Revisionist state

November 2, 2025 - Revisionist state is a term from power transition theory within the wider field of international relations. It describes states whose objective is to change or put an end to the current system. The term assumes a direct correlation between a state's hegemony, both political and economic, and ...

June 26, 2023 - Moreover, potentially revisionist autocratic states, most notably China and Russia, are already substantial players and stakeholders in an ensemble of global institutions that make up the status quo, not least the UN Security Council (in which ...

June 30, 2022 - A key unwritten assumption underlies most of today’s strategic thinking on US foreign policy: that stable multipolarity is impossible because of fundamentally aggressive and revisionist states that seek to rewrite international institutions, grab territory, and challenge the status quo.

October 20, 2025 - The change desired by nations can take many forms: redrawing borders, rebalancing regional power balances or creating alternative rules, norms and institutions to the ones that currently structure international politics. The key is that revisionists nations aren’t just unhappy with specific policies – they’re dissatisfied with the broader system and want to reshape it in fundamental ways.

The Revisionist Powers are a loose alliance of anti-western nations that are aspiring to end America’s global hegemony, in order to reshape the world’s power structure in their favor. The most central members of this authoritarian, eastern based entente of illiberal democracies, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships are the People’s Republic of China and the Russian

1 week ago - A Fascist state is autocratic and based on a political philosophy/movement, (such as that of the Fascisti of pre-WWII Italy) "that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition".

December 20, 2007 - This line of criticism relates to how Classical Realists typically enumerate such foreign policy goals as Power, Security, and Glory (Aron, 1984) — the terms differ slightly — and then go on to assess constellations of them. The problem, critics contend, is that Realists argue that all states are entangled in the perennial struggle for more power while they also contend that these states pursue different goals — some are revisionist, others are status quo oriented.

Russia and China’s view of the operation of the international system conforms in a large part to Westphalian precepts, while rejecting the West’s more recent adoption of humanitarian and individualistic norms and values (which in fact exist in a state of uneasy tension with the traditional assumptions of the Westphalian order). In this sense, Russia and China are neo-revisionist rather than revisionist states.

March 25, 2021 - Revisionist states favor modifications to the prevailing order: its rules and norms, its distribution of goods or benefits, its implicit structure or hierarchy, its social rankings that afford status or recognition, its division of territory ...

February 21, 2019 - At this point, all three revisionist regimes rely for domestic support on nationalist hostility to the United States specifically and Western democracies more generally and reject being part of a U.S.-led coalition. Fortunately, Russia is much weaker than the Soviet Union, China is restrained by both deterrence and the knowledge that military conflict would damage its economy, and Iran is a regional power.

Recently, international relations scholars have again begun to distinguish between states with revisionist goals and those with status-quo goals. Whereas revisionists seek to change the way things are in international politics, status-quo seekers strive to preserve...

November 11, 2020 - The United States is the leader of the free world and the principal architect of a rules-based international system that has brought the world 75 years of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and freedom. China under the CCP is a revisionist autocracy vying to disrupt and displace this system.

January 1, 2006 - Explaining why some states seek the status quo and others seek revision in international relations, Davidson argues that governments pursuing revisionist policies are responding to powerful domestic groups, such as nationalists and those in the military, that believe they can defeat their rivals.

September 19, 2023 - As the history of great power war and peace may be seen as a series of clashes between revisionists and status-quo seekers. Moreover, status-quo states may ally with the most powerful state in the system if it is also a status-quo state, because they should not fear such a state and because they prefer to have defensive coalitions that are too large rather than too small.

May 9, 2022 - Revisionism, on the other hand, is rather a state’s dissatisfaction with the international order. Instead of acting to preserve the international order, a revisionist or ‘revolutionary’ state has a strong will to change the norms accepted by status quo nations.

April 6, 2025 - Iran can reach Russia via inland sea. This invulnerability to interdiction facilitates ties among Eurasia’s revisionists—just as the war in Ukraine pushes them closer together by making Russia more dependent on, and willing to cut deals with, its autocratic brethren.

Steve Chan, Can't get no satisfaction? The recognition of revisionist states, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2004), pp. 207-238

January 20, 2023 - The second important aspect of the definition is its distinction between means and ends. The definition puts a premium on a country's choice to renounce or accept the use of force. A state wanting a change to the status quo would not be revisionist in Wolfers’ view unless it used force or threatened to do so in order to achieve that end.

March 31, 2025 - (THE CONVERSATION) Once upon a time, “revisionist power” was a term reserved for nations trying to overturn the postwar liberal order – the usual suspects being countries like Russia, China or Iran. ... But lately, that concept is starting to fray. When Beijing’s top diplomat says the United States is the one disrupting global stability, and respected analysts argue that Washington itself is acting like a revisionist state, the label suddenly looks a lot less tidy.