Joseph M Parent
Biographic Data
| ID | 384351 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph M Parent |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph M |
| FAMILY NAME | Parent |
| SIGNATURE | PARENT J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Miami |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-3747-7396 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 124 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Voluntary action in International Relations
What is voluntary action in International Relations (IR)? Literatures on bargaining, empire, foreign policy, grand strategy, hierarchy, hegemony, international law, international order, legitimacy, responsibility, status, and strategy depend on the answer, yet IR has no definition of it. We argue that voluntary action is an expression of genuine will. Yet, because of theoretical commitments, there remains deep disagreement about which actors are …
The Dynamics of US Retrenchment in the Middle East
This article argues that conditions favor American retrenchment from the Middle East because the United States can shift burdens to capable states in the region, there are few areas where US commitments are interdependent, and the local conquest calculus favors defense. Forward military deployments do not positively influence potential threats in the Middle East, and maintaining deployments there will detract from meeting challenges from China. T…
In Search of Status: China and the USA in United Nations Speeches, 1970–2020
What is China’s status? The answer has major repercussions for China’s rights, responsibilities, and risk acceptance in international disputes. Although definitions of status are contested, there is broad agreement that it is socially constructed and relative to peer states, which makes measuring it difficult. We aim to address definitional and measurement problems by using text as data from United Nations General Debates speeches, 1970–2020. Thi…
Introduction: Waltzian Theory and the Return of Power Politics
Grand Strategies of Declining Powers
How do states deal with decline? Since Thucydides, various authors have tried to describe how falling states manage their declines and prescribe how they might do it better. Their arguments have run the gamut from “do nothing” to “change everything.” Although this might seem like a bewildering array of plausible alternatives, there are better and worse ways to go about choosing grand strategies of decline. This chapter lays out the dilemmas of de…
Down with Theory and Evidence
Book Review| December 01 2021 Down with Theory and Evidence? A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, By Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenbaum. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. 211 pp. Hardcover, $26.95.. Joseph M. Parent; Joseph M. Parent Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, 2081 Jenkins Nanovic Halls, Notre Dame, IN 46556, Email: [email protected] Search for other works …
The Status of Status in World Politics
What is status? How does it work? What effects does it tend to have? A new wave of scholarship on status in international relations has converged on a central definition of status, several causal pathways, and the claim that the pursuit of status tends to produce conflict. The authors take stock of the status literature and argue that this convergence is not only a sign of progress, but also an obstacle to it. They find that the consensus definit…
The Authors Respond – Paul Macdonald and Joseph Parent
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Conspiracies of Conspiracies: How Delusions have Overrun America
Hierarchies in World Politics
Hierarchies in World Politics, a volume edited by Ayse Zarakol, assembles a first-rate slate of scholars to explore how hierarchies structure the world around us, and what that means for the people
Tsar Power: 1903 Russia
This chapter analyzes Russia's ambivalent responses to decline at the turn of the century. Overall, Russian pursued retrenchment policies that helped lay the foundations for its resurgence after World War I, but retrenchment was accelerated by blundering into the Russo-Japanese War and undermined by the Bosnian crisis. Structural conditions, such as the belief that the conquest calculus rewarded attack, help explain why retrenchment was hard to m…
Studies in Revival
This chapter surveys how the case comparisons were selected and how they throw new light on well known histories of declining states. We compare pairs of states falling at similar rates but responding slightly differently. The small decliners are 1872 and 1908 Great Britain; the medium decliners are 1888 Russia and 1893 France; the large decliners are 1908 Russia and 1925 France.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: Debating Decline
This chapter reviews the literature and lays out the debate on decline. It divides the rival views into two main camps: preventive war and domestic dysfunction. For preventive war theorists, who include power transition and hegemonic stability theorists, there are strong international incentives for falling states to stave off their declines through aggressive or inflexible policies that culminate in war. For scholars of domestic dysfunction, dec…
The Utopian Background: 1925 France
The conventional wisdom is that interwar France was socially incoherent, excessively legalistic, and unrealistically punitive. This chapter counters that French foreign policy after World War I had a high degree of consensus and strategic rationality. France adjusted to its falling power by scaling back its ambitions and leaning increasingly on other states. Unfortunately, France suffered from a lack of capable allies and options, and clung to a …
Conclusion: Retrenchment as Reloading
This chapter sums the arguments and findings of the book, and relates them to the debate on decline, especially the implications for preventive war and domestic dysfunction theories. It then pivots to apply these findings to discussions about how fast the United States is falling, how it is responding to decline, and what the consequences are likely to be.
