles. First he discusses the
economic success of liberal democracies. Then, having concluded that economic
factors alone could not explain their rise, he uses a philosophical argument.
Fukuyama says that history has an endpoint, and that progress towards this point is
driven by the human struggle for recognitionPlatos notion of thymos.
The Participants
Fukuyamas use of philosophy to understand the end of the Cold War was a radically
new approach, and his theory should be understood as reintroducing the terms of a
much older debate. Other major thinkers tackling the subject, such as Samuel
Huntington and John Mearsheimer, reacted to his ideas as part of their own
attempts to make sense of the emerging new world order. Fukuyama himself,
however, looked to the past rather than to his contemporaries for answers.
The end of the Cold War, said historian John Lewis Gaddis, went largely unpredicted
by international relations theorists. Surprise, he said, is still very much with us,
and, although there was nothing inherently implausible about these events the
fact that they arose so unexpectedly suggests that international relations may need
a new approach.3
Fukuyama looks to build on earlier theories in order to explain the overall direction
of modern-day world politics. The advantage of the free market (an economy ruled
by supply and demand) over a planned economy (where the government makes all
economic decisions) had been evident for some time. Economists such as the
Austrian Ludwig von Mises concluded that the latter system was simply
unworkable as early as 1935.4
Meanwhile, liberal democracies have always considered themselves to be the most
evolved way to run a country. Fukuyamas belief that liberal democracy is the
culmination of the human quest to find the perfect system of government was also
informed by Russian-born French philosopher Alexandre Kojves writings from the
1940s on.
Kojves interpretation of Hegels endpoint of history had a particularly strong

influence on Fukuyamas work. It is from Kojve that Fukuyama borrows the term
the end of history, as well as the concept of the last man. Kojve believed that
capitalism and liberal democracy were the final stage in the development of
humanity, and that they would result in the equal recognition of all individuals, and
the triumph of peace over human conflict.
Shortly after World War II, Kojve argued that the United States was the economic
model for a post-historical worldin other words, a world where all countries
would become liberal democracies. He believed that capitalism had overcome its
contradictions and that the post-war economic boom in Europe meant the working
class could look forward to prosperity. This was in contrast to Marx, who argued that
capitalism would be killed by its contradictions and replaced with communism.
Long before Fukuyama wrote The End of History, Kojve predicted that the Cold War
would lead to the triumph of Western liberalism. This would, he said, produce a
historical endpoint that would result in all people being recognized as equals.
This in turn would end the need for war and struggle. Conflict would make way for
enduring peace based on a classless, new world order. People would recognize and
affirm each others freedom, and equality would be backed by an elaborate system
of law.
Kojve said, though, that the final stage of history would also spell the end of
humankind. At the moment of their triumph and the establishment of equality,
humans would lose all reason to continue struggling for recognition. This made
Kojves predictions both optimistic and pessimistic. Fukuyama borrows all these
ideas and applies them to the post-Cold War era.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Which key questions did Fukuyama address? Why did he address these?
How did he respond to them?
Analyze: Will America remain the dominant actor in international affairs in your
lifetime? Why or why not?
Apply: Is universal peace attainable or is it a utopian idea?
Notes
50.
Raymond Garthoff, Dtente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from
Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1994).
John Lewis Gaddis, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War,
International Security 17, no. 3 (19923): 5.
Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, eds., Collectivist Economic Planning (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1935; reprint, Clifton, N. J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1975), 7.
With one now-famous essay, Frank Fukuyama did what had hitherto seemed
almost impossible: he made Washington think. His subject was, and in this far more
sweeping book is, the place of America, and the American idea, in the stream of
history. His conclusion is at once exhilarating and sobering. We have won the
struggle for the heart of humanity. However, that will not necessarily be good for
humanity's soul.
George Will, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and political commentator,
quoted on the cover of The End of History and the Last Man
Key Points
The End of History takes up concepts laid out by earlier philosophers and uses them
to create an original theory in a post-Cold War context.
The grand theory of the work is the shift in attention from victory in war to the
triumph of Western liberalismit presents a recipe for peace.
Fukuyamas writings encouraged a reexamination of the influential German
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Author's Aims
In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama provides an accessible
route to understanding political philosophy. He works through ideas in a logical way,
explaining both their philosophical background and their political reality. Fukuyama
does not assume his readers have any prior understanding and introduces the
historical context of ideas before discussing them. He also gives brief biographies of
philosophical thinkers and summaries of their work.
The core ideas in the book do not in themselves represent original thought. As
French philosopher Jacques Derrida pointed out in his book Specters of Marx (1994):
Eschatological themes of the end of History, the end of Marxism were in the 50s,
that is 40 years ago, our daily bread.1 On the face of it, Fukuyamas theories are
entirely borrowed. The concept of an end of history features prominently in Marx
and has its origins in Hegel, while the term itself is closely associated with
Alexandre Kojve.
However, Fukuyama has the insight to draw on the work of earlier thinkers to
analyze current events in a meaningful way. He uses established ideas to explain
the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union and to make sense of a worldwide
political landscape that had simply not been envisaged. The impact of such a move
was both universal and divisive; that is to say, The End of History was widely
discussed, but not always in a positive way. Although the work held weight among
certain political elites who shared its outlook, of greater significance was the debate
it provoked.
Approach
Fukuyama produces a persuasive argument as to why liberal democracies seem to
be so much more successful than other forms of government. He also provides a
theoretical framework to explain why the Soviet Union had collapsedone that goes
beyond the economic reasons, which Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises had
correctly predicted six decades earlier.2 For this reason Fukuyamas ideas have
been very useful for both students and academics studying post-Cold War politics.
The End of History is an up-to-date theory that competes directly with Marxist
thinking. Fukuyama also lays out a believable explanation for the global political
realities of the day.
Fukuyamas approach challenged the way in which the Cold War was discussed
that is, mainly in terms of geopolitical and economic competition between the
United States and Soviet Union. His grand theory was designed to shift the focus of
international relations away from having won the Cold War, and towards the
peaceful but decisive triumph of Western liberalism over all competing systems.
The end of history had been discussed at great length by Hegel and Marx, and
revived by scholars such as Alexandre Kojve and American sociologist Daniel Bell
in the early stages of the Cold War. But by the time Fukuyama was writing The End
of History, Hegels ideas had become quite unfashionable in academic circles. By
using them as a foundation for his grand theory about where the post-Cold War
world was heading, Fukuyama brought them back into the contemporary debate.
The book had its roots in Fukuyamas 1989 essay The End of History? In this, he
observed that analyses of the end of the Cold War lacked any larger conceptual
framework for distinguishing between what is essential and what is contingent or
accidental in world history, and are predictably superficial.3 The essay triggered
heated debate, but it was the subsequent bookwritten largely in response to the
furore over the essaythat fleshed out the theory and secured Fukuyamas
reputation as a leading thinker in international relations.4
The book proved even more divisive than the essay that inspired it. Martin Griffiths
of Flinders University in Australia noted, [Cambridge professor] John Dunn
described it as a puerile volume and [compared] it to the worst sort of American
undergraduate term-paper.5 In stark contrast, Wayne Cristaudo of Charles Darwin
University judged it to be the most important defense of liberal democracy since
John Rawlss A Theory of Justice.6
Whatever waves the book caused at the time, the West did seem to be in the
ascendancy in geopolitical terms. Derrida, who was critical of the books generally
positive reception by the Western media, argued that it was sought out by those
who celebrate the triumph of liberal capitalism only in order to hide the fact
that this triumph has never been so critical, fragile, threatened, even in certain
regards catastrophic.7
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the authors original contribution.
Analyze: How would you assess the originality of his argument?
Apply: How useful is political philosophy in helping us to understand international
relations?
Notes
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and
the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 14.
Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, eds., Collectivist Economic Planning (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1935; reprint, Clifton, N. J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1975), 18
22. Mises believed that the mathematics required to predict the needs of the
consumer correctly were far too complex to allow for a workable command economy
(the sort of planned economy that exists in communist states). Without the law of
supply and demand, central governments would be unable to regulate the economy.
His theories were validated within the Soviet Union, which encountered all the
problems that he had predicted.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History?, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989):
318.
Jenefer Curtis, review of After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics, ed. Timothy
Burns, Canadian Journal of Political Science 28, no. 3 (1995): 591.
Martin Griffiths et al., Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, second ed.
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 81.
Griffiths et al., Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, 8283.
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1994), 15.

Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas
Liberal democracy replaces the irrational desire to be recognized as greater than
others with a rational desire to be recognized as equal. A world made up of liberal
democracies, then, should have much less incentive for war, since all nations would
reciprocally recognize one anothers legitimacy.
Key Points
Fukuyama believes that history is an evolutionary process of human refinement and
has an endpoint.
Capitalism and liberal democracy are that endpoint of history. They have won the
clash of ideologies, as all other systems have proved incapable of meeting the
human need for recognition and equality.
In time, every part of the world will reach the same ideological endpoint and
become a liberal democracy.
Key Themes
In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama focuses on three main
themes within one primary ideathe logic of history, which he borrows from Hegel.
In his introduction to the book, he writes that history should be understood as a
single coherent evolutionary process taking into account the experience of all
peoples in all times.1
For Hegel and everyone influenced by him (including Karl Marx, Alexandre Kojve,
and Fukuyama himself), history is not simply a sequence of events. History is a
grand story with a plotit has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is the process
that drives human societies from where they are to a position that is objectively
better. Hegel and his followers defined better in terms of freedom. The history of
the world, Hegel wrote in The Philosophy of History, is none other than the
progress of the consciousness of freedom.2
Fukuyamas grand theory for understanding world politics after the Cold War has
three main themes. First, he stresses that human society evolves over time, with
each stage usually attaining greater freedom than the last. This is based on Platos
concept of thymos, which sets people apart from animals on the basis of their desire
for recognition and equality.
Second, Fukuyama argues that the driving force behind this evolution can only be
satisfied by a liberal democratic state, because its emphasis on civil and human
rights encourages humans to struggle for recognition, and eventually to recognize
each others freedoms and respect one anothers equality. Fukuyama concludes that
all other systems, including Marxism, had failed to achieve this.
Third, he argues that liberal democracy marks the end of history for human society
and political ideas, with the last man being the triumphant citizen of this system.
Exploring The Ideas
Political scientist Peter Singer provides an excellent model for understanding the
Hegelian view of history that Francis Fukuyama relies on in The End of History. In
ancient Egypt, Singer writes, only the pharaoh was free and all others subordinated
themselves to his will. In the ancient Greek city-states, the citizens were free, and
recognized one another as free and equal.3 This made ancient Greece superior, in
that era, to ancient Egypt in terms of social and cultural evolution. While there were
still pharaohs in Egypt right up until Roman times, Hegel would see the Greeks and
Romans as having possessed greater freedom, and therefore further along the path
of history. This is where thymos comes into play. It is the driving force behind this
human desire to be recognized as free, equal and worthy of consideration.
The notion that history is propelled by thymos feeds Fukuyamas second main idea:
that liberal democracies represent the final stage of political development. As
mankind approaches the millennium, Fukuyama writes, the twin crises of
authoritarianism and socialist central planning have left only one competitor
standing in the ring as an ideology of potentially universal validity: liberal
democracy, the doctrine of individual freedom and popular sovereignty.4 Liberal
democracy, in other words, is the ideology that most perfectly expresses thymos,
because it is based on the idea that all peoplenot just one person or a certain
groupare recognized as free and equal.
The end of history does not mean a freezing of time; Fukuyama acknowledges that
events will continue to take place once this endpoint is reached. But in his view,
these will not add up to history. Since no alternative form of government satisfies
thymos as well as liberal democracy, none can hope to replace it.
Fukuyama sees liberal democracy, based on the twin pillars of liberty and equality,
as the final form of government to which all others will have to adapt. He does not
offer a timetable for these final days of history and even acknowledges that
setbacks will occur. He simply believes that democracy will inevitably be established
across the world.
Although Fukuyama does not make precise predictions in his book, he does claim to
have identified a measurable trend towards what he called the liberal revolution.
This represents a common evolutionary pattern for all human societiesin short,
something like a universal history of mankind in the direction of liberal
democracy.5
Fukuyama also strikes a cautionary note, acknowledging undeniable peaks and
troughs in this development.6 He means that any failure of a liberal democratic
state, or even entire region, should not be seen as evidence of democracys
overall weakness.7 These warnings are an important rebuttal to the charge that
Fukuyama overstates his theory. Put simply, he concedes that the end of history can
be reversed, but insists that setbacks will prove to be temporary. Liberal democracy
remains the ultimate destination for all states.
His choice of language in portraying liberal democracy as the end of history is
highly optimistic. This lack of caution, coupled with more recent events that have
undermined his thesis, have resulted in serious criticisms of his work.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the authors main ideas.
Analyze: Do you think that liberal democracy is an endpoint, and will thus triumph
over all other systems? Why or why not?
Apply: Is Marxism relevant today or has it been consigned to history?
Notes
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 2012), xii.
G. W. F. Hegel, quoted in Peter Singer, Hegel: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983), e-book.
Singer, Hegel, e-book.
Fukuyama, The End of History, 42.
Section 2: Ideas
The typical citizen of a liberal democracy was a last man who, schooled by the
founders of modern liberalism, gave up prideful belief in his or her own superior
worth in favor of comfortable self-preservation. Liberal democracy produces men
without chests, composed of desire and reason but lacking thymos, clever at
finding new ways to satisfy a host of wants through the calculation of long-term selfinterest. The last man had no desire to be recognized as greater than others, and
without such desire no excellence or achievement was possible. Content with his
happiness and unable to feel any sense of shame for being unable to rise above
those wants, the last man ceased to be human.
Key Points
Fukuyama argues that technology is an engine of historical change, leading to the
disappearance of human conflict and the triumph of universal peace.
The last man is a citizen in a liberal democracy where equality is the norm.
The End of History provides an overview of democratic peace theorythe idea that
democracies share values and dont declare war on each other.
Other Ideas
In The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama explores three themes
that are subordinate to his main argument. The first is the power of science and
technology to move human history forward. Technology brings the possibility of
limitless economic growth, which Fukuyama says will be welcomed by every nation.
And, since having a technologically advanced military means having a comparative
advantage in international relations, all nations will seek to improve their defense
capabilities. Regardless of a countrys history or cultural makeup, science will
guarantee that all societies become more alike.
Fukuyamas second theme is that all nations will openly support capitalism and
liberal democracy, removing any reason for going to war. This will result in universal
peace. Third, with the defeat of Soviet communism, the last man will be stripped
of purpose and ambition.
These themes are linked to one another, and to the main argument. Fukuyama
insists that history progresses from societies with less freedom to societies with
greater freedom. He explores how free societies assert and maintain their
dominance, and ponders what the future will look like once their dominance is
achieved. Fukuyamas vision of the future is pessimistic, because he is certain that
the absence of an enemy (Soviet communism) will deprive people of their sense of
moral superiority. This will result in a deep sense of emptiness and frustration. In the
end, the Wests Cold War victory will prove to be its moral defeat, because values
will have been replaced by material ambitions for wealth, security, and comfort.
Exploring The Ideas
Francis Fukuyama argued that the universality of science provides the basis for the
global unification of mankind,1 but that it is achieved through military competition.
The best way to think of this is in terms of weapons technology. Science makes sure
that history moves forward, because it confers a decisive military advantage on
those societies that can develop, produce and deploy technology the most
efficiently.2 Fukuyama thought that this would also make sure that non-democratic
societies could not keep pace with liberal ones, because they would have no market
incentives to keep technology at the cutting edge.
Fukuyama points to the end of the Cold War, when one of the chief reasons [for
Soviet surrender] was their realization that an unreformed Soviet Union was going
to have serious problems remaining competitive, economically and militarily.3 In
other words, when US president Ronald Reagan used computer technology to make
a generation of Soviet missiles obsolete, he shifted the superpower competition
into areas like microelectronics and other innovative technologies where the Soviet
Union had serious disadvantages.4 Fukuyama calls this defensive modernization.
The Soviet Union had no choice but to introduce more freedoms, because it was
outstripped in technological development by the United States.
For Fukuyama, the post-history world of wall-to-wall liberal democracies is inevitably
still some way off, owing to what is known as the development continuum gap. This
is the difference in economic status, and with it levels of industrialization and
political maturity, between the worlds richest and poorest nations. As states
develop and become more democratic, according to Fukuyama, the chief exchanges
will become economic. The old rules of power politics, with their focus on conflict,
will become irrelevant. The civil peace, Fukuyama writes, brought about by
liberalism should logically have its counterpoint in relations between states.5 He
goes on, noting the fundamentally un-warlike character of liberal societies is
evident in the extraordinarily peaceful relations they maintain among one another,
in part because they share an ideology that recognizes one another as legitimate,
and in part because they compete on a more friendly, economic basis.6
The last man, then, is a fundamentally peaceful creature who has emerged from
the periodizationdevelopmental stepsof history into a post-historical world. He
or she is a citizen of a capitalist democracy where equality is the norm. However,
this person is not ideal, being almost too satisfied and content. For Fukuyama,
those earnest young people trooping off to law and business school may
represent this last man.7 He worries that for them, the liberal project of filling
ones life with material acquisitions and safe, sanctioned ambitions appears to have
worked all too well. It is hard to detect great, unfulfilled longings or irrational
passions, the kind that move history and inspire greatness, lurking just beneath
the surface of the average first year law associate.8 In other words, people in posthistorical society have no great struggle and no great project. Instead they face an
empty lifetime of accumulating money and possessions.
Overlooked
None of these strands in Fukuyamas larger theory constitute original thinking,
although he certainly fleshes out some established ideas. The notion that science
influences historys direction has its origins in the work of Hegel and Marx. The
origins of democratic peace theory can be traced back to eighteenth-century
thinkers Immanuel Kant and Thomas Paine. As for the last man, such ideas had
been debated for quite some time. Hegel, Marx, German philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche and others had even argued about whether the last man was a desirable
concept. Nietzsche, in particular, lamented the coming of the last men as the arrival
of men without chests.
The ideas in The End of History are useful to scholars because they explain why
Fukuyama believes that liberal dominance is inevitable. The book provides a
snapshot of world politics at the time of writing, and also describes what the last
man might look like. This allows us to search for evidence of his existence in parts of
the world that are approaching or have achieved post-history. By including
democratic peace theory in his work, Fukuyama provides an ongoing test of his own
theories. This gives students and academics the opportunity to debate his view of
the world.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the secondary ideas of the text.
Analyze: Will equality and peace triumph over human conflict? Why or why not?
Apply: Has mans purpose in todays world been reduced to the pursuit of
materialism?
Notes
73.
Fukuyama The End of History, 260.

Section 2: Ideas
Francis Fukuyama's influential essay The End of History? announced the triumph
of liberal democracy and the arrival of a post-ideological world. But was it just a
right-wing argument in disguise? And has the demise of utopianism ushered in a
sad time?
Eliane Glaser in the Guardian1
Key Points
Fukuyama argues that liberal democracies are intrinsically stable, and that nonliberal states are a fluke of history.
Current events, such as continued conflict in the Middle East, Irans quest for
nuclear weapons and the crisis over Ukraine continue to invite criticism of
Fukuyamas thesis.
The economic success of non-liberal China coupled with the fallout from the 2008
global financial crisis challenge the idea that liberal democracy is perfect and
inevitable.

Francis Fukuyamas main purpose in The End of History and the Last Man is to show
the supremacy of a specific political and economic systemthat of liberal
democracy and a free market economy. He argues that the move for nations to
adopt this system is a permanent upward trend across the globe, ending the
traditional left and right hemisphere[s] of politics.
Fukuyama sets out to explain why liberal democracy appeared to have won the
ideological struggle that had raged throughout the twentieth century. He sees
fundamental contradictions in every other political system, mainly that they do not
recognize people as equal. For him, it is logical that society shouldand inevitably
wouldorganize itself along democratic lines.
Fukuyama provides no actual plan for prompting states to adopt liberal and free
market principles. Instead he points to the essential stability of liberal states. Since
few totalitarian regimes could replicate themselves through one or more
succession crises,2 authoritarianism itself is a fluke.3 It stands to reason, he

argues, that non-liberal states are an accident of modern history; they are doomed,
because they are at the mercy of any event that proves too much for their inbuilt
inflexibility. Such states either fall or reinvent themselves as democracies, and
existing democracies will endure. A simple mathematical equation reveals the
eventual rise of Western ideology. Even democratic governments voted out of office
during times of crisis leave behind a constitutional framework.
Understanding Fukuyamas achievement requires an understanding of the time and
place in which The End of History was written. At the beginning of the 1990s, free
market economics, combined with liberal democracies, had provided stability and
growth where other systems seemed to have failed. Fukuyama was convinced that
this trend would continue. He argued that in order to compete with the West, other
countries would have to become more like it; and in growing more alike, they would
be more peaceful. Fukuyama acknowledged that a few states would oppose this
arrangement, such as North Korea, but sooner or later they would see no alternative
but to join in.
The problem is that actual world events did not turn out that way. American
president George W. Bush proclaimed a long-term war against terrorism following
the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Competition intensified between
Japan and China, and conflict continued in the Middle East. Iran sought nuclear
weapons, while Russia and the European Union struggled over Ukraine.
Another issue is that Fukuyamas theories are firmly rooted in Western liberal
philosophy. Even though he explains the concepts, he assumes his readers will be
familiar with this tradition. Readers must, therefore, have an understanding of this
Western bias in order to fully appreciate his work.
Limitations
Fukuyama wrote The End of History as a compelling argument as to why liberal
democracies were doing so well compared with other ways of running economic and
political life. It succeeds in this, but where it failed was in predicting that democracy
would continue to dominate the world stage.
The shortcomings of Fukuyamas analysis became even more glaring with the onset
of the 2008 global financial crisis, which shook the foundations of democracies
everywhere and exposed their weaknesses. Rising Asian countries such as Japan
received a good deal of attention in the book, yet since The End of History was
published they have been overshadowed by the rise of non-liberal states. China, the
biggest, has adopted a blend of state capitalism and authoritarianism, and the
Chinese Communist Party regularly condemns Western democratic and legal
conditions.
It could be argued, then, that China is championing an alternative model to the

West. The introduction of democracy has also failed in troubled places such as Iraq
and Syria. This suggests that democracy and the market cannot flourish without a
stable state apparatus and the willingness of most people to adopt the Western
system.
Fukuyama has responded to critiques by arguing that, despite these important
developments, the world has still made great progress towards liberal democracy,
and holds to his belief that it will continue to be the dominant political structure.4
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was the authors main achievement? What are the limitations of
the work?
Analyze: How might the continued rise of China reshape international relations?
Would Chinese leadership be good for the world? Why or why not?
Apply: Can you think of any other current events that undermine Fukuyamas endof-history thesis?
Notes
Eliane Glaser, Bring Back Ideology: Fukuyamas End of History 25 Years On,
Guardian, March 21, 2014, accessed March 19, 2015,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/21/bring-back-ideology-fukuyamaend-history-25-years-on.
40.
Winston Shi, Francis Fukuyama: End of History Still in Sight Despite Chinas Rise,
Huffington Post, July 9, 2014, accessed March 19, 2015,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winston-shi/francis-fukuyama-end-of-history_b_5569581.html.
Section 2: Ideas
What we need, then, and what The End of History did not supply, is a theory of
political development that is independent of economics. State formation and statebuilding, how this happened historically, the role of violence, military competition,
religion, and ideas more broadly, the effects of physical geography and resource
endowments, why it happened first in some parts of the world and not in others
these are all components of a larger theory that has yet to be elaborated.
Francis Fukuyama, afterword to The End of History and the Last Man
Key Points
The End of History and the Last Man is an extension of Fukuyamas 1989 article
where he first sets out his idea that world politics are heading in one direction.
Fukuyama aimed to plug the gap he perceived in the Wests understanding of
exactly what had just happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Since publication, Fukuyama has distanced himself from the neoconservative
branch of American politics, which he once supported.
Positioning
While Francis Fukuyama found fame as the author of The End of History and the
Last Man, his academic career did not begin in international relations. His first
degree was in classics, and he went on to study comparative literature before
eventually turning to politics. In each field, Fukuyama was most fascinated by
philosophy.
As a graduate student at Yale University he spent six months in Paris studying
poststructuralism under the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Poststructuralism is
the name given to ideas stemming from continental Europe during the 1960s and
1970s. Structuralism claimed that human beings could be understood by means of
various structures or models. Poststructuralism argued that people are complex,
making these structures unstable and therefore unreliable.
Fukuyama became disillusioned with complicated postmodern criticism and chose to
transfer from Yale in order to study political science at Harvard. At Harvard he
studied for a Ph.D. and in 1981 completed a doctoral dissertation on Soviet foreign
policy in the Middle East.1
In the eight years between receiving his doctorate and publishing his initial essay,
The End of History?, Fukuyama worked for the influential American policy think
tank, RAND Corporation, as a policy analyst specializing in the foreign policy of the
Soviet Union. It was during this time that his ideas about the end of history
crystallized.
Fukuyamas milestone essay drew on his early experiences of studying across three
disciplines, and can be seen as a blueprint for his later thinking. It lays out all the
key arguments he would use to build the book published three years later.
Integration
In his 1989 article, published in the journal The National Interest,2 Fukuyama argues
that a fundamental change in world history had just occurred. He says that while
many scholars wanted to understand why international relations seemed to be
heading down a more peaceful path, studies about the end of the Cold War lacked
any larger conceptual framework for distinguishing between what is essential and
what is contingent or accidental in world history, and are predictably superficial.3
The book The End of History was published in 1992 as a grand theory that could
identify and explain the forces of history responsible for the march of democracy
around the world. It was also Fukuyamas response to the intense debate stirred up
by his original essay. The book proved, if anything, even more divisive.4 In it, he
goes beyond the conclusions reached in the essay by establishing a theoretical
framework that emphasizes the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy over
every other kind of government.
Significance
The End of History is Fukuyamas most important publication, and made him a wellknown figure in international relations. It has been heavily criticized since it
appeared in 1992, and has become more vulnerable over time as major events
have failed to tally with his world view. Realities such as the rise of non-liberal China
and the 2008 global financial crisis seem at odds with his predictions.
Fukuyama now acknowledges that the reality of current events and the fact that
some states show no indication of being on a liberal, democratic path has weakened
the case of The End of History.
In his later work, especially State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st
Century, Fukuyama has not wavered from his conviction that all states should aspire
to a competent, accountable and democratic government. Such governments
should promote a strong civil society based on equal rights, and aim to maximize
prosperity. He has, however, acknowledged that for weak or failed states, the path
towards this goal is sometimes unclear. Major setbacks have meant that liberal
democracy has not yet become universal, and peace has not yet triumphed over
human conflict.
Fukuyama says troubled countries such as Somalia, Haiti, and the Congo need
state-building help in order to secure a liberal, democratic world order. By statebuilding he means that rich nations, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations should encourage better government. This would
reduce threats to democracy such as human rights abuses, humanitarian disasters,
and terrorism.
In recent years, Fukuyama has often been associated with neoconservatism, a
school of thought that emphasizes the importance of free-market economics and
the aggressive promotion of democracy through military force. This is largely down
to his involvement with The Project for New Democracy, a neo-conservative think
tank. Many people from the project joined the US Administration under George W.
Bush. This involvement did not last long, however, and in his eyes the group
distorted the message of The End of History. By 2003 he had distanced himself from
the Bush administration, deciding that neoconservatism as both a political symbol
and a body of thought [had] evolved into something that [I] could no longer
support, in particular the way it was used to justify an American foreign policy
that overemphasized the use of force and led logically to the Iraq War.5
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize how The End of History and the Last Man relates to the
authors wider body of work.
Analyze: It is sometimes argued that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were an
attempt to export Western liberal democracy to the Middle East. In your view, is this
accurate? Why or why not?
Apply: North Korea is an example of a country that the West commonly refers to as
a rogue state, or a nation that opposes capitalism and liberal democracy. Do you
think that such a state can survive over the long term or will it, as Fukuyama
argues, eventually adhere to Western liberalism?
Notes
Martin Griffiths et al., Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations, second ed.
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 81.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History?, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989):
318.
Fukuyama, The End of History?, 318.
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and
the New International (New York: Routledge, 1994), 15.
Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the
Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, C. T.: Yale University Press, 2006). The Iraq
War began in 2003 when a coalition led by the United States and Britain invaded
Iraq with the aim of overthrowing the existing regime led by Saddam Hussein.
Section 3: Impact
I have been contrasted by many observers to my former teacher Samuel
Huntington I agree with him in his view that culture remains an irreducible
component of human societies But there is a fundamental issue that separates
us. It is the question of whether the values and institutions developed during the
Western Enlightenment are potentially universal, or bounded within a cultural
horizon.
Key Points
The End of History sparked criticism from the political left and right; Samuel
Huntington supplied an alternative theory called The Clash of Civilizations.
Fukuyama claimed his theory had been misunderstood, arguing that Huntington
underestimated the power of economic development and technology to make all
nations more liberal.
Fukuyama was accused of failing to recognize or understand why human conflict
has endured, or why some states are still not liberal democracies.
Criticism
Fellow academics, leading politicians, and media commentators were quick to
respond to Francis FukuyamasThe End of History and the Last Man. His theory of
liberal democracy as the end of history drew criticism from across the ideological
spectrum. Fukuyama noted contributions from Margaret Thatcher, William F.
Buckley, and theWall Street Journal on the right and The Nation, Andr Fontaine,
Marion Dnhoff on the left.1
The most important objections toThe End of History came from scholars in the field
of international relations. Harvard professor Samuel Huntington concluded that the
world was not progressing as his former student had claimed it would. In his rival
post-Cold War theory, The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington argued that Fukuyama
lacked a proper understanding of the workings of world politics.
Huntington warned against fuelling overconfidence in American statesmen,
providing them with a false sense of security that ignored the decline of Western
dominance in relation to its rivals. In the emerging [post-Cold War] world,
Huntington wrote, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers
three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.2
Huntington stressed that other cultures had other forms of government that had
grown out of their particular histories. Rather than seeing the promotion of liberal
democracy around the world as liberating, non-Westerners might see its promotion
in their home countries as aggressive and arrogant.3
Responses
Francis Fukuyama responded to the furore created by the first airing of his theory in
the 1989 essay The End of History? with another article a few months later
entitled A Reply to My Critics, again in the journal The National Interest. In this, he
observed that his real accomplishment [had] been to produce a uniquely universal
consensus, not on the current status of liberalism, but on the fact that I was wrong
and that history has not in fact ended.4 He went on in the same dismissive vein,
stating that none of the objections that have been raised to my thesis strike me as
decisive, and the ones that might have been decisive were never raised.
At this point it appears that Fukuyama simply did not accept what his critics were
saying. His main objection was that he had been misunderstood. He also suspected
many people of not reading the entire 16-page article. Rather than retracting his
thesis, he expanded it in 1992 with the publication of The End of History and the
Last Man.
In 1999 Fukuyama penned a direct reply to Huntington, his former teacher and most
formidable critic, in the form of an article in The National Interest entitled Second
Thoughts: The Last Man in a Bottle. Fukuyama believes that Huntington
underestimates the power of economic development and technological change to
blur the boundaries between civilizations and to promote a universal consensus of
political values among advanced countries. He also believes that Huntington is
wrong to deny that it is possible to have economic development without a certain
degree of value change in a Westernthat is, liberal capitalistdirection.5
Fukuyamas main concern in this article, however, is that the infinite, forward
development of natural science will not lead to the end of history, but will abolish
human nature through bioengineering and pharmacology (genetic modification and
drugs).6 The article is subtitled The Last Man in a Bottle because he worries that
antidepressants will allow people to forget their thymos (the urge to win recognition
and equality) and become last men without actually finding freedom.
Fukuyamas critics insisted that current events had undermined his grand end-ofhistory theory. While some states may appear to be heading down a path of liberal
reform, the reality is that manysuch as Somaliaare still far from liberal
democracy. Somalias civil war left the country without a working central
government and legal system; the government is unable to control parts of its
territory or meet the basic human needs of its people, such as sufficient food, clean
water, education, and health services.
In other countries, such as Sudan, human conflict on ethnic, national, and religious
lines is still occurring. This is despite attempts by the United States and the West in
general to push through reforms using international institutions. Governments in
Iraq and Syria have to a significant extent lost their monopoly on the use of
legitimate force within their territories. Meanwhile terrorist groups have moved to
fill vacuums left by failed or failing states, and now exercise considerable power.
Huntington accused Fukuyama of failing to understand the profound differences
between states. How, for example, did Fukuyama account for the breakdown of
state borders drawn during the colonial era in Africa? Furthermore, Huntington
feared that Americas overconfidence in international affairs could have serious
consequences for the future of the West.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the positions of Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington.
Analyze: What were the problems with Thomass methodology?
Apply: Can Iraq become a liberal democracy?
Notes
Francis Fukuyama, A Reply to My Critics, The National Interest 18 (Winter
1989/90): 2128.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(London: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 310.
Huntington, Clash, 66.
Fukuyama, A Reply to My Critics, 2128.
Francis Fukuyama, Second Thoughts: The Last Man in a Bottle, The National
Interest 56 (Summer 1999): 5.
Fukuyama, Second Thoughts, 1.
Section 3: Impact
Francis Fukuyamas defence of the universalism of western values and institutions
is challenged by modern global political realities.
Professor Talal Asad, A Single History? in Open Democracy1
Key Points
The End of History affected the way Western academics and politicians thought
about spreading democracy and capitalism to other countries.
No school of thought emerged around Fukuyamas theory because the idea of
liberal democracy as the goal of human society has been discussed for centuries.
Fukuyama has not introduced any completely new thinking to international

relations, as academics in other fields have arrived at the same conclusions
independently.
Uses And Problems

Away from academia, Francis Fukuyamas The End of History and the Last Man was
an important reference point for Western leaders and policy makers who shared his
view that democracy was desirable and inevitable everywhere. When Bill Clinton
was president of the United States, from 1993 to 2001, the US and the United
Kingdom tried to spread free market values to nations with very different political
systems and histories. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sent agents to postcommunist lands carrying the same draft constitution in their briefcases. No matter
how discrepant the countries they tried to impose the same model on them all.2
These efforts had limited success, however. The increase in the number of liberal
states had apparently stalled by the end of the twentieth century. When George W.
Bush became president of the United States in 2001, he set a neoconservative
course that employed less peaceful ways of imposing top-down regime change
specifically the Iraq War of 2003. This called into question Fukuyamas vision of
universal peace. Subsequently President Barack Obama took office in 2009 and
faced challenges to the idea of the relentless spread of democracy from countries
such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The main problem with The End of History is that history itself has not unfolded in
the way Fukuyama expected. World events since the books publication seem to
have undermined his theory of a global march towards Western-style democracy.
His ideas were old ones brought forward to fit the world of 1992 and were quickly
overtaken by events, a fact recognized by many of his fellow academics.
Schools Of Thought
The End of History caused a storm of debate when it was published. Pierre Hassner
of the French political research institute Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
in Paris agreed that the current wave of decline in inter-state conflicts and in
revolutionary ideologies, particularly in the developed world, is more than an illusion
or a temporary fluke.3
Samuel Huntington argued that a third wave of democratization had taken place
from 1974, sweeping through Latin America and Eastern Europe and including the
end of the Soviet Union. But the process was not as irreversible as Fukuyama had
thought, said Huntington, because there could also be reverse waves.4
Meanwhile, Marc F. Plattner of the National Endowment for Democracy saw The End
of History as a carefully structured elaboration on the problems and prospects of
liberal democracy that drew on the classics of political philosophy and the works
of modern political and social science.5 This is an important and unifying point. As
Hassner noted, fundamental questions about the meaning of war and peace and
legitimacy call for more than a purely political, military, or economic analysis.6
Fukuyamas seminal text covers overlapping fields involving several schools of
thoughtliberalism, democratic peace theory, post-humanism (the belief that
technology can permanently alter the nature of humanity) and realism (the
international relations theory that assumes states are self-governing and answer to
no higher body, that they all share the same goal of survival and that they provide
for their own security). By building on ideas of democracy proposed by the German
political scientist Dankwart Rustow, and drawing on philosophy, Fukuyama
positioned himself alongside a number of thinkers such as Michael W. Doyle, Robert
O. Keohane, Stanley Hoffmann, and Richard N. Rosecrance. They all accepted
liberalism as a step forward in human evolution (though not all agreed on
Fukuyamas concept of an endpoint).
As early as 1970, Rustow was noting the connection between democracies and
certain economic and social background conditions such as high per capita income,
widespread literacy and prevalent urban residence.7 The neorealist scholar
Kenneth Waltz also spoke of a new optimism, strikingly similar to the old, where
interdependence was again associated with peace and increasingly with
democracy,8 indicating that Fukuyamas influence continued to be felt even within
a field from which he had distanced himself.
No single school of thought has formed around The End of History itself, though it is
most closely related to the study of liberalism. Many liberal thinkers agree with the
texts central philosophical arguments, and scholars such as Michael Doyle
emphasize the essentially progressive nature of history at a geopolitical levelthat
is, the combination of geographic and political factors that influence nations.9
While Fukuyamas ideas still hold some weight in certain circles, they have not
provided a jumping-off point for new thinking. There are two main reasons for this.
The text is essentially revisionist in nature; people who hold with its central ideas
already held those views when the book was written. Also, the more instinctive
elements of Fukuyamas thinkingsuch as those adopted by the neoconservatives
have become either unpalatable to recent governments or impossible in the
current geopolitical climate.
The End of History and the Last Man proposes two credible theses: that history is an
evolutionary process and that the free market represents the most rational form of
economic activity. It can, however, be argued that it has not been responsible for
any fundamental new thinking outside the field of international relations.
This is because academics in other fields have arrived independently at ideas that
mirror Fukuyamas. The Nobel Prize-winning free market economist Milton Friedman
argued that, Everyone, everywhere, now understands that the road to success for
underdeveloped countries is freer markets and globalization.10 Similarly,
democratic peace theorists such as the American sociologist Dean Babst shared
many of Fukuyamas views on liberal peace.11 International relations scholar
Michael Doyle went so far as to state that, unusually for international relations,
liberalism can generate law-like hypotheses that can in principle be
disconfirmed.12 Each of these schools also draws inspiration from thinkers who
were around long before Fukuyama. Democratic peace theory, for example, traces
its roots back three centuries to the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the evolving debate.
Analyze: How might one re-contextualize the authors thesis to fit current
developments?
Apply: Has President Obamas foreign policy mirrored Fukuyamas thesis or has it
diverted from it?
Notes
Talal Asad, A Single History?, Open Democracy, May 5, 2006, accessed March 19,
2015, https://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-fukuyama/single_history_3507.jsp
Penguin, 2007), 83.
Pierre Hassner, Responses to Fukuyama, accessed March19, 2015,
http://www.wesjones.com/eoh_response.htm.
Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
Marc Plattner, Exploring the End of History, Journal of Democracy 3, no. 2 (1992):
11821.
Hassner, Responses to Fukuyama.
Dankwart Rustow, Transition to Democracy: Towards a Dynamic
Model, Comparative Politics 2, no. 3 (1970): 337.
Kenneth Waltz, Globalization and American Power, The National Interest 59
(Spring 2000): 4656.
Michael W. Doyle, Michael W. Doyle on Markets and Institutions, Theory Talks,

April 15, 2008, accessed March 19, 2015, http://www.theorytalks.org/2008/04/theory-talk-1.html.
Nathan Gardels, Naomi Klein, Read Milton Friedmans Last Interview, Huffington
Post, October 1, 2007, accessed March 19, 2015,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/naomi-klein-read-miltonf_b_66591.html?
Dean Babst, Elective Governments A Force for Peace, Industrial Research (April
1972): 5558.
Michael Doyle, Reflections on the Liberal Peace and Its Critics, in Debating the
Democratic Peace, ed. Michael E Brown et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996),
35863.
Section 3: Impact
Francis Fukuyamas ascription to history of a plot and climax is implausible, but the
grain of his work is freshly relevant to the post-9/11 world.
Stephen Holmes, Professor of Political Science and Law, New York University, in The
Logic of a Blocked History, Open Democracy
Key Points
Fukuyamas ideas treat history as an evolutionary process that cannot be
permanently blown off course by actual events.
His theory depended on a sustained increase in liberal democracies around the
world but it seems that in reality, we are seeing a sustained decline.
Critics have called for Fukuyama to address modern political and economic
developments in order for his theory to be useful in todays world.
Position
The End of History and the Last Man has influenced the political elite of the West.
When philosopher and Fukuyama critic John Gray noted that universal democracy
and the War on Terror have proved to be dangerous delusions,1 he was
highlighting an important link between Francis Fukuyamas theoretical framework
and events in the real world.
Although Fukuyama distanced himself from the 2003 invasion of Iraq, two politicians
in particularUS President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
seem to have been heavily influenced by the book. Unlike Bush (a neoconservative
to the core who surrounded himself with other neoconservatives), Blair was a
neoliberal (pro free trade, privatization and deregulation to promote economic
liberation, but less of an advocate of the aggressive imposition of democracy). Yet
he shifted to the neoconservative agenda after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the
United States.
Blair held the belief that only one economic system can deliver prosperity in a late
modern context, according to Gray.2 He never doubted that globalization must
eventually be complemented by global democracy.3 A war to plant democracy in
infertile soil can be seen as the most important political interpretation of
Fukuyamas seminal text. War was no longer a last resort against the worst evils,
but an instrument of human progress.4
The End of History is deeply rooted in philosophical ideas that many people find
unfamiliar. The Cold War left those who lived through it with only a passing
understanding of Karl Marxs basic ideas. Even fewer knew of Hegel and fewer still
had even heard of Kojve. While the text itself is well known, its meaning and
significance, it seems, are not well understood.
The main misunderstanding is often highlighted by Fukuyama himself. The fall of
the Berlin Wall, the Chinese governments crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait were seen as evidence that history was continuing, and
that [he] was ipso facto proven wrong.5 Such an analysis points to a fundamental
misunderstanding of Fukuyamas concept of history as a single, coherent
evolutionary process that had little to do with actual events.
Interaction
In The End of History, Fukuyama makes bold claims about the nature of history and
its ultimate destination. On a very basic level, his theory depends on the increasing,
or at least sustained, dominance of liberal democracies.
Although Fukuyama expected setbacks, it seems that a sustained reversal is
actually in effect.6 Most geopolitical projections place the United States third in
terms of nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2050, behind China and India,
and second in terms of GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity (considered a
more accurate measure), still behind China by a considerable margin. The relevance
of the text has been diluted by the simple truth that history has not followed the
path that Fukuyama prescribed.
Fukuyama has not ignored this observation, noting growth in per capita output
does far more than put larger resources in the hands of states. It stimulates a broad
transformation of society and mobilizes a host of new social forces that over time
seek to become political actors as well.7 This idea is important and shows that his
ideas are still challenging wider political thinking.
According to Clyde Prestowitz, founder of Washington think tank The Economic

Strategy Institute, China shows that a country does not need to be liberal to be
economically successful. Samuel Huntington felt the East would increasingly have
the desire, the will and the resources to shape the world in non-Western ways.8
Both men have directly confronted the spirit of Fukuyamas text and, so far, this
criticism has the upper hand. Huntingtons view appears the most prophetic;
Chinas economy is set to grow for years to come.
Although Fukuyama has reframed the debate to fit todays intellectual and
geopolitical climate more effectively, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that The End
of History needs to take account of events since its publication in 1992 if it is to
remain relevant.
Much has been said about the failure of The End of History to predict developments
on the world stage with any accuracy. But according to Professor Olivier Roy of the
European University Institute, establishing a democracy does not suppose that a
society should go through the same historical and cultural process that the West has
undergone.9 The intellectual debate has shifted toward taking a fresh look at the
form a liberal society might one day take.
Fukuyama, after repenting of [his] neoconservative hubris,10 concluded that the
events of the past two decades did in fact not mean the end of the end of history,
but rather a temporary respite from the end of history.11 This shows that his
position has not so much changed as softened; his ideas are still opposed by the
same thinkers, institutions and schools of thought as before. So, without being
revised for the twenty-first century, Fukuyamas theory will continue to be
undermined by current events and intellectual critiques.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the contemporary impact of the text.
Analyze: How might the continued rise of China and other powers reshape
Apply: Is Islam a barrier to liberal democracy? Why or why not?
Notes
Penguin, 2007), 29.
Gray, Black Mass, 94.

