Richard Ned Lebow
Biographic Data
| ID | 487885 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Ned Lebow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard Ned |
| FAMILY NAME | Lebow |
| SIGNATURE | LEBOW R N |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1972-141X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 168 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 719 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 155 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 13 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
A century of anarchy? War, normativity, and the birth of modern international order
Covid-19 and the Politics of Fear
Weimar's Long Shadow
Weimar casts a long shadow over post-war political thought. The Weimar Republic is used to understand contemporary threats to democracy and to critique or defend modernity. It has generated a series of political lessons that are invoked whenever democracies are challenged. This book questions the historical validity of most of these lessons and their applicability to contemporary political orders. It shows how Weimar lessons are often influenced …
What is Classical Realism
Jonathan Kirshner misrepresents classical realism in fundamental ways. His wants to reclaim classical realism, but he never tells us what it is or engages other scholars who have developed the paradigm. He pleads for a more sophisticated realism but spends much of the book engaging neorealism and ‘hyperrationality.’ He foregrounds Thucydides but reads him superficially and indefensibly in terms of contemporary realist tropes. He asserts – incorre…
Are Leaders Rational
Recognition and agency: People and states
The advantage of reading the texts of Carr and Hegel with a view to fusing their horizons is that it reveals the importance of recognition and reconciliation in their texts.While quite distinct from Hegel's (1977) treatment of recognition in the lordbondsman dialectic of The Phenomenology of Spirit, Carr's analysis of the relations between the victorious and defeated parties in the interwar period is also predicated on a struggle for recognition.…
Response to J. Samuel Barkin’s Review of The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know
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Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders: Leader Assessments, Responses, and Consequences
This volume focuses on the assessments political actors make of the relative fragility and robustness of political orders. The core argument developed and explored throughout its different chapters is that such assessments are subjective and informed by contextually specific historical experiences that have important implications for how leaders respond. Their responses, in turn, feed into processes by which political orders change. The volume's …
International Relations Theory and the Ukrainian War
Drawing on my qualitative and quantitative research I show that the motives for war have changed in the course of the last four centuries, and that the causes of war and the responses of others to the use of force are shaped by society. Leaders who start wars rarely behave with the substantive and instrumental rationality assumed by realist and rationalist approaches. For this reason, historically they lose more than half wars than they start. Af…
Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders: Leader Assessments, Responses, and Consequences
Honneur et prestige: Les nations se battent-elles toujours pour les mêmes raisons
Cet article propose d’étudier les mobiles ( motives ) des États qui décident d’entrer en guerre. À la lumière de Thucydide, nous en identifions trois : la peur, l’intérêt et l’honneur. Nous analysons la répartition de ces mobiles sur une période de quatre siècles à travers une base de données élaborée par nos soins, et catégorisant les guerres qui impliquent au moins une puissance montante ou une grande puissance de part et d’autre. Cette approch…
Fear, pathogens and political order
I distinguish fear from fright and explore the role of both in the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that fear generates strong public demands for protection and that these pressures can constrain or enable leaders depending on the circumstances, capabilities, but above all, their framing of the problem. I focus more on countries that performed badly because their leaders failed to gather or evaluate relevant information. To explain this behaviour I dra…
Reason and Cause: Social Science and the Social World
Back to the Past: Counterfactuals and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Max Weber’s ethics
I offer a critique of Weber’s two ethics. The first layer is internal and concerned with their logics. The second layer considers the external knowledge necessary to apply them appropriately and argues that it is extremely difficult to come by. The third layer connects Weber’s ethics to his politics because the choice of either ethic in almost any context is a value choice. This is apparent in Weber’s application of these ethics to Germany foreig…
Ethical traps in international relations
We elaborate a little noticed strategy generally used by weaker actors both in domestic and international politics: the ethical trap. Actors who fall into such traps lose ethical standing and influence at home as well as abroad. We explore the concept of the trap and distinguish it from policy interventions and escalation in which there is no deliberate enticement. We document historical instances of successful ethical trapping both within states…
The Rise and Fall of Political Orders
