Content area
Full Text
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of behaviour one can expect from a dominant actor in an international system given a situation characterised by declining hegemony. How can the dominant actor preserve its posistion when the power sxructure and fundamental conditions for the hegemony change?
It should be emphasized that the article is not meant to consider these issues from an empirical point of view, but merely to a theoretical discussion based on the theory of hegemonic stability. The main concern will be how the hegemon itself will adjust, facing substantial costs, trying to preserve the existing system. The main argument of this arxicle is that the hegemon challenged in this way will be able to, and find it prefrable to maintain the system partly as it is.
First, some aspects of the theory of hegemonic stability. In short, this theory claims that: "the presence of a single, strongly dominant actor in international politics leads to collectively desirable outcomes for all states in the international system." (Snidai 1985: 579) This theory is developed from the works of Charles Kindleberger and is later modified and further developed by among others, Robert Keohane. (Kindleberger 1973 and Keohane 1980). The idea is that an international system relies on a hegemonic actor to be established. This means that a collective or public good <1> may not be provided unless a strong actor carry a disproportionate share of the burdens. And in many cases the realization. of collective goods are conditions for non-rivalry in other words stability.
Keohane & Gilpin:
Robert Keohane states in his book "After Hegemony" that, when a hegemon is weakened, this will open the door for non-hegemonic cooperation, expressed through international regimes: "It might be possible after the decline of hegemonic regimes, for more symmetrical patterns of cooperation to evolve after a transitional period of discord." (Keohane 1984: 9) The argument of this article demonstrate that the decline of a hegemon will not lead to non-hegemonic cooperation, but rather to a revised hegemony or some form of hegemonic cooperation where the hegemonic power still dominates the system.
Robert Gilpin has outlined five assumptions concerning states behaviour leading to what he calls international political change (Gilpin 1981): (i) an international system...