The domestic analogy revisited: Hobbes on international order.

• Author: Grewal, David Singh
• Position: Thomas Hobbes - Introduction through II. The Refusal of a Global Leviathan, p. 618-647

ESSAY CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL ORDER A. Instituting the Commonwealth B. The Domestic Analogy II. THE REFUSAL OF A GLOBAL LEVIATHAN III. CIVIL SOVEREIGNTY AND INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY IV. THE RADICALISM OF THOMAS HOBBES A. Hobbes's Theory of the Passions B. Hobbes as a Realist-Utopian V. INTERNATIONAL PEACE IN THE SOCIAL-CONTRACT TRADITION VI. REALIST-UTOPIANISM IN INTERNATIONAL LAW TODAY CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

In modern discussions of international relations, the ideas of Thomas Hobbes are usually encountered in the context of the so-called realist position developed in the mid-twentieth century by political scientists such as Hans Morgenthau. (1) According to realists, the international domain is anarchic and therefore dangerous, exemplifying the "state of nature" that Hobbes famously described as a "war of all against all." (2) Realism posits that each state struggles for survival and preeminence against all others. (3) Temporary global stability may be achieved through the power of one dominant country, strong alliances, or an international balance of power, but realists analyze these episodes assuming competitive states in a potentially dangerous anarchy. (4) A conceivable way to escape from this condition, some have supposed, would be to establish an overarching coercive authority or global hegemon. (5) However, realists generally consider that solution infeasible, at least as a permanent condition. (6)

The realist vision of the international order is frequently contrasted with the so-called liberal view, which sees states as cooperating to construct a framework of cosmopolitan law, perhaps even building to a pacific global federation. (7) This position is often seen as anticipating contemporary democratic or liberal peace theory, which argues that liberal-democratic states are less likely to make war against other liberal democracies. (8) Liberalism distinguishes itself from realism by arguing that the spread of representative democracy, commercial interdependence, international law, and human rights contributes to a more pacific and stable world. (9)

The grand figures of the social-contract tradition are commonly drafted into the service of these two dominant approaches to international relations: Hobbes is foundationally associated with realism and Immanuel Kant with liberalism. Discussions of Hobbes in legal scholarship tend to follow the characterization of his work in political science. (10) With respect to international conflict, scholarly attention has focused on whether international law can convert interstate anarchy into an orderly system. (11) A "Hobbesian" position in international relations is associated with skepticism about the legitimacy or effectiveness of international law, usually owing to problems of enforcement. By contrast, scholars supportive of international lawmaking, whether international or supranational, (12) often adopt an anti-realist stance, which they associate with Kant. Cosmopolitan legal theory, of which Kant is considered the founding theorist, proposes a global order built on shared law and morality, in stark contrast to so-called Hobbesian realism. (13)

This Essay reexamines Hobbes's views on international order. It takes as its starting point the view developed in recent historical scholarship that the use of "Hobbesian" as a synonym for "realist" is a distortion. This view, however, has yet to make its way fully into the international-relations literature, not to mention international legal scholarship. (14) As the preeminent Hobbes scholar Noel Malcolm has put it: "[T]he interpretation of Hobbes put forward by modern international relations theorists ... has become fixed and ossified, functioning at best as an 'ideal type' and at worst as a caricature." (15) By contrast, intellectual historians have recently offered more scrupulous accounts of Hobbes. Along with his criticism of contemporary international relations theorists, Malcolm has reconstructed Hobbes's views on international law and interstate relations, emphasizing their complexity and subtlety. (16) Richard Tuck has offered a sustained examination of the political theory of international relations, prominently including Hobbes's work, convincingly identifying its influence on later authors in the social-contract tradition such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Kant. (17) As part of a recent history of international thought, David Armitage has sought to explain the twentieth-century caricature of Hobbesian realism in light of Hobbes's commitment to several distinct and seemingly unreconciled theses on international order. (18) And in a forthcoming volume on the history of "perpetual peace" discourses both before and after Kant, Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Richard Whatmore, and others show that the question of how to achieve a pacific order among potentially bellicose modern states was central to eighteenth-century political thought and was developed partly in response to Hobbesian theory. (19) None of these scholars accept the caricature of Hobbes as the founding father of international realism, and further work in this vein will surely consolidate a more sophisticated historical understanding of Hobbes and of post-Hobbesian political thought.

The Hobbesian caricature matters not only because the widely peddled distortion makes Hobbes's actual understanding of international relations more difficult to discern but because that understanding is distinctive, provocative, and deserving of serious consideration. Elaborating Hobbes's account of international order will accomplish more than just clarifying his views; (20) it should also contribute to ongoing reorientations across several scholarly disciplines. Most importantly for legal scholarship, a genuinely Hobbesian approach to international relations offers a compelling way to reconsider the foundations, governing principles, and expectations of modern international law. The scholarship on international law was transformed by an interdisciplinary opening to international relations theory in the 1990s, (21) and one may hope that the new dialogue between international relations and international political theory will prove fruitful for scholarship on international law as well. (22) For example, recent historical work has revealed the conceptual debt owed to Hobbes by others in the social-contract tradition, including Kant, to whom he has been conventionally opposed in the stylization of international relations theory. (23) This historical reassessment bolsters efforts to reduce the distance between realism and its alternatives in international relations theory, which should reorient the legal scholarship that has adopted these categories. (24)

Any elaboration of Hobbes's theory of international order requires coming to terms with a central problem that has prompted centuries of reflection on the relations among modern states. The source of this problem is the "domestic analogy," (25) an analytic maneuver of enduring influence that draws a parallel between the relations of persons in the state of nature and those of states in international anarchy. An overemphasis on the domestic analogy has contributed greatly to the misreading of Hobbes and may help to explain why even repeated historical critiques have not prevailed against the caricature of his thought.

The domestic analogy asserts a fundamental parallel between individuals and states, and hence between interpersonal and international relations. (26) Hedley Bull, the leading theorist of the "rationalist" school of international relations, first brought the domestic analogy into general academic discussion. (27) In Bull's words, it is "the argument from the experience of individual men in domestic society to the experience of states, according to which states, like individuals, are capable of orderly social life only if, as in Hobbes's phrase, they stand in awe of a common power." (28) In Hobbes's own presentation, importantly, the parallel between individuals and states is only partly drawn. While he asserts the similarity of individuals and states in the state of nature, Hobbes never claims that the way to avoid international conflict is to establish a coercive agent capable of serving as a "common power" at the international level. "In the case of Hobbes himself and his successors," Bull explains, "the domestic analogy takes the form simply of the assertion that states or sovereign princes, like individual men who live without government, are in a state of nature which is a state of war." (29) As Bull recognizes, Hobbes did not argue that an international social contract, analogous to the domestic social contract, "either should or can take place." (30)

Nonetheless, many readers of Hobbes have taken just that step. (31) Convinced by the power of the analogy between persons and states as they exist in conditions of anarchy, readers have postulated the necessity of a "social contract among states" (32) in order to achieve international order, and they have assumed that its absence means the continuation of an international state of war. (33) Indeed, schemes that suppose world government to be the solution to conflict among modern states go back to some of the earliest readers of Hobbes. (34) In the twentieth century, the experience of the two world wars and the threat of nuclear devastation during the Cold War made many thinkers favorable to schemes of world government on the grounds that the system of sovereign states had become outmoded and dangerous. (35) Proposals for reform centered on models of "world federation," (36) or an ambitiously expanded role for international law in the hope of achieving "peace through law," as Hans Kelsen put it. (37)

Importantly, this interpretation of the domestic analogy did not remain in the realm of...