Drawing on political theory, comparative politics, international relations, psychology and classics, Ned Lebow offers insights into why social and political orders form, how they evolve, and why and how they decline. Following The Tragic Vision of Politics and A Cultural Theory of International Relations, this book thus completes Lebow's trilogy with an original theory of political order. He identifies long- and short-term threats to political or…
Stretching Selves Through Empathy: The Role of Collective and Official Memories
Our identities consist of multiple identifications derived from roles, affiliations, and biographies, whose contents are shaped and reshaped as social resources. Nationalists and fundamentalists encourage us to construct vertical identities that emphasize the nationality of religion at the expense of other identifications. I explore mechanisms—including memorialization of collective memory—that can encourage us to reject horizontal identities in …
Thucydides the Constructivist
Max Weber and International Relations
Weber’s Search for Knowledge
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Max Weber and International Relations
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Max Weber and International Relations
Max Weber explored the political, epistemological and ethical problems of modernity, and understood how closely connected they were. His efforts are imaginative, sophisticated, even inspiring, but also flawed. Weber's epistemological successes and failures highlight unresolvable tensions that are just as pronounced today and from which we have much to learn. This edited collection of essays offers novel readings of Weber's politics, approach to k…
Richard Ned Lebow: A Pioneer in International Relations Theory, History, Political Philosophy and Psychology
Thucydides and Order
Disorder resembles a lobster trap; it is easy to enter into and exceedingly difficult to leave. Competition among human beings for status and wealth can easily get out of hand and arouse fear among some actors for their well-being, if not survival. Fear can prompt precautionary measures against those seen to constitute threats. Mutual escalation can rapidly dissolve the bonds of restraint, resulting in stasis. Rebuilding order is difficult becaus…
Rational Deterrence Theory: I Think, Therefore I Deter
Deterrence theories purport to supply the auxiliary assumptions rational choice theories need to predict rational strategic behavior. They generally assume that would-be initiators are (i) instrumentally rational; (2) risk-prone gain-maximizers; (3) free of domestic constraints; and (4) able to identify themselves correctly as defenders or challengers. These assumptions are contradicted by empirical studies that indicate that risk-prone, gain-max…
The long peace, the end of the cold war, and the failure of realism
Three of the more important international developments of the last half century are the “long peace” between the superpowers, the Soviet Union's renunciation of its empire and leading role as a superpower, and the post-cold war transformation of the international system. Realist theories at the international level address the first and third of these developments, and realist theories at the unit level have made an ex post facto attempt to accoun…
Deterrence: The Elusive Dependent Variable
Empirical analyses of deterrence have paid insufficient attention to the validity and reliability of the data used to test the central propositions of theories of deterrence. This article examines two prominent studies of immediate extended deterrence that do not deal adequately with the problems inherent in constructing a valid data set for quantitative analysis. The problems are particularly acute in the testing of theories of deterrence becaus…
Thucydides the Constructivist
The most superficial level of Thucydides' history examines the destructive consequences of domestic and foreign policies framed outside the language of justice. His deeper political-philosophical aim was to explore the relationship between nomos (convention) and phusis (nature) and its implications for civilization. Thucydides concludes that nomos constructs identities and channels and restrains the behavior of individuals and societies. Speech a…
What's So Different about a Counterfactual
The author contends that the difference between so-called factual and counterfactual arguments is greatly exaggerated; it is one of degree, not of kind. Both arguments ultimately rest on the quality of their assumptions, the chain of logic linking causes to outcomes, and their consistency with available evidence. He critiques two recent historical works that make extensive use of counterfactuals and finds them seriously deficient in method and ar…
Beyond Deterrence
Part I of this essay reviews cases of deterrence failure and assesses the political, psychological, and practical obstacles to the success of deterrence. The evidence suggests that the utility of deterrence is limited to a narrow range of cases. It is appropriate only when leaders are motivated largely by “opportunity” rather than by “need,” have the political freedom to exercise restraint, are not misled by grossly distorted assessments of the p…
God Gave Physics the Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World
For conceptual and empirical reasons the quest for predictive theory rests on a mistaken analogy between physical and social phenomena. Evolutionary biology is a more productive analogy for social science. We explore the value of this analogy in its `hard' and `soft' versions, and examine the implications of both for theory and research in International Relations. We develop the case for forward `tracking' of International Relations on the basis …
Psychology and Deterrence
Now available in paperback, Psychology and Deterrence reveals deterrence strategy's hidden and generally simplistic assumptions about the nature of power and aggression, threat and response, and calculation and behavior in the international arena.
