INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

IDEOLOGIES & THEORIESBy Amin Sadeghi

IR vs. international relations

International Relations (IR) is the study of international relations.

Brown & Ainley, 2005

Sentence 1: Global environmental issues are an important part of international relations.

Sentence 2: International relations have become further complicated by an increase in the relative importance of international economic problems.

Sentence 3: All understandings of International Relations and of the other social sciences are necessarily theoretical.

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IR as a subfield of Political ScienceGreat thinkers of the past: Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Hegel, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, etc.It “is not that political science makes no progress, or that we are somehow uniquely fixated on an ancient past, but because these works provide us with the most basic questions that continue to guide our field.”“We continue to ask the same questions that were asked by” those great thinkers of the past – concerning justice, rights, liberty.Their answers, are not the final authority, and we do not necessarily accept them.“These doctrines have not simply been refuted, or replaced, or historically superceded.”

Smith, Yale University, 2006

Political Science subfieldsPolitical PhilosophyGovernment StudiesComparative PoliticsInternational Relations

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Definitions in IRXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

Cox with Campanaro, LSE, 2012

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Government vs. State vs. SovereigntyA government is the organization in charge of creating and administering laws for a region and its people. Governments can exist at national, regional and local levels, with local governments subordinate to higher-level governments. Internationally, the term "state" is usually shorthand for "sovereign state," the technical term for an independent country. A state, no matter what the type, has to be controlled by a government. If a region has no government, then it is not a state. Likewise, if a government doesn't control any actual territory or people, the area it claims to represent is also not a state."Sovereign" means that the government is the top authority within its territory and doesn't answer to any other country's government. If a government has sovereign control over a particular territory, it can form a sovereign state. Proving that a government has sovereign control over a territory is a key part of convincing the world that the area is a legitimate country.

classroom.synonym.com

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Westphalian revolution

384–322 BCE 1648 1918Aristotle Treaty of Westphalia Wilson’s 14 PointsThe father of political science

‘Sovereignty’ and international relations

International Relations as an academic discipline

Many international relations theorists date the contemporary system from 1648, the year of the Treaty of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years War. This treaty marks the end of rule by religious authority in Europe.

Mingst & Arreguín-Toft, 2010

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Treaty of Westphalia’s impact

It embraced the notion of sovereignty—that the sovereign enjoyed exclusive rights within a given territory. It also established that states could determine their own domestic policies in their own geographic space.

Leaders sought to establish their own permanent national militaries. The state thus became more powerful since the state had to collect taxes to pay for these militaries and the leaders assumed absolute control over the troops.

It established a core group of states that dominated the world until the beginning of the nineteenth century: Austria, Russia, England, France, and the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Belgium.

Mingst & Arreguín-Toft, 2010

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‘liberal internationalism’US account of what went wrong in 1914 stressed the failure of diplomacy, Woodrow Wilson set out in the Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, in which America’s war aims were specified.The adaptation of broadly liberal political principles to the management of the international system, produced in Britain and America is conveniently summarized as ‘liberal internationalism’.

Brown & Ainley, 2005July 1914 April 1917 Jan. 1918 Dec. 1918Start of WWI USA entered

WWIWilson’s speech End of WWI

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXCox with Campanaro, LSE, 2012

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Metatheories in IR“The search for a better theory forms the third debate. . . [It] is potentially the richest, most promising and exciting that we have ever had in international relations.” Michael Banks (1986: 17)Following the “idealism versus realism” schism of the 1920s and 1930s, and transcending the more recent “history versus science” exchange of the 1950s and 1960s, in the late 1980s the discipline stands in the midst of a third discipline defining debate (Maghroori and Ramberg, 1982; Holsti, 1985a; Banks, 1986).The “third debate” in the field of international relations … constitutes a still maturing disciplinary effort to reconsider theoretical options in a “post-positivist” era.

