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Alpha to Gamma

Mock-Cliffs on R16-19
exclusively for
International Relations
C16:
International
Relations –
An Overview
Kjell Goldmann
Two main approaches to
reviewing a discipline

 Surveying its findings

 Examining its foundations


[Kenneth Waltz, A Handbook of
Political Science (1975) *The
book was later elaborated into
Theory of International Politics
(1979)]
Issues

 The role of the state in present world


politics
 The reason for doing research about
matters as this
 The significance of purpose and
meaning in IR
 Whether theories of IR are to be seen
as tentative conjectures or as
instruments of power.
Thoughts on Confusion
 Misconception: the field of IR as an
arena where different schools of
thought fight out their differences

*Trivia: PEACE OF WESTPHALIA is the birthday of the state


Stanley Hoffmann

 “The conventional wisdom of the


discipline is that the pursuit of
‘grand’ theory has proven a
‘chimera’.”
 The characterization of IR is as an
“American social science”
Another trend…
 The emergence of INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL ECONOMY as a subfield on
par with the study of INTERNATIONAL
PEACE AND SECURITY and the
conditions for INTERNATIONAL
ORDER.

 US dominance
Most remarkable feature

 The image of a field characterized by


fundamental cleavages giving rise to
recurrent “debates”
 D1: Idealism VS Realism
 D2: Scientific VS Traditional Approach

 D3: Neo-Realism VS Globalists


Sisquel & Ebert on THEORY
OF INTERNATIONAL
POLITICS
 Main object of D3
 Written by Kenneth Waltz
 A realist counter-attack against
“bureaucratic politics”,
“interdependence” and other
subnational and transnational
concerns.
Neo-realism

 Criticized for being wrong in its


account of what it sets out to
account for
 …based on untenable epistemology,
for being politically conservative
Realist Orthodoxy

 Emphasis is on the international


system, nation-states and problems
of peace and security
 Maintained its hold on IR in spite of
the massive criticisms leveled
against it for years
Effects of the Debate over
Realist Theory

 Helped to specify theoretical issues


and propositions of great importance
(David Sanders)
 Less helpful in defining the field as
one of opposing overarching “schools”
Significance of the
Nation State
 “Without the concept of state to fall
back on, scholars would have to
abandon the claim that there is
something unique about the
‘international’ or ‘interstate’ realm”
-Ferguson &
Mansbach
Trivia:
Mainstream IR research is commonly
characterized as “state-centric”
Significance of the
Nation State

 “Nation states or their decision


makers are the most important
actors for understanding
international relations”

-
Vasquez
Much Ado about Nation
States

 The state as object of support


 The state as object of study
 The state as explanatory factor
The State as Object of
Support
 Non-state actors
 International organizations
 Multinational organizations

 State Centrism – a defense of the


nation-state against internationalist
challenges
The State as Object of
Study
 “The substantive core of
international relations is the
interaction of governments of
sovereign states”
-Platig
Criticism: the actions and interactions of
nation-states and governments are
unimportant, that the real groups or
entities in politics are classes or
transnational coalitions (Vasquez). Ergo, it
is a waste of time to examine why states
and governments act and interact the way
The State as Object of
Study
 ERGO, states and governments are
increasingly constrained by
interdependence and institutions
 War is becoming increasingly
dysfunctional
 National security concerns are
getting obsolete
 - “The pillars of the Westphalian
temple are decaying” (Maghroori &
Ramberg)
The State as Object of
Study
 Ergo, state centrism is whether
developments reduce our ability to
explain and understand whatever it
is that concerns us by focusing on
state or government actions and
interactions.
Another thought…

 State centrism in research reflects


the fact that national independence
is regarded by peoples as a
fundamental human need or value
The State as Explanatory
Factor
 State centrism means that
mainstream research errs in its
assumption that the actions and
interactions of states and
governments can fully be explained
at the state and inter-state levels.

