Complexity Science and World Affairs

Chapter Ten: Toward a New Paradigm for Global Studies

1 7 9 To avoid entrapment in the narrow choices posed by realist and idealist paradigms, analysts of international relations can fruitfully apply the basic concepts of complexity science to analyze the properties and patterns (if any) of global interdependence. To illustrate the value of these concepts to international studies, this chapter applies them to fourteen of the major challenges facing global political analysis, comparing their explanatory power with the insights generated by other approaches. The review suggests that, at a minimum, complexity science merits a place alongside the other paradigms used to study world affairs. New scientific paradigms, once they have been widely accepted, do not necessarily weaken or disconfirm old scientific truths; but they often rearrange the configuration of truths in new and unanticipated ways. After Einstein and after quantum mechanics, we acknowledge the spheres where Isaac Newton’s laws of mechanics obtain as well as the spheres where other laws take over” (Gardner 2011, 35). If complexity science becomes an accepted approach to world politics, there will still be a place for Hobbesian realism and Kantian-Wilsonian idealism. There will also be times and places where the insights of Karl Marx or J. Ann Tickner or Alexander Wendt provide the most useful path to understanding. chapter ten Toward a New Paradigm for Global Studies 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 15 16 17 18 19 20 1 8 0 C O M P L E X I T Y S C I E N C E A N D W OR L D A F FA I R S Salient Problems in Global Politics: Insights from Complexity Science Issue 1. From Despotism to Chaos The National Intelligence Council (2012) cautioned that at least fifteen countries were “at high risk of state failure” by 2030. Afghanistan and Pakistan were high on the list, with Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda, and Yemen also in danger. To adopt the language of complexity theory, all these countries lacked effective self-organization. Neither rigid hierarchy nor anarchy is conducive to fitness. Despotism often erupts into chaos while weak or no government elicits an iron fist. Without a strong political authority, Hobbes argued, there is war of all against all. Life is nasty, brutish, and short. To escape from this “state of nature,” frightened but rational people submit to the authority of an all-powerful sovereign. Even then, however, Hobbes left the door open to anarchy, because no one could be expected to obey the sovereign if doing so endangered his or her own life. Whatever happened within the body politic, Hobbes posited that anarchy would remain among states, because no supranational Leviathan ruled over individual sovereigns. Updating Hobbes, some realists have argued that less-developed societies need strong, authoritarian leadership to maintain stability. They have added that preaching democracy is futile where top-down rule accords with local values. Besides, despots may be useful to America if they sell oil at reasonable prices or permit U.S. forces on their soil. The authoritarian prescription has proved shortsighted. Many of the despotic regimes long embraced by Washington have collapsed or are collapsing—generating enormous problems for their own peoples and for the United States. And when tyrants are overthrown, as in Somalia, the result is often a failed state—a danger to its own people and to outsiders. Decades of military dictatorship in Myanmar helped turn one of Asia’s most bountiful countries into one of the poorest. Unlike classical realists, structural realists do not concern themselves with top-down or bottom-up rule because domestic conditions are irrelevant to world politics, a sphere where, they believe, raw power settles everything. Structuralists ignore the roles of key individuals and the cultures that spawn and embrace them. Experience shows, however, that authoritarian dictators (for example, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Slobodan Milošević) and their regimes are lethal. Dictatorships started and lost most of the major wars of the twentieth century. Dictators killed more of their own people than perished in the century’s major wars (Rummel 1996). Many idealists do worry about despotisms and underdevelopment but often lack the means to achieve their ends. West European governments agonized TO WA R D A N E W PA R A D I G M 1 8 1 about bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia but lacked the will and resources needed to stabilize the...