Rethinking Revisionism in World Politics
Author(s)
He, Kai
Feng, Huiyun
Chan, Steve
Hu, Weixing
Year published
2021
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Revisionism is an important concept in international relations discourse, and it is especially prevalent in discussions about relations between China and the United States in the context of a possible power transition. Yet, this concept has until recently not received the systematic research attention that it deserves. We present in this essay different strategies that a revisionist state may pursue. It builds on recent scholarship by other colleagues and is drawn from a larger project of ours to study revisionism historically and develop it conceptually. We argue that military conquest and subversion—or in our terminology, ...
View more >Revisionism is an important concept in international relations discourse, and it is especially prevalent in discussions about relations between China and the United States in the context of a possible power transition. Yet, this concept has until recently not received the systematic research attention that it deserves. We present in this essay different strategies that a revisionist state may pursue. It builds on recent scholarship by other colleagues and is drawn from a larger project of ours to study revisionism historically and develop it conceptually. We argue that military conquest and subversion—or in our terminology, hard revisionism—have become less likely in today’s world compared to the past. Instead, different approaches of soft revisionism intended to advance institutional changes should be given more attention. We provide a typology of these soft revisionist strategies and offer examples from recent Chinese and US conduct to illustrate them.
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View more >Revisionism is an important concept in international relations discourse, and it is especially prevalent in discussions about relations between China and the United States in the context of a possible power transition. Yet, this concept has until recently not received the systematic research attention that it deserves. We present in this essay different strategies that a revisionist state may pursue. It builds on recent scholarship by other colleagues and is drawn from a larger project of ours to study revisionism historically and develop it conceptually. We argue that military conquest and subversion—or in our terminology, hard revisionism—have become less likely in today’s world compared to the past. Instead, different approaches of soft revisionism intended to advance institutional changes should be given more attention. We provide a typology of these soft revisionist strategies and offer examples from recent Chinese and US conduct to illustrate them.
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Journal Title
The Chinese Journal of International Politics
Volume
14
Issue
2
Funder(s)
ARC
Grant identifier(s)
DP210102843
Subject
Political science