Yosef Lapid, 1989

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RealismMain assumptionsThe state is the principal, unitary, rational actor in war and politics in general. (Thucydides)States exist in an anarchic international system. (Hobbes)Human nature is seen as inherently selfish and bad. (Hobbes)Morgenthau’s three levels of analysis:

The flawed individual in the state of nature struggles for self-preservation. The autonomous and unitary state is constantly involved in power struggles,

balancing power with power and preserving the national interest. Because the international system is anarchic—there is no higher power to put the

competition to an end—the struggle is continuous.

The security dilemma is that in a zero-sum world, improvements in a state’s power come at the expense of other states, which lose relative power. (Herz, 1950)

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Why do states want power?

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Classical realists(like Hans Morgenthau, 1948a)

Human nature

Structural realists The structure or architecture of the international system that forces states to pursue power.How much power is enough?

Defensive (structural) realists(like Kenneth Waltz, 1979)

It is unwise for states to try to maximize their share of world power, because the system will punish them if they attempt to gain too much power.

Offensive (structural) realists(like John Mearsheimer, 2001)

It makes good strategic sense for states to gain as much power as possible and, if the circumstances are right, to pursue hegemony.

Types of power according to Mersheimer

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Military power

Tangible military assets that states possess: armoured divisions and nuclear weapons.

Latent power A state’s wealth and the size of its overall population: the raw potential a state can draw from money, technology, and personnel.

Why do states want power?The more powerful a state is relative to its competitors, the less likely it is that it will be attacked. In essence, the structure of the system forces every great power – even those that would otherwise be satisfied with the status quo – to think and act when appropriate like a revisionist state.

Mearsheimer, 2001

Power

Waltz predicted that a “shift away from bipolarity would be towards unipolarity (that is, an end to the anarchical system) – if the Soviet Union were unable to remain in competition with the United States (Waltz 1979).”

Brown & Ainley, 2005

The immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar. It is unipolar. The center of world power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its Western allies. (The Unipolar Moment)

Charles Krauthammer, 1991

Democracies coexist with undemocratic states. Although democracies seldom fight democracies, they do, as Michael Doyle has noted, fight at least their share of wars against others.

Waltz, 2000

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Cox with Campanaro, LSE, 2012

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Polarity

The challenges of the anarchical world order include: Economic rivalry Security dilemmas Arms races Hyper-nationalism Balancing alliances The threat of war

Deudney and Ikenberry (1999: 180)

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Contemporary world issues (according to Neorealists)

States do not fight all others even when purely realist principles dominate; they are constrained by geography, the coincidence of national interests expressed in alliances, and the balance of power. Deterrence forms the heart of survival, but deterrence—and especially nuclear deterrence—is an uncertain and dangerous way of avoiding war. Treating all international politics as unending struggle, and everyone as a potential enemy, risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.This perspective, sometimes labelled liberal-institutionalist, is associated with classical analysts like John Locke, Hugo Grotius, and Immanuel Kant.Doyle was one of the first IR theorists in the modern era to advance the Kantian idea of a liberal peace - Michael Doyle (1997), Ways of War and Peace.

Dunne, Kurki & Smith, 2013

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There are three versions of liberalism that are still current today:1. Classical liberalism revolved around individual liberty,

human independence, the rule of law, and it importantly restricted what states and governments were entitled to do to individuals.

2. Social liberalism explored the conditions for individual development and growth, and sustained by networks of mutual assistance and interdependence. From that branch of liberalism arose the modern welfare state.

3. Neoliberalism emphasises the beneficial consequences of competitive markets and personal advancement far more than the general nourishing of human well-being.

Freeden, 2015

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Economic liberalism: It is beneficial in the long run if markets are allowed to operate freely.

States should be able to trade openly with each other. The role of the state in economic affairs should be kept to a minimum.

Smith, El-Anis & Farrands, 2010

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Tradition of liberal thought (freedom of the individual):

John Locke (1632–1704): Father of Classical Liberalism; Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826); Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832); John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

Economic LiberalismDavid Hume (1711–1776); Adam Smith (1723–1790); John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)

Ibid.

