WHY IR?

AND CONCEPTUAL
INTRODUCTIONS

7 JANUARY 2020
IMPORTANCE OF IR: INTERDEPENDENCE
GLOBALIZATION AND AUTOMATION
IMPORTANCE OF IR - CLIMATE
IMPORTANCE OF IR

2. Global Environmental and Health Issues

• Climate change, ozone layer, acid rain, ocean depletion, rainforest
destruction, freshwater access …
• Pandemics and vaccination

3. Identity
• Religious, Cultural, Social, National
 CONCEPTS OF
INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

‘INTERNATIONAL’
• The relationships amongst governments, non-governmental
organizations, and international organizations
‘RELATIONS’
• The way in which two or more people or things are connected; a
thing's effect on or relevance to another
• Not only focused on within, but primarily BETWEEN two actors
• Processes and outcomes of social relationships of authority and power
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
‘INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS’
• Patters and processes of nation-states and non-state actors in the
absence of a central authority
international relations (‘ir’) = what we study
International Relations (‘IR’) = disciplinary field, one that studies
international relations, global politics, and international politics
‘Politics’ – ‘Who gets what when and how’ – Harold Lasswell, 1936
‘International Politics’
• Relations, distributions, and dynamics of power affected by and
affecting groupings of populations across the world
FORMS OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
(1) Empire – System is a single state
(2) Feudal – overlapping of shared sovereignty

POPE PRINCE
(3) Transitional (city-states; city-leagues; nation-states)
(4) Modern Anarchic System
• No overlapping authority, sovereign states
(5) Multi-layered/multi-perspectival (current?)
 ‘GLOBAL’ POLITICS
AND‘SOCIETY’
‘Global Politics’- Politics of a global ‘society’
1. Macro-mechanisms of global ‘society’ (not mutually exclusive)
2. Economics/global‘market’
3. Internet
4. Religion
Locations for a ‘global society’ and its culture
1. Decentralized/virtual: Internet
2. Centralized: ‘global cities’ (London, New York, Tokyo, Beijing) or global
‘sites’ (museums, religious sites)
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
SOVEREIGN STATE
• Organization claiming sole legitimate authority (legal) within a
geographic area (ie: its borders)
• Countries = nation-states = states
ANARCHY
• No higher authority (vs. ‘hierarchy’)
• In International Politics, anarchy doesn’t =‘Chaos’
 IMPORTANT CONCEPTS
STRUCTURE
• Configurations of units (Nye/Welch, 50)
• Global distributions which constrain/determine the behavior of states
• Power, Social, Economic, Environmental etc.
AGENT
• Person or entity that acts, or acts on behalf of another group
• Individuals/Leaders, Groups, States, Environment
PROCESS (Nye/Welch, 50) – How agents/units interact
THEORY
• an organized system of knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a
specific set of phenomena
• We can’t effectively understand the world (which is complex) without some kind of
theory helping us organize it to make it ‘graspable’
 THE ‘MEANINGS’ OF CONCEPTS:
EXAMPLE – ‘POWER’
Definition of Power: ‘The ability to get others to do what they otherwise
would not’ (Robert Dahl, see also Nye/Welch, chapter 2, p. 46)
Question: But what does that‘mean’?
‘Like love, however, [power] is easier to experience than to define or measure’
(Nye/Welch, p. 46)
Concepts (like power) depend upon:
(1) issue area and (2) theoretical perspective
- This semester, we’ll learn about how studying international relations turns
concepts into‘meanings’, and how the meanings YOU give concepts are
shaped by #’s 1 and 2
FACES OF POWER (LUKES)

• Direct Coercion (force, economic incentives)

• Agenda/Framing (Creating the narrative or defining what can be
talked about)
• Psychological (Removing the whip)
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
(MULTIPLE) MEANINGS OF
POWER
MEANING(S) OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
SOFT POWER- CULTURAL OR
ASPIRATIONAL POWER
MEANINGS OF POWER
A (MORE IMMEDIATE) MEANING OF
POWER
A (MORE IMMEDIATE) MEANING
OF POWER