Look for the Blind Spot where Structural Realism Meets.pdf

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2008.00360.x BJPIR: 2009 VOL 11, 225–237 Look for the Blind Spot where Structural Realism Meets Pluralistic Stagnation Erik Jones The predominant traditions in international relations and comparative political economy both failed to anticipate the end of the cold war. The explanation is not that these traditions are flawed; rather it is that they developed in response to different kinds of questions. Structural realism explains the distribution of power in the international system, not the attitudes or expectations of domestic elites. Meanwhile institutionalist traditions at the domestic level focus on explaining stability, persistence or path-dependence and not sudden or sweeping change. Given their focus, these different traditions built on assumptions that were ill-suited to explain the end of communism. They are better suited, however, to explaining what happened to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe once communism fell. Keywords: communism; legitimacy; norms; elites This is a story about how the union of two theoretical traditions can be worth less than the sum of their contributions to the literature. The traditions are ‘structural realism’, from the field of international relations, and ‘pluralistic stagnation’, from the field of comparative political economy. Both traditions matured in the late 1970s to early 1980s and set the research agenda for decades to follow. Individually, these traditions offered insights about different levels of analysis. Structural realism describes balance-of-power politics at the international level, where states use their relative capabilities to pursue the national interest through strategies of co-operation and conflict. Structural realism can explain specific patterns of band- wagoning