The balance of power and the power struggles of the polis

Abstract

The balance of power is fundamental to the discipline of international relations, but its accuracy in explaining the historical record has been disputed. For international relations, balance of power theory represents a distinct approach which details the behaviour of states to counter hegemonic threats within an anarchic system. This article reimagines the balance of power tradition by highlighting its early modern foundations. Through providing a historical contextualization of the balance of power, this article shows how republican thinkers sought to balance against concentrations of power in order to safeguard political liberty. Early modern republics grappled with the challenge of maintaining a division of power within the polis in a co-constitutive relationship with the international. A republican polis could not secure liberty if under external domination or if the polis itself expanded to imperial proportions. Imperial expansion and the martial politics this entailed have traditionally been understood as incompatible to the safeguarding of political liberty. Recognizing this republican influence can uncover the co-constitutive connections between the internal power dynamics of the polis and the international sphere.

Keywords

Balance of power early modern history international theory republicanism

Introduction

The balance of power is one of the oldest and most established theories within international relations (IR), but it is a theory that is open to a wide and bewildering range of interpretations. IR scholars have looked to the balance of power as a theory used to describe both an equilibrium of power and as a term synonymous to power politics (Haas, 1953; Wight, 1979: 168–185). Critics have long attacked the concept for meaning ‘almost anything’ (Pollard, 1923: 58), while for realists, the balance of power is central to the theorizing of power relations. Modern realism looks to the balance of power as a theory used to defend a Westphalian ‘golden age’ of enlightened statesmen following realist principles of balancing behaviour (Schweller, 2009: 249). The questionable historical accuracy of this myth (Schroeder, 1994) has not prevented realism claiming a mantle on balance of power theory. Revisionist accounts of the balance of power, however, have argued that it also contains liberal elements (Boucoyannis, 2007) and can be traced to a republican tradition (Deudney, 2007). This interpretation of the balance of power rests on the influence of classical republican ideas of active citizenship, civic virtue, mixed constitutions and the restraints of checks and balances on power (Andersen, 2016; Devetak, 2013; Hendrickson, 2018). These republican ideas remain a part of modern IR theory but have been widely neglected due to the ahistorical accounts of systemic approaches. Modern interpretations of the balance of power within IR present a utilitarian theory of cost–benefit analysis which seeks to depoliticize the political sphere by examining only the ability of states to extract and mobilize resources (Nexon, 2009a). This systemic take on the balance of power neglects the lessons of domestic checks and balances because they are seen to operate in different contexts. The balance of power is therefore treated largely as a law of state behaviour. This article breaks new ground by arguing that the balance of power was a normative ideal for republican authors concerned with the political liberty of the polis. Early modern republicans sought to reject a view of divinely conferred, monarchical rule that was exclusive and unaccountable both within the polis and across the international sphere.

IR has developed the balance of power as a distinctly international theory. In doing so, the origins of balancing power within the polis as a check on tyranny have been neglected. But Alfred Vagts (1948) argued that the domestic context of checks and balances ‘preceded the balance of power among states’ (p. 94). Genealogies of the balance of power have traced the idea of balancing against the accumulation of power back to the city-states of republican Florence and Venice (Butterfield, 1973; Janzekovic, 2019; Little, 2007). Scholars have also developed the balance of power by looking to some of its earliest proponents found in republican theorists such as Machiavelli (Gilbert, 1965; Nicolson, 1954; Sullivan, 1973; Waltz, 2001) and Guicciardini (Butterfield, 1966; Ghervas, 2017; Gilbert, 1965). Francesco Guicciardini has also been acknowledged within IR as a major influence on the development of balance of power as a theory (Knutsen, 1992: 58–60; Luard, 1992: 2; Wight, 1979: ix–xii). For Guicciardini, the balance of power was a way to maintain an equilibrium of power that would safeguard political liberty. Although Thucydides inspired the work of Guicciardini, Thucydides did not use terms such as balance or equilibrium; and as Knutsen (2007) argues, it was Guicciardini who was the first to use the balance of power in a modern sense. These republican beginnings are significant because the republics of Florence and Venice were the first actors to link the checks and balances within the polis to a balance in foreign affairs (Arcidiacono, 2011; Vagts, 1948: 99). As Guicciardini (1998) argued, ‘internal good order and the rule of law would be of little use if the city were subject to being overcome by force’ (p. 199). Linking power contestation within the polis to the international shows that political liberty is dependent on preventing the accumulation of power from unaccountable sources of domination.

