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 145 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was seen to herald a move ‘back towards a mixed economy.’5The question, meanwhile, remained: had the state indeed withdrawn as much during the neoliberal era as is often assumed?

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“…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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“…Too often, the link between such largescale changes and ideas, leaders, and domestic politics are not explored'. 22 …”

Section: Clarifying New Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Clarifying the End of Cold War Debate

Brooks

Wohlforth²

2007

Cold War History

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Archie Brown belongs to that small, distinguished and deservedly proud band of Sovietologists who saw early on that Mikhail Gorbachev recognized the need for major changes in domestic and foreign policy. His eloquently argued and richly documented book The Gorbachev Factor remains the landmark study of the Soviet leader's role in the tumultuous events of the USSR's last years. This distinguished record of analysis and scholarship makes him arguably the leading proponent of the view that Gorbachev played a decisive causal role in bringing about the Cold War's end. In a recent article in these pages, Brown repeats his underlying argument about Gorbachev's key role and seeks to strengthen it by showing that it is far superior to alternative explanations, especially 'the interpretation of some who regard themselves as Realists or Neo-Realists in the study of international relations' (p. 2). Brown cites our work as the exemplar of this interpretation and uses it as his main foil. 1 The news that our research failed to change Brown's basic view of Gorbachev's role is hardly surprising. The end of the Cold War is clearly one of those momentous events whose explanation will always be a matter of debate. But such debates may be more or less illuminating, depending on the degree to which scholars actually engage each other's arguments and evidence. What prompted us to respond to Brown's article was the somewhat disheartening degree to which it seemed to be a case of scholarly ships passing in the night. Whatever its faults, our explanation grappled directly with alternative explanations highlighting the role of individuals, ideas and domestic politics. Brown's article does not engage our research in a similarly rigorous manner. As a result, it remains unclear how much Brown really disagrees with us about the causes of this momentous event, and, if so, exactly why. Our purpose here is to try to remedy this situation.

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“…5 The increase in U.S. military spending in the 1980s, the advent of the digital age, and the globalization of production exacerbated Soviet leaders' concerns about the competitiveness of a highly centralized command economy. 6 As Gorbachev's reforms freed Soviet society from many long-standing controls, nationalist movements and other independent forces burst onto the scene and wrested political control away from a weakened party and state. 7 The focus on material incentives for reform does offer a powerful explanation for the policy preferences of Soviet leaders who had concluded by the early 1980s that the productive efªciency and technological competitiveness of the Soviet economy could be improved only by increasing the accountability of enterprise managers and by introducing market incentives to systems of production and distribution.…”

Section: The Power and Limitations Of The Materialist Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War

Thomas

2005

Journal of Cold War Studies

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The reform and subsequent collapse of one-party Communist rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were critical to the end of the Cold War. Despite the huge military arsenals and alliance systems that emerged after 1945, the Cold War was fundamentally a conºict between domestic political systems based on incompatible state socialist and liberal democratic conceptions of political legitimacy. As the Eastern bloc moved away from the ideology and political structures of state socialism in the 1980s, diplomats from East and West found it easier to dismantle the military confrontation that had long divided Europe and the world.The deepening of respect for human rights and the creation of democratic institutions preceded moves away from the hostile attitudes and confrontational military postures of the Cold War. Without these domestic political changes, the Cold War could have endured well beyond the late 1980s and certainly would not have been replaced by the political amity between former East and West that emerged in that period. Given the considerable inºuence that Moscow exercised over politics in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, this article focuses on developments in the Soviet Union.Why and how did a peaceful process of democratic change overcome a state socialist regime in the Soviet Union that had long demonstrated its willingness to use force in defense of the status quo? Why did Mikhail Gorbachev not follow Winston Churchill's famous refusal to preside over the demise of the imperial system that he was chosen to lead? This article rejects claims that these changes resulted simply from the instrumental (and increasingly desperate) initiatives of politically conservative elites motivated by concern about the Soviet Union's economic decline and lack of strategic competitiveness. Instead, it focuses on the effects of ideas about human rights that were embedded in European institutions and disseminated throughout the Soviet Union by a transnational network of human rights activists and other dissidents.

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

Cited by 145 publications

References 29 publications

The Return of the State?

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

Globalization, domestic politics, and transatlantic relations

Clarifying the End of Cold War Debate

Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War

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