International Studies Review (2018) 20, 292–300

ANALYTICAL ESSAY

What Can Russia Teach Us about Change?

Status-Seeking as a Catalyst for
Transformation in International Politics
A N D R E J K R I C K O V I C A N D Y U VA L W E B E R
National Research University Higher School of Economics

Introduction
Although a general task of social science is to measure and predict change, inter-
national relations (IR) paradigms and theories have been unable to keep up with
the rapid pace and destabilizing effects of change in international politics. When ad-
dressing Russia, IR’s “change problem” becomes clearer: the world’s largest country
is treated as an object struggling to adjust to changes rather than a protagonist in-
troducing them into the system. Yet, twice within the last quarter century, Russia
has acted as a catalyst for changes in international politics that few saw coming and
which confounded IR paradigms. The Soviet leadership’s decision to withdraw from
the Cold War standoff and dismantle its empire in Eastern Europe was one of the
most surprising events of the twentieth century. Russia’s interventions in Ukraine,
Syria, and the 2016 US presidential elections have similarly caught most observers
by surprise. IR theories have struggled to account for these actions and have not
been able to integrate Soviet/Russian behavior into their larger understanding of
change in international politics.
Our underlying premise is to treat Russia (in both its Soviet and present-day in-
carnations) seriously as an agent of transformational change in international pol-
itics. Most theories that deal with transformational change focus on the effects of
larger social and economic forces. However, change is seldom a smooth, linear pro-
cess. Larger global forces may be operating, but individual agents catalyze changes
produced by these deeper historical forces. What is needed to understand Russian
foreign policy decision making is an evolutionary theory of change that is able to
integrate historical (root) causes of change with proximate and contingent ones.
In both cases examined in this paper, larger historical root causes push the interna-
tional system toward change, but Russia’s status aspirations and status dissatisfaction
have been the proximate causes catalyzing change.

Andrej Krickovic, Senior Research Fellow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, International
Laboratory for World Order Studies and the New Regionalism
Yuval Weber, Kennan Institute Fellow, Daniel Morgan Graduate School Global Fellow, Assistant Professor, National
Research University Higher School of Economics

Krickovic, Andrej, and Yuval Weber.. (2018) What Can Russia Teach Us about Change? Status-Seeking as a Catalyst for
Transformation in International Politics. International Studies Review, doi: 10.1093/isr/viy024
© The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association.
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 ANDREJ KRICKOVIC AND YUVAL WEBER 293

The Soviet/Russian Challenge to the Study of Change in International Relations

All major IR paradigms address issues of change, but they differ in the types of
change that their theories account for. Realist theories focus on change within the
existing international system and on proximate causes of change that affect the or-
der but do not transform it (Gilpin 1981; Wohlforth 1999). Liberal theories include
transformational change and focus on the larger historical forces that transform
international politics (Keohane and Nye 1977; Ikenberry 2012). Constructivists
trace how change comes about but often ignore the underlying causes that push
change forward, focusing instead on how intersubjective beliefs are constituted
through iteration and other social processes (Finnemore and Sikkink 2001).
While these theories have all made valuable contributions to our understanding
of change, none are able to integrate root and proximate causes into a compre-
hensive theory. Unlike liberals and constructivists, realists are resistant to systems
change and see international politics as a never-ending cycle of competition bound
by the strictures of anarchy or human nature. For realists, proximate causes such
as changes to the distribution of material capabilities are the most important factor
in determining change within the system. Liberals have an evolutionary view of sys-
tems change and see it as a cumulative and progressive process whose root causes
can be traced to sociological/technological processes that have transformed human
existence over the last few centuries. Like liberals, constructivists accept systems
change as an inexorable part of international politics. But unlike liberals, who tend
toward a linear and cumulative view of systemic change that allows a new “liberal”
equilibrium to form, constructivists see change as a continual and never-ending
process with no clearly defined underlying logic. Constructivists acknowledge that
proximate and larger sociohistorical processes can drive change forward. But their
analysis focuses on the process itself rather than on uncovering the forces that are
pushing it forward. None of the leading paradigms integrates larger historical pro-
cesses with proximate causes of change, and thus they are unable to fully account
for why or how Russia has behaved as a catalyst of change.

