The roots of revisionism and status-quo seeking: Opportunities and pressures at the international and domestic levels

The recent return of revisionism and status-quo seeking to international relations theory has raised an important question; what are the origins of revisionism (seeking goods, e.g., territory, not presently held), status-quo seeking (seeking to maintain the status quo), or an apathetic stance toward the status quo (seeking only to defend one's borders)? This question has important implications for policymakers seeking to keep rivals, such as China, from becoming revisionist and for neoclassical realist theory, which currently uses revisionism and status-quo seeking without a theory of origins. I assume that a state's rising or declining relative power determines the goals it will consider. Consequently, I seek to explain under what conditions rising states become revisionist and declining states become status-quo seekers.; Rooted in the realist approach, I argue that the opportunities states face and the pressures states are subject to determine their objectives. First, states are likely to adopt goals when the material capabilities of their expected alliance outweighs their expected rivals'---when capabilities are adjusted to account for relative resolve. However, this balance of allied resolve only presents states with an opportunity. International and domestic level pressures determine whether states take advantage of it. The more concerned with security and/or autonomy they are, the more likely rising states are to become revisionist and the more likely declining states are to become status-quo seekers. I also argue that politically relevant domestic groups trade resources for policy preferences. If pro-goods groups, e.g., nationalists, dominate the government, rising states are more likely to become revisionist and declining states are more likely to become status-quo seekers than if anti-goods groups, e.g. welfare beneficiaries, dominate.; These claims lead to five specific hypotheses on the interaction effects of the three independent variables. I evaluate the hypotheses with congruence procedure and process-tracing methods. I draw extensively on published primary sources for two case studies of rising states---France (1789--93) and Italy (1922--39)---and two cases of declining states---Britain (1899--1911), and France (1919--36). I also discuss two briefer cases: Japan (1960--1987) and Austria (1812--22).