relative reciprocity, it becomes difficult to distinguish from other strategies that a democracy might implement. A more operational definition ought to focus on resources and actions. Appeasement is a strategy that demands few national resources and entails virtually unilateral concessions by democratic leaders in negotiations with the rising state.
Integration
Democratic leaders can decide to integrate a rising power into international institutions. These institutions can differ substantially in structure and total membership, ranging from bilateral alliances with a rising power—pacts of restraint12—to multilateral security or economic arrangements in which many nations in addition to the rising power participate. To varying degrees, membership in institutions creates “long-term security, political, and economic commitments that are difficult to retract.”13 Integration thus holds the potential of altering the cost-benefit calculations of a rising state in a direction that renders competitive behavior less attractive. A strategy of integration also endows an ascendant state with a “place at the table” where it may voice concerns and cooperate with other nations in shaping the future global order.14 Participation in international institutions has the potential to reshape a rising power’s interests, though this outcome is far from assured.
The institutional toolkit available to democratic leaders has evolved over time. During the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, international regimes were few and weak; for the most part, integration consisted of bilateral pacts or attempts to construct multilateral arrangements from scratch. In the post-World War II era, the establishment of a robust architecture of international governmental organizations has given democratic leaders a much larger set of institutions in which to embed rising states.15
Integration demands modest resources from a democratic power, namely, the time and attention government officials take to negotiate treaties, sustain consultative mechanisms, and manage multilateral regimes. Implementation of an integration strategy should feature efforts by democratic leaders to incorporate a rising state into new or preexisting international institutions.
Hedging
A democracy can hedge against another power’s ascendancy. What hedging actually entails remains somewhat nebulously defined in international relations scholarship and security studies. Without explicitly using the term, Randall Schweller notes the potential for strong states to “mix concessions with credible threats, to use sticks as well as carrots” when confronting a rising power.16 Rock similarly points to the possibility of “combining appeasement with deterrent threats in a mixed influence strategy.”17 Unsurprisingly, work on China’s ascendance features the most detailed definitions of hedging. Assessing relations between Washington and Beijing, Evan Medeiros defines hedging as “policies that, on one hand, stress engagement and integration mechanisms and, on the other, emphasize realist-style balancing.”18
Each of these scholars, though capturing aspects of hedging, falls short of an operational definition. When classified as a mixed strategy that harnesses threats and concessions, hedging blurs into coercive bargaining. The definition that Medeiros offers, on the other hand, combines two distinct approaches to a new power’s rise: hedging as well as integration. Resources and actions provide a more precise framework. Hedging is a strategy that demands considerable diplomatic attention and financial investment from democratic leaders. Its execution involves policies designed to establish diplomatic or military leverage against the rising state, such as the redeployment of existing military assets, the development of new military capabilities, and the pursuit of alliances.19
Containment
The term “containment” originated in 1947 with George Kennan’s efforts to devise a U.S. approach toward the Soviet Union.20 It initially meant checking Soviet expansion on the Eurasian landmass, and has since become synonymous with America’s strategy throughout the Cold War. Yet containment, as a strategy available to democratic leaders, existed long before the dawn of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Its execution has always carried a steep cost, in time, in treasure, and potentially, in the lives of a nation’s citizens. Containment goes well beyond hedging; it is a strategy of arresting another power’s rise by imposing economic sanctions, using military capabilities and alliances to deter aggression, and if necessary, taking military action to roll back territorial conquest.
Regime Type and Power Transitions
During power transitions, democratic leaders should, in theory, always prefer integration over other approaches. Integration demands modest resources while holding out the hope of modifying behavior and reshaping interests. No other strategy for navigating a new power’s rise offers such a favorable tradeoff of resources to outcomes. Although less costly, appeasement cannot create enduring incentives for responsible international conduct. Nor can appeasement promote a convergence of interests where the rising state gradually takes on the preferences of the democratic power. Hedging delivers none of the benefits associated with integration and demands substantial resources. Even if democratic leaders try to rely mostly on alliances—to hedge on the cheap—they can only attract and retain partners by fielding some military capabilities.21 For a democracy, containment should hold negative appeal. Imposing economic sanctions against a rising state means forgoing trade and investment opportunities and terminating existing commercial ties. Additionally, deterring territorial expansion requires an expensive peacetime military, while rolling back aggression carries a steep human cost.
Yet from the late nineteenth century to the present, democratic leaders have tried every strategy in their toolkit. They have paired integration with hedging, appeased, contained, and sometimes alternated among strategies during the course of a new power’s emergence. In a world of complexity, no single factor explains this variation, but one factor does stand out: the regime type of the rising power.
Democracy and Power Transitions
Democracy functions as a source of reassurance on multiple levels. In a democracy, authority is dispersed across a number of decision-makers, either through constitutionally enshrined checks and balances, or through deeply respected traditions of rule of law. Either way, a diverse array of domestic actors plays a role in foreign policymaking. At the same time, an essential element of democratic government is transparency. Transparency describes the visibility of a state’s policymaking process. Under democratic rule, a government’s daily proceedings largely occur in the open. Debates about policy take place in the public eye. And, because democracy places a premium on transparency, the press enjoys legal safeguards.22
The combination of decentralized authority and transparency prevents a democracy from concealing its true intentions. With numerous domestic actors privy to foreign policy deliberations, information inevitably leaks, making secrecy about strategic level decisions virtually impossible. Moreover, because transparency operates as a domestic norm, “any embassy can subscribe to the major newspapers that provide day-to-day investigative services on the policymaking activities” of a democratic government.23 Outsiders may fail to predict every perturbation in a democracy’s foreign policy, but they will have a clear understanding of its broader objectives.24
Beyond clarifying intentions, the institutions underpinning democracy also generate opportunities for access—the shaping of strategic behavior by cultivating, lobbying, and manipulating influential groups in another state.25 By opening up the foreign policymaking process to a large number of domestic actors, decentralized authority creates conditions conducive to access. The diffusion of power under democratic rule increases the likelihood that outsiders can locate sympathetic groups who have a hand in foreign policy. In addition, enlarging the circle of decision-making virtually guarantees that internal disagreements will surface, a development that outsiders can exploit, for example, by promoting deadlock to prevent an undesired policy shift.26
In
