Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay

Realismand Domestic Politics A Review Essay Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. Fareed Zakaria I n the literature of international relations, it is fast becoming commonplace to assert the importance of domestic politics and call for more research on the subject.’ After over a decade of vigorous debates about realism, structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and hegemonic stability theory, political scientistsare shifting their attention to the internal sources of foreign policy.2Some even contend that realism’s dictum about the “primacyof foreign policy”is wrong, and that the domestic politics of states are the key to understanding world events. Znnenpolitik is in. Diplomatic history has been under fire for over two decades for its focus on elite decision-making3and with the rise of the “new history,” younger Fareed Zakaria is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government, and a fellow at the Olin lnstitute for Strategic Studies, at Harvard University. He is writing a dissertation entitled, “The Rise of a Great Power: National Strength, State Structure, and American Foreign Policy, 1865-191 7.” I would like to thank Thomas Christensen, Stanley Hoffmann, Robert Keohane, Jonathan Mercer, Joseph Nye, the anonymous reviewers for International Security, and especially, Gideon Rose, and Andrew Moravcsik for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 1. See for example, Joseph5. Nye, Jr., and Sean M. Lynn-Jones, “International Security Studies,” International Security, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Spring 1988), pp. 25-27; Robert 0. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), pp. 173-174; Benjamin Cohen,”The Political Economy of International Trade,” International Organization, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Spring 1990), pp. 268-270; and especially Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, eds., The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge UNversity Press, 1989), pp. 79-101. 2. While the international relations literature of the last decade was dominated by debates about the international system, exceptions exist, the most prominent of which include Peter J. Katzenstein , ed., Between Power and Plenty: The Foreign Economic Policies of the Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs: Parts I and 11,” Philosophy and Public Afiairs, Vol. 12, No. 3 and 4 (Summer, Fall 1983), pp. 205-235, 323-353; and Robert Putnam, ”Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer 1988), pp. 427-460. For a review of recent work, see Levy, “Domestic Politics and War.” 3. See, for example, three modern classics in the field: William Langer, European Alliances and International Security, Summer 1992 (Vol. 17, No. 1) 0 1992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 177 International Security 17:Z I 178 historians have increasingly written about the underlying social, economic, and ideologicalinfluences on high politic^.^ They have not, however, placed their particular explanations within the context of international relations theory. Most theorists of international politics, on the other hand, have focused on the nature of the international system and ignored what goes on behind state doors, treating it as the province of comparative politics, a different sub-field of political ~cience.~ Jack Snyder tries to bridge this gap between domestic and international affairs in his ambitious new book, Myths of Empire,6 constructing a domestic politics model that he claims stays within the realist tradition. The book raises important issues with great sophistication and displays a mastery of both comparative politics and international relations. Ultimately, however, it highlights the difficultiesof constructing a theory in which domestic politics determines international events. In this essay I will argue that Snyder, while purporting to combine domestic and international levels of analysis, can do so only because he adopts an erroneousthough increasingly commoninterpretation of realism that minimizes the powerful effects of the international system on state behavior. In the end we are left not with a novel combination of systemic and domestic determinants, but with a restatement of the traditional Innenpolitik case. Future research should build on the many insights of Myths of Empire, but must attempt to construct...