Poking Counterfactual Holes in Covering Laws: Cognitive Styles and Historical Reasoning
We report a series of studies of historical reasoning among professional observers of world politics. The correlational studies demonstrate that experts with strong theoretical commitments to a covering law and cognitive-stylistic preferences for explanatory closure are more likely to reject close-call Counterfactual that imply that “already explained” historical outcomes could easily have taken radically different forms. The experimental studies…
Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them
Reason, Emotion and Cooperation
Constitutive Causality: Imagined Spaces and Political Practices
I explore alternate meanings of causation and the generic ways in which constitution can have causal consequences. I address the question of constitutive causality in the context of the debate about the rise of the territorial state. I evaluate claims linking its emergence and success to the prior development of linear perspective. To do this, I compare the spatial revolution that took place in the Renaissance with the one that began in the 19th …
Identity and International Relations
Drawing on Kant and Hegel, debates in political theory and international relations generally assume that an identity cannot be created without the simultaneous creation and negative stereotypy of an `other'. Figures such as Schmitt and Huntington accept and even welcome this binary, while others, among them Nietzsche, Habermas and Rawls, look for ways of overcoming it. Drawing on Homer's Iliad and psychological research, I challenge the assumptio…
Lost in Transition: A Critical Analysis of Power Transition Theory
In this paper we identify and critique the key propositions of power transition theory. We find little support for any of power transition theory's main empirical implications. Contrary to most versions of the theory, we fin d that the European and international systems almost never have been characterized by hegemony. No state has achieved a position that allowed it for any extended period to order the international system to suit its interests …
Contingency, Catalysts, and International System Change
The Deterrence Deadlock: Is There a Way out
Recent research into the origins of brinkmanship crisis raises serious questions about the utility of deterrence; it indicates that deterrence fails to address what may be the most common cause of aggression, the perceived need to pursue a confrontatory foreign policy because of weakness at home or abroad. A policy of is proposed to address this problem and is offered as an alternative or parallel strategy of conflict management. Some of the impl…
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly
lessons of the Cuban missile crisis occupy a central place both in United States foreign policy and in international relations theory. For policymakers, the crisis confirmed a number of tenets about the utility of power in a nuclear world and the ways in which relations with the Soviet Union should best bc managed. Theoreticians have thoroughly examined the case for generalizations about crisis decision-making, bargaining theory, and the role of …
Power, Persuasion and Justice
Modern conceptions of power tend to emphasise the material basis of power, do not adequately distinguish between power and influence, and generally divorce the analysis and application of power from ethical considerations. The ancient Greeks were sensitive to the social basis of power, and how its exercise might strengthen or weaken the personal or communal bonds on which enduring influence rested. They distinguished between power exercised throu…
Interdisciplinary Research and the Future of Peace and Security Studies
This essay describes different kinds of interdisciplinary research and the contribution they can make to peace and security studies. It discusses the institutional and professional impediments to interdisciplinary research and indicates what foundations already supporting research in this field could do to encourage such research. Finally, it outlines a substantive agenda for future research, urging scholars to devote less attention to analyzing …
Generational Learning and Conflict Management
Until March of 1985, one of the themes most frequently touched upon by students of the Soviet Union was the advanced age of the Soviet leadership. Prior to Brezhnev's death, the average age of the Politburo was seventy-one. Under Andropov and Chernenko the Soviet Union continued to be run by a gerontocracy wedded to traditional and demonstrably ineffective programmes in almost all important policy areas. With the accession to power of Mikhail Gor…
The Future of Memory
The author compares and contrasts the public discourse over memory in Western Europe and North America. The greater awareness in continental Europe of memory as a political resource and site of contestation has profound implications for elite behavior and mass responses. It also has the potential to alter the dynamics by which collective and institutional memory is created, recalled, and altered
Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis
Social science as an ethical practice
The Art of Bargaining
Bargaining for what we want or need is a part of our everyday lives. But how often do we stop to consider all the factors that go into the bargaining process? How often do we look at the strategies and tactics available to us? And how often do we hurt our own position by failing to do so? In The Art of Bargaining, Richard Ned Lebow draws on his years of experience with the United States government, NATO, and numerous European and American busines…
Deterrence Failure Revisited
