critical approaches and the legacy of the agent-structure debate in ir.pdf

8/9/2019 Critical approaches and the legacy of the agent-structure debate in IR.pdf

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Critical approaches and the legacy of the agent/structuredebate in international relations

Samuel KnafoUniversity of Sussex

Abstract This article examines the significance of the concept of agency for the projectof critical theory as defined by Robert Cox. Even if numerous scholars recognize the

importance of agency, very few have managed to set up an agenda that uses this notionin productive ways. I argue that this failure largely stems from the desire to presentpower as a structural phenomenon. If we see power as embedded in the very structure ofsociety, it becomes difficult to see how social forces can escape the inherent tendenciesimposed by structures. For this reason, the issue of social change has continued to eludecritical theory making it difficult to open up space for an approach based on agency.Against structural conceptions of power, I present an agent-based conception of powerwhich can serve to contextualize international relations in different terms. By presentingpower in terms of practice, I argue, one can better overcome the reifying gaze ofpositivism.

Introduction

Twenty-five years ago Robert Cox established his famous distinction betweenproblem-solving theory and critical theory by characterizing the latter as beingfocused on social change. For Cox,

critical theory, unlike problem solving theory, does not take institutions and socialand power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itselfwith the origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing.(Cox 1981, 129)

Since then, the emphasis on social change has been seen as a powerful strategyfor challenging mainstream approaches in IR. The notion of agency, in particular,rapidly gained saliency in the discipline as a means to escape the reifyingdeterminism of positivism. Yet, after three decades, the impact of this conceptremains surprisingly limited. Even if numerous scholars recognize the importanceof agency, very few have managed to set up an agenda that uses this notion inproductive ways. Discussions about agency remain mostly meta-theoretical andseem to have little impact on concrete studies in the field.

I would like to thank Andreas Antoniades, Joseph Baines, George Comninel, MartijnKonings, Richard Lane, Thierry Lapointe, Kamran Matin, Alex McLeod, Tony Porter, DinahRajak Anna Stavrianakis Jeppe Strandsbjerg and Benno Teschke

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I argue that the limited impact of the notion of agency in the work of criticalscholars stems from its incompatibility with the notion of structural power. Manyscholars take the notion of structural power to be a distinctive component ofcritical approaches to international relations (IR). Yet, the agent/structure debate

shows how difficult it is to marry a structural conception of power with a notion ofsocial change associated with agency. The reason for this incompatibility is simplythat when we present power as embedded in the structures of society, it becomesdifficult to see how social forces can escape the inherent tendencies imposed bythese structures.

The development of a conception of structural power has thus pushed criticaltheory back towards some of the problems of positivism, most notably its tendencyto reify IR. Because it overemphasizes dynamics of social reproduction, the idea ofstructural power has made it difficult to account for social change. As a result,critical scholars often misleadingly oppose power to agency as if those with powerhave no agency and those with agency have no power. Agency here tends to bewrongly conflated with resistance and thus reduced to a limited moment of theanalysis. When agency is discussed, it is generally associated with disadvantagedsocial forces that are most interested, presumably, in changing society. But, beingweaker, they are often seen as struggling to garner the power needed to realizetheir vision of a different world. For this reason, they always seem to be in waitingfor the moment when they will be empowered and finally able to change things.On the other hand, those with power are seen to have no interest in changingsociety. Keen to reproduce a given order, they appear, in fact, to have no agency.As a result, there often seems to be no change in the making, since we only havepowerless agents of change and powerful agents of reproduction.

This paradox illustrates the lack of space that exists within the dominantstructural framework of analysis of critical scholars. While many of them wentbeyond positivism in insisting on the need to widen the range of analysis andlook at the agency of actors, little room was made for agency in most accounts.Ultimately, this reflexive call for becoming more aware of moments of agency whenpeople do change society did not offer a platform, or an alternative methodology,to move beyond positivism. In fact, it became increasingly common for criticalscholars to argue that the agent/structure problem cannot be solved at the level ofmethod, thus consolidating a drift away from methodology and towards ontology.Agency has thus been increasingly repackaged as an object of analysis to be studied

rather than a principle of analytical rigour for understanding history on itsown terms.

Going beyond this approach to agency as a distinct object of research, this articlereformulates what is at stake in the agent/structure debate from the perspective ofmethodology, recognizing that the central role of agency is not simply a matter ofarguing that there is agency or to study various instances of agency (an ontologicalissue), but to reflect on the implications it has for the way we analyse IR. The mainsignificance of agency is methodological in that it provides a principle of criticalrigour to avoid reification. As I argue, it sets a methodological imperative that iscentral to the development of a proper historicist and critical approach.

As a source of rigour for critical thinking, agency helps to specify what canand cannot be said about power and, more generally, social construction. If theconcept of structural power is incompatible with agency, we need to determine an

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the real problem is to solve a riddle: if people act in ways that are notpredetermined by structures, how can one analyse the relationship betweenpower and structures without reifying them? To address this, we must alwayscontextualize manifestations of power in relation to agency (for example, in

relation to the specific actors involved and the change they generate). The purposeof systematically framing the analysis in these terms is to highlight the productivedimension of power which is too often concealed in analyses that emphasizestructural power.

This article examines the agent/structure debate in relation to the critique ofpositivism. Throughout this piece, critical theory is referred to from purely amethodological perspectivethat is, as a framework that does not posit causallaws to human nature and interaction outside or prior to history (Bieler andMorton 2001, 17). The first section outlines the problem for critical scholars wishingto use the notion of agency in order to move away from positivism. In section two,

the concept of agency will be dealt with more specifically to show how the tensionbetween structural power and social change has yielded a notion of agency thatfails to address the problems of positivism. Here, I turn to the school of criticalrealism, which has pushed the notion of agency as traditionally formulated to itslogical conclusion. In section three, I address the notion of structure in order toshow that the problems with the concept of agency, in fact, reflect a deeper problemwith the way critical scholars think in terms of structural power. This has resulted,I contend, in an overemphasis on structural determination; one that reifies socialreality by suggesting that discourses and institutions have inherent tendencies thatare imprinted on society regardless of how social actors relate to them. Finally, thefourth section reconceptualizes the notion of power in relation to agency, which can

allow for a truly historicist conception of power that can overcome the reifyinggaze of positivism. To illustrate what difference this makes, I will draw uponmy previous work on the gold standard and 19th-century international monetarygovernance.

