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Concept
Anarchy (international relations)
Summary
In international relations theory, the concept of anarchy is the idea that the world lacks any supreme authority or sovereignty. In an anarchic state, there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system of international politics. In international relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory.
International relations generally does not understand "anarchy" as signifying a world in chaos, disorder, or conflict; rather, it is possible for ordered relations between states to be maintained in an anarchic international system. Anarchy provides foundations for realist, neorealist, and neoliberal, and constructivist paradigms of international relations. Liberal theory disputes that anarchy is a fundamental condition of the international system. The constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt argued, "anarchy is what states make of it."
The word anarchy literally means "without a leader". The word combines the Greek prefix "an-" meaning without, with the Indo-European root arkh meaning "begin" or "take the lead". It is adapted from the ancient Greek (ἀναρχία-anarchia) meaning "absence of a leader”. In common usage anarchy has come to signify both the absence of a ruler and the disorder that some anticipate is bound up with the absence of a ruler.
The British pacifist G. Lowes Dickinson has often been credited with coining "Anarchy" as a term of art in political science in his books: The European Anarchy (1916), War: Its Nature, Cause and Cure (1923) and The International Anarchy (1926). Some argue that Dickinson used anarchy in a context that is inconsistent with modern IR theorists. Jack Donnelly argues that Philip Kerr's book Pacifism is Not Enough (1935) was first to ascribe the same meaning and context to term anarchy that modern IR theorists do.
Kenneth Waltz set off a fundamental discursive transformation in international relations with Theory of International Politics (1979). One study finds that the term "anarchy" occurred on average 6.
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