Neorealists assume that, like other states, democracies choose their policies according to the dictates of the international system. In this article, I unpack the concept of 'democracy' by examining the institutional, procedural and normative bases of foreign security policy autonomy, and construct a model to explain their impact on actual policy independence in different democracies. My findings indicate that the French Fourth Republic possessed less independence from domestic opposition than neorealists would expect, while the US and Great Britain were considerably more independent than traditional theorists would expect. Furthermore, the French were uniquely able to impose their will on the more powerful Anglo-Saxons through domestic constraint projection. This article challenges the assumptions of realist arguments on grand strategy.
Realists ignore the role of grand strategy in safeguarding a declining hegemon's economic strength.
For long cycle and power transition theorists, a declining hegemon will respond by punishing all competitors even though this strategy will require ever-increasing resource extraction for global defense. While neorealists contend that the relative power of the challengers and the geo-strategic worth of the locale will dictate the hegemon's response. For such realists, cooperation among states is rare. The article argues that the dyadic nature of the foreign commercial policy of rising and declining states will guide the hegemon's allocation of national resources between its political economy and its national security. Among liberal dyads, the hegemon will prefer a strategy of cooperating with contenders, even in strategic locales.