Cox 2008

The Point is Not Just to Explain the World but to Change It
The Point is Not Just to Explain the World but to

Change It
Robert W. Cox
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations
Edited by Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal
Print Publication Date: Aug 2008

Subject: Political Science, International Relations, Political Methodology
Online Publication Date: Sep 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199219322.003.0004
Abstract and Keywords
This article argues that the study of international relations should focus first on the key
issues affecting the biological survival of the human race; and then on the pursuit of jus
tice in the condition of peoples, which is essential to maintaining their support for a sur
vivable world order. A short list of priorities would include: survival of the biosphere;
avoidance of nuclear war; moderating the rich/poor gap; assuring protection for the most
vulnerable people; and effective arrangements for negotiating conflict resolution. The
point for us now is to try to understand the world as people are making it so as to gain
some control over where we are going; and to forgo speculation about an immanent logic
of history that will turn out to be an illusion.
Keywords: international relations, survival justice, world order, history, historical structures
OVER three decades ago I participated in a panel at the annual conference of the Ameri
can Political Science Association, the title of which was the question: “will the future be
like the past?” It concerned the scholarly attempt to define a basic structure of world pol
itics that would be valid everywhere and for all time as a framework for the analysis of
world politics. Those who would answer “yes” to the question envisaged a way of explain
ing international relations in a world conceived as a bundle of data open to the observa
tion of the analyst who stands apart from the action—an approach since called neoreal
ism. This virtual world is invariably divided into a number of hard entities (“states”) of dif
ferent levels of material capabilities whose relationships (peace or war or something in‐
between) are governed by the “balance of power,” which has its own inherent rules of
practice. This basic approach is devised to explain what happens among the state entities
as levels of military and economic capability among them change. Change in material ca
pabilities takes place within the system, but the nature or basic structure of the system
never changes.
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Neorealism proved popular, particularly among American analysts, so long as it seemed

to fit with the world into which it came. It proved to be adaptable to (p. 85) the bipolarity
of the cold war. The question whether the structure of the system so conceived was in
deed applicable to other times and places seemed at the time to be rather academic. In
any case, history was not highly regarded by “neorealists.” At best, history was a quarry
for mining data to test the system. The point of “neorealism” was to explain shifting pow
er relations in a world that did not change in its basic character.
1 Change as a Latent Force in History

“Neorealism” confronted another approach that did envisage basic change in the struc
ture of world power. In its contemporary form this was Marxism, but Marxism had
evolved out of a deeply rooted disposition of the human mind to posit a happy ending to
the human story. It probably began with monotheism. If the world and all that has been
and will be in it has been created by an all‐powerful God, it was natural to assume that
there was some ultimate purpose in it and that that purpose was ultimately good. The
idea of an inherent purpose—a subjective notion—in the unfolding of human history is, of
course, foreign to positive science and hence to neorealism. Historical actors, individual
or collective (that is, states), can have purposes, but for the positivist observer, there can
be no cosmic purpose inherent in the process of interaction itself.
Religious consciousness injects such a purpose. Its primitive form is what theologians call
eschatology—the doctrine of final things, the individual's finality in heaven or hell, and
history's end in the kingdom of God. The Jewish anticipation of the coming of the Messiah
who would open the way toward the earthly paradise was taken over, adapted, and em
bellished by Christianity.
Civilizations untouched by monotheism saw history more naturally as a cyclical process