John Orme's article, Deterrence Failures: A Second Look, is a spirited attack on my book Between Peace and War.' A principal finding of this study is that deterrence is most often defeated by the flawed calculations of the challenger. Orme insists that deterrence only fails when it is executed poorly. In the rebuttal that follows I will show that Orme's historical analysis fails to address, let alone refute, the substance of my criticisms of dete…
Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration
International Communication and the New Diplomacy
Divided Nations in a Divided World
White Britain and Black Ireland: The Influence of Stereotypes on Colonial Policy
Warning and Response: A Study of Surprise Attack in the 20th Century and an Analysis of Its Lessons for the Future. Julian Critchley
Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy, Politics, by Richard K. Betts
Misconceptions in American Strategic Assessment
Recent changes in American strategic doctrine not only have prompted shifts in the measures of strategic sufficiency but have also led to a heightened perception of these measures. Conceptions of the strategic balance currently in vogue are all based on estimates of relative residual military capability following a nuclear exchange. Informed views differ about how such estimates should be made. However, those of the two key institutions most conc…
Miscalculation in the South Atlantic: The origins of the Falkland War
(1983). Miscalculation in the South Atlantic: The origins of the Falkland War. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 5-35
Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience, by Colin S. Gray
The Deterrence Deadlock: Is There a Way out
Recent research into the origins of brinkmanship crisis raises serious questions about the utility of deterrence; it indicates that deterrence fails to address what may be the most common cause of aggression, the perceived need to pursue a confrontatory foreign policy because of weakness at home or abroad. A policy of is proposed to address this problem and is offered as an alternative or parallel strategy of conflict management. Some of the impl…
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly
lessons of the Cuban missile crisis occupy a central place both in United States foreign policy and in international relations theory. For policymakers, the crisis confirmed a number of tenets about the utility of power in a nuclear world and the ways in which relations with the Soviet Union should best bc managed. Theoreticians have thoroughly examined the case for generalizations about crisis decision-making, bargaining theory, and the role of …
Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis
Thucydides and Aggression: A Reply to Professor Bluhm
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Paranoia of the Powerful: Thucydides on World War III
In the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian War, an Athenian expedition descended upon the small island of Melos, about 90 miles south of Athens in the Aegean Sea, and demanded that the Melians join in alliance or be destroyed. Although a Spartan colony, Melos had remained scrupulously neutral in the war. Her citizens, unwilling to renounce their independence, sought unsuccessfully to dissuade the Athenians from attacking them. The Athenians expla…
Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them
The Soviet Offensive in Europe: The Schlieffen Plan Revisited
Deterrence reconsidered: The challenge of recent research
(1985). Deterrence reconsidered: The challenge of recent research. Survival: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 20-28
Generational Learning and Conflict Management
Until March of 1985, one of the themes most frequently touched upon by students of the Soviet Union was the advanced age of the Soviet leadership. Prior to Brezhnev's death, the average age of the Politburo was seventy-one. Under Andropov and Chernenko the Soviet Union continued to be run by a gerontocracy wedded to traditional and demonstrably ineffective programmes in almost all important policy areas. With the accession to power of Mikhail Gor…
The New Psychology of War and Peace
The Nuclear Debate: Deterrence and the Lapse of Faith
A Research Agenda for Peace and Security Studies
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Deterrence Failure Revisited
John Orme's article, Deterrence Failures: A Second Look, is a spirited attack on my book Between Peace and War.' A principal finding of this study is that deterrence is most often defeated by the flawed calculations of the challenger. Orme insists that deterrence only fails when it is executed poorly. In the rebuttal that follows I will show that Orme's historical analysis fails to address, let alone refute, the substance of my criticisms of dete…
Is Crisis Management Always Possible
After the Cuban missile crisis had been resolved, President John F. Kennedy confessed that the odds of the Soviets going to war seemed to him at the time somewhere between one out of three and even.' Kennedy's judgment has remained a matter of controversy among scholars and members of the Ex Com, the informal working group the President assembled to help him manage the crisis. Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy contend that it may have been a rea…
Conventional vs Nuclear Deterrence: Are the Lessons Transferable
Beyond Deterrence: Building Better Theory
Political science (137 works) · Law (106 works) · Sociology (98 works) · Politics (86 works) · Law (59 works) · Philosophy (58 works) · Epistemology (53 works) · History (52 works) · Psychology (50 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (48 works)