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 2012), xii.
PwC, World in 2050: The BRICs and Beyond: Prospects, Challenges and
Opportunities, accessed March 19, 2015, http://www.pwc.com/en_GX/gx/world2050/assets/pwc-world-in-2050-report-january-2013.pdf., last modified 2013,
accessed March 10, 2013.
Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the
French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), 475.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 26.
Olivier Roy, The End of History and the Long March of Secularisation, Open
Democracy, May 15, 2006, accessed March 19, 2015,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/3546.
Charles S. Maier, The Intoxications of History, Open Democracy, May 17, 2006,
accessed March 19, 2015, http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracyfukuyama/intoxication_3560.jsp.
Maier, The Intoxications of History.
Section 3: Impact
One wonders how this feel good thesis is viewed in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, where liberal democracies are often fragile at best and where basic human
needs are not being met. Even in Western terms this provocative tract seems more
attuned to the self-congratulatory 1980s than the problematic years ahead.
Andrew Pierre, review of The End of History and the Last Man, Foreign Affairs
Key Points
Despite pressure for Fukuyama to update his theory, The End of History remains an
optimistic vision of the future that many find inspiring.
Scholars will still study Fukuyamas work but many call for him to update his theory
to take account of factors such as China, North Korea, Syria, terrorism and new wars
around the world.
Fukuyama has softened his approach without abandoning his theory, conceding that
the end of history might take longer and be a more difficult process than he first
imagined.
Potential
The End of History and the Last Man is an important text in which Francis Fukuyama
uses the ideas of leading political thinkers from earlier eras to explain our own
turbulent period of history. For that reason alone the book will continue to be read.
However, Fukuyamas ideas do not reflect the realities of our times and need
updating in order to tackle what actually happened after the Cold War.
The end of history may eventually come, but it has certainly not arrived yet. No
universal political and economic system has been established and different parts of
the world are still torn by ethnic, national, and religious conflict. Instead of seeing
the progress of history through such a wide lens, it may be better to understand
each national context as unique, and to address it as suchafter all, the
complexities of nations such as Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, and Syria are very different.
Fukuyamas optimistic belief is that human society is on a path of continual
improvement toward a more progressive, egalitarian and peaceful future. The world
he describes in The End of History has not yet arrived and may never do so, but the
work offers an important point of scholarly reference and an inspiring vision that
many will fight long and hard to see realized.
Future Directions
The End of History will remain a reference point in the fields of international
relations and politics. As an academic argument, it will continue to be scrutinized as
a thesis that does not reflect modern realitiesscholars are bound to point to the
rise of non-liberal China, the ideological challenges of countries such as Iran and
North Korea, the influence of factors such as terrorist groups (which often
undermine state power over territories) and ethnic, religious, and sectarian
struggles in countries such as Iraq and Syria. Such realities contradict Fukuyamas
idea that humankind will adopt one method of government; instead, they suggest
that conflict will continue to prevent universal peace.
It seems likely that Western politicians will continue to promote capitalism and
liberal democracy abroad. Despite different approaches, this has been true of US
presidents Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama. It is equally likely that they will be met with
resistance, because not everyone shares their beliefs. Many see their doctrines
simply as an imperialist tool used by the West to expand its interests.
Summary
In 1992 Fukuyama made a very big predictionthat capitalism and liberal
democracy were the eventual destination for all the people of the world. More than
a decade later, the 2003 war in Iraq saw a United States government fail to plant
democratic roots in unfertile foreign soil. And yet another decade on from that,
bloody conflict is still a grim reality for many people.
The true test of The End of History, however, is whether the economic prosperity
seen in non-democratic states such as China is sustainable. If China does not
become more liberal, the central premise of the book will become even less
justifiable, though not necessarily to a fatal degree.
It is possible that Fukuyamas prediction will only come true over a much longer
period of time and that the world will indeed end up locked forever in post-history.
The problem with extending the time frame is that it massively dilutes the central
argument, since no one can predict what the world will look like hundreds of years
from now.
The End of History is a philosophical text at heart. Specifically it is a complicated
blend of the ideas of Plato and Hegel. From Plato, Fukuyama took the concept of
thymos, the desire to be recognized as equal to others. From Hegel, he borrowed
the idea that history is divided into periods, and eventually reaches an endpoint. By
fusing the two, Fukuyama argued that as liberal democracy satisfies thymos, history
as an evolutionary process of improvement will grind to a halt.
This complexity makes the work strong enough to be applied to events other than
the annus mirabilis (year of wonders) of 1989, when, contrary to the expectations
of almost all students of the Soviet regime, change came to Eastern Europe by
peaceful means. Just as Fukuyama revived and extended the ideas of Plato and
Hegel, it is possible that other scholars will use his arguments in a new context. To
Fukuyama, liberal democracy is one of the by-products of this modernization
process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of
historical time.1 This wait and see policy is one that affords a degree of longevity
to the central text, but it is nevertheless not infinite.
There is no denying that the changing geopolitical reality of the world has been a
blow to Fukuyama and his supporters. More recently, Fukuyama has argued that the
end of history is not about a universal hunger for liberty in all people, but rather
the desire to live in a modern society, with its technology, high standards of living,
health care, and access to the wider world.2
Here he is essentially repeating the complaints made by Soviet citizens before the
end of the Cold War. The demands he alludes to seem to chime with peoples
clamors during the Arab Springthe wave of pro-democracy protests between 2010
and 2012.
It is safe to assume that Fukuyama knows that his seminal text now seems less
relevant, hence the softening in his approach. The end of history is still on the
horizon, but he seems to acknowledge that getting there will be a much more
complex process than he first thought.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Summarize the current impact and future potential of the text.
Analyze: In your view, will the text continue to be important in the future? In what
ways have Fukuyamas theses been manipulated by politicians?
Apply: In your view, should war be waged in the name of exporting liberal
democracy? Why or why not?
Notes
Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the
Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 54.
Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, 54.
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Arab Spring: the name given to the series of protests and wars that began across
the Arab world towards the end of 2010.
Aristocracy: a system of government in which power is held by the nobility and
continued through hereditary succession. Fukuyama argued that aristocratic rule
was one of the forms of government that had been consigned to history.
Authoritarianism: a society that is best understood as involving submission to
authority and the exercise of authority by a government.
Berlin Wall: a wall that separated communist East and capitalist West Berlin, built in
1961 and effectively taken down in 1989.
Capitalism: an economic system that emphasizes the private ownership of goods.
Chinese Communist Party: the founding and ruling party of the Peoples Republic of
China. It has often criticized Western ideas regarding capitalism and liberal
democracy.
Classical realism: a theory of international relations that emphasizes the selfinterest of states. Although Fukuyama probably would not identify himself as a
realist, many of the foreign policy decisions made by the George W. Bush
administration followed this pattern.
Cold War: defined as a military tension between the United States and the Soviet
Union; there are no exact dates, but the generally accepted view is that it lasted
from around 1945 to around 1991.
Communism: a political ideology that relies on state ownership of the means of
production, the collectivization of labor, and the abolition of social class. It was the
ideology of the Soviet Union (191789), and stood in contrast to free market
capitalism during the Cold War.
Cyclical history: in this world-view, events repeat themselves, history has no
endpoint and thus there can be no last man.
Democratic peace theory: a theory that believes liberal democracies, for reasons of
shared values and interdependence, do not wage war on one another.
Dtente: an attempt to relax tensions between the two superpowers of the United
States and the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1971 until around 1980, when
Ronald Reagan took office as US president.
Development continuum gap: the North/South divide, sometimes referred to as the
Brandt line. This is not a strictly geographic line; Australia and New Zealand are, for
example, both considered to be global North states, despite being in the southern
hemisphere. Essentially, the line splits the world into wealthy and poor nations.
Since the poor nations came late to industrialization and nationalism, so too will
they come late to post-history.
The End of History?: an article that Fukuyama wrote for the journal The National
Interest in 1989, which can be viewed as a blueprint for the later book.
Eschatology: the study of the end of things, including death, judgment, heaven and
hell.
Fascism: a right-wing system of government that came to prominence in the
twentieth century. It is characterized by authoritarianism (usually dictator-led) and
intolerance of difference. Fukuyama argued that fascism was one of the forms of
government that had been consigned to history.
Feudalism: the political and economic system of Europe between approximately the
ninth and fifteenth centuries, in which people worked and fought for nobles in
exchange for protection and the use of land.
Free market economy: an economy that allows the distribution of goods to follow
the laws of supply and demand, without interference from government. Under this
system the means of production are in private hands.
Geopolitics: government policy based on how political relations between states are
influenced by the geographical features of the countries, such as size, location,
natural resources, or borders.
Globalization: the process whereby the world becomes more interconnected. Such
interconnectedness takes many forms, including economic, political and cultural.
The Gulf War (19901991): a military operation against Iraq that was carried out by
the United States, with the help of allies. Given that it was a reaction to Iraqs
invasion of Kuwait, it is also known as the IraqKuwait War. It was sanctioned by the
UN.
Ideological contamination: this occurs when ideas from one culture gain traction in
another. Technology remains the most efficient way of achieving this, and
consequently, such ideological contamination is accelerated by the use of new
media technology.
Imperialism: the subverting of another countrys sovereignty through military power.
International Monetary Fund (IMF): the IMF was set up in 1944 and currently
contains 188 nation members, all of which contribute to, and can borrow from, a
collective pool.
International relations: the study of the relationships between states, including the
study of supranational organizations such as the World Bank and other nongovernment organizations (NGOs).
Iraq War: a conflict that began in 2003 when a coalition led by the United States and
Britain invaded Iraq. The aim was to overthrow the existing regime led by Saddam
Husseins Baathist party, which was achieved that same year.
Islam: a religion that bases itself on the word of the Quran and the teachings of the
prophet Mohammed.
Liberal democracy: a political system that emphasizes human and civil rights,
regular and free elections between competing political parties, and adherence to
the rule of law.
Liberalism: a political philosophy that emphasizes freedom, equality and regularly
contested elections.
Marxism: the name ascribed to the political system advocated by Karl Marx. It
emphasized an end to capitalism by taking control of the means of production out of
the hands of individuals and placing it firmly into those of central government.
Marxism falls into two main camps, structural and humanistic Marxism. Although
both follow the teachings of Karl Marx, the former emphasizes that Marxism is a
scientific study of objective structures. Humanistic Marxism, as the name suggests,
focuses on the human aspects of his theories, which were laid out in his earlier
writings.
Nation, The: a weekly American magazine with leftish leanings.
Neoconservatism: a branch of American conservatism that emphasizes the
importance of free-market economics and the aggressive promotion of democracy
via military force. Neoconservatives are also, generally speaking, neoliberals. Their
views can be seen as an offshoot of American conservatism; in relation to The End
of History, their principal characteristic is that they advocate the imposition of

democracy on other states.
Neoliberalism: seen as a generally right-wing stance that was used in relation to
politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, it emphasizes free trade,
privatization, deregulation and other moves towards economic liberalization.
Neorealism: while realism sees all states as responsible for their own actions, and
interested in their own survival, neorealism stresses that structural constraints limit
their actions and motivations.
9/11: terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC by militant Islamist group Al
Qaeda, which killed around 3,000 people. The prevalence of terrorism in the world
today undermines Fukuyamas thesis. He argued that all nations would become
liberal democracies and that universal peace would replace human conflict.
Periodization: an attempt to create a coherent, inclusive account of history using
definable periods of time. For both Marx and Hegel, this process was finite and had
an ultimate endpoint. Although it remains mostly uncontroversial (everyone is used
to thinking of history in terms of periods), thinkers such as Hegel and Marx took the
idea and used it to predict the future. Marx predicted that the last period would be
communism, while Fukuyama claimed it would be liberal democracy.
Planned economy: under this system, a government agency manages economic
production and distribution. This existed in the Soviet Union until its collapse in
1991. The Soviet Unions transition from communism and central planning towards
capitalism and liberal democracy was the guiding force behind Fukuyamas end-ofhistory thesis.
Post-humanism: a belief that technology has the capacity to alter the nature of
humanity permanently. It is important to understand that although traces of posthumanism can be found in The End of History, Fukuyama himself is opposed to it,
seeing it as a threat to liberal democracy.
Postmodernism: begins with an assumption that the values, norms and economic
conditions to which people are subjected determine each other, rather than having
intrinsic properties that can be understood in isolation. It tends to criticize
traditional hierarchies of knowledge, meaning, authority, and interpretation.
RAND Corporation: a powerful think tank in the United States that provides research
and analysis to the US military. Fukuyama was an analyst at RAND prior to becoming
an academic.
Realism: a school of international relations theory that assumes: (1) states
represent the highest form of global responsibility (as opposed to any other
organizational body), and all states are responsible for themselves; (2) states all
share the goal of survival; (3) states provide for their own security.
Realpolitik: the practical, doable aspect of politics that exists outside of desirable
or popular movements. For example, although a national poll might indicate that
the majority of people want substantial cuts in income tax, Realpolitik would
prevent this happening if, according to government advisers, it would lead to
economic ruin.
Religious wars: the religious wars in Europe took place between the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Several wars were fought during this period, and by the time
they had ended secular political institutions were firmly in control.
Socialism: a political and economic theory that advocates a system of social
organization in which the means of production and distribution are collectively
owned.
Soviet Union: a federal republic officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics that existed between 1917 and 1991. Fukuyama published The End of
History in response to its disintegration in 1991, which ended the Cold War.
Soviet bloc: this term refers to the communist states of Eastern Europe, including
the Balkans, which shared a common ideology during the Cold War. Fukuyamas
end-of-history thesis was based around the transition made by these countries from
communism to liberal democracy following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Thymos: for Plato, thymos was the aspect of humanity that separates us from all
other animals. It can best be understood as the part of the psyche that desires
recognition as a human being. Fukuyama argues that human beings require
recognition and that liberal democracy alone satisfies that desire.
Tiananmen Square: student protests in Chinas Tiananmen Square were put down
by military force in 1989.
Totalitarianism: a political system in which the state exercises absolute or nearabsolute control over society.
2008 global financial crisis: the financial crisis of 20078 is considered by many to
have been the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This instability of the capitalist system and the criticisms the crisis provoked further
highlighted the limits of Fukuyamas end-of-history thesis.
Unipolar world: a world in which one power dominates all others.
Wall Street Journal: an American daily newspaper with an emphasis on economic
issues.
War on Terror: declared by George W. Bush as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attack
in 2001. What began as an attack on Afghanistan was extended to an attack on Iraq
in 2003.
World War II (193945): a global war between the vast majority of states, including
all great powers of the time.
Louis Althusser (191890) was a French Marxist and professor of philosophy at the
cole Normale Suprieure in Paris.
Talal Asad (b. 1932) is distinguished professor of anthropology at City University of
New York. His research interests are religion and secularism, Islamic tradition,
political theories, and the Middle East.
Dean VorisBabst (19212006) was an influential American sociologist.
Benjamin R. Barber (b. 1939) is an American political theorist and author, who wrote
the highly successful Jihad vs. McWorld in 1996.
Daniel Bell (19192011) was an American sociologist and emeritus professor at
Harvard University, who made important contributions to the field of postindustrialism.
Tony Blair (b. 1953) was the prime minister of the United Kingdom 19972007.
Allan Bloom (193092) was an American philosopher. He taught at Cornell
University, Yale University and the University of Chicago. He studied under
Alexandre Kojve.
William Buckley (19252008) was an American conservative and founder of the
influential magazine The National Review.
George W. Bush (b. 1946) was the president of the United States 20019.
Bill Clinton (b. 1946) was president of the United States 19932001.
Wayne Cristaudo (b. 1954) is a professor of political science at Charles Darwin
University.
Jacques Derrida (19302005) was a French philosopher associated with the school of
thought known as poststructuralism, which emphasizes the inherent complexity of
human beings and thus the instability of social sciences.
Marion Dnhoff (19092002) was part of the German wartime resistance to Hitler
and later became a journalist.
Michael W. Doyle (b. 1948) is an international relations scholar best known for his
work on liberal, democratic peace.
John Dunn (b. 1940) is emeritus professor of political theory at Kings College,
Cambridge.
Andr Fontaine (19212013) was a French historian and journalist.

Milton Friedman (19122006) was an American economist and Nobel Prize winner
who taught at the University of Chicago.
John Lewis Gaddis (b. 1941) is professor of military and naval history at Yale
University. He is a well-known expert on the Cold War, and suggested that following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new framework was needed to understand
Raymond L. Ray Garthoff is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an
American think tank based in Washington, DC.
John Gray (b. 1948) is an English philosopher who was formerly professor of
European thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He
remains one of Fukuyamas fiercest critics, and tends to think that Fukuyama was
wrong in every conceivable way.
Martin Griffiths is Dean of the School of International Studies at Flinders University,
Australia.
Pierre Hassner (b. 1933) is research director at the Fondation Nationale des
Sciences Politiques in Paris. His theoretical work centers on war and totalitarianism.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831) was a German philosopher whose
theories heavily influenced Karl Marx. His school of thought, known as German
idealism, was in part a reaction to Immanuel Kants critique of pure reason. Hegels
ideas on history were set out in the 1807 book The Phenomenology of the Spirit and
later expanded in a series of lectures given in Berlin in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831.
Stanley Hoffmann (b. 1928) is an American scholar whose 2002 book World
Disorders: A Troubled Peace in the Post-Cold War Era charted the redefinition of the
role of military intervention in the twenty-first century.
Samuel Huntington (19272008) was an American political philosopher who is best
remembered for his vision of a post-Cold War world. Many of his ideas are in direct
opposition to Fukuyamas.
Immanuel Kant (17241804) was a Prussian philosopher. His 1795 essay Perpetual
Peace can be seen as a starting point for contemporary liberal thought.
Robert O. Keohane (b. 1941) is an American scholar who in his 2002 book Power and
Governance in a Partially Globalized World drew on ideas surrounding Thomas
Hobbess Leviathan, which were similar to Fukuyamas.
Alexandre Kojve (190268), though Russian-born, is best remembered as a French
politician and philosopher whose interpretation of Hegel has been extremely
influential in the field of continental philosophy. It is from Kojve that Fukuyama took
the phrase end of history.
Karl Marx (181883) was one of the most influential philosophers of all time and
gives his name to the political philosophy Marxism. Marx rejected notions of liberal
freedoms, insisting that the only true freedom was equality. With this in mind, an
important stage of Marxist history involved a dictatorship wherein the workers
would be forcibly reorganized into a system that would ultimately lead to a
classless, stateless society.
John Mearsheimer (b. 1947) is professor of political science at the University of
Chicago. He argued, in contrast to Fukuyama, that geopolitics among great powers
would continue to play an important role following the Cold War.
Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900) was a German philosopher whose seminal works
included Beyond Good and Evil and Human, All Too Human. His ideas have a unique
place in Fukuyamas work, since he alone saw the suppression of thymos as
undesirable.
Barack Obama (b. 1961) is the 44th president of the United States. He assumed
office in 2009. His foreign policy has championed the spread of liberal democracy.
Thomas Paine (17371809) influenced the American War of Independence. Like
Kant, he claimed that republics are peaceful, and do not go to war out of pride.
Plato (fourth century b.c.e.) was an ancient Greek philosopher. Founder of the
Academy in Athens, the first university in the Western world, Plato, along with his
teacher Socrates and his student Aristotle, laid the foundations of philosophy and
science.
Marc F. Plattner is the vice-president for research and studies at the National
Endowment for Democracy, co-director of the International Forum for Democratic
Studies, and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.
Clyde Prestowitz (b. 1941) is the founder and president of the Economic Strategy
Institute, a Washington-based think tank and lobbying group.
Jacques Rancire (b. 1940) is professor of philosophy at the European Graduate
School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and emeritus professor of philosophy at the
University of Paris.
John Rawls (19212002) was an American philosopher whose most famous text, A
Theory of Justice, was published in 1971 to critical acclaim.
Ronald Reagan (19112004) was president of the United States 19819. He is widely
credited in the United States for bringing an end to the Cold War. He was a
proponent of spreading capitalism and liberal democracy around the globe.
Richard N. Rosecrance (b. 1930) is an American economist who, in The New Great
Power Coalition (2001), argued that the United States must use incentives to bring
rising nations such as China and Russia into a coalition or risk them adopting
recalcitrant and antagonistic attitudes toward world affairs.
Olivier Roy (b. 1949) is a professor at the European University Institute in Florence,
best known for his book The Failure of Political Islam.
Dankwart Alexander Rustow (192496) is best known for his work in
democratization studies.
Peter Singer (b. 1946) is a moral philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton
University. Singers work on Hegel helps explain how Hegel envisioned the end of
history as a process of continual refinement.
Gspr Mikls Tams (b. 1948) is a Hungarian philosopher and one-time member of
the Hungarian parliament.
Margaret Thatcher (19252013) was prime minister of the United Kingdom 197990.
She was a proponent of spreading capitalism and liberal democracy around the
globe.
Ludwig von Mises (18831973) was an influential Austrian economist and founder of
what is known as the Austrian school of economics, which tends to focus on the
actions of individuals within the wider economic system, regardless of what form
that system takes.
Kenneth Waltz (19242013) was an American scholar and one of the most influential
thinkers in the field of international relations.
George Will (b. 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist known for his
conservative comments on politics.
Paul Wolfowitz (b. 1943) is a neoconservative politician and academic. Formerly
Dean of the School of International Relations at John Hopkins University, he has also
acted as president of the World Bank and US deputy secretary of defense.
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Norton, 2003.
Congressional Budget Office. Iraq and Afghanistan. Accessed March 18, 2013.
http://www.cbo.gov/topics/national-security/iraq-and-afghanistan/cost-estimates.
Curtis, Jenefer. Review of After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics, edited by
Timothy Burns. Canadian Journal of Political Science 28, no. 3 (1995): 59192.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning,
and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.
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15, 2008. Accessed March 19, 2015. http://www.theory-talks.org/2008/04/theorytalk-1.html.
. Reflections on the Liberal Peace and Its Critics. Debating the Democratic
Peace, edited by Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, 358
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Martins Press, 1994.
. Which Fukuyama? Open Democracy, June 7, 2006. Accessed March 19,
2015. https://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-fukuyama/which_3623.jsp.
Elliott, Abrams. Letter to President Clinton. Project for the New American Century,
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/03/thehistoryattheendofhist.
. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French
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. A Reply to My Critics. The National Interest 18 (Winter 1989/90): 2128.
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es.
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John Lewis GaddisWe Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
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Key Points
John Lewis Gaddis is one of the most important historians on the subject of the Cold
Wara period of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States, and
countries aligned with each, in the years 1947 to 1991.
We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, published in 1997, discusses the causes
of the Cold War, its structure, how it developed, and its place in international history.
Gaddiss main argument is that both the United States and the Soviet Union
became empires after 1945; the difference between them was that the United
States ruled other nations by consent while the Soviet Union ruled by coercion. He
accuses the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin of making the Cold War drag on.
Who is John Lewis Gaddis?

John Lewis Gaddis, the author of We Now Know (1997), is one of the most important
experts on the subject of the Cold War. He was born in the city of Cotulla, Texas in
1941, and received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968. After
earning his doctorate, he taught at Indiana University Southeast before working at
Ohio University from 1969 to 1997. He then moved on to Yale University, where he
became Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, a position he still
holds today. Gaddis has also held visiting professorships at the Naval War College,
Oxford University, and Princeton University.
Gaddiss books include The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941
1947 (1972), Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American
National Security (1982), The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War
(1987), and The Cold War (2005). He also wrote the official biography of the
American historian and diplomat George Kennan, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize
for Biography and the American History Book Prize in 2012.
Gaddis explains in the books preface that We Now Know came from a series of
eight lectures he gave at Oxford University in 1992 while spending a year there as a
visiting professor. For Gaddis, it was a fascinating time to be involved in Cold War
research, as the period had only just come to an end: This was the first full year of
what everyone agreed was the post-Cold War era, he said, and, as a
consequence, my first opportunity to lecture on the Cold War from beginning to
end.1
What Does We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History Say?
John Lewis Gaddiss We Now Know looks at our historical understanding of the Cold
War from a new, international perspective. The main goal of the text is to show
readers that new documentary evidence from the former Soviet Union, Eastern
Europe, and China has changed the historiography of the Cold Warthat is, the way
histories of the Cold War have been written.
Gaddis argues that these new documents have to be taken into account if you want
to explain the Cold War as international history. He calls this new Cold War
history.2 This new historiographical approach, he says, means we can now answer
questions such as: Who started the Cold War? Why did it escalate? Why did it last so
long? And why did it end?
The main ideas in We Now Know spring from the opportunity created by the
appearance of the new source material. Gaddis argues in the text that such new
documentary evidence obliged historians to revisit many of the traditional
arguments about the Cold War and to compare materials from everywhere to get a
new, international, view of the periods history.
Gaddiss new way of looking at the Cold War all leads to the books last chapter,
The New Cold War History: First Impressions, which sums up the texts key ideas.
In eight short hypotheses about what we now know, representing a significant
departure from his previous understanding of Cold War history, Gaddis condenses
all the points on specific Cold War events that he covers in the previous nine
chapters.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddis had become a well-known member of the postrevisionist school of Cold War history. Post-revisionist historians wanted to go
beyond the usual arguments about the origins of the Cold War towards
interpretations that stressed the importance of geopoliticsthat is, politics
influenced by geographical factors, such as where things are, what resources they
have, the balances of power between nations, and so on. Gaddis had argued that
the balance of power between the US and the Soviet Union as well as the focus on
grand strategythat is, the strategic use of all the financial, diplomatic and cultural
means open to a nation in pursuit of some aimwere both essential elements in USSoviet policymaking and were responsible for making the Cold War last as long as it
did.
What Gaddis discovered when researching We Now Know forced him to rethink
previous ideas. The diversification of power did more to shape the course of the
Cold War than did the balancing of power,3 he argues in the books concluding
chapterby which he means that the Americans had built a democratic empire
superior to the autocratic (that is, dictatorial and repressive) Soviet empire. He also
concludes that as long as Joseph Stalin was running the Soviet Union, a cold war
was unavoidable.4
According to the Norwegian Cold War historian Odd Arne Westad, these ideas were
a return to some of the concernsbut not always the conclusionsof Cold War
orthodoxy.5 Gaddis did not expect his new theories, which contradicted his
previous thought, to stay true forever, and he predicted that future histories would
probably go on to challenge his new Cold War history as more evidence became
available.
Why Does We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History Matter?
We Now Know argues that the new documentary evidence that had come from the
former Soviet Union and its allies since the end of the Cold War changed how the
conflict should be understood historically. The title of the book is important, as the
main aim of We Now Know was to explain what wethat is, Gaddis and his
readersnow know about the Cold War. The title was an invitation to readers to
join Gaddis on a journey through the new history of the Cold War. The authors
interpretation of the new documents and evidence would make it clear what he
believed people now knew about the Cold War (as opposed what people thought
they knew before this evidence was available), why it started, how it escalated and
why it went on for so long.
When We Now Know was published, it was an exciting time for Cold War research.
The consensus view was that the collapse of the Soviet Union meant an end to the
Cold War, allowing the first histories of the entire period of conflict to be written.
And, given the slew of new documents from the former Soviet Union and its allies in
Eastern Europe and China, researchers had the opportunity to write histories from a
fully international perspective. This, of course, had a significant effect on both
Gaddiss decision to write We Now Know and on the conclusions that he came to
as he admits in the books preface, acknowledging the debt he owed to the work of
other historians in the course of researching and writing his study.
We Now Know is a landmark work on the struggle for political and ideological
supremacy between the United States and the Soviet Union during the second half
of the twentieth century. Looking at the conflict from its early beginnings through to
the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 (the closest the Cold War came to a hot
war fought with nuclear weapons), its use of newly available documents from both
Western and communist nations and its novel interpretation of events establish it as
a key work of so-called new Cold War history.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the meaning of post-revisionism in the context of Cold War
history?
Analyze: How did the Gaddis re-examine and redefine our historical understanding
of the Cold War?
Apply: How convincing is his argument that the United States ruled through consent
while the Soviet Union ruled through coercion or force?
Notes
John Lewis Gaddis, What We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997), preface, vii.
Gaddis, We Now Know, preface, viii.
Gaddis, We Now Know, 283.

Gaddis, We Now Know, 2845, 292.
Odd Arne Westad, Bibliographical Essay: The Cold War and the International History
of the Twentieth Century, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1:
Origins, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge
By now, I seek to situate this book at a particular point in time, not to claim
timelessness for it. This is what I think we know now but did not know, or at least
did not know as clearly, while the Cold War was going on.
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
Key Points
We Now Know provided a fresh historical interpretation of the period of tension
between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies known as
the Cold War.
The main focus of John Lewis Gaddiss lifelong research has been the Cold War. He is
considered one of the leading experts on the subject.
Gaddis wrote the book in the mid-1990s, a period when the world was adjusting to a
new system of international relations ushered in by the end of the Cold War and
when common understandings of historical event were being challenged.
Why Read This Text?

John Lewis Gaddiss We Now Know, published in 1997, is essential reading for
anyone interested in the Cold War as well as international history more broadly.
Gaddis wrote it after the collapse of Soviet communisma social and economic
ideology originally founded on concepts such as the common ownership of industry
and the abolition of classand set out to provide a historical explanation for that
collapse.
In the text, the author brings together newly-available primary and secondary
sources to present a detailed assessment and fresh understanding of the conflict
between America and the Soviet Union. (Primary sources are usually original
documents or testimony; secondary sources include commentary and analysis.)
Gaddis does this through an examination of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a
short period of grave diplomatic tension that almost led to a nuclear war. His focus,
in other words, is on the first third of the Cold War.
Gaddis sees the outbreak of the Cold War as a result of the power vacuum that
World War II created in Europe with all the former major powers effectively
neutralized. And he blames the fact that it went on so long mainly on Stalinismthe
aggressive political doctrine of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who, Gaddis claims,
craved conflict and looked for it wherever he could.
Gaddis pinpoints the start of the Cold War as 1947, the moment when it became
obvious to the American government that the Soviets were unwilling to cooperate in
a multilateral global orderthat is, an agreed-on international systemthat the US
wanted to lead.
As far as the Cuban Missile Crisis was concerned, Gaddis argues in We Now Know
that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev looked to safeguard communist Cuba, headed
by the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, by putting nuclear missiles there. He also
argues that the conflict would have escalated had not the US president John F.
Kennedy sought compromise and peace. He goes on to suggest that the reason it
did not end much earlier, bearing in mind how the Soviet Union declined
economically, was that both countries had nuclear weapons. He also says that the
arms race created a balance of power in international politics that may have
prevented a third World War.
Gaddiss detailed presentation in We Now Know created what he calls a new Cold
War history: a novel approach to the historical period that offered new insights and
laid the foundation for further study and debate on the subject.
Author's Life
John Lewis Gaddis was born in the town of Cotulla, Texas in 1941 and began his
academic career at the University of Texas at Austin. After finishing his doctorate
there under the supervision of Robert Divine, a scholar of diplomatic history and the
US presidency, Gaddis briefly worked as a researcher and teacher at Indiana
University Southeast before moving on to the University of Ohio, where he stayed
until 1997the year he published We Now Know. Today, he is Robert A. Lovett
Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University and is widely regarded as
one of the leading historians of the Cold War.
Gaddis has also held visiting professorships at the Naval War College, Oxford
University, Princeton University, and the University of Helsinki. During his academic
career, he has received several important accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize and
the National Humanities Medal.
We Now Know came from eight lectures that Gaddis gave as a visiting professor at
Oxford University in 1992. Drawing on documents fresh from the archives, he came
up with a new way of looking at the causes of the Cold War, as well as its structure,
development, and place in international history. The text is thought of as one of the
seminal works on the subject.
Author's Background
Gaddis initially set out only to rewrite his lecture notes, putting them in the
perspective of international history rather than simply the history of United States
diplomacy. But as new documents from the former Soviet Union, the Peoples
Republic of China, and Eastern Europe became available, he decided that the time
was right to write a comprehensive history of the Cold War that would incorporate
as much of this new material as possible while relating it to what we already
knew.1
Due to the sheer volume of documents relating to the early years of the Cold War,
Gaddis decided to focus on the first third of that conflictwhich is why he organized
We Now Know into a series of overlapping but connected histories extending
through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He wrote the book in the mid-1990s, when the
world was adjusting to a post-Cold-War system of international relations. At that
time, people began contesting many concepts that had been previously accepted
about Cold War history, such as the idea that the Soviet Union was responsible for
the conflict as a result of its attempt to spread communism through Eastern Europe.
Influenced by new histories of the Cold War, Gaddis decided to write a book that
would bring the latest historical research together into a single volume. The result
was We Now Know, a groundbreaking work that pioneered the approach of new
Cold War history. The book is still relevant to students of the Cold War today.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What, according to the Gaddis, caused the Cold War?
Analyze: Based on the information provided in the module and your own research,
why did the Soviet collapse in 1991?
Apply: The author documents the history of the Cold War through the Cuban Missile
Crisis. What was this event, and what role did it play in the broader Cold War?
Notes
John Lewis Gaddis, What We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997), preface, vii.
The end of the Cold War brought a widely-acknowledged era to an end. New
evidence has continued to be uncovered in the United States; but the opening of
the Soviet archives especially has offered a trove of materials. This has given rise to
a new Cold War history as younger scholars have mined Soviet documents to write
the studies produced by the Cold War International History Project.
Howard H. Lentner, New Cold War History: A Review of We Now Know: Rethinking
Cold War History
Key Points
In We Now Know, John Lewis Gaddis used new primary sources and put them
together with existing literature to provide a fresh interpretation of Cold War history.
Gaddis focused on the first third of the Cold War. This approach differed from other
historians who either assessed the Cold War as one important part of a larger
history or focused on one Cold War event, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Although the author worked in a similar way to the Cold War historian Louis Halle,
who had published an important work of Cold War history in 1967, Gaddis had two
important advantages over Halle: he knew the outcome of the conflict, and he had
access to new sources of information from the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern
Europe.

John Gaddis Lewis was one of several historians who were aiming to provide a new
international history of the Cold War. In the books preface, he acknowledges the
debt of gratitude that he owes to the many young scholars writing the so-called
new Cold War historyto which We Now Know was to make a vital contribution.
Gaddiss approach was novel, however, in that his ambition was to write a full
history of the first third of the Cold War and not just the story of one event within it,
such as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
At the time of the books publication, people were very interested in making sense
of the events of the Cold War and considering what its end meant for the future of
international politics. New Cold War history was uncharted territory. To find
answers to the fields pressing questions, Gaddis turned to fresh sources from the
archives of the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. He questioned everything
that anyone had previously written on the subject, including his own scholarly
contributions. After writing We Now Know, he came to see international history in a
very different wayas did those who read it.
When the Cold War came to an end, many historians wanted to make use of new
material that was coming to light. The immediate post-Cold War period was an
exciting time for these scholars. Some, such as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm,
chose to write about how ideas and ideologies progressed throughout the whole
twentieth century, while others chose to think of the Cold War as a conflict that
began in 1917 with the Russian Revolution, rather than after World War II in 1947.
Although the Cold Wars end and the availability of a great quantity of documents
prompted a surge in historical writing and study, Gaddis successfully incorporated
much of this newly available material and analysis into his book in a readable and
coherent fashion. In its preface, Gaddis acknowledges the rapid change that was
taking place in the discipline and admits it was highly likely that many of the books
conclusions would be questioned as more documents came to light. He takes pains
to stress that the now in the title was only supposed to situate the book at a
particular point in time, not to claim timelessness for it.1
While some of Gaddiss ideas have come under critical scrutiny since the books
publication, the text remains one of the most important works on Cold War history.
Academic Influences
In the preface to We Now Know, Gaddis explains that he set out to follow the
example of Louis Halles classic book The Cold War As History (1967).2 According to
that work, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union should
be viewed: as a phenomenon not without precedent in the long history of
international conflict; as a phenomenon that, experience has taught us, has its own
dynamics; as a phenomenon that, typically, goes through a certain cycle with a
beginning, a middle, and an end.3
Gaddis then explains that he had two advantages over Halle. First, as the Cold War
had just ended, Gaddis knew the outcome; and second, he had access to new
documents from the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. With this, he hoped to
come up with a new understanding of Cold War history based on connected and
overlapping histories of the conflict.
The authors experience at Oxford University also helped shape the book. It grew
out a series of lectures that he delivered there as a visiting scholar. Gaddis credits
Tim Barton of Oxford University Press, who he came into contact with during his
stay, as the first person to suggest that he should turn those lectures into a book.4
He completed parts of his research and writing at the National Security Archive and
the Woodrow Wilson Center in the United States (an American institution dedicated
to research and communication in the field of US world affairs) and the Norwegian
Nobel Institute. He then presented his chapters and received valuable feedback on
them at the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-governmental research and
advocacy organization concerned with US foreign policy that is based in New York.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why did the text come at exactly the right time?
Analyze: How was the text different from the historical approach of previous
scholars, such as Eric Hobsbawm?
Apply: Based on the information provided in the module and your own research,
what was the Russian Revolution, how did it condition the Cold War, and what is its
legacy today?
Notes
John Lewis Gaddis, What We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1997), preface, viii.
Louis Halle, The Cold War As History (New York: Harper and Row, 1967).
Cited in Gaddis, preface, vii.
Gaddis, ix.
What is so distinctive about Gaddiss new book is the extent to which he abandons
post-revisionism and returns to a more traditional interpretation of the Cold War. In
unequivocal terms, he blames the Cold War on Stalins personality, on authoritarian
government, and on Communist ideology.
Melvyn Leffler, Review Essay: The Cold War: What do We Now Know?
Key Points
John Lewis Gaddis wanted to find out whether comparing new archives from the
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China with those available in the United States
and its allied countries would result in a new interpretation of Cold War history.
This methodological approach was novel because no one had compared this
archival material until then.
In We Now Know, Gaddis drew from resources fresh from the archives and recent
secondary literaturethat is, analysis written by other historiansto provide a full
comparative account of the first third of the Cold War.
Core Question
Writing We Now Know, Gaddis wanted to find out whether comparing new
documentary source material from the archives of the former Soviet Union, the
Peoples Republic of China, and other countries in Eastern Europe with sources from
the United States and its allies would change the historical understanding of the
Cold War. That was a fundamentally important question at the time because, before
the publication of We Now Know, there had not been a comprehensive, comparative
history of the conflict that took into account the points of view of all of the principal
players of the Cold Waror at least as many as possible.
In We Now Know, Gaddis tackles this challenge by approaching the subject matter in
a highly detailed and methodical fashion. He focuses on the first third of the Cold
War for two reasons: 1) he had more source material relating to that period, and 2)
he was able to make use of many new English language works devoted to that part
of the Cold War. Gaddiss chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the major developments
of the early Cold War in We Now Know leads to a concluding chapter that condenses
his analysis into eight short ideas that, he argues, form the tenets of new Cold War
historyan influential new way of interpreting the events of the Cold War.
The Participants
At the time of publication, many other scholars were also attempting to come to
terms with the history of the Cold War and what its end meant for the world. The
historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, for example, focused on the
intricacies of Russian decision-making. Others concentrated on subjects like Chinas
role in the Korean War, a conflict fought by North and South Korea between 1950
and 1953 with significant interventions from the United States and communist
China.1 But We Now Know stood out among the glut of new histories that appeared
around the same time because, instead of examining one particular element, it set
out to adopt a comprehensive international approach to the whole first third of the
Cold War. For that reason, it appealed to a much broader audience.
The book was a natural progression from the earlier academic work that Gaddis had
done in the field of Cold War history. As one of the pioneers of post-revisionist Cold
War history, an approach that questioned the recent orthodoxy of the United States
role in provoking and continuing the conflict, Gaddis had already started to work in
a way that compared histories in various countries in his study of the Cold War.2
The definitive end of the Cold War in 1991 allowed him to apply this way of working
to the flood of new documents that had begun to emerge from the East.
Thus, he became the first Cold War historian to put together how the struggle
unfolded from both sides of the ideological divide, the West (the United States and
its allies), on one hand, and the East (the Soviet Union and its allies), on the other.
The text is quite closely related to other works on the period published in the late
1990s, in that it aimed to look anew at the history of the Cold War. Gaddis was clear
about the fact that the work owed a great deal to new source material and newly
published research. He was especially open about his use of the Bulletins and
working papers of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson
Center in Washington. Indeed, each chapter of the book refers to well-known work
of other scholars to tell its story.
In chapter three, Cold War Empires: Asia, for example, Gaddis makes frequent use
of studies by, among many others, the Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad on the
Chinese Civil War, the historians Jian Chen and William Stueck on the Korean War,
and Shu Guang Zhang on Sino-American relations3 and the communist ideology of
the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.4
If We Now Know considered the ideas and analyses of many other writers, it did not
necessarily go along with their conclusions, however. In fact, the reason why We
Now Know became a key example of the new Cold War history was that it drew
the contributions of many other historians together into a coherent whole that
became the first comprehensive comparative account of the first third of the Cold
War. Gaddis used secondary textsthat is, analysis and commentaryto construct
the story he was telling and to provide insightful source material. But the
conclusions he drew were entirely his own.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the main research question of the text? How does the author
use new archival evidence from the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe to
address this?
Analyze: What previous scholarship influenced the authors ideas? To what extent,
was the authors thesis original?
Apply: What is communism, and how relevant does it remain in the contemporary
world?
Notes
See in particular: Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlins
Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1996); and Shu Guang Zhang, Maos Military Romanticism: China and the Korean
War, 19501953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 19411947
(New York: Colombia University Press, 1972); and John Lewis Gaddis, The Emerging
Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War, Diplomatic History 7, No.
3 (1983): 13148.
Shu Guang Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American

Confrontations, 19491958 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
Shu Guang Zhang, Maos Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950
1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
This brilliant studyGaddis fifth book on the Cold Warprovides an exhaustive
and ever-quizzical approach to the early years of the superpower conflict.
David Hendrickson, Review: We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
Key Points
In We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History John Lewis Gaddis sought to present a
new interpretation of Cold War history based on the bringing together of new
archives and current analysis.
The book is structured into individual units that deal with either a prominent event
or a geopolitical situation during the Cold War.
He produced what he called a new Cold War historyand what remains a very
important reference point on the subject.
Author's Aims
John Lewis Gaddiss We Now Know was aimed at scholars and fellow historians of
the Cold War who were finding that older books written in the midst of the conflict
were no longer sufficient.
Gaddis had already written many well-known histories of the Cold War. To give his
new work credibility he had to question the post-revisionist arguments in his own
works (that is, the recently superseded consensus regarding the United States
imperial ambitions).
Although it may have been difficult for Gaddis to have to argue against what he had
previously said in the light of new research, the bravery and flexibility it took gave
him the credibility he needed to reach a wider audience and heightened the books
authority. Gaddis accepted his changing views as part of the natural process of
studying history. He criticized those historians who would not adapt to the postCold-War world and continued to argue cases that the new documentary evidence
had roundly contradicted.
As we have seen, Gaddiss main aim in writing We Now Know was to come up with
the first new Cold War historythe term he used to describe the new,
international, approach that compared documents from different sources to study
the early period of the Cold War. In bringing together the historical theories about
such an important and long-lasting event, Gaddis clearly hoped that We Now Know
would become the definitive Cold War text for historians in a post-Cold War world.
Every chapter of the book contains this underlying message; in each one, he uses
his new methodology to revisit and reinterpret certain historical arguments. The
aims of We Now Know demonstrate a coherent and clear plan with individual units
based on a particular theme that deals with either a prominent event or a
geopolitical situation during the Cold War. Gaddis offers a step-by-step analysis of
the early conflict, with revised theories to explain his findings.
Approach
Gaddis wanted to rethink the way in which the Cold War was understood by
comparing new documentary evidence coming from the former Soviet Union and its
allies to the sources that already existed in the United States and Western Europe.
This was partly an extension of the post-revisionist methods that he had adopted
earlier in his career.1
Post-revisionism, also known as the realist approach, wanted to leave behind the
revisionist views of recent work in Cold War history, which focused on the ambitions
of the United States to dominate global politics. It aimed to replace it with a
comparative methodologycomparing material from different sourcesthat was
less concerned with who should be blamed for the conflict.
Gaddis used documentary evidence from both sides to underline the importance of
power balances in the international system and grand strategy (roughly, the
deliberate use of every diplomatic, financial, and cultural tool available to a nation
that wants to pursue certain objectives in international affairs) in US-Soviet
policymaking. According to Gaddis, these two things accounted for the length and
stable character of the Cold War and helped to explain why the major players acted
in the way that they did.2
That previous work put Gaddis in a good position to understand what the arrival of
new documents from the Soviet Union Eastern Europe and China meant for Cold
War history. For the first time, he was able to present a truly international account of
what happened in the Cold War.
The main ideas that John Gaddis discusses in We Now Know go straight to the heart
of the preoccupations of the historical period in which it was written.
At the time of its publication in 1997, a huge amount of new source material from
the former countries of the Soviet Union and its allies had totally changed the
debate about the Cold War in the United States and Western Europe. Historians
were challenging historical interpretations that most people had previously agreed
on. Instead of writing diplomatic accounts from the American or Western European
point of view, as their predecessors had been forced to, the collapse of the Soviet
Union meant that historians were able to write comparative international histories of
a conflict that had finally ended.
Gaddis wanted to make the most of that opportunity. As he points out in the book,
Cold War events largely defined the life of his generation and his research. He sets
out to put all of this into practice by providing a fresh look at what the world had
been living through.
Authors of related works have praised We Now Know for its breadth and ambition,
even if they have not always agreed with its central arguments. For example, the
historian Melvyn Leffler, who had been a critic of Gaddiss earlier work, admitted
that the book was likely to set the parameters for a whole new generation of
scholarship.3
Key Questions
Synthesize: What contribution did the author make in the field of Cold War studies
and how significant is this?
Analyze: How did the authors theory and way of working differ from his prior work?
Apply: Based on your own research, how has world politics changed since the end of
the Cold War? Is it still based on a struggle between capitalism and communism, or
do other important elements define it?
Notes
Gaddis published two seminal post-revisionist studies: John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies
of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); and John Lewis Gaddis, The Emerging
Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War, Diplomatic History 7, No.
3 (1983): 131148.
Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War and the International History of the Twentieth
Century, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 1, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler
and Odd Arne Westad, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 5.
Melvyn P. Leffler, The Cold War: What Do We Now Know? The American Historical
Review 104, No. 2 (1999): 502.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas

The Cold War in Gaddiss account was both inevitable and necessary. The Soviet
empire and its allies could not be rolled back but they had to be contained. The
resulting standoff lasted forty years. A lot of time and money was spent on nuclear
weapons and the cautious new strategic thinking to which they gave rise. Partly for
this reason there were no major wars. In the endthanks to greater resources, a
vastly more attractive political and economic model, and the initiative of a few good
men (and one good woman)the right side won.
Tony Judt, A Story Still To Be Told
Key Points
The core proposal in We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, by John Lewis
Gaddis, is that the Cold War should be understood very differently than had
previously been thought.
Gaddis suggests throughout the text that his analysis will be subject to critiques and
enhanced interpretations as new sources of information become available.
In the book, he presents the reasons why the Cold War started, escalated, endured,
and ended in 10 distinct, coherent chapters; in doing so, he establishes a novel
framework for interpreting international history.
Key Themes
To John Lewis Gaddis, the end of the Cold War meant that historians had a duty to
account for the rise, flourishing, and decline of the Russian-American global
hegemony.1 (In the field of international relations, hegemony refers to
dominance.) With We Now Know, he aimed to meet this obligation, asking whether
the conflict had to happen in the first place and setting out a clear definition for a
new Cold War history that future scholars could explore and debate.
But We Now Know was not just an examination of these general themes. Gaddis
weaved his principal goal of presenting his new history into a much more detailed
account of some of the most significant and controversial events of the early Cold
War.
The book starts with the vacuum of legitimacy2 in the system of international
relations after World War I that produced the 1917 Russian Revolutiona revolution
fought to replace the existing social and economic system in Russia with
communism. Gaddis argues that the two World Wars broke up the German, AustroHungarian, and Ottoman (or Turkish) empires. Those wars also discredited old
forms of diplomacy that were obviously unable to prevent large-scale conflict
between nations. American and Russian ideologies and military power filled this
void.
The book ends with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a time when the United States
and the Soviet Union seemed on the brink of nuclear war. The book covers a wide
range of twentieth century history in its attempt to explain why the Cold War
started, escalated, endured, and ended.
Gaddis explores different events and themes relating to the early Cold War in each
chapter of We Now Know. Although he gives a separate historical account in each
chapter, they all incorporate his general approach to his new Cold War history. The
reader can understand Gaddiss central argument reading chapters individually or in
sequence: that the new documentary evidence that has emerged since the end of
the Cold War has raised serious questions about what had formerly been accepted
as historical truths.3
Exploring The Ideas
Gaddis breaks the material down into subject areas, organizing content into 10
distinct chapters. The first nine chapters divide the Cold War into a series of
geographical and conceptual themes, including imperialism (the policy of empire
building through military or cultural means), ideology, grand strategy, the balance
of power (the stability brought about by an equal distribution of power in the
international system), personalities, nuclear weaponry, alliances, and the Third
World (usually called the developing world today). Each chapter focuses on a
different aspect of the Cold War in order to support Gaddiss central argument that
some specific historical understanding needs to change.
The book starts with a look at the background of the great rivalry between the
United States and the Soviet Union from the beginning of their existence. This led to
the division of Europe into two Cold War empires, the borders of which soon spread
to Asia. Gaddis argues that new evidence proved that the Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin played the main role in the beginning of the Cold War. He also says that once
Stalins ambitions in Europe had been thwarted, his romantic ideas about revolution
turned to Korea, where they would eventually lead to war.
At this point, the development of nuclear weapons prolonged the Cold War, as the
rivalry became narrowly based on military strengthhence, the Cuban missile
crisis. Gaddis also covers other important regions, such as Germany and the
developing nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as the issue of what
the new documents tell us about the ideology of the Cold War. In his opinion, these
documents show that societies built on the principles of liberal democracy and
capitalism (the dominant model of government, economy, and society in the West)
were stronger and longer-lasting than those of Marxism-Leninism (the political
ideology on which the Soviet Union was founded).
The final chapter of We Now Know boils down what Gaddis means by the new Cold
War history. In it, Gaddis condenses the previous nine chapters into a series of
short hypotheses, or theories, that represent what I think we know now but did not
know, at least not as clearly, while the Cold War was going on.4 A series of bold
statements follow about how the Cold War should be historically understood from
here on out. The new Cold War history proves that the Cold War was basically a
struggle between two imperialist superpowersa contest between good and evil,
and inevitable as long as Stalin controlled the Soviet Union. By stitching together
the different themes of earlier chapters in such a powerful way, Gaddis makes it
clear that when we look at the Cold War as international history, we should
understand it in a completely different way than we had previously.
As we have seen, Gaddiss arguments are neatly arranged into eight to-the-point
hypotheses, or theories, each of which relates to conclusions made at the end of
every chapter. This means that readers can get an idea of his position without
having to read the entire book. Looking at We Now Know as a whole, we can see
that it is not just a history of separate events, but also a fresh interpretation of the
entire period.
To fully understand the arguments Gaddis makes on Cold War topics, such as the
division of Europe or the Korean War, however, the reader needs a firm grounding in
revisionist Cold War historiographythat is, the written history that had come
before, with its assumptions about the United States role in perpetuating and
provoking the conflict. To help students develop their own understanding of Cold
War events, other sources are available on the website of the Cold War
International Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.5
These supplementary materials help us come to our own conclusions on some of
the arguments that Gaddis presents on specific Cold War themes such as ideology,
the balance of power, nuclear weapons and the developing world. They provide
context on the general debates that we need to consider when studying history,
such as the importance of circumstance or of the individual people who were
involved in events.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the main themes of We Now Know?
Analyze: Which of these themes is most important in your view? Can you justify
your answer?
Apply: Based on your own research, what is the Third World and why was it
important in the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet
Union in the Cold War?
Notes
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), 2.
In Cold War history, orthodox interpretations place responsibility for the Cold War on
the Soviet Union because of its Sovietization of Eastern Europe and ambitions to
spread Communism around the world.
The Cold War International History Project website can be found at:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project.
Section 2: Ideas
That ideological euphoria diminished the caution that had shaped Stalins
previous behavior toward the United States. He thus allowed Kim Il-Sung to talk him
into something he had earlier refused to do: authorizing an effort to reunify the
Korean peninsula by military means. Mao, more skeptical, went along because of his
own designs on Taiwan; but when the North Koreans began to lose, he too threw
caution to the winds and confronted the Americans convinced that ideological zeal
would ensure success.
Key Points
The United States and Soviet Union had different imperialistic traits. That is, each
country used different strategies to build informal empires in Europe and Asia.
The United States defended a doctrine of collective security, or an arrangement in
which a group of nations promoted peace, The Russians sought to increase their
security through territorial acquisitions.
Critics argued that John Lewis Gaddis was too focused on showing that the American
system, founded on liberal democracy and a capitalist economy, offered a social
and economic model superior to that of Soviet communism. They said that he paid
too little attention to other actors who influenced the Cold War apart from the
United States and Soviet Union.
Other Ideas
Gaddis makes many important secondary arguments in We Now Know. From these
arguments, developed in the first nine chapters, come the broader conclusions that
he reaches in chapter 10.
To fully appreciate the overall thrust of his argument, then, readers should first try
to understand the in-depth analysis in each chapter. They should look at all of these
secondary ideas in the context of the new primary source documents from the
archives of the former Soviet Union and its alliesmaterial that encouraged Gaddis
to take an international approach to his analysis of the Cold War.
The result is a way of looking at issues from both sides rather than just the
American or Western European point of view.
The main secondary themes that Gaddis considers are the different types of
alliances that the two superpowers formed. These were related to their opposing
ideologies: in the West, society was founded on liberal democracy (a form of
government in which leaders are regularly elected and individual liberty is secured)
and capitalism (an economic model in which businesses and profits are in private
hands); in the East, government was founded on Marxist-Leninism, according to
which individuals have little say in the nations governance and the state owns and
manages industry.
Gaddis further discusses in the text the important role that the Russian leader
Joseph Stalin played in prolonging the Cold War, the superpowers different visions
of European security, and how the threat of nuclear weapons helped create a
balance of power and stability in a state of international anarchy (that is, the lack of
any global government and authority).
Exploring The Ideas
Gaddis set out in We Now Know to show that when you compare the ideologically
opposed alliances built by the United States and the Soviet Union, they both had
similar, imperialistic traits (that is, both adopted policies of empire building).
Even if they employed different methods, both the United States and the Soviet
Union built informal empires in Europe and Asia, exerting their influence over huge
populations outside their borders. Gaddis also describes how, after World War II, the
United States and the Soviet Union both wanted to ensure future peace in Europe
the difference was the type of peace each desired. The United States was in favor of
collective security, to be achieved by getting nations to join together, while the
Soviet Union sought security through the acquisition of territory, bringing more
countries under its influence. These arguments are not entirely original, but the way
that Gaddis presents them, comparing American and Soviet sources, helps set We
Now Know apart.
This is also true of what the book says about Asia. Gaddis contrasts Soviet
policymakingincluding how it was dependent on Stalin and his relationship with
allies such as Chinas first communist leader Mao Zedong and Kim Il-Sung, his
Korean equivalentwith the policymaking of the United States and its allies. Soviet
blunders, he concludes, led to the escalation of the Cold War in Asia.
Gaddis also uses his comparative method to explore the struggle for control in the
developing nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the nuclear arms race; and
the differing fortunes of each sides ideological alliance partners. This is a
convincing approach, backed up by the extensive use of both primary and
secondary source material. Each chapter strengthens the central arguments of the
text, offers a stand-alone unit of research for the more focused scholar, and
reinforces Gaddiss overall approach.
Overlooked
We Now Know is still a seminal text of Cold War history and has continued to attract
attention from Cold War historians since its publication. For this reason, not much of
the book has been overlooked in the writing of Cold War history. Gaddis covered
some of the most important events of the Cold War in the text, looking in detail at
important developments such as the division of Europe, the Korean War, and the
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Since the books publication, many authors and critics have taken apart Gaddiss
arguments and analyzed them in detail as part of general evaluations of the work.
The most powerful critiques have examined it chapter by chapter to back up
general criticisms about the way in which Gaddis constructed his new Cold Way
history.1 As the historian Melvyn Leffler put it: I have taken the time to summarize
Gaddiss themes at length because he is the preeminent historian of the Cold War,
and he is providing a new master narrative to serve as a framework for interpreting
the new documents, digesting the new literature, and understanding the framework
of international relations for much of the second half of the twentieth century.2
The approach that Gaddis took, dealing with aspects of the Cold War individually to
further his ambitious aim of arriving at a comprehensive comparative history of the
Cold War, meant that critics have had to consider each of his individual arguments
one by one if they have wanted to convincingly dismiss the book as a whole. In the
end, Leffler concluded that, while it would set the parameters for future study,
Gaddiss work focused too much on proving his point (or demonstrating his bias)
that the United States vision of the world was superior to that of the Soviet Union.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the key secondary themes of We Now Know?
Analyze: Realist scholars argue that nations are largely the architects of their own
security since there is no world government. Liberal scholars, in contrast, believe
that nations should work together and build international structures for lasting
peace and security. Which of these perspectives best applies to security during the
Cold War? Based on your own research, was the United Nations important during
this period? Why or why not?
Apply: Based on your own research, how did Cold War geopolitics shape the Vietnam
and Korean Wars?
Notes
See, for example: Richard Ned Lebow, We Still Dont Know! Diplomatic History 22,
No. 4 (1998): 627632; and Melvyn P. Leffler, The Cold War: What Do We Now
Know? The American Historical Review 104, No. 2 (1999): 501524.
Leffler, The Cold War, 506.
Section 2: Ideas
All of these practicesknowing the outcome, having multiple sources, paying
attention to ideasare decidedly old-fashioned. They are the way history is written
most of the time. They suggest not only that the old Cold War history is out of
date; it was also an abnormal way of writing history itself.
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold Ware History
Key Points
Although Gaddis has been criticized for his triumphalist view, claiming that liberal
democracy and capitalism (the governmental and economical models dominant
today in the West) succeeded on account of their inherent superiority to Soviet
communism, he reframed the debate on Cold War history.
The influx of new information that became available following the Soviet Unions
collapse in 1991 formed the basis for his achievement in We Now Know.
One limitation of the study is that the author could not analyze many documents in
their original languages. He depended largely on English sources that reference the
most important sources in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.

