Panagiotis Vasileiadis
About
My research project
Grand strategic responses to relative decline: a neoclassical realist theoryHow do great powers behave when their power is in decline? Do they burst forth in defence of what they may lose or do they opt for prudence by reducing external commitments? Existing theories of strategic adjustment provide a number of static models, split into these predicting policy continuity and to those expecting actors to re-structure their commitments so as to survive in a competitive state “market”. Still, what neither approach captures is that past declining powers have selected both 'options'. In response, a neoclassical realist theory of strategic adjustment is developed, proposing an interactive and longitudinal model so as to capture historical 'messiness'.
Supervisors
How do great powers behave when their power is in decline? Do they burst forth in defence of what they may lose or do they opt for prudence by reducing external commitments? Existing theories of strategic adjustment provide a number of static models, split into these predicting policy continuity and to those expecting actors to re-structure their commitments so as to survive in a competitive state “market”. Still, what neither approach captures is that past declining powers have selected both 'options'. In response, a neoclassical realist theory of strategic adjustment is developed, proposing an interactive and longitudinal model so as to capture historical 'messiness'.
My qualifications
Affiliations and memberships
ResearchResearch interests
International relations theory, power shifts and grand strategy, the politics of military interventions, 19th and 20th century imperial history
Indicators of esteem
Doctoral College Studentship Award, University of Surrey
Department of Politics GTA Award for Teaching Excellence 2021/22
BISA Founder's Fund Grant 2023
Research interests
International relations theory, power shifts and grand strategy, the politics of military interventions, 19th and 20th century imperial history
Indicators of esteem
Doctoral College Studentship Award, University of Surrey
Department of Politics GTA Award for Teaching Excellence 2021/22
BISA Founder's Fund Grant 2023
Teaching
Graduate Teaching Assistant and FHEA Fellow
- POL1013 Introduction to international relations
- POL1019 Contemporary international history
- POL1014 Political Philosophy
Department of Politics GTA Award for Teaching Excellence 2021/22
Publications
Neoclassical Realism’s (NCR) theoretical relevance is on the line. The structural realist variant of the paradigm, tasked to explain why states react inefficiently to systemic stimuli is threatened with triviality by being assigned to explain a few cases of deviance. This is given the usual lack of ability on the part of those stimuli to point to a single optimal state response. In acknowledgement of the permissiveness of systemic stimuli, a second generation of NCR scholarship has proposed the development of a general theory of explaining foreign policy as the joint result of the limits imposed by them and the function of non-systemic factors – ideas and domestic politics – in selecting outcomes from within those limits. But this endeavour has been charged with the ‘crime’ of striping NCR of its theoretical distinctiveness, based on the argument that both types of causes are prima facie symmetrical. Accepting the view that NCR faces such an impasse, this article points towards a third pathway, termed transitive NCR. What is proposed under the latter is the longitudinal study of policy trends and patterns as the outcome of the transitive interplay between systemic and non-systemic factors; that is, the careful study of the ways in which systemic factors activate a number of non-systemic causal mechanisms, leading to the explained trends and patterns. In this way, the paradigm acquires distinctiveness and sufficient explanatory breadth while building bridges with other paradigms committed to the multicausal study of long-time periods.