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Revisionism revisited: developing a typology for classifying Russia and other revisionist powers

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Abstract

IR has failed to develop a consistent and coherent conceptualization of revisionism. Conceptual stretching, false comparison, and “status quo biases” pervade the literature. In order to overcome these problems, the article develops a novel typology of revisionism that differentiates revisionist states by the scope of their revisionist aims as well and the means they are willing to use to achieve them. This typology goes beyond recent typologies, which focus on revisionist aims but neglect the important question of means, thereby failing to provide a complete picture of the kind of challenge any particular revisionist poses to peace and stability. The typology is used to classify contemporary Russia, whose challenge comes not from its modest revisionist aims, but from the extreme means it is prepared to use to realize these goals.

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Notes

  1. States that are willing to violate the normative order in pursuing their narrow distributional goals, but which do not fundamentally threaten to alter the global hierarchies of power and status (for example, Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic) also find themselves outside this typology and are not considered to be revisionists. Because they deliberately break the rules and norms, it would be inappropriate to conclude that they are status quo states. Instead, they could be simply described as “rogue states” and should be differentiated from rogue revisionists who strive to significantly alter the international hierarchies of prestige and status.

  2. As was the case with the above category of “moderate reformist”, for the sake of brevity, this type is labeled as “radical reformist” instead of “radical reformist revisionist”.

  3. Russia and the other members of the Holy Alliance had a reactionary vision for the Vienna Concert and tried to use it to restore absolutist rule and suppress the tide of liberal revolution in Europe. This vision was opposed by Britain (and later France and Italy) who defended state sovereignty and were sympathetic to liberalism. For an account of the contradictions and conflicts inherent in the Vienna Concert from its very beginning and the tendency of modern observers to idealize the Concert as a period of stability and order see: Mazower (2013), 3–12.

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  1. International Laboratory for World Order Studies and the New Regionalism, HSE University, Malaya Ordynka 17, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119017

    Andrej Krickovic

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Krickovic, A. Revisionism revisited: developing a typology for classifying Russia and other revisionist powers. Int Polit 59, 616–639 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-021-00322-3

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