Chapter One: Understanding International Relations

1.1. Conceptualizing Nationalism, Nations and States

What is a nation?
Nations are historical entities that evolve organically out of more similar ethnic communities and
they reveal themselves in myths, legends, and songs
A nation, in contrast to a state, constitutes a community of people joined by a shared identity and
by common social practices.
➢ A nation, in this sense, perceives itself to be a distinctive political community.
➢ A nation, unlike ethnic groups, has collective political aspirations.
➢ These aspirations have traditionally taken the form of the desire to maintain political
independence or statehood.
❑ What is nationalism?
➢ Nationalism is the doctrine that asserts the nation as the basic political unit in organizing society.
➢ Nationalism is the most influential force in international affairs.
➢ It has caused the outbreak of revolutions and wars across the globe.
➢ It is a factor for the collapse of age old empires, marker for new borders, a powerful component
for the emergence of new states and it is used to reshape and reinforce regimes in history.
➢ The revolutions that took place in Britain’s North American colonies in 1776, and in France in
1789, provided models for other nationalists to follow.
➢ In the first part of the 19th c, it was a liberal sentiment concerning self-determination.
➢ The idea of self-determination undermined the political legitimacy of Europe’s empires.
➢ Everywhere the people demanded the right to rule themselves/inclusion in the political system.
➢ The Bulgarians an independent Bulgaria; the Serbs an independent Serbia, and so on.
• In 1861 Italy too – long divided into separate city-states and dominated by the Church-
became a unified country and an independent nation.
• However, self-determination was acknowledged as a right after conclusion of WWI in
1918.
• After the WWI most people in Europe formed their own nation-states.
• As a result of the nationalist revolutions, the European international system became for the
first time truly ‘inter-national’.
1.2. Understanding International Relations
What is International relations?
➢ The conventional definition of the field IR is the study of the relations of states, and that those
relations are understood primarily in diplomatic, military and strategic terms
A. As a field of study
➢ International relations as a discipline thus chiefly concerned with what states do on the world
stage and, in turn, how their actions affect other states.

• IR is that branch of Political Science that deals with interactions between state and non-
state actors in the international system.
• Such relations transcend the political and governmental.
• Such non-state actors include IGOs, NGOs and TNCs or MNCs, which are not necessarily
political in nature.

➢ International Relations are the study of all forms of interactions that exist between
members of separate entities or nations within the international system.
➢ It is thus the field or body of knowledge that examines the totality of human relations
across national boundaries

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 • IR as a course of study has been studied for hundreds of thousands of years, as part of other
disciplines such as: Law, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, Economics,
and of course History and Political Studies.

• The first university chair of international relations was founded at the University of Wales
in 1919.
• Then, it came a distinct department or course of study.
Why the study of international relations appeared after the First World War?
• The desire to avoid war in the future after the First World War determined the initial
direction of the International Relations field of study.
• Following this, political scientists specialized in IR emerged in the USA.
B. As an activity/situation
• IR describes the state of interaction between two or more actors in separate national
boundaries.
• Put differently, it describes the relationships that take place by members of the
international community.
These include all or any aspects of their relationship such as:
 War  Sending
 Separation international mail
 Belligerency  Buying or selling
 Settlement goods abroad
 Treaties  International
 Cooperation conflict
 Organization  Inter-national
 Going on holiday conferences on
abroad global warming
 International crime
❑ Participation in international relations or politics is also inescapable.
✓ No individual, people, nation or state can exist in splendid isolation or be
masterof its own fate.
✓ No matter how powerful in military, diplomatic or economic circles
✓ None can maintain or enhance their rate of social or economic progress
without the contributions of foreigners or foreign states.
✓ Each state is a minority among humankind.
❑ Legal, political and social differences between domestic and international politics.
▪ Domestic-obeyed, sanction, monopoly of force
▪ International- self-help, no common enforcement.
❑ Distinction between domestic and international politics is real but declining
▪ Domestic incidents can feature very prominently on the international
political agenda.
▪ And thus lead to foreign policy changes and commitments.
❑ Studying international relations provides the necessary tools to:
▪ Analyze events
▪ Examine the why, where, what and when
▪ Understand the factors that led to a particular outcome and the nature of the consequences.
▪ Gain a deeper comprehension of some of the problems that policy-makers confront
▪ Understand the reasoning behind their actions.
❑ International politics is also about maintaining international order.
✓ Anarchical world
✓ Political power is not centralized and unequal.

