2011/12/01 by William C. Wohlforth · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #International Relations and Foreign Policy #Political Conflict and Governance #Global Peace and Security Dynamics
paper · doi:10.1177/0047117811411742
openalex publication_date 2011/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
I argue that realism in particular and IR more generally erred by assigning Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Relations pride of place in revivifying realist thought. Had Robert Gilpin’s War and Change in World Politics been given equal billing, international relations research would have unfolded quite differently over the past three decades. Scholars would not have been bewildered by change, bewitched by the balance of power, blind to numerous potentially powerful realist theories, and bothered by endless and unproductive zero-sum debates among representatives of competing paradigms. And had all those pathologies been absent, we would be far better prepared today for the intellectual and policy challenges of a world in which underlying power balances appear to be changing quickly, and the status quo inter-state order is ever more contested.