Steven E Lobell
Biographic Data
| ID | 1049796 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven E Lobell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven E |
| FAMILY NAME | Lobell |
| SIGNATURE | LOBELL S E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Why Israel launched a preventive military strike on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program (1981): The fungibility of power resources
In 1981, Israel launched a preventive military strike against a nuclear reactor that Iraq was constructing at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. The low fungibility of Iraq’s power resources, and especially its nuclear weapons program, shaped Israel’s decision-making process. First, it motivated Israel’s executives to disaggregate Iraq’s capabilities. Though they identified Baghdad’s emerging nuclear weapons program as a threat, there was litt…
Tipping Points: Challenges in Analyzing International Crisis Escalation
Why do some near crises tip over into full-blown crisis and others do not? This paper considers existing scholarship and identifies four key barriers to using quantitative analysis for tipping-point analyses: strategic indeterminacy; the incentives for conflict parties to avoid inefficiencies; the paucity of cases; and the availability of quality data. Due to these challenges, many do not perform well as immediate causes for crisis escalation. We…
Preventive military strike or preventive war? The fungibility of power resources
Differential rates of growth explanations for preventive war assume that power resources are highly fungible. That is, they assume that a state’s power resources are easily and quickly ‘moveable’ into practical military capability. This ‘unidimensional and undifferentiated’ baseline obscures an important distinction in the motivations for preventive military strikes and preventive wars. To forestall or block an anticipated adverse power shift, un…
The liberal international trading order (Lito) in an era of shifting capabilities
There is much debate about the impending collapse of the liberal international order. It is provoked by the shifts in material and military capabilities from emerging peer and near-peer competitors, some of whom were not part of the original grand bargain and others that are in a stronger position to renegotiate the bargain. As one critical element of the liberal international order, we ask, during power shifts: is the liberal international tradi…
Is Peaceful Change in World Politics Always Desirable? A Neoclassical Realist Perspective
An assumption runs through this symposium that peaceful change is desirable and ought to be encouraged. We do not believe it is that simple. The term “peaceful change” itself is not well defined. The article, therefore, narrowly defines peaceful change as a process whereby a hegemon voluntarily cedes its dominant geopolitical role to a challenger in one or more regions. Drawing on neoclassical realism, we hypothesize that a declining hegemon will…
A Granular Theory of Balancing
Theories of balancing are under assault. On theoretical and historical grounds, realists and non-realists challenge the claim that states balance against shifts in aggregate material capabilities. In addressing these claims, this article presents a more granular and finely tuned theory of balancing. It contends that states do, in fact, balance effectively. While foreign policy leaders regularly ignore aggregate power developments, they do disaggr…
Structural Realism/Offensive and Defensive Realism
Structural realism, or neorealism, is a theory of international relations that says power is the most important factor in international relations. First outlined by Kenneth Waltz in his 1979 book Theory of International Politics, structural realism is subdivided into two factions: offensive realism and defensive realism. Structural realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle, anarchy, and by t…
Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics
"Since Gideon Rose's 1998 review article in the journal World Politics and especially following the release of Lobell, Ripsman, and Taliaferro's 2009 edited volume Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy, neoclassical realism has emerged as major theoretical approach to the study of foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic. Proponents of neoclassical realism claim that it is the logical extension of the Kenneth Waltz's structural …
Why do secondary states choose to support, follow or challenge
Contested leadership in international relations
Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration
Journal Article Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration Get access Steven E. Lobell Steven E. Lobell STEVEN E. LOBELL is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. He has published extensively on the political economy of security. He has most recently published a co-edited book Beyond Great Powers and Hegemons: Why Secondary States Support, Follow, or Challenge. Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939
This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatenin…
Winning Friends and Influencing Enemies among Great Power Rivals: The Case of Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, 1969-1979
Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States discussed or extended capital and technology, Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff treatment, Export–Import Bank financing, and long-term credit to the Soviet Union and China. This strategy raises three questions: First, why did the United States extend concessions to rival great powers when, under the more restrictive international environment of the 1970, it viewed Moscow's growing agg…
