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AbstractWhy and under what conditions do a challenger's legitimation strategies shape decisions for institutional reform? I argue that legitimation strategies are critical in defining how institutional defenders evaluate the costs and benefits of institutional reform, and thus in shaping their reaction to a challenger's demands. Legitimation strategies do so through principled persuasion, where defenders come to believe that accepting a challenger's demands will have both material and symbolic benefits, and rhetorical coercion, where defenders accept change out of fear that they will bear costs by undercutting their own legitimacy. Not all challengers effectively legitimate their demands, however. A challenger's capacity to affect change depends on its position within institutions, which gives it the authority to effectively deploy rhetoric. I demonstrate this argument with a brief case of Japan's challenge to the unequal treaty system in the late 19th century.

AbstractHow do institutions shape revisionist behavior in world politics? Applying a network-relational approach to revisionist states and challenges to institutional order, I conceive of institutions as networks—as patterns of ongoing social transactions in which revisionists are embedded. Revisionist behavior is shaped by how a state is positioned within this existing network of institutions. A state's position significantly influences the material and cultural resources the state can deploy in pursuit of its aims, and thus the revisionist's strategy. Focusing on two measures of network position—access and brokerage—I propose four ideal types of revisionists and their strategies in the international system: integrated revisionists, who are likely to pursue institutional engagement; bridging revisionists, who will seek rule-based revolution; isolated revisionists, who prefer to exit the institutional system; and rogue revisionists, who have few resources at hand, and thus ultimately must resort to hegemonic violence. I test these ideal types in four cases of revisionists and institutional orders: Russia in the 1820s; Prussia in the 1860s; the Soviet Union in the early Cold War; and Japan in the 1920s and 1930s.

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.

Political entrepreneurs reside at the core of international relations (IR) theory. Structures might constrain agents, but entrepreneurs can remake and transform these structures, contesting norms, shifting identities and creating space for significant political change. Despite this, IR theorists note that key questions about entrepreneurs remain under-theorized. Under what conditions are political entrepreneurs likely to emerge? Who is likely to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how do entrepreneurs produce structural change? I argue scholars could strengthen their answers to these questions by drawing from the growing program of social network theory. Networks influence entrepreneurship in three ways. First, networks provide certain actors – brokers – with resources to effect change. It is not an actor's attributes or interests but her position, then, that enables entrepreneurial behavior. Second, networks create the conditions of entrepreneurship. While certain networks are extremely stable, others contain contradictions that allow entrepreneurs to emerge. Finally, network theory posits structural mechanisms – including mobilization, polarization, and yoking – to explain political change.

From 1864 to 1871, Prussia mounted a series of wars that fundamentally altered the balance of power in Europe. Yet no coalition emerged to check Prussia's rise. Rather than balance against Prussian expansion, the great powers sat on the sidelines and allowed the transformation of European politics. Traditionally, scholars have emphasized structural variables, such as mulitpolarity, or domestic politics as the cause of this "underbalancing." It was Prussia's legitimation strategies, however—the way Prussia justified its expansion—that undermined a potential balancing coalition. As Prussia expanded, it appealed to shared rules and norms, strategically choosing rhetoric that would resonate with each of the great powers. These legitimation strategies undermined balancing coalitions through three mechanisms: by signaling constraint, laying rhetorical traps (i.e., framing territorial expansion in a way that deprived others states grounds on which to resist), and increasing ontological security (i.e., demonstrating its need to secure its identity in international politics), Prussia effectively expanded without opposition. An analysis of Prussia's expansion in 1864 demonstrates how legitimation strategies prevented the creation of a balancing coalition.