INTRODUCTION:

International relations as a discipline of social science have always been predominated with providing knowledge about the social system and of world politics, involving the epistemological concerns, as well as the philosophical debates. Such issues involve the ethics and justice concerns such as:

• How we know what we know?
• Why do we do what we do?
• Why do nations go to war?
• Or what causes conflict in society?
• Are the decisions that we make and the actions that we take our own, the decision of free will, or are they
determined by forces beyond the control of you or any other individual?

These are the questions that are addressed by the agency structure debate, and emphasizes the term the agency structure problem in International Relations. This article will focus on this problem, demonstrating the nature of the debate hereby establishing its significance to the study of international relations.

THE PROBLEM:

In order to look at the significance of the agency structure problem, it is important to establish first, the many identities that it is associated with: individual and society, action and structure, individuals and state, actor and system, agents and structure, and individualism and Holism.

Kuhn’s work on paradigms became a common way of talking about international theory, where a paradigm is a fundamental set of assumptions and ideas that members of a particular community adopt. This becomes the dominant paradigm.

The dominant post-war paradigm of international relations: “realism” was based on the belief that the key-way to understand international politics was through the study of individual decision makers and states. Waltz in “Theory of International Politics”, believed that the structure of the international system forced agents to “play by determined rules or perish”. Believing that the system is pre-fixed. That, the system does not change, it is the actors that are different they change. However, when looking at the epistemological point of view, the structure of which Waltz spoke of did not exist!

According to Hollis and Smith, in an article about structure and agency, the problem became relevant in IR due to the events of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, especially the Cold War. The events in Europe “sparked” a great interest in the subject.

Waltz’s conception of the role of structure in International Relations had been criticized for failing to deal with change, and his theory was seen as “hollow”, with the collapse of the communist block. The dominant paradigms’ understanding of the nature and role of agency and structure was a fundamental weakness. New explanations were required. Thus, the agency structure problem acquired significance because the size of the changes forced theorists into radical rethinking.

Also, it was unclear, what kind of political and security structures will replace those of the Cold War. Whether, it will be a new-world order, or a new-world disorder. Such is the case as, what kind of structures can international systems take after the Cold War. It is like looking at NATO: what do you do now that the Cold War is over? Its future looks bleak.

Realism, the dominant paradigm, failed to take into account these changes, and with the collapse of the international structure at the end of the Cold War, the issue of what we mean by agency and structure became more significant then ever in IR.

It is also possible to claim that the agency structure problem was significant as it exposed and showed a central weakness in Waltz’s account of structure. As, the Cold War has restored the logical question of the agency structure problem in IR. If Waltz’s theory cannot say anything about the collapse of the Cold War system, then what is there left for him to say about international structure. He is left open for criticisms.

However, although the theories could not account for the transformations and the dramatic changes in the international structure, it was clear that there needed to be a new “vision” at what counts as an agent. This needs to be re-examined. This is important as for neo-realists, the human factor of agency, was essentially regarded irrelevant and unimportant, at the structural level of explanation. Yet, the collapse of the Cold War seemed to rely heavily on the active and calculating agents of human agency.

However, it is not just the proven weakness of Waltz, and the explanations of the Cold War system, that make the agency structure problem significant to IR. It can be said that, one of the main reasons for the significance of the agency structure problem, is that, it could be used to understand what causes war and violent behavior. War and violent conflict has been a continuous aspect of society, and the human conditions makes the agency structure problem significant.

A firm developer this point involves Gidden’s structuration theory. Dr V. Jabri, in her book “Discourses on Violence”, utilizes structuration theory to show how agency and structure are inter-related. In the situation of war, violence is an aspect of social and political life, both are inter-related. Hence, without agency, you cannot have structures, and without structures you cannot have agencies. Therefore it seems that Gidden’s theory of structuration accounts for another reason why agency structure is significant to IR.

CONCLUSION:

To conclude, the agency structure debate is relevant, as it attempts to account for changes and the continuities in the world of international politics. Structuralists and realists have been criticized for being unable to explain change. As, for the ideas of the “dominant paradigm”, Hollis and Smith insist that no one must first decide if the social world can be examined in the same way as the natural world, or if it possesses a completely separate domain.

Only once this decision has been made, can the agency structure problem be addressed within a single theory of knowledge or paradigm. It is hopefully clear, from the above arguments that the issues surrounding agency and structure are far from resolved. This is not just the case only in International Relations, but throughout the social scientific world. As, if scholars ignore the issues involved with the agency structure debate, then it is a debate that scholars risk at their peril.

Article Source: http://www.articleset.com