Inadvertent Restraint: Theory of Rising Great Power Underexpansion

Why do rising great powers sometimes pass up cheap territorial expansion under an open window of opportunity? Existing explanations, rooted in calculated restraint, weak state capacity, or the absence of a mobilizing ideology, cannot account for cases in which a state possesses ample capability and will yet declines to act. This article develops a theory of inadvertent restraint. During early, state-led industrialization, financing rapid economic growth compels the formation of internalist, anti-imperialist coalitions whose parochial stake lies in domestic construction rather than foreign expansion. These coalitions capture the fiscal and administrative machinery of the state and manufacture false pessimism about the value of expansion, producing a systematic misperception of cumulativity rather than a considered judgment against it. The theory is tested through a crucial case of within-case variation in Meiji Japan, whose restraint toward Korea in 1873 gave way to calculated aggression by 1910, a less permissive boundary case in the United States annexation of Hawaii, and a plausibility probe from reform-era China.