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 ✓ Multiplication of independent states.
✓ There is one IO for almost every activity
✓ Continuing growth of governmental and international services.
1.3. The Nature and Evolution of International Relations
❑ In medieval Europe:
▪ Most of life & political power was local too. At the local level there was an enormous
diversity of political entities.
▪ There were two institutions with pretensions to power over the continent as a whole – the
(Catholic) Church and the Empire.
i. The Church:
✓ Was the spiritual authority with its centre in Rome.
✓ Virtually all Europeans were Christian
✓ Its influence spread far and penetrated deeply into people’s lives.
✓ Occupied a crucial role in the cultural and intellectual life of the Middle Ages.
ii. The Empire:
✓ Known as the Holy Roman Empire
✓ Established in the tenth century in central, predominantly German-speaking, Europe.
✓ It also included parts of Italy, France and today’s Netherlands and Belgium.
✓ Holy Roman Empire is best compared to a loosely structured federation of many
hundreds of separate political units.
✓ The political system of medieval Europe was thus a curious combination of the local and
the universal.
❑ Yet, from the fourteenth century onward this system was greatly simplified as the state
emerged as a political entity located at an intermediate level between the local and the
universal.
✓ The new states simultaneously set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors on the
universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants and assorted other rulers on the local level.
✓ Italy, Germany, France, England,
❑ In the sixteenth century:
✓ With Reformation notion of a unified Europe broke down completely as the Church began
to split apart.
✓ Followers of Martin Luther had formed their own religious denominations which did not
take orders from Rome.
✓ Instead the new churches aligned themselves with the new states.
✓ By supporting the Reformation, they could free themselves from the power of Rome.
❑ States were not only picking fights with universal institutions but also with local ones.
✓ The kings rejected the traditional claims of all local authorities
✓ This led to extended wars
✓ Peasants rose up in protest against taxes and the burdens imposed by repeated wars.
th
✓ Germany in the 1520s; Sweden, Croatia, England and Switzerland in the late 17 C. In
th
France nobilities in the mid-17 C.
❑ From the sixteenth century onwards:
States established the rudiments of an administrative system and raised armies states.
Extract resources from society for state building
Provided defense and a rudimentary system of justice.
❑ The Treaty of Westphalia, 1648
✓ Concluded the 30 years of warfare
✓ Independent both of the pope and the emperor
✓ Symbolize the new way of organizing international politics.
✓ International politics was a matter of relations between states and no other political units.
✓ All states were sovereign, and formally equal
✓ No overarching power.

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 ✓ Sovereignty and formal equality led to the problem of anarchy.
✓ The practices of diplomacy soon expanded to avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary
conflicts.
✓ This diplomatic network provided a means of gathering information, of spying, but also a
way of keeping in touch with one another, of carrying out negotiations and concluding
deals.
✓ Diplomatic immunities
✓ However, diplomatic practices were never powerful enough to prevent war
₪ It was the European model of statehood and the European way of organizing international
relations that eventually came to organize all of world politics.
❑ Nineteenth century:
✓ Relations between Europe and the rest of the world were irrevocably transformed.
✓ B/c economic changes taking place in Europe.
✓ Europeans began looking for new markets overseas.
✓ Colonial possessions became a symbol of ‘great power’ status
✓ During First World War in 1914, most parts of the world were in European hands.
✓ It was through the process of liberating themselves that the European models were copied.
✓ Europeans only would grant sovereignty to states that were similar to their own
✓ To create such Europe-like states was thus the project in which all non-European political
leaders engaged.
✓ They had their respective Territories and fortified Border, their own Capitals, Armies,
Foreign Ministries, Flags, National Anthems, and all the other paraphernalia of European
statehood.
❑ This, briefly, is how the modern world was made.
1.4. Actors in International Relations
1.4.1. State Actors
✓ State actor includes the individual leader as well as bureaucratic institutions i.e. Foreign
minister.
✓ The birth of modern states could be traced back the 17th C Europe.
✓ There are five statehood criteria. A defined territory, Permanent population, An effective
government, Sovereignty and Recognition
✓ Accordingly, there are no fewer than 195 states
❑ States are different in terms of their internal diversity, wealth, population and
geographical area.
• These differences have their own impact and implication on the international
relations of states.
• Military power of states- ranges from the superpower status of the USA with its long-range
missiles and air craft carriers to small entities such as Bhutan and Nepal.
– Size and quality of the armed force
– Quantity of the weapon
• Ideological Differences-
– This is especially true during the Cold War era.
• Wealth difference
– Its self-sufficiency
– Its capacity to provide food, clothing, shelter to its people
– Main source of wealth (agrarian/industrial)
• Population Size and growth difference
– China vs. Vanuatu
• Territorial Size difference
– Location, climate, size, landlocked, desert
❑ International Relations (IR) traditionally focused on interactions between states.
✓ But now, all sorts of entities

