engages in diplomatic or military brinksmanship, democratic leaders will increasingly question the viability of integration. Lacking alternative sources of information that might offer a more nuanced view of the rising autocracy’s behavior, they will have little recourse but to treat diplomatic and military brinksmanship as a decisive indicator of antagonism. The apparent failure of integration coupled with perceived evidence of the other state’s hostility will motivate a shift to containment. Figure 1 visualizes how democratic leaders select strategies during power shifts.
Figure 1. Democratic strategy during fateful transitions.
The decision-making process illustrated in Figure 1 revolves around the clarity of a rising state’s intentions and the availability of access opportunities. Democratic leaders make choices based on these byproducts of regime type, not on their perceptions of a new power’s form of government.30 As they navigate power transitions, democratic leaders may never refer to the rising state’s regime type as a driver of strategy, and they may even dismiss common values as a foundation of foreign policy. Yet the rising power’s domestic institutions still frame leaders’ choices, because they are responding to whether they possess information about the other state’s ambitions and whether they can locate opportunities to influence that state’s strategic behavior from within.
Defining Regime Type
Regime type will reappear in subsequent chapters as a key factor that shapes power transitions. It is therefore important to define regime type in a way that is historically consistent and relevant to the book’s main argument. One potential measure of regime type is Polity IV, a quantitative dataset commonly used in scholarship on the democratic peace. This dataset aggregates indicators of executive recruitment, executive independence, and political competition into a single numerical score. The positive end of the polity scale (+10) denotes a strongly democratic regime, while the negative end (–10) indicates a strongly autocratic regime. Although polity scores at either extreme accurately capture regime type, the middle of the scale offers a more “muddled” picture of a state’s domestic institutions.31 Polity IV data therefore serves as a first cut when assessing the regime type of an ascendant state. To ensure accuracy—and more closely link measurements of democracy and autocracy to the book’s argument—the diffusion of political authority and domestic transparency provide a second set of criteria for defining the regime type of the rising power.
The World Bank Database of Political Institutions contains a robust methodology for measuring centralization of power within a regime. This database calculates the number of checks and balances by counting domestic actors legally endowed with veto authority and political parties essential to maintaining a governing coalition.32 To qualify as decentralized, a regime must contain at least three checks and balances. This threshold is based on the fact that no country commonly regarded as a democracy has less than three checks and balances in the database.33 A regime qualifies as centralized when only a single check and balance exists. Two checks and balances indicate a transitional domestic power structure. The World Bank database has an inherent limitation: it only starts in 1975. However, the coding procedure is easily replicable for the historical case studies contained in this book.34
Freedom of the press provides a valid measurement of the level of transparency in a regime. The NGO Freedom House conducts a regular worldwide survey of state interference in the media that codes countries as free, partly free, and unfree. Since its inception, the survey has evolved to include twenty-three questions across three categories—the legal, political, and economic environments in which the media operate. A subset of the twenty-three questions suffices to capture how much freedom of the press a rising state permits.35 This abbreviated survey for evaluating state control over the media contains six questions listed in Table 4.
Conclusion
Power transitions are fraught moments in international relations, yet they differ depending on the domestic institutions of the ascendant state. Democratic leaders at these pivotal junctures make strategic choices that ultimately hinge on the rising state’s type of regime, which determines the transparency of that state’s intentions and the existence of access opportunities. This critical insight has repercussions for today’s established and emerging powers. However, it is incomplete without a concrete grasp of how regime type has framed power transitions and influenced the formulation of strategy, an understanding that only history can provide. The next chapters explore six cases in which democratic states have confronted fateful transitions.
Table 4: Freedom of the Press
| Legal environment |
| 1. Does the constitution contain provisions designed to protect freedom of the press? (Y=0; N=1) |
| 2. Do the penal code, security laws, or any other laws restrict reporting and are journalists punished under these laws? (Y=1; N=0) |
| Political environment |
| 3. Are media outlets’ news and information content significantly determined by the government or a particular partisan interest? (Y=1; N=0) |
| 4. Is there official censorship? (Y=1; N=0) |
| 5. Are journalists or media outlets subject to extralegal intimidation or physical violence by state authorities? (Y=1; N=0) |
| Economic environment |
| 6. Are significant portions of the media owned or controlled by the government? (Y=1; N=0) |
| Score: Free=0; Partly Free=1–2; Unfree=3–6 |
Chapter 3
Pax Britannica Eclipsed
As the United States, Europe, and much of Asia navigate the rise of new powers, the British experience at the turn of the twentieth century is instructive. Although the Pax Britannica ended on the battlefields of the First World War, the eclipse of British power occurred earlier. Between 1870 and 1914, Great Britain steadily lost ground to two emerging giants: post-Civil War America and a unified Germany. This was the product of differential economic growth rates and the military capabilities such superior economic performance afforded. Once the United States and Germany surpassed Great Britain economically, its days as the world’s dominant maritime power were numbered.
The unwinding of British primacy is more than a cautionary tale; it is the only period before the current era to feature a democracy and an autocracy rising in parallel. While democratic government in the United States reassured Great Britain, allowing for appeasement, the uncertainty and mistrust generated by Germany’s autocratic system compelled Great Britain to initially integrate and hedge. As growing conflict accompanied Germany’s continued ascendance, the British had no recourse but to abandon this dual strategy for containment. The eclipse of Pax Britannica amply demonstrates how regime type shapes fateful transitions and sets the boundaries for how democratic leaders formulate strategy.
The Balance of Power
At its apogee in 1870, Great Britain stood head and shoulders above all rivals. The British economy was the workshop of the world while the Royal navy ruled every ocean traversed by international commerce. Yet within little more than three decades, the balance of power had radically changed. Both the United States and Germany surpassed Great Britain in economic size
