I. Ascension in Revisionism

Politics is a struggle for primacy in power, a fight to survive and to achieve the capability to impose an order. Thus, it implies a never-ending war between political units to prevail. As every unit has such interests and incentives, the logics that derives from this are those of a reinforced conflict. The relations that are established between units originate a web of power interdependence, a political system.

It is possible to talk about two main political systems. The first one is what can be called the “internal system;” the second is the “international” one. The difference between them is that, in the former, one of the political units has achieved domination over the others —this unit is called the “state”—; while, in the later, none of the players have reached complete supremacy over the system. The international system is formed by dominant units of internal systems which constantly try to expand their dominion over other internal systems, to units alien to them. Nevertheless, despite their differences, the logics that give them the adjective of “political” remains the same.

From the above mentioned, can be deduced that every state unit has two specific objectives: on the one hand, to maintain its prevailing position in its internal system and, on the other, to achieve supremacy over the other states, too. Thus, as Tilly says, the dominant political unit is involved in the tasks of “state and war making” —fighting internal and external enemies.[1]

Therefore, when a unit of the international system threatens or directly affects the control that another state unit has over its system, it disturbs the internal distribution of power that alien political system and severely reduces the chances to survive that the dominant unit has in the internal political struggle. In the theory of the revisionist ascension, this is the igniting factor of change: a disruptive stimulus coming from the international system which alters the status quo of dominance in the internal system.

Before such a stimulus, there emerge two opposed forces: on the one hand, the dominant unit tries to maintain control and to reassert its dominance over the system; while, on the other, the state’s rivals —the dominated political units of the internal system— face an opportunity to overthrow the state and to be they those who prevail in the system —i.e. to become the state unit. Thus, the external disruption in the system results in an internal political crisis.

From this scenario, the outcome can be either that the state unit remains dominant or either that one of the political rivals seizes power and becomes dominant. Nonetheless, the situation remains the same. As the external stimulus still affects the system and the distribution of power in it, the dominant unit which resulted from the crisis has to stop the foreign disruption or, otherwise, face a continuous state of internal political crisis —always threatening for its position of primacy.

Therefore, the dominant political unit of the system has to try to eliminate the disruptive stimulus coming from the international system. Nevertheless, this stimulus is originated from an asymmetry of power. The disruptive unit has been able to interfere in this alien internal political system due to the fact that it is more powerful than the prevailing unit in it. Thus, trying to suppress the stimulus means an attempt to overthrow the actual relation of power with that foreign unit;[2] it means to become at least as powerful as it, in order to revisit this intrusive relation; it means to arise in revisionism, to alter the international distribution of power and to disrupt the international power dynamics. The arising unit will try to achieve more power before its rival. Thus, it will resort to policies of power factors enhancement in the internal and, if possible, in the external systems. It will seek to expand its capacity to extract national resources —natural, human, economical, etc.—[3] and its power to acquire resources and strategic advantages from other international units —this by means of empire[4] towards the weak or diplomacy towards the strong. If successful, a new great power will arise in revisionism; if not, it will continue to face a situation of external intervention and the internal political crisis that derives from it.

Briefly exposed, this is the theory of the ascension in revisionism. As the internal system are contained in the international system, both kinds of system are in constant interaction with each other. The so-called “levels” of international politics are not separated —as it is widely thought— but integrated into the continuous dynamics of change; events in one system affects the other and vice versa. The events in the external system influence the political forces and dynamics in the internal one and, as this system is altered, its units respond to the outer force by changing —evolving— in order to, in turn, change the wider system.