by analogy to the spring, summer, autumn, and winter of the seasons and the biological
cycle of birth, development, maturity, decline, and death. St Augustine, who had to de
bate with the assumptions of classical civilization in order to defend Christianity against
the charge of undermining the imperial state, denounced Plato's teaching of the cyclical
process. The moment in history when God had descended into the world in the Incarna
tion of Jesus Christ, Augustine argued, changed all that. Thenceforward history had a
goal: the City of God. A twelfth‐century monk from Calabria, Joachim of Floris, elaborated
St Augustine's vision into a three‐part historical process: the Age of the Father, in which
God's law for humankind was laid down in the Old Testament; the Age of the Son, in
which the revelation of Jesus Christ enabled men (note the patriarchal gender implica
tion) to overcome the obstacle of sin through obedience to and guidance from (p. 86) the
institutions of Church and state; and, ultimately, the Age of the Holy Spirit— heralded by
some Franciscans reacting against the worldliness of the Church— in which men would
live in mystical harmony without the need for coercive or directing institutions.
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When Europe entered the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the grip of re
ligion loosened, but the three‐stage vision of history remained entrenched in the Euro
pean consciousness, taking on secularized forms. Georg Hegel spoke of history as a
three‐stage rational progress of freedom. Karl Marx's subsequent vision of history, invert
ing Hegel's idealism into materialism, appears as a mirror image of Joachim of Floris's vi
sion. Class struggle, rather than religious revelation or Spirit and Reason, was his version
of the dynamic of history. Social conflict, he explained, has transformed feudalism into
capitalism and would proceed to transform capitalism into history's final form, the com
munist society, in which conflict is resolved into harmony as the coercive institution of the
state “withers away.”
Religious and secular visions of history are all about change, but change that is only indi
rectly the consequence of human endeavor. Change in these linear “progressive” theories
comes from a latent nonhuman force: Providence for St Augustine and his followers; the
“cunning of reason” for Hegel (to which we may associate Adam Smith's “hidden hand”);
and the materialist logic of history in the Marxian version. The explanation of change lies
within the process itself; human activity is guided by the dialectic of the process toward
an ultimate happy ending.
It is well to recall that the modernist notion that history is governed by natural laws is the
creation of three centuries of European history during which European ideas spread
around the world. An older perspective sees the world as a realm of continuous and
chaotic change with no ultimate final state—no “end of history.” Contrary to modernism,
which posits a separation between the subject as observer and the object as observed,
the ancient perspective sees both observer and observed as reciprocally interacting in an
unpredictable process of change. Purpose and fact cannot be separated.
2 Change through Chaos and Self‐organization

In the Greece of the sixth century BCE, the pre‐Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Eph
esus contemplated such a world of perpetual change, of eternal becoming. All change, he
taught, comes from the dynamic and cyclical interplay of opposites. In China, about the
same time, Lao Tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism, taught that (p. 87) transformation
and change are the essential features of nature; and that change, resulting from the inter
play of polar opposites, yin and yang, which are irrevocably bound together, is the ulti
mate reality—the Tao or the path.
Heraclitus and Lao Tzu, who, of course, knew nothing of each other's teaching, went fur
ther to say that the human intellect can never comprehend this ultimate reality, that con
cepts formed by the human mind to express the inner meaning of the world are illusions.
Closer to our time, the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who had thought deeply about
evolution, spoke about homo faber, the human being defined in its capacity to make and
do things, rather than homo sapiens, who purports to understand the meaning of the uni
verse (Bergson 1944,153–4).
Page 3 of 10

When we think now of “change” in world politics and society we think of what has to be
done to ensure the survival of the human race and to moderate conflict among peoples.
The primary task of the study of international relations along with the other departments
of knowledge about human affairs is to help people to organize so as to achieve this.
To serve this purpose, social science should set aside the approaches of the past that
sought to define persisting structures and laws and should adopt the less deterministic
approach of the new physics and biology by being sensitive to emerging and declining
historical structures and movements of self‐organization in social and political relations.
It should set aside illusions about “the end of history” and concentrate upon purposive
change in a chaotic world.
3 Purposive Change
The study of international relations should focus first on the key issues affecting the bio
logical survival of the human race; and then on the pursuit of justice in the condition of
peoples, which is essential to maintaining their support for a survivable world order.
A short list of the priorities would include:
• survival of the biosphere;

• avoidance of nuclear war;
• moderating the rich/poor gap;
• assuring protection for the most vulnerable people; and
• effective arrangements for negotiating conflict resolution.
The point for us now is to try to understand the world as people are making it so as to
gain some control over where we are going; and to forgo speculation about an immanent
logic of history that will turn out to be an illusion.
(p. 88)
The modernist faith in universal laws began to fade in physics and biology during the past
century, undermining the model that had been emulated in the social sciences. The basic
theoretical challenges came in physics from relativity theory and quantum theory. These
concerned the infinitely large (astrophysics) and the infinitely small (particle physics) and
they showed that the apparent certainties of classical mechanics did not apply in these
areas (Prigogine 1996).
Further challenges came in physics from the second principle of thermodynamics, or ten
dency toward entropy, in which loss of energy leads toward disorganization; and in biolo
gy when it showed how a movement toward disorganization in the neurons of the brain
could be countered by autonomous movements of “self‐ organization.” The French biolo
Page 4 of 10