Agency and the move beyond positivism

My starting point is the critique of positivism that is often found in the literatureof IR. Positivism refers to approaches that reify social reality and present itas a normal or natural order, rather than as a socially constructed one. This

definition of positivism follows from the general use of the term among criticaltheorists (Lapid 1989; Gill 1993), even if my emphasis differs somewhat fromothers.1 Instead of focusing on the separation of the subjective and objective world(Wight 2006, 15), or the empiricist epistemology of positivism (Smith 1996), I seethe problems of positivism as being rooted in the way it seeks to generalizelawsofsocial development (Nicholson 1996, 128). This quest for broad generalizations

1 The categories of positivism and critical theory that I use here are not meant tomap exactly the actual configuration of debates in IR, but rather to refer to two distinctepistemological dispositions that can be distinguished on the basis of their ability to grasp

the process of social construction. In doing so, I wish to problematize the way in whichcritical theorists too often distance themselves from positivism without realizing how theythemselves reproduce some of its problems, more specifically its tendency to reify social

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drives positivists to develop methodological tools that downplay the specificitiesof their object of research in order to infer more general and abstract laws. Theproblem with this predilection for transhistorical models is that it creates theimpression of causal laws that are universal because, supposedly, they can be

observed across a wide variety of societies. In that sense, these laws conceal whatis socially constructed, since they always seem to transcend the particular contextin which they are instantiated.2

This positivist framework has two important consequences when one thinksabout social construction. First, positivism neglects social change by virtue of themethod it promotes. Indeed, the more a theory is inclined to derive general laws ofsocial development, the more that social change loses its significance. Changebecomes a matter of historical curiosity, but it is no longer deemed scientific as anobject of research. Positivism thus tends to split science and history as if theyare different orders of explanation, one being theoretical, the other descriptive.

A second consequence, of particular importance for critical theories, is thatthis framework tends to present structures in apolitical ways, as if structurestranscend power relations.3 For positivists, structures always precede politics.They set out the fundamental laws that govern society. Because they operate ata general level, they appear impervious to the specific politics that are playedout below them. These structural laws are thus often seen as being generatedindependently from power dynamics and, while they set the terrain for socialstruggles, they are not directly linked to any specific interest or worldview. It is asif structural conditions apply equally to all actors.

To illustrate these features of positivism, one can turn to the theory of realism.This tradition presents the international system as being driven by the imperative

of survival which emerges from the fragmentation of the system into variouscommunities protected by their own state (Gilpin 1984). Without an overarchingauthority, all states are said to be compelled to ensure their own security throughthe accumulation of power (Waltz 1979). Not only is this imperative consideredalmost timeless, it is also seen as apolitical in that it results from the asociality ofthe international system (Waltz 1959). The international system is, in fact, oftendeemed akin to a state of nature. In that sense, structural determination precedesany exercise of power, and is not associated with the specific interests of any socialforce. An important corollary is that power is then considered in behaviouralterms as an attribute of states.4 It is the ability of states to mobilize resources in

order to achieve certain goals that matters most here (Aron 1966). Moreover,power is seen as having little impact on the structures of the international system.While the distribution of power determines the configuration of the inter-state

2 See Knafo (2008) for a more extended discussion of positivism.3 It should be noted that, technically, positivists would often reject the idea of structures

by adopting a more pragmatic view on knowledge. Yet their approach based ongeneralization implies the existence of structural laws. Even when they only do as if suchcausal laws exist, while thinking that they do not, the method still produces the twoproblems raised here.

4 There are some exceptions, notably among neorealists and liberal institutionalists

who have attempted to problematize the notion of power (Keohane and Nye 1977; Baldwin1989). Here one finds the foundations for a notion of structural power that shares somefeatures with the critical notions of structural power that will be discussed below. For a

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system, and thus the strategic considerations of states, it is governed byimperatives that ultimately escape the agency of states. In other words, powercannot realistically redefine the deeper structures that govern the internationalsystem. Being more permanent, structural laws are deemed to be the object of

science, while politics is relegated to the second order of historical facts.The tendency of positivism to reify structures was criticized by various

approaches in the 1980s. The common element that united these critical approacheswas a desire to emphasize the process of social construction. This generally meanttwo things. First, these early critical approaches rejected the notion that socialstructures were neutral, or apolitical. Referring to different types of structures, theyshowed how structures are in fact tightly connected to specific interests ordiscourses as means through which power is exerted. Social construction was thusprimarily conceived as the process by which social forces establish the conditions,or structures, for exerting power over others. This implied a re-articulation of thenotion of power in order to move beyond a sole focus on behavioural, and moreapparent, forms of power. Structural conceptions of power were introduced toemphasize how peoples behaviour is shaped by their environment (Strange 1988;Gill and Law 1993). As such, structures were increasingly seen as being imbuedwith power. In fact, structural determination often became indistinguishable frompower, since, it was argued, the way structures shape society is never neutral(Lukes 1986).

In rejecting the positivist dualism between power and structure, criticaltheorists also challenged the notion that structures transcend history. Sincestructures were seen as consolidating the interests and worldviews of dominantsocial forces, it became necessary to problematize how these structures are

established in the first place through power struggles. This added a secondcritique of positivism as critical theorists accused it of failing to account for socialchange. Partly in reaction to the rise of structural realism, numerous authors thusbegan to champion more dynamic approaches that move away from the rigiddeterminism of positivism (Cox 1981; Ruggie 1983; Ashley 1986).

The focus on social construction was meant to overcome the two key problemsof positivism: first, its tendency to see structures as politically neutral, and,second, its tendency to neglect the role of social forces in setting them up.However, this broad notion of social construction raised its own difficulties, as itproved difficult to reconcile these two aims. Indeed, while the notion of structural

power put a premium on social change, it also, paradoxically, made it difficultto conceptualize social change because it entailed a circular logic: if structuresempower the very people who are interested in protecting a given social order,how can we explain change? In other words, how can less privileged social forcesovercome the biases embedded in society in order to transform it? This criticalframework based on notions of structural power thus implicitly gave rise to atension between its conceptualization of power and its desire to highlight socialchange. Having emphasized that social structures strengthen dominant forces,change again seemed to elude critical theorists.

One can appreciate, in light of this problem, the significance of theagent/structure debate. In articulating the notions of agency and structure, oneof the objectives of contributors to the debate was to overcome the problemof structural determinism (Giddens 1984, 14). In short, having asserted that



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back to a different source: agency. Hence, by purporting that individuals have theability to act in ways that are not predetermined by structures, these authorshoped to make space for an account of social change. Agency seemed to offer theperfect means to articulate structural power and social change in a coherent

framework of analysis.5

It apparently resolved a tension that had been created bythe analytical move of socializing structures.

Agency and the elusive source of social change

This section will examine how the debate has evolved in such a way as toobjectify agency and limit its methodological usefulness. More specifically, thissection explores how the inability to overcome the agent/structure dualism at amethodological level resulted in a tendency to shift the burden to ontology.Instead of fulfilling a methodological function to frame the analysis, agency has

been turned into an object of research. It is now construed in ontological termsas a dimension of reality that needs to be taken into account. Yet, because it isonly a part of social reality, it can comfortably coexist with a highly structuralframework (the other part of reality). For this reason, the concept of agencydid little to challenge structural determinism and its tendency to reify socialreality.

