The Dynastic Constitution of Early Modern International Politics.

International systems are constituted by rules. These rules are established and enforced by the principal actors in the system, who use them to perpetuate their interests and status. I demonstrate this argument by reference to the international system of early modern Europe, in which dynastic monarchies were the leading actors and dynastic inheritance functioned as the system's constitutive principle. Wars in the early modern system were fought mainly to enhance the prestige of dynastic rulers and secure their dynastic rights, and the pursuit of these goals reinforced the constitutive effects of dynastic legitimacy. As the power of states began to displace that of monarchs in the eighteenth century, the dynastic principle was undermined. The dominant states began to search for new international rules that could protect their own interests, which were distinct from those of the dynastic rulers they were supplanting. Analyzing international systems in terms of their constitutive rules offers important advantages over neorealism, whose deductive approach detaches IR theory from history. In contrast, the approach proposed here reconnects IR theory to history by showing how international systems can be explained in terms of the historically specific interests of the actors that comprise them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]