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 ✓ Notwithstanding this, all states call themselves ‘sovereign’:
– exclusive right to govern their respective territories
– declaring war, concluding a peace, negotiating a treaty
✓ Thus still, they remain leading actors in international politics
1.4.2. Non-State Actors
✓ They are non-sovereign entities participating in the international relations.
✓ They participate with sufficient power to influence/cause change though not belong to
any established institution of a state.
✓ Global firms, IGOs, NGOs, MNCs,
The majority of global interactions – be they related to global finance, production,
education, personal and professional travel, labor migration or terrorism – no longer occur
via state channels
✓ A shift away from the inter-national (‘between-states’) to the ‘trans-national’
(‘across/beyond-states’ and their borders).
✓ ‘International Relations’ is no longer a suitable label and that we should instead refer to
the discipline as ‘Global Studies’ or ‘World Politics’ (Keohane 2016)
✓ Individuals and groups interact across borders
✓ International commercial aviation and the rapid spread of information technologies has
further increased people’s mobility and the rate of interactions occur across and beyond
state borders.
✓ High-speed internet have not only changed lives at personal and community levels but
also dramatically altered the general dynamics in politics and global affairs.
✓ Social media provide accessible platforms of communication that allow for the projection
and promotion of ideas across borders
✓ Various political agendas: progressive, revolutionary or outright dangerous
✓ Political activity and even confrontation become weightless and immaterial
Non-state actors are:
• Individual:
– Desmond tutu- Against apartheid
– Mother Teresa- Charity
– Mahatma Ghandi-
– Nelson Mandela-
• International organizations:
– IGOs
– INGOs
• Multinational corporations
– Toyota
– Sony
– McDonalds
– Coca Cola
• Terrorist organizations
– Al Qaida
– Boko haram
– ISIS
1.5. Levels of Analysis in International Relations
• LA are perspectives that deal with the cause of what makes something happen in
international relations.
• Again deal with the origin of that cause.
• Perspectives on IR that suggest possible explanations to ‘‘why’’ questions.
• Ways of analyzing how foreign policy decisions are made
1.5.1. The individual level
Begins with the view that it is people who make policy.
Every international event is the result of decisions made by individuals.

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 Great leaders influence the course of history
Concerns with the perceptions, choices, behaviors, motivations, beliefs and orientation of
the individual
Concerns with the implications of human nature
Psychology and emotions behind people’s actions and decisions
• Idiosyncratic characteristics of leaders:
መለያ፤ፀባይ
– Personality
– Physical and mental health
– Ego and ambition
• Accordingly: one may analysis
– WWII- based on the role of Hitler
– End of cold-war- based on the role of Gorbachev
– Ethio-Eritrea war-based on the role of Issayas and Meles
1.5.2. The group level
✓ The role of lobbying groups and the way they influence national decision-making on an
issue.
✓ The actions of groups of individuals:
o All voters of a country
o Political parties
o Social movements
o Activist/Pressure groups
1.5.3. The state level
✓ State remains as the dominant unit of analysis
✓ This is the ‘state-centrism’ of the discipline
✓ Point of reference for other types of actors
Why?
✓ State being the main location of power within the international sphere.
✓ States form the primary kind of actor in major international organizations
✓ They feature prominently in the global discourse on most of the major challenges of our
time
✓ States still hold the monopoly on violence
✓ The state as a unit of analysis and frame of reference will certainly not go away any time
soon
• IO of states is the key to understand war and peace
• Locates the cause in the character of domestic system of specific states.
• Uses internal defects of a state to explain its external act.
• Deals with how a country’s political structure and the political forces and sub-national
actors with in a country influences the foreign policy of its government.
❑ Regime type indicates the way states interact with other states in the international system.
– Democratic regimes:
• Do not go to war
• Go to war only for just causes
• Encourages mutual trust and respect.
– Authoritarian
• Foreign policy will be centered in a narrow segment of the
government.
❑ Each country’s foreign policy tends to reflect its political culture
– A society’s widely held traditional values and its fundamental practices that
are slow to change.
– Leaders tend to formulate policies that are compatible with their society’s
political culture

