Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development

Waltz's neorealist theory has been charged with falsely separating geopolitical from social and economic processes. Yet Waltz's critics themselves have failed to show how sociological and geopolitical phenomena can be explained in a unified international theory. Such a theory, says Waltz, would have to pass three tests. It must delimit a field of specifically international phenomena. It must identify structured (and hence theorizable) effects within this field. And it must furnish ‘a brilliant intuition’, which reveals the causal relations that explain these effects. This article argues that the idea of ‘uneven and combined development’ (U&CD) can pass these tests. The article delimits ‘the international’ as those phenomena arising from the interactive multiplicity of societies. Next, it uses Gerschenkron's theory of backwardness to identify internationally structured effects arising from societal multiplicity. And finally, by considering the debate on the First World War, it explores how the causal mechanisms identified by U&CD can be used to construct a unified sociological and geopolitical explanation.