In We Now Know, Gaddiss comparative methodologyhis way of comparing
different pieces of information from different placesproved to be an effective way
of looking at new source material from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the
Peoples Republic of China.
But while most historians were fine with Gaddiss decision to consider the new
material and compare it to sources in the United States and allied countries, some
argued that his interpretation had problems and merely restated old arguments.
(Orthodox interpretations blame the Soviet Union for the Cold War, pointing to the
way it tried to Sovietize Eastern Europe by imposing Russian cultural models, and
to its ambitions to spread communism around the world.)
These arguments came in response to Gaddiss claims that the new source material
proved that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Cold War, and that, in the end,
the resilience of liberal democracy and capitalism stemmed from their superiority to
Marxism-Leninismthe communist ideology of the Soviet Union.
Critics attacked that conclusion as triumphalist meaning that the victory of the
West in the ideological battle with the Soviet Union colored his analysis in an
unhelpful wayand that he held this view even before he wrote the text. But Gaddis
predicted this criticism in We Now Know, and he tells his readers that triumphalism
could be misleading. Although he does not take the point any further, he does
manage to shield his argument from that criticism to some extent.
Apart from this point of contention, by presenting his new Cold War history in
eight clear hypotheses, distilled as one argument in the final chapter, Gaddis
reframed the debate on Cold War history and so made a fundamental contribution
to the field.
Gaddis was a pioneer of a new school of thought on the writing of Cold War history
known as post-revisionism.
Revisionist Cold War history pointed to the United States desire for global political
dominance, finding America at fault for provoking and perpetuating the tension of
the period. But, with the aid of new documentary evidence, Gaddis replaced those
arguments with a differently nuanced perspective on how the conflict broke out. As
the historian Anders Stephanson puts it, Gaddis was less interested, consequently,
in the moral implications of the Cold War and who was to blame for it than he was in
statecraft and the scope of security claims.1
By the time he came to write We Now Know, these arguments were also coming
under threatfrom Gaddis himself. He and other scholars had begun to move away
from the accepted schools of thought that had existed before the Cold War ended.
The flood of new documents from the Soviet Union and its allies after the end of the
Cold War inspired Gaddis to write a comprehensive international history of the
conflictsomething that had hitherto been impossible, although the work of other
historians of the new Cold War history certainly influenced him to do so. The
American historian Ernest May, for example, published work arguing that due to
different traditions, belief systems, and objectives in world politics, hostility
between the United States and Soviet Union was bound to occur following World
War II.2
Limitations
One limitation of We Now Know was that Gaddis was unable to understand many
primary documents from Russia, China, and Eastern Europe. In the preface of the
text, however, he stressed that the large volume of working papers and
monographs in English that referenced the most important of these sources made
up for his not being able to analyze them in their original languages. This shows the
extent to which the author had thought about potential criticisms of his work and
largely pre-empted them.
Gaddis also warned his readers that since he published We Now Know right after the
Cold War ended, other people would undoubtedly revisit his work as new sources of
information became available. Important contributions since, particularly the
Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westads The Cold War and the International History
of the Twentieth Century (2010), have argued that we have to see the Cold War as
one event in a bigger global history and take non-American and non-Soviet points of
view into account. While such critiques have challenged the general thrust of the
We Now Know, Gaddis is still one of the most important historians on the subject,
and he has greatly improved our understanding of Cold War history.
Finally, as with all histories and the historians who write them, We Now Know is
limited by the constraints of the particular period in which it was written. It was
exactly for this reason that Gaddis chose to use the word now in the title. And he
explicitly says in We Now Know that his reason for using it was to situate this book
at a particular point in time, not to claim timelessness for it.3 The work has
become a product of its time in the sense that it represented the first attempt to
write a comparative comprehensive international history of the Cold War.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the principal criticism of the text?
Analyze: Is Gaddiss claim that Joseph Stalin was responsible for the Cold War
convincing? Why or why not?
Apply: The author suggests that liberal democracy and capitalism are superior to
communism. In your view, is this true? Why or why not?
Notes
Anders Stephanson, Rethinking Cold War History, Review of International Studies

24, No. 1 (1998): 119.
Ernest May, The Cold War, in Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Making of Americas Soviet
Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 209230.
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), viii.
Section 2: Ideas
This volume is likely to set the parameters for a whole new generation of
scholarship. No historian is better known for his work on the Cold War.
Melvyn Leffler, Review Essay: The Cold War: What do We Now Know?
Key Points
John Lewis Gaddis published We Now Know at the mid-point of his academic career.
He was already a well known scholar of the Cold War and international history more
broadly.
We Now Know moved beyond Gaddiss previous influential work on the school of
historical analysis known as post-revisionism.
Gaddiss body of work is an important reference point in the field of history and has
served as a foundation for further scholarship and debate.
Positioning
When John Lewis Gaddis published We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, he
was already a historian of repute. He had worked as a researcher and instructor at
Ohio University since 1969, and he had held the title of Distinguished Professor
there since 1983. He had also been a visiting professor of strategy at the Naval War
College, a Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at
Oxford University and a Whitney Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations.1 He was also the author of four books, the most famous of which was
Strategies of Containment (1982), a work that focused on the US strategy of
containment, a diplomatic and military strategy designed to impede Soviet
imperialism.
Gaddis wrote We Now Know at the mid-point of his academic career and
immediately after the end of the Cold War. His first studies were published in the
early 1970s2 while relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were
still tense. During this period, the debate on the subject in historiographical terms
(that is, in approaches to writing history) concerned the struggle between orthodox
historians, who held opinions developed during the Cold War, and revisionist
historians, who held contrary opinions formed at the end of the period and
immediately following it. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gaddis waded
into the debate by reframing it entirely and establishing a post-revisionist school of
thought.
Integration
Gaddiss 1982 article, The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of
the Cold War,3 quickly became highly influential, helping him become one of the
most important Cold War thinkers of his generation. By the time he came to write
We Now Know, he had become the one historian even pundits read.4 But Gaddis
was prepared to risk this reputation with We Now Know, as it meant a complete
departure from his work on post-revisionism in favor of a comparative approach:
new Cold War history. It was a bold move, but it paid off. The book was met with
widespread critical acclaim and set the tone for further scholarship.
Gaddis continues to show an open mind. When he published We Now Know in 1997,
he was already aware that his ideas would continue to develop and change in the
future; the phrase we now know designated what was known at the particular
point in time at which the book had been published. In his words: I reserve the
right in the light of new evidence to change my mind, just as this volume revises
much of what I have previously thought and argued.5
Indeed, the most recent book he has written on the Cold War, a 2005 overview of
the entire conflict, further refined and developed the arguments that he first made
in We Now Know, as well as introduced them to a much wider general audience. In
The Cold War, he argues that, given the fact that both sides access to nuclear
weapons had neutralized military conflict, the most important element of the Cold
War was the power of ideas. Ultimately, he claims that liberal democracy and
capitalism provided hope to citizens while Soviet communism did not. This latter
work won Gaddis the prestigious Harry S. Truman book prize.
Although We Now Know proved very important to the study of Cold War history
when it was first published, it has, if anything, only become even more influential.
Significance
The appearance of Gaddiss comprehensive study of the international history of the
Cold War in 1997 was well timed. In a post-Cold War world, many readers were
looking for a book that could explain the event as history, not current affairs. As a
result, Gaddis became the prominent authority on the new Cold War history. The
fact that We Now Know remains a seminal text for students of the Cold War today,
despite the huge influx of new documents that have been released since its
publication, shows how important it still is, even though its author did not expect it
to be timeless.
As well as winning awards and appreciation for his studies of the Cold War as an
international history, Gaddis has also been a highly influential historian of American
grand strategythat is, the USs policy of using every means available to achieve
its aims. His early work on that and the theory and practice of containmentthe
American policy of trying to limit the spread of communismwas also a critical
success. Gaddis continued to work on the subject of containment over the years
until he eventually produced the official biography of George F. Kennan, the
American statesman and principal architect of containment, for which Gaddis was
awarded a prestigious Pulitzer Prize.
Considering all this, it is clear that Gaddis has had an outstanding academic career.
We can expect his contributions to the field of Cold War history to remain influential,
and controversial, for decades to come. His body of work is essential reading for any
scholar interested in the international history of the period.
Key Questions
Synthesize: How does the text relate to the authors wider body of work?
Analyze: What is the difference between revisionism and post-revisionism?
Apply: If the author published the text today, might his position be different?
Notes
John Lewis Gaddis, What We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1997), viiix.
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 19411947
(New York: Colombia University Press, 1972).
John Lewis Gaddis, The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the
Cold War, Diplomatic History 7, No. 3 (1983): 13148.
Anders Stephanson, Rethinking Cold War History, Review of International Studies
24, No. 1 (1998): 119.
John Lewis Gaddis, Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997), viii.
Section 3: Impact
One empire arose, therefore, by invitation, the other by imposition. Europeans
made this distinction, very much as they had done during the war when they
welcomed armies liberating them from the west but feared those that came from
the east. They did so because they saw clearly at the timeeven if a subsequent
generation would not always seehow different American and Soviet empires were
likely to be. It is true that the extent of the American empire quickly exceeded that
of its Soviet counterpart, but this was because resistance to expanding American
influence was never as great.
Key Points
Gaddiss critics have claimed that, rather than focusing on the essence of the Cold
War, he concentrated too much on showing that the political, economic, and social
structures of the US doctrine were superior to those of the Soviet Union.
Although the author has not engaged in direct debate with his critics, he has
modified his arguments in response to their criticisms in subsequent works on Cold
War history.
Scholars today have moved beyond Gaddiss thesis by attempting to situate the
Cold War within a longer history, rather than analyzing it as a single event.
Criticism
John Lewis Gaddiss We Now Know was strongly criticized when it was first
published. Melvyn Leffler, another prominent Cold War historian, was one of the
most vocal critics of the book. He argued that, although Gaddis had been a pioneer
of the post-revisionist school of historical analysis, he was more concerned with
placing the blame for the Cold War on the Soviet Union than on understanding how
it came about. In this regard, he claims that the text reasserted many of the
orthodox arguments on how the conflict began.
The political scientist Irene Gendzier put similar concerns in more blunt terms by
saying that the work was above all a contribution to the retraditionalization of Cold
War history in which the apologetic treatment of US policy mutes much of what we
now know from the public record.1 By this, she meant that Gaddiss analysis
returned to a traditional interpretation of the historical facts.
Leffler made further criticisms. He argued that Gaddis had come to the firm
conclusion that the Cold War was unavoidable while Joseph Stalin was in charge of
the Soviet Union without closely examining Stalins actions.2 Richard Lebow
agreed, and pointed out what he called an unresolved ambiguity in the book about
the Cold War and Stalins relation to it.3 According to Leffler, the book was
worryingly full of the triumphalism that runs through our contemporary culture.4
He also argued that the neat conclusions it made ran the risk of becoming outdated
that, as time passed, the arguments that Gaddis put forth in We Now Know would
start to seem nothing more than products of the immediate post-Cold War era. He
warned Gaddis: In writing about the Cold War after the Cold War, we should not
confuse its ending with its origins and evolution.5
Responses
Many historians said that the work actually contained very little that was newthat
it was just a rounding up of old arguments. Although some of those criticisms were
persuasive, it would have been hard for Gaddis to accept them all without
fundamentally undermining his methods and conclusions.
Nevertheless, we can see evidence in Gaddiss more recent writing that
developments in Cold War historiography since We Now Know was published have
changed the way he thinks. This is clear in his most recent book on the topic, The
Cold War, published in 2005, which covers the whole conflict in a much more
succinct manner than We Now Know. Discussing the Cold War in that books preface,
Gaddis accepts that: Any attempt to reduce the history of it to the role of great
forces, great powers, or great leaders would fail to do it justice. Any effort to capture
it within a simple chronological narrative could only produce mush.6
Although Gaddis has not been involved in direct debate since he published the
latter work, he seems to have accepted the consensus among historians that the
Cold War was too large an event to summarize in any single-volume history, no
matter how ambitious or talented the historian. He also seems to have accepted
criticisms that the war was fought on many fronts, and other participantsnot
merely the United States and the Soviet Unioninfluenced its outcome.
We Now Know is still very relevant to historians of the Cold War, although perhaps
not in the way in which Gaddis expected or intended when he wrote it.
The text remains an influential study of the new Cold War history that began
immediately as the period ended, when a huge flood of new documentary evidence
became available, allowing a reinterpretation of previously accepted historical facts.
It was one of the first texts to try to rethink Cold War history in a comprehensive
way through the comparison of documents from different sources, and it still
represents an important milestone in the evolution of the historiography. Since its
publication, however, Cold War historians have moved away from the master
narrative approachtelling the whole story in one big overviewtowards a more
nuanced and varied understanding of the Cold War that attempts to position it as
one event within a much wider historical context.
In We Now Know, Gaddis helped start this movement by suggesting that the new
Cold War history needed to leave the old polarized arguments behind and treat the
Cold War as a particular episode instead of a permanent condition. Reviewers of the
book agreed. Richard Lebow, a well known scholar of international relations, argued
that new history also needs new questions. Let us leave behind the question of
who started the Cold Warstill a central theme of this bookand pose more
interesting, important, and productive questions that will provide insight into the
past the present.7
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are Irene Gendzier and Melvyn Lefflers criticisms of the author?
Analyze: Is Lefflers critique of Gaddis convincing?
Apply: Do you think the Cold War should be studied as a single event or as a part of
a longer history? Explain.
Notes
Irene L. Gendzier, The Saints Come Marching In: A Response to John Lewis Gaddis,
in After the Fall: 1989 and the Future of Freedom, ed. George N. Katsiaficas (London:
Routledge, 2001), 162.
Review 104, No. 2 (1999): 503.
Richard Ned Lebow, We Still Dont Know! Diplomatic History 22, No. 4 (1998): 628.
John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2005), ix.
Lebow, We Still Dont Know!, 632.
Section 3: Impact
What is there new to say about the old question of responsibility for the Cold War?
Who actually started it? Could it have been averted? Here I think the new Cold War
history is bringing us back to an old answer: that as long as Stalin was running the
Soviet Union a cold war was unavoidable.
Key Points
Other historians used Gaddiss method of analysis in We Now Know to reach

different conclusions.
Gaddis was criticized for questioning his earlier analysis.
Historians today focus more on the role of ideas, ideologies, and cultures than on
the grand strategy perspectives that Gaddis adopted.
Uses And Problems

John Lewis Gaddis recognized the complexity of the historical forces that shaped the
Cold War in We Now Know. But this complexity meant that historians reacted to We
Now Know in interesting and unpredictable ways. Although the book challenged the
work of historians who had once supported him, it also built bridges between Gaddis
and some of his more passionate critics.
As the debate has unfolded, scholars have conducted historical studies on a wide
range of topics that all deal, in some way or another, with the Cold War.
Explorations of themes as varied as ideas, values, language, culture, race, gender,
geopolitics, economics, and domestic political culture, to name but a few, have all
appeared since Gaddis published We Now Know.1 That has affected the power and
validity of many of the conclusions he made in the text for the precise reason that
he anticipated when writing the book: today, we now know much more.
But the text is still relevant to students because: 1) it is an accessible and wellwritten overview of some of the key events of the early Cold War, and 2) it is the
first comprehensive comparative account of that event. It remains a necessary text
for anyone trying to understand the parameters of the current debate around Cold
War history.
Schools Of Thought
Gaddiss methodology in We Now Know challenged the post-revisionist school of
Cold War historiansa surprise to many, as Gaddis had previously been at the
forefront of the movement. During the latter years of the Cold War, he and his close
supporters had argued in favor of a realistic explanation for the outbreak of the Cold
Warthat it was basically all about national interests, grand strategy, and great
power politics (that is, a political strategy based on deliberate aggression and
threat) and that ideology, ideas, and beliefs were not important. But with access to
new documents from the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe, Gaddis
fundamentally revised his views and returned to some orthodox arguments about
how the Cold War began.
For example, he placed greater emphasis on the role of Stalin and his ideological
compulsions in the outbreak of the Cold War. That meant that historians like the
Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad, who had once passionately supported his postrevisionist stance, now began to oppose him. Lundestad argued that Gaddis was
being far too critical of his own earlier views and that his new views represent a
dangerous return to the orthodox school of interpretation.2
In contrast, historians who were once bitterly opposed to Gaddiss interpretation of
the Cold War now seemed to share his methodological approach. The historian
Anders Stephanson, for example, who argued that American ideology was the most
important contributing factor to the outbreak of the Cold War, had employed a
similar methodology to the one that Gaddis used in We Now Know. The only
difference was that Stephanson came to the exact opposite conclusion about which
countrys ideology had provoked the Cold War.
Current supporters of the methodological approach to studying the history of the
Cold War employed in We Now Know still support its central premise that the new
Cold War history must be based on archival material and must be comparative.
Historians now tend to focus more on the part played by ideas, ideologies, and
cultures than grand strategyan analysis that Gaddis supported.
Some scholars, such as the Cold War historian Odd Arne Westad, have emphasized
concepts. For him, [the] belief that each group involved in the conflict had sets of
concepts or ideas which defined and constituted them is an important feature of
historical interpretation. Often (though not exclusively) focusing on ideologies and
patterns of thought, conceptualist historians tend to see a much wider variety of
human agendas and processes of change intermingled in the conflict we now call
the Cold War, according to Westad.3
In the intellectual world of the new generation of Cold War historians, We Now Know
provides historians with a methodological framework from which to write new
international histories of the Cold War. It continues to be an important starting point
for Cold War studies.
Supporters of this approach to Cold War history, and international history in general,
are very influential today. These historiansworking with the most recently opened
archivesare now writing histories of the Cold War from novel points of view,
exploring new transnational, cultural, geopolitical and societal sides to the conflict.
Understanding the place of the Cold War within the overall history of the twentieth
century is very much about understanding global processes of change,4 writes
Westad. A new generation of historians, inspired by the determination of Gaddis in
We Now Know to explore the Cold War in new and exciting ways, has followed his
lead in order to explain the conflict in extraordinary detail to the next generation of
Cold War scholars.
Key Questions
Synthesize: In what ways has the text served as a foundation for further scholarship
and debate?
Analyze: How do the views of Gaddis and Stephanson differ? Which view is more
convincing?
Apply: In your view, what were the underlying causes of the Cold War and why did it
last as long as it did?
Notes
Review 104 (1999) 2: 5012.
Odd Arne Westad, Introduction: Reviewing the Cold War, in Reviewing the Cold
War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (London: Frank
Cass, 2000), 5.
Century, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 1, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and
Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6.
Westad, The Cold War, 17.
Section 3: Impact
Limited access to Soviet and Chinese archives, a flood of documents from Eastern
Europe, and the general willingness of former Soviet-bloc officials to talk about the
past have stimulated an exciting rethinking and rewriting of postwar history. We
Now Know exploits this archival research and the publications based on it to
reassess some of the major controversies surrounding the first fifteen years of the
Cold War.
Richard Ned Lebow, We Still Dont Know!
Key Points
While scholars agree that the Cold War was too vast and complicated an event for
one master narrative to effectively summarize it, We Now Know remains an
important reference point in Cold War studies.
However, since history evolves, and debate has progressed, the text is no longer
central to current debate.
Today, the Cold War is a historical event and not a matter of current affairs, so
historians seek to understand it within a longer period of history rather than
analyzing it as a single development.
Position
In the decade and a half since John Lewis Gaddis published We Now Know, a new
generation of Cold War historians has revisited and refined its ideas. Although
Gaddis confessed in his concluding remarks that the text was unlikely to remain
definitive as time went on, he did intend for it to provide readers with the first
comprehensive comparative international history of the Cold War.
After publication, critics attacked this idea as unrealisticthey thought that the Cold
War was simply too vast and complicated an event to be summed up properly in
one master narrative. Historians wanted to move away from what they thought
were simplistic questions on who started the Cold War in order to explore the event
in the broader context of the international history of the twentieth century.
As Odd Arne Westad put it in a recent essay: We need to place the Cold War in the
larger context of chronological time and geographical space within the web that ties
the never-ending threads of history together We need to indicate how Cold War
conflicts connect to broader trends in social economic and intellectual history as
well as to the political and military developments of the longer term of which it
forms a part.1
Interaction
We Now Know still serves a purpose as an exceptionally well-written and detailed
general international history of the first third of the Cold War. It provides new
students of that conflict with a useful introduction to the most important events of
that early period, as well as an important understanding of the central tenets of the
new Cold War history as Gaddis defined it. Although the debate over the historical
understanding of the Cold War has moved beyond that of great-power interactions
and grand strategy towards a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of it
as simply one aspect of the international history of the twentieth century as a
whole,2 We Now Know remains influentialeven if it is no longer challenging or
transforming existing ideas about Cold War history.
We Now Know also continues to act as the standard bearer for a method of
historical analysis that uses documentary evidence from the former Soviet Union
and its allies to restate traditional arguments on who was to blame for the Cold War.
But as the mainstream of Cold War history has moved away from this debate, this
argument is less relevant.
We Now Know represents an important introduction to the current intellectual

debate on the historical understanding of the Cold War, even if its central
arguments have since been developed and refined by other historians, and even by
the author himself. Ideas about the Cold War have significantly changed since
Gaddis wrote We Now Know. At that time, when new documentary evidence was still
only just coming to light from the former Soviet Union, its Eastern European allies,
and the Peoples Republic of China, historians, with Gaddis at the forefront, were
keen to pass judgment on a Cold War that had only just ended. In We Now Know,
Gaddis wanted to produce the first comparative international history of the Cold
War.
But the debate has now moved on, and the passage of time has brought historical
detachment from it. As Gaddis has acknowledged in a more recent history of the
conflict, young scholars today do not even remember when the Cold War was a
current phenomenon, rather than a historical one.
Now that the Cold War has become simply another historical event, historians have
less political motivation to analyze it from the point of view of a clash of ideological
superpowers, as orthodox and revisionist historians commonly did before its end in
1991. Historians now want to understand the Cold War in the larger context of
international history and to explore how it interacted with factors such as race,
culture, language, gender, media, and many other criteria. This process culminated
in the publication in 2010 of the exhaustive and authoritative Cambridge History of
the Cold War.3 This three-volume work of 2,000 pages explored a huge range of
topics that relate in some way or another to the international history of the Cold
War. But even so, its editor stressed that no history of the Cold War could be, or
ever should be, considered the last word.4
Gaddis contributed to this study himself by writing an essay on grand strategies of
the Cold War.5 As one part of a much more detailed anthology of work, this essay
demonstrated Gaddiss understanding that Cold War history has changed.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is Odd Arne Westads view of the text and how convincing is this?
Analyze: To what extent is Gaddiss argument still relevant? In what ways, has
debate moved beyond it?
Apply: Based on your own research, why and how did the Cold War end?
Notes
Century, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol 1, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and
Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6.
Westad, The Cold War and the International History of the Twentieth Century, 2.
Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History of the Cold War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Westad, The Cold War and the International History of the Twentieth Century, 2.
John Lewis Gaddis, Grand strategies in the Cold War, in The Cambridge History of
the Cold War, Vol. 2, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121.
Section 3: Impact
Finally, how will the Cold War look a hundred years hence? Not as it does today, it
seems safe enough to say, just as the Cold War we now know looks different from
the one we knew, or thought we knew, while it was going on. It ought to humble
historians to recognize how much their views of the pastany past, no matter how
distantreflect the particular present in which they find themselves. We are all, in
this sense, temporal parochials. There follows, then, one last hypothesis: 'new' Cold
War historians should retain the capacity to be surprised.
Key Points
The importance of We Now Know lies in the fact that it was the first study after the
Cold War ended to compare new sources.
The study of the Cold War is no longer exclusively focused on political and
diplomatic history. It is seen as an event within a longer period of history that can
be examined within different disciplines.
Today, scholars have moved beyond a bipolar focus to understand the role of other
countries in the Cold War, given that it was a globally significant event.
Potential
John Lewis Gaddiss We Now Know has become the standard text of new Cold War
history.
With more access to a much wider range of archives, and by focusing on a much
greater diversity of context, recent studies may have overtaken the texts central
ideas. But that does not mean that We Now Know is irrelevant today. In the same
way that any Cold War scholar still needs to be familiar with orthodox and revisionist
Cold War histories, Gaddiss work will always be important for understanding the
approach to Cold War history that he helped to develop.
Even if the debate about the Cold War has become more nuanced, international,
and diversified than was possible when Gaddis wrote We Now Know, nothing can
change the fact that the book broke new ground when it first appeared. It also
helped put Cold War historians on the path to writing the type of Cold War history
that has become commonplace. For these reasons, there is no doubt that it will
continue to be considered a seminal text for students of Cold War history.
Future Directions
Since the publication of We Now Know, historians have increasingly treated the Cold
War as a global phenomenon. Cold War research now crosses a variety of disciplines
and, along with the access to new archives, that has helped redefine the meaning of
the conflict. Current study of the Cold War no longer focuses on traditional political
and diplomatic history alone. Instead it includes transnational, social, and cultural
history, among many other elements. Within this context, it is hard to imagine
future historiographical debates on the Cold War centering on the arguments in We
Now Know. The field of reference of the new Cold War history has expanded too
far beyond the confines of that text.
But, as the first work of new Cold War history to consider the new source material
and produce a comparative international history of the period not long after it
ended, We Now Know will continue to be relevant to Cold War scholarsat least as
an introduction to the subject. It is probable that, like many recent accounts of the
Cold War, new historians will continue to develop Gaddiss original ideas. Today,
many studies are trying to take a wider view of this topic in terms of theme and
geography than Gaddis was able to provide. They have moved their focus away
from the bipolar contest between the United States and the Soviet Union towards
globalizing Cold War concepts, giving greater attention to other regions and
countries. In short, they have put the Cold War in context as part of the
international history of the twentieth century.1
Summary
We Now Know still deserves special attention from all historians and students of the
history of the Cold War. Although the debate has moved on significantly since its
publication, the book remains a seminal study of the origins of the Cold War.
Gaddiss accessible writing style, his talented working of source material from
across the ideological divide, and his ability to piece together complicated and
diverse events during the early Cold War produced a persuasive synthesis. This is a
study of enduring relevance both to the casual reader and the serious historian.
Since the publication of We Now Know, Gaddis has maintained his reputation as one
of the worlds most prominent Cold War historians. His arguments, ideas, and
thoughts on the subject are taken seriously and debated by some of the most
reputed scholars in this field. The Cold War, his latest work on the topic, is a concise
but comprehensive overview of the entire conflict and was awarded the Harry S.
Truman book prize in 2006. Critics have also praised his official biography of the
famous cold warrior2 George F. Kennan, which received a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.3
We Now Know laid the foundations for this success; Gaddis has revised his method
and interpretation in later works.
The impact We Now Know had when it first appeared was significant in terms of the
wide audience it reached, the plaudits it received, and in the range of criticism it
attracted. An ambitious work on a topic that is always controversial was bound to
attract praise and criticism in equal measure.
But despite the arguments of its detractors, no one could deny that Gaddis had
produced a study that was unique at the time. The end of the Cold War allowed him
to conduct the first, comprehensive, comparative international history of the
conflict. No matter how much the new Cold War history evolved over the coming
years and decades, it is indisputable that Gaddis was the first to define that school
of thought and that he blazed a trail for other historians to follow.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why is the text considered to be important?
Analyze: People often refer to China as a communist country. Based on your own
research, is this true today? In what ways does the Chinese model differ from that
of the United States?
Apply: Based on your own research, which communist countries exist today? Is
Russia still communist? If not, how has its system evolved since the end of the Cold
War?
Notes
Century, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 1, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler
and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2.
A person involved in the development and execution of American or Soviet policy
during the Cold War.
John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: The Penguin
Press, 2011).
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Anarchy: commonly, a state of disorder due to absence of authority; in international

relations theory, the absence of a world government.
Balance of Power: in international relations theory, this is a situation where different
nations counter each others influence to create stability. Realists propose this as a
means of dealing with anarchy (the absence of a world government).
Capitalism: an economic system that emphasizes the private ownership of the
means of production. The means of production refers to those things that are
necessary for the production of goodssuch as land, natural resources, and
technology.
Chinese Civil War: a protracted conflict in China (192736 and 194650) between
the nationalist forces of the Republic of China (ROC) and forces of the Communist
Party of China, eventually resulting in the establishment of the Peoples Republic of
China.
Cold War: hostility between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and
its allies that began after the end of World War II and continued until the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Collective security: a system by which international peace and security is
maintained by an association of nations.
Communism: a political ideology that relies on the state ownership of the means of
production, the collectivization of labor, and the abolition of social class. It was the
ideology of the Soviet Union (191791).
Containment: A policy designed by the American diplomat George F. Kennan and the
United States government to prevent perceived efforts by the Soviet Union to
spread communism to other foreign countries.
Cuban Missile Crisis: a political and military crisis in 1962 involving the United
States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. It began after the American government
discovered that the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles on Cuban territory.
Eastern Bloc: a term used by the United States and its allies during the Cold War to
refer to the Soviet Union and its allies.
Grand Strategy: the deliberate use of all instruments of power at the disposal of a
nation, or an alliance of nations, to attain a defined policy goal.
Historiography: a term meaning either the study of the methodology of writing
history or the body of historical work that exists on a specific topic.
Imperialism: the extension of a nations influence by territorial acquisition or by the
establishment of political and economic dominance over other nations.
Korean War: a war between 1950 and 1953 between the communist Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to unite the
Korean peninsula under one government. It is often considered to have been not
only a civil war but also a proxy war between the superpowers in the Cold War, who
sponsored different sides of the conflict.
Liberal Democracy: a political system that emphasizes human and civil rights,
regular and free elections between competing political parties, and adherence to
the rule of law.
Marxism-Leninism: a political ideology that combines a Marxist analysis of
capitalismsocialist concepts developed by the political philosopher and economist
Karl Marx (181883) and the industrialist Friedrich Engels (18201895)with
Leninism (theories of revolutionary action developed by Vladimir Lenin (18701924),
the first leader of the Soviet Union).
Orthodox: a scholarly approach that holds the Soviet Union responsible for the Cold
War because of its Sovietization of Eastern Europe (that is, the imposition of a
governmental and cultural model developed in Russia) and ambitions to spread
communism around the world.
Post-Revisionism: the practice of replacing old revisionist or orthodox arguments
about the origins of the Cold War with interpretations stressing the importance on
geopolitics and power balances.
Revisionism: an interpretation of events that places greater responsibility for the
Cold War on the United States by emphasizing its imperialist tendencies and
ambitions to dominate global affairs.
Russian Revolution: a collective term for a series of revolutionary uprisings in
Imperial Russia that deposed the ruling Tsar Nicholas II and ultimately led to the
creation in 1917 of a Russian socialist state ruled by communists.
Third World: a term commonly used for the underdeveloped and developing
countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Triumphalism: usually, an excessive glee in triumph; triumphalism might color
historical analysis by preventing a fully objective analysis.
Soviet Bloc: the communist nations that were closely allied with the Soviet Union
during the Cold War.
Stalinism: the ideology of Joseph Stalinan authoritarian, centralized form of
communism.
Woodrow Wilson Center: an institution in the United States, based in Washington,
concerned with research and communication in global affairs.
World War I (191418): a global conflict fought between the Central Powers
(Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire) and the victorious Allied
Powers (Britain, France, Russia and, after 1917, the United States). More than 16
million people died as a result of the war.
World War II (19391945): also known as the Second World War, the most
widespread military conflict in history, resulting in more than 50 million casualties.
While the conflict began with Germanys invasion of Poland in 1939, it soon involved
all of the major world powers, which gradually formed two military alliances and
were eventually joined by a great number of the worlds nations.
Neal Ascherson (b. 1932) is a well-known Scottish journalist and writer. He worked
for the Observer, among other important press outlets.
Fidel Castro (b. 1926) is a Cuban politician and revolutionary. He was prime minister
of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president of the country from 1976 to 2008.
Jian Chen is Distinguished Global Network Professor of History at New York
University, Shanghai. He is a leading scholar on the Cold War, modern Chinese
History, and the history of Chinese-American relations.
Robert Divine is George W. Littlefield Professor Emeritus of History. He was John
Lewis Gaddiss PhD advisor.
Irene Gendzier is a professor of political science at Boston University.
Louis Halle (191088) was a distinguished scholar of international studies. He was
also a member of the policy planning staff at the US Department of State during the
Korean and Vietnam Wars.
David Hendrickson is Robert J. Fox Distinguished Service Professor of Political
Science at Colorado College. He has published several important works, including
Peace Pact: The Lost World of the American Founding (2003).
Eric Hobsbawm (19172002) was a well-known British Marxist historian. He wrote
several seminal works, including The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital
(1975), and The Age of Empire (1987).
Kim Il-Sung (191294) was the leader of North Korea from 1948 until his death in
1994.
George F. Kennan (19042005) was an American historian and diplomat. He was a
key figure during the Cold War.
John F. Kennedy (191763) was president of the United States from 1961 until his
assassination in 1963. He was president during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Nikita Khrushchev (18941971) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1956 to
1964. He was president during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Richard Ned Lebow is a professor emeritus at Dartmouth College and a professor of
international political theory at Kings College London. He is an expert on the Cold
War and international relations more broadly.
Melvyn Leffler is Edward Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia.
He is the author of several important works, including For the Soul of Mankind: the
United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (2008).
Howard H. Lentner (19322014) was a professor emeritus and chair of the political
science department at Baruch College. He was an expert on international relations
and foreign policy.
Geir Lundestad (b. 1945) is a Norwegian historian and former director of the
Norwegian Nobel Institute. He is the author of several important works, including
International Relations Since the End of the Cold War: New and Old Dimensions in
International Relations (2013).
Ernest May (19282009) was a renowned American historian of international
relations. He was a professor at Harvard University for 55 years and the author of 14
books.
Constantine Pleshakov is currently a visiting professor of international relations at
Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, USA. Previously, he was director of the
geopolitics department at the Institute of US and Canada Studies at the Russian
Academy of Sciences from 1986 to 1996.
Joseph Stalin (18781953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his
death in 1953.
Anders Stephanson is Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Professor of
History. He is the author of several important works, including Kennan and the Art of
Foreign Policy(1989).
William Stueck is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of
Georgia. He is an expert on the Korean War* and USKorean relations.
Odd Arne Wested is a Norwegian historian and a specialist in Cold War history and
international affairs. He is a professor of international history at the London School
of Economics and Political Science. He was the co-editor of The Cambridge History
of the Cold War.
Mao Zedong (18931976) was a Chinese communist revolutionary and the founding
father of the Peoples Republic of China.
Vladislav Zubok is a professor of international history at the London School of

Economics and Political Science. He is the author of several important works,
including A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
(2007).
Works Cited
Ascherson, Neal. Khrushchevs Secret. London Review of Books 19, No. 20. (1997):
268.
Chen, Jian. Chinas Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American
Confrontation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: The Penguin
Press, 2011.
___. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National
Security Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
___. The Cold War. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
___. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 19411947. New York:
Colombia University Press, 1972.
___. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
___. A Grand Strategy of Transformation. Foreign Policy 133 (2002): 5057.
___. Grand Strategies in the Cold War. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War,
Volume 2: Crises and Dtente, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
___. Grand Strategy in the Second Term. Foreign Affairs 84 (2005) 1: 2-15.
___. The Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War.
Diplomatic History 7, No. 3 (1983): 13148.
Gendzier, Irene L. The Saints Come Marching In: A Response to John Lewis Gaddis.
In After the Fall: 1989 and the Future of Freedom, edited by George N. Katsiaficas.
London: Routledge, 2001.
Halle, Louis. The Cold War As History. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.
Hendrickson, David. Review: We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Foreign
Affairs (JulyAugust 1997).
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 19141991. New
York: Pantheon, 1994.
Judt, Tony. A Story Still To Be Told. The New York Review of Books, March 23, 2006.
Lebow, Richard Ned, We Still Dont Know! Diplomatic History 22, No. 4 (1998):
62732.
Leffler, Melvyn P. The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of
the Cold War, 19171953. New York: Hill & Wang, 1994.
___. The Cold War: What Do We Now Know? The American Historical Review 104,
No. 2 (1999): 50124.
Leffler, Melvyn P and Odd Arne Westad. The Cambridge History of the Cold War.
Lentner, Howard H. New Cold War History: A Review of We Now Know: Rethinking
Cold War History.H-Teachpol (February, 1998).
Lundestad, Geir. Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe,
19451952. Journal of Peace Research 23, No. 3 (1986): 26377.
May, Ernest. The Cold War. In The Making of Americas Soviet Policy, edited by
Joseph S. Nye Jr. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
Stephanson, Anders. Rethinking Cold War History. Review of International Studies
24, No. 1 (1998): 11924.
Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton: Princeton
Westad, Odd Arne. Cold War and Revolution: Soviet-American Rivalry and the
Origins of the Chinese Civil War, 19441946. New York: Columbia University Press,
1993.
___. Bibliographical Essay: The Cold War and the International History of the
Twentieth Century. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1: Origins,
edited by Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010.
___. Introduction: Reviewing the Cold War. In Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches,
Interpretations, Theory, edited by Odd Arne Westad. London: Frank Cass, 2000.
___. The Cold War and the International History of the Twentieth Century. In The
Cambridge History of the Cold War, Volume 1: Origins, edited by Melvyn P. Leffler
and Odd Arne Westad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Zhang, Shu Guang. Deterrence and Strategic Culture: Chinese-American
Confrontations, 19491958. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
___. Maos Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 19501953. Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1995.
Zubok, Vladislav and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlins Cold War: From
Stalin to Khrushchev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
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Kenneth WaltzTheory of International Politics
Ways In To The Text
Key Points
Kenneth Waltz was a leading American international relations theorist of the late
twentieth century. He is considered to have brought a scientific revolution to the
study of international affairs.
Waltzs aim in writing Theory of International Politics was to critique existing
theories, to create a new theory to replace them, and it to test that theory with realworld international issues.
Theory transformed the study of international affairs. Although the end of the Cold
War (a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their
respective allies) in 1991 challenged its arguments, todays frictions between Russia
and the United States over the crisis in Ukraine has stimulated renewed interest in
the work.
Who was Kenneth Waltz?

Kenneth Waltz (19242013), the author of Theory of International Politics (1979),
was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he spent much of his childhood. After
completing his primary education, Waltz attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where he
first studied mathematics and then switched to economics. The outbreak of World
War II, however, interrupted his education.
After the war, Waltz returned to Oberlin to complete his Bachelors degree,
graduating in 1948. He then attended Columbia University for graduate studies,
where he first majored in economics, then English literature, and finally settled on
political philosophy. Waltz completed his Masters at Columbia, and then, after
fighting in the 195053 Korean Warin which the communist North fought the
South, with a degree of intervention and sponsorship from China, the Soviet Union,
and the UShe was accepted into Columbias doctoral program under the
supervision of the international relations scholar William T. R. Fox.
Despite having fought in two major wars, Waltz downplayed these experiences,
saying they had little impact on the development of his ideas.1
Waltzs first major work was his doctoral dissertation Man, The State, and War,
published as a book in 1959.2 It would gain Waltz widespread recognition as a
leading scholar in the developing field of international relations. Building on the
success of that first text, Waltz published Theory of International Politics in 1979. It
would go on to be his most influential and famous work.3
The importance of Waltzs Theory to the discipline of international relations cannot
be overstated. The text brought a scientific revolution to the discipline and
marked the start of a major theoretical debate that pitted neorealists (who argue,
very roughly, that countries have a need to compete) against neoliberals (who
argue, equally roughly, that countries have a need to cooperate). As a leading
neorealist, Waltz has been described as one of the giants of international

relations.4
What Does Theory of International Politics Say?
Kenneth Waltzs primary goal in writing Theory of International Politics was to
answer this question: If changes in international outcomes are linked directly to
changes in actors, how can one account for similarities of outcome that persist or
recur even as actors vary?5 In other words, Waltz wanted to know how
international relations theorists can account for repeated actions among states
notably, conflictsthat have remained constant throughout history, even as states
have undergone numerous and significant changes, such as political reform,
revolutions, and so on.
No theoretical model had been able to account for this, Waltz believed. Theory was
his attempt to provide one.
In the introduction to Theory, Waltz lays out how he intends to answer this question.
First, he looks at the current theories of international politics and other approaches
that claim to be important. Next, he builds a theory of international politics that
seeks to remedy the defects of existing theories, which he then applies to real-world
examples to show his theorys usefulness.6
The approach Kenneth Waltz takes in Theory focuses on two main ideas: 1) realism,
the school of thought that views the international system as anarchicthat is,
ungoverned by any higher authority, with states acting in the interests of their own
security, and 2) the structure of the international system. The concept of realism
had been around since the fifth century b.c.e., when the Greek historian Thucydides
argued in his book, The History of the Peloponnesian War, that politics were not
rooted in matters of principle, but rather in promoting a countrys own interests.7
Given this, modern realism is based on a number of standard beliefs:
The international system is anarchic.
States are the primary actors of international relations.
States all share the goal of survival.
States provide for their own security.
After World War II, the German political theorist Hans Morgenthau adapted earlier
realist writings into a modern theory, now known as classical realism. That theory
held that the power-hungry nature of humanity and the self-interested calculations
of countries defined global politics.8 In other words, realists believe that conflict
not cooperationis what drives relations among states. Although Waltz shared
these views, he felt that the classical realist model reduced complex matters into
simple modelsa process known as reductionismand was theoretically insufficient
to answer the question that he tried to answer in Theory.
As a result, Waltz created a model that sought to adapt a positivist approach to the
study of international relations. He believed that a valid theory should be founded
on observable evidence, and it should be possible to measure its strength by testing
it against real events. That led him to conclude that certain aspects of the
international system, not any particular features of the states within it, define the
behavior of those states.
He went on to argue that the international system is leaderless and founded on
anarchy; states are the main actors in the international system, and their
capabilities and resources are distributed unevenly. This leads states to naturally
compete with one another through the adoption of foreign policies aimed at
advancing their own interests at the expense of others.
Why Does Theory of International Politics Matter?
Theory is a valuable text for students looking to understand modern international
relations theory. The text marked a turning point in the study of international
relations, pushing the field away from the realm of political philosophy toward the
social sciencesareas that researchers can study using the scientific method of
forming theories on the basis of observations and then testing those theories by
observing further developments. This changed the way scholars studied the
interactions between and among countries and allowed them to analyze events
using a standard set of ideas.
The book, a product of the Cold War era, served as the starting point for a major
theoretical debate that lasted from the 1980s to the early 1990s and led to the rise
of several new schools of international relations theory:
neorealismthe theory Waltz proposes in Theory, sometimes referred to as
structural realism
neoliberalismthe school of thought that cooperation between states through
international institutions is likely, given the benefits of that cooperation for all
balance of threata theory concerned with the ways that states decide on the
extent to which other states threaten them.
This long list of theories all stemmed from the debate surrounding Waltzs text and
has helped transform the way we understand the world in which we live.
The end of the Cold War posed several challenges to the neorealist school of
thought, largely because the theory assumed that the competition between the
United States and Soviet Union would continue. As scholars began to recognize this
problem, several new schools of thought emerged. Some opposed neorealism, such
as critical theoryan approach, also referred to as the Frankfurt School, which
offers a critical analysis of the assumptions on which the study of international
relations is founded. The theory of constructivism, an approach that argues that
international relations are decided by the societies that make up states, also ran
counter to neorealism.
Other theories attempted to adapt neorealism for the post-Cold War international
scene. Among them were: 1) defensive realism, according to which the anarchic
nature of the international scene caused states to concentrate on defense to the
point that conflict became likely; 2) offensive realism, an approach emphasizing
states offensive capabilities; and 3) neoclassical realism, a combination of
neorealism and classical realism.
Although these new theories have somewhat eclipsed neorealism since the end of
the Cold War, the renewal of tension between the United States and Russia in 2014
following the events in Ukraine has raised the possibility that neorealism might once
again return as a leading school of thought.
In the end, Theory of International Politics was a revolutionary text because it
changed the entire discipline of international relations. Indeed, it continues to be
one of the texts that scholars in the field most often cite, with more than 12,000
citations at the time of writing, according to Google Scholar. This eclipses the
number of citations of Waltzs ideological rival, the neoliberal political theorist
Robert Keohane, whose work After Hegemony (1984) has just over 8,000 citations.
Given its continued relevance, it is not surprising that readers continue to hail
Waltzs Theory as one of the single most important texts in the field of international
relations.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why do you think Waltz dismissed the notion that World War II and the
Korean War had impacted the way he viewed the world?
Analyze: What are the primary assumptions of realism?
Apply: How did realism emerge as a school of thought in international relations?
Notes
Harry Kriesler, Theory and International Politics: Conversation with Kenneth Waltz,
accessed October 16, 2013, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Waltz/.
Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1959).
Kriesler, Theory and International Politics.
Douglas Martin, Kenneth Waltz, Foreign-Relations Expert, Dies at 88, New York
Times, May 18, 2013.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley, 1979), 65.
Waltz, Theory, 1.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Crowley (Auckland:
Floating Library, 2008), 568.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1948).
I think the most powerful shaping event occurred in August 1945 with the dropping
of two atomic bombs. That was a world decisive event. The impact the bombing of
Japan had on my thought about international politics was pervasive.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory Talks interview with Peer Schouten
Key Points
Theory of International Politics is the foundational work of neorealism, an important
school of thought in the field of international relations that emphasizes the
importance of the structure of the international system.
Waltz claimed that his experiences fighting in World War II and the Korean War did
not affect his academic outlook.
Waltzs approach to understanding international relations overturned the
established approach. His neorealist school of thought has been successfully applied
to international affairs in a world where a number of countries possess nuclear
weapons.
Why Read This Text?

Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics, published in 1979, is one of the
most important texts in the field of international relations. The text revolutionized
the way that scholars have studied the field by introducing an entirely new
theoretical school of thought: neorealism.
When writing Theory, Waltzs aim was to create a theory based on the most
important features of international politics: the balancing of great powers, war, and
the forming of alliances. Waltz had felt that previous theoretical models such as
realism (roughly, the argument that states act in the interests of their own security)
and liberalism (roughly, the argument that states can achieve peace and mutual
cooperation) had reduced complex global issues to models that were too simplea
process known as reductionism.
Like the realists before him, Waltz believed that the international system was, being
ungoverned, anarchic. He thought that states were the main actors in the
international system and that their capabilities and resources were distributed
unevenly, leading to competition between and among them as they sought to
advance their own interests at the expense of others. Yet Waltz, with his belief that
a theory should be founded on observable evidence and tested against real events,
adopted a more positivist approach to the study of international relations. He
believed that the features of the international system itself, rather than any
features of particular countries or their individual leaders, governed the behavior of
countries within that system.
With these central points in mind, Waltz was able to provide a theoretical model that
scholars could use to interpret real-world events. In doing so, his theory transformed
the way scholars understood international affairs.
Author's Life
Kenneth Waltz was born in 1924, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and attended Oberlin
College in Ohio, where he studied mathematics and economics until military service
in World War II interrupted his studies. On his return, he earned a BA in economics
from Oberlin.1 Waltz continued his education at Columbia University in New York
City, where he applied his economics background to the study of politics under the
supervision of William T. R. Fox, a respected realist scholar.2
The outbreak of the Korean War, however, meant that his studies were once again
interrupted as he fought for the US-led United Nations force against the army of
communist North Korea, aided by China and the Soviet Union. After the war, Waltz
returned to Columbia to teach and complete his PhD thesis, which he later
published as a book in 1959.3 The academic community continues to hold that text,
Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis, in high regard, and it led to
Waltzs rise as a major scholar of international relations.4
By the time Waltz published Theory in 1979 he was already an established
academic. After leaving Columbia in 1957, Waltz taught at a number of leading
colleges and universities around the US before settling at the University of California
at Berkeley in 1971, where he would remain for two decades before returning to
Columbia. The publication of Theory introduced Waltz as a leading proponent of
neorealist international relations theory.
Later in life, Waltz entered into a major debate with Scott Sagan, a scholar at
Stanford University in California, who applied Waltzs theoretical model to the
question of nuclear weapons. In 1997, Sagan and Waltz published The Spread of
Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, which was updated and expanded in several later
editions.5
Author's Background
Waltzs Theory was published in 1979 in the midst of the Cold War, a time when
classical realismwhich argued that it was a desire for security and stability rather
than morality that guided countries foreign policyhad become established as
orthodoxy. After all, this was a time when leading international figures, such as
former US president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger,
openly identified themselves as realists. Although we might assume that Waltzs
experiences in both World War II and the Korean War had a big impact on his
writing, he later claimed that these brutal conflicts did not significantly influence the
development of his ideas.6
From the start of his career, Waltz sought to renew the study of international politics
through his own Copernican Revolution (a rethinking of the field as radical as that
of the astronomer Copernicuss observation in the fifteenth century that the earth
revolved around the sun, and not the sun around the earth). Throughout his career,
he was determined to transform the way that international relations scholars viewed
events by basing analysis on scientific principles, rather than on political philosophy.
Indeed, following the publication of Man, The State, and War in 1959, scholars of
international relations became increasingly interested in applying analytical tools
like quantitative analysis (the analysis of numerical data such as statistics) and
game theory (the analysis of strategic choices made by participants in certain
situations)to the study of international relations. Recognizing this development,
Waltz used his book to promote the application of those new types of analysis by
introducing a novel theoretical model: neorealism.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was Waltzs central objective when writing Theory of International
Politics?
Analyze: Why did Waltz become interested in international relations theory?
Apply: What is a Copernican Revolution, and why did Waltz want to achieve this in
Notes

University Press, 1959).
Douglas Martin, Kenneth Waltz, Foreign-Relations Expert, Dies at 88, New York
Times, May 18, 2013.
Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997).
The science of international politics has come into being in response to a
popular demand. It has been created to serve a purpose and has, in this respect,
followed the pattern of other sciences.
E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis 19191939
Key Points
International relations, a specialty within the field of political science, was formally
established in the late nineteenth century. Waltz wrote his book during the Cold War.
Liberal theories suggest that states will cooperate whenever possible; realist
theories hold that states will tend to fight when necessary.
Although Kenneth Waltz was inspired by earlier generations of classical realist
scholarship, he believed those classical theories were not scientific enough.

Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics falls within the scholarly field of
international relations, which is a sub-discipline of political science. Its focus is the
study of the ways in which countries, empires, and non-governmental actors
international organizations such The United Nations, corporations such as Nike or
British Petroleum, or terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria/the Levant (ISIS or ISIL)interact with each other.
Although scholars and philosophers have studied how groups of people or nations
have interacted with each other for millennia, international relations as a scholarly
discipline did not arise until the late nineteenth century. Since then, it has become a
major discipline within the field of politics, with most major academic institutions
offering courses to train future diplomats and policymakers. Waltz wrote the text
within the context of the Cold War, which had become an all-encompassing topic of
discussion among scholars of international relations, historians, and policymakers.
That conflict for global dominance, or hegemony, pitted the capitalist United States
against the communist Soviet Union.
But just as the world was dividing into two camps, so too were scholars of
international relations, who split into realists and liberals and later into their
intellectual offspring, neorealists (who add to the realist position the argument that
the structure of the international system is important to any analysis of
international relations) and neoliberals (who add to the liberal position the
argument that cooperation between nations will occur, chiefly through international
institutions, because of the benefits of that cooperation).
Within the field of international relations, scholarship breaks down roughly into two
schools of thought: realism and liberalism. An early proponent of realist thinking
was the German political theorist Hans Morgenthau. In 1948, he published his key
text Politics Among Nations, considered one of the leading texts in realist thought.
Morgenthau argued that the flawed, power-hungry nature of humanity, rather than
the calm calculations of states, defines global politics.1 In other words, realists
believe that conflictnot cooperationis what drives relations among states.
When Kenneth Waltz published Theory of International Politics in 1979, it directly
challenged Morgenthaus model, often referred to as classical realism. Waltz
introduced a more scientific approach to the analysis of international relations
based on the assumption that state action is driven solely by a calculation of its
national interests. Waltz called this new model neorealism.
The second school of thought, liberalism, should not be confused with its traditional
political definition. In the realm of international relations, liberalism bases its
analysis on the idea that nations are inherently good and that political institutions
should be used to promote social progress. Further, liberals believe that cooperation
among countries is possible and likely, especially through international institutions
like the United Nations. That is because, the argument goes, states prefer to
maximize their absolute gains rather than their relative gains over one another. In
other words, a state prefers to measure success in what that success means for
itself overall, not in terms of how the balance of power is affected.
The first application of liberal international relations theory was the establishment of
the League of Nations after World War I. This international institution was the
brainchild of the American president Woodrow Wilson, whose association with
liberalism is so close that the concept is often referred to as Wilsonianism.
Around the same time as Waltzs text, however, a new paradigm emerged within
liberalism. Political scientists Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye applied a more
scientifically rigorous, economic model to the basic ideas of liberalism, known as
neoliberalism. This new model, which they put forward in their text Power and
Interdependence, argued that states should be concerned with absolute gains
rather than relative ones, because absolute gains promote cooperation among
states.2
Academic Influences
Though the field of international relations was flush with scholarship at the time
when Kenneth Waltz was writing Theory, the text represented a vital break with
earlier scholarship. He had been inspired by a growing trend within international
relations in the 1960s and 1970s, whereby theorists attempted to make their
theories more scientific by incorporating quantitative techniques (the analysis of
data such as statistics), game theory (the study of how all the participants in a
certain scenario make strategic choices), and other statistical and economic tools
from other, more scientific disciplines.
It is easy to understand why this trend would have had an impact on Waltz, who had
trained as an economist and viewed classical realism as more of a philosophy than a
science. He wanted to develop a scientific model that people could apply to the
study of international relations.
The sociological theories of the social theorist mile Durkheim also influenced
Waltzs concept of neorealism. Durkheims book, The Division of Labour in Society,
suggested that the behavior of units within systems was defined by the features of
the entire system, rather than by any particular characteristic of the units.3 Along
those lines, Waltz concluded that the major causes of wars were located in the
intertwined relationship of the states within an anarchical global system, rather than
in states or their leaders.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the key theories of international relations?
Analyze: What are the distinguishing characteristics of realism and liberalism?
Apply: What do you consider yourself, a realist or an idealist? Why?
Notes
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (New York: Little,
Brown, 1977).
mile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. George Simpson (New
York: Free Press, 1964), 257.
How then should we read Waltzas one in a line of realist theorists whose work is
consistent with the fundamental assumptions of his classical predecessors or as a
figure who has broken with the past? The answer is both and rather than either
or.
Chris Brown, Structural Realism, Classical Realism, and Human Nature
Key Points
Kenneth Waltz wrote the Theory of International Politics during the Cold War, when
the worlds two nuclear-armed superpowers where locked in a tense and dangerous
competition.
He wrote the text in response to the failure of existing theories to explain why wars
had existed throughout history, even though the international world order had
changed consistently over time.
Waltzs theory of neorealism has gone on to influence a number of scholars, among
them the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who debated how
best to understand how countries make foreign policy when faced with military and
other challenges.
Core Question
Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics is an academic attempt to
understand what causes war.
When Waltz published the book in 1979, the United States was locked into a
geopolitical struggle with the Soviet Union: the Cold War. This period in international
politics was dangerous for two principal reasons: 1) global power was concentrated
mainly in the hands of two superpowers, and 2) after the two atomic bombs were
dropped on Japan in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union started
competing with each other in an arms race to develop nuclear weapons. Waltz
believed that nuclear weapons deeply changed everything, turning theoretical
analysis on its head.
This conflict saw the direct application of realist theory to the conduct of
international relations, with top American officials such as Richard Nixon, Henry
Kissinger, and Zbigniew Bzrezinski all identifying themselves as realists. Starting in
the early 1970s, the Cold War entered a period of eased tensions known as dtente.
In this context, a theoretical debate arose as a group of scholars, including Waltz

and the neoliberal thinkers Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, sought to bring about a
revolution in the analysis of international relations. For Waltz, the primary aim of
Theory was to challenge the philosophical basis of the international relations theory
that was widely accepted at the time and develop a new, scientific model of
analysis called neorealism.
The Participants
The field of international relations scholarship is roughly divided into two schools of
thought: realism and liberalism.
The Greek historian Thucydides first introduced the idea of realism in the fifth
century b.c.e. in his pioneering text The History of the Peloponnesian War.1 While
studying the wars between Athens and Sparta, two Greek city-states, Thucydides
recognized that politics was not rooted in matters of principle, but rather in the
advancement of ones interests. If [states] maintain their independence, argued
Thucydides, it is because they are strong, and the weak will, by nature, be forced
to submit to their will.2
One of the earliest backers of modern realist thinking was the German political
scientist Hans Morgenthau. His 1948 book, Politics Among Nations, is a basic text in
realist theory. In it, he argued that global politics was defined by the power-hungry
nature of humanity and calm calculations of countries.3 In other words, realists
believe that conflictnot cooperationis what drives relations among states.
In contrast, within the field of international relations, liberalism is an approach
based on the idea that nations are naturally good and that political institutions
should be used to promote social progress. Liberals, also known as idealists, believe
that cooperation among countries is possible in the absence of a hegemonor
dominant power. They believe that cooperation often occurs in international
institutions, like the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, or in
transnational non-governmental organizations, like the World Wildlife Fund. This is
because states prefer to maximize their absolute gains rather than their relative
gains over one another. In other words, countries gain more through cooperation,
even though that may mean their rivals will gain, too.
Around the same time that Waltz was developing his text, a new theory emerged
that built upon the liberal framework. Keohane and Nye first developed the new
model, neoliberalism, in Power and Interdependence (1977). This new world view
was more scientifically rigorous, in comparison to previous models, having been
built upon an economic model. It argued that states should be concerned with
absolute gains, rather than relative ones, because absolute gains promote
cooperation among states.4
Given the differences between neorealists and neoliberals on how to analyze

international relations, it is no wonder that two separate schools of thought have
developed, although neorealismsometimes called defensive realismhas largely
dominated as the leading school.
Since leading scholars of international relations base their work on Waltzs
theoretical model, Theory stands out as the starting point for students seeking to
understand the field.
Within the neorealist school of thought, key differences have emerged as other
realist scholars, like the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt,
have sought to build upon and modify Waltzs theoretical model. In 1983,
Mearsheimer published his first book, Conventional Deterrence, which analyzed the
use of conventional weaponsas opposed to nuclear, chemical, or biological arms
to repel military threats from neighboring states.5 This text firmly established
Mearsheimer as neorealist and dealt with key issues like nuclear weaponsa topic
with which Waltz later became deeply engaged.
In 1985, Stephen Walt built upon Waltzs theoretical model in the article Alliance
Formation and the Balance of World Power, which introduced the idea of balance of
threat, setting out the criteria by which states assess threats. Two years later, Walt
further developed this theory in The Origins of Alliances,6 which also talked about
the concept of defensive realism. This concept held that the anarchy of the
international system forced states to become obsessed with security, which
ironically led to security dilemmas whereby a states drive for security could
actually lead to conflict with its opponents.
In 2001, however, Mearsheimer openly challenged Walts concept in his
groundbreaking book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.7 This text set
Mearsheimer apart from Waltz, Walt, and other realists by developing the theory of
offensive realism, according to which states will try to maximize their power relative
to one anotherrather than simply obtain just enough power to maintain security.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What debate was Waltz trying to engage in Theory of International
Politics?
Analyze: How did realism emerge as a philosophy of international relations?
Apply: How has the debate about realism evolved since the publication of Theory of
International Politics?
Notes
Thucydides, The History Of The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York:
Penguin Classics; rev. m-en-, 1954).
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Thomas Crowley (Auckland:
Floating Library, 2008), 568.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (New York: Little,
Brown, 1977).
John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press,
1983).
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).
John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton &
Company, 2001).
It is not possible to understand world politics simply by looking inside of states. If
the aims, policies, and actions of states become matters of exclusive attention or
even of central concern, then we are forced back to the descriptive level; and from
simple descriptions no valid generalizations can logically be drawn.
Key Points
Kenneth Waltz wanted to find a theory to explain why, even when governments and
leaders change, relations among countries tend to remain the same. His answer was
this: what matters is not so much the domestic politics of countries, but rather the
chaotic international system in which they operate.
Waltz was strongly influenced by the French sociologist mile Durkheim, who came
to the same conclusion about societythat the features of the system as a whole
are more important that the features of any individuals in it.
Waltz is the founder of neorealism, which claims to have a more scientific approach
to international relations than the classical realist school of thought that it grew out
of.
Author's Aims
When Kenneth Waltz decided to write Theory of International Politics, his aim was to
find the factors that have been constant in politics, across all of human history, in
order to determine why war persists despite every possible combination of states
and statesmen. In doing so, his text transformed the way scholars study
international relations by introducing a new, ground-breaking theoretical model that
sought to apply a scientific method to the classical realist model.
The aim of the text, according to Waltz, was to create a theory that could explain
the following problem: changes in international outcomes are typically the result of
changes in actorsthe leaders and governments in charge of countries. Yet
outcomes often remain similar even when actors change. By international
outcomes, Waltz was referring mainly to high politicsthe actions that
governments take toward other governments. Waltz made a point of emphasizing
that all actions by countries occur in what he calls the brooding shadow of
violence that hangs over countries in an anarchical international system1one
where there is no leader or authority to make countries act fairly or correctly.
At the time Waltz wrote Theory, most theorists of international relations studied
state-level factors, meaning they looked at the domestic politics of countries (which
Waltz referred to as unit-level factors) to try to explain international politics.2
Waltz, however, felt that domestic politics was not the key factor influencing how
countries acted toward one another. It was the anarchic international system itself
that accounted for the patterns of state actionpatterns repeated over and over for
millennia. His focus on the international system, rather than the states, accounts for
how Waltzs theory explains why war recurs, and indicates some of the conditions
that make war more or less likely; but does not predict the outbreak of particular
wars.3 By focusing on the international system instead of the states themselves in
Theory, Waltz is able to draw positivist conclusions about state action, which means
he identifies laws of politics based on observation, similar to the way that a scientist
might come up with laws of physics. This was a new and distinct approach to the
study of international relations.
Approach
Waltz takes a scientific approach in Theory, focusing on two main theoretical issues:
1) realism and 2) the structure of the international system. Specifically, Waltzs
theory contains many standard realist ideas: the international system is chaotic;
states are the main actors in the international system; and states naturally compete
with one another in a quest for power. Crucial for Waltzs theory is the idea that
security is the single greatest concern of states, leading them to be naturally
suspicious of other states motivations and concerned mainly with relative gains
often sacrificing absolute gains if there is a risk another state will gain more. In
other words, they want to keep the balance of power in their favor above all else.
Waltz developed his theory of neorealism after reading the sociologist mile
Durkheims The Division of Labour in Society, which argued that the behavior of
units within systems was defined by the features of the system itself, rather than by
any particular feature of the units.4 It was this line of reasoning that led Waltz to
conclude that the major causes of war were to be found in the relationship among
the states in the anarchic international system, rather than in the states or their
leaders.5 States, according to Waltzs theory, are undifferentiated units or, in
other words, units that are in a sense all the same. All perform the same functions,
like providing security, though with varying success based on their individual
military capabilities, which is determined by countable things such as the
numbers of guns, soldiers, and bombs.
By rethinking realism and focusing on the structure of the international system,
Waltz in effect became the father of the neorealist school of international relations.6
Kenneth Waltzs Theory is the founding text of the neorealist school of thought,
making it entirely original. Certainly, Waltz drew on other scholars for inspiration,
like the classical realist scholar Hans Morgenthau and the sociologist mile
Durkheim, when writing his text. Waltzs intellectual roots came from classical
realism. Morgenthau summarized the central outlook of the classical realists in his
1948 text, Politics Among Nations: [All] politics is governed by objective laws
which have their roots in human nature.7 However, to Waltz, classical realism was
an agent-driven theory and more of a philosophy than a science. To overcome
these limitations, Waltz simply applied a scientific method to Morgenthaus realist
ideas, which led to his theory of neorealism.
As noted above, mile Durkheims The Division of Labor in Society (1893) heavily
influenced Waltzs theory of neorealism. It convinced him that studies of
international relations focused far too much on the behavior of individual states and
not enough on the features of the international system. Waltzs application of
Durkheims sociological ideas to international relations theory presented a
groundbreaking approach to how scholars examine the interactions of states.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was Waltzs primary objective when writing Theory of
Analyze: What are the key assumptions of neorealism?
Apply: In what ways did Waltz bring together key features of realism with those of
science?
Notes
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley, 1979),

102.
Waltz, Theory, 60.
Waltz, Theory, 69.
mile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. George Simpson (New
York: Free Press, 1964), 257.
Waltz, Theory, 99.
Ken Booth, The Darwin of International Relations, Foreign Policy, May 15, 2013,
accessed December 6, 2013,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/15/requiem_for_a_realist_kenneth_wal
tz?page=0,4.
Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw Hill, 1979), 4.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas
In a self-help system each of the units spends a portion of its effort, not in
forwarding its own good, but in providing the means of protecting itself against
others When faced with the problem of mutual gain, states that feel insecure
must ask how the gain will be divided. They are compelled to ask not Will both of us
gain? but Who will gain more?
Key Points
Kenneth Waltzs Theory states that the anarchy of the world order pushes countries
to focus on their security against other countries. In the end, Waltz claims, countries
are all the same in this respect; only their respective military strengths differ.
He and other authors had raised this idea earlier; in Theory, Waltz develops it more
fully.
Waltz wrote Theory for an academic audience, using highly technical language and
assuming that readers had a familiarity with international relations theory.
Key Themes
The main aim of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics is to examine
theories of international politics and approaches to the subject matter that make
some claim to being theoretically important to construct a theory of international
politics that remedies the defects of present theories and to examine some
applications of the theory constructed.1
To do so, Waltz sought to provide a new theory of international relations that
answers the question: If changes in international outcomes are linked directly to
changes in actors, how can one account for similarities of outcome [such as the
occurrence of war or the emergences of balances of power] that persist or recur
even as actors vary?2
The central theme of Theory is the concept of realism, which assumes that the
international system is anarchic, states seek power over one another, great
powers typically emerge, and, finally, that politics between countries often involves
war. At the same time, Waltzs text has a strong secondary theme of criticism of the
classical realist theory, which he accuses of reducing the international system into
an overly simplified model. In the book, he says that previous studies of
international relations tended to focus far too much on the behavior of individual
states and not enough on the features of the international system.
Waltz argues that the anarchy of the international system affects how states act.
Those that do not give a high priority to security against other states do not survive.
Countries are therefore conditioned to maximize their security against others; it is a
case of survival of the fittest. Waltz believes the laws of politics are similar to laws
of physics: states can be understood as billiard balls, differentiated from one
another only by military capability. In this model, the actions of countries are
determined by their relative sizes and positions in the systemjust as the relative
sizes and positions of two or more billiard balls would affect their movements on a
billiard table.
Exploring The Ideas
Even as he is critical of the shortcomings of international relations realism, Waltz
maintains the use of key realist ideas. For instance, he sees the international system
as leaderless (consistent with the idea of anarchy), where actors (states) seek to
maximize their own national interests (their power relative to other states) in order
to ensure their own survival. In other words, the international system creates a
situation whereby states are cynical actors determined to improve their situation
vis--vis other states. Crucial for Waltzs theory is the realist idea that security is the
single greatest concern of states, leading them to be naturally suspicious of each
others motivations.
The idea that anarchy can be thought of as a force shaping politics between and
among countries is not entirely original to Theory. The American philosopher
Mortimer Adler had raised this idea in How to Think About War and Peace, published
1944. In that book, Adler wrote that peace would not be possible until international
anarchy is replaced by world government.3 Waltz reflected this notion in his
previous work, Man, The State, and War, published in 1959,4 when he said that a
prescription for peace will only be effective in preventing war if the establishment
of a world government would turn the international system from anarchy to
hierarchya system of authority that could make countries act in a certain way.
Waltzs core concern in Theory, therefore, was to adapt those previous ideas into a
scientific theory of state action.
When Kenneth Waltz wrote Theory, his intended audience was chiefly academic
what he refers to in the text as students of politics.5 This is immediately clear
from Waltzs focus on theory, an approach that would interest few people outside
the academic world. His central concern was to construct a theory of international
politics that remedies the defects of present theoriesin other words, a new model
that is applicable in real life.6
Waltzs expectation that his audience would be primarily academic gave him the
freedom to assume significant knowledge of political theory on the part of his
readers. For instance, in the second and third chapters, he is able to go directly into
criticism of existing theories of international politics, such as neocolonialism (the
theory that capitalism motivates nations to build empires), without wasting time
explaining the historical context or the content of the theory. Given this, the layman
would consider the language that he uses to deliver his arguments quite
sophisticated.
Still, Waltz structures the text in an easily understood manner. He breaks it down
into nine chapters, organized according to his three objectives. The first four
chapters focus on other theories of international politics and approaches to the
subject matter that make some claim to being theoretically important.7 For
instance, in the first chapter, Waltz lays out his definition of theory and, in the next
three chapters, he critiques the major theoretical models of international relations,
particularly classical realism. He describes it as reductionistthat is, as
oversimplified to the detriment of accuracy
In the fifth chapter, Waltz addresses his second objective of constructing a theory
of international politics that remedies the defects of present theories.8 Then, in the
final four chapters, he lays out the theoretical basis for his approachneorealism
through discussions about how the world order is a type of anarchy, the balance of
power politics, and the structural causes of economic and military conflicts. In the
final chapter, Waltz uses practical examples to show how his theory applies to real
events, drawing on examples ranging from competition between car manufacturers
to the American war in Vietnam.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the key ideas that underpin neorealism?
Analyze: How central were these themes to Waltzs argument?

Apply: How did Waltz view the international system? What were the key elements of
his point of view?
Notes
Waltz, Theory, 65.
Mortimer Adler, How to Think About War and Peace (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1944), 81.
Waltz, Theory, 4.
Waltz, Theory, 1.
Waltz, Theory, 1.
Waltz, Theory, 1.
Section 2: Ideas
A theory is a picture, mentally formed, of a bounded realm or domain of activity. A
theory is a depiction of the organization of a domain and of the connections among
its parts.
Key Points
Inspired by the French sociologist mile Durkheims systems theory, Waltz
overturned the study of international relations to shift the focus to the system as a
whole and how it affects the actions of individual countries.
Waltzs positivist approach suggested that laws could be determined for
international politics, just as they can be for physics, through an examination of
real-world events.
The most overlooked part of the text is Waltzs discussion of metatheory (i.e., a
theory of theories), where he talks about the difference between laws and theories.
Other Ideas
The second major element of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics was
his desire to rethink how the field is studied.
In the book, Waltz criticizes other theorists for failing to adopt a scientific approach
to the study of international affairs and for trying to account for too much. Part of
the problem was that these other scholars tended to use the language of scientific
theory, whereby international outcomes (dependent variables) are thought to
result from domestic conditions (independent variables). In other words, they said
that the state of relations between and among countriescooperation, war, or
something in betweendepends on what kind of governments those countries
have. But for Waltz, this is not true. He argues that these other scholars were using
scientific-sounding terms too loosely, without proper scientific rigor.1
Seeing classical realism as an insufficient theoretical model of analysis, Waltz
sought to revolutionize the discipline by formulating a truly scientific approach to
the study of international relations. To do so, he adapted mile Durkheims systems
theory to the study of international relations, which allowed him to develop a
model that focused on the international system as a whole and how it impacted the
interactions of states.2
From Waltzs point of view, by combining the central elements of realist theory with
the positivist (that is, roughly, scientific) elements of Durkheims systems theory, he
was able to develop a new theory of international relations that focused on the
international system as a whole and the distribution of capabilities among states,
each of which has the main aim of continued survival in the face of threats or
competition from other states.
Exploring The Ideas
In order to understand Waltzs text, a brief explanation of its relationship to
positivism is necessary.
Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the idea that people receive
information from their sensory experience (things seen, heard, and otherwise
verified), and they can use that sensory experience to create laws. For example,
one might sense that apples drop when they lose their attachment to trees and, in
sensing that, come up with the law of gravity. Positivism, as applied to social
sciences, believes that certain laws govern the social world, just as other laws
govern the physical one.
Waltzs theory had two major points in common with positivism. First, neorealism
attempted to derive laws of international politics akin to laws of physics, and
second, Waltz believed that concepts like anarchy are observable and objectivein
other words, that anarchy has a clear meaning and can be expected when certain
conditions are in place. However, while Waltzs theory had a lot in common with
positivism, the two approaches differed in some ways. Waltz felt the positivists
relied too much on their observations of the actions of individual countries and were
not capable of stepping back and considering the wider picture of the international
system as a whole. He wrote to construct a theory, we must abstract from reality
[and] leave aside most of what we see and experience.3
Overlooked
The most overlooked aspect of Theory of International Politics is Waltzs discussion
of metatheory or the theory of theory: his stand-alone theory of how to make a
theory. Throughout his first chapter, Laws and Theories, Waltz analyzes in detail
the nature of laws and theories. He explains that a law is based not simply on a
relation that has been found, but on one that has been found repeatedly.4
Theories, in contrast, are not ideas that people can discover through examination of
facts or the accumulation of hypotheses about laws of action. Instead, theories are
statements that people use to explain laws.5
One problem that Waltz identified with previous theories of international relations,
like realism and liberalism, is that they rely on what is known as an inductivist
illusionwhich means they attempt to come up with theories through the
accumulation of more and more data and the examination of more and more
cases. In the end, as Waltz observes in Theory, We will simply end up having more
and more data and larger sets of correlationbut no objective truth.6
A theory is a picture, Waltz writes, mentally formed, of a bounded realm or
domain of activity and the connections among its parts.7 By bounded realm,
he means that there could never be a theory of politics in general, because the
different domestic and international realms are bounded, or roped off, and
governed by different laws. Waltz did not believe that theory represented reality
perfectly; rather, a theory explains reality as it operates within a bounded realm.
In other words, Waltz intended for people to view his theory as an analytical device,
not as a description of the real world.
Unfortunately, the significance of the theoretical model that he introduces in the
rest of the text overshadows his analysis of laws and theories, and his warning of
their limits in describing reality. In 2009, however, the Danish international relations
scholar Ole Wver published an article, Theory of Theory, that argued that
Waltzs followers, the so-called Waltzians, had misrepresented much of his work. As
Wver observed, The books grand success owed much to being widely accepted
as setting a new standard for theory in the discipline. Given all of this, it is
surprising how little attention has been paid to what Waltz says about the nature of
theory.
In particular, Wver found that Waltzs followers had ignored his warnings that
theory is meant to be used only as an analytical device, and that to apply it to realworld events would be to distort reality.8
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the main secondary themes of Theory of International Politics?
Analyze: What is positivism and how did Waltz apply this concept to international
relations?
Apply: What aspects of the text have scholars of international relations overlooked?
Notes
Waltz, Theory, 61.
Waltz, Theory, 68.
Waltz, Theory, 1.
Waltz, Theory, 5.
Waltz, Theory, 4.
Waltz, Theory, 8.
Ole Wver, Waltzs Theory of Theory, International Politics 23, no. 2 (2009): 204
5.
Section 2: Ideas
Intellectually speaking, we are all Waltzs subjects, whether we be loyal disciples,
friendly critics, or rebellious opponents: the discipline defines itself in relation to the
authority of his work.
Ken Booth, The King of Thought
Key Points
Theory of International Politics presents a scientific theory of how one might
conduct an analysis of international relations without making assumptions about
particular people or states. To this end, Kenneth Waltz was very successful
The relative simplicity of the high-stakes international environment during the Cold
War tended to reinforce Waltzs abstract reasoning. It was a zero-sum competition:
one states loss was anothers victory.
In a post-Cold War international environment, the influence of Waltzs approach,
neorealism, has waned due to its limited applicability.

When Kenneth Waltz set out to write Theory of International Politics, he had three
primary objectives:
to examine theories of international politics and other scholarly approaches
considered to be important;
to construct a theory of international politics that remedies the defects of previous
theories;
to offer examples of the application of his new theory to real-world situations.1
To that end, Waltz was very successful, as evidenced by Theorys status as a basic
text for the study of international relations and his reputation as the founder of a
major school of thought with countless followers.2
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Waltzs theory was its ability to create a
science out of the international relations approach known as realism. Waltz did this
by rigorously applying positivist methods to itin other words, by basing his
theories on observations and testing them through experimentation and further
observations. For Waltz, that meant coming up with reliable, enduring lawsmore
like laws of physics than models in social scienceof how countries act on the
international scene. He concluded that war was a natural and certain outcome of
international anarchy, for example, because states are naturally competitive
seeking power, influence, resources, and so on. To this day, that conclusion holds
true.
Theory was most clearly relevant in the context of the Cold War. Writing in the late
1970s, Waltz based his theory of international politics on the most important
common features that he observed, such as competition among countries, the
balance of power between two great powers, the outbreak of war, and the formation
of alliances. His theory rested on a number of key ideas. For instance, Waltz
believed that, in terms of relations among countries, all states are basically alike,
only great power politics matters, and domestic factors do not matter.3 All of
these notions were evident in the behavior of countries during the Cold War.
Waltz is considered to have freed international relations from its status as just a
division of history or political theory and turned it into its own, theoretically rigorous
disciplineone that could be applied to the real world.4 Throughout the 1980s, a
debate raged about the conclusions of Theory, with Waltz arguing that international
anarchy meant that states naturally compete and the political theorist Robert
Keohane and other neoliberal institutionalists arguing that international anarchy

does not rule out the possibility of cooperationespecially given the existence of
international institutions to allow nations to reap the benefits of cooperation.
But when the Cold War came to an abrupt end in 1991, it was suddenly obvious that
the bipolar, zero-sum nature of international affairs (where a loss for one of the
worlds two superpowers was a gain for the other) had been replaced by system
that was unipolar (with one remaining superpower) or multipolar (with several
superpowers). As a result, the global balance of power was now less important as a
force in international affairs than, for example, influences extending across several
borders. Those might include interventions in failed states, such as the Yugoslav
Wars in the 1990s, or the actions of transnational terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda
or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant (ISIS or ISIL).
Given that neorealism was based on the actions of countries, Waltzs theory
struggled to adapt to such new post-Cold War sources of turmoil without sacrificing
its core ideas. As a result, the influence of the neorealist theoretical model has
declined somewhat, although the text remains a key starting point for students
learning the basics of international relations theory.
Limitations
Waltz intended the text to be a viewed as model for analyzing international affairs.
But its greatest weakness is that he had expected that the international conditions
of the Cold War were natural and would continue beyond the end of that conflict.
The post-Cold War period has proved that idea false, however.
For example, Waltz assumed that states were the only actors in global politics and
that great power states, like the United States and Soviet Union, were the only
important actors from that group.5 He also assumed that in an anarchical
international system, there would always be competition between states. However,
in a post-Cold War context, these ideas seem outdated. World politics is now taken
up, in no small part, by the actions of transnational terrorist groups, against whom
states have tended to cooperate. This means that Waltzs neorealist analysis is
mostly limited to a Cold War context.
After the end of the Cold War, discussions about international relations theory took a
post-positivist turn. This new direction rejected the disciplines earlier claims to be
based on scientific principles. Starting in the 1990s, new types of analysis, like
critical theory and constructivism, emerged and took aim at both neorealisms
methods and conclusions. The constructivist theorist Friedrich Kratochwil, for
example, argued that neorealisms focus on giving greater precision, depth, and
above all, scientific respectability to international relations, closes the discipline off
from alternative ideas.
Treating international relations as a hard science with fixed laws, Kratochwil

suggested, only limits the number of questions scholars can ask, and thereby
reduces the whole disciplines chance of finding valid answers.6 In an ironic turn,
the theory that set out to challenge the reductionism of previous theoriesby
claiming that their oversimplification of older theories made them miss the forest
for the treeswas now viewed as being reductionist itself.
Key Questions
Synthesize: How successful was Waltz at achieving his primary objectives?
Analyze: Why does Waltzs text remain so influential today?
Apply: Why has the popularity of neorealism waned since the end of the Cold War?
Notes
Ken Booth, The Darwin of International Relations, Foreign Policy, May 15, 2013,
accessed December 6, 2013,
tz?page=0,4.
Waltz, Theory, 99.
Michael Williams, Waltz, Realism, and Democracy, International Relations 23, no. 3
(2009): 338.
Waltz, Theory, 172.
Friedrich Kratochwil, The Embarrassment of Changes: Neorealism as the Science of
Realpolitik without Politics, Review of International Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 634.
Section 2: Ideas
There is a constant possibility of war in a world in which there are two or more
states each seeking to promote a set of interests and having no agency above them
upon which they can rely for protection.
Kenneth Waltz, Man, The State, and War
Key Points
Man, The State, and War, Waltzs first book, was his initial attack on the weaknesses
of the realist approach. It took him another two decades to refine his ideas before
publishing his most famous work, Theory of International Politics.
Over time, Waltz changed some of his opinions, most notably on nuclear weapons,
which he came to see as a stabilizing force.
The neorealist approach that Waltz inspired lost some of its relevance after the end
of the Cold War, but it remains intellectually important and Theory of International
Politics is still considered to be one of the most significant international relations
texts of the twentieth century.
Positioning
Theory of International Politics is, without question, Kenneth Waltzs most famous
work. Indeed, as the first major book on the neorealist school of thought, it is one of
the most influential texts of international relations in the twentieth century.
Within Waltzs work, Theory was published in the middle of his career, as a follow-up
to his first book, Man, the State, and War, an expanded version of his PhD thesis
that he published in 1959. While studying economics and political philosophy at
Columbia University, Waltz became inspired by the work of his supervisor, William T.
R. Fox, who famously coined the terms superpower and bipolar in his 1944
text, The Super-Powers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet UnionTheir
Responsibility for Peace.1 In that work, Fox described the nature of the relationship
between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Waltzs Man, The State, and War, like the later Theory of International Politics, was
an influential text for those who study international relations. His primary goal was
to answer the question How can the major causes of war be determined, and how
can war be predicted and controlled? In looking at the means to answer these
questions, Waltz found that the main theory at the time, classical realism, left him
unsatisfied. Not surprisingly, soon after Man, The State, and Wars publication, a
colleague asked Waltz, Whats going to be the sequel?2 Though it took him 20
years, Waltz developed Theory in order to address the scholarly issues not
adequately answered that he first identified in Man, The State, and War.
Integration
Throughout Waltzs career, from his studies at Columbia University after World War
II through to his death in 2013, his primary focus was how to best understand the
international system.
In Man, The State, and War, Waltz concluded that the frequency of war is caused by
the state of anarchy in the international system. The same focus can be seen in
Theory, which sought to develop a theoretical model to analyze international affairs.
While his first text was a significant contribution to the field, Theory is considered to
be the most important and influential work of Waltzs career, and the one that
defined the school of neorealism. Theory introduced a more scientific account of
international politics and a school of thought that many prominent international

relations theorists, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, have carried on
since then.
Understandably, as Waltzs career advanced, he spent much of his time refining and
defending his neorealist approach in the face of growing criticism.3 However, he
was not entirely rigid on the question of nuclear weapons, and his views underwent
significant shifts over time.
For instance, in Theory, Waltz argues that the perennial [long-standing] forces of
politics are more important than the new military technology in shaping state
behavior.4 But when Waltz published his 1995 work, The Spread of Nuclear
Weapons, it was clear that he had changed his position, arguing instead that
nuclear weapons had deeply changed the international system because they made
the destruction of an entire country possible. Ironically, they were more effective at
preventing conflict than anything that had ever existed before.5
Significance
According to scholars of international relations, Waltzs Theory has undoubtedly had
a tremendous impact on its field. Not only did Waltz introduce a new,
groundbreaking theoretical approach, but his work was also key to establishing the
field of international relations as a separate academic discipline.
Despite the texts original significance as a major force in international relations,
however, neorealisms influence has faded somewhat following the end of the Cold
War. In a new situation, with the United States as the only remaining superpower
and terrorism a major concern since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
in New York on September 11, 2001, scholarly and public attention turned to a new
range of political problems to which neorealism was irrelevant.6
Nevertheless, Theory of International Politics has enjoyed enormous lasting
influence because it set the stage for more nuanced methods of analysis. As the
international politics scholar Chris Brown observed, Contemporary [international
relations] is fixated on Theory of International Politics. Not only was Realism
revitalized by this book, but also anti-Realists have felt obliged to respond to its
arguments.7
Brown is not alone in his praise of Waltz. Mearsheimer once wrote that Waltz was
the most important international relations theorist of the past half century.
Stephen Walt, meanwhile, said that he was the pre-eminent international relations
theorist of the post-World War II era. The neoliberal theorist Robert Keohane,
Waltzs ideological opponent, called him the pre-eminent theorist of international
politics of his generation.8 By the time Waltz died in 2013, he had established a
reputation as one of leading scholars of international relations.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What have been the primary interests of Waltzs career?
Analyze: Was the theoretical model that Waltz put forward in Theory of International
Politics evident in his earlier works?
Apply: What was it about Theory of International Politics that made it so successful?
Notes
William T. R. Fox, The Super-Powers: The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union
Their Responsibility for Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944).
See Kenneth Waltz, A Response to Critics, in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert
Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 32246.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison Wesley, 1979),
173.
Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1995).
Richard Ned Lebow, Classical Realism, in International Relations Theories, ed. Tim
Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 53.
Chris Brown and Kirsten Ainley, Understanding International Relations (London:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 40.
William Rooke, Great IR Thinkers: Kenneth Waltz, International Relations and
Security Network, October 6, 2011, accessed January 14, 2015,
http://isnblog.ethz.ch/international-relations/great-ir-thinkers-kenneth-waltz.
Section 3: Impact
We need to respond to the questions that realism poses but fails to answer: how
can order be created out of anarchy without superordinate power; how can peaceful
change occur?
Robert Keohane, Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond
Key Points
Those people who followed the liberal school of thought in international relations
criticized Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics for failing to account for
the reality of cooperation among rational states. Constructivists, meanwhile, who
emphasize the way that societies determine international relations, criticized his
work for assuming that all states act rationally.
Waltz responded to both views by claiming that the critics misunderstood his theory
and what it was trying to do: to develop a broad-based theory to cover a wide range
of possibilities
After the end of the Cold War, Waltzs neorealism was increasingly seen as too onesidedfocusing only on a countrys security aims. A new trend, neoclassical realism,
saw the truth in a compromise between Waltz and his critics.
Criticism
Criticism of Kenneth Waltzs neorealist Theory of International Politics came from
two quarters: neoliberals and critical theorists.
Broadly speaking, critics took issue with neorealisms dream to be a grand theory.
The neoliberal theorist Robert Keohane rejected neorealisms claim that one should
expect all states, regardless of their individual politics or character, to act similarly
in a given international situation, writing, Even if interests are taken as given, the
attempt to predict outcomes from interests and power [exclusively] leads to
ambiguities and incorrect predictions.1 To him, Waltzs idea that countries always
want to maximize power was problematic and presented neorealists with the
following dilemma: either they maintain this error and fail to take into account the
idea that states can have competing goals, some of which would be generated by
the internal social, political, and economic characteristics of the countries
concerned, or they accept that these competing factors are important and reduce
neorealism to the status of a partial, incomplete theory.2
A second source of criticism of Theory came from critical theorists, whose work
questioned many of the very assumptions about knowledge on which the social
sciences were founded. The British theorist Richard Ashley, for example, took issue
with neorealisms similarity to the hard sciences and its focus on structure, writing
that far from expanding international political discourse, [neorealism] excludes all
standpoints that would expose the limits of the given order of things.3 Ashley also
attacked Waltzs take on positivism (his approach to working from observable
evidence and practically testing theory) and neorealisms surface resemblance to
natural science. By studying international relations as a natural science, Ashley
argued, Waltz profoundly [limits] the range of possibilities that theory can
contemplate if it is to find acceptance as an objective scientific theory.4 Positivism,
argued Ashley, tends to produce theories that do not at all reflect social values,
emphasizing mathematical rationality, thereby making Waltzs work a theory

masked as method.5
With the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the collapse of the bipolar world order (a
system of two superpowers confronting each other), neorealism and neoliberalism
appeared to become obsolete. They were theories designed to account for a bipolar
international structure.
According to the Danish political theorist Ole Wver, the two theories no longer
[lacked any common features] on the contrary, they shared a rationalist research
program [that is, they were based on reason rather than emotions], a conception of
science, [and] a shared willingness to operate on the premise of anarchy.6 In that
vein, the debate began to emphasize critical and constructivist positions, which
accounted for the role of different societies in the formulation of foreign policy,
while increasingly grouping together neorealism and neoliberalism, which both
focused on a bipolar world, as antiquated.
Responses
Because Theory was central to the theoretical debate between neorealism and
neoliberalism (the first seeing ruthless competition as the natural state of affairs
between countries and the latter seeing cooperation), it generated a great deal of
interestboth critical and approving. Robert Keohanes edited volume, Neorealism
and Its Critics (1986), captured the debate, featuring the views of a range of
scholars of international relations, including Waltz.7 The text gave Waltz an
opportunity to respond to the challenges that the neoliberals had put forward.
In that book of essays, Waltz played down the differences between the two theories,
suggesting they had a difference of emphasis, but little basic disagreement. He
noted that both theories shared similar beliefs, especially the notion that states act
rationally in an anarchic world order.8 However, whereas Keohane had a wider view
of state interests, including issues vital to both the survival of the state and the
welfare of the state, Waltz focused on state survival.
In response to Ashleys critique, Waltz wrote, Ashleys main objection seems to be
that I did not write a theory of domestic politics That is so because I essayed an
international political theory and not a domestic one. Not everything can go into one
book and not everything can go into one theory.9 However, Waltzs response to
Ashley also drifted away from the theoretical toward the personal: I find [Ashley]
difficult to deal with. Reading his essay is like entering a maze. I never know quite
where I am or how to get out.10
Despite the debate surrounding Waltzs theory, he did not change his views, but
instead hardened his position in the face of challenges. Waltz also faced new
challenges from scholars from a new school of thought called neoclassical realism.
Emerging in the 1990s, its followers claim that state action can be explained with
reference to both structural factors (such as the distribution of capabilities between
states) and agent-driven factors (such as the ambitions of countries leaders). To
them, the problem with Waltzs analysis was that he defined power narrowly, largely
in terms of military capability. Neoclassical realists turned back to the classical
realist work of scholars such as Hans Morgenthau in order to capture the human,
as well as scientific, side of politics.
For example, the American theorist Richard Ned Lebow, a neoclassical realist,
challenged Waltzs claim that neorealism continued to be useful after the Cold War.
He wrote, Waltz now insists that the international system remains bipolar even
after the breakup of the Soviet Union. His depiction of the post-Cold War world as
bipolar is strikingly at odds with the views of other prominent realists. More to the
point, it cannot be derived from the definition of power in Waltzs Theory.11 While
neoclassical realists recognized that neorealism did a good job describing security
competition between states, the problem was that it emphasized only one aspect of
international relations at the expense of other, potentially more useful lines of
inquiry.
Faced with this new wave of criticism, Waltz countered by insisting that neorealisms
core would remain relevant and useful as long as the international system remained
the same. For instance, in a 2000 article, Structural Realism After the Cold War,
Waltz suggested that the end of the Cold War meant a new type of international
anarchy, rather than a change of the system from anarchy to hierarchy.12
Key Questions
Synthesize: What were the key criticisms leveled against the text?
Analyze: How did Waltz respond to these critiques?
Apply: What was the overall consensus of the debate surrounding Theory of
Notes
Robert Keohane, Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond, in
Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert Keohane (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), 190.
Keohane, Theory, 174.
Richard Ashley, The Poverty of Neorealism, in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed.
Robert Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 268.
Ashley, Poverty, 285.
Ashley, Poverty, 285.

