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Most literature on state and regime formation, whether on Europe or the developing world, assumes war as a key independent variable, following Tilly's classic formulation. Cases where war is found to be less relevant, like Africa or Latin America, are deemed deviations in need of explanation. Accounts such as Herbst's and Centeno's have enriched our understanding precisely by showing how war was not relevant for institution-building in these cases..x000d..x000d.I argue, by contrast, that there is no 'deviation' to be explained. The developing world seems 'pathological' in its history, often in need of a 'stronger' state, only because we have failed to correctly assess what the historical record really teaches about the European experience for state formation..x000d..x000d.I offer both logical and historical reasons to show why the Tilly paradigm, like most purely structural approaches, even in their most refined, enriching, and informative versions, like those of Tilly himself, rests on insufficient foundations. The experience of the developing world, as we know it, has many more similarities with the European one than we commonly acknowledge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic Peace theorists have developed a normative understanding of the democratic process, giving realist critiques an easy target. I articulate a more 'realist' understanding of the domestic process, one which shows realists need to refocus their response. I draw on the classical liberal tradition and the foundational texts of the American liberal democratic tradition to show how it, like realism, was predicated on the concept of self-interest and power, and did not assume the natural success of laws and norms. I also point out that, contrary to contemporary stereotypes, this classical liberal tradition is closer to the more modern, progressive definition of liberalism than commonly assumed..x000d..x000d.This analysis further suggests an intriguing convergence between the liberal democratic system and defensive realism: both are meant to produce a minimalist conception of what state interests should be in the international arena. In most decisions on war in recent US history, defensive realists were stridently opposed. Paradoxically, the more democracies act in conformity with defensive realist positions, the more democratic theory is confirmed. This suggests a convergence of the two theories not previously noted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though balance of power and democratic peace theories have long been viewed as adversaries, I argue that the former is most likely to operate optimally, i.e. with fewer overreactions and miscalculations, when the international system is composed of well-functioning liberal democracies.What a liberal democracy is meant to do is to provide an aggregation of preferences filtered through constitutional checks, which best represents the interests of the collectivity as a whole. Existing liberal defenses of the theory are predicated on a normative understanding of the functioning of democracy which ignores its foundation in the classical liberal tradition. The purpose of liberal checks was to ensure that political outcomes were the result not of messianic, “altruistic” excesses of religious and other ideologies, nor of destructive passions of particularism, such as belligerent nationalism. Instead, they were meant to converge on a prudent policy that most affected would be willing to support, given adequate information. This is the kind of policy that defensive realists and neorealists have most consistently proposed: though the theoretical differences with liberal IR are deep, in practice, neorealists and liberals have found themselves on the same policy side where actual war, rather than lower level interventions, has been at issue (Vietnam, Iraq). A democracy that allowed defensive realists to shape policy would be more likely to behave as the theory predicts.To support the point, I construct a more “realist” understanding of the democratic process that has been offered in liberal accounts. Paradoxically, this allows me to show that existing realist critiques of DPT fail on their own terms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-standing debates on the balance of power have failed to note an interesting paradox: the same concept, encapsulated in the ideas of checks and balances and market equilibria, underlies classical liberal constitutional and economic theory. The notion of interest balancing interest lies at the core of the liberal solution to the problem of anarchy and human nature, whether in politics, economics or the international sphere. Liberal scholars who question balance of power theories in international relations are thus rejecting the same mechanism that ensured liberalism's success at the domestic level. At the same time, realist scholars in IR uphold the balancing prediction-the same one that realist scholars in domestic politics, like Schattschneider, have sought to undermine. Nonetheless, in IR, Realism has been identified with balance of power theory. Andliberalism has been identified with a rationalist utilitarian or a normative approach, that seems to many as irrelevant in the realm of international politics and security. This intellectual confusion needlessly denies liberal theory a coherent and robust view of international politics; it also serves to undermine the coherence of realist theory, which has hitherto tried to accommodate two ultimately irreconcilable predictions (balance ofpower and power concentrations) under one paradigm, leading to widespread dissatisfaction with realism itself and 'paradigms' in general. In this paper, I explain how this conflation of theories came about, by tracing the trajectory of realism, statism and the balance of power from nineteenth-century German idealism to modern international relations. I also offer a defense of the classical liberal position that addresses realist and conservative critiques, suggesting that more than terminology is at stake: liberal theory needs to reclaim the balancing prediction, in domestic as well as in international politics-a need that current trends towards unilateralism have brought to the fore. At the same time, it needs to be recognized that neither theory is 'right' or 'wrong': both capture important and recurrent tendencies in the international system, and both sides can ignore each other only at their peril. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balance of power has been the traditional alternative to hegemonic theories in international relations, even though, strangely enough, both theories are thought to confirm the realist paradigm. Current developments, however, ushering hegemony at the forefront in both normative and positive terms, has brought the contrasting implications of the two theories into the limelight. In my paper, I argue that this ‘inconsistency’ is the result of the miscasting of balance of power as a realist theory. I point out that the notion of a balance emerging out of the interaction of self-interested actors is the core intuition underlying liberal constitutionalism as much as liberal economics, from Madison to Adam Smith?even though current definitions of liberalism emphasize different mechanisms. I provide an explanation of how balance of power became assimilated in a realist, state-centric position, and argue that the connection is historically contingent, and, more importantly, analytically flawed. The ‘real’ realist position, instead, is the one predicting that balances will not last or efficiently emerge. This has been the core of hegemonic theories in IR; it has also been the conventional way of defining the realist alternative to liberal pluralism in American politics. This revision is important for two main reasons. First, liberals have relied on fundamentally normative arguments to counteract hegemonic theories, or on theories of cooperation. These are, in positivist terms, the weakest to defend, which is why most arguments have been confined to the non-security realm. Instead, reclaiming the mechanism that underlies liberal success at the domestic level will provide a robust foundation upon which to build more complex arguments about international interaction. Second, the current conflation of two starkly opposed theories under the realist framework has done much to undermine the coherence, usefulness, and reputation of the latter. Clearly separating what are analytically very distinct claims is necessary to highlight the importance of the realist prediction as one that questions that the system will effectively balance, and the dangers that ensue. The tendency to concentrations, as current developments at the domestic level also illustrate, is one of the most important challenges to the liberal pluralist model. It should be seen as distinct from balancing arguments at the international level as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International relations today pose new problems and require fresh solutions. Yet, some fresh insights may be gained by looking at old solutions from a new light. Balance of power has traditionally been considered as a core principle of realism, and most scholars have directed their criticisms against it as part of an opposition to this approach in international relations. However, an argument may be made that a balance of power emerging from opposing interests is the central mechanism that underlied the success of liberalism, whether in constitutionalism or economics. By recasting balance of power as part of the liberal arsenal, traditional objections to the approach may be overcome, and a liberal approach to international relations may be based on a more minimal, less exigent standard. At the same time, realism acquires a more coherent form, as the theory that predicts concentrations of power; at this time, its heuristic value is defused by encompassing two radically opposed theories: balance of power and hegemonic theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]