This shift towards ontology can be traced back to a fundamentalmethodological problem that proved difficult to overcome in the initial stages ofthe debate. In IR, the debate was initially built on the basis of Giddens (1984)important emphasis on the duality of structures. He argued that structures

represent constraints but also resources for action. On this basis, agency andstructural reproduction had to be considered inseparable aspects of social realityand had to be both taken into account in any analysis. Alexander Wendt took upthis argument in his 1987 article, The AgentStructure Problem in InternationalRelations Theory.6 One of his main propositions was that the ability of peopleto transform their social environment is a crucial dimension of social realitywhich needs to be integrated more directly into the analysis along with socialreproduction. As Wendt and Duvall later stated,

the goal of structurationist ontologies is to replace the dualism of agency and socialstructure that pervades individualist and collectivist ontologies with a perspective

that recognizes the codetermined irreducibility of these two fundamental units ofsocial analysis. (Wendt and Duvall 1989, 59)

5 There is another alternative to the inclusion of agency for theorizing social change,which is to focus on internal contradictions, as if change were generated by the structuresthemselves. This type of approach is often associated with world system theory(Wallerstein 1980; Arrighi 1994). I cannot deal properly with this view here but it has beenextensively criticized elsewhere (Brenner 1977). In short such approaches lead to a form offunctionalism in that social change is always explained in terms of the need to overcomevarious problems of the system. Why one specific solution is necessary to overcome acontradiction rather than another, however, can never be explained within this framework.

6

Although it is debatable whether Alexander Wendt belongs to the critical tradition inIR, his writings on agency are still couched in the broad critical terms that I outlined earlier.Wendt, in fact, initially defined himself as a critical theorist whose concern was precisely to

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While this intervention was certainly important, the end product remainedflawed. One could agree that there was no separation at the ontological level, butthe dualism quickly reappeared as soon as one tried to derive the implications ofthis idea for the way we analyse IR. In the end, the study of social reproduction

and social change could thus never be fully articulated to one another becauseeach implied a different form of causation. On the one hand, structures were saidto shape the behaviour of agents, establishing the rules and norms that conditionpeople. On the other hand, agency was presented as the ability to step out of socialconditioning and, to some extent, freely transform structures.7 Hence, the twotypes of causation appeared opposite to one another even when both aspectscould be said to exist in a single moment. While both structural determination andagency could be said to be inherently tied to one another from an ontologicalstandpoint, the dualism proved difficult to overcome methodologically. This is whythe concept of bracketing out each moment seemed to resurface at various points

of the debate (Archer 1995) as if one needed to abstract from one of the twomodalities in order to perceive the other. As one author put it: as long as actionsare explained with reference to structure, or vice versa, the independent variablein each case remains unavailable for problematisation in its own right (Carlsnaes1992, 250).

This very problem prompted various critics to suggest that structuration theoryamounted to nothing more than a restatement of the problem (Palan 2000).In Explaining and Understanding International Relations, Hollis and Smith (1990)pointed out that ultimately one could not overcome the problem by superposingtwo different forms of causality (one structural and one related to agency). As they

stressed, it is one thing to recognize that people maintain some margin of freedomeven if they are conditioned by their context, but it is another to integrate thesetwo aspects into a coherent methodological framework. Hollis and Smithwarned against the temptation to resort to a collage of two narratives thatcould never be fully articulated to one another. For them, it was all too plainthat structuration theory is more of an ambition than an established body oftheoretical achievements. It is more a description of social life than a basis forexplanation (Hollis and Smith 1991, 406). From this they concluded that, althoughit is appealing to believe that bits of the two stories can be added together, wemaintain that there are always two stories to tell and that combinations do not solvethe problem (Hollis and Smith 1990, 7). In other words, the agency/structuredialectic could not reconcile reproduction and change because it offered nomethodological basis on which to ground an explanation.

It is in this context that one can understand the turn to ontology that hasbeen particularly associated with critical realism (Wight 2006; Jessop 2008). Ascontributors to the debate proved unable to overcome the dualism implicit at the

7 This voluntarist conception presents agency as an inherent property of individualswhich ends up being construed in opposition to social structures that condition them,rather than as a capacity that is itself socially constructed and which needs to beproblematized as such. We never know where agency comes from other than that it is

always there. Having taken agency as a given, everything that is socially constructed willthen appear as opposed to this innate capacity of agents. Our theoretical framework thusnecessarily projects a conception of agency that is desocialized, since it precedes, in a way,



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methodological level, it has become increasingly common to solve the dilemmaby shifting the burden to ontology.8 Colin Wight (2006), for example, pushes thedebate to its logical conclusion by arguing that the agent/structure dilemmacannot be solved at a theoretical level. He further argues that it is impossible to

predetermine how important agency is before examining specific cases. Hence, itis only in reference to concrete developments that one can calibrate the respectiveemphasis on agency and structural determination (Wight 2006). From thisperspective, the goal is to assess concretely to what extent people do make adifference.

This type of argument has led to a new framework that is more open toexamining agency as an object of research. Critical realists have made importantcontributions examining how various agents manage to influence the course ofhistory (Bieler 2006; Hay 1996). In part, this involves putting forwards softerconceptions of structural determination that do not predetermine how things willturn out. Bob Jessop for example, proposes to see the structural impact in terms ofstrategic selectivity (Jessop 2008). He argues that structures do not determine theoutcome but do make certain forms of strategies more viable than others. This canhelp to explain why certain strategies are adopted rather than others, but oneshould not assume a necessary causal relationship. The goal is to leave thedialectic between agent and structure open for historical study again with the ideathat it is only at the level of ontology that one can determine how structure andagents relate to one another. In other words, critical realists turn the issue ofagency and structural determination into an object of enquiry to be debated in eachspecific case.

It is a key argument of this article that such an ontological solution rests on an

illusory assumption that one can distinguish agency from structural determi-nation. The criterion to establish agency as a fact hinges here on the possibility ofshowing that a significant change has occurred that was not predetermined bystructures. The problem is that the threshold that demarcates this criterion willnecessarily vary depending on the approach or the author. Indeed, what appearsfor some authors to be a moment of agency can easily be reinterpreted by othersas being determined by broader structural forces that were neglected in thefirst place.

A good example of this problem can be found in one of the classic uses of thenotion of agency. It emerged in the context of the debate on the inevitability of

globalization. During this debate, Eric Helleiner, for example, showed how keydecisions made by state officials allowed financial globalization to proceed, anddrew the conclusion that globalization was a product of state agency (Helleiner1994). Yet, these decisions, which he saw as enabling globalization, can easily beread instead as proofs of the very opposite. Is it a coincidence, one might ask, thatall these decisions to liberalize and allow globalization to proceed pointed in

8 Colin Wight (2006) has contested this type of claim by arguing that the literature onstructure and agency has mostly adopted a misleading epistemological focus. However,

this assessment fails to see that the literature, in fact, already assumes that structure andagency are two aspects of ontology. Hence, the debate has been mostly about findingways to recognize this ontological duality by adopting a proper epistemological

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the same direction? Hence, various authors have seen in these turning pointsthe proof that structural constraints were actually narrowing the freedom of stateofficials (Goodman and Pauly 1993; Clarke 1987).

