Realism and Reality Congruence: Sociology and International Relations

Abstract

In the modern world, there is a great variety of important power resources. So the formulation of a ‘realist’ strategy for a state in pursuit of hegemony is correspondingly more complex and uncertain: how is national interest to be perceived and pursued? The central question that I wish to pose is whether we can conceive of ‘realism’ in international relations if there is a low level of reality congruence, and a high level of fantasy in the thinking of the people whose ‘national interest’ is being pursued, and in the perceptions of those with the power to pursue that ‘national interest’? Let us therefore dissect this notion of ‘national interest’.