Republicanism at its most basic level is a theory centred on the desire for political liberty (Skinner, 1998: 17). The republican tradition presents an older language of freedom that views liberty as antithetical to slavery. Freedom for individuals rests on the ideals of active citizens and an independent polis free from external constraint. Republican liberty can only be secure when there are checks on power to prevent unaccountable forms of domination (Pettit, 2001). The discipline of political theory has developed a significant body of work devoted to republican liberty (Slaughter, 2018; Van Gelderen and Skinner, 2002; Viroli, 2002). Defined as neo-Roman, Pettit (2001) traces the republican ideal of non-domination from the origins of the Roman Republic, to Machiavelli, to the English Civil War before finally crossing the Atlantic and residing within the early United States (p. 19). This tradition prescribes normative principles of self-government and citizen participation and is influenced by historical figures such as Polybius, whose support for a mixed constitution, checks and balances shows that ‘liberty’ in the republican sense means freedom from an ‘arbitrary’ power (Von Fritz, 1975: 349).

IR has largely missed the significance of republican thought because it was first and foremost a critique of absolutist imperialism. Republican polities existed before the development of nation states (Onuf, 1998) and evolved within a context of overlapping and blurred boundaries of dynastic politics when the form of the state was not settled. Independence for the polis meant rejecting dynastic monarchs who sought to extend their powers across multiple territories. The development of republican freedom against universal monarchy therefore presents a narrative that blurs the distinctions between the internal and the external. The following analysis builds in part upon Daniel Deudney (2007), by looking to the balance of power within republicanism. However, this argument differs by focusing on balancing within civic republicanism and the balance of power as a goal to secure political liberty. Deudney’s ‘republican security theory’ opens new ground for IR, but neglects the civic republican tradition (Brown, 2008; Deudney, 2007: 15) and is mired in a presentist methodology celebrating ‘human security’, which would be an alien concept to early modern republicans. Deudney’s theoretical approach also presents a ‘Waltzian’ interpretation of republican polities as understood through the discourse of distinct units among anarchy. This approach remains tied to a systemic cost calculus theory of balancing based on material resources. By looking to republicanism as a theory of political liberty, this article argues that a republican balance of power was a normative strategy to prevent domination. The term ‘republicanism’ has become synonymous with ambiguity, and historians have become fond of quoting the oft-repeated line from John Adams that ‘there is not a single more unintelligible word in the English language than republicanism’. John Adams (1787) was, however, a passionate defender of the notion that a polity faces two choices, rule, ‘either by a monarchy and standing army, or, by a balance in the constitution’. The lack of a political balance was seen to lead to ‘everlasting fluctuations, revolutions, and horrors’. Recognizing this republican goal of seeking a balance of power within the polis demonstrates a sophisticated normative approach to securing political liberty.

Connecting political liberty and the balance of power creates a co-constitutive view of internal conflicts and checks on power to the international sphere. This republican argument develops throughout this article in four parts. The first section argues that the conventional view within IR of the balance of power has become too narrow in focusing solely on easily quantifiable metrics that tell us little about the wider context. The second section develops this critique by looking to early modern history and presenting a deeper historical contextualization of the balance of power. Placing the balance of power within an early modern context demonstrates how republican polities sought to prevent the accumulation of power within the polis against the context of universal monarchy. The third section looks at this division of power within the republic, before showing in the final part how this division of power was shaped or threatened by the international sphere. The twin challenges of external domination or the expansion and collapse of the republic presented a security threat to the safeguarding of republican liberty. This article concludes by arguing that linking checks and balances to the balance of power can provide new avenues for research on political liberty and IR.

The balance of power within IR

Realism is fundamentally concerned with the nature of power, and the balance of power has become the cornerstone of realist theory (Kaufman et al., 2007: 2). The core claim of structural realism is that there will be inevitable balancing against the accumulation of capabilities within the constraints of an anarchic system. For Waltz (1979), balancing is split into a distinct and separate process between the domestic and the international. Internal balancing is represented by developing military resources, while external balancing is classed as the securing of alliances. In making this divide, Waltz’s systemic theory is unable to fully theorize the co-constitutive nature of the balance of power. As the following section examines, the narrow research concerned with quantifiable metrics of military power has led to an inherent confusion over the nature of balancing behaviour.