gist Jacques Monod (1970) popularized the discovery of indeterminism, disorder, and
chance in his book, Le Hasard et la nécessité.
These discoveries opened a new approach in the physical and biological sciences called
“complexity” (Waldrop 1993). It departs from a mechanical conception of causality by en
visaging vast interacting networks—an approach facilitated by advances in cybernetics.
The French philosopher Edgar Morin (1973) has speculated about what he calls hyper‐
complexity: a system that reduces constraints while increasing its capacity for self‐organi
zation, in other words its capacity for autonomous change.
These developments in scientific thinking have implications for thinking about change in
human affairs. Implications for the social sciences are:
• a shift from being to becoming, from emphasis on innate structures to emphasis on

processes, and from causality (in a billiard‐ball sense) to complexity (in the sense of in
teractive networks);
• to renounce searching for basic causes; change takes place through interactions in a
complex network in which no single force is determining;
• that processes are irreversible, that is, tendencies toward entropy and disorganiza
tion may be countered by self‐organization, which means that the future will not pre
dictably reproduce the past;
• that the search for absolute certainty of scientific propositions is abandoned in favor
of determining their “domain of validity,” which converts such propositions into ex
ploratory hypotheses rather than universal laws;
• that observer and observed are equally involved in change, which means discarding
the subject/object dichotomy of so‐called objective science in favor of an “epistemic”
science that pursues findings within a particular and transitory paradigm.
The terms chaos, complexity, and uncertainty are characteristic of the new scientific approach,
whereas order, simplicity, and certainty characterized modernist science. The natural sciences
are moving away from the notion that their purpose is to facilitate humans' domination and con
trol over nature, toward understanding humanity as a part of nature through an emerging theo
ry of living, self‐organizing (p. 89) systems. The impact of these changes on social science—
which has heretofore been constructed on the model of Enlightenment physics—is bound to be
resisted and delayed by professional conservatism; but new paradigms are emerging here too in
more holistic, more relativistic, and more historically oriented approaches.
This means looking for the recurrent “self‐organizing” of the human species so as to dis
cern the patterns of reorganization that have been created collectively in response to the
sequence of challenges to human society. The structures that emerge in this process are
human creations, neither something innate within a supposed invariant “human nature”
and “natural order,” nor something inherent within a cosmic historical process. What we
have here are historical structures, the forms of collective organization, and the mentali
ties that fit them, both reacting from and adapted to the material conditions of existence
of human groups.1
Page 5 of 10

The distinction between data and facts is important here. It is clearer in the Latin lan
guages than in English. The word “data” derives from the verb “to give” (dare, datum);
and the word “fact” derives from the verb “to make” (facere, factum): a given is just
there; a fact presupposes a maker and the maker's purpose. Positivist science deals with
givens. History deals with facts; or, as R. G. Collingwood (1946) said, with the inside as
well as the outside of an event, not just that which can be observed but also the inten
tions and purposes of the action that went into making the fact. With facts and history the
ethical and the observable are one.
4 Change in Historical Structures

Action begins with an assessment of prevailing conditions. If the purpose of action is to
remedy some anomaly or dysfunction, then the prevailing conditions are taken as given;
but if the goal is change in some fundamental way—that is, in the structure of society,
whether local or global—then action must also aim at changing the prevailing conditions.
These conditions can no longer be taken as givens. They have to be viewed critically as
products of history. Only thus can we understand how they came to be and how we may
work to change them. Fundamental change means change in the historical structures
that create the framework for everyday activities.
Hegel (1967, 13) wrote: “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of
dusk.” The world is not shaped by theory. Theory comes from reflection on what happens
in the world; and there has been much to reflect upon recently as a spur to thinking about
emerging and persisting historical structures: (p. 90)
• the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it of the bipolar world, and the emergence
of what French diplomacy calls the hyper‐power of the USA;
• growing concern about ecological instability and its impact on the biosphere;
• the persistent tendency of capitalism to widen the gap between the rich and the
poor;
• a resurgent affirmation of identities of an ethnic, national, religious, or cultural kind;
• a new salience of irregular or extralegal activities like “terrorism” and organized
crime;
• increasing skepticism of people toward all forms of established authority.
I would suggest that in the context of these changes at the beginning of the twenty‐ first century
there are three configurations of power, three interacting historical structures that circumscribe
the problems of international politics and world order.
Page 6 of 10