Ole Wver, The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate, in International
Theory: Positivism and Beyond, ed. Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 163.
Robert Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986).
Kenneth Waltz, A Response to Critics, in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. Robert
Keohane (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 330.
Waltz, Response, 339.
Waltz, Response, 337.
Richard Ned Lebow, The Long Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of
Realism, International Organization 48, no. 2 (1994): 254.
Kenneth Waltz, Structural Realism After the Cold War, International Security 25,
no. 1 (2000): 5.
Section 3: Impact
The two paradigms [realism and liberalism] had different strengths, there were
things better explained by the one, and others dealt better with the other. And more
importantly, there was no way to prove one or the other right. Realists and [liberals]
saw different realities.
Ole Wver, The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate
Key Points
Theory drove a shift in international relations theory from philosophy to science,
but this shift has been disputed since the early 1990s.
Although neorealism continues as a school of thought to this day, the end of the
Cold War weakened its appeal and helped to inspire a modified theory: neoclassical
realism.
Recent trends have added new dimensions to Waltzs neorealism. For example, in a
2001 book, the neorealist scholar John Mearsheimer introduced the idea of offensive
realism.
Uses And Problems
Following the publication of Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics, a major

shift occurred in the study of international relations. Waltzs work was at the very
center of a major re-evaluation of the core of the field, with both Waltzs followers
and opponents jockeying to position themselves within the emerging debate.
The scientific revolution that Waltz created by publishing Theory helped define two
great debates within the discipline. The first debate occurred in the 1980s and
centered on differences between supporters of neorealism (like Waltz) and
supporters of neoliberalism (such as Robert Keohane). Both theories viewed
positivism (roughly, basing theories on observed facts) as central to their
methodology and agreed on the core belief that states were the primary actors of
international affairs. They also agreed that states were naturally rational and that
anarchy was the defining feature of international politics. They disagreed, however,
on their conclusions.
Neoliberals, for example, argued that cooperation and competition were both
possible results of interaction between countries because states were as interested
in welfare as they were in security. For neorealists, however, only competition was
possible.1 In that sense, Theorys scientific leaning influenced both sides of the
great debate.
Waltzs text was not as central to the second debate, which was, in broad terms,
between positivists (that is, neoliberals and neorealists) and a group identifying
themselves as post-positivists, who believe that the background or values of a
researcher can affect their observations and cloud their judgments.
The Danish theorist Ole Wver first identified this second great debate in an article
of 1996, where he characterized the positivist alliance of neorealists and
neoliberals as the Neo-Neo Synthesis.2 Post-positivists, like the German political
theorist Alexander Wendt, rejected the beliefs of the positivists as artificially narrow,
and criticized their claim that international relations is a science. In doing so, he
argued, they limited the kinds of questions the discipline could ask. Wendt
challenged Waltzs belief that anarchy naturally conditioned states to be
competitive, and he suggested that states choose to compete in anarchy, thereby
making anarchy a competitive system. States, according to Wendt, could just as
easily choose to cooperate and make anarchy a cooperative system.3
The rise of post-positivist theory and the change in the nature of international
politics have both contributed to the decline of neorealism as a leading theory.
Schools Of Thought
The most direct outcome of Waltzs text was the establishment of neorealism as a
school of thought within the field of international relations. Toward the end of the
Cold War, neorealism proved to be an attractive and distinctive model due to its
positivist methods. Yet as narrow and supposedly similar to science as it was,
neorealism was later criticized for having numerous beliefs about the international
system that no longer seemed valid after the end of the Cold War in the early
1990s.
At a basic level, neorealism assumes that competition between countries is a
natural, and indeed unavoidable, outcome of states dealing with one another under
anarchy. While neorealisms importance as a theoretical model has declined since
the end of the Cold War, that has not stopped Waltzs followers, like John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, from adapting it to new theories that are better
suited for the post-Cold War environment, like offensive and defensive realism.
At the same time, neorealism has also influenced the emergence of a new
approach, neoclassical realism, which is now considered a distinct theoretical
branch of international relations. This model combines two levels of analysis:
first, an emphasis on the structure of the international system and, second, classical
realist ideas of human imperfection. Neoclassical realists include the American
theorists Gideon Rose, Fareed Zakaria, and Richard Ned Lebow.
Theory remains part of the mainstream of the field of international relations. Current
promoters of neorealism, like Mearsheimer, Walt, Robert Gilpin, and Robert Jervis,
have all reinforced Waltzs focus on the international system to the exclusion of
considering the role of the states themselves. They tend to avoid analysis of statelevel factors (the leadership of individual countries, for example), assuming instead
that all states are basically similar in their desire for security.
The main way neorealism has remained important has been through the addition of
new objects of analysis, often at the domestic level. Jervis, for example, added
psychological factors of communication to his evaluation of the roots of war. He
believed miscommunication of ideas between states causes war in two ways: the
deterrence model and the spiral model.4
Similarly, Mearsheimer offered a different version of neorealism in his 2001 book,
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, where he introduced the idea of offensive
realism. According to offensive realist theory, states seek to maximize their power
relative to one another, rather than to get just enough power to maintain security.
For traditional neorealists, states obtain just enough security by preserving a
balance of power with their enemies. Mearsheimer, in contrast, argued that states
never have just enough security, that great powers will always increase their
security by getting as much power as they can, and that those powers will
aggressively put down other states whenever possible.5
Although Waltzs traditional form of neorealism may no longer be a leading model
for the study of todays international relations, his disciples have managed to adapt
his model in such a way that it continues to be a prominent and influential school of
thought.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the two great debates about international relations?
Analyze: Where does Waltz fit within these two debates?
Apply: How have scholars adapted Waltzs model to fit with the post-Cold War
international environment?
Notes
Palgrave McMillan, 2005). 33.
Ole Wver, The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate, in International
Theory: Positivism and Beyond, ed. Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski
See Alexander Wendt,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relations)">Anarchy is What
States Make of It: the Social Construction of Power Politics, International
Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391425.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976), 94. In this model, an aggressive state is appeased
in the hope of eliciting better behavior, but the aggressive state only sees that it is
capable of frightening its adversaries into concessions and, therefore, continues
that behavior, leading to war. Conversely, in the spiral model, an aggressive state
is punished in the hope of eliciting better behavior, but the aggressive state sees
the punishment as aggression and perceives the need to defend itself more
assertively, leading to war.
John Mearsheimer, Structural Realism, in International Relations Theories, ed. Tim
Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7273.
Section 3: Impact
Contemporary realists remain committed to the goal of peace but find it difficult to
accept that the postwar behavior of the great powers had belied their unduly
pessimistic assumptions about the consequences of anarchy.
Realism
Key Points
After the end of the Cold War, Kenneth Waltzs followers updated his Theory of
International Politics. The neorealist scholar John Mearsheimer, for example, wrote
that the new situation was multipolar, with competition and war more likely that
before.
After Waltz published his book, two new schools of thought, constructivism and
critical theory, attacked it for assuming that relations between countries ran along
somewhat mechanical and predictable, lines. For them, Theory failed to account for
the influence of culture and the political choices that countries can make.
The end of the Cold War has led to new schools of thought thatwhether they
argue, on the one hand, that countries tend toward competition or, on the other,
toward cooperationall allow for more human choice in international affairs that
Waltz did.
Position
Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics defined international relations
theory toward the end of the Cold War. His main aim when writing the book was to
create a scientifically-based model to explain war, balances of power, alliances, and
other common aspects of international affairs. In that, he was very successful.
The sudden end of the Cold War in 1991, however, revealed the limits of his theory.
Even so, a number of Waltzs followers, particularly the American neorealist theorist
John Mearsheimer, have adapted and modernized the model to better reflect the
current international setting. As a result, the text remains relevant to assessing
international affairs today.
Waltzs major contribution to his field was in shifting the type of analysis from
political philosophy to hard science through the application of a positivist method.
He intended his theory to offer laws that were enduring with repeatable predictions,
somewhat like laws of physics. Waltz advanced a number of beliefs about the
international system that were natural and inevitable, like his belief that global
politics is shaped exclusively by its great power players.1 But in the aftermath of
the Cold War, the international system clearly shifted away from bipolarity toward
multipolarity, as secondary states and non-state actors began to influence
international affairs.
Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, for example, Mearsheimer
had predicted the emergence of a multipolar international system in his 1990 article
Back to the Future. Mearsheimer argued that an end to the Cold War would see
the rise of a new international system where power and influence would be
concentrated in the hands of three or more players, which would result in more
rather than lesscompetition and war between countries.2
Interaction
Since the publication of Theory, Waltzs ideas have seen challenges from two new
schools of thought: constructivism and critical theory.
Constructivists claim that major features of international relations are made by
particular societies in their historical situation. In other words, those features are
not simply the outcome of human nature.3 In 1992, Alexander Wendt, a leading
constructivist, published an article that challenged Waltzs belief that the anarchy of
the international system caused states to act selfishly and compete.4 In short,
Wendts position was that states did not have fixed identities and intereststhey
could choose to see themselves as competitive or cooperative. This meant that the
international system could be defined by cooperation if states chose to cooperate.
Critical theorists, like the German thinker Friedrich Kratochwil, issued an even more
basic criticism of neorealisms methodology. In an article from 1993, The
Embarrassment of Changes, Kratochwil argued that the search for invariable
[unchanging] laws of international politics has not only significantly reduced the set
of interesting questions, it has also led to premature closure.5 He claimed that
neorealism tried to describe international affairs in such a mechanical way that it
failed to consider the social aspect of how people and countries act.
Today, the intensity of the debate around Waltzs text has relaxed somewhat,
particularly compared to the early 1990s. One reason for that has been the
emergence of new theories that view neorealism as a source of inspiration, among
them offensive realism and neoclassical realism.
Perhaps Waltzs most well-known follower is John Mearsheimer, whose famous 2001
text, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, adapted neorealism to better suit the
state of international affairs at the time. In place of neorealism, Mearsheimer
introduced the idea of offensive realism, which argued that states have sought to
maximize their power relative to one another, rather than have just enough to
feel secure. This theory differed from neorealism in the sense that Mearsheimer
believed states could never achieve total security. He thought that great powers
like the United States, Russia, and more recently Chinawill try to increase their
security by maximizing their power and will aggressively put down smaller states
when challenged.6
Similarly, in the early 1990s, a group of scholars developed a new mode of realist
analysis by joining together key parts of neorealism with classical realism. The
resulting neoclassical realism, according to the American international relations
scholar Gideon Rose, explicitly incorporates both external [the international
system] and internal [domestic] variables, updating and systemizing certain insights
drawn from Classical Realist thought.7 For example, Richard Ned Lebow, a leading
member of the school, challenged Waltzs claim that neorealism remained

important after the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The problem, according to Lebow, was that Waltz continued to insist that the postCold War world continued to be bipolar, a view at odds with those of other realists.8
In response, neoclassical realists found inspiration from classical realist scholars,
like Hans Morgenthau, and sought to capture the human aspects in their analysis
of international affairs, accounting for society and the roles played by world leaders.
Ultimately, neither offensive realists nor neoclassical realists are debating the
central ideas put forward in Theory, but are instead using Waltzs text to develop
new ways of analysis that are better suited for evaluating the post-Cold War
international environment. Both of these theories stand in opposition to neoliberals,
like Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane, who maintain that cooperationnot
competitionis the more common aim of countries today, and constructivists, like
Alexander Wendt, and critical theorists, like Friedrich Kratochwil, who have argued
for a more open approach to theorizing that takes into account identity, interests,
and process.
Key Questions
Synthesize: In what ways has Mearsheimer used Waltzs model to build his own
theoretical model?
Analyze: What is offensive realism?
Apply: What are the other variations of neorealism that have emerged since the end
of the Cold War? What makes them similar or different?
Notes
John Mearsheimer, Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,
International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5.
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Daniel H. Nexon, Whence Causal Mechanisms? A
Comment on Legro, Dialogue IO 1, no. 1 (2002): 81.
Alexander Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of
Power Politics, International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 417.
Friedrich Kratochwil, The Embarrassment of Changes: Neorealism as the Science of
Realpolitik without Politics, Review of International Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 64
John Mearsheimer, Structural Realism, in International Relations Theories, ed. Tim
Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007): 723.
Gideon Rose, Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy, World Politics
51, no. 1 (1998): 146.
Realism, International Organization 48, no. 2 (1994): 254.
Section 3: Impact
Miscalculation by some or all of the great powers is the source of danger in a
multipolar world; overreaction by either or both of the great powers is the source of
danger in a bipolar world. Bipolarity encourages the Soviet Union [or Russia] and
United States to turn unwanted events into crises, while rendering most of them
relatively inconsequential. Each can lose heavily in a war against the other; in
power and wealth, both gain more by peaceful development of internal resources.
Key Points
Kenneth Waltzs approach in Theory of International Politics led him to argue that
nuclear weapons are a stabilizing factor, making the price of war too terrible for
countries to enter into armed conflict.
Revived tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine have resulted in a
renewed interest in neorealist theory.
By injecting a scientific, system-wide approach to international relations, Waltzs
Theory has had a major impact on the discipline.
Potential
Kenneth Waltzs Theory of International Politics has had a lasting influence on the
study of international relations and will continue to be a key text in the future. The
book continues to be cited in major publications, including the US Army War College
Guide to National Security Policy and Strategy,1 and has also been a source of
inspiration to top government officials, like Condoleezza Rice, a former US secretary
of state.2 This suggests that future policymakers and scholars will view Waltzs text
as a basic source for the study of international affairs.
The real-world uses of Waltzs Theory came through in his later work, where he
sought to build upon this original theoretical foundation. For example, in his debate
with Scott Sagan, Waltz argued that nuclear weapons in the hands of all states
would make the cost of war seem frighteningly high and thus discourage states
from starting any wars that might lead to the use of such weapons.3 Therefore,
states armed with conventional weapons were more likely to fight one another than
nuclear-armed states. Waltz believed that two nuclear-armed states would not risk
nuclear conflict because both parties would be completely destroyed in the event of
a war, whereas two conventionally armed states would fight until one defeated the
other.
In 2012, Waltz repeated his argument in an article for Foreign Affairs, Why Iran
Should Get the Bomb, suggesting that power begs to be balanced and that
nuclear states become less likely to go to war.4 This shows that Waltzs theory can
still be applied to conflicts between countries, although not necessarily to great
power competition.
Future Directions
Modern neorealists have attempted to update Waltzs theory by loosening some of
its more rigid ideas. For example, the American neorealist thinker Stephen Walt,
who had introduced the concept of balance of threat to the neorealist vocabulary
in the mid-1980s, has argued that the classical realist idea of a balance of power
did not accurately capture all the details of global politics today. Walt claimed that
the degree to which a state threatens others is a function of four factors: its
aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive capabilities, and offensive
intentions. This, he said, was the strongest basis for analyzing international
relations.
For example, how was the United States able to create a powerful coalition of allies
to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The reason, according to Walt, was
that the Soviets possessed significant aggregate power, was close to other key
centers of world power, had large offensive capabilities, and at different times
proclaimed openly revisionist aims.5 In other words, the Soviet Union was a threat
to everyone.
Interestingly, in the immediate post-Cold War environment, critics who felt
neorealism was no longer useful to the analysis of international relations had
lampooned the approach. But these critics failed to consider the possibility of a
renewed competition between the United States and Russia, which became a reality
in 2014 after Russia annexed the Crimean region of Ukraine and sparked a civil war
and major international crisis. It was at this point that neorealism seemed to come
back as a useful model.
In September 2014, the American neorealist scholar Mearsheimer published the
article Why The Ukraine Crisis is the Wests Fault, which argued that Russia
interpreted the expansion of Western influence, through the spread of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) into Eastern
Europe, as a threat to its interests.
In essence, the two sides have been operating with different playbooks: [Vladimir]
Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist
dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas
about international politics, Mearsheimer said. In other words, the Russians viewed
the expansion of NATO and the EU as the creation of an anti-Russia order on its
border, which made it feel threatened. Therefore, Mearsheimer concludes, The
United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.6
This analysis is an excellent example of the application of the neorealist approach to
current affairs, signaling its potential to remain a relevant method of analysis in the
future.
Summary
Kenneth Waltzs Theory deserves special attention as a major contribution to the
theory of international relations during the Cold War. By using a more positivist (that
is, scientific) approach to the study of international affairs, Waltz established an
entirely new school of thought, neorealism, which has been a major subject of
debate ever since.
Contemporary international relations, observed the theorist of international politics
Chris Brown, is fixated on Theory of International Politics. Not only was realism
revitalized by this book, but also anti-Realists have felt obliged to respond to its
arguments.7 Indeed, Waltz was entirely successful at achieving the revolution in
the study of international relations that he had aimed for, having radically changed
the way that scholars understand what goes on when countries interact. He did so
by, 1) illustrating what a scientific theory should look like; 2) identifying the
problems in existing theories; 3) introducing a new, scientific model; and 4) finally
applying this model to current issues. From this point onward, the entire field of
international relations was transformed, as scholars were forced to adapt to this
radically new approach.
At its root, what made Waltzs work so special at the time was its originality. Rather
than continuing the common approach of looking at the specific traits of individual
states and their leaders, he applied a system-wide and scientific method. In this
way, he transformed an academic discipline that had been historically part of the
humanitiesone that was more similar to history or philosophy than to a social
science like economics. Theory has been credited with completing the
modernization of a discipline that was stuck in a classical realist way of thinking. As
such, it had an enormous impact on academics, and it will remain one of the most
important texts in the history of international relations.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why is Theory of International Politics considered a seminal text?
Analyze: What was the most successful aspect of Waltzs text?
Apply: Can you think of examples where Waltzs text might be applied outside of
Notes
John F. Troxell, Military Power and The Use of Force, US Army War College Guide to
National Security Policy and Strategy, ed. J. Boone Bartholomees Jr. (Carlisle, PA: US
Army, 2006), 62.
Alec Russell, US Foreign Policy Takes Neo-Realist Approach, The Telegraph,
February 9, 2006, accessed December 6, 2013,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1510075/US-foreignpolicy-takes-neo-realist-approach.html.
Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better (London:
International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), 1.
Kenneth Waltz, Why Iran Should Get the Bomb, Foreign Affairs 91, no. 4 (2012),
accessed August 29, 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137731/kennethn-waltz/why-iran-should-get-the-bomb.
Yale Journal of International Affairs, Balancing Threat: The United States and The
Middle East: An Interview with Stephen M. Walt, September 10, 2010, accessed
January 15, 2015, http://yalejournal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2010/09/105202walt.pdf.
John Mearsheimer, Why The Ukraine Crisis is the Wests Fault, Foreign Affairs 93,
no. 5 (2014), accessed December 12, 2014,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukrainecrisis-is-the-wests-fault.
Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 40.
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Absolute gain: a means by which international actors (countries or organizations)
determine their interests, weighing out the total effects of a decision on themselves
and acting accordingly.
Al-Qaeda: a militant Islamic fundamentalist group that was behind a terrorist attack
against the United States on September 11, 2001.
Anarchy: a state of leaderlessness; sovereign states are in an anarchic world
because there is no authority compelling them to act one way or another.
Balance of power: a balance of power refers to the conditions whereby the power of
one state is balanced by the equivalent power of another state or group of states.
Balance of threat: a theory that holds that states use four criteria to evaluate the
threat of another state: 1) aggregate strength, 2) geographic proximity, 3) offensive
capabilities, and 4) offensive intentions.
Bipolar: a distribution of power in the international system; a bipolar system has
Bosnian War (19925): an armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina
after the break-up of the state of Yugoslavia.
Classical realism: school of international relations theory that assumes state action
is agent-driven (controlled by leaders, rather than structural imperative) and
identifies the inherent imperfections of human nature as the source of conflict.
Cold War (194791): a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet
Union and the nations aligned to them. While the two blocs never engaged in direct
military conflict, they engaged in covert and proxy wars as well as espionage
against one another.
Constructivism: a school of international relations that has gained prominence
sincethe end of the Cold War. This school of thought believes that both historical
and social factors, as opposed to human nature, determine international politics.
Copernican Revolution: a metaphor used to describe an overhaul of a discipline to
replace common sense and traditional explanations with a radically new way to
think about the discipline, one based on pure science. It refers to the observation of
the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the fifteenth century that the earth
revolved around the sunnot the sun around the earth.
Critical theory: a school of thought that originated in Frankfurt in the 1930s. It is
concerned with the circumstances and assumptions that underpin ideas in social
sciences and the humanities.
Defensive realism: a theoretical concept that argues that the anarchy of the
international system forces states to become obsessed with security, which leads to
security dilemmas whereby a states drive for security can lead to conflict with its
opponents.
Dtente: a policy that the United States implemented between 1971 and 1980 to
deal with the Soviet Union. The policy consisted of easing tensions through less
provocative behavior and interaction via meetings and summits.
European Union: a family of institutions that govern the legal, economic, and
political union of 28 European states.
Game theory: a branch of strategic studies that uses mathematical models to
analyze potential strategies for responding to competitiveor zero-sumsituations,
whereby one side wins and another loses. The models help predict the best possible
approach to a particular situation and are often used in international relations to
predict the actions of an opponent.
Great Debate: a debate that took place among theorists of the neoliberal,
neorealist,* critical theory, and constructivist schools of thought and that was
largely documented in two academic journals, International Organization and
International Security.
Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over
others. When a state achieves dominance over all other states, they are considered
a hegemon.
Hierarchy: a state of clear authority. States in a hierarchical world can be compelled
by other, more powerful states or some non-state actor one way or another.
High politics: diplomatic-strategic issues relevant to the survival of the state.
Inductivism: a scientific method developed by the English philosopher Francis Bacon
(15611626) that makes a modest observation based on a pattern of observed
behavior in nature, which can be confirmed by the collection of further data and
eventually developed into a theory or law.
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/the Levant (ISIS or ISIL): an Islamist militant group
that seized control of a large amount of territory in both Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Korean War (19503): a Cold War conflict that began when North Korea invaded
South Korea in 1950, leading to a United Nations intervention that lasted until a
ceasefire was declared in 1953. The war technically continues to this day.
League of Nations (192046): an international organization founded in the aftermath
of World War I and considered to be the precursor to the modern United Nations.
Liberalism (international relations): a school of international relations theory that
suggests that states can, and ultimately will, achieve peace and mutual
cooperation.
Low politics: cultural-economic issues relevant to the welfare of the state.
Multipolar: a distribution of power within the international system whereby power is
balanced between more than two nations.
Neoclassical realism: a combination of neorealism and classical realism. Its

supporters hold that state action can be explained with reference to both structural
factors (such as the distribution of capabilities between states) and agent-driven
factors (such as the ambitions of given leaders).
Neocolonialism: a perspective that assumes that international capitalism drives
states to acquire empires, either by direct means or indirect military control.
Neoliberal institutionalism: see neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism: school of international relations theory that holds that cooperation
among countries is possible and likely, especially through international institutions,
because states prefer to maximize their absolute gains rather than their relative
gains over one another.
Neorealism/structural realism: a school of international relations theory that
assumes structural constraints (anarchy and the distribution of world power), rather
than human agency, will determine an actors behavior.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): a collective defense organization
composed of 28 states. It is generally considered to be engaged in the promotion of
American, or Western, interests abroad.
Offensive realism: a theory of international relations first put forward by John J.
Mearsheimer, arguing that aggressive behavior between states at an international
level is a result of the lack of a central international authority.
Polarity: a distribution of power within the international system. A bipolar system
has power concentrated in two states, whereas a unipolar system has only one pole
(also known as hegemony) and a multipolar system has power concentrated among
Positivism: a perspective in the philosophy of science. It holds that people obtain
information through their sensory experience (what is seen and heard in the real
world). Laws are derived from these observations and tested through
experimentation.
Post-positivism: a response to positivism that holds that the background or values of
the researcher can affect what he or she observes.
Quantitative analysis: the study of a situation or event using complex mathematical
and statistical modeling.
Realism: a school of international relations theory that assumes, 1) states are the
primary actors, 2) states all share the goal of survival, and 3) states provide for their
own security.
Reductionism: a philosophical perspective that holds that a person can understand

a system by examining its individual parts rather than as a working whole.
Relative gain: a means by which international actors determine their interests with
respect to power balances while disregarding other key factors, such as economics.
Soviet Union, or USSR: a kind of super state that existed from 1922 to 1991,
centered primarily on Russia and its neighbors in Eastern Europe and the northern
half of Asia. It was the communist pole of the Cold War, with the United States as its
main rival.
Superpower: a very powerful and influential nation, often used to refer to the United
States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when both states were the most
powerful nations in the world.
Unipolar: an international situation where one nation dominates the rest (also
known as hegemony).
Ukraine: a nation in which demonstrations in 2004 against its president, Viktor
Yanukovych, aligned to Russia and perceived to be corrupt, finished in the reelection of Viktor Yushchenko as president. In controversial circumstances, Russia
sponsored forces of ethnic Russians in the Crimean region to agitate for it to be
incorporated into the Russian state. The crisis is ongoing.
United Nations: an intergovernmental organization representing nearly every state
in the world. It is the main organization administering international health,
development, security, and similar programs.
Vietnam War (195575): a Cold War conflict between the United States and the
communist forces of North Vietnam. In 1973, the US signed a peace treaty and
withdrew its forces from South Vietnam, which collapsed two years later.
World War I (191418): a military conflict between the Allied forces, led by France,
Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom, and (after 1917) the United States, and the
Central powers, led by Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and the Ottoman
Empire. The war left 16 million people dead.
World War II (193945): a global conflict fought between the Axis Powers (Germany,
Italy, and Japan) and the victorious Allied Powers (United Kingdom and its
commonwealth, the former Soviet Union, and the United States).
Yugoslav Wars (19912001): a series of wars fought in south-eastern Europes
Balkan peninsula between the successor states to the former Yugoslavia, including
Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Croatia, and Slovenia.
Zero-sum: a concept used in international relations to describe a situation whereby

a victory for one side of a conflict is viewed as a loss for the other. For example, the
United States viewed the Soviet Unions launching of Sputnik in 1957 as a loss.
Mortimer Adler (19022001) was an American philosopher who wrote primarily on
ethical topics. His work consisted of a wide range of ethical investigations into
subjects from religion to the idea of human perfectibility to politics. He wrote How to
Think About War and Peace in 1944.
Richard Ashley is a British international relations theorist in the critical theory school
of thought.
Chris Brown is a prominent professor of international political theory at the London
School of Economics.
Zbigniew Brzezinski (b. 1928) is a Polish-born American political scientist,
statesman, and diplomat. He played a prominent role during the Jimmy Carter
administration, serving as national security advisor in 197781.
Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543) was a Renaissance astronomer who showed that
the sun and not the earth was at the center of the known universe.
mile Durkheim (18581917) was a French social theorist. He is considered to be
one of the founding fathers of the social sciences. Durkheim was concerned with
imparting hard scientific rigor to the social sciences and the study of society as a
system, rather than with individuals.
Robert Gilpin (b. 1930) is an American professor of political economy at Princeton
University. He is the author of a number of prominent works including The Political
Economy of International Relations. Notably, he imported a key idea of neorealism
into the field of political economy.
Robert Jervis (b. 1940) is an American professor of international affairs at Columbia
University. He is associated with the neorealist school. Jervis is prominent for
applying psychology to international conflict and positing how miscommunication
between states can spiral into war.
Robert Keohane (b. 1941) is an American political science professor at Princeton. He
is associated with neoliberal institutionalism, and he co-wrote his first book on the
topic, Power and Interdependence, with Joseph Nye.
Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) is a German-born American political scientist, statesman,
and diplomat. He played a prominent role during the administrations of US
presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor in 1969
73 and then as secretary of state in 19737.
Friedrich Kratochwil (b. 1944) is a German international relations scholar who has
worked in both Europe and the United States. His 1989 book, Rules, Norms, and
Decisions, is credited with introducing constructivism to the discipline.
Richard Ned Lebow is an American political scientist in the constructivist and
neoclassical realist school of thought.
John Mearsheimer (b. 1947) is an American international relations professor and
neorealist at the University of Chicago. He is the pioneer of offensive realism, a
contemporary reformulation of neorealism.
Hans Morgenthau (190480) was a German political theorist who worked primarily
in America. He has been described as the most prominent of the classical realists.
Richard Nixon (191394) was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to
1974. After securing a second term in office in 1972, he was forced to resign due to
his involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Joseph Nye (b. 1937) is an American political science professor at Harvard
University. He co-wrote Power and Interdependence with Robert Keohane, effectively
founding neoliberal institutionalism.
Vladimir Putin (b. 1952) is a former Russian intelligence officer and statesman. He
was president of the Russian Federation in 20008, prime minister in 200812, and
has been president since 2012.
Condoleezza Rice (b. 1964) is a political scientist and diplomat. She played a
prominent role in the administration of US President George W. Bush, first as
national security advisor (200105) and then as secretary of state (20059).
Gideon Rose is an American professor and policy advisor in international relations.
The editor of Foreign Affairs magazine from 2010, he teaches at Columbia
University.
Scott Sagan (b. 1955) is an American professor of international relations at Stanford
University. He is known for his research on nuclear weapons.
Thucydides (460395 b.c.e.) was an ancient Athenian historian, politician, writer,
and general. He is often thought of as the first political theorist.
Ole Wver (b. 1960) is a Danish professor of international relations, working
primarily in Denmark and London and specializing in the theory of theory.
Stephen Walt (b. 1958) is an American international relations professor and
neorealist. He co-wrote The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy with fellow neorealist
John Mearsheimer. He expanded the concept of the balance of power to take state
identities into account, calling it the balance of threat.
Alexander Wendt (b. 1958) is a German political theorist and one of a core group of
constructivist scholars in the field of international relations.
Woodrow Wilson (18561924) was the 28th President of the United States. He is
notable for presiding over the US during World War I (191418) and for helping
construct an international order in the aftermath.
Fareed Zakaria (b. 1964) is an Indian American journalist, author, and neorealist
scholar. He has been managing editor of Foreign Affairs and Time, and he notably
authored The Post-American World.
Works Cited
Adler, Mortimer. How to Think About War and Peace. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1944.
Ashley, Richard. The Poverty of Neorealism. Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by
Robert Keohane, 255300. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Booth, Ken. The Darwin of International Relations. Foreign Policy. Accessed
December 6, 2013.
tz?page=0,4.
Brown, Chris, and Kirsten Ainley. Understanding International Relations. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Halliday, Fred, and Justin Rosenberg. Interview with Ken Waltz. Review of
International Studies 24, no. 3 (1998): 37186.
Jervis, Robert. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976.
Kratochwil, Friedrich, The Embarrassment of Changes: Neorealism as the Science
of Realpolitik without Politics. Review of International Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 63
80.
Kriesler, Harry. Theory and International Politics: Conversation with Kenneth Waltz.
Accessed August 12, 2013. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people3/Waltz/.
Lebow, Richard Ned. Classical Realism. In International Relations Theories, edited
by Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith, 5269. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007.
Legro Jeffrey, and Andrew Moravcsik. Is Anybody Still a Realist? International
Security 24, no. 2 (1999): 555.
Linklater, Andrew. The Achievements of Critical Theory. In International Theory:

Positivism and Beyond, edited by Steve Smith, Ken Booth, and Marysia Zalewski.
Mearsheimer, John, Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,
International Security 15, no.1 (1990): 556.
___. Structural Realism. In International Relations Theories, edited by Tim Dunne,
Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith, 7286. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
___. Why The Ukraine Crisis is the Wests Fault, Foreign Affairs 93, no. 5 (2014).
Accessed December 12, 2014. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-jmearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault.
Milner, Helen. Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International,
American, and Comparative Politics. International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998):
75986.
Morgenthau, Hans. Politics Among Nations. New York: McGraw Hill, 1979.
Nye, Joseph. Neorealism and Neoliberalism. World Politics 40, no. 2 (1988): 235
51.
Rose, Gideon. Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy, World Politics
51, no. 1 (1998): 14472.
Schouten, Peer. Theory Talk #33, Stephen Walt. Theory Talks. Accessed November
1, 2013. http://www.theory-talks.org/2011/06/theory-talk-33.html.
___.Theory Talk #40, Kenneth Waltz. Theory Talks. Accessed August 14, 2013.
http://www.theory-talks.org/2011/06/theory-talk-40.html.
Singer, David J. The Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations. World
Politics 14, no. 1 (1961): 7791.
Troxell, John F. Military Power and The Use of Force. In US Army War College Guide
to National Security Policy and Strategy, edited by J. Boone Bartholomees Jr. Carlisle,
PA: US Army, 2006.
Waever, Ole. Waltzs Theory of Theory. International Politics 23, no. 2 (2009): 201
22.
Walt, Stephen. Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power. International
Security 9, no. 4 (1985): 343.
Waltz, Kenneth. Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Columbia
___. Theory of International Politics: A Theoretical Analysis. Reading: Addison

Wesley, 1979.
___. The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better. London: International
Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981.
___. A Response to My Critics. In Neorealism and Its Critics, edited by Robert
Keohane, 32245. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
___. Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory. Journal of International Affairs 44, no. 1
(1990): 2137.
___. The Emerging Structure of International Politics. International Security 18, no.
2 (1993): 4479.
___. Structural Realism After the Cold War. International Security 25, no. 1 (2000):
541.
___. Why Iran Should Get the Bomb. Foreign Affairs. Accessed August 29, 2013.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137731/kenneth-n-waltz/why-iran-should-getthe-bomb.
Wendt, Alexander. Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of
International Politics. International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992): 391425.
Williams, Michael. Waltz, Realism, and Democracy. International Relations 23, no.
3 (2009): 32840.
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Thomas PaineCommon Sense
Ways In To The Text
Key Points
Though born in England in 1737, Thomas Paine is best remembered for writing
pamphlets that inspired Americans to revolt against Great Britain.
Common Sense called for American independence and explained how to achieve it.
Paines pamphlet made political ideas accessible and sold in huge numbers. It
directly influenced the outcome of the American Revolutionthe military conflict
that led to the independence of 13 of Great Britains North American colonies and
the formation of the United States of America.
Who was Thomas Paine?
Thomas Paine was born in England in 1737. His father belonged to the Quakers, a
denomination of Christianity that opposes war and violence. Though few received
an education at this time, and Paines family was not rich, he attended a grammar
schoolwhat we would today call a secondary or high schooluntil he was 13.
There he received a basic education in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and the
Scriptures.
Paines early life was not particularly successful. Neither of his marriages lasted,
and the businesses he started failed. In 1772, while working for the Customs and
Excise Office inspecting imported goods, Paine wrote his first political work, The
Case of the Officers of Excise, in which he argued for better working conditions and
pay. He was dismissed from this post early in 1774.
In September 1774, Paine was introduced to Benjamin Franklin, an inventor, author,
and political agitator who would become one of the Founding Fathers of the United
States of America. Franklin was impressed with Paine, and he not only advised him
to move to North America, but also gave him a letter of recommendation.
When Paine arrived in Philadelphia, the political situation in the American colonies
was quite volatile. The Seven Years War, fought between Great Britain and France
over conflicting trade interests, had ended 11 years earlier. While Great Britain had
won, it was heavily in debt and wanted the colonies to help cover the wars cost.
Paine, like many Americans, was outraged that Britain would tax the colonies to
help pay for the war while refusing them representation in Parliament. He felt that
America must become independent, and he made his case in Common Sense.
What Does Common Sense Say?
Paine believed that the American colonies could win independence despite a
military disadvantage. At the time, the most important part of a countrys military
was its navy, and Britain had the best navy in the world. However, Paine claimed
that America had many advantages over Britain. For example, it was rich in natural
resources like trees, which were needed to build ships. Additionally, British soldiers
would have to travel a great distance to reach the fighting.
More important was Paines argument that British rule was unfair. He wanted to
create a free society in which decisions were made not by a king or queen, but by
the people. The ideas in Common Sense were easy to understand, and they still
influence American politics today. Because of this, Common Sense is an important

part of American history.
The ideas were not Paines alone. He drew from a European intellectual movement
called the Enlightenment that emphasized reason and individualism over tradition.
Among the interests of Enlightenment thinkers was a general inquiry into how
societies could be fairer. Nobody, however, had yet tried to organize a society based
on Enlightenment principles.
Paine helped change that. After winning the Revolution, American society was
formed around the sorts of personal freedom for which Enlightenment thinkers
argued. While some believed such a system would lead to chaos, Americas success
proved them wrong. Paine is considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United
States because of his pamphlets role in these political changes.
Those studying Paine should see Common Sense as valuable for two reasons. First,
it helps us understand the fears and thoughts that average eighteenth-century
colonists had about their political situation. It also shows us why even some who
were not happy with recent events wanted to stay part of the British Empire.
Second, Paines writing style influenced the way future political arguments were
made. He took the political opinion of elite thinkers and made them accessible to
anyone who could read. As the political historian Eric Foner notes, Paine
communicated a new vision of government not just to a broad American audience,
but to a worldwide audience.1
Why Does Common Sense Matter?
Common Sense listed reasons in favor of American independence and attacked
those who wanted to remain British subjects. As such, the text provides the reader
with a sense of the eighteenth-century publics feeling and mood. It can therefore
help students understand both history and politics. It can also help explain why
freedom is considered to be so important to so many today.
Common Sense was innovative because it made difficult ideas easy to understand.
These ideas would outlast the Revolution and become part of everyday politics. For
example, Paines ideas made their way into both the Declaration of Independence
(the statement issued by 13 British colonies to the British Empire in which they
declared that they considered themselves independent) and the US Constitution
(the document setting out the rights of American citizens and the nature and
obligations of their government). Both documents formed the basis for the
American system of government; the Constitution has proven to be enormously
influential globally.
Paine also popularized ideas that had previously been understood only by a few
well-educated people. For example, he explained that freedom of religion and
freedom of speech were not dangerous, as was thought at the time, but would lead
to a better world.
Paines style also showed that it was beneficial for political writing to be easy to
read. The pamphlet sold in large numbers, and the war would not have had so much
support without it. Additionally, this support allowed American leaders to put these
new ideas into place after the war was over. The success of the new American
system caused some Europeans to think about making similar changes. The old
argument that a free country would be a horrible place looked weak, and people
began to want more from their governments. In this way, we can see how Paines
Common Sense drastically affected how people throughout the world saw political
systems.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why did Thomas Paine write Common Sense?
Analyze: Why was the writing style he used so important?
Apply: Has the book had any effect on the politics of today?
Notes
Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (London, New York, and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976), xvi.
Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation.
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Key Points
Common Sense was instrumental in inspiring popular support for independence.
Paine immigrated in 1774 to America, where he could argue for his ideas to be put
into practice.
The American Revolutionary War (the military conflict between 13 colonies of the
British Empire and the empires army that led to the formation of the young United
States) provided the chance to create a nation based on the principles of the
Enlightenmenta movement in European culture and thinking towards rationality
and individualism.
Why Read This Text?
Thomas Paine first published Common Sense in 1776. His pamphlet argues that the
political and economic union of America and Britain sooner or later must have an
end.1 Paine critiques Britains hereditary monarchya system in which sovereign
power is inherited by succeeding generations of the same familyand asserts that
it is impractical for a small, distant island to govern a continent. He claimed that
Britain had inflicted economic and social injustices upon the colonists that were an
affront to their personal freedoms.
While many in America accepted that grievances existed between Britain and the
colonies, some believed that reconciliation was possible. However, Paine argued
that everything that is right or natural pleads for separation,2 and insisted that
independence was the best course of action. His arguments led to a notable shift in
the attitudes of colonists, who began to support revolution in much larger numbers.
It should be noted that the primary purpose of Common Sense was propaganda.
That is, it was not written to provide unbiased information, but rather to convince its
audience that Paine was right.
Paines text offers a brief summary of eighteenth-century political ideas and helps
make contemporary political thought easy to understand. Additionally, Common
Sense helps us understand how the American Revolution succeeded. This is
important because the revolution influenced Western political systems in ways that
still reverberate today.
Author's Life
Paine was born in England in 1734 to a Quaker father and an Anglican mother. His
early life was undistinguished. Until he was 13 he attended grammar school, where
he received a basic education. His first marriage ended tragically, when his wife and
daughter died during childbirth. Paines second marriage to Elizabeth Olive lasted
only four years, and they formally separated in 1774. His business ventures, such as
his tobacco shop, also failed.
Paines first notable experiment with writing came while working at the Custom and
Excise Office in London. He wrote a 21-page pamphlet, The Case of the Officers of
Excise, in which he argued for better working conditions and an increased salary. He
was dismissed from this post shortly after its publication.
Paines life changed when he was introduced to the American political theorist and
scientist Benjamin Franklin in September 1774. Little is known about this meeting,
but Paine set sail for Philadelphia almost immediately after it. He arrived on
November 30 and soon became a citizen. Franklin had given Paine a letter of
recommendationan important endorsement at the time. By January 1775, Paine
was employed as the editor of a periodical called the Pennsylvania Magazine. Here,
he immersed himself in American politics and developed his unique style.
Author's Background
America was still a sovereign territory of Great Britain when Paine arrived in 1774. It
was also in the midst of a crisis. Britain and France had fought for control of America
in what was known in Europe as the Seven Years War, and though Britain had won,
the war had been expensive. As a consequence, Britain imposed taxes on the
colonies to help pay its debts. The colonists were outraged that the government
could tax them without their consent, especially given that they had been denied
representation in the British Parliament.
The political situation deteriorated further after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, in
which colonists boarded three British ships in Boston Harbor and threw the
consignment of tea overboard. The British response was to pass a series of five
laws, called the Coercive Acts,3 which were designed to punish the colonies and
reestablish control over the territories. Massachusetts, one of the more rebellious
states, was targeted in particular. For instance, the acts closed Bostons port, gave
direct control of the Massachusetts government to a British-appointed governor,
gave the governor the right to insist that accused government officials be tried in
Great Britain, and permitted the governor to house troops in unoccupied buildings.
Unsurprisingly, the new laws provoked outrage: the colonists referred to them as
the Intolerable Acts. As a result, the First Continental Congress was organized, in
which representatives from 12 of the 13 colonies (Georgia did not attend) met in
Philadelphia from September to October 1774. Coincidentally, this was almost
exactly when Paine arrived in the city.
The congress sent a petition to Britains king, George III, asking him to address their
grievances with the Coercive Acts and various other issues. After the petition was
rejected, the Second Continental Congress met in May 1775 to prepare for the war
effort that many, though not all, now saw as inevitable.
The battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought on April 19, 1775, and these
first conflicts effectively began the American Revolutionary War. On July 4,1776, the
Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which
declared that the 13 colonies were no longer part of the British Empire.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why was Common Sense so important?
Analyze: How did Paines background shape his thinking?
Apply: How important was the political climate in shaping the book?
Notes
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1997), 22.
Paine, Common Sense, 22.
Only four of the five acts were in direct response to the general sense of rebellion.
The fifth was related to the borders of Quebec.
But where, says some, is the King of America? Ill tell you friend, he reigns above
and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain.
Key Points
Common Sense discussed what should be done about the political crises unfolding
in the American colonies.
Thinkers of the Enlightenmentthe current of European thought that increasingly
stressed rationality and individualismemphasized the rights of the individual over
the power of the state.
Paine was self-taught and had no formal education in political philosophy.
In Common Sense, Thomas Paine appealed to a sense of national pride that existed
in Britains colonies in the eighteenth century. Although his writing reflected the
consensus opinion of his Enlightenment peers,1 Paines goal was not to educate
but to inspire political change. He wrote so that the common colonist could grasp
his meaning, mixing straightforward arguments with biblical references, and
appealing to how colonists felt about the political climate.
Paine chose not to mention Enlightenment philosophers such as the British political
philosopher John Locke, the Genevan political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
and the French political philosopher and writer Voltaire, and others more immediate
to Paines circle, such as the American political theorist and scientist Benjamin
Franklin. However, it is easy to see how he was influenced by these thinkers, given
what they contributed to eighteenth-century thought.
Locke is often considered the father of modern liberalism, and, along with Voltaire,
argued for the rights of the individual and the separation of church and state.
Rousseaus writing on social inequality and political systems would influence both
the American Revolution (in which the young United States forcibly took its
independence from the British Empire) and the French Revolution (in which French
citizens rose up to overturn the social order, overthrowing the monarchy and
instituting a republic).
Ideas about individual rights and freedoms were not immediately accessible to the
average person in the eighteenth century. The American colonies were subject to
the king of England, and though his power was not absolute, colonists were still
limited in what they could do and say. Unlike today, no real alternative to this
system of government had been attempted. As such, it was difficult for those in
favor of individual liberty to answer those who argued that individual liberties would
lead to anarchy.
The intellectual climate of the time was volatile, as Enlightenment thinkers were
challenging existing beliefs about religion, government, and individual rights. Like
Voltaire, Paine was a deist, meaning that he believed that reason rather than
tradition should be the foundation for belief in God. He also believed that reason
and not tradition should be the basis of government. Though he did state these
claims explicitly in Common Sense, it is still possible to see the influences of
Enlightenment thinkers in the subtext of the pamphlet.
An idea central to Common Sense, and to all Enlightenment political thought, is the
social contractthe idea, established by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes,
that human nature is governed by reason, and that there is a limit to the number of
rights citizens should consent to lose for the sake of good governance; Hobbes
believed that human beings would live in chaos unless subject to strong
authoritative governments like monarchies.
Paine agreed with Hobbes that some form of government was necessary for civil
society, but he strongly disagreed about how much was required. Paine argued not
only that were men free, equal, and independent, but also that their only king was
God, who reigned above and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute
of Britain.2
John Locke was another important influence on Paine. Locke believed that human
nature was governed by reason, and he argued for a form of government in which
people voluntarily abandoned personal liberties in order to create a civil society.
Locke had argued that people should give up fewer rights than Hobbes thought they
should, and Paine took this even further. According to Paine, citizens should give up
as few rights as possibleand some rights could not be given up at all, not even by
choice.
Although Paine recognized that societies needed leaders, he wanted a presidential
system, in which the leader is elected by the people, and not a hereditary
monarchy, in which authority stays within a family and is passed from generation to
generation. Furthermore, he believed that the presidency should be both temporary
and limited in power.3 In Common Sense, Paine argued that his ideas should be put
into place. The pamphlet was not just a contribution to philosophical debate.
Academic Influences
While we have seen that Enlightenment thinking influenced Paine, it is possible to
look more closely at his principles. He believed in liberalism, a political philosophy
that emphasizes freedom, equality, and regularly contested elections. He was also
influenced by republicanism, an ideology that rejects the notion that the head of
state should be a hereditary position, such as that of a king or other monarch.
Finally, he was a radical, which at the time referred to those who wished to break
with England in order to create a fairer society. Today, it should be noted, radicalism
has come to mean any form of extreme ideology. Paine may also have learned a
great deal from Benjamin Franklin, who was a politician of considerable influence, as
well as a polymath (that is, his expertise spanned several fields of knowledge).
Paines Enlightenment peers had been struggling with how best to organize society
for some time. Hobbes had felt that without an authoritative ruler, the strong would
dominate or enslave the weak. As a result, he thought that life was the only
inalienable, or guaranteed, right that people had. Locke was less extreme. He wrote
that people had a range of incontestable rights, but that they still had to trade some
for security and peace.
According to Paine, however, Hobbess monarch was a tyrant, and Lockes
constitutional monarchy, in which the power of the monarch was limited by a
constitution, was not much better. Paine melded these ideas with more modern
thinking, such as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for democratic rule.
Though this does not seem radical today, it contradicted the common wisdom of the
day.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What school of thought did Paine belong to?
Analyze: What did Paine think should be done about the political crises?
Apply: Why did Paine think people should be free?
Notes
Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: His Life, His Time and the Birth of Modern Nations
(London: Profile Books, 2007), 8.
As in absolute governments the king is law so too in free countries the law ought to
be king.
Key Points
Paine wanted to guarantee the rights of the individual above all else.
In most European countries, the individual was less important than loyalty to ones
king or nation.
Paine made it possible for anyone to understand the debate over individual rights.
Core Question
Thomas Paines Common Sense tried to answer two core questions. First, was
independence from Britain desirable? Second, was it achievable?
Paine intended his pamphlet to serve as propaganda; he believed yes was the
answer to both questions and made no attempt to offer a balanced discussion. He
began writing shortly after the American Revolution began, although at the time,
many, including some in the Continental Congress, still hoped for reconciliation. This
is why these core questions were so important: Paines primary purpose was to
convince both the masses and American leaders that independence was the correct
course of action.
Paine said British rule amounted to tyranny. He was less clear on whether
independence could be achieved. At the time, defeat was a serious possibility. Given
what we know now, it is easy to miss how much Paines argument was a
monumental gamble. That the gamble paid off remains one of the more compelling
reasons why Common Sense has endured.
The Participants
Although Common Sense does not refer to specific political or philosophical
theories, Paines intellectual influences are clear. One important thinker whose ideas
we find reflected in the pamphlet is the English philosopher John Locke.
Lockes concept of a civilized society was based on natural rights, or rights that
should be guaranteed to all people, and social contract theory, which was the idea
that some liberties should be given up for the sake of a peaceful, just society.
Paine took Lockes belief that only consent could give a man permanent
membership of society, and expressed it in language that was deliberately
inflammatory.1 For example, Paine wrote that independence meant no more than,
whether we shall make our own laws or, whether the King, the greatest enemy this
continent hath or can have shall tell us there shall be no laws but such as I like.2
Most Enlightenment texts were not nearly so provocative, because they were
directed at an intellectual audience and their authors, who feared arrest, tended to
be more cautious.
Not every Enlightenment thinker believed in the same version of social contract
theory, and Paine drew from a range of sources. Another of his influences was the
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was born in Geneva, in what is now
Switzerland. In Du Contrat social, Rousseau claimed that it was important for
citizens to obey the law for the collective good of society.3 Like Rousseau, Paine
believed in the importance of laws based on reason, writing that as in absolute
governments the king is law so too in free countries the law ought to be king.4
He differed from Rousseau in that he valued individual rights over the collective
good. Paine dismissed the question of what rights colonists should give up entirely,
since he did not think English law was legitimate: [you] that oppose independence
now [you] know not what [you] do, he wrote; [you] are opening a door to eternal
tyranny by leaving vacant the seat of government.5
In making this statement, he further radicalized what were already extreme ideas.
Common Sense thus attacks British rule both by asking what rights citizens should
give up to their rulers, and who should be permitted to rule in the first place.
When Paine published Common Sense in 1776, the intellectual battlefield included a
volatile mix of Enlightenment ideas, traditional thinking, and realpolitik ideas (that
is, ideas governed by practical concerns rather than moral considerations). Paine
drew on this debate, often taking radical ideas and making them even more
extreme.
For example, John Locke believed that monarchs should have their power limited by
a constitution. Paine took this further, ridiculing even the concept of a constitutional
monarchy: Why is the constitution of England sickly, but because monarchy hath
poisoned the republic, the crown hath engrossed the commons?6 Similarly, the
French philosopher Voltaire believed that England was freer than France because of
its constitutional monarchy. Paine, however, openly dismissed the idea that English
liberties had any real substance.
Even supporters of independence such as the politician John Adams, who was to be
the second president of the United States, thought Common Sense was too radical.
According to Adams, Paine tended to resort to false dichotomies, or claiming that
only two choices exist when in reality there are many possibilities. In Thoughts on
Government (1776), Adams rejected Paines idea that the country could be
governed by a single legislative body. He wrote that people could not be long free,
nor ever happy, whose government is in one assembly.7
To understand Common Sense today, the reader must have some understanding of
Enlightenment thought. It is important to remember that while Paine borrowed
ideas, he took the time to trace their origins, as he wanted his pamphlet to be
simple and accessible.
Finally, one reason why Paines ideas were often more extreme than those whose
work he drew on was the context in which he wrote. Those writing in Europe could
afford to make abstract arguments. Paines ideas had to be immediately applied to
the volatile political situation in the colonies; there was so very little time for
debate.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Was Paine certain that America could win the war?
Analyze: How did Paine take ideas from previous thinkers and apply them to the
political crisis?
Apply: If Paine did not mention any philosophers by name, how can we identify their
influence on his pamphlet?
Notes
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge
Christopher D. Wraight, Rousseaus The Social Contract: A Readers Guide (New
York: Continuum, 2008), 33.
John Adams, Thoughts on Government, accessed November 7, 2013,
http://www.constitution.org/jadams/thoughts.htm.
The Tremendous Impact of Paines writings in Europe and America has never been
adequately explained, and Paines relationship to the expansion of popular
participation in politicsa major achievement in the Age of Revolutionis still not
clear.
Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America

