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CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & COMMUNISM EXPLAINED SIMPLY

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anarchy, in political science and the study of international relations, the absence of any authority superior to nation-states and capable of arbitrating their disputes and enforcing international law. The term anarchy is derived from the ancient Greek root anarchos ("without authority"), denoting the absence of the rule of law or of settled government.

The prevalence of anarchy in the relations between states is the basic assumption of realism, a prominent school of thought in international relations theory. According to realists, international law in practice imposes few direct constraints on the behaviour of states, in part because there is almost no way of enforcing it. In the absence of a suprastate power or arbiter, there are no enforceable rules of conduct, especially for strong states. The harsh interstate environment is anarchic both in the strict sense of lacking enforceable international law and in the broader sense of being violently chaotic. The prevalence of this environment in turn requires that the primary goals of individual states be survival and security.

Some scholars, especially those associated with the liberal approach to international relations, believe that anarchy can be overcome, or "exited," through international institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and through the widespread acceptance of international law, especially by strong states. For realists, however, the UN, at least in its present form, is incapable of fulfilling that promise, since it has no coercive power that is independent of the will of the major powers. Thus, according to realists, unless the UN is fundamentally transformed or a genuine world state is created, the state of anarchy will endure.

Consequences of anarchy

Realists have argued that the prevalence of anarchy in the state system requires individual states to be ruthlessly self-seeking. Because there is no suprastate actor capable of enforcing international law, each state must provide for its own security. Thus, a structural anarchy is also inevitably a self-help regime: every government reserves the right to decide what is just or necessary for itself and to take up arms to pursue or enforce that decision. Because the best way to achieve security under anarchy is to be powerful (both militarily and economically), self-help leads naturally to power-maximizing behaviour. In an anarchic state-system, power-maximizing behaviour is therefore the normal behaviour of all states.

The combination of anarchy, ruthless self-help, and power-maximizing behaviour by all states leads to another realist assertion: in such an environment "war is normal," as a leading realist theoretician, the American political scientist Kenneth Waltz, claimed. In other words, war, or the threat of war, is the primary means by which states under anarchy resolve conflicts of interest. The readiness of every state in an anarchic system to defend its interests through organized violence is the primary factor responsible for the development of internal cultures of militarism and bellicosity (and an emphasis on maintaining honour-i.e., international status).

Anarchy and the distribution of power

Political scientists also suggest that under anarchic conditions, there is a moment when the danger of large-scale war is most acute: when a sudden large shift in the distribution of power among states occurs. Political scientists refer to such a shift as a power-transition crisis. The shift can be either a dramatic increase in the capabilities of one of the main actors or a dramatic decrease in the capabilities of another main unit. But when the existing distribution of privilege, influence, and goods in a system becomes mismatched to the changing realities of power, the result tends to be large-scale war, which in turn creates a new structure, a new configuration of privilege, influence, and goods-one better matched to the actual distribution of power.

Thus, major realignments of power, influence, and status within anarchic state systems have tended to be accompanied by great violence-what political scientists call hegemonic war. World War I is a good example. Realists hold that power-transition crises and hegemonic wars often result from the attempt by a main actor to preserve its deteriorating position within the system; it acts while its governing elite feels it still can. But this is only a trend, for realists also agree that individual moments of decision making by governments are too idiosyncratic to be predictable. Hence, the power-transition crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union was handled without war, thanks to good diplomacy on both sides. Historically, however, a power-transition crisis tends to lead to hegemonic war to establish new leaders within anarchic systems.

Critiques of the realist notion of anarchy

Modern realist thinking rose to prominence as a pessimistic response-first, to the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of World War I and to the terrible international events of the 1930s, which were followed by the cataclysm of World War II and then the onset of the decadeslong Cold War, despite many diplomatic efforts at detente. However, the peaceful denouement of the Cold War, and the relatively high level of interstate cooperation that accompanied it (1989-91), led in the 1990s to a resurgence of liberal-institutionalist (also called neoliberal) criticism of anarchy theory as too pessimistic. Liberal institutionalists, who held that state behaviour can be positively modified by interaction with international institutions such as the UN and the European Union (EU), argued that the realist view of interstate behaviour underestimated the extent of communal interest, interdependence, and cooperation that exists among modern states and that it underestimated as well the human desire for peace.

Realists responded by arguing that perceived national interest and little else-certainly not altruism-determined state actions at the end of the Cold War and that the relative success and smooth working of international institutions in the 1990s merely reflected the fact that they were supported by (and were useful to) the overwhelming power and prestige of the United States. They also pointed to the reemergence after the Cold War of a more internationally assertive Russia, as well as the rise in power of an increasingly nationalistic and militarized China, as demonstrating the persistence, pervasiveness, and ferocity of international competition.

