Balance of Power

The balance of power is a central concept in international relations that first came into widespread [Page 47]use in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though many different meanings have been associated with this concept, it refers generally to the principle that powerful states in an anarchic international environment will respond to one state's increase in power by striving to increase their own levels of power. The result of this self-interested action by states is thought to be a general power equilibrium among the most powerful states in the system. Because of the interaction of states' self-interested strategies, no one state is able to dominate the international system. This concept is thus held to explain why there has never been—nor is there likely to be—an overarching world government.

Scholars of international relations have often remarked disparagingly on the ambiguity surrounding the meaning of the term balance of power. Richard Cobden once declared scathingly, “The theory of a balance of power is a mere chimera—a creation of the politician's brain—a phantasm, without definite form or tangible existence.” In a noteworthy critique, Inis Claude identifies the contradictory manners in which scholars have referred to the concept: descriptively as a situation that inheres among states, prescriptively as a policy that statesmen should follow, and analytically as a system that regulates conduct among states and limits the range of possible international political outcomes. Within each category, there remains considerable variation in the way that the term is used. When referring to the balance of power as a situation, for instance, scholars sometimes use it to describe a situation of equilibrium, sometimes to describe its opposite, a situation of imbalance, and sometimes as a synonym for any distribution of power. Similarly, discussions of the balance of power as a policy sometimes refer to a policy of maintaining an equilibrium with other states and other times to a policy of maintaining a favorable balance of power—that is, a preponderance of power. Because of this confusion about the concept's meaning, and because of many scholars' tendency to slip between conflicting meanings of the concept with relatively little awareness, readers must take care to ascertain which meaning of the concept an author is employing at a particular time.

Despite these sources of disagreement, scholars of the balance of power share many assumptions. These assumptions are also held in general by realist scholars of international relations, making the balance of power a central realist concept. The state is viewed as the central unit of international politics in a system that is described as anarchical, a term that refers simply to the absence in the international context of an overarching world sovereign—anarchy in this context neither means nor implies chaos. Yet, because there is no international equivalent to Thomas Hobbes's domestic Leviathan, states—which are assumed to desire, at a very minimum, survival—must jealously guard their own security. They must be ever circumspect, as the inherent uncertainty of the international system means that even states that seem benign today might become threatening tomorrow. In such a situation, states that see an emerging power on the horizon should attempt to counteract this new power. They have two primary means at their disposal as they attempt to balance against a rising potential threat: (1) they may increase their own military strength through such efforts as armament or (2) they may form alliances with other states against the potential threat. The first is known as internal balancing and the second as external balancing.

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