The Fates of Nations: Decline by the Numbers
This chapter discusses research design: how cases were selected, issues with measurement, and the quantitative and qualitative ways variables were operationalized. It then overviews all the cases to see general patterns and correlations. It finds little support for preventive war and domestic dysfunction arguments, while retrenchment appears to be the most common and effective response to great power decline. Statistical tests are run to compare …
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
How do great powers respond to decline? The conventional wisdom is preventive war or domestic dysfunction. This book argues that declining states are neither more prone to aggression nor political paralysis. Instead, it makes three main claims. First, the most common and effective response to decline is retrenchment because, in the competitive world of power politics, states need to stay strategically solvent. Second, the rate of decline is the m…
A Hegemon Temporizes: 1872 Great Britain
This chapter argues that British policy after the death of Palmerston was not driven by imperial dogma or careless adventurism; it was driven by a careful consideration of the balance of power. The first section establishes that British policymakers realized they were declining. The second section demonstrates that policymakers tailored their domestic policies to fit the drop in relative power. The third section details how decision-makers slight…
A Descending Whirligig: 1888 Russia
This chapter illustrates how Russian decision-makers recognizes that their state was declining and embraced the domestic and foreign policies necessary to improve competitiveness and avoid costly conflicts. Waves of reform helped overhaul antiquated institutions and alliance activity gave the country breathing room to reform internally. Eventually, altered structural conditions sapped the pressures for retrenchment.
Parry to Thrust: The Logic of Retrenchment
This chapter elaborates the logic of the arguments. First, it contends that decline encourages retrenchment because viable states seek strategic solvency. Second, states rely on a combination of domestic and international policies to manage decline and as the rate of decline increases states will not only retrench more, they will increasingly rely on international policies because domestic self-help is insufficient. Third, four structural modifie…
A Hegemon Wakes Up: 1908 Great Britain
This chapter argues that British elites coalesced behind a policy of retrenchment after the Boer War. Yet retrenchment was a sustained and coherent policy to deal with Britain's changing position in the system, not a focused reaction to rising German power. Balancing against Germany was a late and specific manifestation of British retrenchment, but British domestic and foreign policies were a much broader and continuous effort to make the country…
“Les Jeux Sont Faits”: 1893 France
This chapter showcases how French decision-makers adapted to a fall in rank by decreasing foreign policy costs to overhaul domestic institutions and that leaders that strayed into adventurism abroad suffered negative feedback. The culmination of this process was the cementing of the Franco-Russian alliance.
