Abstract

A key concept in IR, revisionism has since the mid-2010s experienced a significant comeback in the context of the debate on the future of the liberal order. The role of emerging countries, first and foremost China, explains why dissatisfaction seemed to be a posture that had to be made sense of. The success achieved by revisionism as a conceptual tool and the need to apply it to an increasingly diversified array of actors and behaviors, however, led to a significant conceptual stretching: a number of very complex typologies have in fact been proposed to accommodate such diversity. The result was that revolutionary revisionism and moderate reformism, diverse conducts indeed, ended up under the same label. The argument advanced in the article is that, for conceptual clarity and policy effectiveness, revisionism and reformism should be considered distinct strategies for bringing about change. The reason is that they differ on the crucial parameter of respecting the fundamental norms of the international community. China’s practice of multilateralism as exemplified by the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative is then presented to highlight the strategy Beijing is pursuing to bring about change within the international system. This case seems to support the argument that a conceptually more precise concept of “within systemµ pro-change actor and conduct is fundamental to analyzing a crucial type of behavior within the present international system, with relevant policy implications especially for actors who want to preserve the rules-based order