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 – How people feel about themselves and their country, how they view others,
what roles they think their country should play in the world, and what they
see as moral behaviour.
– Example: American exceptionalism &Sinocentrism.
❖ Thus, a state level analysis might be interested to look at any one of the following:
✓ how states interact with each other to deal with the crisis / their foreign
policy
✓ how they build off each other’s suggestions and react to international
developments and trends
✓ how they cooperate, say, in the framework of international organizations
✓ how we look at them as competitors and antagonists
❖ Careful consideration of:
✓ what kinds of states we are looking at (how they are ordered politically),
✓ their geographical position,
✓ their historical ties and experiences, and
✓ their economic standing.
1.5.4. The system level
✓ Global system as the structure in which states cooperate, compete and confront each other
over issues of national interest.
✓ The level above the state
✓ This level of analysis involves a top down approach to the study of world politics.
✓ It examines state behavior by looking at the international system.
✓ In this level of analysis, the international system is the cause and state behavior is the
effect.
✓ Changes in international system also causes change in state behavior
✓ Focus on the external constraints on foreign policy.
✓ Global circumstances are seen to condition the ability and opportunity of individual states
and groups of states to pursue their interests in cooperative or competitive ways
✓ Balance of power between states and how that determines what happens in global politics.
✓ Developments that are even outside the immediate control of any particular state or group
of states: global economy, transnational terrorism or the internet.
• The anarchic nature of the international system
– Self-help
– No international 911 to call for help
– This compels states to have military
• Distribution of power amongst states:
– Unipolarity: relative peace
– Bipolarity: conflict/unavoidably worry of one another
– Multipolarity: limited conflict
• Economic pattern:
– Economic interdependence
– Natural location and use
1.6. The Structure of International System
➢ Political power is usually distributed into three main types of systems namely:
A. Unipolar system:
✓ There is one state with the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power and
hence the ability to totally control other states.
• It is a system dominated by one super power/empire.
• The hegemonic actor prevents or resolves conflicts by serving as “the Police Agent of
the World.”
• The distribution of power is determined by the single super power.

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 • Power structure is hierarchical in that power is concentrated in the hands of one
powerful nation/empire.
• The hegemony assures international order and stability through punishing violators and
giving rewards to obedient actors.
• No alliances exist because the hierarchy is ruled by one centre of power.
• Example: US after the end of Cold War.

B. Bipolar System
✓ Dominated by two contending super powers which in turn dominate other states and the
international system at large.
✓ There are two coalitions/alliances formed and headed by the two super powers.
✓ Alliances are hierarchically organized with the two powers as the leaders of their respective
alliance.
✓ There is conflict between the two coalitions/blocs and especially between the bloc leaders.
✓ In both bipolar and multipolar systems there is no one single state with a preponderant
power and hence ability tocontrol other states.
✓ Example: US and USSR during Cold War.
C . Multipolar System
• This comprises of four or more powerful actors in the international system with relative
equal political, economic and military powers.
• There is no significant hierarchy among actors.
• Multipolar configuration reached its climax in 1700s and 1800s
• It lasted from the treaty of Westphalia (1648) to mid-twentieth century,
• Example: Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and other European
countries dominated the globe.
❑ Power
✓ Power is the currency of international politics.
✓ Power determines the relative influence of actors and it shapes the structure of the
international system
✓ Power is the blood line of international relations.
✓ Power can be defined in terms of both relations and material (capability) aspects.
✓ The relational power: ‘A’s’ ability to get ‘B’ to do something it would not otherwise do.
✓ Example: US vs. Russia
❑ Anarchy
✓ Absence of authority (government) be it in national or international/global level systems.
✓ Power is decentralized and there are no shared institutions with the right to enforce
common rules.
✓ Everyone looks after themselves.
✓ States had to rely on their own resources or to form alliances
✓ Constant tensions and threats of war
❑ Sovereignty: two dimensions
▪ Internal sovereignty: a state’s ultimate authority within its territorial entity.
✓ Independence/freedom in its domestic affairs
▪ External sovereignty: the state’s involvement in the international community.
✓ Autonomy in foreign policy
1.7. Theories of International Relations
1.7.1. Idealism/Liberalism
o Referred to as a ‘utopian’ theory
o From 1919 to the 1930s, the discipline was dominated by what is conventionally referred to
as liberal internationalism
❑ Human nature:
o View human beings as innately good