The Road to Recovery: How Once Great Powers Became Great Again
In 2014, a quiet revolution shook international politics. That year, the World Bank reported that U.S. GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms slipped to second place for the first time since th
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
In this bold new perspective on the United States-China power transition, Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent examine all great power transitions since 1870. They find that declining and rising powers have strong incentives to moderate their behavior at moments when the hierarchy of great powers is shifting. How do great powers respond to decline? they ask. What options do great powers have to slow or reverse their descent?In Twilight of the T…
The Status of Status in World Politics
What is status? How does it work? What effects does it tend to have? A new wave of scholarship on status in international relations has converged on a central definition of status, several causal pathways, and the claim that the pursuit of status tends to produce conflict. The authors take stock of the status literature and argue that this convergence is not only a sign of progress, but also an obstacle to it. They find that the consensus definit…
Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment
There is broad scholarly consensus that the relative power of the United States is declining and that this decline will have negative consequences for international politics. This pessimism is justified by the belief that great powers have few options to deal with acute relative decline. Retrenchment is seen as a hazardous policy that demoralizes allies and encourages external predation. Faced with shrinking means, great powers are thought to hav…
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
In this bold new perspective on the United States-China power transition, Paul K. MacDonald and Joseph M. Parent examine all great power transitions since 1870. They find that declining and rising powers have strong incentives to moderate their behavior at moments when the hierarchy of great powers is shifting. How do great powers respond to decline? they ask. What options do great powers have to slow or reverse their descent?In Twilight of the T…
Balancing in Neorealism
Does neorealism offer a convincing account of great power balancing behavior? Many scholars argue that it does not. This conclusion rests on a misunderstanding of neorealist theory and an erroneous reading of the evidence. Properly specified, neorealism holds that great powers place an overriding emphasis on the need for self-help. This means that they rely relentlessly both on arming and on imitating the successful military practices of their pe…
International polarity and America's polarization
Central Authority and Order
Strong central authorities are able to effectively manage costly defection, but are unable to adequately address lesser conflicts because of limits to their ability to monitor and enforce. We argue, counterintuitively, that these limitations build cooperation and trust among subordinates: the limitations contribute to the production of order. First, limits to authority leave space for locally informed decentralized enforcement. Second, central au…
In Search of Status: China and the USA in United Nations Speeches, 1970–2020
What is China’s status? The answer has major repercussions for China’s rights, responsibilities, and risk acceptance in international disputes. Although definitions of status are contested, there is broad agreement that it is socially constructed and relative to peer states, which makes measuring it difficult. We aim to address definitional and measurement problems by using text as data from United Nations General Debates speeches, 1970–2020. Thi…
Democratic Peace: A Political Biography
Anarchy, hierarchy and order
How does order emerge from anarchy? While scholars generally agree that international politics is anarchic, there is much dispute about how anarchy orders relationships. This paper challenges prevailing views by attacking the problem of anarchy from behind. We examine how hierarchy creates order and argue that two mechanisms are responsible. The first is the direct actions of a leviathan; the second is an indirect effect, which counterintuitively…
Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic
Journal Article Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic? Get access Joseph M. Parent Joseph M. Parent JOSEPH M. PARENT is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami. Previously, he taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University. He publishes on American foreign policy, political integration, and international relations theory. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford A…
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
Decline and Retrenchment: Peril or Promise
April 01 2012 Decline and Retrenchment: Peril or Promise? Kyle Haynes, Kyle Haynes Kyle Haynes is a Ph.D candidate in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar William R. Thompson, William R. Thompson William R. Thompson is Distinguished Professor and Donald A. Rogers Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Search for other works by thi…
Publius's Guile and the Paranoid Style
When foreign dangers become domestic threats, how should governments respond? This article turns to the past to better understand the present. Three rebellions in early American history—Shays's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and Fries's Rebellion—illustrate how similar domestic events elicited different governmental responses, depending on changes in the international environment. The ethical implications are mixed, but the policy recommendati…
Duelling and the abolition of war