The point here is that separating agency from structural determination always

requires an arbitrary distinction that can never be convincingly established onthe grounds of ontology. There is simply no way to determine in reality whatagency consists in, as if it were an object to be distinguished from structuraldetermination.9 In the end, any action can always be traced back to some form ofstructural determination. Because of this difficulty, critical scholars have struggledto make space for social change in their analysis. Indeed, the difficulty ofestablishing historically the agency of actors has led this dimension to be squeezedout of most accounts except in its most spectacular forms. This generally yields aconception of social change as being exceptional, shortlived and cataclysmic, asreflected in the idea of social revolution or epistemic change. If many approachesin IR insist that agency must play a role at one point in the analysis, that instance israrely reached. Social change thus continues to be pushed into the interstices ofhistory and to be seen as an exceptional case by contrast to the prevalent dynamicsof reproduction.

The limit of this ontological solution to the agent/structure dualism iscompounded by a second problem. Indeed, the notion of agency, as construed,tends to be a poor, if not sterile, heuristic tool for understanding social dynamics.The concept is largely constructed as a residual category in that it is defined as thataspect of social dynamics that escapes, at least partially, structural determination.Such a conception makes it virtually impossible to theorize agency itself (Doty1997, 81).10 As a moment of freedom from structural conditioning, it appears to be

something formless about which we can say very little. If one can point to theoccurrence of agency or describe an act of agency, there is little more to say aboutit. Arguing that agency is shaped by institutions or structures would be, in effect,tantamount to denying it. Cast as the ability to escape social conditioning, agencycannot have any historical shape or be thought in relation to historical structures.For this reason, the notion of agency acquired a voluntarist and ahistorical form,one that is mostly defined in abstraction from its social and historical context(Knafo 2002).

This explains why this notion has had little heuristic value in IR, even whenpeople admit to its theoretical importance. When authors wish to move beyond

the simple description of individual actions, they are necessarily driven to focus

9 One can add that such a judgment will always rest on an arbitrary assessment that ismore susceptible to confirm our assumptions than to challenge them. When we try to makethe distinction between agency and structural determination everything that appears to usas normal actions will appear to be determined by structures. By contrast, actions thatstrike us as out of the ordinary will be perceived as cases of agency.

10 Interestingly, Doty (1997), while correct in her assessment of this notion of agency,fails to grasp the implications of this point. Hence she exacerbates the problem by insistingthat agency should be reconceptualized as a moment of undecidability. In doing so, she

takes the limit itself of this conception of agency to be the key feature of social construction(the fact that it cannot be captured theoretically). In this way, she ends up celebrating thelimits of theory rather than rearticulating a conception of agency that is more productive



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on structural determination.11 Thus, the introduction of the notion of agencydid little to solve the structural bias of the discipline. Even, constructivists,who initially championed the notion of agency, fell back on the tendency tooveremphasize the role or social structures and norms at the expense of the

agents who help create and change them in the first place (Checkel 1998, 325).Most scholars now continue to rely on structural arguments for explaining

social developments, even when they go to great lengths in order to bring agencyback at a theoretical level. Because of this classic tradeoff between explanationand description, the structural framework of interpretation maintains its stronggravitational pull. Agency thus continues to be relegated to a descriptive andsecondary role, while the structural moment gives us the analytical material thatdoes the explaining. Treated as an exogenous variable, agency is invoked in orderto follow the advent of specific social configurations which are then assumed tolast for a given time. Yet this agency seems to have little importance for grasping

thesignificanceof these social structures. It only informs us about how structurescome about.12

Even in the work of critical realists, which generated important studies of socialchange and resistance, the desire to maintain a level of structural determination(even if only as a bias rather than an explicitly causal mechanism) perpetuates areifying moment in the way they analyse social processes. To come back to Jessopsargument that structures do not predetermine the outcome, this idea still assumesthat one can determine what are the (potential) effects of structures. In other words,it changes little in the analysis other than recognizing that these tendencies may notfulfil themselves. While this keeps the course of history open, it ultimately fails to

address the more important problem of positivism: reification. It is precisely theassumption that one can predetermine what are the effects of structures that I wishto put into question in the next section.

In the end, other than asserting that societies could be different, agencycontinues to have minimal explanatory value for understanding what did happen.At best, referring to agency serves here to prove, in a circular fashion, thatthere was indeed agency, but this is as far as the notion can go. Coming backto Helleiners argument about globalization, one can admit that his emphasison the role of key officials is fruitful for challenging deterministic conceptionsof globalization. But it offers little in terms of casting a different picture ofglobalization. For Helleiner, agencyallowedthe structural forces of globalization to

11Similarly, any attempt to substantiate agency irremediably falls back on structuraldeterminism. Even critical realists, who explicitly tried to carve out a middle ground

between structural determinism and empiricism/agency have repeatedly failed to do so, aseverything they touched turned into structural determinism. For example, Colin Wights(2006, 212214) attempts to unpack agency leads him back to structural determination. Hisanalysis of agency simply falls back on a structural analysis of agents based on identity andsocial positions.

12 This is well exemplified by Jonathan Josephs (2008) attempt to put forth the notion ofhegemony as a means to mediate the relationship between structure and agency. Here, it isnot clear how hegemony escapes the agent/structure dualism, since once again agency is

simply used as a means to follow how structures are put in place, but the explanation ofthe purpose that such a structure fills is still structural. Agency tells us about the wayinstitutions (or discourses) are implemented while structural analysis tells us what these

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operate, most notably by liberalizing economic flows, but this analysis does notchange how we see globalization itself. Ultimately, globalization might have beenengineered by specific actors, but we are never shown how these decisionsfundamentally shaped the nature of globalization. The notion of agency here seems

to say little more than the obvious: social dynamics are indeed socially constructed.Hence, critical scholars continue to rely on a structural framework of analysis

to explain what structures do and what is the purpose behind their design. As foragency, it is now mostly a marker that attests to an authors sensitivity to therole of social forces in shaping the world, but without really transformingthe structuralist bias that informs the historical analysis. In this way, the idea ofagency is generally evoked as a formal defence against determinism, but onewithout heuristic value for explaining the significance of concrete historicaldevelopments. For this reason, I argue that it provides mostly a token recognitionof the problem of social construction.

The limit of structural determination

The intention to overcome the dualism between agency and structure only yieldedunsatisfactory answers. Various strategies were proposed to take both sides of thestory into account in a dialectical manner, but this amounted at best to a statementof good intentions. As discussed above, trying to compensate for structuraldeterminism by adding agency to the mix failed to make sufficient room for thelatter.

What then is the problem with structural frameworks of analysis, especially

those that use the notion of structural power? This section will demonstrate how astructural framework leads critical scholars back towards positivism, a problemthat is particularly salient because of the emphasis on structural power. Whilepower may be structural in form (ontology), attempts to analyse it in structuralterms (method) lead critical scholars to reify social reality (Sewell 1982).13

The problem of reification can best be explained in relation to the issue thatinitially spurred the rise of continental structuralism. What distinguished thisapproach was a keen awareness of the radical autonomy of practice in relationto structures. Saussure (1979) had initially emphasized that language may haverules, but one still cannot know what people will do with language despite theconstraints that these rules impose. In other words, grammar does not provide an

explanation for why people say one thing rather than another. This distinction wasinitially used for the purpose of condemning empiricism and historicism as beingunable to provide a proper ground for defining structures. But this problem canactually be inverted. If there are an infinite number of possibilities that agentscan exploit within a structural framework, how can the effects of structures bedetermined? Are we then simply reduced to describe concrete practices?

