in TIPand has never worked out systematically the implications of his framework
for a unipolar system. Instead, he simply assumes that it will be possible for other
states to match the power of the hegemonic state and that unipolarity will thereby
be a short-lived phenomenon. But apart from the fact that this evades rather than
confronts the theoretical issue, world history fails to support this assessment because
there are many examples of very long-lasting unipolar systems.^38 Moreover,
although Wohlforth’s discussion of unipolarity is primarily developed in the context
of the contemporary world, the general thrust of his argument suggests that uni-
polarity is certainly not necessarily incompatible with long-term stability.^39 As the
example of China illustrates, unipolarity can be simultaneously compatible with the
existence of both peaceful and war-prone systems. It is difficult to see how this
difference can be accommodated except by bringing in a constructivist perspective.
Once a constructivist perspective is brought into the frame, the balancing process
begins to look a good deal more complex. Waltz argues that there are only two
dimensions of balancing that need to be taken into account. The systemic distri-
bution of power can be affected by internal balancing, when a state enhances its
military potential by innovation or the reallocation of resources, and by external
balancing, when a state establishes a military alliance with one or more states. But
this assessment ignores the fact that it is also possible to affect the distribution of
power by intersubjective agreement. So there is no doubt that the major European
peace treaties established in the early modern and modern periods had a profound
effect on the distribution of power.^40 The English School has extended this point
to argue that the balance of power needs to be identified as a central institution of
the European international society and that the behaviour of the European great
powers was profoundly influenced by the acknowledgement that the balance of
power was required to sustain the system of European states. The balance of power
was viewed as a social phenomenon and not as the unintended outcome of states
striving to survive.^41
The assessment of balancing has been taken much further by the argument that
the nature of this process underwent a fundamental change during the nineteenth
century, which is increasingly seen to identify the point in time when we move
from the early modern era of history through to the modern era, thereby challenging
the conventional argument in IR that the shift can be dated from 1648 and the
Treaty of Westphalia. Teschke notably endeavours to establish a sharp distinc-
tion between what he calls a ‘dynastic predatory equilibrium’ and ‘the balance of
power’.^42 From his perspective, in the early modern era, dynasties on mainland
Europe used their dynastic connections to expand their territory, but in order to
maintain good relations with other major dynasties they also sustained a dynastic
equilibrium through a process of mutual absorption of territory. He contrasts this
activity with the process of active balancing that Britain began to pursue, in the
attempt to prevent territorial expansion on the continent, and which then came to
prevail in the modern era. By the same token, although coming from a very different
perspective, Schroeder argues that in the early modern era, this dynastic ‘cooperative
system-conforming conduct [was] indistinguishable from naked aggression’.^43 He
The paradox of parsimony 297