Discourse of Anarchy in the Theory of International Relations

This article discusses the development of the anarchy discourse in international relations theory It questions the main problematiques around which the discourse of anarchy is organised and asks whether anarchy is still a valid concept to understand international relations. The mainstream IR theory analyses anarchy from an institutional framework, and is based on the assumption that state relations is sufficient to describe and understand anarchy. Post-positivist period have developed diverse criticisms to this conceptualisation. The article evaluates the criticisms of postmodernist, historical sociological, postcolonial and feminist approaches to the concept of anarchy. One of the main theses of this article is that the concept of anarchy can meaningfully be used to analyse international relations only if it is connected to social relations (and more specifically to social relations of capitalism with respect to understanding present international system). Therefore, the approach adopted in this article overlaps with many of the criticisms of anarchy by postmodernism, feminism, but more specifically with recent historical sociological approaches and the postcolonial studies. Another argument of the article is that the anarchy/order opposition can not totally be eradicated unless the social relations sustaining them can be altered.