Winner of the International Studies Association’s Best Book Award, 2014.
In this book, Professor Bear F. Braumoeller argues persuasively that both perspectives are correct: leaders shape the main material and ideological forces of history that subsequently constrain and compel them. The result is “the first logically sound and empirically tested systemic theory of international relations”–a synthesis of Realist and liberal IR theory that far exceeds the sum of its parts. His studies of the Congress of Vienna, the interwar period, and the end of the Cold War illustrate this dynamic, and the data he marshals provide systematic evidence that leaders both shape and are constrained by the structure of the international system.