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Understanding change in international politics: the Soviet empire's demise and the international system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Rey Koslowski  and
Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Rey Koslowski
Affiliation:
candidate in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Affiliation:
Lawrence B. Simon Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
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Abstract

The succession of mostly nonviolent revolutions that replaced Eastern European communist governments in 1989 and the lack of any action by the Soviet Union to stop these changes transformed the international political system. Since these changes were not driven by changes in relative capabilities, they did not follow the postulates of neorealist theory. Rather, the revolutions of 1989 changed the rules governing superpower conflict and, thereby, the norms underpinning the international system. This constructivist perspective systematically links domestic and international structures with political practice and shows that international systems consist of ensembles of social institutions. These institutions change in response not only to shifting distributions of capabilities but also to redefinition of actors' identities as well as changes in state-society relations. Transformations of the international system occur when political practices change and therefore fail to reproduce the familiar international “structures.”

Type
Symposium: The end of the cold war and theories of international relations
Information
International Organization , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , Spring 1994 , pp. 215 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1994

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References

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