ABSTRACT
This paper calls into question both the logic and the empirical validity of the assumption of anarchy in international relations and its principal derivatives and ingredients, namely, that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the absence of a ‘world government’ and the ‘reign of anarchy’; that world politics is more anarchic than domestic politics; and that durable and genuine cooperation among sovereign states becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, under the circumstances. The paper concludes that contemporary world politics is more hierarchic than domestic politics and that there are factors such as inter-subjective knowledge and shared understandings which in the absence of world government provide the basis for order and stability in the international system.
We should encourage scholars to ask new questions. Problematizing the things that communities have naturalized is at least as important a function of science as finding the right answers. Alexander WendtCitation[1]