Political scientists have long compared war to duelling in the hope that war could be abolished like duelling, that is, at the hands of a normative campaign. However, there has been limited investigation of duelling's past. What can the history of duelling teach us about the future of war? This paper advances two arguments. First, by refining the conventional wisdom, it argues that duelling's demise was caused less by normative campaigning than b…
Of Polarity and Polarization
July 01 2008 Of Polarity and Polarization Joseph M. Parent, Joseph M. Parent Joseph M. Parent is Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Joseph Bafumi, Joseph Bafumi Joseph Bafumi is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Charles A. Kupchan, Charles A. Kupchan Charles A. Kupchan is Professo…
Institutions, Identity and Unity: The Anomaly of Australian Nationalism
Why has Australia not produced a viable separatist movement? This non‐event is all the more striking compared to the separatism experienced by the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada, among others. Individually or combined, the major paradigms cannot explain separatism or its absence. This paper advances an elite persuasion argument and contends that success of separatist movements depends on the conditions in which elites appeal for autono…
Central Authority and Order
Strong central authorities are able to effectively manage costly defection, but are unable to adequately address lesser conflicts because of limits to their ability to monitor and enforce. We argue, counterintuitively, that these limitations build cooperation and trust among subordinates: the limitations contribute to the production of order. First, limits to authority leave space for locally informed decentralized enforcement. Second, central au…
Of Polarity and Polarization
July 01 2008 Of Polarity and Polarization Joseph M. Parent, Joseph M. Parent Joseph M. Parent is Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Joseph Bafumi, Joseph Bafumi Joseph Bafumi is Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Charles A. Kupchan, Charles A. Kupchan Charles A. Kupchan is Professo…
Duelling and the abolition of war
Political scientists have long compared war to duelling in the hope that war could be abolished like duelling, that is, at the hands of a normative campaign. However, there has been limited investigation of duelling's past. What can the history of duelling teach us about the future of war? This paper advances two arguments. First, by refining the conventional wisdom, it argues that duelling's demise was caused less by normative campaigning than b…
Anarchy, hierarchy and order
How does order emerge from anarchy? While scholars generally agree that international politics is anarchic, there is much dispute about how anarchy orders relationships. This paper challenges prevailing views by attacking the problem of anarchy from behind. We examine how hierarchy creates order and argue that two mechanisms are responsible. The first is the direct actions of a leviathan; the second is an indirect effect, which counterintuitively…
Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic
Journal Article Europe's Structural Idol: An American Federalist Republic? Get access Joseph M. Parent Joseph M. Parent JOSEPH M. PARENT is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Miami. Previously, he taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, and New York University. He publishes on American foreign policy, political integration, and international relations theory. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford A…
Publius's Guile and the Paranoid Style
When foreign dangers become domestic threats, how should governments respond? This article turns to the past to better understand the present. Three rebellions in early American history—Shays's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and Fries's Rebellion—illustrate how similar domestic events elicited different governmental responses, depending on changes in the international environment. The ethical implications are mixed, but the policy recommendati…
Elder Abuse: How the Moderns Mistreat Classical Realism1: Elder Abuse
Neorealists narrate their origins by explaining that classical realists committed a multitude of sins and were therefore displaced. The classics unscientifically explained world politics primarily through individual-level characteristics, typically a will to power that drove state behavior and international outcomes. In short, classical realism was inadequately structural and theoretical; thus, neorealists revised them by prioritizing structural …
Graceful Decline? The Surprising Success of Great Power Retrenchment
There is broad scholarly consensus that the relative power of the United States is declining and that this decline will have negative consequences for international politics. This pessimism is justified by the belief that great powers have few options to deal with acute relative decline. Retrenchment is seen as a hazardous policy that demoralizes allies and encourages external predation. Faced with shrinking means, great powers are thought to hav…
International polarity and America's polarization
Decline and Retrenchment: Peril or Promise
April 01 2012 Decline and Retrenchment: Peril or Promise? Kyle Haynes, Kyle Haynes Kyle Haynes is a Ph.D candidate in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar William R. Thompson, William R. Thompson William R. Thompson is Distinguished Professor and Donald A. Rogers Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Search for other works by thi…
American Conspiracy Theories
Conspiracies theories are some of the most striking features in the American political landscape: the Kennedy assassination, aliens at Roswell, subversion by Masons, Jews, Catholics, or communists, and modern movements like Birtherism and Trutherism. But what do we really know about conspiracy theories? Do they share general causes? Are they becoming more common? More dangerous? Who is targeted and why? Who are the conspiracy theorists? How has t…