IR continues to see balance of power theory as one of the oldest and most enduring aspects of international thought (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2009), but there is little consensus or coherence in agreeing on what balancing behaviour actually entails. Structural realist accounts of the balance of power have resulted in an ‘intellectual monoculture’ (Kirshner, 2015) of equating state behaviour to simplistic assumptions of economic market behaviour (p. 155). The neo-positivism of these approaches have focused on a utilitarian account of power based on easily quantifiable metrics (Liff, 2016), which has created a fixation on material resources reducing balancing behaviour to simply a case of measuring resources in a cost calculus manner. Since the end of the Cold War, the structural account of the balance of power has been challenged in reconciling structural theory with the historical record (Wohlforth et al., 2007, 2009). This has led to the development of a range of scholarship which seeks to expand the concept of balancing. The expansion of balancing behaviour includes underbalancing (Schweller, 2004), balancing under unipolarity (He, 2012), balancing as great power management of international society (Little, 2007), a ‘granular’ theory of balancing (Lobell, 2018) and the inclusion of concepts such as ‘soft’ balancing (Pape, 2005). The conceptual degeneracy of these approaches attempt to save balance of power theory by adding a variety of types. As Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (2009) argues, these debates have led to ‘differing-and often contradictory-predictions about both individual state behaviour and systemic outcomes’ (p. 349). It is therefore unable to make clear what are the conditions under which balancing occurs or even what balancing behaviour entails.

The subject of IR has been shaped by its claim to the balance of power as a distinctly ‘international’ theory, and IR has historically defined itself as a discipline through creating a sharp distinction between the internal and the external (Walker, 1993). Kenneth Waltz (1979) confidently asserted that if there was one accepted theory of IR then ‘the balance of power is it’ (p. 117). The divorce between the domestic and the international within Waltz’s structural realism has led to a relative neglect of considering the power relations within the polis. Deudney’s (2007) republican security theory attempts to correct this oversight by arguing that republican states seek to avoid hierarchy within the polis and anarchy in the international sphere. But Deudney’s account of republicanism avoids engaging with the civic republican tradition and the concerns of other republican authors, such as the Federalist papers, with the vices, passions and emotions of human agency (Publius, [1788] 2000: 30). Deudney’s republican security theory argues that the rising destructive ability of technology on a global scale provides evidence for the need to create a global federal republic, which is then able to escape the effects of intense anarchy on a planetary scale. Deudney’s focus on material contexts reduces the issue of technology and political violence into a technological determinist view of history that neglects the issue of political interactions and associations (Herrera, 2003: 569). Recognizing the normative elements of republicanism as a theory of liberty can develop an alternative account to the materialist reading of the balance of power used by structural realists as a law of behaviour.

To develop a clearer account of the balance of power there needs to be a greater focus on its role in challenging hegemonic power and in recognizing that the balance of power has changed over time. The balance of power is itself a contested concept which has evolved within different contexts. Current realist approaches to the balance of power have become overly fixated on easily quantifiable resources based on like-minded units within a timeless anarchic system. This has led to a limited conception of power that presumes the equality of actors differentiated only by material means. The problem of this approach is that structural realist theories of IR equate an anarchic system with ‘sovereign equality’ (Donnelly, 2006: 144) and ‘unitary actors’ (Waltz, 1979: 118). This presumes an international system of equals rather than of unequal relations (Donnelly, 2006: 155). In theorizing about the behaviour of equal units, structural realists encourage an almost mythic understanding of the balance of power leading to equilibrium. Waltz’s positivist approach implies that balancing is ‘automatic’ and an unintended consequence of systemic behaviour (Sheehan, 1989: 126). This anarchic and systemic approach to the balance of power is challenged by the historical record and its claims for almost ‘inevitable’ balancing are problematic (Liff, 2016: 423). In looking to the great power politics of the eighteenth century, the balancing predictions of structural realist behaviour have been identified as ‘more exceptions’ than the norm (Sofka, 2001: 148).

Structural realists view the balance of power as the natural result of relations between sovereign equals within an anarchic system. Focusing solely on balancing between functionally alike unitary actors presents an ahistorical account that overlooks the challenge of hierarchical rule. Early modern political order included multiple dynastic regimes based on hierarchical status with overlapping, heterogeneous territories (Nexon, 2009b). In looking to the experience of early modern history and the rise of dynastic empires, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, Benno Teschke (2002) argues that the ‘inter-dynastic relations’ of this period, coupled with an economic system of territorial wealth meant that the balance of power ‘did not bring about automatic power balancing’ as structural realist theorists would expect, instead, it created dynastic practices of ‘elimination’ (p. 15). As the following section explains, the balance of power was also an early modern strategy to challenge the hierarchical order of universal monarchy. Recognizing this aspect of the balance of power demonstrates a connection to republicanism.