Great Powers in a Restrictive International Environment
Why did Sino- American and American- Soviet engagement make greater strides in the 1969 to 1979 period than in any earlier period, resulting in significant US-Soviet negotiations on arms control, including SALT, the basic principles agreement, the Helsinki agreement, the agreement on the prevention of nuclear war, and the normalization of Sino-American relations?One explanation is thatthe United States engaged the Soviet Union and China to restor…
Conclusion: The state of neoclassical realism
Despite important differences between the chapters, most of the contributors to this volume have expressed strong preferences for an approach to international politics that stresses the primacy of the international system, but that also acknowledges the importance of domestic political arrangements and the perceptions of leaders in the selection and implementation of foreign policy responses to the international environment. The question remains,…
Introduction: Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy
How do states, or more specifically the decision-makers and institutions that act on their behalf, assess international threats and opportunities? What happens when there is disagreement about the nature of foreign threats? Who ultimately decides the range of acceptable and unacceptable foreign policy alternatives? To what extent, and under what conditions, can domestic actors bargain with state leaders and influence foreign or security policies?…
Threat assessment, the state, and foreign policy: A neoclassical realist model
How do states perceive international threats? Which domestic actors are the most important in threat definition? What happens when domestic actors and interests disagree on the nature of threats? As we state in chapter 1, these are central questions to the neoclassical realist agenda and require a theory of the state to answer. In this chapter I will develop a neoclassical realist theory of threat assessment to fill this gap and illustrate it wit…
Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy
Neoclassical realism is an important new approach to international relations. Focusing on the interaction of the international system and the internal dynamics of states, neoclassical realism seeks to explain the grand strategies of individual states as opposed to recurrent patterns of international outcomes. This book offers the first systematic survey of the neoclassical realist approach. The editors lead a group of senior and emerging scholars…
The Second Face of American Security: The US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement as Security Policy
Great powers can pursue deliberate “Trojan horse” policies to transform rising and geostrategic secondary states into followers and supporters, rather than challengers. I contend that a great power can use economic statecraft, and in particular trade agreements, to deliberately promote shifts in the societal distribution of power in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of societal and economic actors who have a stake …
Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy
Second Face of Security Strategies: Anglo-German and Anglo-Japanese Trade Concessions During the 1930s
Great powers can pursue deliberate Trojan horse policies to transform rising and threatening states into followers and supporters rather than challengers by altering their domestic political and economic institutions. I contend that a great power can use trade concessions, rather than punishment, to enable a favorable foreign policy coalition in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of state and societal elites who hav…
From Realism to Postmodernism and Beyond
Jennifer Sterling-Folker's edited volume, Making Sense of International Relations Theory, contains a masterful discussion and application of the major theoretical approaches in international relations. The book contributes to our understanding of the similarities and differences in the core assumptions of eleven key perspectives in international relations and their variations. By applying varying strands of these approaches to a single case (Koso…
The second face of security: Britain's ‘Smart’ appeasement policy towards Japan and Germany
Most states have numerous paths to create security for themselves. Foreign policy-makers must recognize that their own security policy will initiate a process that structures the nature of the domestic competition over domestic and foreign policy in other countries. I contend that one state's security alternative can empower or weaken domestic actors and interest groups in opposing foreign powers. I term this process the ‘second face of security’…
The Political Economy of War Mobilization: From Britain's Limited Liability to a Continental Commitment
The International Realm, Framing Effects, and Security Strategies: Britain in Peace and War
In combining the domestic and international levels, I contend that the international environment can enable a domestic win-set and thereby guide the formation of a state's international security strategy. The trigger is the nature of and changes in the extant international setting. Based on findings from framing effects and prospect theory, I contend that periods of external crisis, conflict, and war will shift the public's domain to one of relat…
A Granular Theory of Balancing