The Soviet/Russian Challenge

The end of the Cold War presents a challenge to realist theories. The experience
of bipolarity became the empirical foundation upon which the dominant empiri-
cal paradigm, structural realism, was built (Wohlforth 2011). Structural realism fo-
cused on continuity rather than change and saw the bipolar international system
as one that was particularly stable and resistant to change (Waltz 1979). Despite
its mounting economic difficulties and obvious imperial overstretch, few IR schol-
ars predicted that the Soviet Union would give up the Cold War struggle, or the
radical form that the Gorbachev revolution in foreign policy would take (Gaddis
1992). Instead of seeing the global arena as a struggle between capitalism and so-
cialism, “New Thinkers” recognized the growing interdependence and intercon-
nectedness of the modern world. Effectively understanding the opportunity cost
of the Soviet Union’s isolation from these trends, Gorbachev pushed to end bipo-
lar confrontation in favor of a cooperative approach to security that would address
the most pressing problems faced by humanity: nuclear proliferation, poverty, and
the environment (Checkel 1993). Gorbachev made unprecedented concessions to
the West, including extensive reductions of the Soviet military, withdrawing Soviet
troops from Afghanistan, ending the promotion of revolution in the third world,
and allowing Eastern Bloc states (including East Germany) the freedom to exit the
Soviet sphere of influence (Sarotte 2014).
Realism’s focus on systemic rather than systems change did not allow scholars
to consider the way in which deeper historical changes impacted world politics
(Gaddis 1992). Their theories could not account for the transformative impact

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 294 Krickovic & Weber – What Can Russia Teach Us About Change?

that globalization, increased interaction and interdependence in all its forms, and
changing ideas and norms were having on international politics. Subsequent analy-
ses by realist scholars have integrated these changes into explanations of the end of
the Cold War while focusing on the material constraints the Soviets faced (Brooks
and Wohlforth 2000). Yet these views still do not fully explain the unexpectedly
revolutionary form that Soviet policies of retrenchment would take or why Soviet
thinking changed the way that it did.
Liberal theorists, like realists, failed to predict the end of the Cold War. Rather
than reflecting theoretical weaknesses, this stemmed more from the empirical fo-
cus of their research. Studies examined the effects that growing institutionaliza-
tion of relations, economic interdependence, and the spread of democracy were
having within the Western bloc rather than looking at US-Soviet relations, which
seemed stuck in a predictable pattern of bipolar conflict (Grieco 2009). Liberals
retrospectively recognized that the same forces transforming international politics
within the Western bloc could also be used to explain the end of the Cold War and
so-called “New Thinking,” and they predicted a new era of international politics
that would move away from the state and security-centric Realist paradigm (Ohmae
1991; Rosenau 1995).
The end of the bipolar struggle breathed life into the constructivist research pro-
gram and encouraged much productive scholarship. Constructivists retrospectively
traced the Gorbachev foreign policy revolution to the evolution of ideas and norms
among the Soviet elite (Risse-Kappen 1994). But constructivists could not explain
why norms and ideas changed in the first place, and they failed to demonstrate that
the ideational changes they examined were not simply an intervening variable be-
tween changing material conditions and changes in Russian foreign policy (Brooks
and Wohlforth 2000).
Paradigmatic views of Russia’s recent challenge also fall short. For liberals, the
“three pillars” to mitigating anarchy (international institutions, economic interde-
pendence, and democratic peace) have failed to restrain Russia or moderate its
behavior. After a brief honeymoon period in the early 1990s, Russia’s foreign policy
grew increasingly assertive, bucking the global trend toward democracy and liberal-
ism that seemed to be so insurmountable after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Liberals
have fallen back on “diversionary” foreign policy theories, claiming that Russia’s ag-
gressive pursuit of great power status is a product of its corrupt and authoritarian
regime, which must seek external sources of legitimacy to compensate for its do-
mestic failures (Stoner and McFaul 2015). However, these explanations fail in that
the Kremlin has not faced the kind of domestic opposition or public dissatisfaction
that would necessitate such drastic action (Tsygankov 2015).
Some realists characterize Russia’s behavior as a natural response to Western
provocations that threaten its security. They see Russia’s emergence as a challenger
to the United States as a vindication of their theories and a final realization of the
predictions they made at the end of the Cold War (Mearsheimer 2014). Yet Russia’s
decision to directly confront the United States is still puzzling in that it is not in line
with its material capabilities and carries tremendous risks and dangers. Russia is a
declining power with only a small fraction of capabilities compared to the United
States. Moreover, US policies have been more of a threat to Russia’s status and pres-
tige than to its physical security. Even hardnosed Russian realists acknowledge that
Russia, with its strong nuclear deterrent and capable conventional forces, is more
secure now than it has ever been in its history (Karaganov 2011). Russia’s more as-
sertive behavior is provoking a backlash among Western powers that will make it less
secure in the long run (Kortunov 2016).
Constructivists trace the return to realpolitik thinking and great power politics—
that have motivated Russia to challenge the United States—to Russia’s efforts to
construct a viable post-Soviet identity (Clunan 2009). They argue that Russia’s as-
piration to restore its historical great power status has become an integral part of

