This title was first published in 2002: Questioning the most fundamental assumptions of international relations theory, this absorbing work compares and contrasts domestic and international politics regarding the issues of order and disorder taking into account aspects of the two realms which have been neglected by scholarship until now. Challenging the view that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between the absence of a world government and international anarchy and that durable and genuine cooperation among sovereign states becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, under the circumstances, this text is suitable for upper-level undergraduates, graduates and scholars of international relations.

1. The realist tradition

This original and impressively researched book explores the concept of anarchy—"unimposed order"—as the most humane and stable form of order in a chaotic world. Mohammed A. Bamyeh traces the historical foundations of anarchy and convincingly presents it as an alternative to both tyranny and democracy. He shows how anarchy is the best manifestation of civic order, of a healthy civil society, and of humanity's noblest attributes. A cogent and compelling critique of the modern state, this provocative book clarifies how anarchy may be both a guide for rational social order and a science of humanity.

This book elaborates and defends law without the state. It explains why the state is illegitimate, dangerous and unnecessary.

Jack Snyder is a leading American international relations scholar with an international reputation for his research on IR theory and US Foreign policy. This book collects many of his most important essays into a single volume. Exploring a liberal realist theory of international politics, the book is arranged around three key subject areas: Anarchy and Its Effects The Challenges of Democratic Consolidation Empire and the Promotion of a Liberal Order With a new introduction to frame the selected essays, this collection examines how developing nations evolve political systems, and fit into a world dominated by liberal-democracies. It looks to the future for the current dominant powers in a changing world of international relations and at the challenges to their leadership. Featuring a new conclusion, developed from the assembled chapters, this is a fascinating and vital collection of scholarship from one of the most influential theorists of his generation. Power and Progress is an invaluable text for students and scholars of international relations, and those interested in the debates on liberalism and realism, and comparative politics.

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: C, Macquarie University, course: IRPG 841 Theory of International Relations, language: English, abstract: This essay will argue that anarchy is indeed an important characteristic, but certainly not the basic premise of international relations as a discipline. To support this, the papers first section will be a brief examination of the relevance and application of anarchy in different theoretical approaches. Starting with those strongly based on anarchy, the paper will progress to approaches which do not concentrate on anarchy. These theories will be limited only to those closely linked to the neorealist line of thought. Finally the paper will present and evaluate critical approaches to the perception of anarchy as the founding principle of IR.

This book provides a contextual account of the first anarchist theory of war and peace, and sheds new light on our contemporary understandings of anarchy in International Relations. Although anarchy is arguably the core concept of the discipline of international relations, scholarship has largely ignored the insights of the first anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon's anarchism was a critique of the projects of national unification, universal dominion, republican statism and the providentialism at the heart of enlightenment social theory. While his break with the key tropes of modernity pushed him to the margins of political theory, Prichard links Proudhon back into the republican tradition of political thought from which his ideas emerged, and shows how his defence of anarchy was a critique of the totalising modernist projects of his contemporaries. Given that we are today moving beyond the very statist processes Proudhon objected to, his writings present an original take on how to institutionalise justice and order in our radically pluralised, anarchic international order. Rethinking the concept and understanding of anarchy, Justice, Order and Anarchy will be of interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, anarchism and international relations theory.