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Free hand abroad, divide and rule at home

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Abstract

The end of the Cold War and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a new unipolar international system that presented fresh challenges to international relations theory. Since the Enlightenment, scholars have speculated that patterns of cooperation and conflict might be systematically related to the manner in which power is distributed among states. Most of what we know about this relationship, however, is based on European experiences between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, when five or more powerful states dominated international relations, and the latter twentieth century, when two superpowers did so. Building on a highly successful special issue of the leading journal World Politics, this book seeks to determine whether what we think we know about power and patterns of state behaviour applies to the current 'unipolar' setting and, if not, how core theoretical propositions about interstate interactions need to be revised.

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... Yet, the debate remained largely inconclusive as to the behavioral consequences or US oreign policy and its global leadership role: Under unipolarity, hegemonic powers might become satised with the status quo or revisionist, they might provide global public goods (or not), they might have more control over outcomes or be more constrained (ibid., 13-18). Last not least, domestic politics might matter more under unipolarity, precisely because the constraints o the international system are less signicant or the hegemonic power (ibid., 18-20; see also Snyder et al. 2011). ...
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