Key Points
Paine believed that the only interest government should serve was the will of the
people.
By putting Enlightenment ideas into practice, Paine contributed significantly to the
formation of the United States.
Paine understood the need to translate abstract philosophical ideas into practical
ones in order to cause political change.
Author's Aims
In writing Common Sense, Thomas Paine was aware of the limits of his intended
audience. The philosophical ideas that informed his work were not familiar to the
average person in 1776and nor were they easily explained. Thus his text was not
a philosophical treatise but a call for political action. It was written clearly and
concisely, avoiding complex metaphors and intricate arguments.
Because literacy was uncommon in eighteenth-century New England, there were
also restrictions on the pamphlets length. Common Sense was intended to be read
aloud at public gatherings, which would have been difficult had it been long. This
was one reason why the pamphlet was revolutionary: its briefness and use of plain
speech allowed common people to understand complex political and philosophical
ideas.
Called the first American self-help book for those who could not imagine life
without a monarch,1 Common Sense became an instant best seller,2 stirring
opinion across the continent and, perhaps more importantly, boosting morale in the
Continental army commanded by George Washingtona man who was to be the
first president of the young United States.
Approach
Paine rejected the notion that reconciliation with Great Britain was possible, even if
some still desired it. Two aspects of Paines response to those who opposed
independence are noteworthy.
First, he drew from Enlightenment thinkers who believed that political systems
should be based on reason, not tradition. Second, he knew a great deal about
contemporary American politics and was able to apply Enlightenment ideas clearly
to them. Paines innovation was to ask not if the colonies should become
independent, but how. In his view, continued British rule was not an option.
While most political philosophers had to create hypothetical examples of how their
ideas might work, Paine was able to draw upon real-world events that were already
unpopular, such as the Coercive Actslaws imposed by the British government on
the state of Massachusetts and intended to punish the colonists for behavior
considered to be insubordinate (that is, rebellious). His ideas were therefore not
abstract; they were applicable to current affairs.
While thinkers in Europe were asking questions about what rights people should be
allowed, Paine pointed to those that were already being denied or abused. This
combination of an intellectual analysis and an appeal to emotion struck a chord with
readers from all over the continent.
Paine was the inheritor of an eclectic set of ideas originated by figures such as the
Genevan Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a man much
esteemed by Paine,3 who had already argued that democracy was the best form of
government. Rousseau had developed his thinking by studying the British political
philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. The historian Christopher Hitchens
points out that it is not known whether Paine ever read Hobbes, and he always
denied having read John Lockes essay on Civil Government,4 but we can still see
their influences in Common Sense.
Paine was able to apply these ideas directly to the plight of the colonies; in this way,
he was not only critiquing British misrule but also the British political system. Unlike
Locke and Hobbes, Paine rejected the idea of a kingeven one limited by a
constitutionand opted instead for a system that called for leaders to be chosen
and removed from office on a regular basis.
It is difficult to know exactly where to position Paine within academic thought. In
Common Sense, the stance he takes against monarchy allows us to identify him as
a republican, and his emphasis on equality, freedom, and individual rights suggests
that he was a liberal and a radical. However, it is only by examining his later works,
such as The Rights of Man (1791), that we can definitively say that he was
influenced by social contract theory. In The Rights of Man, Paine applied existing
political theory to the events that had led to the American crisis, and later to the
French Revolution. More importantly, he adapted and combined ideas from multiple
sources that fit his vision of freedom.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What role did Paine think government should play?
Analyze: How did Paine redefine the philosophical questions of the age?
Apply: Can we be sure that Paine was adapting Lockes theories to the American
crises? Why, or why not?
Notes
Thomas Paine, The Thomas Paine Reader, ed. Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick
(London: Penguin, 1987), 10.
Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paines Rights of Man (New York: Grove Press, 2006),
95.
Hitchens, Rights of Man, 106.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas
Society in every state is a blessing but government even in its best state is but a
necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
Key Points
Common Sense argued that Britain had betrayed its colonies, and that America was
morally required to fight for independence.
Paine showed that the grievances Americans felt toward Britain represented a larger
social injustice.
He wrote in a bold, dramatic style, and persuaded his audience using language they
were familiar with.
Key Themes
Common Senses argument is built on the premise that government even in its
best state is but a necessary evil,1 and at its worst is an intolerable one. As such,
Paine begins by describing how governments, in particular monarchies, can be
harmful. He argues that American independence is inevitable and insists that
without it, British tyranny would continue to cause social injustice. He ties these
ideas together by touching upon a philosophical concept that was important to
Enlightenment thinkers: an examination of the state of nature (that is, the
hypothetical way in which people would have lived before societies were formed).
Paines explanation of the social contractan idea based on the assumption that
human nature is governed by reason, and that people should only trade so many
rights for stable governmentis subtle.
First, he asks the reader to imagine each person living on his or her own, in a state
of nature. It would be logical for people to want to create a "society,2 since,
according to Paine, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants and his
mind so unsuited to perpetual solitude.3 In coming together, people would need to
agree upon rules and choose leaders to govern them.
However, Paine writes, the invention of government had been conceived in dark
and slavish times,4 and was now imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable
of producing what it seems to promise.5 According to Paine, examples of these
imperfections include Englands unwritten constitution (called unwritten
because it existed in multiple documents and practices, and not as a single, unified
text) and hereditary monarchy, in which the crown was passed from generation to
generation according to tradition. In particular, Paine sees the king as the source of
all social injustice.
Paine accuses the British government of crimes stretching back several years.
Among these crimes are unfair taxation, lack of representation in the British
Parliament, and the bloody battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in
1775, when the Revolutionary army engaged the British army in the colony of
Massachusetts, with great loss of life.
In Paines view, reconciliation would not resolve the colonists grievances because it
would not change the fact that the colonies were ruled by a king. As such, Paine
charges those who support reconciliation with opening a door to eternal tyranny.6
And because Britain had refused to agree to colonial demands, the only two options
Paine allows for are surrender or revolution. From this perspective, war seems
inevitable: the colonists position was intolerable and would not change unless they
escaped British rule.
Exploring The Ideas
Paine doesnt just disapprove of the British governments policies. He writes that the
very system is corrupt. He denounces the hereditary monarchy as an insult and an
imposition on prosperity,7 and reasons that the way to correct the problem is to
change the system. This, in Paines view, is why Americans must become
independent: there was no will in Britain to change from a constitutional monarchy,
which they saw as a liberal, workable system.
America would have to break from the mother country herself. Paine writes that the
Old World is overrun with oppression, and freedom has been hunted from the
globe.8 Paine believed that no amount of negotiation with Britain would change
this. It would therefore be necessary to construct a new political system based in
part on the beliefs of Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius, who was among
the first to introduce the idea of natural individual rights in the seventeenth century.
In asking readers to consider what a state of nature might look like, Paine also asks
them to reevaluate the social norms with which they had been raised. Paine claims
to draw his form of government from a principle of nature.9 He also argues that
the state of nature proves that hereditary monarchy is illogicalor, as he put it,
turns it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.10 Furthermore, Paine
insists that men, who look upon themselves [as] born to reign and others to obey,
soon grow insolent. For Paine, the logic is clear: there are no kings in nature, and
there should be none in society.11
The key ideas in Common Sense are best understood as a series of arguments and
counterarguments designed to inspire the public to support revolution. Paine begins
by rejecting the idea that government should serve any interest other than that of
the people. He is especially critical of hereditary monarchy, especially in the ways it
limits individual rights. After citing a series of examples to show that the Bible does
not support the idea of kings, Paine launches an all-out attack on British rule, citing
the absurdity of an island ruling a continent, let alone much of the world.
Paines outrage is tempered by his calm, logical support for inalienable, or
guaranteed, human rights. By both illustrating the injustice of British rule and
highlighting the economic practicality of war, Paines argument addresses specific
colonial concerns while also giving voice to the growing anger that colonists felt at
the time.
Paine wrote in dramatic, emotional, and provocative English. He wanted the
contemporary reader to understand easily why the colonies should fight for
independence from Britain. If the text is difficult to read today, it is because it was
written nearly 250 years ago: Paine was not writing for future generations, and
modern readers may not be familiar with the political affairs of his time. Still, in
arguing for how much power government should have over individuals, he speaks to
a political debate still relevant to readers today.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why was Paines use of plain speech so important to the success of the
book?
Analyze: Why did Paine think that monarchy was such a bad idea?
Apply: If a country were not to be led by a king or queen, then who would maintain
order?
Notes

Section 2: Ideas
Through this new language, he communicated a new visiona utopian image of an
egalitarian societyand in so doing ideas surrounding natural rights and
republicanism became instantly accessible to all.
Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
Key Points
Common Sense also suggested that the colonies could both win and profit by the
war.
Paines argument allowed Americans to question their loyalty to the British king.
Not all the claims Paine made in Common Sense were realistic.
Other Ideas
Although Thomas Paines primary goal in Common Sense is to convince colonists
that independence is the best course of action, he makes a number of other
important points. He articulates some of the perceived crimes committed under
British rule and discusses the current state of the coloniesparticularly their
military strength.
Readers should be aware that Paine was not writing a textbook and did not feel the
need to give details or evidence. For example, Paine refers to the Massacre at
Lexington, without explaining that he is referring to fighting that began in the
towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, after the British army attempted to
destroy colonial military supplies.1 Similarly, he writes, Thousands of lives are
already ruined by British barbarity,2 without mentioning specific incidents.
Paine understood that war with Britain would be expensive and risky, and speaks to
these fears. He notes that the colonies were free from debt, and therefore prepared
to repel the forces of all the world.3 He also said that since America possessed the
largest body of armed and disciplined men of any power under Heaven,4 the
colonies could not afford to balk at challenging Britain on purely economical
grounds. Britains strength was its navy, which Paine describes as formidable,
though dismisses, saying not a tenth part of them are at any one time fit for
service.5 And while the colonies had no warships of their own, Paine was confident
that no country was so happily situated, or so internally capable of raising a fleet
as America.6
Such ideas were speculative, but also exaggerated. It was true that the British navy
was in considerable disarray, but the idea that America could raise a fleet to
compete with it was absurd. Readers should also note that war between Britain and
the colonies would mostly mean fighting on land, so Paines claims that America
could raise a fleet to repel the British navy ultimately did not matter.
Exploring The Ideas
While Americas successful revolution vindicated Paines insistence that the
colonists need fear no external enemy,7 some of the claims he made were
questionable. Paine seems at times more concerned with using dramatic,
inflammatory language to incite colonists to support war than with making
reasonable points.
For example, his analysis of colonial military capabilities can only be explained as
ignorance, reckless overconfidence, or an outright lie. While it is true that the British
navy was not able to blockade the entire coast, and that punitive attacks, like the
burning of Falmouth, Massachusetts, were annoyances, the reality was that in 1776
the American navy was practically nonexistent.8 It was not until 1778, when France,
Spain, and the Netherlands entered the war on Americas behalf, that British naval
superiority was contested.
Paine also avoided describing the specific events he cites as evidence of British
tyranny, such as the battles at Lexington and Concord. Instead, he uses broad
sweeping statements to critique Britain. Englands constitution, which was not a
single document but a group of documents and policies, was fit only for Dark and
slavish times;9 King George III was the descendent of a French Bastard;10 and,
more importantly, Britain had heaped unforgivable injuries upon the colonies.
Overlooked
Towards the end of Common Sense, Paine focuses his arguments on the Quakers.
He does this for two reasons. First, Paines father was a Quaker (though his mother
was not), and this connection gave him insight into the groups opinions. Second,
and more importantly, Paine was living and writing in Philadelphia, where there
were many Quakers, and it was logical to ask for their support. Paine may not have
anticipated that Common Sense would be read so widely.
In this part of the pamphlet, Paine adopts a more diplomatic tone, insisting that our
plan is for peace forever. We are tired of contention with Britain and can see no real
end to it but separation.11
Paine knew that the Quaker religion was based on pacifism, or opposition to war and
violence. Though Quakers initially supported resistance to Britainthey had, for
example, opposed the crowns taxation policiesthey were alarmed by the
escalating violence on both sides. Events such as the Boston Tea Party (a political
protest in the course of which activists threw a shipload of tea into Boston harbor in
protest at taxes Americans were obliged to pay without representation in the British
Parliament) and the passage of the Coercive Acts (punitive laws imposed by Britain
in retaliation for American rebelliousness) suggested that war was inevitable. Paine
didnt think that Quakers would support war with Britain, which is why he addressed
them directlybut he believed that, while they would not bear arms, that did not
mean that they were required to remain neutral.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why is it is so important to understand the historical context in which
Paine wrote when analyzing his text?
Analyze: What kind of disadvantage did Britain face when it came to waging war
with the American Colonies?
Apply: Why was Paine concerned with what the Quakers thought of the war?
Notes

Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy, 17751998
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 6.
Section 2: Ideas
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Key Points
Paines pamphlet convinced many Americans to favor independence.
Common Sense was written to inflame public opinion.
Paine played less of a role in shaping the United States than in helping it achieve
independence.

It is clear that in Common Sense Thomas Paine wanted to inspire the colonial
masses to support and fight for independence. As such, Paine maintains an
outraged and incendiary tone throughout. In addition, he employs two broad tactics
to persuade his audience. First, Paine uses economic, moral, and theological
evidence to justify his position. Second, he uses these same types of evidence to
refute arguments against independence.
It is unclear, however, how much Paine hoped to influence events after the
American Revolution. Common Sense certainly does not offer a full, coherent plan
for creating a system of government. Paine does suggest some specifics, such as
term limits for government officials and presidential elections, but we cannot be
sure if he meant these as a blueprint, or if he simply wanted to show colonists that
there were alternatives to hereditary monarchies.
Ultimately, Paine did not contribute directly to the form of the United States
government. Nevertheless, he achieved his primary goal when the colonies won
their revolution. Paines claims that the colonies would succeed in their war made
him seem prophetic.
The success of Common Sense must be seen as connected to the success of the
American Revolutionary War. More, it was written and structured according to what
Paine thought would persuade the average colonist. We should also note that
Paines text was directly linked to the events of the crisis in the American colonies,
and it probably would not have been published under different circumstances.
Paines fame lasted because of the colonial victory. Having inspired public support
for revolution, Paine did not stop writing about his ideas. Although he addressed the
specific situation in America, he also believed his vision was universal, arguing that
it was within Americas power to begin the world over again.1 And indeed, the
Revolution that he helped inspire was a major historical event; it contributed, for
example, to the French Revolution that began shortly after, in 1789.
Paines pamphlet also interested academics, particularly those who studied
theology. For example, Common Sense attacks the idea that monarchs were divinely
appointed. In France, the attack on hereditary monarchy had literal consequences in
the execution of the French king, Louis XVI, in 1793. Similarly, the separation of
religion and politics, a foundation of the new American government, has since
become important throughout the Western world.
Common Sense is also one of the cornerstones of American political literature.
Paines fiery prose style set the tone for the American Revolution, and for future
American political writers. He continued to write this way in his later pamphlets,
such as The American Crises. He was aware that he was creating a new style of
writing,2 and that most writers in the eighteenth century believed that to write for
a mass audience meant to sacrifice refinement for coarseness and triviality.3
Common Senses success showed that this was not true.
Limitations
Paines contemporaries, such as the USs second president, John Adams, expressed
outrage that history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine,4 and
attributed more influence to the likes of the political activist Joseph Hewes, an
important signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Common Sense should
nevertheless be viewed as a work of immense importanceboth for its role in
political change, and for its influence on political writing.
Over time, the ideas in Common Sense spread. Paines thinking found its way into
both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, documents on which
the history of the United States as an independent and free nation are instituted.
More importantly, Paines ideas endured beyond the Revolution, both because
Enlightenment principles were becoming widely accepted, and because Paines

writing style was so accessible.
Prior to Common Senses publication in 1776, political writing was mainly directed
toward the intellectual elite. Paines style changed that. According to the University
of Virginia professor of history Sophia Rosenfeld, the effectiveness of common
sense as a political weapon could be measured by its many opposition imitators,
who seized upon the forms commercial as well as polemical potential.5 That is, we
can see that Paines style was influential because it had many imitators who valued
it as a tool for communicating with the general public. Paines style became a
commonplace polemical tool in a bitterly fought struggle over the future of
politics6 because, politicians learned, the language in which a message was
delivered was as important as the message itselfperhaps more so.
Thus Paines text began a new tradition in writing about politics. As the Australian
political theorist John Keane points out, democratic revolution required a prior
democratic revolution in prose.7 Paines use of plain language would later be used
to great effect in political speeches, such as those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who
served as president of the United States from 1933 to 1945. Roosevelt channeled
Paine when he affirmed the nations commitment to defeat fascism and make
freedom universal.8 In saying make freedom universal, Roosevelt reminded
Americans of their heritage.
Paines belief that Americas cause was the worlds cause, and that freedom and
justice were universal principles, has become part of the American psyche, and
Roosevelt used this to influence his audience. Thus we can see that Common Sense
has had a lasting impact on American political expression from speechwriting to
propaganda.
Key Questions
Synthesize: In what way was Common Sense a success?
Analyze: Why was Paine not directly involved in deciding the eventual form that
American government would take?
Apply: Who else contributed to the political future of America?
Notes
Eric Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (London, New York, and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976), 85.
Foner, Tom Paine and Revolutionary America, 85.
John Adams, To Thomas Jefferson, vol. 10 of The Works of John Adams, Second
President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by
His Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), accessed
September 22, 2013, http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2127/193637/3103690.
Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Rosenfeld, Common Sense, 54.
John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (London, New York, and Berlin: Bloomsbury,
2009), 295.
Roosevelt quoted in Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (New
York: Hill & Wang, 2005), 195.
Section 2: Ideas
Paines work burst from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by
types and paper in any age or country.
Daniel Conway Moncure, The Life of Thomas Paine
Key Points
Paine believed that man had certain natural rights, and that God did not interfere
with humanity.
Common Sense includes Paines philosophical viewsbut its purpose is to convince
America to go to war.
The text made Paine a celebrity and cemented his role in American history.
Positioning
Common Sense was Thomas Paines first significant work. His earlier political
writing, such as the 1772 pamphlet The Case of the Officers of Excise,1 was more
limited in scope, and perhaps produced out of self-interest. The essay Observations
on the Military Character of Antsa satire in which red ants, symbolizing the
British army, deprived brown ants of their natural rightsappeared in the July 1775
issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine. Paine used a pseudonym, Curioso,2 because of
libel laws, which made it illegal to criticize the government or to incite contempt for
the monarch. For the same reason, Common Sense was initially published
anonymously, though it did not take long for its author to be identified. It is difficult
to overstate how important the pamphlet was to Paines career; it burst from the
press with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in any age
or country,3 and Paine became a celebrity.
Common Sense was written as a call to arms. The battles of Lexington and Concord
(April 1775) and Bunker Hill (June 1775) had already taken place by the time it was
published in January 1776, and the point of no return occurred only five months
after, when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Between 1773 and 1776,
Paine wrote 16 pamphlets collectively titled The American Crises. Written in a
similar style to Common Sense, they were designed to improve colonial morale and
spread Paines philosophical ideas.
Integration
Common Sense was instrumental in gaining public support for the Revolution. It also
established Paines reputation and helped popularize his later works, in which he
explained his ideas more thoroughly.
These later texts affirmed his unwavering stance against monarchies and his
commitment to liberty. He remained a liberal (in the sense of one committed to
equality and regular elections) and a deist, believing that a faith in God should be
founded on reason rather than tradition. He would expand upon these and many
other ideas in his seminal work The Rights of Man (1791). The book became popular
because of Paines reputation, and it is considered his most important contribution
to political philosophy.
Significance
Though Common Sense made Paine a celebrity, it did not contain fully articulated
versions of Paines ideas. Paines later works were true academic texts and
influential in their own right, though readers should note that their publication was
only guaranteed by the success of Common Sense. Paines pamphlet took on
historical significance because America had won its independence and created a
government based on the liberal principles he had written about; his later works
built on this reputation.
Paine wrote The Rights of Man because he was inspired by the French Revolution,
during which the French monarch, Louis XVI, was executed and several constitutions
were drafted. In it, Paine attacks hereditary succession and a monarchy whose
despotism resident in the person of the King divides and subdivides itself into a
thousand shapes and forms.4 His other important text, The Age of Reason (1794),
is primarily concerned with religion and makes an argument for deism. This was a
departure from his other works in that it risked religious controversy. By comparison,
where Common Sense contained religious sentiments, these were only to justify the
war for independence. It should be noted that these ideas were an extension of
Enlightenment thinking; they were not Paines originally.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why did Thomas Paine adopt the name Curioso for his essay
Observations on the Military Character of Ants?
Analyze: How did the events in America help to inspire the French Revolution?
Apply: Why do you think Paine avoided theological controversy in Common Sense?
Notes
Thomas Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, ed. Moncure Daniel Conway
(New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1894), accessed December 8, 2014,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1083.
Edward Larkin, Inventing an American Public: Thomas Paine, the Pennsylvania
Magazine, and American Revolutionary Discourse, Early American Literature 33,
no. 3 (1998): 25076.
Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary,
Political and Religious Career in America, France, and England; to Which Is Added a
Sketch of Paine by William Cobbett, vol. 1 (New York and London: G.P. Putnam and
Sons, 1894), 25.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1999), 14.
Section 3: Impact
[Common Sense is] a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass.
John Adams, The Works of John Adams
Key Points
Contemporaries criticized Common Sense for its superficial arguments and
provocative style.
Candidus, a writer who believed that the colonies should remain loyal to Britain,
argued that the rebels would be more tyrannical than the king.
Even those who agreed with Paine that the colonies should become independent did
not always agree about the form the new government should take.
Criticism
The primary critics of Thomas Paines Common Sense were loyalists, colonials who
wanted to remain part of the British Empire. They saw the pamphlet as a dangerous
work composed by a writer whose powerful literary style was crucial to
disseminating its irrational and dangerous arguments.1 Loyalists often wrote that
conditions in the society Paine envisioned would be worse, and that the rebels
would more ruthless than the British. For example, a writer who used the
pseudonym Candidusa man historians believe to be the Scottish-born military
officer James Chalmerswarned that if the colonials won the war against the British,
they would persecute the loyalists with more unrelenting virulence than the
professed advocates of arbitrary power.2
Loyalist critics such as the poet Jonathan Odell from New Jersey came from a variety
of social backgrounds,3 and were united by political views that cut across social and
geographical divides. Their arguments, however, had little impact on the American
Revolution; the colonies declared their independence soon after Common Sense was
published, just as Paine insisted they must, and the loyalist position rapidly became
shaky.
Responses
The second edition of Common Sense was published in February 1776. In it, Paine
addresses his critics directly. He claims that he delayed publication of the new
edition because he was waiting for a refutation of the doctrine of Independence,4
but that no answer hath yet appeared.5 This shows the contempt he felt for his
critics position.
Paine did not respond to critics by name or focus on specific disagreements.
However, we can guess from his writing which criticisms he felt needed to be
answered. For example, he responded to critiques of his anonymity by saying, who
the author of this production is, is wholly unnecessary,6 and, because he took
accusations of partisanship seriously, he insisted that he was unconnected with
any party and under no sort of influence public or private.7
Paine was also critiqued for the alternatives to monarchy he offered. Paine argued
that monarchy had laid the world in blood and ashes,8 and he felt a similar
contempt for Englands unwritten constitution. However, critics attacked his
alternative, a form of republicanism, in which all citizens had a say in government.
First, they noted that it had already been attempted in the Protectorate of the
English revolutionary general and political leader Oliver Cromwell in the period
between 1649 and 1658 when England was a republic. Loyalists also pointed out
that Cromwell had himself become a tyrant.
Second, according to John Adams, Paines system was no better than a monarchy
because it preserved power in a single sovereign body.9 Adams, who would
become the second president of the United States, agreed with the necessity of
independence and Americas ability to maintain it,10 but disagreed about what
form the new nations government should take. He dismissed Paines idea of a direct
assembly, in which all people had a say in laws that were passed, as unworkable.11
Since its purpose had been to call for revolution, there was no need for a third
edition of Common Sense after the war began in earnest. We can therefore only
understand the later criticisms of the text based on which of its suggestions were
rejected when the new government was formed. Though Paines vision did resemble
what was eventually created, many of his ideas were significantly altered.
Adamswho later referred to Common Sense as a poor, ignorant, malicious, shortsighted, crapulous mass12felt that whether Paine knew it or not, his stubborn
appeal to undivided popular sovereignty helped to drag republican politics a few
yards towards democracy.13 Adams saw himself as keeping apart the conflicting
ideas of republicanism and democracy,14 and he believed that Paines popular
sovereignty, or system in which all citizens had a say in government, was a radical
and dangerous idea. Adams believed that all forms of government, not just
hereditary monarchies, were apt to abuse power, and that Paine had forgotten the
elementary truth that democracy dangerously concentrates power in the hands of
the many.15 Ultimately, Adams was a central figure in the structure of the new
American government, and his opinion carried significant weight.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Who were the main critics of the text?
Analyze: Why was there no need to publish the book a third time?
Apply: What reasons did separatists like John Adams give for disagreeing with the
text?
Notes
Philip Gould, Writing the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 121.
James Chalmers, Plain Truth: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, Containing,
Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, Entitled Common Sense (Charleston, SC: Nabu Press,
2014).
Cynthia Dublin Edelberg, Jonathan Odell: The Loyalist Poet of the American
Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987).

Paine, Common Sense, 2
John Adams quoted in John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (London, New York, and
Berlin: Bloomsbury, 2009), 125.
Keane, Tom Paine, 125.
John Adams, To Thomas Jefferson, vol. 10 of The Works of John Adams, Second
President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by
His Grandson Charles Francis Adams, vol. 10, To Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1856), accessed September 22, 2013,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2127/193637/3103690.
See Keane, Tom Paine, 127.
Section 3: Impact
Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and
with various designs; but all have been ineffectual and the period of debate is
closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest.
Key Points
Common Sense revolutionized political prose and shaped politics both in the
colonies and beyond.
The pamphlet drew from Enlightenment philosophical principles.
The texts focus on individual rights means it is relevant to American political
debate today.
Uses And Problems
Thomas Paine drew his ideas from a mix of Enlightenment political theories,
especially those that dealt with social contract theory. Although these ideas had
been purely theoretical up to this point, the American Revolutionary War put them
to the test. The most crucial and progressive aspect of Paines pamphlet was that it
took prior thought and used it to inform social and political change.
In short, Paines pamphlet argued that important Enlightenment ideas were not just
abstractions, but key tools informing government.
It is no coincidence that the French Revolution began in 1789, only six years after
the American Revolution ended. The social upheaval in France was informed by the
same philosophers that Paine drew from in Common Sense, and by the real events
in North America, where the newly independent United States had formed a republic
(a system based on the idea that nations do not need to be governed by monarchs).
The republic, free of kings and hereditary monarchy, was perhaps the most powerful
idea in Common Sense, and Paine expanded upon it in The Rights of Man (1791). It
is a system that continues to find expression in todays liberal democracies. That
said, the formation of republics is not always free of trouble or resistance. For
example, Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament and critic of British
colonial policy, was initially a supporter of the French Revolution but soon became
horrified by the bloodshed. He rejected notions of natural rights, asking, Am I to
congratulate a Highway man and murderer who has broke prison upon the recovery
of his natural rights?1
Schools Of Thought
Many of Paines foundational ideas were borrowed. We have already encountered
some of those who originated the important ideas in Common Sense, such as the
political philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Paines focus on social contract theory, in which people give up some individual
rights in order to form a just society, also associates him with thinkers who came
later. One such example is Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French politician and liberal
social theorist.
Proudhon founded a philosophy called mutualism, which is based on the idea that
societies function best when people depend upon one another. Another descendent
of the social contract theory school of thought was American political philosopher
John Rawls. Rawlss A Theory of Justice (1971) was a controversial but critically
acclaimed book about how resources should best be distributed in a society.
It is important to note that Common Sense had little effect on the philosophical and
academic conversation surrounding social contract theory. It was not, however,
intended to: it was The Rights of Man that indicated Paines importance as a political
theorist. A more thorough description of Paines beliefs, The Rights of Man
indicates [Paines] importance in forcing a broadening of the political nation and

the democratizing of national politics.2
The most important idea in this book is how Paine defines natural rightsthat is,
rights that are so fundamental that they cannot even be made law (since that would
imply that they could be taken away). The emergence of the American nation
helped put these ideas into practice and encouraged other societies to model
themselves on the social contract.
Todays political scholars recognize Paines Common Sense as a landmark in
American and world history. For example, Harvey Kaye, a political scientist at the
University of Wisconsin, writes that Paine emboldened Americans to turn their
colonial rebellion into a revolutionary war, defined the new nation in a
democratically expansive and progressive fashion, and articulated an American
identity charged with exceptional purpose and promise.3 Today, Paines ideas
seem so central to our beliefs about justice and individual rights that it is almost
impossible to understand his ideas as the revolution in thinking that they once
were.4
The Enlightenment ideas that Paine drew on have significantly influenced Western
politics, cultures, and governments. By the end of the Cold Wara period of tension
between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1991the world was
experiencing what American political scientist Francis Fukuyama has described as a
liberal revolutionone that has broken out of its original beachheads in Western
Europe and North America.5
The liberalism that Fukuyama refers to, while not universal, has certainly become
widespread in the Western world, and it reflects Paines ideas about liberty and
government. Few Western countries maintain their hereditary monarchies, and
where they have (for example, the United Kingdom), the monarch has been stripped
of power. Today, scholars study Common Sense to learn about its role in the
American Revolutionary War and its effect on political speech and writing.
Key Questions
Synthesize: How did the American Revolution lead to the spread of Enlightenment
ideas?
Analyze: How did Thomas Paines ideas continue to develop after the American
Revolution?
Apply: What kinds of society continue to reject liberal ideology?
Notes
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2006), 8.
Mark Philip, Introduction to Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political
Writings, by Thomas Paine (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008), xxiii.
Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (New York: Hill & Wang,
2005), 4.
50.
Section 3: Impact
The impact of Common Sense as a political weapon can also be measured by its
many Opposition imitators, who seized upon the forms commercial as well as
polemical potential.
Sophia Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History
Key Points
Common Sense is a landmark in the history of the American Revolutionary War.
Although radical for its time, Common Senses core ideas now seem ordinary.
Paines arguments are still relevant today in that governments continue to exert
power over their citizens.
Position
Today, Thomas Paines Common Sense is best seen as a historical document. It tells
us about the ideas and events that were controversial in 1775, and it also shows us
how Enlightenment principles such as natural rights informed eighteenth-century
political thought. For Paine, tyranny stood in the way of natural rights, and these
rights were enshrined in his vision of a free and democratic American state.
The text is also part of the narrative of the American Revolution, and students of
history can see how it contributed to the countrys formation. Paine played an
important role in this narrative, and the text is interesting because of what it can tell
us about political writing and propaganda. Additionally, we can see how Paines
ideas are still relevant to todays liberal democracies. That said, although Common
Sense is directly related to modern liberal democratic thought, it has been less
influential than Paines later works, particularly The Rights of Man (1791).
Interaction
Common Senses contribution to eighteenth-century political thought was limited in
two ways. First, Paine wrote to inflame public support for independence, not to
influence philosophical debate. Additionally, the Declaration of Independence was
signed only a few months after the pamphlet was published; from that point, there
was no turning back from war, making much of Paines argument, therefore, moot.
Second, though Paine was on the right side of history, the worldwide liberal
revolution described by the American political theorist Francis Fukuyama was still
several centuries away.1 It was not until the twentieth century that government by
hereditary monarchy fell out of favor. Similarly, Paines writing did not have much
immediate effect on imperialism in which countries exerted power and influence
over other countries through diplomacy or military forcethough it was one of the
grounds on which he critiqued British rule.
That said, Paines world view ultimately endured. Todays liberal democracies
generally allow for the natural rights of man to coexist peacefully with the
government at largean idea true to the spirit of Common Sense. In the twenty-first
century, few are comfortable with the idea of one nation dominating another,
refusing it any representation, and imposing unfair taxes. Additionally, not many
people support a return to pre-democratic government. Intellectuals today who
entertain such a possibility remain at the fringes of serious academic debate or are
considered political extremists. Thus Paines legacy is reflected in the forms of
government that are most common today.
The debate about individual rights continues to evolve today. The Western world has
come to revile the idea of a nation that does not guarantee the natural rights of its
citizens. One explanation for this is what the French cultural theorist Paul Virilio calls
ideological contamination, in which new technologies allow ideas to spread faster
and further. This is one reason why Western intellectual movements, such as those
informed by the Enlightenment, have become so widely appealing.2
Today, proponents of liberty and individual rights continue to gain ground, as
demonstrated by the recent Arab Spring (a series of protests, demonstrations, and
civil wars that swept through the Middle East in 2010 and 2011). As a result of the
Arab Spring, rulers were forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and
civil conflicts erupted in Bahrain and Syria. While tyranny still exists in the region,
proponents of liberty and rights have gained more prominence.
Exceptions exist, of course. One notable example is the Peoples Republic of China,
a nation struggling to prevent ideological contamination from prompting a reform
movement in the country. Some Islamist sects, like the Taliban, have reacted to the
perceived threat from liberal Western values,3 and rejected the idea of natural
rights.
Key Questions
Synthesize: How should contemporary readers view Common Sense?
Analyze: Why did states eventually decide that guaranteeing human rights was
important?
Apply: What threats to liberalism exist today?
Notes
39.
Paul Virilio, The Information Bomb, trans. Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2005), 15.
Section 3: Impact
[Paine] emboldened Americans to turn their colonial rebellion into a revolutionary
war, defined the new nation in a democratically expansive and progressive fashion,
and articulated an American identity charged with exceptional purpose and
promise.
Harvey J. Kaye, Thomas Paine and the Promise of America
Key Points
Paines text remains central to understanding the American Revolution and is still
studied for its dramatic, inflammatory prose.
Common Sense will continue to be seen as one of the main inspirations for
American independence.
Common Sense is required reading for those who wish to understand why America
went to war with Britain.
Potential
Thomas Paines Common Sense is likely to remain an important and influential text
in the future. Although it was not a great philosophical work, its role in inspiring
support for independence from Great Britain makes it significant. Furthermore,
because Common Sense was so widely read, Paine deserves credit for popularizing
key Enlightenment ideas.
Paines pamphlet is also important in that its ideas found their way into two
documents that were foundational to the new United States: the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson, who would become the
third president of the United States, emphasized the importance of natural rights.
Future Directions
Paines core ideas will probably not be developed further. They are no longer
controversial, and much of what Paine argued for has been widely achieved: the
formation of governments that allow their citizens natural rights, an end to
hereditary monarchy, free elections, and, of course, American independence. In
todays liberal democracies, these ideas fall into what the American
communications expert Daniel C. Hallin describes as the sphere of consensus,1 in
that they are rarely questioned.
That said, the pamphlet marks a turning point in history. Paines plain, accessible
writing style is now a common feature of political speech. As for its ideas, the fact
that readers now struggle to understand why it was so controversial shows how
influential Paines ideas became; todays liberal democracies fulfill most, if not all, of
Common Senses demands. Common Sense also resonates because of its criticism
of tyrannical governments. Paines argument for justice is inspiring, and reminds us
that Americas cause was, and is, a noble one.
Summary
Common Sense was different from other eighteenth-century political texts because
of its accessibility and inflammatory prose. Paine attacked any view that ran counter
to his argument. He took the radical ideas of the English Enlightenment philosopher
John Lockethat monarchs could be replaced if they broke the social contractand
made them even more extreme. Paine heaped scorn upon the British king, George
III, ridiculed the hereditary system, and ultimately made it acceptable for his
readers to disobey British rule.
Common Sense was successful not because of its intellectual achievement, but
because Paine grasped what was important to the average colonist. In this sense, it
was a masterpiece, and it helped spread Enlightenment principles to the masses. It
is important for those who want to understand the Revolutionary War, the formation
of the new American government, and how the American system eventually
influenced other governments around the world. The cause of America is in a great
measure the cause of mankind,2 Paine argued, and, as with so many of his
predictions, he was correct.
The creation of the United States has greatly influenced todays liberal democracies.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was so important about Paines writing style?
Analyze: Why is the text unlikely to be developed any further?
Apply: Which of Common Senses ideas are no longer controversial? Why not?
Notes
Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989), 116.
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
American Revolutionary War (177583): a military conflict between Britain and the
13 American colonies, although it eventually drew in France, Spain, and the
Netherlands. Also known as the American War of Independence.
Anarchy: general disorder resulting from individuals unwillingness to recognize
authority. Some political thinkersgiving primacy to self-regulating individual
freedom and dismissing the need for governmentargue in favor of anarchy as a
form of social organization.
Arab Spring: a series of violent and nonviolent protests, demonstrations, and civil
wars that swept through the Middle East in 2010 and 2011. As a result of the Arab
Spring, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and
civil wars have erupted in Bahrain and Syria.
Boston Tea Party: an incident on December 16, 1773, in which colonists boarded
three British ships in Boston harbor and threw their consignment of tea overboard.
This was in response to the Tea Act of 1773, which was part of legislation that both
raised revenue and established that Britain could impose taxes on the colonies.
British Empire: a maritimeor navalempire established between the sixteenth
and eighteenth centuries. It comprised colonies and territories such as Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and what would become the United
States.
Burning of Falmouth: an incident in October 1775, when the British navy bombarded
the town of Falmouth. Originally located in Massachusetts, the site is now a part of
Maine.
Coercive Acts: nicknamed the Intolerable Acts by colonists in favor of revolution,
these were a series of laws imposed upon Massachusetts that, among other things,
placed it under the authority of leaders appointed by the British king, George III.
Cold War (194791): a period of tension between the United States and the Soviet
Union. It did not result in war between the countries, but was instead carried out
through espionage and proxy wars.
Constitutional monarchy: a form of government in which the power of the monarch
is limited through the passage of a constitution.
Declaration of Independence: a statement that the 13 colonies no longer considered
themselves to be part of the British Empire. The declaration was ratified (that is,
officially agreed) at the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
Deism: the belief that reason rather than tradition should be the foundation for
belief in God.
English liberties: limits on the power of kings, such as the right to be tried by a jury
and restrictions on the monarchs power to raise taxes.
Enlightenment: a movement in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe that
challenged commonly held ideas based in tradition and faith, and tried to advance
knowledge through rationality and science.
First Continental Congress: a meeting from September to October 1774 that
petitioned King George III for redress of grievances. It included representatives from
12 of the 13 colonies (the state of Georgia did not attend).
French Revolution (178999): a period of political and social upheaval that
culminated in the execution of King Louis XVI and the drafting of several temporary
constitutions.
Grammar school: a type of school. The grammar schools of Paines times were
privately run establishments that taught a limited range of subjects, including the
Scriptures, Latin, Greek and mathematics.
Hereditary monarchy: a system of government according to which the crown is
passed from one generation to the next, usually through the eldest male heir.
Ideological contamination: a process by which new technologies enable the swift
spread of ideas from one location to the next.
Imperialism: a policy in which a country exerts power and influence over other
countries through economic policy, diplomacy, or military force.
Islamists: members of any Islamic group that desires political control.
Lexington and Concord: two battles that occurred in April 1775 in towns near
Boston. Fighting began when the British army attempted to destroy colonial military
supplies and met local resistance.
Libel: a system of laws that, among other things, made it illegal to criticize the
government of the day or to incite hatred or contempt of the monarch. Publishing
anonymously was a common tactic used to avoid arrest.
Liberalism: a political philosophy that emphasizes freedom, equality, and regularly
contested elections.
Loyalists: a faction of colonists who wanted to remain part of the British Empire.
Natural rights: universal and absolute rights with which each individual is born, such
as the right to the pursuit of happiness. These rights are separate from legal
rights.
Pacifism: a philosophy that opposes war and violence.
Polymath: someone whose expertise spans several different fields.
Presidential system: a type of government headed by a president who is elected by
the people or the peoples representatives.
Protectorate: period from 1649 to 1658, when England was a republic and Oliver
Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector.
Quakers: a Christian denomination that originated in seventeenth-century England.
Opposed to war and violence.
Radicalism: any form of progressive liberal ideology. At the time Common Sense was
published, radicalism meant those who wanted to break from England to create a
fairer society.
Realpolitik: a nineteenth-century term referring to the practical and achievable
aspects of political action as opposed to action based on moral or ideological
considerations.
Republicanism: an ideology that rejected the notion of hereditary monarchy.
The Rights of Man: Paines 1791 book, written in response to the French Revolution,
which began in 1789, and to Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolutions in
France, which had been critical of the revolution. In it, Paine states that revolution is
an acceptable response if the government is incapable or unwilling to guarantee

certain basic or natural rights.
Second Continental Congress: a meeting of colonial representatives in May 1775 to
organize resistance to the British. This became the acting American government.
Seven Years War (175463): a war between Great Britain and France over conflicting
trade interests across their respective empires.
Social contract theory: the philosophy that human nature is governed by reason,
and that there is a limit to the number of rights people should give up in order to be
governed.
Soviet Union, or USSR (192291): a federation of communist republics in northern
Asia and Eastern Europe. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created from
the Russian Empire in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Soviet
Union, then the largest country in the world, became a superpower and rival to the
United States during the Cold War.
State of nature: a thought experiment used by philosophers to help describe what
life was like before people began to live in groups.
Taliban: an Islamist militant organization that seized power in Afghanistan in 1996
and set out to create an authoritarian Islamic state, sweeping aside personal liberty
in the process. For example, television and Internet access were outlawed, and men
were ordered to keep their beards at a certain length.
Tea Act of 1773: part of a series of acts designed to raise revenue and establish the
principle that Britain had the right to impose taxes on the colonies. The Boston Tea
Party was a response to the Tea Act.
US Constitution: the supreme legal document of the United States, ratified at the
Second Continental Congress by all 13 states in 1790, it described the type of
government the country would have and guaranteed each citizen certain rights and
protections.
John Adams (17351826) was the second president of the United States and a
leading advocate of independence from Britain. Though a supporter of
Enlightenment principles, he was highly critical of many of Paines ideas.
Edmund Burke (172997) was an Irish political theorist. He is best known for his
book Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Candidus was the pseudonym used by the author of a 1776 pamphlet entitled Plain
Truth. Although nobody knows for sure, the author was probably the Maryland
loyalist James Chalmers.
Oliver Cromwell (15991658) was an English military and political leader who
became the Lord Protector of England after the Civil War (164251). After he died,
the republic collapsed, and a new king, Charles II, was offered the throne.
Eric Foner (b. 1943) is an American historian and biographer of Thomas Paine. He is
best known for his work on political history.
Benjamin Franklin (170690) was a scientist, author, and political agitator and one
of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. He helped maintain colonial
unity during the war and later served as the first ambassador of the United States to
France.
Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952) is an American political scientist whose best-known
work, The End of History and the Last Man, cites liberal democracy and free-market
economics as the ultimate means for organizing society.
King George III (17381820) was king of Great Britain and ruler of the American
colonies until the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He refused to listen to
colonial demands, which ultimately led to the American Revolution.
Hugo Grotius (15831645) was a Dutch philosopher who introduced the idea of
natural and inalienable individual rights. He helped lay the foundations of social
contract theory.
Daniel C. Hallin is a researcher in media and communications at the University of
San Diego. He is particularly respected for his work on how the media reflect
societal norms.
Joseph Hewes (173079) was a Quaker from North Carolina and a signatory of the
Declaration of Independence. He was also an active participant in the Continental
Congress.
Christopher Hitchens (19492011) was a prolific writer and journalist. A selfdescribed socialist, Hitchens took contrary views on many popular historical figures,
such as Mother Theresa and Pope Benedict XVI.
Thomas Hobbes (15881679) was an English philosopher best remembered for his
book Leviathan, in which he established what is now known as social contract
theory. Hobbes championed government, specifically the monarchy, as the supreme
defense against the chaotic state of nature.
Thomas Jefferson (17431826) was an American Founding Father who was the
principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He later served as the third
president of the United States.
Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice
Studies at the University of Wisconsin. He has written two books about Thomas
Paine.
John Keane is a political theorist from Australia and professor of political science at
the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin. His current
work focuses on the Asia Pacific region.
John Locke (16321704) was an English philosopher and is generally regarded as
the father of modern liberalism. He argued that human nature was governed by
reason, and some, but not all, liberties were to be given up to the state. His bestknown work, Two Treatises of Government (1689), is considered a landmark in
political thought.
King Louis XVI (175493) was the king of France from 1774 to 1792. After being
deposed in 1792 during a period of social unrest, he was tried and eventually
executed in 1793.
Jonathan Odell (17371818) was a poet. Loyal to the British, he suffered legal
sanctions following the Revolution.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (180965) was a French politician and liberal social theorist.
The founder of a branch of philosophy known as mutualism, he is also the first
person to have declared himself an anarchist.
John Rawls (19212002) was an American philosopher and proponent of democracy.
His most famous book, A Theory of Justice, was published in 1971 to critical acclaim.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) was the 32nd US president from 1933 until his
death in 1945. He is the only president to have served four consecutive terms in
office and was considered a master speaker.
Sophia Rosenfeld is a professor of history at the University of Virginia. She has done
work in political discourse, linguistics, and analysis of revolutions.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (171278) was a Genevan philosopher and member of the
Enlightenment movement whose writings heavily influenced the French Revolution.
Both Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and On the Social Contract are
cornerstones of modern political thought.
Paul Virilio (b. 1932) is a French cultural theorist who philosophizes about the
consequences of technology. One of his most important ideas is ideological
contaminationthe idea that technology leads to the free exchange of ideas
between cultures.
Voltaire (16941778) is the pseudonym of Franois-Marie Arouet, a French
Enlightenment writer who advocated, among other things, the rights of the
individual and the separation of church and state. His 1756 work, Essay on the
Customs and the Spirit of the Nations, influenced the way political thinkers looked at
history.
George Washington (173299) was a veteran of the French and Indian War and
became commander-in-chief of the Continental army on June 14, 1775, shortly after
the battles of Lexington and Concord. He would later become the United States first
president in 1789.
Works Cited
Adams, John. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With
a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations. Boston: Little, Brown, 1856. Accessed
September 22, 2013. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2127/193637/3103690.
______. Thoughts on Government. Accessed November 7, 2013.
http://www.constitution.org/jadams/thoughts.htm.
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
Chalmers, James. Plain Truth: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, Containing,
Remarks on a Late Pamphlet, Entitled Common Sense. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press,
2014.
Conway, Moncure Daniel. The Life of Thomas Paine: With a History of His Literary,
Political and Religious Career in America, France, and England; to Which Is Added a
Sketch of Paine by William Cobbett. New York and London: G.P. Putnam and Sons,
1894.
Edelberg, Cynthia Dublin. Jonathan Odell: The Loyalist Poet of the American
Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987.
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. London, New York, and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976.
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin, 2012.
Gould, Philip. Writing the Rebellion: Loyalists and the Literature of Politics in British
America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hallin, Daniel C. The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1989.
Hitchens, Christopher. Thomas Paines Rights of Man. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by J.C.A. Gaskin. Oxford and New York: Oxford
Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy, 17751998.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
Jefferson, Thomas. To Thomas Paine Philadelphia, June 19, 1792. Accessed
December 8, 2014, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letters-ofthomas-jefferson/jefl99.php.
Kaye, Harvey J. Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. New York: Hill & Wang,
2005.
Keane, John. Tom Paine: A Political Life. London, New York, and Berlin: Bloomsbury,
2009.
Larkin, Edward. Inventing an American Public: Thomas Paine, the Pennsylvania
Magazine, and American Revolutionary Discourse. Early American Literature 33,
no. 3 (1998): 25076.
Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Meacham, Jon. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. New York: Random House Trade
Paperbacks; reprint edition, 2013.
Nelson, Craig. Thomas Paine: His Life, His Time and the Birth of Modern Nations.
London: Profile Books, 2007.
Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. New York: Cosimo, 2005.
______. Common Sense. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1997.
______. The Rights of Man. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1999.
______. The Thomas Paine Reader. Edited by Michael Foot and Isaac Kramnick.
London: Penguin, 1987.
______. The Writings of Thomas Paine. Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. New York:
G.P. Putnams Sons, 1894. Accessed December 8, 2014,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1083.
Philip, Mark. Introduction to Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political
Writings, by Thomas Paine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008.
Rosenfeld, Sophia. Common Sense: A Political History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Virilio, Paul. The Information Bomb. Translated by Chris Turner. London: Verso, 2005.
Wraight, Christopher D. Rousseaus The Social Contract: A Readers Guide. London
and New York: Continuum, 2008.
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Ernst GellnerNations and Nationalism
Ways In To The Text
Key Points
Ernest Gellner was a social theorist and anthropologist born in Paris, France, in
1925.
In Nations and Nationalism, published in 1983, he argued that modern industrial

