2
Of Predators and Pariahs: Path Dependence
and the Social Origins of the Revisionist State
If a government is doomed to destruction,
it perishes by the very means that it uses to save itself.
- LOUIS-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 6 JULY 1843
The recent war with Iraq, the fragile nature of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, and the
steady march of an ascending China all point to the pressing need to understand why,
and when, leaders will elect to challenge the existing international status quo. Despite the
clear historical and contemporary importance of revisionist states, however, traditional
neorealist and rationalist approaches offer only partial insights into the emergence of
these actors. Arguably, these constraint-opportunity models of state behavior are hobbled
by their neglect of the crucial role played by actor identity in shaping the direction of a
state’s grand strategy. Indeed, the distinction between revisionist and status quo states acts
as a tacit identity variable that supplies most of the explanatory leverage that is more
commonly ascribed to the security dilemma or relative balances of power.
This paper represents an initial effort to articulate an explanation that traces the
sources of revisionism to the content of the identity a regime projects and institutionalizes
to legitimate its rule. Arguably, regimes can find themselves ‘entrapped’ into pursuing
revisionist strategies as a way of safeguarding their legitimacy from challengers seeking to
exploit contradictions between the regime’s rhetoric and its actual behavior. To ensure
continued rule, a regime must constantly strive to reaffirm and institutionalize its favored
collective identity as the basis of citizen (subject) allegiance. In other words, a regime has
an identity commitment, and as time progresses the path dependent properties of a
collective identity act to bind the regime ever-tighter to its stated project. Contradictions
within the regime’s own project, however, create opportunities for opponents to exploit,
while the regime’s efforts to establish its vision as the ‘only game in town’ often provoke
substantial resistance. Successive crises will compel regimes to embrace revisionist
strategies in ‘gamble for resurrection’ that promise to silence domestic critics and revive
the fortunes of the embattled regime. Yet over time the cost of identity maintenance is an
ever-widening divergence between strategic objectives and military means, a result that
culminates in a desperate attempt by the regime to restore its legitimacy through means
that may ultimately destroy it.
The paper is organized as follows. The first section briefly addresses the issue of
devising clear definitions and indicators for the study of revisionism. The second section is
devoted to a brief review of the merits and shortcomings of existing neorealist and
rationalist theorizing on the issue of revisionist state origins. A third section details the
proposed argument and explores a set of possible hypotheses that link collective identity
to revisionist outcomes through generalizable mechanisms. A fourth section then tests the
proposed argument’s explanation of Napoleon
III
’s grand strategy (
1848-71
) against
competing explanations provided by rationalist and neorealist theorists.
1
The concluding
section appeals for an understanding of revisionism and realpolitik as rooted not in
systemic pressures or relative economic capacity but rather in the demands of identity
maintenance. In the final analysis, strategies may be just as inward-looking as they are
threat-oriented.
1
Morrow 1993 and Christensen 1997, respectively.
Convention