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 ANDREJ KRICKOVIC AND YUVAL WEBER 295

its post-Soviet national self-image. It won out against other aspirational projects,
such as making Russia a “normal” Western country, because it reflected Russia’s
past historical experiences and thus enjoyed wide-based legitimacy in Russian so-
ciety (Clunan 2009). Russia’s new post-Soviet identity also reflects deeply held na-
tional values, which include a unique spirituality rooted in the Orthodox religion,
reverence for a strong state, and support for kindred cultural communities outside
Russia that share these values (Tsygankov 2012). The West has refused to accept the
legitimacy of these values, particularly in Ukraine, prompting Russia to resist what
it sees as Western aggression against its values and interests (Tsygankov 2015).
Constructivist theories do an admirable job of describing the social process by
which Russian leaders’ ideas about the nature of international politics and Rus-
sia’s place in the international order have changed. However, none of the existing
constructivist accounts of Soviet and Russian foreign policy present an explanatory
framework that can be used to explain ideational change in both the case of new
thinking and Russia’s later turn toward confrontation with the West. Constructivism
is well-suited to helping us understand the central importance of identity forma-
tion and maintenance, but it is less clear on the question of which type of greatness
Russian leaders choose to pursue. If we are to develop a better understanding of
Russia as an agent of change, we need theories that can explain changes in Russian
thinking about international politics across a broader spectrum of time.