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 o Capable of mutual aid and cooperation
o Bad human behaviour is the product not of evil people but of institutions
o If properly organized, they could see what they have in common, put in place laws and
rules to reduce conflict and facilitate cooperation.
❑ Cooperation/Peace:
o War is unnatural
o War can be eliminated.
o Peace/cooperation is the normal state of affair
o Believe peace and harmony between nations is not only achievable, but desirable
o Optimistic that world order can be improved, with peace and progress gradually replacing
war.
o There is a greater potential of cooperation among states, even if the international system is
anarchic.
❑ International law(IL):
o Liberals also argue that international law offers a mechanism by which cooperation among
states is made possible.
• IL performs two different functions.
1) To provide mechanism for cross-border interaction,
2) To shape the values and goals these interactions are pursuing.
o Generally, the purpose of international law is to regulate the conducts of government
and the behaviors of individuals within states.
❑ Democracy and free trade:
o the prospects for the elimination of war lay with a preference for democracy over
aristocracy, free trade over autarky, and collective security over the balance of power
system’
❖ Democracy:
o Wars are created by militaristic and undemocratic governments for their own vested
interests
o Democracy breaks the power of ruling elites and curb their propensity for violence.
o Kant states that shared liberal values should have no reason for going to war against one
another.
o Liberal states are ruled by their citizens and citizens are rarely disposed to desire war.
o Democratic peace theory, which posits that democracies do not go to war with each other.
o Mutual trust and respect.
❖ Free trade:
- Encourage international friendship and understanding
- Create mutual interdependence and thereby reduce conflict
- Economic interdependence makes conflict/war threatening to each side’s prosperity
❑ International organization:
o War and injustice are international problems that require collective/multi-lateral efforts.
o Woodrow Wilson, following World War I……‘a general association of nations must be
formed’ to preserve the coming peace.
o This resulted in the establishment of League of Nations in 1919.
o League of Nations would be the guarantor of international order and would be the organ
through which states could settle their difference through arbitration.
o League collapsed due to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
o Thus, liberalism failed to retain a strong hold and a new theory emerged to explain the
continuing presence of war.
1.7.2. Realism
▪ Liberal internationalist ideals seemed, at the outset of the 1930s and ultimately the outbreak
of the Second World War, futile and utopian.
▪ The ‘idealism’ of the interwar period was henceforth to be replaced by realism.

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 ▪ Realism locates its roots further back, citing Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes.
▪ Realism in the modern sense arose as a critique to liberalism.
▪ And, realism gained momentum during the Second World War
❑ Hans Morgenthau: ‘Politics among Nations’ (1948)
▪ For him, there are objective laws which have universal applicability, ‘international politics,
like all politics, is a struggle for power’.
▪ According to him theories of international relations must be consistent with the facts.
▪ Morgenthau, like other realists, hence assumes a clear separation of fact and value, of
theory and practice.
▪ By the late 1950s and into the 1960s we see a discipline dominated by realist conceptions
of international relations
❑ Human nature:
• Man is flawed and therefore prone to conflict.
• This explains why cooperation is never guaranteed and world government is unachievable.
• Conflict are rooted in human nature.
• They believe conflict is unavoidable and perpetual and so war is common and inherent to
humankind.
• They claim individuals act in their own self –interests.
• Stress human nature as the factor that shapes world politics.
• Human nature is immutable.
• Thus, little hope for progress in international relations.
• State, like human beings, has an innate desire to dominate others, which led them to fight
wars.
❑ International system
• International system is ‘anarchic’.
• World is made up of states that exist in an environment of anarchy.
• World is a dangerous jungle full of predators.
• ‘No one to call’ in an international emergency helps
• Therefore, states can ultimately only rely on themselves.
• States should rely on their own means of security, i.e., power.
• This is related with the bad nature of human beings.
❑ Power:
✓ The primary task of states is to promoting their national interests:
✓ IN is whatever that enhances or preserves a state’s security, its influence, and its military
and economic power.
✓ Power is the key to national survival in a country-eat-country world.
✓ “Might makes right”
✓ Realists, therefore, are bold to state that stability can be achieved, if states accumulate more
power or build their capability.
✓ The best way to maintain the peace is to be powerful: “peace through strength.”
✓ It is necessary for a country to be armed as the world dangerous.
✓ States have to be ready for war, in order to maintain peace.
✓ Unbalanced power is dangerous
❑ Balance of power:
o Countries should practice balance-of-power politics.
o This is to achieve an equilibrium of power in the world in order to prevent any other
country or coalition of countries from dominating the system.
o This can be done through:
✓ Building up your own strength
✓ Allying yourself with others
✓ Dividing your opponents
❑ Scepticism about IOs, IL, principles, morality,...
✓ Rules are for weak
✓ IOs and ILs have no power/force

