This is difficult to establish, both because it is not always clear what we mean by neo-realism and also because trying to show a kind of direct influence of ideas on policies is not empirically easy or even feasible.

As to the first. Neorealism is usually meant to include 'structural' realists. This would then include defensive (Waltz) and offensive (Mearsheimer) ones. These two sides can come up with quite different policy recommendations. Waltz was a proponent of controlled nuclear proliferation (since it would increase rational self-restraint), Mearsheimer is not, as far as I remember (since he does not trust rationality much and is more 'worst-case' oriented). Hence, any position of the US administration would fit one of the neorealists. Indeed, probably all of the typical US policy positions (intervention versus isolation, deterrence versus reassurance) can be found among realists and my sense is also the specific (small) group of neorealists. Maybe, another way is to see what sets them apart. Since they _tend_ to see military strategy as the ultimate fallback of politics (but again not all), they tend to see international affairs through more military lenses. Hence, whenever politics is more militarised, it could be an indicator of the presence of their thought. Again, however, there are 'liberal hawks' who have been supporting the invasion of Iraq whereas Walt and Mearsheimer famously did not. So, my sense is that as all realist theories, they are very good in being against some other option, but that does not make it a very coherent school when it comes to policy advice. In principlre, prudent self-restraint defensive neorealism should be more attractive to democratic administrations - but then, it seems to work also with Bush sen. As you turn it, I think it is 'indeterminate' if one wishes to answer the question in general.

As to the second, there is a big difficulty to retrace the process from ideas to behaviour. In my reading, ideas cannot be likened to causes that push, like a billiard ball, people to behave one way or another (the critique has been done many times by e.g. Friedrich Kratochwil. There is also a set of literature around Goldstein/Keohane, Laffey/Weldes and Yee.). Ideas can provide internal reasons, which is not the same as external causes. Hence, the most one can do with an analysis of ideas (or discourses) is to show what kind of position they exclude from being taken into account, since they are not 'authorised' or, in the extreme case, not even 'thinkable'. They affect by excluding (Jutta Weldes' book on Constructing the National Interest is excellent on this). At most they can be part of a 'how-causal' explanation providing factors that make possible: they answer 'how possible' questions that can be answered ex post, but not 'why' questions that can be answered ex ante. Still, one way to make a more direct analysis of the link is to do it via people. Jeffrey Checkel's early book on the end of the Cold War does that by showing how ideas transmute from certain expert circles to the government (Checkel, Jeffrey (1997) Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behaviour and the End of the Cold War. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.) With the revolving door policies of academics turning officials and returning academics, there is perhaps a way to see whether there is a direct influence. I am not sure, though. Hence, this leads to analyse the think tank world in the US. Piki Ish-Shalom has worked on such 'hermeneutic mechanism' (see his article: 'Theory as a hermeneutic mechanism' (EJIR 2006).

Hope that provides some pointers.

Thank you for your extraordinary answer, Mr. Guzzini. 

First of all please, let me tell you that it is intriguing and overwhelming to meet someone whose works I've been constantly referring both in  my Masters' and Phd theses, either when debating the works of Waltz, Giplin, Wendt, etc.

Your answer provides an amazing theoretical topography, for some article which I'm currently trying to design and which tackles the (constantly mentioned) structural pivoting of the US. 

My question was, to a large extent, an unintended by-product of my analysis of Robert Jervis' refinement of John Hertz earlier works, but also of other Realist writings situated at the periphery of the mainstream (defensive) Realist universe (Stephen Van Evera, Jack Snyder, Barry Posen, Charles Glaser, even Lynn-Jones, etc).

While working on this particular subject in 2010, I've encountered some writings (which I can't actually remember or identify), about the expansion of a NeoRealist culture (in the vein of Waltz) within US Administration, which played a nodal role in the articulation of US' foreign policy deliverables and perspectives, before and after the end of the Cold-War.  

If i remember correctly, Jervis himself argued that his Defensive structural realist approach and mechanisms were, to some extent, a by-product of this process, which he aimed to replace. Jeffrey Checkel would be an important landmark in the architecture of the hypothesis I'm attempting to build (I would have to explore Piki Ish Shalom's work, which is completely unfamiliar to me at this point). 

I did took into consideration the impact of the liberal business circles with high politics agenda, which supported some US dynamics in the 1990s and 2000s, but in my (still instinctual yet, arguably logical) perspective, when it came to Washington's ... mmm... grand-strategy of survivalism (if there is one), US's behavioural dynamics seem circumscribed to the logical geometry of Neo-Realism (often identified in Kissinger's rhetoric and works). Is an assumption, though... but I am trying to see if I can build upon it. 

