Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804750173
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Since the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, many scholars have argued that the balance of power theory is losing its relevance. This text examines this viewpoint, as well as looking at systematic factors that may hinder or favour the return of balance of power politics.
Balance of Power
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804750173
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Since the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, many scholars have argued that the balance of power theory is losing its relevance. This text examines this viewpoint, as well as looking at systematic factors that may hinder or favour the return of balance of power politics.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804750173
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Since the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, many scholars have argued that the balance of power theory is losing its relevance. This text examines this viewpoint, as well as looking at systematic factors that may hinder or favour the return of balance of power politics.
The Balance Of Power
Author: Michael Sheehan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134813155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
The balance of power principle has been central to both the study and practice of international politics for over 300 years. It has guided governments in the conduct of foreign policy and provided a structure for explanations of some of the recurring patterns of international relations. This study examines the various meanings given to the balance of power over the centuries and traces the historical evolution of its theory and practice through steadily more complex forms. It describes the balance principle in practice, both as a guiding light of national foreign policies and as a structural explanation of how the international system operates. The reader is provided with an understanding of the various meanings of the balance principle and the key thinkers and politicians who have influenced its development. The text presents the essence of arguments concerning the morality of the principle as a foreign policy guide and its value as a structural explanation of the fundamental reality of international relations.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134813155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
The balance of power principle has been central to both the study and practice of international politics for over 300 years. It has guided governments in the conduct of foreign policy and provided a structure for explanations of some of the recurring patterns of international relations. This study examines the various meanings given to the balance of power over the centuries and traces the historical evolution of its theory and practice through steadily more complex forms. It describes the balance principle in practice, both as a guiding light of national foreign policies and as a structural explanation of how the international system operates. The reader is provided with an understanding of the various meanings of the balance principle and the key thinkers and politicians who have influenced its development. The text presents the essence of arguments concerning the morality of the principle as a foreign policy guide and its value as a structural explanation of the fundamental reality of international relations.
Polarity, Balance of Power and International Relations Theory
Author: Goedele De Keersmaeker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319426524
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This book discusses the rise of polarity as a key concept in International Relations Theory. Since the end of the Cold War, until at least the end of 2010, there has been a wide consensus shared by American academics, political commentators and policy makers: the world was unipolar and would remain so for some time. By contrast, outside the US, a multipolar interpretation prevailed. This volume explores this contradiction and questions the Neorealist claim that polarity is the central structuring element of the international system. Here, the author analyses different historic eras through a polarity lens, compares the way polarity is used in the French and US public discourses, and through careful examination, reaches the conclusion that polarity terminology as a theoretical concept is highly influenced by the Cold War context in which it emerged. This volume is an important resource for students and researchers with a critical approach to Neorealism, and to those interested in the defining shifts the world went through during the last twenty five years.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319426524
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This book discusses the rise of polarity as a key concept in International Relations Theory. Since the end of the Cold War, until at least the end of 2010, there has been a wide consensus shared by American academics, political commentators and policy makers: the world was unipolar and would remain so for some time. By contrast, outside the US, a multipolar interpretation prevailed. This volume explores this contradiction and questions the Neorealist claim that polarity is the central structuring element of the international system. Here, the author analyses different historic eras through a polarity lens, compares the way polarity is used in the French and US public discourses, and through careful examination, reaches the conclusion that polarity terminology as a theoretical concept is highly influenced by the Cold War context in which it emerged. This volume is an important resource for students and researchers with a critical approach to Neorealism, and to those interested in the defining shifts the world went through during the last twenty five years.
Balance of Power in World History
Author: S. Kaufman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023059168X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The balance of power is one of the most influential ideas in international relations, yet it has never been comprehensively examined in pre-modern or non-European contexts. This book redresses this imbalance. The authors present eight new case studies of balancing and balancing failure in pre-modern and non-European international systems.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023059168X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The balance of power is one of the most influential ideas in international relations, yet it has never been comprehensively examined in pre-modern or non-European contexts. This book redresses this imbalance. The authors present eight new case studies of balancing and balancing failure in pre-modern and non-European international systems.
Restraining Great Powers
Author: T. V. Paul
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory--the bedrock of realism in international relations--other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance the United States' rising power. Yet they did not. Nor have they united to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or Russian offensives along its western border. This does not mean balance-of-power politics is dead, argues renowned international relations scholar T. V. Paul; instead it has taken a different form. Rather than employ familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers have engaged in "soft balancing," which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. Paul places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective, from the post-Napoleonic era to today's globalized world. This book offers an illuminating examination of how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228481
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world's most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory--the bedrock of realism in international relations--other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance the United States' rising power. Yet they did not. Nor have they united to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China Sea or Russian offensives along its western border. This does not mean balance-of-power politics is dead, argues renowned international relations scholar T. V. Paul; instead it has taken a different form. Rather than employ familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers have engaged in "soft balancing," which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. Paul places the evolution of balancing behavior in historical perspective, from the post-Napoleonic era to today's globalized world. This book offers an illuminating examination of how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races.
The Balance of Power in International Relations
Author: Richard Little
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521874882
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Offering an analysis of the concept of the balance of power in IR, Little establishes a framework that treats the balance of power as a metaphor, a myth and a model. He then uses this framework to reassess four major texts that use this to promote a theoretical understanding of international relations.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521874882
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Offering an analysis of the concept of the balance of power in IR, Little establishes a framework that treats the balance of power as a metaphor, a myth and a model. He then uses this framework to reassess four major texts that use this to promote a theoretical understanding of international relations.
