Politics and International Relations 1B: The Global Dimension
Table of Contents
Lecture 1: Course Information and Introduction ........................................................................... 1
Lecture 2: Anarchy ............................................................................................................................. 2
Tutorial 1: Welcome to PIR 1B .......................................................................................................... 4
Lecture 3: Traditional Approaches to Power in IR ......................................................................... 4
Lecture 4: Critical Approaches to Power in IR ............................................................................... 8
Lecture 5: Traditional Approaches to Security ............................................................................ 10
Lecture 6: Critical Approaches to Security ................................................................................... 12
Lecture 7: War and Armed Conflict ................................................................................................ 15
Lecture 8: Gender and War ............................................................................................................. 18
Tutorial 4: War and Armed Conflict................................................................................................ 22
Lecture 9: Peace ............................................................................................................................... 23
Lecture 10: UN Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (Peace Operations) .................................... 25
Lecture 11: The United Nations ...................................................................................................... 30
Lecture 12: The European Union ................................................................................................... 36
Lecture 13: The Making of Foreign Policy .................................................................................... 41
Lecture 14: Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect ............................... 51
Lecture 15: Inequality, Development, and the UN........................................................................ 59
Lecture 16: Human Rights............................................................................................................... 68
Lecture 17: Global Environmental Politics and the Climate Crisis ........................................... 76
Lecture 18: Climate Security and Climate Justice ....................................................................... 82
Lecture 19: The Future of World Order – Traditional Approaches ............................................ 89
Lecture 20: The Future of World Order – Critical Approaches .................................................. 94
Lecture 1: Course Information and Introduction
Why do we need IR Theory?
- It differentiates political analysis from journalism and history
• Simplifies complex and otherwise confusing world
• Guides analysis/research
• Identifies and clarifies patterns & tensions
• Produces a more coherent picture of phenomena
• May generate hypotheses and predictions
Three principal types of theory:
1) Traditional (explanatory)
2) Critical (interpretive)
3) Normative (political theory)
,Relationship between disciplines
Is political science a science?
Principal approaches to the study of Politics and IR
- Traditional (Foundationalist Ontology & Positivist Epistemology)
- Critical (Anti-Foundationalist Ontology & Interpretivist Epistemology)
Important questions
- Who are we talking about when we talk about international relations?
• How is ‘the international’ constituted?
• Who is excluded from this? Which issues are excluded from this?
- Do we really mean ‘Western’ relations?
- What is the purpose of theory? Who gets to theorise? Who gets to do international politics?
- How can we conceptualise the relationship between the domestic and the international or the foreign?
• Do you think political phenomena in general exist on a continuum rather than in distinct
spheres of domestic and international?
Lecture 2: Anarchy
International Relations
- 4 principle contending approaches to understanding IR
• Traditional pessimists (realists). (Game of Risk)
• Traditional optimists (liberals). (Game of Monopoly)
• Critical role-playing (social constructivists). (Game of roleplaying)
• Critical game-changers (critical scholars).
Definition
, - NOT chaos, disorder, or crime
- Anarchy in IR means no central government. No higher authority in IR
- States are thus sovereign in an anarchic system because there is no higher authority
- 200 sovereign states in the system – we want to be able to understand how they relate to one
another
- Distinguishes IR as a discipline
- Is IR a separate thing to politics because of anarchy or is it a subset?
Traditional Pessimists (Realists)
- We can ameliorate the worst effects of anarchy, but we cannot remove them
- Scholars who look back through history and find people who have written about the world in a way
that resonates with them
- Start with Thucydides (ancient Greek general in 5th century) – in an anarchic system, power is the
currency that gets you everything
• “The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept”
- Machiavelli – if you want to survive in the city state system you have to both a lion and a fox – both
strong and cunning
• “The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.
One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion
• Pessimistic and realistic
- Thomas Hobbes
• “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” – Leviathan, middle of
English Civil War
- The game of risk – you have to be powerful and cunning to win and to survive
• You have to work in alliances
• You do things you may not want to, but you do them to survive
The Security Dilemma (or Spiral Model)
- Anarchy → self-help → security dilemma
• Anarchy means, without a Leviathan, without a one world government, we are left in a self-
help system, and thus you are caught in a security dilemma
- Actions taken by one state to heighten its own security (such as increasing its military strength,
threating to use weapons, or even building a missile-defence system) can lead others to respond
with similar measures which leaves everyone more insecure
• In a spiral of insecurity
• The Cold War – The Soviet Union and the US had 40,000 nuclear weapons each
The Thucydides Trap
- Sparta was the most powerful state, Athens was rising. When Athens got to the point where it could
challenge their power, Sparta went to war to stop it getting any more powerful
- 16 of those cycles over the past 500 years
- 12 of 16 times it has happened, it has ended in great power war
- How do we prevent war between the US and China?