Thank you again for an amazing answer and guidance!

Good luck!

I would be impressed if you find much of a clear distinctive neo-realist turn. It is true that the defensive realists you mention are most of the time on the 'diplomatic' side of realism. There is an underlying division between those realists who really think military first (and therefore populate strategic studies, not to be confused with security studies) or, which amounts to the same, as the ultimate issue (which then defines the priorities), and those realists like Kennan, Wolfers, or Aron, who tend to think in terms of politics first. I always like to use Aron since he repeatedly criticised the US tendency during the Cold War to reverse Clausewitz, i.e. rather than thinking the military as a means to political ends, politics became war with other means. The scholars you mention seem all to be on the same side of Aron; Glaser having defended Wolfers's visions, Jervis who insists in the spiral model (to which realist thought can contribute), and so on. But exactly that makes them very cautious and open to 'unorthodox argument'. Kissinger, Scowcroft, etc. are not purely structural thinkers to start with.

Hence, I would suggest that the strategic thought is not influenced by neo-realists (or anyone else from IR) but uses any idea it can find from wherever it comes from. Neo-conservatives are open adversaries of these defensive realists (they could not be further away from each other). As you may know, I would look for determinants in US foreign policy not just in terms of poles and pivots, although some strategic thinkers (which reduce FP to this) may.

 Dear Rudilf, try to find the unser at this web-site - http://wpf-unesco.org/ . There are a lot of information on the subject over there.

My colleagues have already responded to what I was about to suggest in terms of scholarship of neo-realism. I can mention a few prominent scholars such as Robert Gilpin, Joseph Nye, John Mearsheimer, Robert Jervis, Stephen Walt, Robert Keohane, Fareed Zakaria, etc. Now with respect to empirical observation of neo-realism, I would argue that, even though we are in a post-cold war era that seems to make neo-realism irrelevant, if not obsolete, states continue to be concerned about their survival at a different level, the notion of self-help continues to be modus operandi of nation-states (e.g., Israel, Iran, etc.), competition for dominance continues to be the element of international politics, regional hegemons are still challenging the superpower, etc (e.g, Iran, Venezuela). Certainly, states have become more interdependent from a liberal perspective. Yet, the same dynamic of pre and post-cold war doesn't seem to disappear. Clearly, neo-realism is still empirically observable. Perhaps, one must argue that a co-existence of neo-realism with other international relations theories that are currently at play in the international system.

Thank you, for your reccomendations Mr. Kondrashin and Mr. Guyma. I have been away for some while, and haven't managed to get on RG. 

These are good points (you might also find useful 

Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler,  The Security Dilemma:  Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics. 2008, Palgrave-Macmillan.

A realist counter that is neither defensive nor offensive would be the English School (though its evolution in a recent years has moved it quite a ways from Bull's Anarchical Society).  But, relative to the question of the link to ideas in the US, I think there is also an empirical problem.  One doesn't "see" huge swaths of US foreign policy behavior in the sense that there is diplomacy, scientific collaboration, and certainly economic power.  If you focus on force, you essentially reproduce what sells the news and miss ideational drivers of American foreign policy.

Thank you for your amazing comment, Frank. The research question I have in mind aims to test some claims that seems to put too much (unconvincing) emphasis on the aspect, and thus try to check whether the expected behavioural dynamics (established by the school of thought) are mimicked by the actions per se. 

Thank you for the suggestions and comments!

Thank you for the comment Mary. Thank you for reminding me of Booth and Wheeler, I did used the text in some previous research. 

The idea is to question whether some US behavioural dynamics are consistent with the theoretical scenarios. I was trying to go deeper than that and actually try to find studies pointing out to the existence of a causal relation. Is not whether they are convincing or not, I'm interested in how they actually present it and what arguments they bring in.

I wonder if biographies might be more useful, then. Or, check some of the now-public records of various decisions.  Some of those are on-line (but you'd be better off asking someone who does that work).  Do you have particular instances of US behavior in mind?  That might jog my memory. 

Still not quite what you are looking for, but I just ran across this.

http://connections-qj.org/article/critical-analysis-us-pivot-toward-asia-pacific-how-realistic-neo-realism

Thank you Mary Durfee! Yes, I was thinking to recalibrate the research along some specific ideas. I'm not extremely focused on a particular set of instances, but rather on wether there is some patterned behavioural dynamic reflecting a certain way of thinking. Thank for the link as well... It does help me with my research.