Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas

Brooks, Stephen G.; Wohlforth, William C.

doi:10.1162/016228800560516

Cited by 146 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…States do participate in these organizations, but merely in order to push through their own interests. Globalization did herald revolutionary developments in research, development and production, making life difficult for regimes that could not partake in it, 116 and affecting relations among states. 112 Above all, 'realists' (as well as some 'institutionalists' belonging to the American school of International Political Economy) 113 don't see much room for potential systemic transformation; US scholars have tended to emphasize that, for all the literature about the erosion of national sovereignty, governments continue to possess more autonomy than is often supposed.…”

Section: Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Return of the State?

Delwaide¹

2011

European Review

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Massive government-financed rescue operations for banking and insurance industries in the United States and in Europe, seeking to contain the financial crisis that culminated in 2008, amounted to ‘the biggest, broadest and fastest government response in history.’1This ‘great stabilisation,’ asThe Economistcalled it, resulting in ‘quasi’ or ‘shadow nationalization,’2cast doubt on the notion, fashionable at the height of the neoliberal wave, that the state was essentially on its way out, as many of its tasks and responsibilities were oozing steadily and irreversibly toward the market. The state and, by the same token, the political seemed back – with a vengeance, triggering solemn announcements of ‘the return of the state’ and ‘the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’3Observers concurred. ‘Free-market capitalism, globalization, and deregulation’ had been ‘rising across the globe for 30 years,’ yet that era now had ended: ‘Global economic and financial integration are reversing. The role of the state, together with financial and trade protectionism, is ascending.’4Triggering a perceived ‘paradigm shift towards a more European, a more social state,’ even in the United States and in China, the crisis was seen to herald a move ‘back towards a mixed economy.’5The question, meanwhile, remained: had the state indeed withdrawn as much during the neoliberal era as is often assumed?

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Section: Ordermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Return of the State?

Delwaide¹

2011

European Review

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“…Most are delimited by certain scope conditions, and balance of power theory is no exception. The unconditional hypothesis that hegemonic concentrations of power do not form in multistate systems is contradicted by Britain's economic and naval dominance in the 19 th century and by American economic and military dominance after the end of the Cold War (Russett, 1985;Brooks and Wohlforth, 2000/01). In continental systems, it is contradicted by the transformation of Chinese multi-state systems into hegemonies under Qin and Han (Hui, forthcoming) and by the emergence of hegemony in ancient Assyria (Wohlforth and Kaufman, 2003).…”

Section: Hypotheses On Balancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe, 1495-1999

Levy¹,

Thompson²

2005

Security Studies

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The balance of power is a venerable concept in international relations theory, but it is plagued by ambiguities about what the concept means and what the theory purports to explain, and the key proposition that states balance against concentrations of power or hegemonic threats is rarely if ever subjected to systematic empirical test. We argue that despite these ambiguities and disagreements, there is one proposition that nearly all balance of power theorists and their critics as well would accept as an accurate reflection of the theory and that provides the basis for a "most-likely" test of the theory: great powers have balanced against extreme concentrations of land-based military power in Europe, concentrations that have created the potential for hegemony over the continent.We develop and test several hypotheses linking military concentration, capability changes, and alliance responses for the European system from 1495-1999 using the Rasler and Thompson (1994) data on army concentrations and developing a new data base of great power alliances for the last five centuries. We find that European great powers have demonstrated a strong propensity to balance against the leading state when one state acquired a third or more of the total military capabilities in the system. Lower concentrations of power have been less likely to generate balancing coalitions. Not all available great powers have joined these balancing coalitions, however, so that the size of the typical balancing coalition is smaller than balance of power theory might lead us to believe.While our overall findings provide considerable support for hypotheses about balancing against high concentrations of military power in Europe, we emphasize that this is the "most likely" case for the balancing proposition, given the longstanding great power and Eurocentric biases of the balance of power tradition in international relations theory. Consequently, our findings cannot necessarily be generalized to other systems. We are particularly skeptical as to the validity of our findings for international systems dominated by maritime or global powers. 1 HEGEMONIC THREATS AND BALANCING IN EUROPE, 1495-1999The balance of power is one of the oldest and most fundamental concepts in the study of international relations. Hume regarded the balance of power as a scientific law, and Waltz argued that "if there is any distinctively political theory of international politics, balance of power is it." Although there are many variations of balance of power theory, and although there is considerable disagreement about the meaning of its key concepts and even about what the theory purports to explain (Haas, 1953;Claude, 1962), the central proposition of nearly all balance of power theories is that states tend to balance against concentrations of power or hegemonic threats. Indeed, this is one of the most widelyheld propositions in the international relations field. Even this proposition is quite ambiguous, however, and it is rarely if ever subjected to systematic empirical test. O...

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“…ii Some have argued that the growth and integration of the world economy during the Cold War helps explain the collapse of the Soviet empire (Books and Wohlforth, 2000). iii A good example was the British Government's Strategic Defence Review (1998).…”

Section: Endnotes Imentioning

confidence: 99%

Globalization, domestic politics, and transatlantic relations

Trubowitz

2017

Int Polit

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For two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall globalization functioned as a unifying force in the West. In the absence of a common security threat, the United States and Europe found common ground in a neoliberal agenda calling for the freer movements of capital, goods, services, and peoples across national boundaries.Today, support for that neoliberal agenda has been rapidly weakening across the West. Drawing on a variety of quantitative measures, we show that Western support for globalization has declined, both at the level of national policy and at the level of party politics. We argue that this erosion of domestic support for globalization is closely linked to the rise of populist parties in Europe and the US. We consider the implications of this shift in the West's domestic politics for the future of transatlantic cooperation and leadership.

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Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas

Cited by 146 publications

References 29 publications

The Return of the State?

The Return of the State?

Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe, 1495-1999

Globalization, domestic politics, and transatlantic relations

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