Democratic Peace: A Political Biography
Balancing in Neorealism
Does neorealism offer a convincing account of great power balancing behavior? Many scholars argue that it does not. This conclusion rests on a misunderstanding of neorealist theory and an erroneous reading of the evidence. Properly specified, neorealism holds that great powers place an overriding emphasis on the need for self-help. This means that they rely relentlessly both on arming and on imitating the successful military practices of their pe…
Tsar Power: 1903 Russia
This chapter analyzes Russia's ambivalent responses to decline at the turn of the century. Overall, Russian pursued retrenchment policies that helped lay the foundations for its resurgence after World War I, but retrenchment was accelerated by blundering into the Russo-Japanese War and undermined by the Bosnian crisis. Structural conditions, such as the belief that the conquest calculus rewarded attack, help explain why retrenchment was hard to m…
Studies in Revival
This chapter surveys how the case comparisons were selected and how they throw new light on well known histories of declining states. We compare pairs of states falling at similar rates but responding slightly differently. The small decliners are 1872 and 1908 Great Britain; the medium decliners are 1888 Russia and 1893 France; the large decliners are 1908 Russia and 1925 France.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: Debating Decline
This chapter reviews the literature and lays out the debate on decline. It divides the rival views into two main camps: preventive war and domestic dysfunction. For preventive war theorists, who include power transition and hegemonic stability theorists, there are strong international incentives for falling states to stave off their declines through aggressive or inflexible policies that culminate in war. For scholars of domestic dysfunction, dec…
The Utopian Background: 1925 France
The conventional wisdom is that interwar France was socially incoherent, excessively legalistic, and unrealistically punitive. This chapter counters that French foreign policy after World War I had a high degree of consensus and strategic rationality. France adjusted to its falling power by scaling back its ambitions and leaning increasingly on other states. Unfortunately, France suffered from a lack of capable allies and options, and clung to a …
Conclusion: Retrenchment as Reloading
This chapter sums the arguments and findings of the book, and relates them to the debate on decline, especially the implications for preventive war and domestic dysfunction theories. It then pivots to apply these findings to discussions about how fast the United States is falling, how it is responding to decline, and what the consequences are likely to be.
The Fates of Nations: Decline by the Numbers
This chapter discusses research design: how cases were selected, issues with measurement, and the quantitative and qualitative ways variables were operationalized. It then overviews all the cases to see general patterns and correlations. It finds little support for preventive war and domestic dysfunction arguments, while retrenchment appears to be the most common and effective response to great power decline. Statistical tests are run to compare …
Twilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment
How do great powers respond to decline? The conventional wisdom is preventive war or domestic dysfunction. This book argues that declining states are neither more prone to aggression nor political paralysis. Instead, it makes three main claims. First, the most common and effective response to decline is retrenchment because, in the competitive world of power politics, states need to stay strategically solvent. Second, the rate of decline is the m…
A Hegemon Temporizes: 1872 Great Britain
This chapter argues that British policy after the death of Palmerston was not driven by imperial dogma or careless adventurism; it was driven by a careful consideration of the balance of power. The first section establishes that British policymakers realized they were declining. The second section demonstrates that policymakers tailored their domestic policies to fit the drop in relative power. The third section details how decision-makers slight…
A Descending Whirligig: 1888 Russia
This chapter illustrates how Russian decision-makers recognizes that their state was declining and embraced the domestic and foreign policies necessary to improve competitiveness and avoid costly conflicts. Waves of reform helped overhaul antiquated institutions and alliance activity gave the country breathing room to reform internally. Eventually, altered structural conditions sapped the pressures for retrenchment.
Parry to Thrust: The Logic of Retrenchment
This chapter elaborates the logic of the arguments. First, it contends that decline encourages retrenchment because viable states seek strategic solvency. Second, states rely on a combination of domestic and international policies to manage decline and as the rate of decline increases states will not only retrench more, they will increasingly rely on international policies because domestic self-help is insufficient. Third, four structural modifie…
A Hegemon Wakes Up: 1908 Great Britain
This chapter argues that British elites coalesced behind a policy of retrenchment after the Boer War. Yet retrenchment was a sustained and coherent policy to deal with Britain's changing position in the system, not a focused reaction to rising German power. Balancing against Germany was a late and specific manifestation of British retrenchment, but British domestic and foreign policies were a much broader and continuous effort to make the country…
Political science (35 works) · Law (25 works) · Politics (22 works) · Economics (18 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (13 works) · Law (13 works) · History (12 works) · Psychology (12 works)