King Cross University

This opposition, however, itself reflects a deeper failure of each theory to recognize the mutually constitutive nature of human agents and system structures—a failure which leads to deep-seated inadequacies in their respective explanations of state action. An alternative solution to the agent-structure problem, adapted from “structuration theory” in sociology, can overcome these inadequacies by avoiding both the reduction of system structures to state actors in neorealism and their reifi...

While neorealism and world-system theory both claim to be “structural” theories of international relations, they embody very different understandings of system structure and structural explanation. Neorealists conceptualize system structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state agents, whereas world-system theorists conceptualize system structures in structuralist terms as generating state agents themselves. These differences stem from what are, in some res...

Perhaps the biggest difference concerns the role of the state. Social democrats seem to think leftist objectives can be achieved to at least some degree if only Labour could win control of the state and show the courage of its convictions. Marxists are more sceptical. We think the state is captured by capitalist interests either directly, through cronyism, or indirectly because governments must maintain business "confidence".