Session 9: Power and Politics

Kenneth Waltz begins the chapter, ‘Political Structures’ by defining how politics is an ordered system comprising of a structure and its interacting units. However, he goes on to state that the structure is only useful in definition if interactivity between the units is completely ignored, but their positions or relations to one another are concentrated on. He further states that it is necessary to ignore the personality, behaviour, and interactivity between the actors. Instead, one should look at their relative positions within society. Domestic politics and international politics are quite different from one another, and their structures are quite different as well.

Moving on, he describes the domestic political structure as hierarchical and centralized, where the power lies under the President, Prime Minister, judiciary, bureaucracy etc. On the other hand, the international political system is defined as quite the opposite; anarchical and decentralized. Each state has its own laws and ideas on what it wants to do. Despite that, it is quite clear that their lies a system of hierarchy even in the international system. This hierarchy is defined by how much ‘power’ which in turn depends on their ‘capabilities’. The US, for example is often labelled as The Hegemon in the international arena since it possesses the most power in terms of the military arms, technology, intelligence, money etc. This power leads the other states to either ally with the US, to gain support or stand up against it by striving to match its level.