Traditional Optimists (Liberals)
- Accept anarchy but they do not believe that we can’t build a more peaceful world
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Social Contract
- Emmanuel Kant – Perpetual Peace: Definitive Articles
• If we design institutions within the state and we do it in a way that encourages good
behaviour, we can do the same in IR
• We can progress, but it takes reason and rationality
• Every state should be a republic – the vote of the ordinary people, but we should have a
system of checks and balances (worried about mob rule). Today we would call Republics
liberal democracies. Kant calls for a world where we spread liberal democracies because
ordinary people have every incentive to avoid war
, • Democracies create political systems that act as a break on leaders who might otherwise go
to war
• But we can also make war less likely by joining international organisations
• Increase economic independence through trade that will encourage us to act more
peacefully and less likely to go to war
- Like the game of Monopoly
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Cooperation is difficult without communication – that is how states are
caught in this really insecure environment (for liberals)
Critical approaches
Role playing (social objectivism): Three Cultures of Anarchy
- Anarchy does not determine the type of social relations that exist between states
1. Hobbesian – enmity and conflict
2. Lockean – rivalry and competition
3. Kantian – friendship and peace
Anarchy is what the states make out it
- Ideas
- Norms (shared values)
- Roles (identity)
Tutorial 1: Welcome to PIR 1B
Social constructivists
- Much greater role for individuals – can be broader than individuals
- The role of norms – actors are driven by norms, beliefs and identities
- Anarchy is what you make of it
- Role players
Lecture 3: Traditional Approaches to Power in IR
Theories or ‘Games’ in IR
Realists (Traditional Pessimists) – see the world as a game of Risk. In anarchy, everyone is insecure and
so they have to protect themselves by increasing their military expenditure; they have to act like a lion and
a fox as Machiavelli said. Everyone is trying to dominate everyone else
Table of Contents
Lecture 1: Course Information and Introduction ........................................................................... 1
Lecture 2: Anarchy ............................................................................................................................. 2
Tutorial 1: Welcome to PIR 1B .......................................................................................................... 4
Lecture 3: Traditional Approaches to Power in IR ......................................................................... 4
Lecture 4: Critical Approaches to Power in IR ............................................................................... 8
Lecture 5: Traditional Approaches to Security ............................................................................ 10
Lecture 6: Critical Approaches to Security ................................................................................... 12
Lecture 7: War and Armed Conflict ................................................................................................ 15
Lecture 8: Gender and War ............................................................................................................. 18
Tutorial 4: War and Armed Conflict................................................................................................ 22
Lecture 9: Peace ............................................................................................................................... 23
Lecture 10: UN Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding (Peace Operations) .................................... 25
Lecture 11: The United Nations ...................................................................................................... 30
Lecture 12: The European Union ................................................................................................... 36
Lecture 13: The Making of Foreign Policy .................................................................................... 41
Lecture 14: Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect ............................... 51
Lecture 15: Inequality, Development, and the UN........................................................................ 59
Lecture 16: Human Rights............................................................................................................... 68
Lecture 17: Global Environmental Politics and the Climate Crisis ........................................... 76
Lecture 18: Climate Security and Climate Justice ....................................................................... 82
Lecture 19: The Future of World Order – Traditional Approaches ............................................ 89
Lecture 20: The Future of World Order – Critical Approaches .................................................. 94
Lecture 1: Course Information and Introduction
Why do we need IR Theory?
- It differentiates political analysis from journalism and history
• Simplifies complex and otherwise confusing world
• Guides analysis/research
• Identifies and clarifies patterns & tensions
• Produces a more coherent picture of phenomena
• May generate hypotheses and predictions
Three principal types of theory:
1) Traditional (explanatory)
2) Critical (interpretive)
3) Normative (political theory)
,Relationship between disciplines
Is political science a science?
Principal approaches to the study of Politics and IR
- Traditional (Foundationalist Ontology & Positivist Epistemology)
- Critical (Anti-Foundationalist Ontology & Interpretivist Epistemology)
Important questions
- Who are we talking about when we talk about international relations?