Theories of balancing are under assault. On theoretical and historical grounds, realists and non-realists challenge the claim that states balance against shifts in aggregate material capabilities. In addressing these claims, this article presents a more granular and finely tuned theory of balancing. It contends that states do, in fact, balance effectively. While foreign policy leaders regularly ignore aggregate power developments, they do disaggr…
Why do secondary states choose to support, follow or challenge
Contested leadership in international relations
The second face of security: Britain's ‘Smart’ appeasement policy towards Japan and Germany
Most states have numerous paths to create security for themselves. Foreign policy-makers must recognize that their own security policy will initiate a process that structures the nature of the domestic competition over domestic and foreign policy in other countries. I contend that one state's security alternative can empower or weaken domestic actors and interest groups in opposing foreign powers. I term this process the ‘second face of security’…
Politics and National Security: The Battles for Britain
Between 1889 and 1939 Britain created security for itself through alliances, rearmament, or appeasement (either alone or in some combination). The existing literature emphasizes the role of geopolitics, domestic characteristics, and individual idiosyncrasies to explain Britain's choices. I argue that within Britain, two broad and logrolled coalitions (outward-looking internationalist bloc and inward-oriented nationalist faction) battled to advanc…
The Political Economy of War Mobilization: From Britain's Limited Liability to a Continental Commitment
Is Peaceful Change in World Politics Always Desirable? A Neoclassical Realist Perspective
An assumption runs through this symposium that peaceful change is desirable and ought to be encouraged. We do not believe it is that simple. The term “peaceful change” itself is not well defined. The article, therefore, narrowly defines peaceful change as a process whereby a hegemon voluntarily cedes its dominant geopolitical role to a challenger in one or more regions. Drawing on neoclassical realism, we hypothesize that a declining hegemon will…
Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939
This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatenin…
Second Face of Security Strategies: Anglo-German and Anglo-Japanese Trade Concessions During the 1930s
Great powers can pursue deliberate Trojan horse policies to transform rising and threatening states into followers and supporters rather than challengers by altering their domestic political and economic institutions. I contend that a great power can use trade concessions, rather than punishment, to enable a favorable foreign policy coalition in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of state and societal elites who hav…
The International Realm, Framing Effects, and Security Strategies: Britain in Peace and War
In combining the domestic and international levels, I contend that the international environment can enable a domestic win-set and thereby guide the formation of a state's international security strategy. The trigger is the nature of and changes in the extant international setting. Based on findings from framing effects and prospect theory, I contend that periods of external crisis, conflict, and war will shift the public's domain to one of relat…
Why Israel launched a preventive military strike on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program (1981): The fungibility of power resources
In 1981, Israel launched a preventive military strike against a nuclear reactor that Iraq was constructing at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. The low fungibility of Iraq’s power resources, and especially its nuclear weapons program, shaped Israel’s decision-making process. First, it motivated Israel’s executives to disaggregate Iraq’s capabilities. Though they identified Baghdad’s emerging nuclear weapons program as a threat, there was litt…
Preventive military strike or preventive war? The fungibility of power resources
Differential rates of growth explanations for preventive war assume that power resources are highly fungible. That is, they assume that a state’s power resources are easily and quickly ‘moveable’ into practical military capability. This ‘unidimensional and undifferentiated’ baseline obscures an important distinction in the motivations for preventive military strikes and preventive wars. To forestall or block an anticipated adverse power shift, un…
The liberal international trading order (Lito) in an era of shifting capabilities
There is much debate about the impending collapse of the liberal international order. It is provoked by the shifts in material and military capabilities from emerging peer and near-peer competitors, some of whom were not part of the original grand bargain and others that are in a stronger position to renegotiate the bargain. As one critical element of the liberal international order, we ask, during power shifts: is the liberal international tradi…
Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration
Journal Article Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration Get access Steven E. Lobell Steven E. Lobell STEVEN E. LOBELL is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. He has published extensively on the political economy of security. He has most recently published a co-edited book Beyond Great Powers and Hegemons: Why Secondary States Support, Follow, or Challenge. Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Great Powers in a Restrictive International Environment
