ABSTRACT
Almost 30 years ago, in a 1978 article in International Organization, Peter A. Gourevitch first discussed what he called “the second image reversed”: the impact of international political and economic structure on domestic politics. Gourevitch argued that certain changes in the global political economy-such as the invention of the railroad and the steamship in the nineteenth century-had such profound effects that one could only understand what appeared to be domestic politics by understanding these systemic changes. Other examples are the impact of industrial revolution, with its emphasis on textile production, on the market for cotton and therefore on American slavery; the effects of World War I in Russia; the consequences of the Great Depression on the politics of Europe in the 1930s; and the implications of the Cold War for the politics of American and Soviet allies around the world.
