Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War 7
Power, Globalization, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. and the End of the Wohlforth Cold War Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas The end of the Cold War has become a case study of major importance for scholars of international relations for numerous reasons. Not least among these is that it helped spark a renaissance in the study of ideas in the ªeld and contributed to the rise of constructivism as a major theoretical school in the 1990s.1 It has also proven to be a rich case for developing new arguments inspired by constructivist think- ing, as well as for extending standard models drawn from cognitive or social psychology and organization theory concerning how ideas shape strategic be- havior. The result of this scholarly effort is a rich and diverse literature that ad- vances numerous models of how norms, culture, identity, trust, persuasion, learning, demonstration effects, transnational conceptual ºows, intellectual en- trepreneurship, socialization, and many other ideational processes inºuenced the dramatic ending of the superpower rivalry. Indeed, it is difªcult to identify another case that has generated as large and varied a literature devoted to ex- 2 ploringPower, Globalization, and the End of the Cold how War ideas inºuence international relations. Stephen G. Brooks is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. William C. Wohlforth is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. For their helpful comments, we are indebted to Fiona Adamson, Andrew Bennett, Doug Blum, Fred Chernoff, Amy Gardner, Geoff Garrett, Joanne Gowa, Jakub Grygiel, Ian Hurd, Daniel Markey, Sarah Mendelson, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Bruce Russett, Phillip Saunders, Holger Schmidt, Randall Schweller, Mark Sheppard, Andrew Stigler, Nina Tannenwald, Matthew Web- ster, Brad Westerªeld, International Security’s three anonymous reviewers, participants in seminars at Columbia University, Georgetown University, Princeton University, University of Virginia, Yale University, and especially Matthew Evangelista and Alexander Wendt.
[Show full text]