INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
REALISM - LECTURE NOTES
1. Realism has been the dominant theory of world politics since the beginning
of academic International Relations.
2. Realism is an approach to the study and practice of international politics. It
emphasises the role of the nation-state and makes a broad assumption
that all nation states are motivated by national interests or best national
interests disguised as moral concerns.
3. Outside the academy, realism has a much longer history in the work of
classical political theorists such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and
Rousseau.
4. The unifying theme around which all realist thinking converges is that
states find themselves in the shadow of anarchy such that their security
cannot be taken for granted.
5. At the start of the new millennium, realism continues to attract
academicians and inform policy makers, although in the period since the
end of the cold war we have seen heightened criticism of realist
assumptions.
6. The belief that there is not one realism, but many, leads logically to a
delineation of different types of realism.The different realisms are stated
below-
• CLASSICAL REALISM
- The classical realist lineage begins the Thucydides representation of power
politics as a law of human behaviour.
- The drive for power and the will to dominate are held to be fundamental
aspects of human nature.
REALISM - LECTURE NOTES
1. Realism has been the dominant theory of world politics since the beginning
of academic International Relations.
2. Realism is an approach to the study and practice of international politics. It
emphasises the role of the nation-state and makes a broad assumption
that all nation states are motivated by national interests or best national
interests disguised as moral concerns.
3. Outside the academy, realism has a much longer history in the work of
classical political theorists such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and
Rousseau.
4. The unifying theme around which all realist thinking converges is that
states find themselves in the shadow of anarchy such that their security
cannot be taken for granted.
5. At the start of the new millennium, realism continues to attract
academicians and inform policy makers, although in the period since the
end of the cold war we have seen heightened criticism of realist
assumptions.
6. The belief that there is not one realism, but many, leads logically to a
delineation of different types of realism.The different realisms are stated
below-
• CLASSICAL REALISM
- The classical realist lineage begins the Thucydides representation of power
politics as a law of human behaviour.
- The drive for power and the will to dominate are held to be fundamental
aspects of human nature.
