Micro Power



Micro Power

Introduction

Although classical realism does make strong political assumptions about human nature and the role of power in politics, the two-step analysis of power mentioned above, which is driven by the explanatory domain, has become dominant. On the micro level, realist theory relies on the idea that states are interested in relative gains in power. Each of these concepts presupposes that power is measurable. Indeed, such theories require a concept of power akin to the concept of money in economic theory. In this analogy, the striving for utility maximization expressed and measured in terms of money parallels the national interest (i.e., security) expressed in terms of (relative) power.

The Concept of power in Realist Theories

This central assumption has been challenged by early realist critiques and more recent institutionalist approaches. In an early argument that also anticipates and implicitly criticizes the economic analogy in neorealist theory, Raymond Aron opposed this aggregated concept of micro power and the underlying micro power-money analogy. The different degrees of the fungibility of money and micro power resources make this impossible. The term fungibility refers to the idea of a moveable good for which another good in the same class can be freely substituted. Fungible goods are universally applicable or convertible, in contrast to those that retain value only in a specific context. Whereas fungibility seems a plausible assumption in monetarized economies, it is not so in world politics; even apparently ultimate micro power resources such as weapons of mass destruction may not be of great help in getting another state to change its monetary policies.

Aron recognized that economic theory can be used to model behavior on the basis of a variety of conflicting preferences. But for him, with the advent of money as a general standard of value within which these competing preferences can be situated on the same scale, compared, and traded-off, economists were able to reduce the variety of preferences to one utility function. Because micro power in world politics lacks a real-world fungibility, it cannot play a corresponding role as a standard of value. Therefore, micro power cannot be the currency of world politics, and national security in terms of micro power is not equivalent to a utility function.

In response, realists insisted that diplomats had repeatedly been able to find a measure of micro power, and hence, the difference is just one of degree, not of kind. Yet even if actors can agree on some approximations for carrying out exchanges or establishing micro power rankings, this is a social convention that by definition can be challenged and exists only to the extent that it is agreed on. Micro power resources do not come with a standardized price tag.

With the link between resources and outcomes forgone, the realist chain of causes for understanding the international structure is broken, for a single international micro power structure relies either on the assumption of a single dominant issue area or on a high fungibility of micro power resources—neither of which are ...