IR summary

INTRODUCTION: FROM INTERNATIONAL TO WORLD POLITICS


FROM INTERNATIONAL POLITICS TO WORLD POLITICS
 Nation-state
o = pol community in which state claims legitimacy on grounds that it represents nation


 INGO: International non-governmental organization

 MNC: Multinational corporation

 NGO: Non-governmental organization

 Interconnectedness
o = interweaving of human lives: events in region of world impact all /most other people



THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 International hierarchy
o = structure of auth in which states/other intern actors: ranked according to rel power



THEORIES OF WORLD POLITICS
 Theory
o set of ideas that simplifies complexity world, gives suggestions: how to identify key
forces/ actors within it


REALISM
 = theoretical approach that analyses all intern relations as relation of states engaged in
pursuit of power, cannot accommodate non-state actors within its analysis

 Main actors: states (legally sovereign actors)
o sovereignty= there is no actor above the state that can compel it to act in specific ways


 International politics
o struggle for power among states, with each trying to maximize its national interest
o self-help system: states must rely on their own military resources to achieve their ends


 Balance of power
o = equilibrium between states
o for historical realists: product of diplomacy = contrived balance

, o for structural “ : system has tendency towards nat equilibrium = fortuitous balance

 Diplomacy: key mechanism for balancing various national interests

 Military force
o important tool for implementing states foreign policy
o material power


 Neorealism
o since 1970s and 80s
stresses importance of structure of intern system in affecting behavior of all states
o = modification of realist approach by recognizing that economic resources are basis for
exercising influence; attempt to make realism ‘more scientific’ by borrowing models
from econ and behavioral social science to explain intern pol

 Multipolarity: distribution of power among number (least 3) of major powers or ‘poles’


LIBERALIM
 Main themes
o human beings can be improved
o democracy is necessary for liberal improvement
o ideas matter (not the material power)


 States
o not unitary actor
o made up of individuals and their collective, societal preferences and interests
o comprised of set of bureaucracies, each with own interests  no ‘national interest’


SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
 Constructivism
o = approach to intern politics that concerns itself with centrality of ideas and human
consciousness and stresses a holistic and idealist view of structures
o = approach to philosophy of soc science w implications for kinds of arguments that
can be made about world politics
o argues that we make and re-make the social world
o interested in how
- structure constructs actors’ identities and interests
- their interactions are organized/constrained by that structure
- their interaction serves to reproduce or transform that structure
o Alexander Wendt ‘anarchy is what states make of it’


 new approach in IR
o developed in late 1980s




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, o more influential since mid 1990s
o arose out of set of events in world pol: disintegration of Soviet empire (fall of Berlin
Wall in 1989)  indicated human agency had much greater potential


MARXIST THEORIES
 Marxism
o = view that most fundamental feature of society is the org of material forces
o material forces: incl natural resources, geography, military power and technology
o aka historical materialism
o sovereignty: not as important for Marxist theories
o concept of class conflict: central to Marxist ideas of pol and history


 understand how world works: taking material forces/class conflict into account
 leads to forms of technological determinism or analysis of distributions of milit power
for understanding state’s foreign policy and patterns of intern pol (for IR scholars)

 World economy: constraints states’ freedom of manoeuvre

 Key feature world/international economy
o Division of world into: core; semi-periphery; periphery


POSTSTRUCTURALISM
 Poststructuralism
o influential theoretical development in last 30 years
o also referred to as postmodernism
o concerned w distrusting/exposing any account human life: claims to have direct
access to ‘the truth’
o Michael Foucault: important influence on poststr.  power produces knowledge


POSTCOLONIALISM
 Post colonialism
o important approach in cultural studies; mostly ignored in IR


 neo-colonialism
o = inform processes keep former colonies under power/especially econ influence of
former colonial powers and advanced industrial countries


FEMINISM
 Feminism
o = pol project to understand so as to change women’s inequality or oppression
o for some: to aim to move beyond gender
o for others: to work for more equal and inclusive social relations overall




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, META-THEORETICAL QUESTIONS
 Explanatory theories
o one that sees world as something external to our theories of it
o = theories that see soc world something external to our theories of soc world
o task: report on world: exists independently of observer & his/her theoretical position
o assume causal relations among main variables


 Constitutive theories
o one that thinks our theories help construct the world
o assumes concepts soc world help construct soc world, what we see as external world
o assume mutually constitutive rather than causal relations among main ‘variables’


 epistemology = study of how we can claim to know something


THEORIES AND GLOBALIZATION
 Globalization
o = historical process involving fundam shift in spatial scale of human soc org links
distant communities and expands reach of power relations across regions /continents
o catch-all phrase: usually: describe single world econ after collapse communism,
sometimes: define growing integration of intern capitalist system in post-war period


GLOBALIZATION: MYTH OR REALITY?
REALITY MYTH
pace of economic transformation is so glob is merely a buzzword to denote the
great, it has created a new world politics latest phase of capitalism
communications have revolutionized the glob is very uneven in its effects
way we deal with the rest of the world
there is now a global culture glob may be the latest stage of Western
imperialism
time and space seem to be collapsing There are considerable losers as the world
becomes more globalized
a global polity is emerging Not all globalized forces are necessarily
‘good’
a cosmopolitan culture is developing Main worry with global governance aspects
of glob, is about responsibility
a risk culture is emerging




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