Regime Change and the Restructuring of Alliances

Morrow (1991) claims that alliances can shift because of changes in the policy preferences of the regimes that control states. This is counter to the central theoretical position of neorealist theory that sees alliances as the outgrowth of particular distributions of power in an anarchic international system. Drawing on regime changes in Europe between 1816 and 1965, we evaluate the relative merits of these contradictory claims. Our data support the conclusion that regime changes that were (1) externally imposed, (2) the result of internal revolution, or (3) nonviolent, but occurred in the context of an internal political crisis, all had significant effects on a state's restructuring of its alliances, even when other variables, such as changes in the distribution of power and the state's power status, are held constant.