What the Paradigms Miss: The Importance of Status

Soviet policies at the end of the Cold War and Russian policies in recent years call
attention to the inadequacies in the way that the three major IR paradigms address
change and their failure to recognize the importance of status, both as a motivat-
ing factor in Soviet/Russian behavior and as a proximate cause of transformational
(systems) change. Status is the collective belief held by states and leaders about a
country’s ranking in the international hierarchy based on valued attributes, such
as military power, wealth, cultural attractiveness, or its adherence to principles and
values (Paul, Larson, and Wohlforth 2014). Status is important to states for instru-
mental reasons, and it is the “currency” of international relations; when a state has
status, it does not have to use its material resources to get what it wants (Gilpin
1981). It is also important for less tangible social-psychological reasons. Status has
become an important component of individuals’ and groups’ sense of self-esteem
(Volgy et al. 2011). We are accustomed to describing state behavior in terms of the
security and material needs of their populations. In the same way, we can ascribe a
state’s drive for status to its citizens’ collective need for self-esteem (Lebow 2008).
Scholars studying status in IR have identified three broad strategies that states
adopt in order to realize their status aspirations (Larson and Shevchenko 2003).
Through social mobility, states try to move up the international status hierarchy by
adopting the norms and principles of the states at the top of the hierarchy. Social
competition entails improving one’s status through geopolitical or military competi-
tion. States using social creativity try to redefine the desired attributes by which status
is measured to include those attributes in which their state ranks highly or in which
they have a comparative advantage.
As Larson and Shevchenko (2003) show in their pioneering study, Gorbachev
and his fellow reformers’ decision to abandon the Cold War struggle in favor of
new thinking was deeply influenced by their concerns about their country’s de-
clining international status vis-à-vis the United States and Western world. By the
late 1980s, the Soviet Union was falling behind the West economically and tech-
nologically, threatening its ability to maintain status parity with the United States.
Gorbachev was ready to undertake unprecedented and revolutionary measures in
order to address these problems (Kokoshin 1998). He and his team engaged in a
strategy of social creativity: they tried to improve the Soviet Union’s position in the

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international status hierarchy by finding new dimensions on which it was superior

to the West. New thinking represented a kind of “shortcut to greatness” that would
allow the Soviet Union to position itself as the global moral leader. It could then
achieve its status aims by redefining what it meant to be a super power, reasserting
its status without having to catch up economically and technologically to the West
(Larson and Shevchenko 2003).
New thinking was a novel response to material constraints and incentives. The
Soviet Union’s steep economic and technological decline severely restricted Gor-
bachev’s choices and favored a policy of strategic retrenchment. The Soviet leader-
ship was also aware of the tremendous material gains to be had from participating
in the open global economy and understood the Soviet Union would be left out of
these processes as long as it maintained its confrontational stance toward the West
(Brooks and Wohlforth 2000). While material constraints may have pushed them
toward retrenchment and rapprochement with the West, they still cannot explain
the particular policy choices that Gorbachev made or why his policies went well be-
yond the kind of standard retrenchment and détente envisioned by realist theories
(Bennett 2005). Larger historical forces may have determined the menu of choices
for Gorbachev, but status concerns shaped Gorbachev’s choices in ways missed by
paradigmatic approaches. “Gorbachev and his like-minded associates chose the ide-
alistic new thinking over competing foreign policy programs because it offered a
new global mission that would enhance Soviet international status while preserving
a distinctive national identity” (Larson and Shevchenko 2003, 78).
Status considerations have also played a central role in Russia’s recent foreign
policy, prompting Russia to reject integration into the existing US-led liberal or-
der and to challenge US global leadership. Russia has resisted joining the liberal
order because doing so would not confer to it the level of status its leaders and
public feel that it deserves. Unlike a rising power such as China, Russia does not
possess the growing material capabilities that would force the United States to treat
it as an equal. Unlike established liberal-capitalist states (Germany, Japan, and Great
Britain) Russia lags behind in many attributes (democracy, human rights, economic
liberalism) that members of the liberal order value and which can accord them sta-
tus beyond their power and capabilities (Neumann 2014). To become integrated
into the liberal order, Russia would not only have to accept a subordinate role to
the United States, it would also have to accept a lower status than states it regards as
lesser powers.
Resisting the liberal order and pursuing a strategy of social competition with the
Western liberal order confers more status than a strategy of social mobility seeking
integration into it. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have reasserted its dominance in the
post-Soviet space and shown that Russia can impose costs on the West for ignoring
what it regards to be its vital interests. Its intervention in Syria has made it a major
player in one of the world’s most pivotal regions and a global player in addressing
terrorism and Islamic extremism. Russia’s purported hacking of the US elections
and support for populist politicians in Western Europe show that it is a force to be
reckoned with on the ideological and propaganda planes. These actions may not
make Russia popular in the West, but it is now taken seriously as a major player in
international relations, albeit one whose actions are more a cause for worry than
source of stability.
Russian leaders, foreign policy experts, and theorists have developed distinct
views about change (Lo 2015). Like many in the West, they recognize that larger
forces unleashed by globalization are profoundly transforming the very nature of
international politics. While Western observers do acknowledge their disruptive ef-
fects, they tend to see these changes as being positive and progressive and are con-
fident that the liberal international order will be able to adjust to them (Ikenberry
2014). Russian observers emphasize the destabilizing effects of these changes,
and they are especially concerned about the eroding power and authority of

