Session 10 - The Anarchy Assumption

Helen Milner discusses the ambiguity and vagueness of the concept of anarchy in her article. She does not agree with prominent theorists who argue that anarchy is the only, defining feature of international politics. Instead, she argues, that strategic interdependence is equally important in defining the international system.

First, Milner presents the varying definitions of the term anarchy. Second, she highlights the problems with the definitions by picking up particular concepts and questioning what they really mean. For example, if anarchy means ‘lack of government’, then what does the word ‘government’ mean? If government equals legitimacy, then how can legitimacy be truly defined and interpreted? Her ability to deconstruct the concept of anarchy in a systematic and inquisitive manner is something that can be appreciated and learned by students of the subject. It teaches one to closely examine the meanings of every concept rather than accepting them at face value. 

At one point, Milner quotes Waltz where he says that domestic politics is defined by hierarchy. I particularly found Milner’s counter argument to this assumption very interesting because it presented a new way of looking at the domestic system within a country. She noted that within the US, there is ‘no single hierarchy of authority’ and that authority for different issues rests with different segments of society. Therefore, power is not concentrated but dispersed in the US. This is contradictory to what Waltz believed about hierarchy in domestic politics.

In the second part of her article, Milner explains why strategic interdependence should be considered as a structural feature of international politics along with anarchy. She believes that the theory of interdependence has heuristic and empirical support where as anarchy does not have a sufficient level of empirical support. I agree with Milner when she says that ‘politics seems ultimately to be about choice – choice in the presence of uncertainty, incomplete information, and guesses about the intentions of other actors’.