5 Existing Historical Structures

The first is what has been called the “American empire,” or now often simply “Empire.”
“Empire” penetrates across borders of formally sovereign states to control their actions
from within through compliant elites in both public and private spheres. It penetrates
first into the principal allies of the United States but also into many other countries
where US interests wield influence. Transnational corporations influence domestic policy
in countries where they operate; and economic ties influence local business elites. Mili
tary cooperation among allies facilitates integration of military forces under leadership of
the core of “Empire.” Cooperation among intelligence services gives primacy to the secu
rity concerns of the imperial leadership. The media generalize an ideology that propa
gates imperial values and justify the expansion of “Empire” as beneficial to the world.
Economic systems of the component territories of “Empire” are restructured into one vast
market for capital, goods, and services. In the imagined future of “Empire,” the “hard
power” of military dominance and economic coercion is both maintained and transcended
by the “soft power” of attraction and emulation.2 “Empire” constitutes a movement tend
ing to absorb the whole world into one civilization. Its governing principle is unity and ho
mogeneity.
The second configuration of power is the Westphalian inter‐state system that was inaugu
rated in Europe in the seventeenth century and spread throughout the world during the
era of European dominance. The sovereign state, though weakened by (p. 91) “Empire,”
remains a hardy structure. Sovereignty has a dual aspect. One aspect is the autonomy of
each sovereign state in the society of nations. The other is the authority of each state
within its own territory and population. Both aspects are protected by respect for the
principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states. Both external and inter
nal sovereignty remain a defense against absorption into “Empire.”
The two fronts on which the residue of the Westphalian world structure confronts the im
pact of “Empire” are, first, the defense of the inter‐state system and its creations, interna
tional law and the United Nations; and, second, the strengthening of the bonds linking
citizens to political authorities. These protect national autonomy in economic and social
organization, and thereby sustain a plural world of coexisting cultures and civilizations.
Multilateralism within the inter‐state system is the realpolitik of middle powers. The gov
erning principles of the Westphalian world are pluralist diversity and a continuing search
for consensus.
The third configuration is what is often called “civil society.” This exists within states and
within “Empire” and it also takes a transnational form. This configuration of forces has
defended the environment and women's rights. It has mobilized for peace and to combat
poverty. It has been especially active in recent decades initially as a movement for an al
ternative to the economic globalization of transnational corporate power and then as a di
rect confrontation of “Empire” in the popular mobilization against the Anglo‐American in
vasion of Iraq.
Page 7 of 10

It has also, in the form of so‐called people power, provoked “regime change” in some
countries, most recently in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. In these cases, external ideolog
ical influence and finance from “Empire” merged with internal discontent to create a for
mula for nonviolent revolution. Civil society was, in a measure, co‐opted to become an in
strument for the penetration of “Empire” into Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
“Civil society” differs from both “Empire” and the state system in that it functions as a de
centred network rather than as a disciplined hierarchical structure. Modern information
technology in the form of the Internet and the cell phone has helped it to develop and to
mobilize for action. This loose flexible character is an asset in being able to bring togeth
er a diversity of groups around some central issue. It is also a weakness by making it diffi
cult to articulate a clear program of action because of this very diversity; and also by
leaving the movement open to disruption by agents provocateurs or to being co‐opted by
well‐financed and well‐ organized state or ideological interests either domestic or foreign.
Civil society is inherently opposed to the centralizing and homogenizing force of “Em
pire” but is always vulnerable to being subverted or manipulated.
Behind and below these three rival configurations of power lies a covert world including
organized crime, so‐called terrorist networks, illegal financial circuits, intelligence opera
tives, arms dealers, the drug trade and the sex trade, and sundry religious cults, all of
which are transnational in reach. This covert world functions (p. 92) in the interstices of
the three overt configurations of power. Some of its component elements, like “terrorist”
networks, conspire to subvert and destroy established powers. Other components, like or
ganized crime, are parasitical upon established power and live in symbiosis with it. The
covert world is always present in some measure. Its expansion signals trouble for the es
tablished order—a loosening of confidence in the security that order is supposed to en
sure for people in general.
The three configurations of power in the world today overlap geographically. They are not
confined by territorial boundaries. They have points of geographical concentration but
are in contest everywhere asserting rival claims to legitimacy, while the expansion of the
covert world, in both its subversive and parasitical aspects, undermines legitimacy every
where.
6 Legitimacy and Change