13 The notion of structure is a difficult one to specify. At the most basic level, structuresrefer to any form of constraints that affects (or structures) how people act. More concretely,a structure represents a set of arrangements through which social relations are formalized.

There are two different aspects to this formalization: discourses and institutions. Thesestructures in turn give rise to unintended effects which can themselves create a secondorder of structural constraints in the form of unintended consequences that emerge from



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The problem of the gap between structure and practice remains a crucial issuefor social theory today. While it is certainly possible to relate the actions of peopleto all sorts of constraints and rules they confront, it would be wrong to assumethat one follows necessarily from the other, as if these actions were the necessary

or normal product of these constraints; as if people were forced to relate ina specific way to the constraints they experience. Thus, structures do createimperatives, but this does not mean that there is only one way to react to theseimperatives. To say, for example, that a market obliges people to find ways toremain competitive does not tell us what strategies people will choose in order todo so (Knafo 2002, 160). In other words, institutions and discourses provide rulesof the game, but they do not determine how people play it (Konings 2005, 108). Inwhat follows, I develop further the point that we cannot determine the trajectoryof a society by examining social structures in themselves (for example, the logicof capitalist accumulation, the discourse of modernity, et cetera). As I argue, thesignificance of social dynamics is not given by the structures themselves, but bywhat people do with them.

The main issue is a methodological one in that structural readings create amisleading perspective on social dynamics that blurs the process of socialconstruction and reifies social reality. Indeed, the argument that structuresconstrain or condition people to act in certain ways often leads critical theorists tofocus on those agents who are constrained by structures. But, for every agent whois constrained, there is always another who is empowered. For example, one canargue from a Marxist perspective that workers must subject themselves to theimperatives of the market because they no longer own their means of productionand thus need to enter wage relations to get their means of subsistence. However,

this structural constraint on workers provides at the same time agency forcapitalists who can use this power to exploit labour in various ways. In otherwords, when we focus on the restrictive nature of structures we limit ourselves toonly one side of a social relation. What appears to be the product of structuralconstraints is always a product of agency when properly resituated within a socialrelation that takes into account the power of another actor exploiting thesestructural constraints. The agency/structure debate is thus ill defined because itexamines the issue in terms of a dual relation between structure and agent, whenin fact we are dealing with a social relation between agents which is only mediatedby structures.

This point is crucial because structural constraints do not materialize asimperatives for one agent if there is no other agent who threatens to act upon theseconstraints. This is, in a way, a banal statement. Most people would agree that law,for example, never applies homogeneously across society. Some people have moremeans to mobilize it and exploit it than others. Some can afford to ignore it. In thisway, law has no determinate effect that could be derived in abstraction from theagents involved. Many critical theorists would subscribe to this point. But weoften miss its wider implications because it is often interpreted as a sign ofstructural biases rather than an indication of the centrality of agency. In otherwords, the key here is not that some agents escape the constraint of the law, butthat the law is mobilized by specific agents and for specific purposes. One cannotassume how law will be used. To analyse its structural effects in abstraction fromspecific uses and actors involved will thus lead us to reify legal institutions and

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thewaypeople exploit them, just as workers experience differently the constraintsthat stem from the market depending on the way capitalists exploit theirvulnerabilities.

What appears to be a product of structural constraints should thus be analysed

as a product of agency. The reason for this is that one gets a richer picture of socialdynamics when taking into account the people who exploit structures, rather thansimply those who are constrained by them. The focus is then set on what is beingachievedthrough these structures, rather than simply on the product that resultsfrom these actions. In other words, we examine the process of social construction,rather than limiting ourselves to its outcome. If we conceal from view the roleplayed by social actors in order to interpret this phenomenon in structural terms,we risk giving the impression that structures themselves generate such results. Itleads us to reify reality. Social outcomes then appear to be necessary products of astructure, as if the latter had an inherent logic.

Unfortunately, this point is often neglected, for there remains an assumptionamong critical theorists that differences in the way people exploit structures arelargely secondary and simply constitute variations on a common theme. Indeed,critical scholars are often adamant that there are limits to the possible which areestablished by these structures and which enable us to keep a structural viewpointwhile still entertaining the possibility that, within these limits, concrete strategiescan vary.14 Some Marxists might accept, for example, that capitalists pursuedifferent strategies of accumulation, yet still emphasize that all capitalists facetight competitive pressures that limit what they can do. These references to thelimits of the possible represent convenient assertions that enable scholars tomaintain a structural viewpoint while paying lip service to diversity and/oragency. This idea of limits simply justifies a static analysis of structures (forexample, in terms of how they reproduce something already given) which hindersour ability to grasp how people construct their social reality through structures.One can say that this perspective highlights how a state of affairs is maintained,but social reality is here, in a way, already constructed. Pointing to limits thusoveremphasizes the restrictive nature of structures and downplays theirproductive leverage.

This emphasis on the restrictive nature of structures not only reifies socialreality; it reinforces our own assumptions about social reality because the focus isset on what cannot be done, rather than what is being achieved. Assessing what

cannot be done is highly arbitrary and necessarily depends on what we assumeshould be possible. It encourages anachronistic and biased readings thatconsolidate our own assumptions about social reality. We thus, for example, oftenproject on the past our understanding of the present and measure the significanceof past developments in relation to what we assume should be possible. For thisreason, the notion of limit undermines the project of critical theory. It serves totranslate our assumptions of the possible into limits that are confronted by others

14 This is the problem with various scholars influenced by critical realism (for instance,Bieler and Morton 2001) who insist on the existence of deep structural constraints. The issue

is not whether they exist or not, but whether it is possible to determine the nature of thisstructural conditioning. This idea of deep structures drives a wedge between theory andhistory, creating again the illusion that one can determine the logic of these structures in



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(or by us). In doing so, we are bound to miss the significance of social constructionbecause we always play it out in our own terms.15

This represents a significant problem for critical theory because a structuralframework reifies social reality and hinders our ability to challenge our own

assumptions. To analyse power as being embedded in structures creates theimpression that these structures always have the same effect. This makes it easy tosimply project our own assumptions about these structures, and about how poweroperates through them. If given structures always produce similar effects, thenwhat we know about these structures always applies regardless of the context. It isfor this reason that a self-reflexive critical approach, one that seeks to put intoquestions its own assumptions, cannot rely on a structural approach to power.In the end, even if power operates through structures, it still should not be interpretedin structural terms.

