Rosenberg, Justin. "Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development". International Politics, Vol.50, No.2 (2013): 183-230.

Rosenberg, Justin. "Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development". International Politics, Vol.50, No.2 (2013): 183-230.

• One of the primary critiques of Kenneth Waltz's theory of neorealism is its separation of domestic and international politics. Responding to these critiques, Dr. Waltz has argued that the link between domestic politics and international affairs is impossibly difficult to theorize, allowing it to be ignored (183-184, 187).
• Dr. Waltz argues that a theory capable of linking domestic and international politics must be limited in the objects of its analysis, rather than encompassing every factor; must identify patterns of behavior which can be recorded as scientific laws; and must explain and predict international relations. Dr. Waltz asserts that no such theory yet exists (185).
• Previous attempts to bridge the gap between theories of domestic and international politics have been unsuccessful largely because they simply attempt to explain international politics with reference to state interactions. This does not meet the true criteria for a unifying theory: the ability to find common causal variables which can explain both domestic and international politics (192).
• The author contends that Leon Trotsky's theory of 'uneven and combined development' meets all three of the criteria set forth by Dr. Waltz for a theory to combine domestic and international politics. The theory limits international politics as the interactions between multiple societies, identifies patterns in interactions within and between societies, and provides explanatory and predictive information about future outcomes (185).
• Unevenness, as defined by Leon Trotsky, is the concept that different societies are developing at different ways and at different rates and that their interactions are affected by this unevenness and influence future unevenness. Thus, a theory of the interaction of uneven societies can explain both domestic and international politics because uneven levels of development affect both internal domestic developments and interstate relations (193-194, 199).
• Using the example of Alexander Gerschenkron's 1962 book 'Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective', which attempted to establish theoretical laws to govern the relationship between the backwardness of a country upon attempting industrialization and its later development, the author contends that the concept of unevenness can be used to identify and theorize patterns (202-203).
• The issue with Dr. Gerschenkron's approach, which distinguishes it from the full theory put forth by the author, is that Dr. Gerschenkron only looks at 'backwardness' as a national characteristic. Instead, unevenness should be imagined as a condition existing both within and between countries (204).
• The author uses the First World War as a case study of the explanatory value of the theory of uneven and combined development (206-224). The explanation given is really really long and is more historical than anything else; not relevant to actual theoretical points being argued.
• The inability of the realist school of IR to create a unifying theory between international and domestic politics is not because of a specific blindness in realist theory, nor because such unification is ontologically impossible, but because the classical tradition of social theory from which the realist school of IR draws did not have the conception of societies required to construct such a theory (188).
• Dr. Waltz and other realists have considered the divide between domestic and international politics as analogous to Emile Durkheim's divide between 'mechanical' and 'solitary' societies. This is flawed because, unlike mechanical and solitary societies, the domestic and international politics interact with each other and exist contemporaneously (191).
• Leon Trotsky created the theory of uneven and combined development in response to the question of why Russia, despite reaching a stage of industrialization similar to Britain and France in the early 19th Century, did not have political and social conditions resembling those states. Mr. Trotsky came up with three reasons for divergent developments (195).
• Industrialization and capitalism did not arise naturally through internal developments, but emerge as the result of direct action by domestic elites and foreign governments. The economic, political, and military pressure exerted on Russia by capitalist states pressured it to industrialize (195-196).
• Development in Russia did not mimic earlier stages of development in western Europe because by the time industrialization began in Russia new technologies were available which had not existed in earlier decades. Despite being at the start of industrialization, therefore, Russia and other undeveloped societies had access to better technologies than earlier societies, allowing and encouraging them to pursue different paths of development (196).
• The fact that the methods of industrialization and levels of technology were so different in Russia and other undeveloped states than anywhere else meant that a new combination of economic and political conditions existed in Russia, entirely different from any previous state. In Russia this manifested in an advanced industrial economy run by a primarily feudal and agriculturalist society (196-197).
• Anarchy actually plays a larger role in all levels of politics in the theory of uneven and combined development than it does in neorealism. Neorealism restricts the role of anarchy to international relations, but does not recognize the impact that anarchy has on domestic politics; the theory of uneven and combined development explores the impact of anarchy at all levels of politics and society (200).
• Source mine of historiography of the First World War is given on pages 205, 207, and 210.