Why a World State is Inevitable
ALEXANDER WENDT
University of Chicago
Long dismissed as unscientific, teleological explanation has been
undergoing something of a revival as a result of the emergence of self-
organization theory, which combines micro-level dynamics with macro-
level boundary conditions to explain the tendency of systems to
develop toward stable end-states. On that methodological basis this
article argues that a global monopoly on the legitimate use of
organized violence — a world state — is inevitable. At the micro-level
world state formation is driven by the struggle of individuals and
groups for recognition of their subjectivity. At the macro-level this
struggle is channeled toward a world state by the logic of anarchy,
which generates a tendency for military technology and war to become
increasingly destructive. The process moves through five stages,
each responding to the instabilities of the one before — a system of
states, a society of states, world society, collective security, and the
world state. Human agency matters all along the way, but is increas-
ingly constrained and enabled by the requirements of universal
recognition.
K
EY
W
ORDS
♦ cultures of anarchy ♦ downward causation ♦ logic of
anarchy ♦ self-organization ♦ struggle for recognition ♦ teleology
♦ world state
In this article I propose a teleological theory of the ‘logic of anarchy’ which
suggests that a world state is inevitable (cf. Buzan et al., 1993). Like any
structural tendency, the speed with which this one will be realized is
historically contingent. At the micro-level the process is neither determin-
istic nor linear, and forward movement may be blocked for periods of time.
There are many pathways by which a world state may be achieved, and
human agency matters along every one. In that sense ‘anarchy is [still] what
states make of it’ (Wendt, 1992). However, I am not concerned here with
historical contingencies or timing. My own guess is that a world state will
European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2003
SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 9(4): 491–542
[1354–0661 (200312) 9:4; 491–542; 038724]
emerge within 100–200(?) years, but nothing below turns on that pre-
diction. Instead, I am concerned with the macro-structure of all pathways,
which channel the international system’s development toward an inevitable
end-state. In that respect the theory is progressivist, although in an
explanatory rather than normative sense.
Resistance to progressivist, much less teleological, thinking runs deep
within contemporary IR scholarship. Realists are skeptical, arguing that the
logic of anarchy is one of endless conflict and war (Waltz, 1979). Liberals are
more optimistic, arguing that international institutions, interdependence
and/or democratic states can lead to cooperation and peace within anarchy
(Keohane, 1990). However, liberal progressivism is contingent, not tele-
ological. If institutions are upheld, if interdependence deepens and/or if
democracy spreads, then progress is possible. The forecast is based on
extrapolating lawlike regularities from the past into the future, assuming
certain conditions continue to hold. Since there is no guarantee they will, we
cannot say that any given future is inevitable.
Indeed, if there is one thing almost all social scientists today agree on,
from the most hardened positivists to the most radical postmodernists, it is
that teleological explanations are illegitimate. To call a theory ‘teleological’
is considered a decisive criticism, with no need even to explain why. This
may be due to the fact that teleology has been considered unscientific since
the triumph of the mechanistic worldview in the 17th century, and is also
sometimes thought to deny human agency in the social world. In my view
both objections are unfounded, and with them a priori resistance to
teleological thinking about world politics.
To show this, in the first section I synthesize recent attempts to
rehabilitate teleological explanation. These efforts span many disciplines and
indicate that, although the scientific status of teleology remains con-
troversial, it is being taken increasingly seriously. One reason is that much of
this literature builds on self-organization theory, which is emerging as an
important challenge to the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution.
1
Self-
organization theory hypothesizes that order in nature emerges not only
through the mechanism of mutation-selection-retention, but also ‘spon-
taneously’ from the channeling of system dynamics by structural boundary
conditions toward particular end-states. With a few exceptions this theory
has been little noticed by IR scholars,
2
who are just beginning to engage
neo-Darwinism.
3
But in the social sciences more generally the idea of self-
organization has been around since the ‘spontaneous order’ tradition of the
Scottish empiricists, and is getting considerable attention today.
4
Much of
this work is not teleological, and many self-organization theorists might
vigorously reject any such reading of their approach. On the other hand,
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many others do see a connection, arguing that self-organization theory
provides a scientific basis for teleological explanation.
5
Assuming that is possible, toward what end-state does the international
system move, and by what mechanism does it get there? Three end-states
suggest themselves — a pacific federation of republican states, a realist world
of nation-states in which war remains legitimate, and a world state. The first
is associated with Kant (1991a, 1991b) and the second with Hegel (1977),
both of whom based their projections on explicitly teleological arguments.
6
In rejecting the possibility of a world state, therefore, they agreed that,
strictly speaking, anarchy would remain the organizing principle of the
system, albeit different kinds of anarchy. As to the mechanism of progress, in
different ways Kant and Hegel also both emphasized the role of conflict —
Kant in man’s ‘unsociable sociability’, and Hegel in the ‘struggle for
recognition’.
I am in no position here to engage in an exegesis and critique of Kant and
Hegel’s arguments. However, since I share their emphasis on conflict as a
mechanism of development but reach a different conclusion, it may be useful
to introduce my argument by highlighting two ways in which it departs from
theirs. The first concerns the effects of conflict on state identity. While
envisioning a tendency for conflict to create republican states, Kant did not
expect them to develop a collective identity. His states remain egoists who
retain their sovereignty. Hegel provides the basis for a different conclusion,
since the effect of the struggle for recognition is precisely to transform
egoistic identity into collective identity, and eventually a state. But Hegel
expects this outcome only in the struggle between individuals. States too
seek recognition, but in his view they remain self-sufficient totalities. Their
struggle for recognition does not produce supranational solidarity, leaving us
at the ‘end of history’ with a world of multiple states (also see Fukuyama,
1992). Some critics have suggested that Hegel’s reasoning here is
inconsistent, and that he should have argued for a world state.