Early modern history and the balance of power

IR theory has developed by building upon the legacies of early modern European history and political thought (Walker, 1993). This is evidenced in the way realist theory, as a constructed tradition, legitimizes itself through paying homage to early modern authors. But as the following explores, early modern history shows that balancing behaviour developed from seeking an alternative to hierarchical rule within the polis and against dynastic political orders. Deudney’s (2007: 127) interpretation of republicanism considers monarchical absolutism only through the topography of Europe, or the philosophy of republican guides to cultivate virtue within the monarch (Deudney, 2007: 68–69). But for early modern republics, balancing against the accumulation of power was a normative means to secure political liberty. This section will, therefore, develop an alternative republican reading of early modern history and its relationship to the balance of power.

Early modern history shows that political order was based on a vision of universal monarchy and the concept of hierarchical order. The relative neglect of ideas about hierarchical status and precedence within IR (Lake, 2009) means that structural accounts of IR have no conception of how to engage with the political order of the Medieval and early modern world. Conventional accounts of the development of the international states system describe dynastic monarchies consolidating their rule over territorially distinct areas. This ignores the historical areas of overlapping authority, such as the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, as ‘anomalies’ (Keene, 2002: 61). Republican conceptions of liberty, therefore, developed through the rejection of being subsumed by the dynastic interests of monarchs seeking to extend their power over heterogeneous territories. Republicanism did not evolve within the context of bounded sovereignty in an international state system, instead, the language of republicanism evolved against the idiom of universal monarchy and concerns of power and prerogative (Onuf, 1991: 433).

Hierarchical orders defined the politics of IR for early modern republics. This is evidenced in the way the relationship between the status and power of a polity was understood. In breaking away from Habsburg absolutism, the Dutch republic was referred to as the ‘Hautes Puissances’, or the ‘great power’, because they were not seen as part of the dynastic relations of the European monarchs and lacked the prestige associated with the status of ‘majesty’ (Keene, 2013: 274). Universal monarchy represented an ideal of political rule as ordered and fixed. This evolved from strands of Medieval thought which identified a ‘hierarchy of complexity and value’ within political life, ‘an arrangement whose basis was ideal and therefore utterly static’ (Bouwsma, 1984: 4). One figure who represented this ideal was the Habsburg Emperor Charles V who represented a genuine promise of fulfilling the role of unifying Christendom under a single monarch. His titles as Emperor, ruler of the Netherlands, King of Italy, as well as the King of Spain with all of Spain’s New World possessions, showed a real prospect of universal monarchy (Bartelson, 2010: 227). English republicans of the sixteenth and seventeenth century viewed the Spanish monarchy and the House of Habsburg as a threat because ‘they pretended to a universal monarchy of all the known world’ (Pincus, 1992: 18).

The development of republican independence was based on overcoming deeply ingrained conceptions of Monarchia Universalis. Within a static political order of hierarchy based on medieval conceptions of religious value, political domination was equated to slavery. The hierarchical conception of universal monarchy saw subjects as ‘subordinate members of a universal system’ that had ‘no right to govern themselves’ (Bouwsma, 1984: 6). Republican thought challenged this by arguing that individual liberty ‘would promptly collapse into absolute servitude’ without the freedom of the polis (Skinner, 1984). Guicciardini (1998) illustrates this republican view when he argued that a ‘single monarchy’ within Italy was the greatest threat to liberty (p. 117). Although republicanism was not the only challenge against universal monarchy, it was distinct because of its goal for achieving political liberty. At a time in which universal monarchy and the Medieval ideal of order was defined by its rigidity as a fixed system, early modern republicans keen to preserve autonomy and liberty saw the fluidity of the balance of power as an alternative and solution to the hierarchical order expressed by the divine right of kings (Long, 2010: 775). Republicanism, therefore, became an alternative to the political order of dynastic interests. The republican rejection of unaccountable and exclusive monarchical rule implies a position that sees political order as existing through an ‘incessant flux’ in which liberty is preserved through balance in both external and internal affairs (Bouwsma, 1984: 4). Republicans embraced the concept of the balance of power in contrast to this Medieval idea of the ‘binding unity of Christendom’ (Moulakis, 1998: 6).

In facing hierarchical conceptions of order, the ‘balance of Europe’ became a prominent phrase for republicans keen to reject the arbitrary power of universal monarchy (Schmidt, 1966). This older language of political liberty recognizes that in order to protect the institutions of a free republic, individual liberty is upheld through the law and freedom of the polis. For the Venetian republic, ‘liberty’ was understood not as a form of personal freedom, but the freedom of political independence from other powers (Muir, 1981: 17). James Howell (1651), a prominent seventeenth-century writer surveyed the republic of Venice and sought to explain why its government was so widely admired. His analysis focused on the longevity of its liberty. Howell wrote in 1651 that Venice’s principal aim was to keep a balance of power within the state of Italy, but also between ‘Spain and France, which are two poles whereon Europe may be sayed to moved in Aequilibrio, to keep them in counterpoise’. The Venetian republic sought a balance in international affairs to avoid external domination. It was argued by the Venetian thinkers Paolo Sarpi and Whatley (1720) that the ‘Venetians should enjoy entire liberty under their own laws’ (p. 330). This was a common security challenge for early modern republics which sought to break away from universal and hierarchical orders of political rule (Serna, 2013).