society was responsible for the advent of nations.
Nations and Nationalism was the first book to theorize how economic, social, and
cultural changes in human society brought about the idea of nation.
Who was Ernst Gellner?
Ernest Gellner, the author of Nations and Nationalism (1983) was born in Paris,
France, in December 1925 to parents from Bohemia, a region of what is today the
Czech Republic (then part of the country of Czechoslovakia). He spent his boyhood
in Prague. When Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the region
became dangerous for Jewish people. Gellners family fled to Great Britain. An avid
student, Gellner began studying philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford
Universitys Balliol College in 1943.
World War II interrupted Gellners studies. During the last years of the war, he
served in a brigade of Czechoslovak expatriates that the British Army organized and
armed. He returned to Oxford in 1945, finishing a masters degree with first-class
honors, then taught at Oxford and at Edinburgh University for two years. In
Edinburgh, he became interested in mountaineering, and he traveled frequently to
the Alps in his later years, sometimes with his students. From 1949 until 1961,
Gellner taught sociology roughly, the study of the structures and forces that
shape and form societyat the London School of Economics. He published his first
book, Words and Things, in 1959.
After obtaining his doctorate in 1961, Gellner continued teaching at the London
School of Economics, now as a professor. Shortly after the publication of Nations
and Nationalism in 1983, he left London for Cambridge University, where for nine
years he taught social anthropologya subfield of anthropology (the study of
human beings)often concerned with things such as economics, law, and political
organization.
In 1993, the president of the Czech Republic, Vclav Havel, offered Gellner a post at
the Central European University. Gellner served as the founding director of its
Center for the Study of Nationalism until his death in 1995 at the age of 69.
What Does Nations and Nationalism Say?
Since its publication in 1983, Nations and Nationalism has become one of the key
texts on the subject of nationalism. Previously, scholars had believed that nations
were ancient and basiceither intrinsic to the human condition or a matter of
collective will. Gellner argued instead that nations and nationalism emerged in the
modern era.
According to Gellner, before industrializationthe process by which a society
founded on agriculture becomes a society founded on industry, with the profound
economic and cultural implications that move bringssocieties were culturally

differentiated from one another. Large states or empires could rule over diverse
populations. It did not matter if the ruling classes spoke a different language or
practiced a different religion because people adhered to local customs and
traditions that could vary from one region to the next. They belonged to various
kinds of groups, but not to nations. Industrialization changed that.
In Nations and Nationalism, Gellner argues technological changes and the needs of
new industries created a new workforce. To be productive, the workforce required a
different set of technical skills. A broad-based education system was born to
develop and perpetuate this workforce. As the organization of society required more
and more people to share a standard language and culture in order to work
effectively, the idea of the nation arose.
Communities coalesced around a unifying culture and, according to Gellner, shared
access to this unifying culture and language made a group into a nation. To
administer and protect a national culture, language, and economy, the boundaries
of a state had to match those of a culture. States do not necessarily need nations,
Gellner says in the text, but nations seek their own states for protection and to
perpetuate the national culture and language. From this comes nationalism: a
political concept in which state and cultural boundaries match.
This new way of understanding nationalism, as Gellner outlines it in the text, had
important implications. First, he argues that the origins of nationalism can be found
in the relationship of economy to culture. A nation is neither a fundamental aspect
of the human mind nor a deeply embedded facet of human culture. Instead, nations
have arisen from historical changes occurring in the modern period.
Second, Gellner shows how a national education system helped create a culture
connecting many individuals. In the past, groups with specialized knowledge could
function as cultural units. That is, certain groups such as clerics or a financial elite
were culturally distinct from the mass of the population. Industrialization changed
this, requiring a universal standard of education accessible to all. Gellner refutes the
idea that an elite somehow produced nationalism.
Why Does Nations and Nationalism Matter?
Nationalism is a slippery subject, something Ernest Gellner knew well. As he wrote,
The idea of a man without a nation seems to impose a strain on the modern
imagination.1 In Nations and Nationalism, Gellner shows how the idea of a nation
resulted from a certain set of circumstances. Although nations often try to assert
ancient roots, Gellner demonstrates that nations are in fact products of the modern
world, born of economic, social, and cultural factorsan idea that refutes many of
the myths that nationalists like to tell.
Gellners book also serves as a reminder that there is nothing natural about the
nation state. The political legitimacy of the nation state has evolved throughout
modern history. Nations and Nationalism asks its readers to consider what is true
and what is false in the construction of a collective world of nation states.
The importance of Nations and Nationalism lies in its documentation of how the
nation state came into existence. The text also shows why this concept came to
structure human organization and international relations. To understand the history
of the modern world, one must understand how the nation originated. More than
that, one must understand how nations came to legitimize states. In the past, a
right to rule might come from conquest or marriage. Now a state gains and retains
legitimacy by protecting the rights of a nation.
More than 30 years after Nations and Nationalism first appeared, the concepts it
addresses continue to be importantespecially in analyzing the power of
nationalism and the origin of nations. Cornell University Press republished the book
in 2008 and The Times Literary Supplement named it one of the 100 most influential
books since the end of World War II.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What happened to Gellners family during his childhood?
Analyze: What were some of the earlier ideas of nationalism?
Apply: What was important about Gellners revisions to earlier theories of
nationalism?
Notes
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 6.
At the age of thirteen, Gellner underwent the trauma of that dangerous journey
across Europe and lost his friends and social moorings. In his teenage years he
dreamed constantly of Prague, viscerally longing to go back.
John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography
Key Points
Nations and Nationalism was one of the first texts to theorize about the modern
origins of the nation.
Gellner loved learning and his training in philosophy strongly influenced his later
work in sociology (the study of the structure, history, and forces that shape society)
and anthropology (roughly, the study of human beings).
Gellners Jewish upbringing in a country invaded by Nazi Germany offered him a
real-life lesson in the power of nationalismthe political position that the
boundaries of the state and a peoples culture should be in agreement.
Why Read This Text?
Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism, published in 1983, set forth a deceptively
simple idea: nations are a product of the modern world. The nationalist who
attributes the origins of the nation to an ancient battle creates a myth to justify the
nations existence. We can trace the real existence and origin of any nation, Gellner
argues, to the shift from an agrarian societya society with an economy based on
farmingto a modern, industrial society.
In arguing this point in the book, Gellner does not just shift the focus of studies on
nationalism. He opens the door to a completely new way of thinking about and
researching nationalism. Rather than seeking the origins of the nation in the
thoughts of nationalists or in a fundamental aspect of humanness, Gellner shows
how the idea of nation connected to the needs of industrial society. According to
him, changes in human social organization brought about the idea of nation. Gellner
also provides ideas and analytical tools for understanding why nations formed in
different places, at different times, and in different ways.
Nations and Nationalism created a framework for thinking about and studying
nationalism. Scholars today who work on nationalism or related topics will want to
explore and expand on Gellners ideaswhether they agree or disagree with them.
Author's Life
Ernest Gellner was born in 1925 in Paris, France, to Jewish parents from the Bohemia
region of what was then the country of Czechoslovakia. With the rise of Adolf Hitler
and the growing power of the racist, nationalistic, and extremely right-wing Nazi
party in Germany, Gellner and his family left their home in Prague in 1939 and
resettled in Great Britain. An excellent student, Gellner began studying philosophy,
politics, and economics at Oxford Universitys Balliol College in 1943.
World War II interrupted his studies. During the last years of the war, Gellner served
in a brigade of Czechoslovakian expatriates organized and armed by the British
Army. To fully grasp Nations and Nationalism, it is important to consider Gellners
experience as a Jew forced to flee his home and his decision to fight in another
countrys military. The rise of Hitlers Nazi Party and the horrific war waged by
Hitlers regime demonstrated the power of nationalism to unify peoples in what
Gellner saw as specially virulent ways.1 His book is an attempt to understand the
origins and conditions of nationalism.
Gellner returned to Oxford in 1945, finishing a masters degree with first class
honors. From 1949 until 1961, Gellner taught sociology at the London School of
Economics. He also worked on his doctoral dissertation in the field of social
anthropology (roughly, a subfield of anthropology often concerned with things such
as customs and political organization), conducting fieldwork in North Africa.
After obtaining his doctorate in 1961, Gellner was made a professor of philosophy
and continued teaching at the London School of Economics. In 1984, he left London
for Cambridge University and taught social anthropology there for the next nine
years. In 1993, he was offered a post in his native Prague at the Central European
University, where he served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of
Nationalism.
Gellner died in Prague in 1995 at the age of 69.
Author's Background
One might argue that World War II, which forced Gellner to leave his homeland,
changed his scholarly trajectory. He moved away from his early philosophical
studies and toward sociology and anthropology. From the 1950s until the time of his
death, the main subject underlying his work focused on sociological structures and
ways of living in the modern world.
Questions on such topics led Gellner to his study of the origins and functions of
nationalism. His 1964 book, Thought and Change, tackled the concept of
nationalism, but people outside scholarly circles paid it little attention. Nationalist
movements and far-right parties had been discredited as a result of the war.
Moreover, the real concern in the immediate decades following World War II was the
Cold Warthe growing political and cultural struggle between communist states and
liberal democracies. This tension simmered until 1991.
In the 1970s, however, a new wave of nationalist sentiment emerged in Europe. As
republicans in Northern Ireland sought independence from Great Britain, Ulster
Nationalism was reborn. At the same time, a number of protest movements
occurred involving nationalists from the Basque and Catalan regions of northern
Spain.
The 1970s also saw the rise of a number of far-right political movements throughout
Western Europe. In France, a new political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen called the
National Front exploded onto the political scene, proclaiming that Muslim
immigration threatened French identity. Such political struggles over the idea of
nation provided the background for a major rethinking of nationalism in academic
circles. Ernest Gellner played a significant role in this movement.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What did Gellners work do for the study of nationalism?
Analyze: How would Gellners life have affected his ideas about nationalism?
Apply: Why would Gellner think that nationalism was important to write about at the
time?
Notes
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983), 139.
An outburst of collective emotion in a gathering does not merely express the sum
total of what individual feelings share in common, but is something of a very
different order . It is a product of shared existence, of actions and reactions called
into play between the consciousnesses of individuals. If it is echoed in each one of
them it is precisely by virtue of the special energy derived from its collective
origins.
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method
Key Points
Sociology* and anthropology are both concerned with the behaviors and actions of
human communities across time.
Although both academic disciplines focus on human communities, sociology is
generally more interested in large-scale structures and collective behaviors, while
anthropology uses qualitative methods to study smaller groups and interactions.
Ernest Gellner brought both of these approaches to Nations and Nationalism,
producing an interdisciplinary bookthat is, a book that draws on the aims and
methods of more than one academic discipline.

Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism was published in 1983 as part of a series
entitled Perspectives on the Past, which sought to discuss problems simply as
problems, and not as history or politics or economics.1 Gellners book is
purposefully interdisciplinary. He worked with evidence and ideas emanating from
several social-science disciplines, including sociology (the study of social behavior),
history, philosophy, and social anthropologya subfield of anthropology (the study
of human beings) that sees human behavior as embedded in social and historical
contexts.
That said, Gellners approach is most informed by ideas within sociology and social
anthropology. The academic discipline of sociology coalesced at the turn of the
twentieth century under the influence of three different thinkers: the German
economist and social theorist Karl Marx, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, and
the German sociologist Max Weber. One thing these thinkers had in common is the
idea that we can understand human societies by rationally examining certain
structures, collective behaviors, or common actions.
The academic discipline of sociology differed from scientific examination of human
biology, as well as from psychologys interpretations of individual human
consciousness. Unlike these disciplines, sociology pursues knowledge about broad
human social phenomena, usually on a quantitative basisthat is, by measuring
data.
Anthropology emerged in the late nineteenth century from practices of natural
historythe study of plants and animals in their environment. European scholars
used anthropology as a way to describe faraway, usually colonized, lands and
peoples to other Europeans.
Social anthropology combines features of both sociology and anthropology. Like
sociology, it focuses on social phenomena such as customs, political organization,
family and gender relations, and religion. But it emphasizes qualitative methods
the study of somethings qualitiesand smaller-scale studies.
Social anthropologists conduct extensive field studies and observations. Like their
colleagues in the field of anthropology, they learn native languages and live among
their research subjects. In the early twentieth century, historically oriented studies
gave way to an emphasis on analyzing contemporary ways of living. Scholars of
social anthropology use long-term ethnographic fieldworkobservation conducted
in a specific settingto describe how people live today.
Gellners work on nationalism was heavily informed by particular approaches within
both sociology and social anthropology. The text reflects the influence of the
philosophy of positivism, which dominated sociology after World War II,2 and
emphasized the importance that an assertion should be logically or scientifically
proven.
Positivism emerged from the writings of the nineteenth-century French thinkers
Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim. In the mid-nineteenth century, Comte laid the
groundwork for the academic discipline that would become sociology. Durkheim,
born the year after Comte died, is generally considered one of the primary founders
of the discipline.
Durkheim explained his positivist approach in his 1894 book, The Rules of
Sociological Method. He hypothesized that observation and measurement could
reveal certain social facts.3 A social fact operated in general over the whole of a
given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual
manifestations.4 Gellners investigation of nationalism relies on this insight and
method. His text seeks to explain nationalism as more than simply an intellectual
exercise. He sees it as a structuring factor in modern society.
Another approach at the time came from the Polish anthropologist Bronisaw
Malinowski, who loomed large within the field of social anthropologyespecially the
British School, with its emphasis on long-term observation.
Scholars consider Malinowski the founder of the functionalist school of
anthropology, which theorizes that human beings establish particular institutional
mechanisms to satisfy physiological needs5and that we may see cultural
practices and attitudes as adaptations to meet these needs. Functionalism in the
British school of anthropology was a reaction to the natural history mode of earlier
anthropological studies. Those earlier anthropologists saw cultural traits as
indications of historical change rather than as being useful in the present.6
As part of his functionalist approach, Malinowski claimed that we cannot separate
our views of history from the contemporary needs of those attempting to recreate
the past. For Malinowski, anthropology aimed to understand why that view existed
for a particular individual. In essence, he wanted to grasp the natives point of
view.7
Academic Influences
Malinowskis ideas in social anthropology significantly influenced Gellners
understanding of nationalism as a modern phenomenon, For Gellner, Malinowskis
ideas helped explain why nationalists project and even invent an ancient history for
their nation.
Within sociology, Gellners positivist approachhis emphasis on logically and
scientifically proving assumptionsrelates back to Durkheim. In addition, his
account of modern society relies on the thought of the German sociologist Max
Weber. Weber used the term disenchantment to describe features of modern
society such as bureaucracy and secularization. He also applied it to knowledge of
the world derived from science as opposed to religious belief.8 Weber argued that
modernity had ushered in an age of disenchantment, and Gellner found that
particularly convincing. More specifically, Gellner appropriated Webers notion of
disenchantment when explaining the difference between industrial and preindustrial societies.
The French sociologist and Cold War liberal intellectual Raymond Aron also
significantly influenced Gellner. Aron is perhaps best known for his book The Opium
of the Intellectuals (1955), a critique of French Marxist theory. In particular, Arons
account of industrialization specifically influenced Gellners thinking.
Aron described contemporary economic growth and compared the development of
different societies by analyzing a set of hierarchies and national rivalries. He also
described the political forms that various societies take: state socialism (a system in
which, for example, industry is not held in private hands), dictatorial regimes (such
as that of Nazi Germany), and liberal democracies (such as those of America and
Western Europe, for example).9 By charting the effects of industrialization, Aron
provided fertile ground for Gellners own analyses.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What is the primary concern of the academic disciplines of sociology
and anthropology?
Analyze: How do sociology and anthropology differ in terms of methods?
Apply: Which ideas did Gellner take from sociology and which from anthropology?
Notes
R. I. Moore, preface to Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1983), viii.
George Steinmetz, American Sociology before and after World War II: The
(Temporary) Setting of a Disciplinary Field, in Sociology in America: A History, ed.
Craig Calhoun (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 3567.
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: The
Free Press, 1982), 52.
Durkheim, Sociological Method, 59.
Ernest Gellner, The Political Thought of Bronisaw Malinowski, Current
Anthropology 28, no. 4 (1997): 5579.
Michael Young, Bronislaw Malinowski, in International Dictionary of
Anthropologists, ed. Christopher Winters (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 445.
Quoted in Chris Holdsworth, Bronislaw Malinowski, in Oxford Bibliographies, doi:
10.1093/OBO/9780199766567-0096
See Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,
trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946),
12956.
See Raymond Aron, 18 Lectures on Industrial Society (London: Weidenfeld &

Nicolson, 1967).
Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the
national unit should be congruent.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
Key Points
The idea of self-determination, the process by which a nation takes charge of its
own affairs, in the twentieth century provoked scholars to consider how to define a
nation and its origins.
Some scholars saw the ideology of nationalism as the product of other ideologies.
Others saw it as being produced by a particular form of politics or regime.
Gellner rejected these stances as inconsistent. He asserted the economic and social
basis of nationalism, as well as the role of culture and education in creating a
modern nation.
Core Question
Nationalism emerged as a topic of study long before Ernest Gellner wrote Nations
and Nationalism in 1983. World War I was set in motion in 1914 by a nationalist act,
a Slav nationalists assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When the
war ended four years later, the Versailles peace negotiations created new nation
states based on the idea of self-determination, as championed by US President
Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson based his concept of self-determination on the idea that national groups
should have the right to found a state and govern themselves. The doctrine raised
the hopes of groups around the world that they would be able to create their own
internationally recognized states. Clearly, nationalism had reached a new level of
political legitimacy. So historians and other scholars set about trying to answer a
core question: where did nationalism come from?
In the 1920s and 1930s, scholars began to answer that question. The American
Carlton Hayes and the Prague-born scholar Hans Kohn were among the most
prominent. Both Hayes and Kohn explained nationalism as an ideologya system of
beliefs founded on a desire that a particular world view should be instituted.
For Hayes, nationalism was the product of other ideologies such as liberalisma
belief emphasizing individual libertyand imperialism1the political doctrine of
empire building and the dominance of subject people. Kohn, on the other hand,
viewed it as a product of certain types of political regimes. Different regimes
produced certain types of nationalisms. Kohn divided these into a Western liberal
and democratic nationalism, and an Eastern nationalism that was irrational and
pre-enlightened.2 Still, nationalism in his studies was either reduced to a function
of something else (other ideologies, the nation) or as an incredibly powerful idea
that can shape the world in its image.3
Another set of scholars of the early twentieth century saw nationalism as grounded
in popular political participation enabled by a common language. Leftist intellectuals
and politicians such as the Austrian thinker and government minister Otto Bauer
and the statesman Karl Renner suggested that nationalism had its roots in language
and communication.4 Their ideas, although not as influential in shaping leftist
politics, had a longer-lasting impact within the academic world.
The Participants
World War II, another conflict sparked as a result of nationalist sentiment, left some
60 million peopleboth military and civiliandead across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
After the war ended, the central question animating scholars remained very much
the same as it had been at the end of World War I: what are the origins of
nationalism?
But there was another question, too: what factors made nationalism such a powerful
force in shaping international politics and history? Gellner brought many of the
techniques and insights of sociology and social anthropology to his attempts to
answer these questions. But he was hardly the only person addressing them.
In 1953, Gellners fellow social scientist from Prague, Karl Deutsch, published a book
called Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of
Nationality. Deutschs work built on some of the ideas set forth by Otto Bauer.5
Deutsch collected quantitative datathat is, measureable data such as statistics
to show how social communication affected groups. Good communication
between groups helped build affinities, while communication difficulties could
present barriers. Some scholars of nationalism, such as the American historian
Carlton Hayes, hesitated to embrace Deutschs theories. But Deutschs emphasis on
communication played a large role in later theories of nationalism.6
Another intellectual trend sought to understand the pernicious role of nationalism in
the rise and fall of Hitlers Germany. In 1960, Elie Kedourie, a Jewish migr like
Gellner, wrote an essay titled simply Nationalism. Kedourie wrote of nationalism
as a peculiarly European ideology and problem that had bred fanaticism and
irrationalism with truly tragic and pernicious consequences for human society.7
In his 1964 book, Thought and Change, Gellner resisted Kedouries characterization.
Gellner aligned himself more with Deutsch. He suggested that education, culture,
and a shared language were far more important to the power of nationalism than
ideological aberration or emotional excess.8
In the early 1980s, when Gellner published Nations and Nationalism, several other
thinkers brought forward ideas on the same, or a very similar, topic. The scholar
most aligned with Gellners point of view was the British scholar Benedict Anderson.
Anderson published his book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism, in 1983, the same year as Gellners work.
Like Gellner, Anderson believed that communication held the key to understanding
the origins of nationalism. Anderson advanced the idea of nationalism as an
imagined community. This community depended on a particular configuration of
economic and communication technologies, as well as on the weakening of
European empires.
Anderson argued that the printing press and the capitalist market that engendered
it led to a form of print-capitalism. This print-capitalism standardized and
consolidated a given language as a consequence of the capitalist market that
produced itcapitalism being the dominant economic, social, and political model in
the West and in many other nations in the developing world.
In effect, according to Anderson, reading the same news in the same language
helped bring together groups of people into an imagined national community.
The early 1980s also saw the publication of a book by one of Gellners students,
Anthony D. Smith. Smith took a different view of nationalism from his mentor.9 In
fact, his alternative interpretation of nationalism put him at odds with Gellners core
thesis. Gellner viewed nations and nationalism as entirely modern phenomena. But
in his book, The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Smith suggested that nations have premodern origins. He argued that we can only comprehend nationalism by looking at
its historical ethnic coreand that core has roots going back to long before the
modern area.
Smith stated, Nationalists have a vital role to play in the construction of nations
as political archaeologists rediscovering and reinterpreting the communal past in
order to regenerate the community.10 Gellner, however, rejected Smiths thesis on
the ethnic origins of nationalism, viewing it as nothing more than myths created for
modern circumstances.11
Key Questions
Synthesize: What did Deutsch, Gellner, and Anderson all believe was important to
the origins of nationalism?
Analyze: What historical conditions led to a fascination with nationalism as a topic of

study?
Apply: How did Gellner differ from his student Anthony D. Smith in his
understanding of the origins of nationalism?
Notes
See Carlton Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1926).
Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944),
457.
John Breuilly, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford
See Otto Bauer, The Nationalities Question and Social Democracy, trans. Joseph
ODonnell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Karl Renners essay
entitled State and Nation (1899) has been reproduced in the Bauer translation.
Bauers work was originally published in 1907.
Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the
Foundations of Nationality (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1953).
Carlton J. H. Hayes, Review of Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry
into the Foundations of Nationality by Karl Deutsch, The Catholic Historical Review
39 (1954): 4623.
Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Elie Kedourie's Contribution to the Study of Nationalism,
Middle Eastern Studies 41 (2005): 662. See also Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (New
York: Praeger, 1960).
See also Brendan OLeary, On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest
Gellners Writings on Nationalism, British Journal of Political Science 27 (1997):
193; and Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1964).
Smith carried out his doctoral research under Gellners supervision at the London
School of Economics. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1986).
Anthony D. Smith, Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the
Reconstruction of Nations, Nations and Nationalism 1 (1994): 19.
For an account of Smith and Gellners relationship, see John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner:
An Intellectual Biography (London: Verso, 2010), 3267.
[A] definition tied to the assumptions of one age (and even then constituting an
exaggeration), cannot usefully be used to help to explain the emergence of that
age.
Key Points
Ernest Gellner argued that nationalism resulted from the transformation of agrarian
society, one founded on an agricultural economy, into an industrial society.
Gellner was the first to present a theory and argue that nationalism was a modern
phenomenon with modern origins.
While Gellner built on the ideas of earlier scholars about the nature of society, he
synthesized them in a novel way.
Author's Aims
In Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gellner aims to prove that nationalism is a
unique phenomenon of the modern worldthat is, of the period that began roughly
towards the end of the fifteenth century. Gellner argues that nationalism is an
unavoidable aspect of modernity, or the modern period. It emerges when agrarian
societies became industrialized. Nationalism is not, as many had believed, a
primordial facet of human societies. Gellners contention is that industrialization
and the processes of urbanization (people moving from the countryside to the city),
bureaucratization (the building of the procedures and institutions the modern state
requires to function), and mass educationmade nationalism possible.
These viewpoints required Gellner to describe the process of industrialization and to
outline the characteristics of agrarian societies that had not fostered nationalism. In
other words, it was not enough to show how industrialization facilitated nationalism;
he also had to show why nationalism could not occur within pre-industrial agrarian
societies.
In the text, Gellner begins with a full explanation of the social, cultural, and
economic structures of agrarian societies. Then he undertakes a similar analysis of
industrialization. After explaining how industrial development fosters nationalism,
Gellner moves on to his broader goal: describing the idea of nation and the
characteristics of nationalisms and explaining why certain nationalisms prevailed
while others fizzled out. Aiming to provide a Typology of Nationalisms, as noted in
the title of his seventh chapter, Gellner acknowledges and describes in that section
how nationalisms differed, even when they emerged from similar societal
circumstances and needs.
Approach
Gellner uses an interdisciplinary and speculative approach to the question of the
origins of nationalism. He attempts to explain nationalism by placing it within a
grand historical narrative. Because Nations and Nationalism is a short textonly
about 145 pagesGellners explanations seem at times schematic (simplified, or
making use of diagrams). This is true in both senses of the word: he covers a great
deal of history in a short span. And he uses charts and tables to describe large
historical processes and societal characteristics.1
Gellners distinction between hunter-gatherer hunter-gatherer societies, in which
people survive by hunting animals and collecting wild food; agrarian societies, in
which social organization is based on an agricultural economy; and industrial
societies may be his most original contribution to the study of nationalism. He
contends that nationalism could only have emerged in the last of these phases:
industrialization.
To make this argument, Gellner relies on the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowskis
functionalist idea, according to which societies create institutions, customs, and
culture to meet certain needs.2 Dividing history between agrarian and industrial
societies, Gellner discusses how human societies deal with the pressures of living
under particular economic, cultural, and political conditions. In his view, nationalism
fulfills social needs caused by industrialization. Having established that nationalism
is a key feature of the industrialized world, Gellner examines how the thesis
changes our understanding of the world. Viewing nationalism in this way gives us a
very different understanding of nations and nationalist movements.
Underlying Gellners approach is the positivism of sociologythe idea that one may
become certain of specific social facts by observing social activities. Gellner
believed he could explain the historical contours of human cultures by observing
how their various institutions and practices function. Gellner refused to reduce his
sociological analysis of nationalism to a particular idea or value. Instead, in Nations
and Nationalism, he stresses the deep structural issues involved in societys
transition from agrarian to industrial practices. In the last part of the book, he
examines the uneven development of these changing societies.
Gellners contribution to the study of nationalism both reacts to and synthesizes
several trends. On the one hand, Gellner disputed the view that nationalism
emerged from other ideologies or intellectual trends, as the American historian
Carlton Hayes or the British historian Elie Kedourie proposed.3 Instead, Gellner
sought to produce an account of nationalism that demonstrates its modern origins.
He particularly focused on its relationship to industrialization and the collapse of

agrarian regimes. For Gellner, scholars who suggest that nationalism has premodern originsas his student Anthony D. Smith did in his analysis of ethnic
affiliationsfall into a trap laid by the nationalist. Nationalist identities are generally
invested in the idea that there is something natural or predestined in the nation.
On the other hand, Gellner agreed with the spiritif not the mechanismsof ideas
that the Czech scholar Karl Deutsch proposed. In Nations and Nationalism, Gellner
emphasizes the relationship of nationalism to the new forms of communication
required by industrial society.4
Gellner also discusses the Oxford-trained academic John Plamenatzs 1973 essay
Two Types of Nationalism. This essay is heavily indebted to the work of the
American philosopher Hans Kohn. Plamenatz makes a distinction between the
nationalism of the West and that of the East. The primary difference he sees is that
the West is culturally equipped for nationalism. The East is not adapted to
success, and nationalism generates violence and other social problems.5 Gellner
appropriates parts of Plamenatzs and Kohns arguments in his own typology of
nationalisms, adding to and extending their analyses.6
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was new about Ernest Gellners theory?
Analyze: How did insights about social facts and the idea of functionalism figure
into Gellners theory?
Apply: What could it mean to be culturally equipped for a successful nationalism?
Notes
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1983), 9, 14.
See Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 8590.
Gellners critique of Kedourie is substantial. See Gellner, Nations and Nationalism,
12734.
Gellner does not agree with Deutschs concept that the news media transmits an
already-formed nationalism. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 1267.
John Plamenatz, Two Types of Nationalism, in Nationalism: The Nature and
Evolution of an Idea, ed. Eugene Kamenka (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), 334.
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 99101.
Section 2: Ideas
Module 5:Main Ideas

Innovation means doing new things, the boundaries of which cannot be the same
as those of the activities they replace. Nationalism is rooted in a certain kind of
division of labour, one which is complex and persistently, cumulatively changing.
Key Points
Gellner believed that nationalism occurred as a result of human social organization,
namely the way that different groups within society interact to produce particular
culture.
Nationalism is caused by an adjustment in the relationship between political and
economic conditions and human culture, according to Gellner.
Although Gellners text ranges widely across time and geography, he strives hard to
provide examples and show how his theory operates.
Key Themes
In Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gellner defines nationalism as a political
principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent1
that is, literally, that they should agree. Gellners central thesis is that this
concept of political legitimacy originates in a deep adjustment in the relationship
between polity and culture occurring as a result of industrialization.2 In other
words, the move from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy
industrializationtransforms the organization of society and culture to the point
that nationalism becomes a legitimate way of organizing political units.
Gellners thesis relies on two interlocking interpretations of human social life. The
first is the agrarian nature of human societies during the pre-industrial age. Social
organization in this phase revolves around a population primarily involved in
agricultural work. The various processes that make nationalism a viable and
legitimate political principle are not yet present.3 Gellners argument here relies
on an idea of agrarian society as socially and culturally differentiated. By this he
means that the different social strata of agrarian society remain distinct and
separate.
The second interpretation has to do with industrial society. Gellner argues that the
old stability of the social role structure on which agrarian societies rely cannot
survive industrialization. Industrialization changes human societies in several ways.
First, it produces the conditions under which nationalism may become an organizing
principle. Industrial societies rapidly innovate and the persistence of occupational
change itself becomes the one permanent feature of the social order.4 This new
social order in a modern, industrial society also changes human social roles and
works to produce a homogenized culture and language. A sense of unity replaces

the social and cultural differentiations that defined agrarian society. In agrarian
societies, social loyalties are based on religion or a local potentate. But as society
industrializes, it coalesces around the concept of nation.
Exploring The Ideas
Gellner theorized that pre-modern societies could not support a nationalist
organization. This idea depends on a concept of political and cultural difference.
According to Gellner, distinctions between human groups function horizontally.
That is, the upper classes of any given pre-modern state may be rigidly separated
by culture and language from those they ruled. Examples of such social dams,
separating unequal levels include a German-speaking Austrian elite or Turkishspeaking Ottoman elite holding sway over a Serbian- or Romanian-speaking
population.5 Gellner argues, It is clearly advantageous to stress, sharpen and
accentuate the traits of the privileged groups.6 The upper classes emphasize
their different traits, endowing them with the aura of inevitability, permanence and
naturalness.7
In addition to these horizontal divisions, agrarian societies are also vertically
differentiated. Agricultural producers are often physically isolated and inwardturned, tied to the locality by economic need.8 Local groups have little interest in
cultural interconnection. As Gellner notes, they may have links with a variety of
religious rituals, and think in terms of caste, clan, or village (but not of nation)
according to circumstance.9
For industrialization to function properly, it requires a form of cultural homogeneity
supported by a state. Industrial society operates on sustained and perpetual
growth, which requires a constant input of highly mobile and educated workers.10
To incorporate such workers into its highly specialized and ever-changing
employment roles, an industrial society must produce workers with a high level of
basic training. Gellner likens modern society to an army, which provides a
prolonged and fairly thorough training for all its recruits, insisting on certain shared
qualifications.11
One of these qualifications is the ability to communicate in technically precise and
mutually intelligible language. A large, indispensable and expensive education
system is the only viable method for achieving these shared qualifications.
Education therefore becomes the most important touchstone for employability,
dignity, security and self-respect and plays a vital role in promoting a particular
school-transmitted culture.12
According to Gellner, culture can no longer be a diversified, locality-tied illiterate
little culture or tradition. Instead, the education system must adopt or manufacture
a great universal culture. Gellner argues that the limits of the culture within which
[men] were educated are also the limits of the world within which they can, morally
and professionally, breathe.13 Loyalty to a new, shared culture produces the

nation. Nations form when two people share the same culture and recognize
certain mutual rights and duties to each other.14
Criticallyand this is most important to Gellners argumentthe state is the only
institution strong enough to control so important and crucial a function as
sustaining the education system and defending the culture. Gellner argues, this is
the main clue to why state and culture must be linked in the concept of
nationalism.15 The political principle of nationalism flows from this linkage. Since
the state is the only viable guarantor of education and thus culture, its borders must
encompass all who adhere to the same culture. And there we have the rationale for
the nation.
The Irish academic R. I. Moore, a specialist in medieval history, asserted that Gellner
had produced an explanation of nationalism which makes it, for the first time,
historically and humanly intelligible.16 Gellner writes in a clear and lucid style. Not
only is the book accessible, at times it is even entertaining.
For example, Gellner invents a group of fictional agriculturalists known as the
Ruritanians who inhabit the Empire of Megalomania. The difficulties the
Ruritanians face in their attempts to join the dominant Megalomanian culture
illustrate important points Gellner wishes to make about the development of the
nation.17
In trying to provide a clear understanding of nationalism and its effects, Gellner
relies on abstractions and hypotheticals. When discussing the problem of minority
attributes within larger homogenized populations, he analyzes the hypothetical
problems of a group of individuals who are pigmentationally blue.18 In most
cases, such abstractions help show the general and widespread character and effect
of nationalism within his schema.
Still, Gellners vocabulary can be academic and his arguments, particularly those
involving Western philosophy, can be quite complex. This makes the book difficult to
negotiate. While college-level students may understand much of the work, they may
find some of the philosophical intricacies and historical references puzzling or
difficult to assess.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What made nationalism possible during the Industrial Age but not
during the Agrarian Age?
Analyze: Why is education so important to Gellners theory?
Apply: What is the position of the state in Gellners theory and what is its role with
respect to culture?
Notes
Gellner notes that, at times, a concept of unity existed in pre-industrial societies,
but that this did not attain the level of political principle. Gellner, Nations and
Nationalism, 14.
Authors emphasis. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 38.
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, viii.
Section 2: Ideas
Nationalism is a phenomenon connected not so much with industrialization or
modernization as such, but with its uneven diffusion.
Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change
Key Points
Gellners concept of industrialization relies on the following ideas: 1) the society is
mobile, fluid, and egalitarian, 2) certain human traits prove resistant to even
dispersal throughout society, and 3) resistant traits form the basis of defining a new
nation.
Gellner uses the idea of resistant traits to distinguish between two stages of
nationalism. These correspond to early or late industrialization.
Gellners fascination with different cultures and traits informed his interest in Islam
and his positioning of the religion as having a vital impact on nationalism in Muslim
societies.
Other Ideas
After laying out his central argument in Nations and Nationalism, Ernest Gellner
introduces two important secondary ideas in explaining nationalisms effects. The
first has to do with the effect of industrialization in creating a society that is
random and fluid.1 Gellner refers to this attribute as social entropy.
According to this idea, industrial societies move toward cultural sameness or
homogeneity, but as they do so, certain human traits prove entropy-resistant.
These are traits that, in a fluid and changing society, cannot become evenly
dispersed.2 According to Gellner, an entropy-resistant trait creates fissures,
sometimes veritable chasms, in the industrial societies in which it occurs.3
Gellner suggests this idea to try to differentiate between two stages of nation
making. In early industrialization, the life chances of the well-off and the starving
poor differ widely. Certain traits of the disadvantaged group could be entropyresistant and thus politically activated. That is, traits not evenly dispersed in
society can over time become markers of a certain political status, economic
position, or other difference. If so, Gellner argues that individuals may identify
themselves and each other culturally, ethnically, and a new nation may be born.4
In the later stages of industrialization, Gellner argues, something different happens:
entropy-resistant traits that lead to problems of mobility and equality will create
national struggles.5
Gellner extends the concept of how nationalisms differ by introducing three other
variables: power, education, and culture. According to Gellner, Modern societies
are always and inevitably centralized, in the sense that the maintenance of order is
the task of one agency or group of agencies.6 Political power in modern societies is
thus the domain of a few. Not all members of society can exert power over all other
members. People do not always have equal access to education and thus to the
national culture. Gellner uses these three variables in a model that shows how only
in certain cases will differences result in a national struggle, as opposed to another

kind.7
Exploring The Ideas
Nationalisms exhibit different characteristics. But Gellner tries to show that they are
all fundamentally shaped by cultural differentiation.8 This cultural differentiation
may be driven by what he terms entropy-resistant traits. Culture is the critical
variable in Gellners typology.
In Gellners model, while societies may have inequalities in power and education, a
national distinction only arises in the face of a cultural difference. For instance, in a
society where a politically weak subgroup is economically or educationally
privileged but shares the same culture as the rest of the society, political conflict
may indeed arisebut it will not be due to nationalism.
According to Gellners scheme, nationalism is about entry to, participation in,
identification with, a literate high culture which is co-extensive with an entire
political unit and its total population.9 A nationalist group will not arise from a
previous, larger political unit unless a politically weak group is also cut off from the
culture of the powerful. This group may go about identifying and creating its own
culture. Using the principle of nationalism, that group may act to create its own
state.
Nationalism can also arise when the powerful and powerless share the same culture
but are separated into different states. Unificatory nationalism may then occur
when elements in the different states agitate to unify, becoming part of a single
political unit.
Gellner identifies a final form of nationalism: diaspora nationalism. In this case, a
subset of the powerless has both economic and educational opportunity, but it
differs culturally from the majority. This can happen in societies where positions,
often too dangerous to be given to locals or full citizens [are] consequently reserved
for foreigners.10 Gellner provides the example of palace guards or the providers
of financial services.11 With the coming of a mobile, anonymous, centralized
mass society, Gellner argues these services can hardly be reserved for a
minority, and so the specialized minority groups lose their disabilities [i.e.
foreignness], but also alas their monopoly and their protection.12 This leaves the
minority group with two choices. It can assimilate to the dominant culture, or it can
create a state of its own, as the new protector of a now un-specialized, generic,
newly national culture.13 Gellner offers the famous and dramatic case of Israel
as an example of a successful diaspora nationalism.14
Overlooked
The interaction between nationalism and the religion of Islam fascinated Gellner.
Religions are often administered by a literate upper class. But in the Industrial Age,
Gellner believed that they become secularized, part of a mass national culture.15
He argues that religion must throw off its erstwhile legitimating doctrine to
become the pervasive and universal culture.16
Gellner believed that Islam had particular characteristics that allowed it to survive
in the modern world better than do doctrinally more luxuriant faiths.17 He saw
Islam as being without intellectually offensive frills and so able to maintain some
aspects of its universality and its legitimating influence.18 It could legitimate both
traditionalist regimes such as Saudi Arabia or Northern Nigeria, and socially radical
ones such as Libya, South Yemen or Algeria.19 Islam could function both to
legitimate power and to universalize a particular culture.
Scholars roundly criticized Gellners stance, and the kernel of his ideas remained
unexamined for some time. But John A. Hall, Gellners biographer, noted that certain
facets of Gellners analysis of Islam help explain features of political activism in the
Middle East.
Hall highlights the Iranian-born scholar Asef Bayats 2007 text, Making Islam
Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamic Turn, a book written 12 years
after Gellners death. Bayat suggests that political and social movements shaped
the practice of religion. In Halls view, this conclusion agrees well with how Gellner
viewed the influence of modernity and nationalism on Islam.20
Key Questions
Synthesize: What does Gellner mean by an entropy-resistant trait?
Analyze: How does this trait figure into cultural differentiation in Gellners model?
Apply: Why does Gellner believe Islam is different from Christianity or Judaism in its
relationship to nationalism?
Notes

John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography (London: Verso, 2010), 306.
See also Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the PostIslamic Turn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
Section 2: Ideas
Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent though
long-delayed political destiny, are a myth.
Key Points
Gellners theory of nationalism redefined much of the thinking on nationalism and
refuted four major ideas about the phenomenon.
While Gellners ideas were new and important, the slow collapse of the Soviet Union
in the late 1980s brought nationalist groups to the fore and Gellners work to a
broader audience.
Gellners work relies on industrialization to explain how nationalism began in
Europe. Critics argue his theory explained more about European history than
nationalism in other parts of the world.