 Waltz’ THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL


POLITICS is limited to the level of the
interstate system
“State-centrism” as
Emperical Issue
 There remains the challenge of
investigating how the state and
attitudes toward the state are
affected by the new international
relations that are emerging.
 Politics is becoming transnational
 Nation-states are becoming
penetrated
 Europe
paradoxical combination of
revived nationalism and advancing
internationalism

 European Union is emerging as a


major object of study for IR scholars
with an interest in the foundations of
their field.
The Purpose of Research
and the end-of-cold-war
problem
 IR scholarship from the mid 50’s-80’s
may be characterized as the
accumulation of explanations of the
Cold War’s persistence
 The sum was a powerful theory of
international non-change. There was
little basis in this rich literature to
expect the East-West confrontation
to end – and to do so peacefully and
in a short time. Ergo, the “end-of-
Three Purposes of
Research
 Research Purpose
 Positive

 Motivated by extra-academic concerns (I)


 Motivated by intra-academic concerns (II)

 Negative (III)
Differentiating Positive
from Negative Research
 Positive
 the purpose is to add positively to existing
knowledge.
 The purpose of extra academic c. is to
produce social effects
 The purpose of intra academic is to improve
our comprehension of ourselves and our
existence.
 Negative – to examine the limitations
of what others take to be knowledge.
 Type I – Problem Solving / Positivism
 Type III – Post positivism and Critical
Theory
Type I Research
 Seem to have dominated the study
of international relations
 “peace researchers”
Johan Galtung

 Compared peach research with


medical science and has argued that
the object is to do away with the
quack-doctoring of international
relations
David Singer

 Maintained that the continued


acquiescence with pre-scientific
analysis qualifies as “the ultimate in
war crimes”
Alexander George

 Follows Galtung in drawing a parallel


between IR research and the medical
profession
Quantitative International
Politics

 QIP

 Criticized for invalid abstraction


More about Type I

 The need to be concerned with the


future, anticipating future
developments to which we have to
adapt, assess outcomes of courses of
action, contribute to such matters.
Type II Research
 There is a dilemma between parsimony
and comprehensiveness (Allan)
 Too strict a pursuit of the scientific
criterion of parsimony in their efforts to
theorize is inappropriate for developing
useful policy-relevant theory and
knowledge (George)
 The solution to the end-of-the-cold-war
problem in type II res is to include political
ideas and domestic political processes in
models of international politics.
Type III research

 Emancipation from constraints


implied in what is taken by others to
be knowledge
 To demonstrate that the necessary
may be avoided and that the
impossible may be actualized.
Three Professional Roles of
IR Scholars

 Constructive Citizen

 Detached analyst

 Systematic skeptic
Mentalism

 The view that phenomena are


explicable only in terms of creative
and interpretative minds
 Challenge to structuralism
 Mental phenomena have loomed
large in studies of foreign policy
decision-making and bargaining.
vocabulary

 Explanation – presumed to deal with


causes
 Causes – external to the actor whose
behavior is to be explained
 Understanding – taken to deal with
meaning
 Meaning – understood from within
 “Two plausible stories to tell, one
from the outside about the human
part of the natural world and the
other from inside a separate social
realm. One seeks to explain, the
other to understand… [and]
combining the two stories is not as
easy as it first seems.”
-Hollis &
Smith
Holsti

 He analyzed the substantive motives


states have had for waging war and
the prevailing attitudes toward war in
various epochs
Institutions

 May be seen as generalized purposes


and meanings.
 “much behavior is recognized by
participants as reflecting established
rules, norms and conventions”
(Keohane)
New Institutionalism
 To emphasize the autonomous role of
politics in society
 Focus on the ways in which political life is
organized around the development of
meaning through symbols, rituals and
ceremonies rather than on decision-
making and the allocation of resources
 To see political actors as responding to
obligations and duties than self-interest
(March & Olsen)
Morgenthau
 Historically set the tone of the
autonomy of politics at the
international level
 Conceived of politics in terms of the
concept of interest defined in terms
of power
 This concept sets politics as an
autonomous sphere of action and
understanding apart from other
spheres, such as economics, ethics,
Keohane

 Suggests that we distinguish


between institution as a “general
pattern or categorization of activity”
and as a “particular human-
constructed arrangement formally or
informally organized”
Sources of Compliance
 Rationalistic
 Institutions are assumed to affect
actors’ calculation of cost.
 Similar to the Structural Theory