As the following sections argue, in securing independence from a universal system of rule, a republic is open to two intertwined security challenges. First, in rejecting hierarchical rule a republic is faced with a division of power within the polis. Second, a republic can only enjoy political liberty if it is free from external control and interference. If a republic remains weak it becomes liable to geopolitical domination, but in seeking to secure political liberty, this introduces a co-constitutive threat of the militarization of society. The balance of power can be recovered as a political goal to prevent the accumulation of power by moving away from a neo-positivist and systemic discourse, to consider the republican rejection of hierarchical absolutism.

A republican balance of power

A republican balance of power is developed with the goal of political liberty firmly in mind. Republicanism understands that the internal balance of power within the polis is liable to corruption, decay and a loss of virtue. It is a language which stresses the impossibility of demands for absolutes in a world based on ‘fortuna’ (Peterson and Tjalve, 2013: 5). This concern for the corruption of power and securing liberty within the polis presents a view of power contestation as constantly in flux. IR theory often takes the condition of political order and sovereignty as a settled and ‘assumed condition’ (Walker, 2002: 345). Opening up questions of power contestation both within the polis and its connection to the international can provide a more nuanced understanding of the balance of power. As the following explores, republicans have always sought to avoid the dilemma of internal tyranny by creating checks and balances on the accumulation of unaccountable power.

The republican tradition is built on challenging unaccountable hierarchy within the polis. Tyranny is defined by republicanism as the centralization of power within an unaccountable body (Brincat, 2008). This idea is reflected in the work of Guicciardini (1998: 122) who argued that liberty can be understood as ‘the supremacy of law and public decrees prevailing over the desires of individuals’. An individual ruling for their own interest was seen as tyrannical and a primary example of this was monarchical control over the use of armed force. In both republican theory and practice, standing armies have traditionally been associated with the hierarchical rule of monarchical absolutism and the universalism of Popery (Schwoerer, 1974). English republican authors such as Algernon Sidney and Marchamont Nedham criticized the ‘entrenchment of the hereditary principle’ because it encouraged monarchs to see their countries, including the army, as their own possessions rather than in trust for the good of the public sphere (Cress, 1979: 51; Wootton, 1994: 69). Standing armies were understood as disruptive to commercial interests and acted only in the name of dynastic ambitions. Republicans have therefore always sought strong citizen militias and a free public sphere to act as a check on unrestrained military power. This republican understanding of security seeks to guard the political rights of the community from despotic forms of power, which can usurp the political rights and property of individual citizens within the polis. Dividing power through checks and balances was the primary way to prevent such hierarchical domination.

Historically, republicans believed the ideal polis was small because a single ruler that accumulates too much power in a small area would inevitably invite revolt and opposition (Deudney, 2007: 128).¹ To sustain the balance of power, a republic has to guard against external interference while simultaneously prevent the militarization of the public sphere. In rejecting monarchical universalism, the independence of a republic becomes viable to collapse or turmoil if a republic is unable to gain autonomy without resorting to an expansion of unrestrained military power. A republic that seeks greater power to secure recognition or secure its position through armed struggle faces an inherent risk of a coup d’etat (Serna, 2013: 19). English republicans therefore celebrated the external outlook of naval forces and feared the centralization of power represented by a standing army. For later republican movements, the career of Cromwell and his forcible dissolution of the Rump Parliament were seen ‘as the perfect illustration of abuse arising from military leadership’ (Serna, 2013: 2). As with the English republic, Dutch republican thought was equally based on the insistence that ‘the soldiery be subordinated to civilian priorities’ (Israel, 1998: 267). The militia became a republican ideal to ensure a stable balance of power within the polis. For the Dutch republic, the militia as a body of citizens were seen to speak for the community in defending political liberty and act as an opposition to the absolutism of a standing army (Prak, 1997: 446).

