IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v48y1994i02p215-247_02.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Koslowski, Rey
  • Kratochwil, Friedrich V.

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.â€

Suggested Citation

  • Koslowski, Rey & Kratochwil, Friedrich V., 1994. "Understanding change in international politics: the Soviet empire's demise and the international system," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 215-247, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:48:y:1994:i:02:p:215-247_02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818300028174/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Florent Frasson-Quenoz y otros., 2020. "Pensar, debatir y aportar a las Relaciones Internacionales," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Finanzas, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales, number 143, August.
    2. Stephen, Matthew D., 2021. "China's New Multilateral Institutions: A Framework and Research Agenda," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 23(3), pages 807-834.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:48:y:1994:i:02:p:215-247_02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.