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 ANDREJ KRICKOVIC AND YUVAL WEBER 297

nation-states, which they still regard as the ultimate guarantor of stability and or-
der, both domestically and internationally (Lukyanov 2014; Karaganov 2016).
Russia’s leadership and its leading scholars and experts are unified in their be-
lief that the only way to manage the complexities of today’s world is through
the transition to a multipolar order and twenty-first century “Great Power Con-
cert” (Bogaturov 2011; Lukyanov 2014). Under this system, the United States
could remain first among equals. But it would have to share power with other great
powers and accept a hard Westphalian notion of sovereignty that prohibits great
powers from interfering in each other’s internal affairs. Great powers would rec-
ognize each other’s spheres of influence and commit to managing both issues of
transnational importance and the inevitable conflicts that arise along the way. Rus-
sia would play a pivotal role in this concert system by acting as a “balancer” between
China and the United States, and its military capabilities would make it a valuable
partner for both in the fight against terrorism (Karaganov 2016).
Critics of this perspective argue that it understates the degree to which actual
power has diffused throughout the system (Lo 2015; Kortunov 2016). They contend
that what we are witnessing is not so much a shift from American unipolarity to
multipolarity and great power politics but, rather, a shift to what Richard Haass
(2008) has termed “non-polarity,” where a variety of actors—regional powers, small
state, and even nonstate actors—have the power to shape individual issue areas. This
perspective holds that Russia’s efforts to create a great power concert will end in vain
because they exclude many of the actors whose cooperation and support are needed
to address the most pressing global problems (Lo 2015). Moreover, Russia will need
to demonstrate that it has the material capabilities necessary to take advantage of
the opportunities presented by the decline of the current liberal order to craft a
new order that is more in line with its preferences and status aspirations.
Though it purports to represent hard-nosed realism, Russian analyses of change
often make the same mistakes classic realists such as Carr and Morgenthau criticized
earlier idealist IR scholars of making (Carr 1946; Morgenthau 1948). It is prescrip-
tive, reflecting the kind of world that Russia would like to see, rather than descrip-
tive, reflecting the world as it actually is. Like Soviet-era new thinking, these views
are profoundly shaped by status aspirations. And, like new thinking, contemporary
Russian great power thinking is a “shortcut to greatness.” It presents a stylized view
of international politics that overstates the degree of international chaos in order to
promote a vision of global order that advances Russia’s status aspirations, justifying
an enhanced status for Russia even as its material power continues to decline.
New thinking was unable to transform the international system in the ways Gor-
bachev and its proponents imagined that it would, as Gorbachev’s broader reform
program led to the collapse of the Soviet State and ushered in a period of US and
Western dominance. As the international system continues to move toward nonpo-
larity, it is unlikely that Russia’s current turn to social competition will establish the
kind of twenty-first century great power concert that Russian leaders crave. More-
over, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union played a much more direct and impactful role in
bringing about transformational change than Russia does today. The Soviet Union
was a superpower and pillar of the bipolar order. The end of the Cold War and
demise of bipolarity were a direct result of changes in its foreign (and domestic)
policies. Contemporary Russia is a much less significant force in world politics. Nev-
ertheless, it can still play an important indirect role as a major facilitator of change.
Russia’s capabilities may be limited but the disruptive effects of its actions are am-
plified by the growing levels of interdependence and complexity in world politics.
Russia’s actions in pursuit of status and efforts to create a great power concert ac-
celerate deeper historical processes, such as the erosion of US hegemony and the
diffusion of power and authority to a variety of actors (state and nonstate), which
are transforming world politics.