These debates over internal restraints on military power have been a recurring theme of republican thought. Part of the challenge in reforming the city of Florence was based on the concern of creating checks on power. Machiavelli frequently advocates for the use of a militia force. But there was a deep-rooted fear of factional infighting as each side within the city was afraid of allowing their rivals to have control of military power (Capponi, 2010: 128). Machiavelli advocated his preference for a militia over the use of cavalry because it prevented the personal interests of the wealthy from gaining too much power (Lukes, 2004). Despite Machiavelli’s concern for factions, he does not place faith in a top down conception of the state personified by an idealized leader. In his later work, the ‘Discourse on reforming the state of Florence done at the instance of Pope Leo X’, written in 1520, Machiavelli (1989a) calls for a three-tier model of republican government in which competing classes are balanced against one another. As Mark Jurdjevic (2007: 1249) argues, Machiavelli sought to ‘distribute authority as broadly as possible’ which ‘systematically diminishes the significance of individual offices’. The institutional checks against power within a republic created divisions, but these divisions strengthened the safeguarding of political liberty. For early modern republics, liberty could be threatened if power became subsumed by an unaccountable individual or group able to dominate others. This understanding explains the republican scepticism of unrestrained democracy. The concentration of power within the people suggested that the democratic populace would be able to usurp control of the polis (Urbinati, 2012; Vatter, 2012).

The ideal of plurality was important for early modern republican theorists who sought to design a political order based on a division of power, which crucially, represented conflicting spheres of interest. Dividing power in this way prevented unaccountable forms of political rule. This had an important effect in preventing both the militarization of the polis and limiting the accumulation of power within a single actor. Evidence of this can be seen with the Venetian republic, which sought to ensure that each governing committee or council was checked by another so as to assure a balance in the rule of law. The division of Venice’s ruling apparatus created several bodies of power with the Great Council, the Senate, and the Council of Ten (Bouwsma, 1984: 61). To prevent the centralization of power, Venetian military commanders were also chosen by an elective process as a safeguard against nepotism (Lane, 1973). Together these arrangements represented a Polybian ideal of a mixed form of governance. It was this division of power that reinforced the self-image of Venice as representing liberty and constitutional stability (Mulier, 1980). Although the Italian cities had no formal written constitution, it was the Venetian model of ruling through councils that divided power which was used to justify the establishment of Florence’s Great Council in 1494 (Muir 1981: 45). Italian republics such as Venice, Florence, Genoa, Lucca and Siena were all praised for ‘possessing mixed constitutions with royal, oligarchic and popular elements’ (Haskins, 2010: 455). The influence of guilds and assigning offices via a lottery (Lane, 1966), a practice also used in ancient republics (Rahe, 2016), helped to also ensure a further diversity of interests. Within the Florentine republic, the divisions of power became an important source of preventing domination by aristocratic factions. The role of guilds and the use of a lottery to decide appointments over elections helped to prevent wealthy citizens using their influence to dominate popular elections (McCormick, 2010).

Like Machiavelli, Guicciardini’s analysis of Florentine politics centred on the dilemma of balancing power within a divided republic. Guicciardini (1965) argued that a republic is uniquely vulnerable to external domination because of the natural divisions arising within a free polis (p. 59). In the Discorso di Logrogno written in 1512, Guicciardini (1998) sets out his ideal republic based on a division of power. He calls for a three-tier republic with power being split between a Great Council, a Gonfalonier and a select delegation of advisors. Crucially, he saw the division of power as intimately linked to the foreign policy conduct of the republic. The balance of power within the republic would ensure a stable approach to foreign policy. He argued that to have ‘the multitude’ of the people making sole decisions on foreign policy would end in catastrophe. For Guicciardini (1998: 123–126), a republic dominated by the will of the people would be prone to rash decisions and would result in ‘nothing but damage and disgrace’. Guicciardini uses the example of the Florentine expedition to Pisa in 1504 and the troubles of classical Athens and Rome to justify his division of power in a three-tier system of government. In designing an ideal republic, Guicciardini, therefore, sought to directly link the external sphere to the effective governance and internal liberty of the polis (Moulakis, 1998: 5).

Liberty, or libertas, for these republican city-states was built on a double meaning of the avoidance of tyrannical governance through the division of power, and externally, independence in relation to other states (Gilbert, 1968: 466). This intertwined struggle is illustrated by the Papal challenge to Venetian governance. The Venetian Interdict of 1606 and 1607 showed a resistance by Venice to Papal interference over the Pope’s control of clergy and ecclesiastical courts. For the Venetian Friar Paolo Sarpi, this meant the internal liberty of Venice was dependent on rejecting the external temporal power of the Papacy with the person of the Pope equated to the absolutist rule of a monarchical tyrant (Keenan, 2015). A republican balance of power within the polis is, therefore, liable to corruption, decay and interference in relation to external actors. As the following section explores, internal checks and balances and the international have often been treated as separate domains. The following analysis, however, argues that the power relations within the polis are mutually constituted with the international sphere.

