The balance of power is a central concept in inter-national relations that first came into widespread
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use in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though many different meanings have been associated with this concept, it refers generally to the principle that powerful states in an anarchic international envi-ronment will respond to one state’s increase in power by striving to increase their own levels of power. The result of this self-interested action by states is thought to be a general power equilibrium among the most powerful states in the system.
Because of the interaction of states’ self-interested strategies, no one state is able to dominate the international system. This concept is thus held to explain why there has never been—nor is there likely to be—an overarching world government.
Scholars of international relations have often remarked disparagingly on the ambiguity surround-ing the meansurround-ing of the term balance of power. Rich-ard Cobden once declared scathingly, “The theory of a balance of power is a mere chimera—a creation of the politician’s brain—a phantasm, without defi-nite form or tangible existence.” In a noteworthy critique, Inis Claude identifies the contradictory manners in which scholars have referred to the con-cept: descriptively as a situation that inheres among states, prescriptively as a policy that statesmen should follow, and analytically as a system that regulates conduct among states and limits the range of possible international political outcomes. Within each category, there remains considerable variation in the way that the term is used. When referring to the balance of power as a situation, for instance, scholars sometimes use it to describe a situation of equilibrium, sometimes to describe its opposite, a situation of imbalance, and sometimes as a syn-onym for any distribution of power. Similarly, discussions of the balance of power as a policy sometimes refer to a policy of maintaining an equi-librium with other states and other times to a policy of maintaining a favorable balance of power—that is, a preponderance of power. Because of this con-fusion about the concept’s meaning, and because of many scholars’ tendency to slip between conflicting meanings of the concept with relatively little aware-ness, readers must take care to ascertain which meaning of the concept an author is employing at a particular time.
Despite these sources of disagreement, scholars of the balance of power share many assumptions.
These assumptions are also held in general by real-ist scholars of international relations, making the
balance of power a central realist concept. The state is viewed as the central unit of international politics in a system that is described as anarchical, a term that refers simply to the absence in the international context of an overarching world sovereign—anar-chy in this context neither means nor implies chaos.
Yet, because there is no international equivalent to Thomas Hobbes’s domestic Leviathan, states—
which are assumed to desire, at a very minimum, survival—must jealously guard their own security.
They must be ever circumspect, as the inherent uncertainty of the international system means that even states that seem benign today might become threatening tomorrow. In such a situation, states that see an emerging power on the horizon should attempt to counteract this new power. They have two primary means at their disposal as they attempt to balance against a rising potential threat: (1) they may increase their own military strength through such efforts as armament or (2) they may form alli-ances with other states against the potential threat.
The first is known as internal balancing and the second as external balancing.
Assessing the Balance of Power as System Of the various ways of viewing the balance of power discussed, the view of the balance of power as system is the one most relevant to analytical theories of international relations. The claim is that the balance of power imposes a degree of order on the international system that has some positive consequences. Two questions in particular are the subjects of debate in this realm: (1) the automatic or manual nature of the balance of power and (2) the specific outcomes the balance of power is expected to produce.
Is the Balance of Power a Law?
One claim made by some scholars of the balance of power draws on an analogy to laissez-faire eco-nomics and the “invisible hand” thought to bring about a positive collective outcome, the efficient operation of the market, from the self-interested action of individuals. Just as individual producers and consumers do not intend to produce the mar-ket but merely intend to achieve individual profit, individual states do not intend to produce equilib-rium. Rather, each individual state aims to achieve
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the preponderant power that will ensure its own security. Yet, as each state attempts to achieve this goal, the collective outcome is a rough balance of power, at least among the major states, because no state is able to achieve preponderance when other states simultaneously seek the same goal. Thus, the general security of the system, and the survival of the major state units, is ensured. To some scholars, then, the balance of power expresses a general law of how the international system operates regard-less of the intentions of the individual states. No balance of power policy, in this view, is necessary to produce the outcome of equilibrium.
In contrast, however, some scholars view the balance of power as semi-automatic or manual rather than fully automatic. In the semi-automatic view, a specific country able and willing to play the role of “holder of the balance” is needed for the balance of power system to operate. This country has sufficient strength that, by switching allegiance from one set of countries to another, it can alter the balance of power within a particular area. This state is usually in a unique position relative to the other states, possessing some distance from the other states but nevertheless being close enough to affect and be affected by these states. This state, unlike the others, also makes a conscious decision to undertake the role of balancer. The paradig-matic example of such a state is 19th-century Britain, the geographic position and military power of which made it an able holder of the balance.