To illustrate this argument, it is useful to look more closely at a historical case in

order to show what difference a systematic focus on agency makes. For thispurpose, I turn to my work on the gold standard in order to illustrate the problemwith a structural approach. According to the critical literature, the gold standardrepresents a perfect case of structural power. It was a monetary regime that wasfirst implemented in Britain in the context of early 19th-century economicliberalism and which was said to structurally bind economic policy to capitalistimperatives. The idea behind the gold standard was to anchor a monetary systemon the basis of gold reserves that were held by central banks. The simplecommitment to make banknotes fully convertible into gold at a fixed rate was saidto have a powerful effect in limiting state intervention and promoting self-regulating markets (Ruggie 1982; Capie 2002). For the state now had to be carefulnot to adopt policies that could provoke capital outflows and deplete gold reserves.As scholars of the gold standard put it, states thus had to sacrifice nationalautonomy to promote free capital flow and stable conditions of investments.

However, this apparently straightforward interpretation of the gold standardis misleading and illustrates how a structural viewpoint can lead us to reify socialstructures. In line with my argument about structural mediation, it should beobserved that the gold standard imposed certain constraints on states but onlybecause it created distinct opportunities for financiers to arbitrage and speculateon currencies (Knafo 2006). Convertibility offered numerous opportunities forarbitrage and for speculative attacks on banks. To think about the constraints on

central banks without factoring the agency that financiers gained is to limitourselves to one side of the equation. In the end, the gold standard was only asource of concern for central banks when financiers threatened to speculateagainst these banks. Hence, central banks experienced differently the constraint ofconvertibility depending on who held banknotes, what kind of strategies theseactors adopted and the way they converted banknotes into gold.16

15 This scenario is often played out in an inverted form with the assumption that aspecific limit we confront today is said to have been absent in the past, or in another society.However, the key assumption is here again what we presume should be or was possible.

16

For this reason, central banks could in fact stray far away from what would beconsidered prudent behaviour by todays standard because they were able to negotiate andmake sure that key financiers and merchants would not exploit the commitment of

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This structural bias has not only led scholars to reify this institution but alsoreinforced their own assumptions about the significance of the gold standard.Interestingly, analyses of the gold standard are generally based on a comparisonwith more recent monetary systems. Unsurprisingly, the restrictive nature of the

gold standard is thus accentuated by the fact that it proved incompatible withKeynesian macroeconomic policy (Eichengreen 1992). However, the assumptionthat the gold standard served to limit modern expansionary economic policies isahistorical because Keynesian policies had never been implemented when thegold standard was first established. It is thus misleading to emphasize thisconstraint of the gold standard as a determining feature of monetary policy in the19th century.

As I will show in the next section, the gold standard was in fact a flexiblestructure of governance in comparison with previous monetary systems (Knafo2006, 7980). It was, after all, a means to lend credibility to banknotes by ensuringthat they would be convertible into gold. The irony, then, is that the restrictionsimposed by the gold standard and exploited by financiers were only significantbecause of the possibilities they opened up for central banks. While the goldstandard limited the amount of banknotes that could be issued, it still enabled theissue of banknotes in the first place.

As this example demonstrates, structural interpretations are not specificenough to grasp the social significance of given structures and the complexarticulation of power that they buttress. In emphasizing the problems withapproaches that focus on the restrictions that structures impose on agents, I do notwish to deny that there are limits to the possible. Clearly people cannot dowhatever they wish. Yet this does not mean that these limits actually determine

in a significant way what people actually do. To assume that the existenceof constraints or imperatives can explain why agents act in one way or anotherentrenches social theory in a form of positivism. It perpetuates the illusion thatpeople follow a template already laid out by the structures within which theyoperate. To put it differently, when we assume that the behaviour of agents canbe deduced from the structures in which they are embedded, we take thesebehaviours for granted as the normal manifestations of structural constraints.We take the strategies adopted by actors as already given by the structuresthemselves, as if these strategies were the only way to relate to given structuralimperatives or constraints.

To assume that capitalists, for example, would always exploit workers in thesame way is precisely to naturalize their behaviour as if there was a normalstrategy for them to adopt. Developments such as mass production or Fordismcan thus be almost naturalized as necessary steps in the development ofcapitalism, rather than specific innovations by agents in their attempt to come toterms with their own social reality. For this reason, innovations are too oftenminimized and presented as the predetermined outcome of an overarching logic.In this way, change is reduced to an inconsequential development; one that, oddlyenough, becomes significant only when repackaged as a functional requirement ofsocial reproduction itself. In other words, this structural conception leads us toreduce change to its very opposite: a means for reproducing the status quo.

It is important to emphasize this point, because too often the debate overstructure and agency degenerates into a discussion over whether agents have an



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relevance to what is at stake here. The important problem relates to the way wemake sense of the world. It is an epistemological issue because it concerns thenature of critical knowledge and a methodological one because it relates to thetype of rigour that is required to overcome the pitfalls of positivism. Thus, I am not

rejecting the notion that structures do, in a way, condition the behaviour of agents.Rather, I challenge the idea that scholars can derive explanations from thestructures themselves as if they had an inherent causal effect. Doing so reifiesstructures and thus reproduces the problem initially identified with positivism.17

A drift towards essentialism is then inevitable and well exemplified in the broadgeneralizations that pervade the work of critical scholars. It is on this basis thatsome Marxists can posit that 400 years of market development in Western Europeare ultimately driven by a single logic of accumulation that was presentedby Marx in Capital; or that some poststructuralists can hastily conclude that theWest has been shaped by a similar discursive structure of modernity for the past

300 years.

Agency and the practice of power

The problem of positivism is linked to its tendency to naturalize a sociallyconstructed reality. Critical scholars sought to solve this problem by proposing aricher ontology that emphasized social construction. In the context of this move,agency seemed to fill a key role by highlighting that structures are the resultof past human interactions (Bieler and Morton 2001, 25). Yet, this solutionunderestimated the problem of positivism and failed to address it at a

methodological level. As argued above, it is insufficient to point out that peoplewere responsible for establishing structures (an ontological argument) if wecontinue to attribute an inherent logic to these structures. It is not enough todevelop an ontology that posits that structures are socially constructed, if weimplicitly suspend this process of construction when analysing structures as ifthey were simply reproducing something already given or inherent.

The key misunderstanding in this debate is the belief that we need to overcomethe agent/structure dualism. The scholars who have attempted to do so have beenforced to shift the focus away from methodology and towards ontology (Wight2006). By contrast, I argue that the problem is not the dualism itself, as is oftenbelieved. There is simply no way around this incompatibility of structural powerand agency. One can seek to make this relationship as dialectical as possible, butthere will always be a choice to be made even if it is a reluctant one. It is necessaryto recognize this in order to clarify what is stake in this methodological debate.Once it is accepted that it is impossible to have it both ways, one can finally decidewhich of these two sides should be privileged.

