International Studies Compendium Project

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Comment on this article   Few “state-level” concepts are more prevalent in the international relations literature than the idea that states with different types of political regimes engage in fundamentally different patterns of foreign policy. Across the classics of political theory, attempts to understand the underlying dynamics of international conflict and cooperation have taken note that alternative regime types have different foreign policy impulses (e.g., Thucydides, Rousseau, and Kant as discussed in Doyle 1997 ; also Waltz 1954 ). Amidst the crises of the mid-twentieth century, early “realist” scholars looked to regime type and lamented the weakness of democracies against “totalitarian” regimes in an anarchic international system (e.g., Carr 1939 ; Kennan 1951 ; Morgenthau 1952 ; Kissinger 1966 ). In the mid-1960s, regime type was a concept of first resort in early comparative foreign policy research as scholars sought to move beyond American-based cases (e.g., Rosenau 1966 ). But, it has only been in the past two decades that the link between regime type and foreign policy has achieved widespread theoretical and empirical credibility in international relations theory. “Liberal” theorists view democracies as a key element for the twenty-first century peace (e.g., Russett and Oneal 2001 ), while some “realist” theorists stress that democratic “transitions” already ... log in or subscribe to read full text