When Right Makes Might: Rising Powers and World Order

Why do great powers accommodate the rise of some challengers but contain and confront others, even at the risk of war? When Right Makes Might proposes that the ways in which a rising power legitimizes its expansionist aims significantly shapes great power responses. Stacie E. Goddard theorizes that when faced with a new challenger, great powers will attempt to divine the challenger’s intentions: does it pose a revolutionary threat to the system or can it be incorporated into the existing international order? Goddard departs from conventional theories of international relations by arguing that great powers come to understand a contender’s intentions not only through objective capabilities or costly signals but by observing how a rising power justifies its behavior to its audience. To understand the dynamics of rising powers, then, we must take seriously the role of legitimacy in international relations. A rising power’s ability to expand depends as much on its claims to right as it does on its growing might. As a result, When Right Makes Might poses significant questions for academics and policymakers alike. Underpinning her argument on the oft-ignored significance of public self-presentation, Goddard suggests that academics (and others) should recognize talk’s critical role in the formation of grand strategy. Unlike rationalist and realist theories that suggest rhetoric is mere window-dressing for power, When Right Makes Might argues that rhetoric fundamentally shapes the contours of grand strategy. Legitimacy is not marginal to international relations; it is essential to the practice of power politics, and rhetoric is central to that practice

Which synthesis?: strategies of theoretical integration and the neorealist-neoliberal debate

Despite growing interest in the promises and problems of theoretical synthesis among political scientists, frameworks for assessing the potential advantages of different pathways to theoretical integration are scarce. We build on the conceptualization of alternative strategies for synthesis proposed by Jupille, Caporaso, and Checkel and assess the implications of two criteria — parsimony and empirical fit — for understanding the relationship between two influential strands of international relations theory, neorealism and neoliberalism. Neorealists present concerns about relative gains as evidence of the limited scope of the neoliberal theory of international cooperation. We argue that, on the contrary, neoliberalism provides theoretical tools that are indispensable to determine when and why relative-gains concerns thwart international cooperation, and that this provides a strong case for subsuming neorealism under neoliberalism in a parsimonious synthesis. We apply this framework to explain an empirical puzzle: why two arch-rival states — Austria and Prussia in the second half of the 18th century — succeeded in cooperating in some cases but failed in others