Citation:
Abstract:
This article starts from a very simple (and unoriginal) premise: actors who enter into a social interaction rarely emerge the same. For mainstream international relations theories this is at one and the same time an uncontroversial statement and a rather radical one. It is uncontroversial because mainstream IR accepts that social interaction can change behavior through the imposition of exogenous constraints created by this interaction. Thus, for instance, neorealists claim that the imperatives of maximizing security in anarchical environment tends to compel most states most of the time to balance against rising power. Contractual institutionalists also accept that social interaction inside institutions can change behavior (strategies) in cooperative directions by altering cost–benefit analyses as different institutional rules act on fixed preferences.