To explain how globalization rebuilt public policy and social behavior, we study the different political, economic, and social actors - public or private, individual or collective - and the exchanges and interactions between them that are remaking international relations. This course is inspired by a French sociological and historical approach to international relations. This course is also available in french version: www.coursera.org/learn/espace-mondial-fr/
From Hobbes to Present Day
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来自 Sciences Po 的课程
Espace mondial：法国视角下的国际研究
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从本节课中
Power
Is power still meaningful and efficient?
与讲师见面
Bertrand BadieProfessor
Marie-Françoise DurandProfessor
Power is the cornerstone
of international relations.
It’s a very well known
and currently used concept,
but however it’s not so clear,
and that’s a problem
that we can probably explain
why the international system
nowadays is not working well
it’s because the concept of power
is getting ambiguous.
In the traditional vision,
it seems to be simple, it seems to be obvious,
that’s to say power is enforcing ones
will to all the other actors by any means,
including using violence
and including using means, instruments, ways,
which are not legal in the domestic affairs.
So power seems to be the real sphere
of international relations,
this free fight among the gladiators
as they were called by Thomas Hobbes.
Power is the expression of sovereignty,
but it’s also the expression of the pure rivalry
among all the nation states,
which are supposed to be the only actors,
the unique actors of the international relations.
And so power, in this traditional vision,
is pointing the capacity of acting,
the capacity of impeding,
the capacity of influencing
which could be attributed to every nation state,
that’s to say every unit in a free fight
inside the international arena.
It’s really, as it was pointed
by so many writers and so many thinkers,
it is a world of anarchy,
and in a world of anarchy,
every unit is able to exist through its own power.
In this vision, stability, at the international level,
is only possible if we can reach
a minimal level of balancing,
that’s to say of balance of power.
What was true inside the domestic affairs
is getting more obvious
inside the international arena.
That’s to say the only way for keeping peace
is to reach a situation of balancing powers
in which every power is containing the others
and so is preventing the risk of a conflagration,
a risk of a total and global war. Otherwise,
we are in a situation of permanent war
as it was clearly described by Hobbes.
Nothing really new
from the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes.
This was the vision taken by Clausewitz
when he wrote his very famous book <i>On war</i>.
But it’s also true
about so many political actors and princes
during the 19th century and this is for instance
the background of the famous bismarckian strategy,
this is also the background of the realist theory
as it is now well known.
But can we be satisfied by such a vision?
In a first approach,
all these points seem to be really obvious,
seem to be absolutely true, but,
if we revise this vision and if we take into account
the global transformation of the world,
it’s not so evident that it appears.
First problem: power is a concept made
for defining an individual capacity,
does it fit to collective actors like states?
What does it mean
when people say the power of a state?
But my question would be: the power of whom?
Is it the power of the president?
Is it the power of the government?
Is it the power of the administration?
Is it the power of the state department in US?
Or the Pentagon? Or the CIA?
Or the power of the society?
Of the economic actors
who are playing an important role
inside the domestic affairs of these actors?
What do we mean?
When we say the French power,
who is holding the French power?
The French president? His prime minister?
His government? His administration?
The parliament? The parties?
The political system? Or the mass media?
The main French firms and corporations?
The French civil society?
There is there an ambiguity to which
the realist theory didn’t really pay attention
and however, if we want to have a clear vision
of how the international arena is working
we have to pay attention to the real identity
of every unique actor
and the power is then changing,
that’s to say it is no more this collective capacity,
but a fragmented capacity,
and from this fragmentation
we can sometimes observe
that there are oppositions,
contrasts and sometimes conflicts.
That’s a first problem
which has not been really solved
by the political analysis.
The second problem
about the concept of power
is that it is a subjective one, not only an objective,
which is describing the capacity of an actor,
it’s also a subjective, that’s to say I have power
if the other recognizes me as holding power.
My power is depending on my reputation,
on my own reputation, my power is depending
on the perception that the others have,
and this is probably very ambiguous
and it leads to another question,
which is so important in our discipline,
this is the question of the status of every state.
That’s to say, a state has a status,
a status of power, which is deliberated,
which is decided by all the other actors.
If you pretend to have a power
but if you are not credible,
if all the others consider that you don’t have
the power you pretend,
you will not be able to act efficiently,
and your power will be only a mystification.
This subjective dimension of power
is also pointing out another problem,
which is the problem of the willingness
of every state to use the resources of power
that it has at his disposal.
A state can have strong resources,
strong power resources but however
doesn’t want to use and to mobilize them,
don’t want to pay the cost
of using these resources,
and so his power will be only an apparent power,
not a real power.
Other problem: What is power?
How to measure power? Is it depending
on resources you have at your disposal
or is it depending on your capacity?
What is the real expression of power?
To hold resources or to have
the capacity to solve a problem?
It’s quite clear that by now US
has very very strong power resources,
but is US really able to use
these resources with success?
That’s to say is US really capable?
Has US the capacity of solving
the problem it is facing?
That is another very difficult dimension.
If you consider power as a capacity,
your results will be different
that if you consider power as resources.
You can hold resources and not have
the capacity to solve the problem,
or you can solve the problem
but holding very few resources.
This is another ambiguity.
Now the problem of balance of power
which is so important, which is at the core
of the international relations studies,
is this concept clear? I don’t think so.
What does it mean for instance nowadays?
During Cold War, balance of power
was meaningful that’s to say the balance
between the US and the USSR power.
That was clear, or rather clear.
But now, what does it mean?
What does mean this balance of power
between US and Al Qaeda?
What does mean these balance of power
among actors who are so different
and who hold very different kinds of resources?
Last problem but not the least:
the evolution of power.
Is power nowadays
meaning the same thing than previously?
Now, when civil societies, social actors,
non state actors, are more and more present
inside the international arena
is power so clear?
The second problem is related to culture.
Previously, we were in a world
which was monocultural,
but now we are in a world in which
there is a competition among different cultures,
and these different cultures
don’t have the same meaning,
don’t give the same meaning
to the concept of power.
So, what to do when there are
different visions of power
coming from different competing cultures?
And so the problem will be to say:
what does power mean in the Chinese culture,
in the Western culture,
in the Muslim culture and so on?
And how can we conceive a global arena
in which these different visions of cultures
are competing?
Now the last problem is a problem of resource,
that’s to say: how can we define power
in a world in which there are so many different
and more and more differentiated
resources of power?
How can we conceive a hierarchy of powers
in a world, which is characterized
by an increasing differentiation
of resources of power?