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 ✓ Moral concerns should not guide foreign policy
✓ Morality must be weighed prudently against NI
✓ Political actions must be inspired by the moral principle of national survival.
✓ The highest moral duty of a state is to do good for its citizens.
✓ “Do good if the price is low”.
❑ Kenneth Waltz’s ‘Man, the state and War’ (1959)
o He focuses on the international system itself and seeks to provide a structuralist account of
its dynamics and the constraints it imposes on state behaviour
o For Waltz, the international system is anarchical
o And hence perpetually threatening and conflictual.
• Waltz and his followers conceived of international politics as a struggle for power, wealth,
or security.
• And thus the anarchic structure of the international system was the most important
determinant of state behaviour.
• Put differently, states’ fear for survival is not rooted in human nature, as classical realists
believed, but has its origins in the institutional configuration of the international system.
• Waltz argues “International anarchy is the permissive/underlying cause of war.”
• Neo-realists have little room in the world for cooperation than realists.
• When cooperation does occur, power relationships are at work within the cooperative
arrangements.
• The more powerful states take larger share of any joint share (relative gains) that flows
from the cooperation.
❑ Both liberalism and realism consider the state to be the dominant actor in IR, although
liberalism does add a role for non-state actors such as Ios.
1.7.3. Structuralism/Marxism
• Marx began with belief that free market system was an aberration and has to be destroyed
by revolution.
• Capitalism is the central cause of international conflict.
• For Marx, capitalism is characterized by two major divisions within society: the
‘bourgeoisie’ and the ‘proletariat’.
• Actors of International Relations are the classes.
• Classes are more important than society and states.
• There is nothing as such like national interest.
• But states reflect the interests of the dominant/rich class.
• The role of the state-States as “Executive Committee of the Ruling (Corporate) Class,”
doing the bidding of corporations.
• Ensuring overall stability of global capitalist economy as the roles of the state.
• International cooperation among the working class/proletariat will eventually bring about a
just and fair international system where everyone equally benefits.
• There could not be peace in the world unless the proletariat class wages proletarian
internationalism and seizes power.
• There is no anarchy; rather there is hierarchy in international system.
• This is to mean that some states (dominant classes within them) dominant other states and
peoples of the world.
• States are unfinished but categorized into different classes that also dominate the
international system.
• Economic power is the most crucial power to dominate others.
✓ Emerged as a critique of both realism and pluralism
✓ Concentrated on the inequalities that exist within the international system
✓ In equalities of wealth between the rich ‘North’ or the ‘First World’ and the poor ‘South’ or
the ‘Third World’.