Finally, some scholars view the balance of power as being fully manual, able to function only by the careful and deliberate manipulation of skillful statespeople. In these latter two views, in contrast to the view of the balance of power as automatic, the balance of power can sometimes fail to operate effectively.
The failure of states to balance appropriately can perhaps be partially explained by the concept of a collective action problem. Although it may be in the interest of a group of states to balance against the power of a rising threat, each individual state might prefer that the other states undertake the burden of doing so. Such behavior is known as buck passing, and the result might be that no state mobilizes against the rising power until it is too late. Such an explanation might explain why a coalition formed against Adolf Hitler only at such a late date. Similarly, states may possess options
other than balancing in their attempt to maintain security. These options, which may be particularly tempting for weak states, include allying with the rising threat, or simply hiding.
Awareness of the potential of the collective action problem to thwart effective balancing behavior led to Kenneth Waltz’s claim in his semi-nal Theory of Internatiosemi-nal Politics that a bipolar distribution of power is more stable than is a mul-tipolar distribution of power. When only two superpowers exist, according to Waltz, there is less uncertainty than in a multipolar world—each state knows who the potential enemy is and is able to respond via internal balancing rather than rely on external balancing, which is easily prone to miscal-culation and war. Waltz thus provides a parsimoni-ous account of one variable likely to affect how automatically—and effectively—the balance of power operates.
What Are the Consequences of the Balance of Power System?
A second important debate concerns precisely what desirable consequences the balance of power is expected to produce. Some theories view the bal-ance of power system as one that helps bring about peace, but others dispute that this is a primary outcome of the balance of power. The balance of power is thought to contribute to relative—if not absolute—peace among major powers by ensuring that no state possesses sufficient power to conquer all other states. Thus, it is thought, the balance of power constitutes a disincentive to extreme aggres-sion. However, as Claude perceptively notes, equi-librium is unlikely to be as much of a deterrent to aggressive behavior as would be a preponderance of power vested in a countervailing coalition.
Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organski and the power transition school similarly cast doubt on the sup-posed relationship between balance and peace.
They argue that, far from causing peace, relative stability or balance between two powers is a quite unstable and bellicose situation. A significant dis-parity of power between two states, they argue, is likely to result in peace because there is no doubt which state would prevail in a war. The weaker state is thus cognizant of its limitations and defers appropriately to the stronger power. War is most likely once the weaker state begins to approach
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parity with the stronger state because both the weaker and stronger parties then possess incen-tives to fight, the weaker to improve its power position and the stronger to prevent the emergence of the weaker as an equal contender.
Balance of power partisans respond to these critiques in a number of ways. First, they assert that, though preponderance in a specific context might indeed be the best deterrent to aggression, this is not a generalizable rule for system-level international politics because one cannot deter-mine a priori which states should possess a pre-ponderance of power in the service of peace. The balance of power system is thus more appropriate in this regard. Furthermore, balance of power scholars take issue with Organski’s claim that dis-parity contributes to peace because disdis-parity and the unequal treatment that occurs under it creates the motivation for war in Organski’s theory, even if war can only occur once relative parity is reached. Furthermore, such a war is more likely to be a major, systemic catastrophe, what Robert Gilpin calls a “hegemonic war,” than is a war that occurs between two relatively balanced states to rectify a slight imbalance perceived to exist between the two. Finally, balance of power theorists may assert that although the system does not succeed in completely eradicating war, it does achieve other arguably desirable outcomes.
Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the balance of power system maintains the status quo.
Yet, one notable feature of the balance of power system has been the occasional sacrifice of smaller powers in order to create a more desirable distribu-tion of power among the major powers. Historically, the partitions of Poland provide an illuminating example of such a dynamic. Thus, it seems that the balance of power does not maintain the status quo in its entirety, though it may succeed most of the time in preserving the independence of the major units of the international system. At a very mini-mum, though, the balance of power system is thought to prevent any one state from achieving world domination, even if war may occasionally be a necessary means of achieving this end.
How one assesses the outcomes produced by the balance of power system may depend partly on what one conceives of as the alternative systems of power management. One major ideological com-petitor to the balance of power system has been the
system of collective security. Collective security systems seek to provide a radical alternative to the self-help system that undergirds the balance of power. States that are members of the collective security community declare that a threat to any member state constitutes a threat to the whole. In theory, such a threat, once it emerges, is met with the united force of the community. Collective secu-rity thus aims to achieve a universal and automatic response to international aggression, something akin to the role of law enforcement in the domestic context. However, scholars have noted that many problems plague collective security even in theory, and it has yet to prove itself successful in practice.
