Explaining the Strategic Behavior of States: International Law as System Structure

Neorealist models of international politics have usefully called attention to the importance of system structure in determining states' strategic behavior. Neorealism errs, however, in equating international structure with the distribution of capabilities among states in the system. Since it is logically possible (even in an anarchic realm) for legal norms to determine strategic behavior, and since international law does exist, a theory of international politics should instead equate international structure with the legal principles regarded by states as imposing binding constraints on their strategic actions. A review of available data on actual patterns of territorial conquest, war initiation, and balancing behavior by states suggests that such a law-based approach yields valuable new insights into the structural dynamics of states' strategic choices. The law-based approach also resolves several troubling empirical anomalies associated with neorealist theory.