17 Another rendition of this problem can be found in Quentin Skinners work. HismagnificentFoundations of modern political thought(1978) shows how political theorists haverepeatedly misunderstood the canon in political theory by focusing on key ideas found inthe work of great theorists. But, as Skinner shows, often the most striking ideas to modern

eyes were in fact common to the era in which these authors wrote. Hence withoutresituating these authors in their intellectual context in order to better assess their actualcontributions, commentators often neglect the actual distinctiveness of these theorists, their

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In this section I propose that only a radical emphasis on agency can take criticaltheory beyond positivism and reification. Instead of seeing it as a moment or aspecific object that should be identified and studied,18 agency is approached as aprinciple of critical rigour to historicize IR. From this perspective, agency is not an

ability that people can choose to activate in certain circumstances; rather, it isalways constitutive of social dynamics. For this reason, it must frame morefundamentally how we think about social phenomena such as power. To movebeyond positivism and its tendency to reify social reality, it is necessary to accountfor agency all along the way of the analysis.

The point in embracing this methodological principle is not simply to limitwhat can be said about social reality or to force oneself to only describe the world.Rather, this methodological principle generates richer insights on power becauseit highlights the productive dimension of power which is too often concealed.While various scholars point out the dual nature of structures at a theoretical level

(enabling and constraining), in practice the analysis constantly gravitates towardsthe constraining and determining aspect of these structures.As one reifies structures by assuming that they have inherent biases, the power

struggles that are played through these structures tend to be reified. The result isthat power becomes construed as a passive phenomenon that seems embeddedin structures. It has no agency, always serving to reproduce an already givenstructure. It also appears already settled, as if it is no longer negotiated amongsocial actors. Seen as being embedded in a structure, power is reified as a forcethat keeps having the same effects. The question of practice then always appearssecondary. It is here used for the most part to illustratehow power works (as anexample) rather than to challengeour understanding of it.

To perceive the productive aspect of power, one needs to be more specific inthe analysis than what a concept of structural power can allow for. The best way toconvey this point is to shift the traditional emphasis away from weaker socialforces and resistance and turn to the agency of the powerful. While power is moreobvious at this level, agency tends to slip out of the picture. Theorists oftenunderestimate the challenge there is for social forces to exert power over others.This is not an evident process. Firstly, social actors must conceptualize theircomplex reality in order to relate to it. For example, trying to conceive strategiesfor regulating an economy that is constituted by millions of different activities is agreat challenge that always partly eludes state officials (Scott 1998). Secondly,developing proper institutions in order to gain leverage over this reality is alsotricky, partly because other agents resist and subvert attempts to do so (Certeau2002; Crozier and Friedberg 1980).

To say that dominant social forces have more power to determine what shouldbe done does not mean that they can easily achieve what they set out to do.Assuming so often leads critical scholars to make three problematic assumptions:(1) that dominant forces fully understand the problems they face; (2) that theyknow how to solve these problems, as if there was a predetermined and objectivecourse to ensure reproduction; and (3) that they control the consequences of whatthey do, as if other social forces react passively to their actions. For this reason,

18 The classic mistake that reflects this bias is the tendency in the literature to conflate



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one cannot emphasize enough how power, and the ability to shape society, iscontinuously exaggerated and misunderstood by social theorists who focus onstructural power.

Exerting power is always a challenge and requires constant innovations. Indeed,

the social context in which people act always evolves and creates difficulties thatneed to be dealt with. For this reason, there is always a pragmatic element in theway people exploit structures in order to relate to others. This pragmatic dimensionis central to power dynamics and indicates that the question of power can never besettled. More importantly, it shows that these pragmatic considerations are morethan complications that would limit the effectiveness of power. They shape themotives that drive power and what is actually being played out between socialforces. People are always working to adjust their strategies in order to gain leverageover what escapes their control. For this reason, power struggles are mainly aboutthe attempt to build a certain agency over social phenomena that escape ones

grasp. One can say that power is effective only if it translates into agency. In otherwords, what is significant about power dynamics is precisely the attempt of specificagents to construct and reshape their agency. Power is always about agency; aboutthe attempt by social forces to develop means to relate to a social reality that partlyescapes their control and which they seek to influence or change.19

To problematize power as a dynamic and constructive phenomenon, it isimportant to recover this pragmatic dimension often neglected in a structuralconception of power.20 Failing to specify power in these terms leads us tooverestimate the power of dominant actors and to miss the purpose of givenstructures. Indeed, structures are established and transformed precisely in order

to gain leverage and to influence a social reality. Structures are thus intimately tiedto agency. Their purpose is precisely to create agency (for some), not simply toclose it off (for others).

This conception can be defended on ontological grounds, but it is formethodological reasons that I put this argument forward. The issue is one of

19 For poststructuralists influenced by Foucault, there is no space for a concept of agencybecause there is no subject that stands outside of the very practice that constitutes thatsubject. Dyrberg (1997, 29) conceptualizes this issue by pointing out that power operates ina circular fashion by reference to base values and structural determinants, which are at oneand the same time the medium and outcome of power. Structural determinants andpractice are thus bound in such a way that none of these aspects can be seen as standingoutside as a prior determinant that could be said to shape the other. On this issue, see alsoCampbell (1996). This idea, however, only stands if one remains within an ontologicalframework where the objective is to determine the logic of causality. As Dyrberg correctlyshows, there is no way to isolate a moment of causality that one could ascribe to an agentconstituted in abstraction from practice; as if the agent were defined prior to what is done orperformed. However, if we switch the terms of the debate to think of the issue in terms ofepistemology, that is as a means to problematize what is socially constructed, then there isno point in seeking the agent responsible for this agency. In other words, the issue is not toidentify the cause that produces what we are trying to explain, but rather to problematizethe significanceof what is achieved from the perspective of agents and the way they relate totheir social context.

20

This is not to revert to Roxanne Dotys (1997) ontology of practice as somethingradically indeterminate. Rather the objective is simply to problematize social dynamics as

being shaped by the specific problem of practice; by the difficulty social forces have in

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critical rigour. The recognition of agency helps to specify what differencepower makes (its productive aspect) by emphasizing the actors involved insocial struggles and the changes that these struggles generate. What the agency/structure debate reveals is that it is insufficient to simply argue that agency is an

integral feature of IR.21

Change and reproduction may be two sides of the samecoin,22but the real issue is to determine what kind of methodology can deal withthis problem. As I showed, attempts to reconcile both perspectives will continue toprivilege structures and reproduction over agents and change. Hence, one cannotavoid making a choice between these two sides of the story. The argument of thisarticle is that this choice is not an ontological one which would depend ondetermining which of the two is more prevalent. It is a methodological one whichconcerns the purpose of analysis or what we hope to achieve through it.

From the critical perspective developed here, the ambition is to determinewhich angle provides a more incisive approach to challenge our own assumptions

about IR. As argued throughout this piece, the methods of positivism are basedprimarily on generalization and tend to reify social reality. It is this path thatcritical scholars are forced to take when they focus on social reproduction andstructural power. While it is attractive because it makes it easier to generalizeconclusions about the way power operates, this structural emphasis pushescritical theory towards positivism and reification. By contrast, an emphasis onsocial change offers a better means to challenge ones own assumptions. Itprovides the necessary historical precision to grasp more clearly the differencethat power makes. It is with this purpose in mind that critical scholars mustprivilege agency and change over structure and reproduction, because only a

focus on change can really grasp the productive nature of power.Analysing power from the perspective of agency does not imply that we arecondemned to describe history. Rather, structures and power must be analysedfrom the perspective of the agents involved and the change that they generate.One can still arrive at abstract and general conclusions based on this perspective,but the process of theorizing moves towards specification rather thangeneralization. It aims at showing how a logic we assume to be inherent to agiven structure is in fact specific to a given context.