Another major criticism, based on the constructivist theory of international relations, is that the notion of anarchy as realists deploy it constitutes an artificial and arbitrary discourse of competition and violence. That discourse itself has a detrimental effect on the international system because of its destructive impact on the expectations and perceptions of national leaders. In other words, the harsh paradigms of realist discourse constitute a self-fulfilling prophecy. For constructivists, the world of states is not objectively given but rather socially constructed by human beings acting on specific ideas. The interstate system may indeed be anarchic, without a guiding authority or effective means of enforcing international law, but anarchy is, in the words of the American political scientist Alexander Wendt, what "states make of it," and the pessimistic theorizing of realism should be combated and replaced by a new communitarian discourse of interstate relations. Once such a discourse has replaced pessimistic and destructive anarchy discourse, a new and more benign international environment might be constructed-as similar communitarian discourses have accomplished in the past, according to constructivists, especially in the Middle Ages.

Realists, while acknowledging the impact of discourse on state action, have responded that such thinking gives too much power to words. They argue that the prevailing medieval communitarian discourse actually had little practical impact on the rivalrous and warlike real-world actions of medieval states within their anarchic state system. Moreover, the originators of constructivism were mostly American scholars writing in the 1990s, before the September 11 attacks of 2001, in a world that the United States dominated and in a society that (extraordinarily in history) had little experience of what it felt like to be acted on violently and decisively from the outside, by others. Only intellectuals ensconced in the safety of the American world of the 1990s, they argued, could have doubted a state's need to establish security against a hostile world without law and order.
Arthur M. Eckstein The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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anarchy | Definition, Consequences, Examples, & Facts

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Anarchy, in political science and the study of international relations, the absence of any authority superior to nation-states and capable of arbitrating their disputes and enforcing international law. The term anarchy is derived from the ancient Greek root anarchos ('without authority').

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Oligarchy

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dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations. The term dictatorship comes from the Latin title dictator, which in the Roman Republic designated a temporary magistrate who was granted extraordinary powers in order to deal with state crises. Modern dictators, however, resemble ancient tyrants rather than ancient dictators. Ancient philosophers' descriptions of the tyrannies of Greece and Sicily go far toward characterizing modern dictatorships. Dictators usually resort to force or fraud to gain despotic political power, which they maintain through the use of intimidation, terror, and the suppression of basic civil liberties. They may also employ techniques of mass propaganda in order to sustain their public support.

With the decline and disappearance in the 19th and 20th centuries of monarchies based on hereditary descent, dictatorship became one of the two chief forms of government in use by nations throughout the world, the other being constitutional democracy. Rule by dictators has taken several different forms. In Latin America in the 19th century, various dictators arose after effective central authority had collapsed in the new nations recently freed from Spanish colonial rule. These caudillos, or self-proclaimed leaders, usually led a private army and tried to establish control over a territory before marching upon a weak national government. Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico and Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina are examples of such leaders. ( See personalismo.) Later 20th-century dictators in Latin America were different. They were national rather than provincial leaders and often were put in their position of power by nationalistic military officers. They usually allied themselves with a particular social class, and attempted either to maintain the interests of wealthy and privileged elites or to institute far-reaching left-wing social reforms.

In the new states of Africa and Asia after World War II, dictators quickly established themselves on the ruins of constitutional arrangements inherited from the Western colonial powers that had proved unworkable in the absence of a strong middle class and in the face of local traditions of autocratic rule. In some such countries, elected presidents and prime ministers captured personal power by establishing one-party rule and suppressing the opposition, while in others the army seized power and established military dictatorships.

The communist and fascist dictatorships that arose in various technologically advanced countries in the first half of the 20th century were distinctively different from the authoritarian regimes of Latin America or the postcolonial dictatorships of Africa and Asia. Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin were the leading examples of such modern totalitarian dictatorships. The crucial elements of both were the identification of the state with a single mass party and of the party with its charismatic leader, the use of an official ideology to legitimize and maintain the regime, the use of terror and propaganda to suppress dissent and stifle opposition, and the use of modern science and technology to control the economy and individual behaviour. Soviet-type communist dictatorships arose in central and eastern Europe, China, and other countries in the wake of World War II, though most of them (as well as the Soviet Union itself) had collapsed by the last decade of the 20th century.

During times of domestic or foreign crisis, even most constitutional governments have conferred emergency powers on the chief executive, and in some notable cases this provided the opportunity for duly elected leaders to overthrow democracy and rule dictatorially thereafter. The proclamation of emergency rule, for example, was the beginning of the dictatorships of Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, Józef Piłsudṣki in Poland, and António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal. In other democracies, however, constitutional arrangements have survived quite lengthy periods of crisis, as in Great Britain and the United States during World War II, in which the use of extraordinary powers by the executive came to a halt with the end of the wartime emergency.

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Dictatorship | Definition, Characteristics, Countries, & Facts

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Dictatorship, form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations. Dictators usually resort to force or fraud to gain despotic political power, which they maintain through the use of intimidation, terror, and the suppression of civil liberties.

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Democracy and Monarchy

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Featured Teaching Kits

Teacher-approved stories, resources, and worksheets for teaching about the United States Constitution in your classroom, courtesy of Junior Scholastic, the middle school Social Studies classroom magazine

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The Constitution | Free Middle School Teaching Resources

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Featured Teaching Kits Teacher-approved stories, resources, and worksheets for teaching about the United States Constitution in your classroom, courtesy of Junior Scholastic, the middle school Social Studies classroom magazine