Why did Sino- American and American- Soviet engagement make greater strides in the 1969 to 1979 period than in any earlier period, resulting in significant US-Soviet negotiations on arms control, including SALT, the basic principles agreement, the Helsinki agreement, the agreement on the prevention of nuclear war, and the normalization of Sino-American relations?One explanation is thatthe United States engaged the Soviet Union and China to restor…
The grand strategy of hegemonic decline: Dilemmas of strategy and finance
The grand strategy of hegemonic decline: Dilemmas of strategy and finance
Britain's paradox: Cooperation or punishment prior to World War I
In the three decades prior to World War I, Britain's paradox was whether to cooperate with or punish an emerging Germany, Japan, France, Russia, and the United States. Based on the need for economy, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer pressed for cooperating with the contenders. Members of the services and Conservatives pushed to punish these contenders, countering that Britain could afford the rising naval expenditure needed to implement suc…
War is politics: Offensive realism, domestic politics, and security strategies
Ethnic Conflict and International Politics: Explaining Diffusion and Escalation
Combining theoretical analyzes with case studies, this book increases understanding of the internationalization, diffusion and escalation of ethnic conflict. The essays stand at the nexus of comparative politics and international relations, examining the influence on ethnic conflict of the weakening of state institutional structures, the role of non-state regional and international actors, changes in the ethnic balance of power, and the degree of…
Politics and National Security: The Battles for Britain
Between 1889 and 1939 Britain created security for itself through alliances, rearmament, or appeasement (either alone or in some combination). The existing literature emphasizes the role of geopolitics, domestic characteristics, and individual idiosyncrasies to explain Britain's choices. I argue that within Britain, two broad and logrolled coalitions (outward-looking internationalist bloc and inward-oriented nationalist faction) battled to advanc…
The second face of security: Britain's ‘Smart’ appeasement policy towards Japan and Germany
Most states have numerous paths to create security for themselves. Foreign policy-makers must recognize that their own security policy will initiate a process that structures the nature of the domestic competition over domestic and foreign policy in other countries. I contend that one state's security alternative can empower or weaken domestic actors and interest groups in opposing foreign powers. I term this process the ‘second face of security’…
The Political Economy of War Mobilization: From Britain's Limited Liability to a Continental Commitment
The International Realm, Framing Effects, and Security Strategies: Britain in Peace and War
In combining the domestic and international levels, I contend that the international environment can enable a domestic win-set and thereby guide the formation of a state's international security strategy. The trigger is the nature of and changes in the extant international setting. Based on findings from framing effects and prospect theory, I contend that periods of external crisis, conflict, and war will shift the public's domain to one of relat…
From Realism to Postmodernism and Beyond
Jennifer Sterling-Folker's edited volume, Making Sense of International Relations Theory, contains a masterful discussion and application of the major theoretical approaches in international relations. The book contributes to our understanding of the similarities and differences in the core assumptions of eleven key perspectives in international relations and their variations. By applying varying strands of these approaches to a single case (Koso…
The Second Face of American Security: The US-Jordan Free Trade Agreement as Security Policy
Great powers can pursue deliberate “Trojan horse” policies to transform rising and geostrategic secondary states into followers and supporters, rather than challengers. I contend that a great power can use economic statecraft, and in particular trade agreements, to deliberately promote shifts in the societal distribution of power in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of societal and economic actors who have a stake …
Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy
Second Face of Security Strategies: Anglo-German and Anglo-Japanese Trade Concessions During the 1930s
Great powers can pursue deliberate Trojan horse policies to transform rising and threatening states into followers and supporters rather than challengers by altering their domestic political and economic institutions. I contend that a great power can use trade concessions, rather than punishment, to enable a favorable foreign policy coalition in a target country. The intent is to strengthen the political power of state and societal elites who hav…
Conclusion: The state of neoclassical realism
Despite important differences between the chapters, most of the contributors to this volume have expressed strong preferences for an approach to international politics that stresses the primacy of the international system, but that also acknowledges the importance of domestic political arrangements and the perceptions of leaders in the selection and implementation of foreign policy responses to the international environment. The question remains,…