As discussed earlier, scholars tend to project their own assumptions about astructure when they only look at the constraints that it imposes. Looking back at the

21 Even if we start from the idea that peoples practice is fundamentally shaped by theirability to use a strategy learned in one context in order to apply it in another (socialconditioning), these contexts always differ. The same behaviour will thus have differenteffects because of the specific context in which it is adopted. Hence, even when replicating asimilar strategy, there is always an innovative aspect to social practices because of theirspecific effect within the new context in which they are pursued. This is why people canoften innovate and transform their reality even without realizing the significance of thetransformation that is taking place. In the end, while no actions are truly revolutionary, inthe sense of breaking completely with the past, people still always innovate, even if most ofthe time the consequences appear minor. Such social changes should not be dismissed assuperficial on the basis that they serve to reproduce something already given, as if they

simply served to make the structure work.22 As various historians have shown, people change their structural conditions in thevery process through which they attempt to reproduce or bolster the forms of power they



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gold standard will help illustrate this. The main reason why scholars misunder-stood the gold standard is that they started from the constraint of convertibility.This implied first that it had been imposed on the state and secondly that it wasmotivated by financial interests. However, looking more closely at the history of

the gold standard, one realizes that the opposite was true. It was actually imposedby the British state on banks, such as the Bank of England, that were, at the time,private or semi-private. Specifying the actors involved thus gives us already aprecision that changes substantially our assessment of this institution.

But how did this change the power of the British state?23 If it was a constraintimposed by the state on banks, what form of empowerment did it provide to theformer over the latter? This development was particularly significant because itunwittingly created new tools of governance. As I have argued elsewhere, the aimwas to develop a new framework of governance for the state to relate to a bankingsector that escaped state control. It was a means to control more specifically the

practice of banknote issuing which was growing rapidly in England. This led,most notably, to the centralization of banknote issuing under the aegis of the Bankof England and increasingly subjecting the Bank to state control. In the process,central banking was progressively constructed as the state experimented withmonetary governance in order to get a grip over developments that escaped itscontrol.

In sum, a structural approach led scholars to posit that the gold standard hadlimited the range of possibilities for monetary policy. However, in doing so, thisliterature missed how the gold standard had created a radically new form ofagency by profoundly transforming the way states relate to monetary phenomena.

Scholars thus only saw the restrictive impact of the gold standard (the limitsimposed on central banking) because they took for granted what the goldstandard actually constructed (central banking). When we invert our reading inorder to examine the leverage that the gold standard provided for states, it thenappears a crucial stepping-stone towards the construction of monetary policy,rather than something fundamentally constraining it (Knafo 2006, 97). It wasprecisely this new agency that made the institutions of the gold standard, initiallydeveloped in Britain, so alluring in the late 19th century as other states raced toemulate its example.

Conclusion

Critical theorists have often misunderstood what is at stake in the agent/structuredebate. By seeking different forms of causality in order to capture two aspectsof social construction (reproduction and change), they have entertained a

23 From a methodological standpoint, the agency/structure debate concerns the way wecontextualize power. When we contextualize from a structural perspective, we fall back onthe structures themselves to define this context and thus explain social developments.However, this type of contextualization neglects the agents involved and the specific waysin which they relate to one another. For this reason, I invert the traditional relationship that

is established between structures and agency. Whereas structures, such as institutions ordiscourses, are generally perceived as a means to contextualize actions associated withagency, the significance of these structures must be framed from the perspective of agency:

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problematic dualism positing that social construction can be conceptualized as twodistinct modalities. Such a framework offers no space to reconcile the notions ofpower and agency, which are thus generally opposed to one another, the formerbeing privileged to explain the significance of social dynamics. This bias

undermines the project of critical theory, since, in attributing social developmentsto the existence of given structures, it further reifies the social reality that theoristswish to critically engage. A structural framework of analysis thereforeoverestimates what can be derived from the analysis of social structures andconsequently tends to relegate any conception of agency to irrelevancy.

The notion of power has been rearticulated in relation to agency in this piece.As I have argued, the idea of agency tells us more about the limits of theory inrelation to history than it tells us about the actions of individuals. It offers amethodological rigour that highlights how far one can go theoretically beforeengaging history. Furthermore, several arguments were emphasized throughoutthis piece. First, structures have no significance outside of the way they arehistorically implemented and exploited by specific agents as means to relate toother actors. Second, I argued that we should take the effects of this constructionmore seriously by making social change a systematic focus of our analysis. Thisperspective enables one to better specify the significance of social structures andthe struggles for power that revolve around them. More specifically, it brings intofocus the way in which social forces experimentin order to relate to a socialreality that always partly eludes their controland the impacts that theseadjustments have.

The debate on agency and structure is fundamentally about methodology, notabout ontology. It concerns the implications that the concept of agency has for the

way we analyse IR, or more specifically its usefulness for accentuating the criticalthrust of our analyses (that is, their ability to put into question what we take forgranted). Hence, the notions of agency and structures do not refer to twoontological dimensions of social reality that we need to recover, but rather to abroader epistemological issue, one that is at the very heart of the oppositionbetween positivism and critical theory.

It is on this basis that I offered a re-reading of Robert Coxs opposition betweenproblem-solving theory and critical theory. What lies behind the oppositionbetween structure- and agent-based readings of social construction is the problemof reification. It is directly linked to the contrast between positivism and critical

theory. The problem of positivism is that it reifies social reality by assuming thatsocial dynamics are determined, or constructed, by structures. In seeking togeneralize certain conclusions about structures, it reifies them and creates theimpression that these structure generate an inherent logic, or bias. Approachesthat adopt such a framework present reality as a given. Structural readingstherefore always reinforce our assumptions about the world by reifying it and, inso doing, blunt the critical edge of theory.

The task then for critical theorists is to address the issue of methodology inlight of this recognition of agency and what it involves for the way we theorizeabout IR. Putting into question what we take for granted requires that wehighlight how structures have a different significance depending on the wayspecific agents relate to them. Agency provides a methodological rigour to specifyhow structures are used differently by social agents in order to gain leverage over



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produces in this process (social change). This focus on agency is necessary for theproject of critical theory, because without the methodological rigour it provides,that is without reading all social processes in terms of agency, there is nothing tostop us from lapsing back into the reifying gaze of positivism.

Notes on contributor

Samuel Knafois a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex.His work focuses on liberal financial governance and the political economy ofspeculation. Recent publications include Liberalisation and the political economyof financial bubbles,Competition and Change (2009) and The state and the rise ofspeculative finance in England, Economy and Society(2008).

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