Dale C. Copeland

Bio: Dale C. Copeland is an academic researcher from University of Virginia. The author has contributed to research in topics: International relations & Realism. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 11 publications receiving 1135 citations.

Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations

Abstract: I D o e s economic interdependence increase or decrease the probability of war among states? With the Cold War over, this question is taking on importance as trade levels between established powers such as the United States and Russia and emerging powers such as Japan, China, and Western Europe grow to new heights. In this article, I provide a new dynamic theory to help overcome some of the theoretical and empirical problems with current liberal and realist views on the question. The prolonged debate between realists and liberals on the causes of war has been largely a debate about the relative salience of different causal variables. Realists stress such factors as relative power, while liberals focus on the absence or presence of collective security regimes and the pervasiveness of democratic communities.’ Economic interdependence is the only factor that plays an important causal role in the thinking of both camps, and their perspectives are diametrically opposed. Liberals argue that economic interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing the value of trading over the alternative of aggression: interdependent states would rather trade than invade. As long as high levels of

The Origins of Major War

Abstract: Introduction1. Rethinking Realist Theories of Major War 2. Foreign Policy Choices and the Probability of Major War 3. German Security and the Preparation for World War I 4. The July Crisis and the Outbreak of World War I 5. The Rise of Russia and the Outbreak of World War II 6. Bipolarity, Shifting Power, and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950 7. The Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises 8. Major War from Pericles to Napoleon 9. The Implications of the ArgumentAppendix Notes Index

The Constructivist Challenge to Structural Realism: A Review Essay

Abstract: Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 For more than a decade realism, by most accounts the dominant paradigm in international relations theory, has been under assault by the emerging paradigm of constructivism. One group of realists—the structural (or neo-/systemic) realists who draw inspiration from Kenneth Waltz’s seminal Theory of International Politics1—has been a particular target for constructivist arrows. Such realists contend that anarchy and the distribution of relative power drive most of what goes on in world politics. Constructivists counter that structural realism misses what is often a more determinant factor, namely, the intersubjectively shared ideas that shape behavior by constituting the identities and interests of actors. Through a series of inouential articles, Alexander Wendt has provided one of the most sophisticated and hard-hitting constructivist critiques of structural realism.2 Social Theory of International Politics provides the arst book-length statement of his unique brand of constructivism.3 Wendt goes beyond the more

Economic Interdependence and War

Abstract: Preface vii Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Chapter Oone: Theory of Economic Interdependence and War 16 Chapter Two: Quantitative Analysis and Qualitative Case Study Research 51 Chapter Three: The Russo-Japanese War and the German Wars for Hegemony, 1890-1939 97 Chapter Four: The Prelude to Pearl Harbor: Japanese Security and the Northern Question, 1905-40 144 Chapter Five: The Russian Problem and the Onset of the Pacific War, March-December 1941 184 Chapter Six: The Origins, Dynamics, and Termination of the Cold War, 1942-91 247 Chapter Seven: European Great Power Politics, 1790-1854 319 Chapter Eight: Great Power Politics in the Age of Imperial Expansion, 1856-99 375 Chapter Nine: Implications of the Argument 428 Bibliography 447 Index 473

A Realist critique of the English School

Abstract: Over the past decade, the English School of International Relations (IR) has made a remarkable resurgence. Countless articles and papers have been written on the School. Some of these works have been critical, but most have applauded the School's efforts to provide a fruitful ‘middle way’ for IR theory, one that avoids the extremes of either an unnecessarily pessimistic realism or a naively optimistic idealism. At the heart of this via media is the idea that, in many periods of history, states exist within an international society of shared rules and norms that conditions their behaviour in ways that could not be predicted by looking at material power structures alone. I f the English School (ES) is correct that states often follow these rules and norms even when their power positions and security interests dictate alternative policies, then American realist theory – a theory that focuses on power and security drives as primary causal forces in global politics – has been dealt a potentially serious blow.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

Abstract: The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge

Abstract: Social constructivism in international relations has come into its own during the past decade, not only as a metatheoretical critique of currently dominant neo-utilitarian approaches (neo-realism and neoliberal institutionalism) but increasingly in the form of detailed empirical findings and theoretical insights. Constructivism addresses many of the same issues addressed by neo-utilitarianism, though from a different vantage and, therefore, with different effect. It also concerns itself with issues that neo-utilitarianism treats by assumption, discounts, ignores, or simply cannot apprehend within its characteristic ontology and/or epistemology. The constructivist project has sought to open up the relatively narrow theoretical confines of conventional approaches—by pushing them back to problematize the interests and identities of actors; deeper to incorporate the intersubjective bases of social action and social order; and into the dimensions of space and time to establish international structure as contingent practice, constraining social action but also being (re)created and, therefore, potentially transformed by it.

Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma

Abstract: This article proposes that in addition to physical security, states also seek ontological security, or security of the self. Ontological security is achieved by routinizing relationships with signi...

The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950–1985

Abstract: The liberals believed that economic interdependence, as well as democracy, would reduce the incidence of interstate conflict. In this article, we test both their economic and their political prescriptions for peace, using pooled-regression analyses of politically relevant dyads for the Cold War era. We find that the pacific benefits of trade, both total and dyadic, have not been sufficiently appreciated. We also offer clear evidence that democracies are relatively unlikely to become involved in militarized disputes with other democracies, while autocracies and democracies are prone to conflict with each other. Since democratic dyads are more peaceful than autocratic dyads, it follows that democracies are more peaceful than autocratic states generally, ceteris paribus. Previous research at the national level of analysis, which led most to conclude that democracies have been no more peaceful than other states, did not consider that the incidence of conflict depends importantly upon the number of contiguous states, the character of their political regimes, and other factors. In addition, we find no evidence that states that have recently undergone regime changes, whether in the democratic or autocratic direction, are particularly conflict prone. Our results suggest the basis for a broader formulation of expected–utility theories of interstate conflict.