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 ✓ Focused on dependency, exploitation and the international division of labor which
relegated the vast majority of the global population to the extremes of poverty, often with
the complicities of elite groups within these societies.
✓ As many in this tradition argued, most states were not free.
✓ Were subjugated by the political, ideological and social consequences of economic forces.
✓ The basis of such manifest inequality was the capitalist structure of the international system
✓ Creates center-periphery relations
✓ Networks of economic interdependence viewed as the basis of inequality, the debt burden,
violence and instability.
1.7.4. Constructivism
o One of the most popular approaches in 1990s and 2000s
o A “social theory of international politics” that emphasizes the social construction of world
affairs
o The major thesis of constructivism is that the international system is “socially
constructed”.
o It considers international politics as a sphere of interaction which is shaped by the actors’
identities and practices and influenced by constantly changing normative institutional
structures.
o Actors are intrinsically “social” beings whose identities and interests are the products of
inter-subjective social structures.
ACTORS AND STRUCTURES ARE MUTUALLY CONSTITUTED
• This implies that structures influence agents and that agents influence structures.
• Agents (individuals, groups, states) create structures (rules, IOs and images), which
reciprocally impact the agents’ action.
• Meaning, agents and structures are co-constituted through reciprocal interaction.
• The social relation of enmity between US and North Korea represents the intersubjective
structure (that is, the shared ideas and beliefs among both states).
• U.S and North Korea are actors who have the capacity to change or reinforce the existing
structure or social relationship of enmity.
• This change or reinforcement ultimately depends on the belief and ideas held by both
states.
• If these beliefs and ideas change, the social relationship can change to one of friendship.

CONSTRUCTIVISM AND ANARCHY

• For neorealists: “anarchy” is a determining condition of international system that by itself:
– Makes competition and conflict endless strong possibilities
– Makes the International System (IS) a more conflictual than a peaceful
environment.
• But, for constructivists anarchy alone does not make much sense as it cannot by itself
bring about a predetermined state of affairs among state actors.
• Rather, we can have different social structures and arrangements under anarchy:
cooperative or conflictual.
• Anarchy is indeterminate.
• Anarchy is neither necessarily conflictual nor cooperative.
• As Wendt puts it, “anarchy is what states make of it”.
• If states show a conflictual behavior towards each other, the “nature” of international
anarchy appears to be conflictual.
• If they behave cooperatively towards one another, anarchy appears to be cooperative.
• Therefore, there is no pre-given “nature” to international anarchy.
• It is the states themselves that determine anarchy’s nature.
• Thus, to understand conflict and cooperation in international politics, we must focus upon
what states do

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 • What states do depends on what their identities and interests are, and identities and
interests change.
• Identities and interests in international politics are not stable – they have no pre-given
nature
• Anarchy has no a fixed/constant nature.
• It varies as the identities and interests of states are changed.
• Identities and preferences of international actors are shaped by the social structures that
are not fixed or unchanging.
• Gives due emphasis to social relationships in the international system.
✓ The essence of international relations exists in the interactions between people.
✓ IR is, then, a never-ending journey of change chronicling the accumulation of the accepted
norms of the past and the emerging norms of the future.
Identities and Interests in World Politics
• Identities are necessary, in international politics and domestic society alike, in order to
ensure at least some minimal level of predictability and order.
• A world without identities is a world of chaos, a world of pervasive and irremediable
uncertainty, a world much more dangerous than anarchy.
• Identities perform three necessary functions in a society:
– they tell you and others who you are and
– they tell you who others are.
• The identity of a state implies its preferences and consequent actions.
• Example: the identity of a small state implies a set of interests that are different from those
implied by the identity of a larger state.
• Small states may more focus on its survival whereas the larger state is concerned with
dominating global political, economic and military affairs.
• A state understands others according to the identity it attributes to them, while
simultaneously reproducing its own identity through daily social practice.
• The crucial observation here is that the producer of the identity is not in control of what it
ultimately means to others.
• The intersubjective structure is the final arbiter of meaning.
• Example: Soviet Union
• Soviet control over its own identity was structurally constrained not only by East
European understanding, but also by daily Soviet practice.
• Unlike neoreaism, constructivism assumes that the selves, or identities, of states are a
variable; they likely depend on historical, cultural, political, and social context.
• Our identities – who we are – change, as do our interests – what is important to us.
• We are not exactly who we were yesterday, and we are unlikely to be exactly the same
tomorrow.
• Thus, identities and interests in international politics are not stable – they have no pre-
given nature.
THE POWER OF PRACTICE
• Power is a central element for both mainstream and constructivist approaches
• However, their conceptualizations of power are vastly different.
• For neorelism and neoliberalsm material power (military/economic or both) is the single
most important source of influence and authority in global politics.
• For constructivists, both material and discursive powerare necessary for any
understanding of world affairs.
• They believe in the powerofdiscourse: knowledge, ideas, culture, ideology, and language.
• Powers is more than brute force.
• Actors are capable of constructing and reproducing the political world not just by their
military actions but also through their discourses.
• The key is the way we communicate (speak and write) and think about the world.
• Language calls things into existence.