Introduction: Neoclassical realism, the state, and foreign policy
How do states, or more specifically the decision-makers and institutions that act on their behalf, assess international threats and opportunities? What happens when there is disagreement about the nature of foreign threats? Who ultimately decides the range of acceptable and unacceptable foreign policy alternatives? To what extent, and under what conditions, can domestic actors bargain with state leaders and influence foreign or security policies?…
Threat assessment, the state, and foreign policy: A neoclassical realist model
How do states perceive international threats? Which domestic actors are the most important in threat definition? What happens when domestic actors and interests disagree on the nature of threats? As we state in chapter 1, these are central questions to the neoclassical realist agenda and require a theory of the state to answer. In this chapter I will develop a neoclassical realist theory of threat assessment to fill this gap and illustrate it wit…
Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy
Neoclassical realism is an important new approach to international relations. Focusing on the interaction of the international system and the internal dynamics of states, neoclassical realism seeks to explain the grand strategies of individual states as opposed to recurrent patterns of international outcomes. This book offers the first systematic survey of the neoclassical realist approach. The editors lead a group of senior and emerging scholars…
Winning Friends and Influencing Enemies among Great Power Rivals: The Case of Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, 1969-1979
Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United States discussed or extended capital and technology, Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff treatment, Export–Import Bank financing, and long-term credit to the Soviet Union and China. This strategy raises three questions: First, why did the United States extend concessions to rival great powers when, under the more restrictive international environment of the 1970, it viewed Moscow's growing agg…
Great Powers in a Restrictive International Environment
Why did Sino- American and American- Soviet engagement make greater strides in the 1969 to 1979 period than in any earlier period, resulting in significant US-Soviet negotiations on arms control, including SALT, the basic principles agreement, the Helsinki agreement, the agreement on the prevention of nuclear war, and the normalization of Sino-American relations?One explanation is thatthe United States engaged the Soviet Union and China to restor…
Bringing Balancing Back In: Britain's Targeted Balancing, 1936–1939
This article challenges the conventional wisdom that Neville Chamberlain rejected the British tradition of balance of power in the 1930s. In contrast to balance of power and balance of threat theories, states do not balance against aggregate or net shifts in power. Instead, leaders define threats based on particular elements of a foreign state's power. The import is that different components of power of a foreign state are more or less threatenin…
Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration
Journal Article Engaging the Enemy and the Lessons for the Obama Administration Get access Steven E. Lobell Steven E. Lobell STEVEN E. LOBELL is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. He has published extensively on the political economy of security. He has most recently published a co-edited book Beyond Great Powers and Hegemons: Why Secondary States Support, Follow, or Challenge. Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
Contested leadership in international relations
Why do secondary states choose to support, follow or challenge
Neoclassical Realist Theory of International Politics
"Since Gideon Rose's 1998 review article in the journal World Politics and especially following the release of Lobell, Ripsman, and Taliaferro's 2009 edited volume Neoclassical Realism, the State, and Foreign Policy, neoclassical realism has emerged as major theoretical approach to the study of foreign policy on both sides of the Atlantic. Proponents of neoclassical realism claim that it is the logical extension of the Kenneth Waltz's structural …
Structural Realism/Offensive and Defensive Realism
Structural realism, or neorealism, is a theory of international relations that says power is the most important factor in international relations. First outlined by Kenneth Waltz in his 1979 book Theory of International Politics, structural realism is subdivided into two factions: offensive realism and defensive realism. Structural realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle, anarchy, and by t…
Is Peaceful Change in World Politics Always Desirable? A Neoclassical Realist Perspective
An assumption runs through this symposium that peaceful change is desirable and ought to be encouraged. We do not believe it is that simple. The term “peaceful change” itself is not well defined. The article, therefore, narrowly defines peaceful change as a process whereby a hegemon voluntarily cedes its dominant geopolitical role to a challenger in one or more regions. Drawing on neoclassical realism, we hypothesize that a declining hegemon will…
Political science (29 works) · Law (27 works) · Politics (25 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · Law (20 works) · Political economy (18 works) · International relations (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works)