• How is ‘the international’ constituted?
• Who is excluded from this? Which issues are excluded from this?
- Do we really mean ‘Western’ relations?
- What is the purpose of theory? Who gets to theorise? Who gets to do international politics?
- How can we conceptualise the relationship between the domestic and the international or the foreign?
• Do you think political phenomena in general exist on a continuum rather than in distinct
spheres of domestic and international?
Lecture 2: Anarchy
International Relations
- 4 principle contending approaches to understanding IR
• Traditional pessimists (realists). (Game of Risk)
• Traditional optimists (liberals). (Game of Monopoly)
• Critical role-playing (social constructivists). (Game of roleplaying)
• Critical game-changers (critical scholars).
Definition
, - NOT chaos, disorder, or crime
- Anarchy in IR means no central government. No higher authority in IR
- States are thus sovereign in an anarchic system because there is no higher authority
- 200 sovereign states in the system – we want to be able to understand how they relate to one
another
- Distinguishes IR as a discipline
- Is IR a separate thing to politics because of anarchy or is it a subset?
Traditional Pessimists (Realists)
- We can ameliorate the worst effects of anarchy, but we cannot remove them
- Scholars who look back through history and find people who have written about the world in a way
that resonates with them
- Start with Thucydides (ancient Greek general in 5th century) – in an anarchic system, power is the
currency that gets you everything
• “The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept”
- Machiavelli – if you want to survive in the city state system you have to both a lion and a fox – both
strong and cunning
• “The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.
One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion
• Pessimistic and realistic
- Thomas Hobbes
• “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” – Leviathan, middle of
English Civil War
- The game of risk – you have to be powerful and cunning to win and to survive
• You have to work in alliances
• You do things you may not want to, but you do them to survive
The Security Dilemma (or Spiral Model)
- Anarchy → self-help → security dilemma
• Anarchy means, without a Leviathan, without a one world government, we are left in a self-
help system, and thus you are caught in a security dilemma
- Actions taken by one state to heighten its own security (such as increasing its military strength,
threating to use weapons, or even building a missile-defence system) can lead others to respond
with similar measures which leaves everyone more insecure
• In a spiral of insecurity
• The Cold War – The Soviet Union and the US had 40,000 nuclear weapons each
The Thucydides Trap
- Sparta was the most powerful state, Athens was rising. When Athens got to the point where it could
challenge their power, Sparta went to war to stop it getting any more powerful
- 16 of those cycles over the past 500 years
- 12 of 16 times it has happened, it has ended in great power war
- How do we prevent war between the US and China?
Traditional Optimists (Liberals)
- Accept anarchy but they do not believe that we can’t build a more peaceful world
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Social Contract
- Emmanuel Kant – Perpetual Peace: Definitive Articles
• If we design institutions within the state and we do it in a way that encourages good
behaviour, we can do the same in IR
• We can progress, but it takes reason and rationality
• Every state should be a republic – the vote of the ordinary people, but we should have a
system of checks and balances (worried about mob rule). Today we would call Republics
liberal democracies. Kant calls for a world where we spread liberal democracies because
ordinary people have every incentive to avoid war
, • Democracies create political systems that act as a break on leaders who might otherwise go
to war
• But we can also make war less likely by joining international organisations
• Increase economic independence through trade that will encourage us to act more
peacefully and less likely to go to war
- Like the game of Monopoly
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Cooperation is difficult without communication – that is how states are
caught in this really insecure environment (for liberals)
Critical approaches
Role playing (social objectivism): Three Cultures of Anarchy
- Anarchy does not determine the type of social relations that exist between states
1. Hobbesian – enmity and conflict
2. Lockean – rivalry and competition
3. Kantian – friendship and peace
Anarchy is what the states make out it
- Ideas
- Norms (shared values)
- Roles (identity)
Tutorial 1: Welcome to PIR 1B
Social constructivists
- Much greater role for individuals – can be broader than individuals
- The role of norms – actors are driven by norms, beliefs and identities
- Anarchy is what you make of it
- Role players
Lecture 3: Traditional Approaches to Power in IR
Theories or ‘Games’ in IR
Realists (Traditional Pessimists) – see the world as a game of Risk. In anarchy, everyone is insecure and
so they have to protect themselves by increasing their military expenditure; they have to act like a lion and
a fox as Machiavelli said. Everyone is trying to dominate everyone else