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 • Examined the role of “language,” “speech,”
and “argument”as a key mechanism of social construction.
• Nicholas Onuf argues that “talking is undoubtedly the most important way that we go
about making the world what it is”
• “Language makes us who we are”
• The power of social practices lies in their capacity to reproduce the intersubjective
meanings that constitute social structures and actors alike.
• The U.S military intervention: great power, imperialist, enemy, ally, and so on.
• Social practices not only reproduce actors through identity, but also reproduce an
intersubjective social structure through social practices.
• Social practice has the capacity to produce predictability and order.

THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

• Some constructivist scholars have focused on “the role of international organizations in
disseminating new international norms and models of political organization”
• International organizations do produce and promote new norms, and even “teach” states.
• International institution plays a socializing role.
• They are important venue for socialization.
• According to constructivists, international institutions have both regulative and
constitutive functions.
• Institutions embody the constitutive and regulative norms and rules of international
interaction; as such, they shape, constrain, and givemeaning to state action and in part
define what it is to be a state.
• There is a connection between normative changes and state identity and interests.
• At the same time, however, institutions themselves are constantly reproduced and,
potentially, changed by the activities of states and other actors.
• Institutions and actors are mutually conditioning entities.
1.7.5. Critical Theories
▪ Critical approaches refer to a wide spectrum of theories that have been established in
response to mainstream approaches in the field, mainly liberalism and realism.
▪ Has become influential in international theory since early 1980s
▪ Share one particular trait- – they oppose commonly held assumptions in the field of IR
that have been central since its establishment.
▪ Influential figures: Andrew Linklater and Robert Cox
▪ Critical theories are valuable:
– Because they identify positions that have typically been ignored or
overlooked within IR.
– They also provide a voice to individuals who have frequently been
marginalized, particularly women and those from the Global South.
• CT sought to inquire into the possibilities of transforming IRs in order to remove
unnecessary constraints on achieving universal freedom and equality.
• It intends to analyze and overcome the social structure which result in abuses.
• IRs should be oriented by an emancipatory politics.
• The desire ‘to lend a voice to suffering’ and to ‘abolish existing misery’ should stand at
the center of political analysis.
• Concerned with all the features of domination.
• Critical of the main forms of exclusion in world history (national, racial, gender, etc.)
• An attempt to make their history under conditions of their choosing.
• Removal of domination, promotion of global freedom, justice, and equality are the driving
forces of CT.
• The aim of CT is to advance human emancipation.
▪ Critical theorists who take a Marxist angle:

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 – Are against the internationalization of the state as the standard operating
principle of international relations
– B/c this led ordinary people around the globe becoming divided and
alienated, instead of recognizing what they all have in common as a global
proletariat.
– To address this, the legitimacy of the state must be questioned and
ultimately dissolved.
– Emancipation from the state in some form is often part of the wider
critical agenda.
▪ Post-colonialism differs from Marxism by focusing on the inequality between nations or
regions, as opposed to classes.
– This approach acknowledges that politics is not limited to one area or
region and that it is vital to include the voices of individuals from other
parts of the world.
– Focuses on including the viewpoints of those from the Global South to
ensure that Western scholars no longer spoke on their behalf.
– Postcolonial scholars are, therefore, important contributors to the field as
they widen the focus of enquiry beyond IR’s traditionally ‘Western’
mindset.
– Marxists would argue that:
– Any international body, including the UN, works to promote the interests of
the business class.
– After all, the UN is composed of states who are the chief protagonists in
global capitalism.
– The UN, then, is not an organization that offers any hope of real
emancipation for citizens.
– UN legitimizes a system of perpetual state-led exploitation.
▪ Post-colonialists would argue that:
– The discourse perpetuated by the UN is one based on cultural, national or
religious privilege.
– They would suggest, for instance, that, as it has no African or Latin
American permanent members, the Security Council fails to represent the
current state of the world.
– The presence of former colonial powers on the Security Council
perpetuates a form of continued indirect colonial exploitation of the Global
South.

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