Ernest Gellner wrote Nations and Nationalism primarily as a work of theory. He
evokes a grand narrative of human history to illustrate the modern origins of
nationalismthat is, as having historical roots no older than the end of the fifteenth
century, and owing much to the advent of industrialization in the mid-nineteenth
century. The work is not a deep historical analysis, and Gellner does not deploy a
great deal of data. Instead, the book is almost entirely argumentative.
It is perhaps best, then, to assess Ernest Gellners theories by noting the many
views of nationalism that he rejected. In the penultimate chapter of Nations and
Nationalism, Gellner reminds his audience of what he considers to be four false
theories of nationalism. The first false view suggests that nationalism is natural
and self-evident and self-generating1that it is somehow fundamental to the
human condition.2
The second false position argues that nationalism is a regrettable accident and
that political life even in industrial societies could do without it.3 This view would
suggest that no connection whatsoever exists between nationalism and
industrialization.
The third perspective involves the Marxist view of nationalism, founded on the
thought of the political theorist Karl Marx. Gellner calls this The Wrong Address
Theory.4 In the Marxist reading, societal advancement can only take place through
class struggle, not nationalism. Those who evoke the latter miss the point of
revolution.
Finally, Gellner rejects the view that sees nationalism as nothing more than the reemergence of the atavistic [that is, ancient and re-emergent] forces of blood and
territory.5 Gellner argues that both those who embrace nationalism and those who
reject it endorse this perspective. Those who embrace nationalism view it as a way
of renewing the nations soul. Those who reject it see nationalism as a barbarian
movement leading to total disaster.
To Gellner, none of these understandings of nationalism ring true.
In his text, he refutes these notions, relying on a complex and compelling argument
about social structure. Nationalism could not be supported by agrarian social
organization6that is, the society founded on an agricultural economyand,
therefore, it is not primordial, or ancient. Nationalism is not an intellectual accident;
it emerges from economic and social forces, not the transmission of a particular
idea.7
To Gellner, the relationship of culture to power remains far more relevant to the rise
of nationalism than class struggle or capitalismthe economic and social system,
dominant in the West, in which industry is private and the profits from the labor of
working people go to private hands.8 Finally, Gellner offers an account of needs, or
the way industrialization requires a certain social formation. This examination puts
to rest the notion that nationalism is simply about blood and territory.9
Academics generally praised Nations and Nationalism, and the text reached a wide
readership. In fact, it became Gellners best-selling work.10
Part of the success of Nations and Nationalism undoubtedly relates to the timing of
its publication. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as the leader of one of
the worlds great superpowers, the Soviet Union. Gorbachev adopted new policies
meant to restructure the Soviet economy and government. These policies
empowered nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and other areas under Soviet
control.
By the late 1980sjust a few years after Gellners book was publishedthe Soviet
empire had begun to unravel.11 Its collapse led to the independence of several new
states in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, and the Ukraine. Several nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus
Mountains also gained independence, including large territories such as Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The Soviet Unions demise sparked much greater
interest in studies of nationalism.
These geopolitical changes had a significant effect on Gellners career. In the final
years of his lifehe died in 1995he traveled a great deal, attending conferences
on the subject.12 He also wrote several new prefaces to the various translations of
Nations and Nationalism as well as prefatory remarks to other books on the subject.
As a prominent and strongly argued text, the book also engendered debate and
criticism. Many of Gellners writings after Nations and Nationalism sought to address
critics of the book and to fine-tune his argument.13
Limitations
Gellners book offers a well-argued theory of nationalism that may broadly apply to
different places and times. Indeed, within a text that runs to fewer than 150 pages,
Gellner manages to touch on a remarkable number of subjects. One of Gellners
students noted that he makes varied staccato comments on multiple issuesthe
struggles of states over peoples, the reasons for the unlikelihood that Arab
nationalisms defeat would be reversed, the behavior of empires, the mythical
character of much nationalist ideology.14
Gellners wide-ranging commentary suggests he wanted his work to address many
concerns. Cornell University Press published a second edition of Nations and
Nationalism in 2008, clearly indicating that the book remains relevant almost two
decades after its initial publication.
Still, several scholars criticized Nations and Nationalism. They saw it as relying too
heavily on European history, particularly in its discussion of the development of
human societies and its typology of nationalisms. The Palestinian American
intellectual Edward Said criticized Gellner and the British Marxist historian Eric
Hobsbawm for their repeated insistence on the Western provenance of nationalist
philosophies.15 Gellners biographer John A. Hall notes that it can be said
immediately that [Gellners] theory is marred by only really considering European
history.16 Certain aspects of Gellners text do seem to rely on a particular
European mode of industrialization.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What are the four arguments about nationalism that Gellner refuted?
Analyze: What are the limitations of political theories such as Gellners when
discussing large-scale historical events?
Apply: Do you think that Gellners thesis applies more to Europe or can be
understood as also happening in other places?
Notes
This view is often associated with the perspective of the German romantic Johann
Gottfried Herder, who argued that the origins of language determine the shape and
form of nations. See Johann Gottfried Herder and Michael N. Forster, Philosophical
Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65166.
This point of view is most closely associated with Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (New
York: Praeger, 1960).
See Robert J. Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Hall, Ernest Gellner, 308.
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 216.
Section 2: Ideas
Nations and Nationalism is at once more sociologically ambitious than Thought and
Change, bearing the imprint of Gellner's dialogues with Durkheim and Marx; more
conceptually novel, displaying the value-added of his theory; and more empirically
promising, as it sets out a typology of nationalism-inducing and nationalismthwarting situations.
Brendan OLeary, On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's
Writings on Nationalism
Key Points
Gellner was a political philosopher. His lifes work focused on understanding human
societies and culture, though in later life he focused almost solely on nationalism.
Gellner viewed Nations and Nationalism as the broadest and fullest synthesis of his
ideas about society.
While much of Gellners theoretical work on Islam has been roundly criticized,
Nations and Nationalism has stood the test of time.
Positioning
Nations and Nationalism follows logically from much of Ernest Gellners early work.
The sociological and social anthropological concerns on display in Nations and
Nationalism can be traced to his 1959 book Words and Things. In this work, he
rejected a theory known as ordinary language philosophy. Ordinary language
philosophy limited philosophy to examining how language works in a given context
or community. That is, it held that philosophy should not be concerned with
determining what is universally true for all peoples in all societies. Instead, it should
focus on how language operates as a system of meaning in a given community.
Gellner believed ordinary language philosophy stripped the discipline of philosophy

of any real significance. He argued that it reduced philosophy to nothing more than
a descriptive enterprise incapable of offering solutions to the biggest challenges
facing the modern world. Five years later, in 1964, he took up one of these
challenges, nationalism, in his second published book, Thought and Change. This
book contains many of the central elements that would later appear in Nations and
Nationalism. Gellners interest in, and work on, Islam from the late 1960s until the
early 1980s can also be found in Nations and Nationalism.1
Many of the ideas dominating Nations and Nationalism appear in Thought and
Change. Indeed, chapter 7 offers a glimpse of what is to come in Nations and
Nationalism. Gellner focuses on a break in human history: the transition from preindustrial to industrial society.
As Gellner saw it, this transition radically changed how humans understood their
world. Gellner argued in Thought and Change that nationalism came into existence
as a result of industrialization. It should not be viewed as a primordial, or an
ancient, notion going back to time immemorial. Thought and Change is also where
Gellner developed the idea that nationalism must not be conceived of as random.
He felt it should be connected with the various institutions and practices of a given
state. States work to make nationalism seem natural because the concept helps
to legitimate their existence.
Integration
Both Words and Things (1959) and Thought and Change (1964) function more as
philosophical rather than anthropological texts. But the latter shows Gellner moving
more fully into arguments around the social sciencesnamely state formation and
the history and effects of industrialization. This trajectory toward social and cultural
anthropology grew stronger as Gellner conducted further studies on Islam and
Muslim societies in North Africa. He published Saints of the Atlas, a study of pastoral
peoples in Morocco, in 1969. He also published Muslim Society in 1981, a book in
which he discussed the mechanisms that caused what he viewed as the stability
and homogeneity (that is, the internal similarity) of Islamic societies.
While many of the ideas present in Nations and Nationalism appeared first in
Thought and Change, that book did not receive much attention when it was
published in the mid-1960s. Gellners biographer, John A. Hall, notes that, in
retrospect, it is clear that Thought and Change foreshadows nearly all his later
work, aiming as it did to provide a social philosophy of modern times.2 In
Thought and Change, Gellner addressed what he saw as two interrelated social
phenomena: industrialization and nationalism. This exploration set the agenda for
the focused study that would later become the most important work of his career,
Nations and Nationalism.
Significance
Gellner felt Nations and Nationalism had fully encapsulated his intellectual views.
Shortly after publishing the book, he traveled to Moscow and met a friend, the
anthropologist Anatoly Khazanov. According to Khazanov, Gellner remarked that
the book contained his life.3
The book certainly changed his life, garnering huge attention and eventually
offering an opportunity for Gellner to leave England and return to his native Prague.
He did so at the invitation of Vclav Havel, a Czech dissident and the first
democratically elected president of the newly independent Czechoslovakia. Havel
asked Gellner to be the founding director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism
at the new Central European University. The university had been established just
two years earlier, in 1991, after the demise of the Soviet bloc. The institutions goal
was to facilitate cooperation and education among central European nation states.
Gellners decision to leave Cambridge University to join the Central European
University gave the institution great credibility.
As director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism, Gellner attracted scholars,
diplomats, and policy makers from central Europe and around the world. When
Czechoslovakia split into two countriesthe Czech Republic and SlovakiaGellner
held conferences and seminars on Czech and Slovakian nationalism aimed at
analyzing the political divide between the two countries.
Gellner also turned his attention to other parts of the world. His work on nationalism
enabled him to influence public thinking on the situation of formerly dominant
minorities in Hungary and Ireland. Gellner used the new research center to discuss a
range of topics including Quebecs desire for independence from Canada; the
economic, political, and social void created when Russia rejected communism; and
the relationship between Islamic revivalism and nationalism.4
Key Questions
Synthesize: How does Thought and Change relate to the authors later work?
Analyze: How does Gellners main idea in Words and Things relate to what he says
about education and culture in Nations and Nationalism?
Apply: How did Gellners experience as a Jew from Prague come to impact his ideas
and interests?
Notes
Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969) and Ernest
Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

Section 3: Impact
Instead of arguing that nationalism contradicts capitalism, constitutes an anomaly,
or is an emotional, ideological, or intellectual mistake, Gellner states that
nationalism was the only possible outcome when industrialism burst into an
ethnically differentiated world.
Gale Stokes, How is Nationalism Related to Capitalism? A Review Article
Key Points
Early criticism of Gellners Nations and Nationalism primarily focused on the
relationship he drew between the concepts of industrialization and nationalism, as
well as the historical examples he deployed to prove his theory.
Gellner acknowledged the need for more historical evidence, but resisted those who
suggested that a social scientist could not identify causal truths in social
phenomenathat is, that it was not possible to analyze social behavior in order to
identify the causes of those phenomena.
Gellners work reshaped the questions one might ask of the origins of nationalism.
He found a community willing to grapple with his provocative set of ideas.
Criticism
Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism was widely reviewed. The years following
its publication in 1983 saw both praise and a number of criticisms of his main
arguments.1
Several critics denied that a social scientist who stood outside of a given culture
could determine how such a society actually operated.2 Believing such a thing is
possible requires accepting that the scientist knows more about the real purpose of
values than the people who are in fact practicing them. This is typically understood
as functionalism. John Breuilly, a professor of nationalism and ethnicity at the
London School of Economics, explains that in Gellners text, Nationalism is
regarded as functional for industrialism and its function serves to explain its
existence (teleology).3 In other words, industrialism requires nationalismand that
means nationalism must exist.
Breuilly found this notion vague because there is no direct cause, arguing,
Industrialism is now less a process of social change underpinning nationalism and
more a perceived need which motivates nationalists.4 The mechanism whereby
industrialization propels nationalism is not entirely clear in Breuillys view. Breuilly
feels Gellner has shown a relationship between nationalism and industrialization but
not an exact source.
Others criticized Gellner for not providing more specific examples to historically
ground what might appear to be a speculative theory on the origins of nationalism.
Even so, Gellners former student Anthony D. Smith commented, How far [Gellners
theory] can encompass the some 200 or so nationalisms to date would require more
investigation than a general exposition permits. Smith praised Gellners work as
broadly conceived and stimulating for without theories to provide perspectives
the manifold researches of individuals becomes disjointed and fragmentary.5
Responses
Gellners biographer, John A. Hall, notes that Gellner constantly engaged with his
critics.6 As a consequence, Gellner subtly reworked many of his claims in his later
work by describing in detail the different stages in the emergence of nationalism.
He also attempted to elaborate on the historical circumstances of nationalism in
much of his later work.7
Gellners most direct response to criticism may be found in his aptly titled article
Reply to Critics. Refuting claims that his work is teleological or functionalist,
Gellner writes, Needs engender no realities. But my theory does not sin against
this. It is straightforwardly causal.8 Gellner then recapitulates his argument that, at
root, the division of labor in a society is the mechanism that provokes nationalism.
Some critics charged that his work did not take enough account of history. Gellner
took aim at those who argued it was not possible to use historical interpretation in
service of political theory or who questioned that genuine knowledge can be
independent of the embeddedness of the practitioner in his social position, and that
it can be conveyed, learnt and applied through abstract formulation.9 For Gellner,
that viewpoint rejected the very idea of theory and the availability of objective and
articulable knowledge.10 In repudiating such a stance, Gellner asserted that such
criticism granted the critic privileged access to historical reality, but consigned
others to the realm of ideology.11 He adamantly refused the idea that his work
could not help to explain and order historical developments.
Gellners work on nationalism never failed to provoke controversy. Shortly after his
death in 1996, a compendium of essays analyzing his ideas was published under
the title, The Social Theory of Ernest Gellner.12 In this text, critics leveled more
charges against Gellners theory. The Australian historian Nick Stargardt argued that
industrialization does not necessarily require mass literacy or the standardization of
language.13 He noted that industrialization in Great Britain occurred generations
before compulsory education.
Other essays in the book suggested that people in many major industrial cities
speak a variety of native languages, which possibly undermines Gellners claim
about the relationship between industry and a homogenous, or internally similar,
culture and language.14
More interestingly, a number of critics argued no relationship necessarily existed
between industrialization and nationalism. They suggested nationalism may arise
even in the absence of an industrial society. For example, nationalism occurred in
colonial India, but its leading proponent, Mahatma Gandhi, explicitly rejected
Western industrialization.15 As this collection of critical essays demonstrated, many
of the charges leveled at the book when it was published in the 1980s remained
relevant years later.
The rise of other theories brought new kinds of scrutiny to Gellners work. For
example, postcolonial theory sought to analyze and destabilize the modes of
thought that support Western colonialism and imperialism. Encompassing several
academic disciplines, it removed European narratives from their formerly central
place in scholarly conversation and added a new focus on the histories of peoples in
other parts of the globe. The use and interpretation of history remained at the
center of Gellners battles with proponents of postcolonial theory, particularly the
scholar Edward Said.
Newer works on nationalism by postcolonial theorists, such as those by the Indian
scholar Partha Chatterjee in the 1990s, have offered alternative interpretations of
nationalism in non-European contexts. They have also questioned whether Gellners
theories apply to the world outside of Europe.16
Key Questions
Synthesize: What were the major objections to Gellners theory?
Analyze: What was Gellners stance regarding the scholars ability to produce and
use knowledge?
Apply: How did Gellner react to charges that his work was functionalist?
Notes
For a bibliography detailing a list of Gellner's critics see: John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner:
An Intellectual Biography (London: Verso, 2010), 3218.
John Breuilly, introduction to Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers, 1983), xlxlii.
John Breuilly, Reflections on Nationalism, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 15
(1985): 68.
Breuilly, Reflections, 68.
Anthony Smith, Review of Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner, Millennium:

Journal of International Studies 12 (1983): 281.
John Breuilly, introduction to Nations and Nationalism: New Perspectives on the Past,
by Ernest Gellner (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2nd Edition, 2008), xxxliii.
Gellner, Reply to Critics, New Left Review I/221: 84.
Gellner, Reply to Critics, 88.
John A. Hall and Ian Charles Jarvie, eds., The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996).
Nick Stargardt, Gellners Nationalism: The Spirit of Modernism, in The Social
Philosophy of Ernest Gellner, eds. John A. Hall and Ian Jarvie (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996),
17189.
Breuilly, introduction to Nations and Nationalism, xxxvxxxvii.
Breuilly, introduction to Nations and Nationalism, xxxix.
See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial
Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) and particularly Nationalist
Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1996),
212.
Section 3: Impact
It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round.
Key Points
Gellner worked in the years after publication of Nations and Nationalism to add
additional historical evidence and expand his theory.
Although a Gellner school did not emerge from Nations and Nationalism, the text
remained a touchstone for further research and debate.
Gellners resistance to postcolonial theory, which critically analyzes the legacies of
the modes of thought on which Western colonialism and imperialism were founded,
provoked an ongoing debate about the relationship of culture to power and how
best to analyze it.
Uses And Problems
Ernest Gellner carried forward many of his ideas years after the publication of
Nations and Nationalism. In particular, he responded to critiques by publishing two
additional texts. Both Encounters with Nationalism in 1994 and the posthumously
published Nationalism (1997) added to his basic theory in substantive ways. In this
last book, Gellner put forward a new way of classifying nationalism, largely
overlapping with the previous typology.1
Gellners new concept divided the history of nationalism into stages and geographic
zones. Both the zones and the historical examples that he cites focus almost
entirely on Europe, bypassing the charge that Gellners theory is inapplicable to
other regions.2 Gellner did make a significant revision to his discussion of Islam. He
included the Muslim world as one of his zones. Instead of arguing that Islam would
facilitate nationalism, Gellner argued that the religion emerged as the dominant
and victorious trend over nationalism.3
Gellners views on Islam raised the ire of the Palestinian American postcolonial
theorist Edward Said. Said suggested that Gellners perspective was potentially
driven by ideologythat, in fact, it was indistinguishable from Western imperialism.
Said argued that Gellners work on Islam presupposed Western standards of truth
and reason, which led Gellner to a biased and prejudiced understanding of Islamic
societies.4
In a now-famous battle in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement, Gellner and
Said traded barbs. The spat began when Gellner reviewed Saids book Culture and
Imperialism, in which Said criticized Gellners views on nationalism. Writing of
Orientalism, Saids argument that in the European colonial imagination the
civilizations east of Europe were exotic and uncivilized, with certain implications
that endure in many forms of Western culture, Gellner said that Said was inventing
a bogy called Orientalism and that the problem of power and culture is too
important to be left to [literary criticism].5 Said replied that the generalities which
he adduces to my argument are his, not mine. He accused Gellner of being
ignorant about both Muslim societies and Orientalism.6 Gellners reaction sought to
characterize Saids idea of Orientalism as the attribution of superior merit and
truth in virtue of who one is rather than to the affirmations themselves on
merit.7
While the argument continued through several more published letters, the essential
difference between the two men involves their interpretation of the motives of
history. For Gellner, grand historical forces set in motion Western imperialism and
nationalism, a transformation of the world by a new technology, economy and
science.8 For Said, imperialism was also a cultural project, which explains his
emphasis on those who represent the historical experience of decolonization.9
Both Gellner and Said are interested in the relationship of power to culture. But they
fundamentally disagreed on the mechanisms that shape history.
Schools Of Thought
Despite the success of Nations and Nationalism, Gellner never established a
particular school of thought. Nevertheless a number of his students advanced the
field of nationalist studies. Gellners students rearticulated many of his ideas while
also rejecting some of his fundamental claims.
Anthony D. Smith may be Gellners best-known former student. He argued against
one of Gellners basic points, namely that nationalism is an entirely modern form of
myth-making (that is, its roots are no older than, roughly, the late fifteenth century).
Smith agreed with Gellner that nationalisms emergence is inseparable from modern
industrialization. However, he argued that nations have pre-modern ethnic
origins.10
Another important student of Gellners is John A. Hall, who recently completed a
well-received biography of Gellner.11 Hall acknowledges that Geller influenced his
own work on nationalism, but fundamental differences between them remain. In
particular, Hall criticizes Gellner for his lack of engagement with politics. In Halls
view, that does not mean Gellners theory of nationalism is useless, but rather that
it must be completed.12
Brendan OLeary was a student of Gellners who later came to believe that much of
what Gellner wrote on nationalism was either wrong or no longer applicable.
OLeary accepted Gellners novel claim that nationalism is linked to industrialization.
Yet he saw Gellners focus on industrialization as too reductive.13 OLeary instead
argued that political causes not connected to industrialization might be the primary
factors for the rise of nationalism.14
Scholars in various fields study nationalism, and Nations and Nationalism takes an
interdisciplinary approach to the subject. So scholars from many different disciplines
have some involvement with Gellners work, and many have appropriated Gellners
ideas to update them. The sociologist Michael Mann embraces Gellners overall
theory of nationalism, for example, but has expanded it by linking it to European
military history, colonization, and the exploitation of workers.15 The political
scientist Michael Lessnoff, meanwhile, has complicated Gellners account of Islam
and modernity by arguing that different intellectual trends provided the pathway
into modernity for Islam.16
Although influenced by Gellners thought, the British anthropologist Alan Macfarlane

has argued that Gellners theory of nationalism fails to provide an adequate account
of European civil society and how trust was developed within such societies.17 The
political scientist Mark Haugaard has attempted to enrich Gellners understanding of
nationalism by exploring how power operated in pre-modern and modern European
society. In this sense Haugaard attempts to reconcile Gellners work on
industrialization with social theorist Michel Foucaults understanding of power.18
The sociologist Nicos Mouzelis has worked to update Gellners concept of modernity
by arguing that the transition from agrarian society to industrial society only
became possible once the political sphere dominated the economic sphere. This
would resolve the criticism that nationalism in Gellners argument depends too
much on industrialization and not enough on the political transformations that
Europe experienced during the modern era.19 And, as we have seen, Edward Said
condemned Nations and Nationalism as inherently imperialist. All of these writers
can be seen as working with Gellners thought, however, rather than explicitly
against it.
Key Questions
Synthesize: What was the main point of contention between Edward Said and Ernest
Gellner?
Analyze: How have scholars extended Gellners theory to further their own
research?
Apply: Could Gellners students constitute a new school of thought or are they too
different?
Notes
See Edward W. Said and Gauri Viswanathan, Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews
with Edward W. Said (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2001), 297.
Ernest Gellner, The Mightier Pen?, review of Culture and Imperialism by Edward
Said, The Times Literary Supplement, February 19, 1993, 23.
Edward Said, Letter to Editor, Times Literary Supplement, March 19, 1993.
Ernest Gellner, Letter to Editor, Times Literary Supplement, April 9, 1993.
Gellner, The Mightier Pen?, 2.
Edward Said, Letter to Editor.

See Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).
Hall, Ernest Gellner.
Brendan OLeary, Ernest Gellner's Diagnoses of Nationalism: A Critical Overview,
or, What is Living and What is Dead in Ernest Gellner's Philosophy of Nationalism,
in The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism, ed. John A.
Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4090.
Brendan OLeary, On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's
Writings on Nationalism, British Journal of Political Science 27 (1997): 204.
Michael Mann, Predation and Production in European Imperialism, in Ernest
Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought, eds. Sinisa Malesevic and Mark Haugaard
Michael Lessnoff, Islam, Modernity and Science, in Ernest Gellner and
Contemporary Social Thought, 189226.
Alan Macfarlane, Ernest Gellner on Liberty and Modernity, in Ernest Gellner and
Mark Haugaard, Power, Modernity and Liberal Democracy, in Ernest Gellner and
Nicos Mouzelis, Nationalism: Restructuring Gellners Theory, in Ernest Gellner and
Section 3: Impact
[What] remains of Gellners thought after these various critiques? Arguably what is
most impressive is that, ten years after his death, his research problematicthe
questions he raised and the way he answered themis still at the cutting edge of
social theory.
Mark Haugaard and Sinisa Malesevic, Introduction: An Intellectual Rebel with a
Cause
Key Points
Nations and Nationalism continues to inform and fertilize debates about the nation
and nationalism, as seen with the publication of a new edition in 2008.
The way Gellner positioned Islam within his work still attracts significant criticism
from major thinkers.
Further work on nationalism acknowledges Gellners major ideas, often noting ways
to open up new avenues of inquiry.
Position
Although certain aspects of Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism, originally
published in 1983, may seem dated, the book remains a seminal text in the field of
nationalism studies. It is essential reading for contemporary scholars approaching
the question of nationalism. Cornell University Press published a new edition of the
text in 2008, and the book has been translated into 24 languages and sold more
than 160,000 copiesan unusually high number for an academic work.
Indeed, Nations and Nationalism continues to receive considerable scholarly
attention. Two edited volumes have recently appeared that discuss Gellners work
on nationalism at length. The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of
Nationalism, edited by John A. Hall and published in 1998,1 raises criticisms of
Gellners work, but it also attempts to revise and update it for the contemporary
context. In 2007, an anthology, Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social Thought,
brought together students of Gellner and outside scholars to reassess his work.2
Gellners fundamental insight and distinct contribution to the discipline remains the
connection he made between industrialization and nationalism. Scholars disagree
with many elements of his thought, but even today critics conclude that Gellner was
right to connect nationalism with modern industrialization. In a 2007 article with the
subtitle, Should we still read Ernest Gellner?, the Spanish historian Daniele
Conversi responded with a resounding, Yes. Conversis article expands on
Gellners theory of cultural homogenization and notes that Gellner was among the
first scholars to theorise its linkage with nationalism as a consequence of
industrialization.3
Interaction
Many more-recent works have found inspiration in Gellners Nations and
Nationalism, even as their authors have taken issue with different aspects of his
explanation.
In the 1990s, the Canadian academic Charles Taylor attempted to use many of
Gellners insights by adding a political dimension.4 He hoped to explain why
nationalism had taken on such significant meaning for large numbers of people and
how this had influenced their political actions. Taylor applied these reformulations to
Qubcois nationalism.5
The comparative literature professor Gregory Jusdanis wrote The Necessary Nation
(2001) on the place of culture in nation-making. In it, he commented that Gellner
explains the conspicuousness of culture in nation building, even as he does not
really explain why inherently a modern, industrial society must be a secular nation
state.6
The historian Tara Zahra acknowledged a debt to Gellners thesis in her examination
of national indifference among Czech and German-speakers in the region of
Bohemia in her 2008 book, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for
Children in the Bohemian Lands, 19001948. But she also noted that nations may
be modern, but nationalization did not unfold through an organic and inevitable
process of modernization.7
Even scholars working on different topics have used Gellners understanding of
nationalism. In his 2002 book examining ethnic violence, the political scientist Roger
Petersen discussed Gellners hypothetical Ruritarians and their choice of a
nationalist option. But Petersen noted that Gellner, operating at a
historical/structural level and interested in nationalism as a broad phenomenon, is
not particularly inclined to specify the force or mechanisms that so impelled the
Ruritanians.8
Some would argue that Gellners biggest impact in the past 15 years has stemmed
from his writing about the shape and form of Muslim societies. After the terrorist
attacks on the United States sponsored by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, public
interest in Islam increased dramatically. Six years after Gellners death, the
postcolonial theorist Edward Said criticized the news media for turning to the ideas
of scholars such as Gellner and Bernard Lewis in an attempt to understand Muslim
societies and beliefs.9 Said accused the news media of being prone to welcome, I
would say it is primed for, Gellners theses that [Muslims] culture and politics can
be discussed in thousands of words without a single reference to people, periods, or
events.10
The Pakistani American anthropologist Talal Asad has criticized Gellner along the
same lines, saying Gellners conception of Islamic society involves the definition of
Muslim history as the mirror image of Christian history, in which the connection
between religion and power is simply reversed.11 Asad has argued that Gellner
uses too many Western presuppositions that do not adequately represent Muslim
values and practices.
The social theorist Partha Chatterjee represents another influential strand of
present-day thinking on nations and nationalism. Chatterjees work has taken issue
with both Gellners thesis and that of his contemporary Benedict Anderson.
Chatterjee, whose largest problem with such accounts of nationalism has been that
the idea of modernity is not effectively interrogated, has commented, History, it
would seem, has decreed that we in the postcolonial world shall only be perpetual
consumers of modernity.12 According to Chatterjee, Gellners version of
nationalism produces a modular notion of history, a model that is simply exported
to transform other parts of the globe. In reducing history to this modular form, the
agency, attitudes, and activities of local populations matter little.
Key Questions
Synthesize: In what ways have present-day scholars expanded on Gellners thesis?
Analyze: Which aspects of Gellners theory appear to have survived into the
present? Which have not?
Apply: How might Gellners work inform current world politics?
Notes
John A. Hall, ed., The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of
Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Sinisa Malesevic and Mark Haugaard, eds., Ernest Gellner and Contemporary Social
Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
Daniele Conversi, Homogenisation, Nationalism and War: should we still read
Ernest Gellner?, Nations and Nationalism 13 (2007): 3878.
Charles Taylor, Nationalism and Modernity, in The State of the Nation: Ernest
Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism, ed. John A. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge
Charles Taylor, The Politics of Recognition, in Multiculturalism: Examining the
Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1994), 2574.
Gregory Jusdanis, The Necessary Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2001), 623.
Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the
Bohemian Lands, 19001948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 6.
Roger Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in
Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
57.
See, for instance, Bernard Lewis, The Roots of Muslim Rage, The Atlantic,
September 1990, 4760.
Edward Said and Gauri Viswanathan, Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with
Edward W. Said (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 2001), 297.
Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam, Occasional Papers Series

(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies,
1986), 5. See also Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of
Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1993).
Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993), 5.
Section 3: Impact
Not much real comfort for our woes is on offer What Gellner offered was
something more mature and demanding: cold intellectual honesty.
John A. Hall, Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography
Key Points
As one of the most influential books published since the end of World War II, Nations
and Nationalism may find new life as globalization and international alliances
suggest a redefinition of the nation state.
Gellners work was seminal in its discovery of nationalisms origins in modernity and
industrial society, and it will probably serve as a point of reference for further
questions and research.
Nations and Nationalism has added significantly to understanding of the relationship
of culture and power in the creation of the nation.
Potential
One cannot overstate the influence of Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism. In
2008, the Times Literary Supplement named it one of the 100 most influential books
since World War II.1 It is likely to continue to be a text that scholars must wrestle
with, acknowledge, expand upon, and criticize. Nationalism continues as a force in
todays societies. It shapes both individual identities and relations between people.
Some nation states in the contemporary world are relatively young. Countries such
as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), founded in 1971, include diverse populations
from different parts of the globe. But the UAE offers very limited paths to
citizenship. In such countries, the state supports events and programs designed to
invent, encourage, and educate people about a particular national vision of
heritage.2 Future scholars may debate whether Gellners thesis applies to such
places, even as young countries grow and change.
Gellners work may have continued relevance in judging the importance of

nationalism as a force shaping relations between people. Some have suggested that
globalizationthe increasing trend towards cultural and economic integration
across the globewill cause the decline of the nation state.3 This raises a number
of questions. If free-market economic policies appear to threaten national identities,
will there be a nationalist backlash? If globalization serves as a culturally
homogenizing force, what will the role and reaction of carefully constructed national
cultures be? Gellners thoughts on nationalism can help provide answers.
Future Directions
At the heart of Gellners work is the idea that the destabilizing forces of
industrialism cause nationalism to take a certain shape in a given society.
Industrialization changes existing social structures, and national ideas often take
root during that period of change. Gellners student John A. Hall has attempted to
reconcile Gellners work on nationalism with the expanding phenomenon of
globalization. Hall aims to examine the viability of the nation state in the face of
contemporary economic forces.4 He understands nationalism as a modern
phenomenon connected to economic forces, an idea that originated with Gellner.
Hall analyzes how new changes in these economic forces may now affect nations
and nationalism.
Meanwhile, scholars such as the Turkish-born scholar of genocide Ugur Umit Ungor
and the American historians David Ludden, Tara Zahra, Timothy Snyder, and
Francine Hirsch, among many others, continue to clarify the process of nation
making and nationalism in particular historical cases.5 Their work grapples with
various theories of nationalism, of which Ernest Gellners may be the most
prominent. Each of these authors tries to show historically how the shift from
multicultural empires to nation states happened at various scales. Many, including
Hall, continue to work directly with Gellners texts. But Gellners innovations have
informed and opened up a much larger sphere of intellectual inquiry for scholars in
different disciplines to pursue.
Summary
Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism offers a readable and innovative account
of the origin of two important phenomena: 1) the nation, and 2) the idea of the
nation, generally called nationalism. Gellners book was the first to make a clear
argument about the connection between nationalism and the modern world. He
theorized that nations formed as a result of the social and cultural changes brought
on by industrialization.
Gellners book has stood the test of time because of its sophistication and the
clarity of his model. His text does a great deal of conceptual work. He connects
significant changes in the economyspecifically, industrializationto the modern
state, education, culture, and power. Because of the works broad range and the
causal links Gellner draws between these concepts, Nations and Nationalism has
inspired many readers. It has also invited much criticism and provided countless
avenues of new research for scholars in a number of academic disciplines.
Economic forces, technology, science, and culture continue to change the world, so
Gellners theory continues to receive attention. It may even gain new relevance.
Questions about globalization, migration, and war, in particular, all test Gellners
ideas about the links between economic development, cultural homogeneity, and
the power of the state. The book will continue to provoke comments and questions
well into the twenty-first century.
Key Questions
Synthesize: Why has Ernest Gellners Nations and Nationalism been so important?
Analyze: In what ways might Gellners concept of nationalism complicate or
influence ideas about globalization?
Apply: Considering Gellners thesis about social and economic change bringing
about nationalism, is nationalism an important force in the twenty-first century?
Why or why not?
Notes
Times Literary Supplement, "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the War,"
October 1995.
For recent work on nationalism and citizenship in the United Arab Emirates, see
Ahmed Kanna, Dubai: The City as Corporation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2011) and Neha Vora, Impossible Citizens: Dubais Indian Diaspora (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2013).
See for instance Martin Wolf, Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?, Foreign
Affairs 80 (2001): 17890.
John A. Hall, Globalization and Nationalism, Thesis Eleven 63 (2000): 67.
David Ludden, Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of
Democracy in India (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); Ugur
Umit Ungor, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia,
19131950 (London: Oxford University Press, 2012); Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls:
National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 19001948
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of
Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 15691999 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003); and Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic
Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2014).
Glossary
Glossary of Terms
Agrarian society: a society that depends on an economy centered on the cultivation
and trade of agricultural products.
Al-Qaeda: a militant group that employs an extreme interpretation of Islam to justify
its actions. Osama bin Laden and several other militants founded the group
sometime in the late 1980s.
Alps: a mountain chain in Europe extending from France in the west to Austria in the
east.
Anthropology: the scientific study of human beings and culture.
Arab nationalism: the belief that Arabic-speaking peoples share a common heritage
and should be part of a single nation state.
Basque: an ethnic group occupying a region known as the Basque Country, which is
located in an area of modern-day Spain and France stretching from the western
Pyrenees Mountains to the coast of the Bay of Biscay.
Bohemia: a region in what is today the western half of the Czech Republic. It was
once a province of Austria-Hungary and, after that, a part of Czechoslovakia.
British School of Anthropology: a particular school of thought in social anthropology
associated with Bronislaw Malinowski. It sought to break free from historical
interpretation to analysis of contemporary societies through long-term ethnographic
fieldwork.
Bureaucratization: the creation of procedures, protocols, and institutions
(bureaucracy) necessary to the functioning of the modern state.
Capitalism: an economic system in which property and capital goods are privately
owned and economic production aims to make a profit.
Catalan: an ethnic group and language of northeastern Spain. It is the national and
official language of the tiny state of Andorra in the Pyrenees Mountains.
Center for the Study of Nationalism: a research center established in 1993 at the
Central European University in Prague. Ernest Gellner was the centers first director.
Christian: an adherent of the religion of Christianity.
Christianity: a religion of over 2 billion adherents founded in the first century b.c.e.
Its believers consider Jesus of Nazareth to be the son of God and the Messiah
prophesied in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Class struggle: competing socioeconomic classes entering into conflict. Karl Marx
believed that class struggle was the means to make radical changes in society.
Cold War: a period of high political tension, from roughly 1947 to 1991, between a
group of countries known as the Western bloc that included the United States and
its European allies, and the Soviet bloc, a group of nations that included the Soviet
Union and its European allies.
Colonialism: the policy of one country obtaining control over the territory of another
by means of settling its own people to populate and govern the new territory.
Communism: a political theory and economic ideology derived from the writings of
Karl Marx that advocates the collective ownership of property and social revolution
ending in a classless society.
Cultural differentiation: distinctions made between different human groups on the
basis of real or perceived cultural characteristics.
Cultural homogenization: the reduction of cultural diversity, usually accomplished
through the invention, popularization, or diffusion of cultural concepts and symbols.
Czechoslovakia: a state in eastern Central Europe formed in 1918 as a result of the
peace treaty ending World War I. It was peacefully dissolved in 1993 into two
separate states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Decolonization: the overturning of colonial control in a state that has been
dependent on an outside power. Decolonization may be understood, in a political
sense, as attaining independence and, in a cultural sense, as the removal of colonial
social and cultural effects.
Diaspora: the forced dissemination of a people or culture from its place of origin or
ancestral homeland.
Division of labor: on a general level, the apportionment of tasks in a society to
different individuals. Karl Marx made a distinction between the economic division of
labor (a result of technical needs) and the social division of labor (achieved through
social hierarchies).
Ethnographic fieldwork: a method of social-science research used to describe the
modes of everyday life of a particular group. Fieldwork refers to long-term
observation of subjects in a particular setting or place.
Functionalism: the method of studying, or the theory of, the functional interactions
and adaptations of particular phenomena within a given framework or structure.
Globalization: the process whereby the world becomes more interconnected. Such
interconnectedness takes many formsincluding economic, political, and cultural
onesand is often seen as negatively affecting national identity.
History: the branch of human knowledge involved with studying and analyzing past
events. Historians produce narratives of these events, usually attempting to discern
the causes of change over time and thus producing histories.
Hunter-gatherer society: a society made up of people who are reliant on hunting,
fishing, and the harvesting of wild foodstuffs.
Ideology: a system of beliefs founded on a desire that a particular world view should
be instituted.
Imperialism: a system of rule based on concepts of dominion and superiority
whereby one society dominates the territoryas well as the political, social, and
economic lifeof another society.
Industrial society: see Industrialism and Industrialization.
Industrialism: a series of economic and social changes brought about by a shift in
energy use by human populations. New energy sources, such as water and steam
power, made it possible to develop new machines and manufacturing processes. It
began in England in the eighteenth century and later spread to Western Europe and
the United States.
Industrialization: the process of transformation from an economy based on
agriculture to the manufacture of goods, resulting in a very different socioeconomic
order.
Islam: one of the great monotheisticthe belief in one god who is transcendent
over creationreligions that emerged from the Middle East. Founded in the early
seventh century in what is today western Saudi Arabia, Islam has spread around the
globe to now include over 1.5 billion followers, known as Muslims.
Islamic revivalism: a movement to return to the fundamental tenets of the religion
of Islam. Modern revivalists may trace their roots to Egyptian and South Asian
activists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Jew: an adherent of the religion of Judaism.
Judaism: a monotheisticthe belief in one god who is transcendent over creation
religion that began 3,500 years ago in what is now known as the Middle East. The
prophet Moses founded the religion. Its most important scriptural text is the Torah,
the five books of Moses.
Liberal democracy: a system of government in which all eligible members of the
population participate, usually through elected representatives.
Liberalism: a political philosophy most associated with seventeenth-century British
philosopher John Locke. Locke argued that human beings have a natural right to life,
liberty, and property, which government must not transgress.
Marxism: a school of social and economic thought derived from the ideas of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels that influenced the development of the socialist and
communist movements. Its key ideas are based around class struggle, the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, and the replacement of a capitalist
system with socialism.
Modern society: see Modernity.
Modern world: see Modernity.
Modernity: the modern period, beginning around the end of the fifteenth century,
when advances in science drove many changes in technology, warfare, politics, and
exploration. In the study of history, the modern period generally coincides with the
increasing predominance of Europe on the world stage as a result of
industrialization and globalization.
Modernization: a concept that seeks to identify the steps or parameters necessary
for less-developed societies to attain the same level of social and economic
progress as developed societies.
Muslim: an adherent of the religion of Islam.
Nationalism: a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit
should be congruent, according to Gellner. Nationalism has many forms and
meanings; it is used, for example, to refer to extreme patriotism or to a nations
desire for self-determination.
Natural History: a study of organisms, including plants and animals, in their
environment. Before the twentieth century, natural history often also included
observations and studies of non-European peoples.
Nazism: the policies and practices under the dictatorship of the Austrian-born
German politician Adolf Hitler (18891945) as leader of the Nazi Party and, later,
Fhrer (193445). It was a totalitarian regime characterized by genocidal antiSemitism, state control of the economy, and national expansion.
Ordinary language philosophy: a concept that limited philosophys aim to examining
how language works in a given context or community. It held that philosophy should
not be concerned with determining what is universally true for all peoples in all
societies, but should instead focus on how language operates as a system of
meaning in a given community.
Orientalism: a term used for the imitation or depiction of cultures predominant in
areas east of Europe. Edward Saids formulation of the term refers to the patronizing
frame of many Western depictions, which he argued stripped the subject culture of
dynamism and diversity.
Philosophy: the academic field focused on fundamental problems of mind, language,

existence, and reason. The word comes from the ancient Greek for love of
wisdom.
Political realism: a theory that national self-interest drives foreign policy. When
diplomacy fails, national self-interest could result in conflict between two nations.
Political science: the social-science academic discipline most concerned with the
study of political activities, government, and political behavior. Political scientists
may use quantitative or qualitative methods in their attempts to understand the
underlying factors that affect how politics works.
Political theory: the study of the ideas and concepts at work in the understanding
and evaluation of politics.
Positivism: the idea that any rational assertion can be verified, either by scientific
methods or a logical proof.
Postcolonial theory: the study of Western colonialism and imperialism's cultural and
political legacy. It is not defined as part of a particular academic field but it typically
involves such disciplines as literature and anthropology.
Pre-modern: the period in history prior to the modern period, meaning the era
preceding the late fifteenth century when changes in technology and science led to
increasing globalization and industrialization.
Primordial: a term used to denote something as existing from the very beginning, as
essential or original.
Print-capitalism: the consolidation and standardization of a language as a
consequence of the printing press and the capitalist market that engendered it.
Qualitative: methods of research based on the analysis of the subjects particular
qualities.
Quantative: methods of research based on the measurement of data such as
statistics.
Self-determination: a political principle that a people who consider themselves a
nation should have the right to form a state and govern themselves.
Slav: an ethno-linguistic group occupying much of the eastern half of Europe.
Social anthropology: a subfield of the academic discipline of anthropology that
combines features of both sociology and anthropology. Like sociology, it focuses on
social phenomena such as customs, political organization, family and gender
relations, and religion. But it emphasizes qualitative methods, or the study of
somethings qualities, and smaller-scale studies. Social anthropologists emphasize
fieldwork as they pursue questions related to human interaction, including social

customs, patterns of exchange, family structures, political organization, and
religion. The subfield generally views culture as embedded in social and historical
contexts.
Social entropy: regarding social systems, this is the idea that social structures or
networks have a tendency to break down over time. This can lead to the
disappearance of social distinctions.
Socialism: an economic and social system in which the free market is regulated for
the sake of social justice and economic equality.
Sociology: the academic discipline focused on studying collective social behaviors
usually using not only quantitative methods, but also qualitative research
techniques. Sociologists focus on a broad range of subjects including culture,
religion, social class, institutions, gender, law, and sexuality.
Soviet bloc: the communist states of Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, which
shared a common ideology during the Cold War, which lasted from the end of World
War II to the collapse of the Soviet communist system (194791).
Soviet Union, or USSR: a kind of super state that existed from 1922 to 1991 and
centered primarily on Russia and its neighbors in Eastern Europe and the northern
half of Asia. It was the communist pole of the Cold War, with the United States as its
main rival.
Teleology: literally means the purpose of something, but in many contexts refers to
determining the reason something exists or acts by virtue of what it appears to do
or exist for.
Typology: a system for classifying things according to type, or study of how things
have similar traits or characteristics.
Ulster Nationalism: the concept that the northeastern part of the island of Ireland,
currently a part of the United Kingdom, should become its own separate country
and not join the Republic of Ireland, which occupies the rest of the island.
Urbanization: the movement of population from rural areas to urban centers and the
attendant social, political, and economic effects.
World War I: a global conflict that began in 1914, pitting the Allies, a group of
countries including the United Kingdom, France, and Russia (and eventually the
United States) against the Central Powers, which included Germany, AustriaHungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The war ended in 1918 with the defeat of the
Central Powers.
World War II: a European conflict between Germany and its neighbors that began in
1939 and eventually resulted in the eruption of tensions around the world. The
United States entered the conflict in 1941. The war ended with the defeat of
Germany and her allies and the dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in Japan. Close to 60 million peopleabout two-thirds of them civilians
died before the war was brought to an end.
Benedict Anderson (b. 1936) is a contemporary British scholar best known for his
1983 book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, in which he systematically describes the emergence of nationalism in
the world during the past three centuries.
Raymond Aron (190583) was a French sociologist and Cold War champion of
liberalism perhaps best known for his 2001 book, The Opium of the Intellectuals,
which argued that Marxism is not a scientific philosophy but a secularized religion.
Talal Asad (b. 1932) is an anthropologist who teaches at the City University of New
York. He is best known for his work on the anthropology of Western secularism and
the concept of religion.
Otto Bauer (18811938) was one of the leading left-wing thinkers in Vienna, Austria.
He held a PhD in law and served as the foreign minister of Austria from 191819 at
the end of World War I.
Asef Bayat is a sociologist who teaches at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He specializes in the study of social movements, urban life, and Islam
in the Middle East.
John Breuilly (b. 1946) is professor of nationalism at the London School of
Economics and has written extensively on the subject of nationalism and ethnicity.
Partha Chatterjee (b. 1947) is a professor of anthropology and South Asian studies
at Columbia University. His work focuses on empire and nationalism in South Asia.
Auguste Comte (17981857) was a French philosopher who helped found the
discipline of sociology and the concept of positivism.
Daniele Conversi is a research professor at the University of the Basque Country in
Bilbao, Spain. He focuses on the history of nationalism and cultural homogenization.
Karl Deutsch (191292) was born to a German-speaking family in Prague and went
on to obtain two doctoratesone in political science and the other in sociology. He
worked extensively on nationalism, international relations, and cybernetics.
Emile Durkheim (18581917) is generally considered the founder of the French

sociological tradition. He is best known for his works on religion, suicide, and the
division of labor.
Franz Ferdinand (18631914) was an archduke of Austria and heir to the throne of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His assassination prompted Austria-Hungary to
declare war against Serbia, which led to the outbreak of World War I.
Michel Foucault (192684) was a French philosopher and social theorist. He is best
known for his works on the relationship between power, institutions, and knowledge.
Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (18691948) was the leader of the Indian
independence movement against the rule of the British Empire. Gandhi employed
nonviolent techniques of civil disobedience to resist British rule.
Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) was the last general secretary of the Soviet Union,
appointed in 1985. His economic and political reforms helped to end the Cold War,
but they also resulted in the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
John A. Hall (b. 1949) is a professor of sociology at McGill University in Montreal,
Canada. He obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and has written
extensively on nationalism and the life and ideas of Ernest Gellner.
Mark Haugaard (b. 1961) is a professor of political science at the National University
of Ireland Galway. His research interests focus on political and sociological theory.
Vclav Havel (19362011) was a writer and political dissident of Czech origin. After
the overthrow of Czechoslovakias communist government, Havel became the
countrys president. When Czechoslovakia split into two countriesthe Czech
Republic and SlovakiaHavel became the first president of the new Czech Republic,
a post he held for 10 years from 1993 to 2003.
Carlton J. H. Hayes (18821964) was an American historian of nationalism and a
diplomat. He served as the president of the American Historical Association and was
appointed the American Ambassador to Spain during World War II.
Johann Gottfried Herder (17441803) was a German philosopher perhaps best
known for his writings on the origins of human language and German nationalism.
Francine Hirsch (b. 1967) is professor of history at the University of WisconsinMadison. She specializes in Russian and Soviet history.
Adolf Hitler (18891945) was the leader of the Nazi party in Germany. Elected
chancellor of Germany in 1933, he became a dictator and styled himself the Fhrer
from 1934 until his suicide in 1945. Under Hitlers leadership, the German military
invaded several neighboring countries, starting World War II. His policies also
resulted in the systematic genocide of nearly 6 million Jews, homosexuals, ethnic

minorities, and other citizens considered undesirable.
Eric Hobsbawm (19172012) was a British Marxist historian considered by many to
be the greatest British historian of the twentieth century. He is perhaps best known
for his five-volume work on the history of modern Europe.
Gregory Jusdanis (b. 1955) is professor of classics at Ohio State University. His
research focuses on aesthetics, nationalism, and cultural studies.
Elie Kedourie (192692) was a British historian of the Middle East. Of Iraqi Jewish
background, Kedourie wrote extensively on empire, Middle East politics, and
nationalism.
Anatoly Khazanov (b. 1937) is the Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on nomadic pastoralists,
nationalism and ethnicity, and collective memory.
Hans Kohn (18911971) was an American philosopher and historian. He is known for
his work on nationalism in Eastern Europe.
Jean-Marie Le Pen (b. 1928) is a French conservative and nationalist politician. In
1972 he helped to found the French party, Front National (also known as the
National Front). The partys platform calls for legislation to curtail immigration and
Frances return to its old currency, the franc, instead of the euro.
Michael Lessnoff (b. 1940) is a research fellow in political science at the University
of Glasgow. His research focuses on the emergence of modernity.
Bernard Lewis (b. 1916) is a British American historian of Islam, best known for his
2002 book, What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response,
which provides a number of speculative answers as to why the Muslim world fell
behind advances made by European societies during the modern period.
David Ludden (b. 1948) is professor of history at New York University. He has written
extensively on agricultural communities on the Indian subcontinent.
Alan Macfarlane (b. 1941) is a British anthropologist who has written many historical
works on England, Nepal, Japan, and China.
Bronisaw Malinowski (18841942) was a Polish-born British anthropologist who
argued that anthropologists should participate in their studies. This is known as the
technique of the participant observer.
Michael Mann (b. 1942) is a British sociologist teaching at the University of
California at Los Angeles. His work focuses on state power and bureaucratization in
the twentieth century.
Karl Marx (181883) was a German economist and political theorist who became the
founder of modern communism. He co-wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848) with
the industrialist Friedrich Engels and authored Capital (1867).
R. I. Moore (b. 1941) is a professor and specialist in medieval history. He has written
several works on the concept of heresy.
Nicos Mouzelis (b. 1939) is professor of sociology at the London School of
Economics. His research focuses on the sociology of development.
Brendan OLeary (b. 1958) is a political scientist teaching at the University of
Pennsylvania. His research focuses on nationalism, democracy, and constitutional
design.
Roger Petersen is a political scientist who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. His research centers on comparative politics with an emphasis on
conflict and violence.
John Plamenatz (191275) was a political philosopher. He is best known for his work
on democracy and spent most of his career at the University of Oxford.
Karl Renner (18701950) was an Austrian politician and first chancellor of the
Austrian Republic after World War I. His academic work focused on law and property.
He worked with Otto Bauer on ideas of legal protection of minority groups.
Edward Said (19352003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and advocate
for Palestinian rights, best known for his book Orientalism (1978), which argues that
Orientalist scholarship is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produce it.
Anthony D. Smith (b. 1933) is a British ethnographer and sociologist, currently a
professor emeritus at the London School of Economics. Smiths work on nationalism
argued that nations have pre-modern origins.
Timothy Snyder (b. 1969) is a professor of history at Yale University. His work
focuses on the history of Eastern and Central Europe and the history of the
Holocaust.
Nicholas Stargardt (b. 1962) is an Australia-born historian and fellow at Oxford
Universitys Magdalen College. His research focuses on modern European history.
Charles Taylor (b. 1931) is a Canadian philosopher best known for his work on
Hegel, modern understandings of selfhood, and the history of secularization in
Europe and North America.
Ugur Umit Ungor (b. 1980) is a historian and sociologist at Utrecht University. His
research focuses on mass violence and genocide.
Max Weber (18641920) was a German sociologist famous for his work on economy
and society, notably his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism.
Woodrow Wilson (18561924) was the 28th president of the United States. Wilson
served from 1913 to 1921 and his administration supervised Americas entry into
World War I. He is perhaps best known for his Fourteen Points speech to the
American Congress on January 8, 1918, which called for a general association of
nations and led to the establishment of the League of Nations (an international
organization founded in January 1920 after the end of World War I to help settle
international disputes and which was dissolved in 1946).
Tara Zahra is professor of history at the University of Chicago. Her research centers
on family, nation, and ethnicity in Europe during the twentieth century.
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Highlights and Notes

Module 10: The Evolving ...

leaders of all stripesfrom current US president Barack Obama to former president

Putnam, Bowling Alone, 19.

Paul Lichterman, Social Capital or Group Style? Rescuing Tocquevilles Insights on

Capital.1 In the article, Putnam pointed to the declining membership of friendly

Analyze: How do Putnam and Coleman present a similar conception of social

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone

for the greatly diminished level of civic engagement in America. Buried in a

The picture in the UK is not as dramatic as that painted by US academic Robert

Assessing The Argument

social networks, membership of community organisations and voluntary groups

Module 8:Place In The Author's Work

Putnam concludedsomewhat controversiallythat increased immigration and

government to improve its understanding of the state of Americas social capital. It

political-scientist-renews-his-alarm.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm, accessed June 7,

Uses And Problems

Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone

Analysts of the influence of the Internetelectronic communications and online

Synthesize: What possible factor could contribute to the diminishment of Bowling

Bridging social capital, specifically, is outward-looking and encompasses people

Methodist: Christian Protestant Church founded in Great Britain in the eighteenth

L. J. Hanifan (18791932) was American state supervisor of schools in rural West

Mildred Warner is a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at

Highlights and Notes

Highlights and Notes

Module 6: Secondary Ideas

Who is Robert Keohane?

Bounded rationalitythe theory that rational behavior is limited by the amount of

International cooperation is founded on the development of international regimes

Waltzs Theory of International Politics in 1979, neorealism emerged as the

Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Two Approaches, International

Why Read This Text?

Synthesize: What is the importance of After Hegemony for neoliberalism in

After Hegemony was published in a context of declining American power and

The Work In Its Context

Although Keohane built on ideas that already played a part in discussions

Today neoliberalism and realism are understood to be different explanations of

absence of a hegemon and regardless of whether states have perfectly matching

highly valued goods.1 In Keohanes view, hegemonic structures provide leadership

Keohanes themes emerge out of a discussion of the flaws of neorealism, in which

cooperation concerning trade and money, which he contrasts with non-cooperation

See Google Scholar, JSTOR and other academic search databases.

Maliniak et al., TRIP Around the World, 49.

prevent nations from cooperating, as long as international regimes still function.5

Curriculum Vitae, Princeton University, accessed January 4, 2015,

Conflict and Consensus

Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions: Two Approaches, International

Meanwhile, a new theoretical approach, constructivisma theory founded on the

Contemporary realist thinkers such as John Mearsheimer, the founder of offensive

See Charles Lipson, Why Are Some International Agreements Informal?

Scholars of international relations who subscribe to neoliberal thought are likely to

Maliniak et al., TRIP Around the World, 49.

Democracy: a system of government in which the ruler or rulers of a state are

International relations: an academic discipline focusing on the study of relations

War on Terror: a military campaign initiated by the administration of President

international relations think tanksthe Royal Institute of International Affairs, now

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Highlights and Notes

Module 2: Academic Context