7
Be that as it
may, I argue that the struggle for recognition between states will have the
same outcome as that between individuals, collective identity formation and
eventually a state (cf. Walzer, 1986). One reason for this concerns the
second difference in my approach, which concerns the role of technology.
Kant rejected the possibility of a world state in part because the technology
of his day precluded it (Carson, 1988: 177; Guyer, 2000: 416–17), and in
positing an end-state in which war remained legitimate Hegel did not think
its costs would become intolerable. Neither anticipated the dramatic
technological changes of the past century, which are in part caused by the
security dilemma and thus endogenous to anarchy. As Daniel Deudney
(1999, 2000) convincingly argues, these changes have greatly increased the
costs of war and also the scale on which it is possible to organize a state.
Wendt: Why a World State is Inevitable
493
With these material changes the struggle for recognition among states
undermines their self-sufficiency and makes a world state inevitable. Via the
struggle for recognition, in short, the logic of anarchy leads to its own
demise.
Two caveats. First, it is impossible within the constraints of an article to do
justice to both the methodological and substantive issues in this discussion.
That might have counseled two separate articles (at least), but given the
modern hostility to teleology the argument might be dismissed a priori
without a defense of its methodology, and the latter might seem
unmotivated without a ‘plausibility probe’. So at the risk of doing both
inadequately I have joined them. However, on the assumption that the logic
of teleological explanation will be less familiar and of broader interest than a
theory of world state formation, when faced with trade-offs I have opted for
preserving discussion of the former, and left the substantive theory more at
the level of a sketch, to be fleshed out in the future. Second, again for
reasons of space, I shall not address the relationship between the logic of
anarchy and the ‘logic of capital’, which forms a distinct developmental
dynamic in the system. The logic of capital generates distributional struggles
that cannot be reduced to the struggle for recognition (Fraser, 2000) and, as
such, would significantly complicate the latter, but in the long run it too
points toward a world state (Chase-Dunn, 1990; Shaw, 2000). So I bracket
its role here, on the assumption that it only makes a world state ‘more’
inevitable.
The teleological explanation is defended in the next section. I then explain
what I shall mean by the state, including a world state. In the third section
I discuss the struggle for recognition, and the fourth show why such a
struggle within anarchy should culminate in a world state. The role of
agency in this process is addressed in the conclusion.
Causal Pluralism and Teleological Explanation
In recent years there has been much debate within IR scholarship about
what might be called ‘causal pluralism’ (Asma, 1996) — whether explana-
tions of world politics can take different forms. The orthodox positivist
position, rooted in a Newtonian worldview, is that an explanation always
depicts a mechanical relationship between prior conditions and later effects.
8
Other forms of inquiry might be valuable as ‘descriptive inference’ (King et
al., 1994), but they do not explain. Explanations must be causal, and
causation must be mechanical. From this perspective, causal pluralism is
either confused about what ‘explanation’ means, or a threat to science itself.
Following interpretivist philosophers of social science, constructivists and
postmodernists have argued against causal monism in favor of ‘constitutive’
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analyses. Some see their work as yielding ‘Understanding’ and thus outside
the ‘Explaining’ paradigm altogether (Hollis and Smith, 1990), whereas
others see it as a form of explanation (Ruggie, 1998: 871–4; Wendt, 1998).
But all agree that constitutive theories are not merely descriptive, and
contribute to social science in ways that cannot be reduced to mechanical
causation.
The ultimate question here is whether different kinds of causes exist in
nature.
9
If causal monism is based on the Newtonian worldview, then the
prototype for causal pluralism is the Aristotelian worldview that it replaced.
Advocates of constitutive theory in IR have not offered an Aristotelian-style
defense of their approach.
10
Doing so might be instructive, and suggests that
teleological explanation should be added to the pluralist agenda.
Aristotelians distinguish four kinds of causality. (1) ‘Efficient’ causality
refers to a mechanical relationship between a prior cause and a subsequent
effect. This is how positivism defines causation. (2) ‘Material’ causality refers
to the sense in which an entity or process is caused by having a particular
composition. (3) ‘Formal’ causality refers to the way in which the structure
of an object or process gives it form. (4) ‘Final’ causality — the key element
in teleology — refers to the way in which the purpose or end of a system
affects its development. A textbook example of these multiple causes at work
is building a house (Ulanowicz, 1997: 12) — its efficient cause is the labor
of workmen; its material cause is the bricks and mortar of which it is made;
its formal cause is the blueprint that gives these materials their eventual
form; and its final cause is the purposes of the individuals building it.
Significantly, all four causes are seen as necessary to complete explanations,
and will be at least implicit in any scientific theory. So the goal is not
pluralism for pluralism’s sake, but to obtain a total understanding of a
phenomenon.
If the positivist view of explanation presupposes efficient causation, then
constitutive analyses offer intriguing parallels to material and formal
causation. In IR such arguments have usually been used to emphasize the
importance of ideas, although material conditions can be constitutive as
well. Thus, constitutive theorists have shown how phenomena normally seen
as material, such as power, are in fact constituted by ideas (‘material’
causation). And these ideas exist and have effects because of the discursive
forms (norms, institutions, ideologies) in which they are embedded (formal
causation). This is not the place to defend the explanatory content of such
accounts. The point is only that the a priori rejection of their explanatory
status assumes causal monism. However, positivists and post-positivists alike
reject final causation. If causal pluralism justifies constitutive theory, then
perhaps it can do the same for teleology.
Wendt: Why a World State is Inevitable
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