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Begin New Search Topic Government Author G. John Ikenberry

1. Which Way Is History Marching?

Author:
G. John Ikenberry, Daniel Deudney, Ronald Inglehart, zar Gat, and Christian Welzel
Publication Date:
07-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Two recent articles in these pages -- "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival [1]" (January/February 2009) and "How Development Leads to Democracy [2]" (March/April 2009) -- have taken issue with my July/August 2007 essay, "The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers [3]." In the first, Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry dispute my argument that the authoritarian capitalist great powers Germany and Japan were defeated in both world wars largely because of contingent factors rather than structural inefficiencies. As I have argued, these countries were too small in comparison to the United States. With respect to the challenge posed by China and Russia, Deudney and Ikenberry insist that developed nondemocratic capitalist societies will not be viable in the long run.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Germany

2. Structural Liberalism:The Nature and Sources of Postwar Western Political Order

Author:
G. John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney
Publication Date:
05-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
The end of the Cold War has triggered new debates about international relations theory. Most of the attention has been focused on explaining the end of the Cold War. Equally important, however, this epochal development raises new questions about the impact of forty years of East-West rivalry on the relations among the Western liberal democracies. This issue is not simply of passing historical interest because it bears on our expectations about the future trajectory of relations among the great powers in the West. Will the end of the Cold War lead to the decline of cooperative relations among the Western liberal democracies? Will major Western political institutions, such as NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance, fall apart? Will "semi-sovereign" Germany and Japan revert to traditional great power status? Will the United States return to its traditional isolationist posture? Our answers to these questions depend upon the sources of Western order: was the Cold War the primary cause of Western solidarity or does the West have a distinctive and robust political order that predated and paralleled the Cold War?
Topic:
International Relations, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Europe, and Germany