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 298 Krickovic & Weber – What Can Russia Teach Us About Change?

In both cases presented above, larger historical forces presented Soviet and Rus-
sian statesmen with constraints and opportunities. But it was their status concerns
that shaped the way they responded to them, driving them to pursue risky and un-
predictable policies, which, in turn, served as catalysts for broader transformative
change. Gorbachev and his inner circle pursued new thinking because it offered
a way to respond to material constraints while still retaining the Soviet Union’s su-
perpower status on a new soft power plane. Contemporary Russian leaders have
looked to exploit what they perceive as growing global instability to pursue “social
competition” with the United States. Status has not only impacted policy choice—
it also had a profound impact on the way larger historical changes are perceived
and interpreted. New thinkers believed that increased interdependence demanded
cooperation and promotion of collectively held human values because these poli-
cies would allow the Soviet Union to take the moral high ground and preserve its
international standing. Contemporary Russian leaders bullishly interpret growing
unpredictability and complexity of international affairs as signaling the need for a
transition to a multipolar order that would put an end to “global chaos” and which
would (conveniently enough) bolster Russia’s status as a center of global power and
influence.

Conclusion
Russia’s actions have been a major catalyst for transformational change in interna-
tional politics twice in the last generation. Yet existing paradigms have a difficult
time accounting for Soviet/Russian behavior or integrating it into their frameworks
for analyzing change. This is partly because they ignore the important role of status
considerations as a motivating factor for state policy and proximate cause of sys-
tems change. But it also reflects larger shortcomings in the way these paradigms ap-
proach the issue of change. Because they have focused primarily on systemic (cycli-
cal) change, realists have paid insufficient attention to deep historical changes and
their impact not just on the balance of power between states but also the nature
and function of the actors themselves. Liberals have placed greater emphasis on
systems change, but they have often adopted a linear and progressive view that fo-
cuses on the revolutionary impact of larger historical factors at the expense of prox-
imate causes of change. Constructivists have primarily concentrated on the process
of change itself rather than in looking to identify its causes. While constructivism
can teach us much about the relationship between status and identity (Barnett and
Telhami 2002), up till now, constructivist scholarship (and especially those works
dealing with the Soviet/Russian case) has largely treated status as one of many vari-
ables involved in identity formation and maintenance instead of putting it at the
very center of its analysis of these processes.
What is needed is a complex framework of change that integrates both root causes
that create the necessary conditions for change as well as proximate causes that
move change forward. Change in international relations may best be studied as an
evolutionary rather than a revolutionary or cyclical process (Bernstein et al. 2000).
The evolution of biological species follows a predictable logic even as outcomes are
largely determined by accidental or chance events, such as mutations in species or
changes to their environment (Gould 1989). Similarly, an evolutionary approach to
change in international politics would combine the study of enduring, long-term
processes (such as the constraints imposed by anarchy or growing economic inter-
dependence) with an appreciation for the pivotal role that contingent and unpre-
dictable phenomena play in pushing change forward. The latter need not be limited
to purely random events but, as the cases examined in this paper show, should also
include deliberate actions by states that are primarily motivated by status concerns.
We are entering a period of history when larger historical forces are increasing
in their intensity and when contingent and random events can catalyze change at

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 ANDREJ KRICKOVIC AND YUVAL WEBER 299

an ever-faster pace. Under these circumstances, developing a better understanding

of status is indispensable to understanding the contours and possibilities of change.
Status aspirations can prompt states to choose policies that end conflict and fos-
ter cooperation, as happened with Soviet leaders toward the end of the Cold War;
conversely, they can lead them to adopt policies that seek out conflict and increase
instability, as is happening with Russia today. A better understanding of status may
not solve all of our problem when it comes to understanding change, but it is a good
first step.

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