When we think of the world in dynamic terms as being open to change, the legitimacy of
authority becomes the condition for effective action. Legitimacy enables authority to act
with sustained support and public acquiescence. A revolutionary act or an imperial incur
sion may precipitate change, but the change becomes durable only to the extent that le
gitimacy comes to prevail. Government is legitimate when people accept the institutions
and procedures of authority and the decisions that emerge, even if they do not like them.
When that general acceptance becomes eroded, when there is no general acceptance that
decisions have been properly arrived at, the relationship becomes illegitimate.
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Fear is a critical factor—fear on the part of the rulers as well as among those subject to
authority. The tyrant is in constant fear of being overthrown; and those over whom the
tyrant rules are kept in obedience through fear. Legitimacy calms fear on both sides—for
the governors and for the governed. When the public is gripped by a fear that authority
seems impotent to calm, the scene is set for arbitrary power—for the “man of destiny.”
When governments provoke fears among the public, as is now a common aspect of the
“war on terror,” they are preparing for oppressive measures. The inverse relationship be
tween fear and legitimacy is the key to the problem of public and social order today as al
ways. This is perhaps the one durable transhistorical truth. The establishment of legitima
cy is the primary condition for the ethical pursuit of change.
Legitimacy in global governance thus becomes the central problem of world order. “Em
pire” aspires to global legitimacy by claiming to know the one best way of organizing so
ciety—what the agents of “Empire” call “democracy” and “capitalism.” The overwhelming
military power of “Empire,” its capacity for economic (p. 93) coercion, and its communica
tions and ideological resources have not, however, been able to gain support or acquies
cence from a broad sector of humanity. The claims of “Empire” remain illegitimate on a
global scale. Indeed, the overwhelming “hard power” of “Empire” has generated “terror”
as the response of those who utterly reject “Empire.”
The alternative concept of global governance—a continuing process of negotiation among

states under recurrent pressure from the manifold manifestations of civil society—has
been faltering in its ability to establish confidence in its efficacy. Civil society is the ulti
mate anchor of legitimacy. This is the major dilemma of international relations today.
One civilization versus a plural world of coexisting civilizations: How this basic issue of
global governance is decided will affect the way in which the major issues confronting the
future of humanity can be dealt with. These issues are all global in scope: protecting the
biosphere; moderating the extreme inequalities between rich and poor; protecting the
vulnerable; and minimizing violence within and among peoples. To deal effectively with
these issues requires broad consensus with legitimate power behind it. The challenge to
world politics and to the study of international relations is to build that consensus. The
conditions in which this can be done are shaped by the ongoing contest for legitimacy
among the rival configurations of power: “Empire,” state system, and civil society. The
outcome is uncertain—the historically transitory product of ethical conviction, will, skill,
and chance. Such is life in a Heraclitan world.
References
BERGSON, H. 1944. Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell. New York: Modern Library.
BRAUDEL, F. 1980. History and the social sciences: the longue durée. Pp. 25–54 in On
History, F. Braudel, trans. S. Matthews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; originally
published (in French) 1958.
COLLINGWOOD, R. G. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Page 9 of 10

HEGEL, G. W. F. 1967. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford Uni
versity Press; originally published (in German) 1821.
MONOD, J. 1970. Le Hasard et la nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biolo

gie moderne. Paris: Seuil.
MORIN, E. 1973. Le Paradigme perdu: La Nature humaine. Paris: Seuil.
NYE, J. S. 1990. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Ba
sic Books.
PRIGOGINE, I. 1996. The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature.
New York: Free Press.
WALDROP, M. 1993. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos.
New York: Touchstone.
Notes:
(1) The French Annales school of history has developed this approach. See Braudel
(1980).
(2) The concept of “soft power” comes from Nye (1990,32).
Robert W. Cox
Robert W. Cox is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York University.
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The Point is Not Just to Explain the World but to Change It

The Point is Not Just to Explain the World but to

Print Publication Date: Aug 2008

Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

Neorealism proved popular, particularly among American analysts, so long as it seemed

1 Change as a Latent Force in History

Civilizations untouched by monotheism saw history more naturally as a cyclical process

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

2 Change through Chaos and Self‐organization

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

A short list of the priorities would include:

• survival of the biosphere;

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

• a shift from being to becoming, from emphasis on innate structures to emphasis on

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

4 Change in Historical Structures

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

5 Existing Historical Structures

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

6 Legitimacy and Change

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

The alternative concept of global governance—a continuing process of negotiation among

COLLINGWOOD, R. G. 1946. The Idea of History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

MONOD, J. 1970. Le Hasard et la nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biolo­

MORIN, E. 1973. Le Paradigme perdu: La Nature humaine. Paris: Seuil.

(2) The concept of “soft power” comes from Nye (1990,32).

Robert W. Cox is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at York University.

Subscriber: University College London; date: 06 September 2021

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MONOD, J. 1970. Le Hasard et la nécessité: Essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biolo