Why do revolutionary states oscillate between adventurism and pragmatism in their foreign policies? Past research has identified revolutions as being intrinsically international in nature and capable of producing radical states that exhibit bellicose and missionary foreign policies. The conventional view of these states holds that revolutionary actors return to business-as-usual as they progressively become socialized into the prevailing international norms. It is argued that the adoption of a more conciliatory behaviour arises when efforts at exporting the revolution fail and after the geopolitical costs of revisionist policies become too high. Both of these explanations focus on systemic pressures to explain why erstwhile revolutionary leaders shift gears and become rule takers rather than rule breakers while the revolutionary zeal slowly wears off. In contrast, this paper argues that the distinction between the supposedly revolutionary and pragmatic origins of foreign policy are exaggerated at the expense of the domestic and international co-constitution of state behaviour. This is the case because once the state has become the vehicle of the revolutionary moment, it must be preserved. Continuity and change in the behaviour of revolutionary state actors is therefore best seen as driven by competitive factionalism in the domestic context which is only in part shaped by international realities. This largely neglected point in previous work on this subject will be demonstrated through a discussion of Iranian foreign policy during the 1980s (the revolutionary years) and the 1990s (the pragmatic moment). An analysis of the decline of the Iranian revolutionary momentum shows that moderation develops into a salient policy option because it is placed in the service of the Islamic Revolution. In short, this paper will make the case that adventurism and pragmatism in foreign policy strangely enough can coexist simultaneously.