The failure of the League of Nations as a collective security organization is viewed as evidence of fatal flaws in collective security as a tool of power man-agement, most notably because collective security theorists fail to detail how the collective action problem discussed earlier might be overcome.
Thus, though the balance of power may not be ideal as a system of power management, it is often viewed as operating via a more consistent logic than is the collective security alternative.
The Balance of Power and the Empirical Record
The historical record of state behavior is relevant to assessing balance of power theory. Realist scholars often cite the “long century” from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of World War I as evidence of the relative peace and order that the balance of power provides, as well as of the general propensity of states to balance. However, the idea that balancing accurately describes state behavior in general has been challenged by recent scholar-ship. Historian Paul Schroeder has argued that states have historically engaged in a wide range of behaviors in response to threats, behaviors not at all limited to balancing. Likewise, some scholars have argued that the balance of power is a rather Eurocentric concept, and that the history of the world outside Europe provides numerous examples of hierarchical systems in which states did not effectively balance against overweening power.
China during the Warring States period is a notable example of such a system.
Post–cold war developments in international politics have also caused some to question basic
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balance of power arguments. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, realist scholars such as Waltz and John Mearsheimer predicted that a rival to U.S. power would soon emerge because it was contra balance of power theory for such a superpower to remain long unchecked. However, a decade and a half later, a clear rival to the United States still had not emerged. Two amendments of balance of power theory have been used to explain this apparent anomaly.
First, Stephen Walt argued that states do not sim-ply balance against material power, but against threat. Thus, states should not balance against a powerful state viewed as having benign intentions.
The explanation for the failure of other states to bal-ance against the United States, then, lies in the U.S.
ability to convince others that the United States does not pose an actual threat to other states’ security.
U.S. democracy or its involvement in the post–World War II liberal international order might explain why the United States is able to convince others of its benign intentions. One should note that balance of threat theory represents a significant departure from the traditional realist skepticism of reliance on esti-mates of other states’ intentions to ensure one’s own security. Precisely because state intentions can so easily change, a conservative statesperson should balance against power, rather than against estima-tions of threat. Likewise, evaluating other states’
intentions is an extremely difficult task and one that, as standard histories of both world wars reveal, statespeople often do not do well.
The second attempt to explain the purported failure of other states to balance argues that what constitutes balancing has changed in recent decades. States may not be engaging in traditional forms of balancing behavior, but they are, some argue, engaging in “soft balancing.” This refers to political, rather than military, efforts to restrain the actions of states possessing disproportionate power; the refusal of many European states to sup-port the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003, for example, might be viewed as “soft balancing.”
Finally, some argue that changes occurred in the 20th century made it more difficult for the balance of power system to operate. Democracy has prolif-erated in many regions of the world, arguably making it difficult for states to make the rapid adjustments in foreign policy loyalties that the balance of power requires. Likewise, technological
changes in warfare, particularly nuclear develop-ments, may have changed the meaning of the dis-tribution of power, making it more difficult to estimate, and may have likewise increased the costs of using war as a means of correcting power asymmetries.
Alternative Views of the Balance of Power Though the balance of power is a traditionally real-ist concept, liberal and constructivreal-ist interpreta-tions of the balance of power do exist. Hedley Bull and other scholars of the English School of interna-tional relations emphasize the way in which the balance of power, rooted in understandings about the possibility for mutual advantage among states, provides order and predictability to the interna-tional system. Others have called this the “associa-tional” view of the balance of power, in contrast to the “adversarial” view that is traditionally realist.
Departing even further from the realist position, constructivists highlight the contextual and social aspects of the ideas of balance and power. Richard Little, for instance, has argued that the prevalence of the metaphor of the balance of power in discussions of international politics contributed to a shift in mainstream views of power from hierarchical and agent-based to structural and relational. This con-structivist critique relates to a broader critique of the balance of power—the difficulty of defining, and thus measuring, power. The typical realist response to such a critique is that although assessing the dis-tribution of power, a necessary enterprise if the bal-ance of power is to function, is by nature an art and not a science, statespeople are accustomed to mak-ing such estimations and are usually in broad agree-ment about which states constitute the most power-ful states in the system at any given point in time.
Brooke C. Greene
See also Collective Action Problem; Power Transition Theory; Realism in International Relations
Further Readings
Claude, I. (1967). Power and international relations.
New York: Random House.
Jervis, R. (1997). System effects: Complexity in political and social life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Little, R. (2007). The balance of power in international relations: Metaphors, myths, and models. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge University Press.