War and Change in World Politics
Author: Robert Gilpin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273763
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
rofessor Gilpin uses history, sociology, and economic theory to identify the forces causing change in the world order.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273763
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
rofessor Gilpin uses history, sociology, and economic theory to identify the forces causing change in the world order.
World Out of Balance
Author: Stephen G. Brooks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083760X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
World Out of Balance is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the constraints on the United States' use of power in pursuit of its security interests. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth overturn conventional wisdom by showing that in a unipolar system, where the United States is dominant in the scales of world power, the constraints featured in international relations theory are generally inapplicable. In fact, the authors argue that the U.S. will not soon lose its leadership position; rather, it stands before a twenty-year window of opportunity for reshaping the international system. Although American primacy in the world is unprecedented, analysts routinely stress the limited utility of such preeminence. The authors examine arguments from each of the main international relations theories--realism, institutionalism, constructivism, and liberalism. They also cover the four established external constraints on U.S. security policy--international institutions, economic interdependence, legitimacy, and balancing. The prevailing view is that these external constraints conspire to undermine the value of U.S. primacy, greatly restricting the range of security policies the country can pursue. Brooks and Wohlforth show that, in actuality, the international environment does not tightly constrain U.S. security policy. World Out of Balance underscores the need for an entirely new research agenda to better understand the contours of international politics and the United States' place in the world order.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083760X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
World Out of Balance is the most comprehensive analysis to date of the constraints on the United States' use of power in pursuit of its security interests. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth overturn conventional wisdom by showing that in a unipolar system, where the United States is dominant in the scales of world power, the constraints featured in international relations theory are generally inapplicable. In fact, the authors argue that the U.S. will not soon lose its leadership position; rather, it stands before a twenty-year window of opportunity for reshaping the international system. Although American primacy in the world is unprecedented, analysts routinely stress the limited utility of such preeminence. The authors examine arguments from each of the main international relations theories--realism, institutionalism, constructivism, and liberalism. They also cover the four established external constraints on U.S. security policy--international institutions, economic interdependence, legitimacy, and balancing. The prevailing view is that these external constraints conspire to undermine the value of U.S. primacy, greatly restricting the range of security policies the country can pursue. Brooks and Wohlforth show that, in actuality, the international environment does not tightly constrain U.S. security policy. World Out of Balance underscores the need for an entirely new research agenda to better understand the contours of international politics and the United States' place in the world order.
Beyond the Balance of Power
Author: Peter Jackson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107039940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583
Book Description
This is a major study of French foreign and security policy in the era of the Great War. Peter Jackson examines the interplay between contending conceptions of security based on traditional practices of power politics and the new internationalist doctrines that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107039940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 583
Book Description
This is a major study of French foreign and security policy in the era of the Great War. Peter Jackson examines the interplay between contending conceptions of security based on traditional practices of power politics and the new internationalist doctrines that emerged in the late nineteenth century.
Unanswered Threats
Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837855
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
Why have states throughout history regularly underestimated dangers to their survival? Why have some states been able to mobilize their material resources effectively to balance against threats, while others have not been able to do so? The phenomenon of "underbalancing" is a common but woefully underexamined behavior in international politics. Underbalancing occurs when states fail to recognize dangerous threats, choose not to react to them, or respond in paltry and imprudent ways. It is a response that directly contradicts the core prediction of structural realism's balance-of-power theory--that states motivated to survive as autonomous entities are coherent actors that, when confronted by dangerous threats, act to restore the disrupted balance by creating alliances or increasing their military capabilities, or, in some cases, a combination of both. Consistent with the new wave of neoclassical realist research, Unanswered Threats offers a theory of underbalancing based on four domestic-level variables--elite consensus, elite cohesion, social cohesion, and regime/government vulnerability--that channel, mediate, and redirect policy responses to external pressures and incentives. The theory yields five causal schemes for underbalancing behavior, which are tested against the cases of interwar Britain and France, France from 1877 to 1913, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) that pitted tiny Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Randall Schweller concludes that those most likely to underbalance are incoherent, fragmented states whose elites are constrained by political considerations.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837855
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
Book Description
Why have states throughout history regularly underestimated dangers to their survival? Why have some states been able to mobilize their material resources effectively to balance against threats, while others have not been able to do so? The phenomenon of "underbalancing" is a common but woefully underexamined behavior in international politics. Underbalancing occurs when states fail to recognize dangerous threats, choose not to react to them, or respond in paltry and imprudent ways. It is a response that directly contradicts the core prediction of structural realism's balance-of-power theory--that states motivated to survive as autonomous entities are coherent actors that, when confronted by dangerous threats, act to restore the disrupted balance by creating alliances or increasing their military capabilities, or, in some cases, a combination of both. Consistent with the new wave of neoclassical realist research, Unanswered Threats offers a theory of underbalancing based on four domestic-level variables--elite consensus, elite cohesion, social cohesion, and regime/government vulnerability--that channel, mediate, and redirect policy responses to external pressures and incentives. The theory yields five causal schemes for underbalancing behavior, which are tested against the cases of interwar Britain and France, France from 1877 to 1913, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) that pitted tiny Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Randall Schweller concludes that those most likely to underbalance are incoherent, fragmented states whose elites are constrained by political considerations.