Political liberty and external domination

Guicciardini’s influence on balance of power theory is well known, but his republican theorizing is often overlooked. Realist authors have long been influenced by republican authors and particularly, the Federalist papers (Morgenthau, 1973: 178; Waltz, 2001: 214). It was the Federalist papers which showed how checks and balances could divide power. As Morgenthau (1973) explains, the ‘concept of equilibrium or balance has indeed found its most important application, outside the international field, in the sphere of domestic government and politics’ (p. 176). Despite acknowledging this, checks and balances are still seen as being ‘outside’ the concern of international politics. However, as Peter Gourevitch (1978) has argued, the domestic and the international are so tightly ‘interrelated’ that they should be ‘analyzed simultaneously’ (p. 911). This approach recognizes that power struggles between political factions stem from within the polis and are intertwined concurrently with external relations (Pratto et al., 2014: 128). As the following argues, republicanism aims to theorize internal checks and balances simultaneously with the external firmly in mind.

The legacy of republicanism within balance of power theory is apparent in the way realism has adopted republican authors into the story of realism. Realists frequently compare America to the republic of Athens, but the presuppositions of republican thought are rarely explored (Blachford, 2019). Looking to the Venetian understanding of Thucydides shows a way forward for IR to engage with its neglected republican foundations. The first printed editions of Thucydides appeared in the Venetian republic (Rhodes, 2015: 77), a polis that prided itself on its political liberty and balanced institutions. At a time when studying Tacitus was the norm, the Venetians celebrated Thucydides because he was deemed to have provided ‘realistic advice to republics’ (Sullivan, 2015: 242). The Venetian philologist Domenico Molino referred to Thucydides as ‘an author to whom all of us who enjoy a free country owe so much’ (Bouwsma, 1984: 237). Thucydides showed the Venetians that republican liberty within the polis was intertwined in a co-constitutive manner with the international (Hoekstra, 2012: 31). Athen’s experience as an imperial republic could be used as an example for the Venetians, as the insights of Thucydides were ‘embedded’ in the challenges Athens faced as a ‘great imperial power’ (Garst, 1989: 8). The republican challenge of the polis becoming subsumed by corruption can be seen with the ‘breakdown’ of the Athenian democratic institutions’ as its foreign policies abroad corrupted the political life at home (Garst, 1989: 18).

The expansion of a republic to imperial proportions is seen as incompatible with republican political liberty. Early modern republics within Europe were typically small city-states that remained vulnerable to larger monarchical powers. To prevent external domination, a republic could remain small and fragile thereby, susceptible to anarchy and tyranny. Or, expand and risk the accumulation of power within the polis, as the polis becomes subsumed by militarization (Armitage, 2002; Deudney, 2004; Levy, 2006). Early modern republics interpreted their own experiences through the example of Rome and feared the rise of a new Caesar. For republican thinkers, the example of Rome has historically been used to show the transition from republican to imperial government. Machiavelli (1989b) warned how Caesar was the ‘first tyrant in Rome, as a result that city was never again free’ (p. 274). In reflecting on the lessons of Rome, republicans interpreted claims to imperial power in reference to a Roman typology in which empire represents ‘the vicious declension from republican virtue into hereditary monarchy’ (Armitage, 1992: 532). This republican security challenge can be traced to the Roman historian Sallust who observed how ‘the pursuit of liberty had opened up the gate to empire, but empire came at an insurmountable cost: corruption’ of the polis at home (Weststeijn, 2012: 491). It was the expansion of Rome’s military conquests seeking rule for personal ambition. Republicans, therefore, feared the expansion of unaccountable power that arises from militarization and unchecked executive rule.

Republican theorists stress how internal corruption and decay is intrinsically linked to the external. Machiavelli’s consideration of factions is shaped by the geopolitical situation facing the Florentine republic. The challenge posed by external intervention was a key reason for Machiavelli seeking to forge a strong militia force bound by republican citizenship instead of the dependence on the conditorei (Hornqvist, 2002; Lukes, 2004). Machiavelli had seen with his own experiences, one of the greatest dangers of factions within the Florentine republic was the introduction of outside forces and arms to help settle factional disputes. Within the Discourse on Florentine Affairs, Machiavelli (1989a) considers the failings of Florentine governments and argues, ‘the reason why all these governments have been defective is that the alterations in them have been made not for the fulfilment of the common good, but for the strengthening and security of the party’ (p. 103). Much of Machiavelli’s analysis of Florentine politics rests on the problems of dangerous factional tensions and the changing leaders of the city, from Savonarola, to the Albizzi, the Medici and the Soderini regimes. He links this factional infighting to the strategic context Florence experienced with the 1494 invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France. In the Discourse on Florentine Affairs, Machiavelli (1989a) laments how the struggle between the Habsburgs and France for influence within Italy meant that ‘the Florentines must ally themselves with one of the two; yet if the ally they select loses, at once they are left as the booty of the victor’ (p. 104). The final chapter within the Prince (Machiavelli, 1989c) makes a plea ‘to liberate Italy from the Barbarians’ thereby making a prescriptive call to defend Florence from external actors.

John Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment (1975) showed the influence Machiavelli had on the founding moment of the United States and the republican legacy within early American political thought. The Federalist papers show a desire to avoid the mistakes of previous historical republics and an awareness of how European city state republics had historically faced problems arising from both internal tyranny and external domination. The Federalist authors looked to previous historical examples of other republics in order to guide them in creating the new republic of the United States. In doing so, they saw the threat to a vulnerable polis arising from external domination. Alexander Hamilton sought to unite the 13 states because he believed history showed how discord among confederations would inevitably lead to external powers taking advantage of any weaknesses. Hamilton (Syrett, 1962) observed how, ‘the Romans in their progress to universal dominion’ sought to subdue the Achaean league by ‘sowing dissensions among them . . . and finished by making them a province of the Roman empire’ (p. 92). Within the Federalist Papers, we can see the concern for domination arising from unaccountable power and corruption throughout the arguments of the founding authors. Crucially, the danger of external interference is seen as intertwined with the danger of turmoil and tyranny within the republic. As one of the Federalist authors, John Jay (Publius [1788] 2000) showed this concern with his warning ‘against dangers from foreign arms and influence’, concurrently ‘against dangers of the like kind arising from domestic causes’ (p. 13). Central to their concern of securing political liberty was an awareness of seeking to prevent ‘an illegal usurpation of authority’. As James Madison (Publius [1788] 2000) warned, tyranny has ‘oftener [sic] grown out of assumptions of power called for, on pressing emergencies, by a defective constitution, then out of the full exercise of the largest constitutional authorities’. However, Madison’s warning in the Federalist Papers was based on looking to the Dutch republic and the challenges it faced from ‘surrounding powers’. His examination of the danger in power becoming usurped by an unaccountable tyrant was based on the Dutch experience of ‘popular convulsions, from dissensions among the states, and from the actual invasion of foreign arms’. Here, Madison is not only considering domination arising from domestic sources, but how the international presents an equal threat to political liberty by becoming a form of domination. Within this analysis, Madison links the political liberty and checks and balances of a republican polity to the threats arising from surrounding powers.

Properly understood, the republican tradition offers an analysis of international politics which focuses on the mutual implication of the domestic and international spheres. As Alexander Hamilton (2008) argued, ‘too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people’ (p. 115). It is this republican version of balance of power thinking, rather than the oft-favoured machtpolitik genealogy, which may even account for the preference of contemporary IR realists for balancing against power abroad while fearing its accumulation at home. Modern realism has developed by accepting Waltz’s claim that the balance of power is distinctly an ‘international’ theory. But the republican understanding of balancing as a strategy whereby ‘power should be separate and distinct’ (Publius, [1788] 2000: 308) retains a kernel of truth for realism. However, because the balance of power has been divorced from the domestic, systemic theorists are unable to fully theorize the co-constitutive nature between domestic liberty and the international.

Conclusion

The republican balance of power is a normative ideal and strategy that views equilibrium as central to securing political liberty. Conventional understandings of the balance of power within IR often take a utilitarian view of balancing as an ‘unintended natural process’ (Zhang, 2011: 650). Structural realist approaches to security also take a unitary sovereign state for granted where the internal is pacified and neglected from consideration. This leaves systemic realism effectively blind to understanding the dynamics of power relations within the polis and its relationship to the international. For realists, the polity is assumed to be capable of acting as a singular sovereign presence. Linking power contestations within the polis to the international presents a more nuanced view of power as constantly in flux. The traditional division within IR between the domestic and the international has disguised these connections and led to the neglect of republican thought. But at a time in which the last two decades of American power preponderance has led to repeated calls for restraint from realist authors (Mearsheimer, 2014; Posen, 2014; Walt, 2005, 2018), there remains a need to revisit republican ideas about checks and balances, and the balance of power. In looking to a republican balance of power, this article argues for a co-constitutive approach to the power contestations between the domestic and the international.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Kevin Blachford

Notes

Author biography

Kevin Blachford is a Lecturer of International Relations at the Baltic Defence College and the Estonian School of Diplomacy. His work has been published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies and European Journal of International Relations. His research interests include International Political Thought, International Security and Foreign Policy Analysis.

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