Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition

by Jack L. Snyder

" Myths of Empire offers the best-developed theory to date of the domestic sources of international conflict and security policy.... Snyder has taken a major step toward ending the theoretical impoverishment of the study of the domestic sources of international conflict." ― American Political Science Review Overextension is the common pitfall of empires. Why does it occur? What are the forces that cause the great powers of the industrial era to pursue aggressive foreign policies? Jack Snyder identifies recurrent myths of empire, describes the varieties of overextension to which they lead, and criticizes the traditional explanations offered by historians and political scientists. He tests three competing theories—realism, misperception, and domestic coalition politics—against five detailed case early twentieth-century Germany, Japan in the interwar period, Great Britain in the Victorian era, the Soviet Union after World War II, and the United States during the Cold War. The Resulting insights run counter to much that has been written about these apparently familiar instances of empire building.

Genres: History, International Relations, Nonfiction, Politics, Political Science

344 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Patricia Roberts-Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Persuasive explanation of foreign policy overreach and overexpansion. The emphasis on logrolling works for most of the cases, but I'm not persuaded on the Vietnam example (but everything else about his model works well for that). I'm curious what he'd say about the Second Iraq War.