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

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.”