This paper is his contribution to the great "isms" debate that dominated much of the 1980s in American IR cup.columbia.edu/book/neorealis…
He views the debate as boiling down to whether states (a) care about their own gains (i.e. absolute gains), or (b) they care about how their gains compare to the gains of others (i.e relative gains).
His answer, which he supports with a model, is "it depends" (primarily on the destructiveness of fighting)
His key "meta" insight comes in the conclusion: the "theoretical" and the "empirical" should not be confused...scholars tend to forget this.
Something could be theoretically useful for gaining insights - say, the unitary actor assumption - even if it is not empirically supported
Second is his 2004 @AJPS_Editor paper on how war fighting is a CONTINUATION of bargaining, NOT what happens when bargaining ENDS.
He acknowledges that treating "war" as the end of bargaining has been useful. Hence, it's not "wrong".
But he then notes that this limits what formal models can say. Hence, to understand more about war, we have to model the wars themselves.
Powell thinks progress can be made by treating war as a continuation of that bargaining, not as a different process from pre-war bargaining.
But he finds bargaining models to be VERY sensitive to assumptions about (1) the information available to states & (2) the bargaining processes they use (the figure below is a stylized view of such a process).
This leads to his key "meta" insight: when theoretical insights are highly contingent on assumptions, make assumptions that match empirical reality.
Powell's paper is a direct response to the 1995 @IntOrgJournal paper by James Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War" (which I discussed in a #KeepRealismReal thread)
Powell agrees that war is puzzling because it seems REALLY inefficient: it's costly and results in outcomes that could have been reached without the cost.
His goal in the paper is to focus on inefficiency. This means assuming their on no informational problems.
He warns that one can't just treat "commitment problem" as "anarchy". That won't shed any insights because, well, anarchy is a constant
Instead, he thinks commitment problems arise and undermine the prospects for peace when there are concerns over future power shifts
But he also warns against focusing too much "informational" explanations for war. This leads to his next "meta" insight: theory should not generate "bizarre" readings of history.
His example is prolonged conflict: if it's just about information, then long wars must be due to the sides never learning more about each other. But that simply can't been true.
Which of these two men is most responsible for World War II?
Short answer: not Churchill
Long answer: [THREAD]
To be clear, in this thread I am dealing with the onset of the war in Europe. The War in Asia was just as important and obviously connected to Europe. But that is for another thread. For now, I do highly recommend Paine's book "The Wars for Asia"
Solving the "Europe Problem" has vexed US foreign policy since the beginning.
[THREAD]
As I wrote last week, a key trait of US "grand strategy" since the founding of the Republic was "Go West" either by expanding US territory west or seeking to maintain trade with China.
Since the founding of the republic, US foreign policy has been about one thing:
Go west (and don't let Europe get in the way).
[THREAD]
I'll write more about "don't let Europe get in the way" in another 🧵. This one will focus on the "Go west" part (which will also touch on the Europe part).
One could go so far as to argue that the Republic itself was founded because of a desire to go west. Specifically, the colonials were forbidden to go west of the 1763 Proclamation line.
When you hear "Liberal International Order", just think "the G-7, for better and for worse"
[THREAD]
While some scholars and policy makers like to speak of the "Liberal International Order" as the collection of post-World War II international institutions.... cambridge.org/core/journals/…
...the phrase itself is much more recent in origins, largely a product of the mid-1990s.
As I wrote in my latest for @WPReview, shifting patterns in population growth will inevitably influence international politics. worldpoliticsreview.com/global-demogra…
This isn't a new idea. It's one found in classic works on change in world politics.