 Reflective
 Assumption that preferences and
perceptions are not fixed but are
affected by institutions.
Theory: Conjecture or
discourse?
 Theory as a set of answers
A set of explanatory hypotheses which
purport to reveal the rules of the
game of international politics
 Theory as a set of questions
 Effortsto devise a right way of
studying the phenomena of world
affairs
Game Theoretical
Analysis
 Said to address the wrong problem
 It is concerned with the implications
of given preferences and perceptions
without asking how preferences and
perceptions are formed (Jervis)
Ann Tickner
 Feminist critiques of IR theory may
be a third indication of disagreement
over what theory is.
 Mainstream theory actively
prescribes male-oriented concerns
 Theory as oppressingly normative
than conjectural and analytic.
Walker
 IR theories are interesting mainly as
expressions of the limits of the
contemporary political imagination
 Attempts to think otherwise about
political possibilities are constrained
by categories and assumptions that
contemporary political analysis is
encouraged to take for granted. -end-
C17:
International
Relations –Neo-
realism and
Neo-liberalism
David Sanders
Concessional Realism
 A simple but flexible set of
propositions about nation-state
behavior in the contemporary
international system.
 The product of a conducted “thought
experiment” which attempted to
specify what neo-realism and neo-
liberalism would look like if their
efforts to constitute versions of
rational choice theory were
Traditional Realism

 Was both a simple decision-making


theory and a proto-structural theory
about outcomes in the international
system
 Any analysis of international politics
which confined itself merely to the
attributes of the nation-state units or
to the interactions between units was
fundamentally “reductionist” and
therefore inadequate.

-Waltz
Prisoner’s Dilemma

 A possible restatement of the


Hobbesian security problem which
was central to traditional realism
Limitations of the Game Theoretic
approach to international
relations theory

 Problems relating to the role of


national interests
 Ineffective specification of “structural
constraints”
Axelrod & Keohane

 Perceptions define interests to


understand the degree of mutuality
of interests, we must understand the
process by which interests are
percieved and preferences
determined.
Game Theoretic
Perspective
 A state’s interests are maximized if
its payoff gains are maximized
 Its payoff gains can themselves be
regarded as gains in capabilities
(Baldwin)
QUINCY WRIGHT
standard

 Someone who has command of an


enormous range of substantive case
studies of interests and who
possesses the theoretical insight to
offer a simplifying synthesis of what
he or she observes.
STRUCTURE

 According to Waltz, it is a set of


constraining conditions that produces
a gap between intention and
outcome
Two Characteristics of an
Intl Sys
 The particular distribution of
capabilities that it exhibits
 Anrachic ordering principle upon
which it is based
Snidal

 Released a work on the importance


of relative gains under varying
conditions of system polarity
C18:
International Relations:
Post-positivist and Feminist
Perspectives

J. Ann Tickner
C19:
International Relations,
Old and New
Robert O. Keohane
The Alvarez Hypothesis
 By Luis and Walter Alvarez
 Theory of the demise of the
dinosaurs
 A cosmic collision 65 million years
ago threw tremendous quantities of
dust into the air, reducing global
temperature and thus killing the
dinosaurs.
Marple-Dagliesh Method
 Based on two characters created by
Agatha Christie and P.D. James
 Students of IR would do well to
imitate this detectives by carefully
observing and describing events,
specifying the causal mechanisms
that could have led to these results,
and testing accurate predictions of
complex events.
Cause of the revival of
Realism
 Adolf Hitler’s accession to power in
Germany
 Subsequent crises and war that
resulted
Realism
 A dominant approach
 Served as an antidote to ideological
thinking
 A source of caution, emphasizing the
principle of avoiding over-extension
by keeping ends aligned with the
means to achieve them.

“The Owl of Minerva only flies at


dusk.”
Direct foreign
investment
 Means that multinational
corporations have a major presence
around the world.
Warsaw Pact
Liberal Institutionalism
 May benefit from increasing
formalization, in the form of rational
choice theory as long as the
historical and comparative contexts
of action are kept in mind and
propositions generated by theory are
tested empirically, rather than simply
being applied.

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