Liberal thought (as a broad political ideology): Liberty Equality (there is divide on this one)

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Prior to “World War I”, almost all currencies were convertible into gold. 1752: Hume, in one of his nine essays: changes in price levels would naturally correct the inflows and outflows of gold that resulted from international trade; the Mercantilists’ way would be unsustainable as a continual flow of gold would “raise domestic prices” and “cause economic activity to move abroad”, therefore reversing the flow of gold.

Ibid.

David Hume (1711–1776)

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1776: The Wealth of Nations: “production and economic growth” are the determinants of wealth; this economic growth is best achieved by the “operation of free markets” with a “minimum of political interference”. The ‘invisible hand’ (term): how the market convert the “individual pursuit of self-interest” into benefits for society as a whole. He believed in “free trade” and use of “tariffs” as a temporary retaliatory measure against states engaged in trade protectionism to convince them of the error of their ways > reflected today in WTO rules. ‘The Adam Smith Institute’ is a contemporary UK-based pro-market think-tank.

Ibid.

Adam Smith (1723–1790)

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In the period after the First World War and in particular after the Great Depression of the 1930s: the idea that “minimal state involvement would result in benefits for all” was questioned. “International institutions” were now viewed as necessary to ensure that a system of free trade would be mutually beneficial (vs. classic liberals’ faith in the strength of the interdependence that results from trade: they did not foresee “the need for institutions to guarantee world peace”).

Ibid.

A significant shift in liberal thought (1930s)

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He differed from many liberal thinkers in emphasising the importance of “imperfections in the market”: the existence of producer groups, labour unions and so on meant that the liberal interpretation of markets as self-regulating was not matched by reality.

(State intervention at the domestic level) In his opinion, to avoid the negative consequences of economic recession, full employment should be the major goal of macroeconomic policy.

(State intervention at the international level) In his opinion, to avoid the desire to pursue protectionist policies to achieve full employment, he advocated cooperation: the world economy could be managed.

The failings of Marxism (in the Soviet Union), the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War > alerted him to the dangers of mercantilist policies.

Calls for state intervention in the market were “complementary” rather than a form of “replacement”.

Ibid.

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)

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Etymology: 1882, French: ‘to let be’; ‘to allow’; “to let people do as they think best”

18th & early 19th century (wealthier states of Europe and North America) – present (in many contemporary states).

Ibid.

Laissez-faire economics

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"In the modern world, political ideologies are largely defined by their attitude towards capitalism. Marxists want to overthrow it, liberals to curtail it extensively, conservatives to curtail it moderately. Those who maintain that capitalism is a excellent economic system, unfairly maligned, with little or no need for corrective government policy, are generally known as libertarians."

Hussain, Syed B. (2004)

Some of the top contemporary Libertarian think-tanks: Ludwig von Mises Institute Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Center for Libertarian Studies Cato Institute International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL)

Libertarianism

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Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973 )One of Mises’s notable contributions is his claim that socialism must fail economically. In a 1920 article, Mises argued that a socialist government could not make the economic calculations required to organize a complex economy efficiently.Mises believed that economic truths are derived from self-evident axioms and cannot be empirically tested. He laid out his view in his magnum opus, Human Action, and in other publications, although he failed to persuade many economists outside the Austrian school. Mises was also a strong proponent of laissez-faire; he advocated that the government not intervene anywhere in the economy.

Library of Economics and Liberty (econlib.org)

Austrian School of Economics

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Realists maintain that international politics is a struggle for power (Morgenthau, 1966, p.25), one where alliances are short-lived (Snyder, 2004) and “the state of nature is a state of war” (Waltz, 1979, p.102). In all, the end result of this predicted zero sum game bears semblance to the Hobbesian world of anarchy: insecure, brutal and bloody (Hobbes, 1651).Structural liberals argue that liberal institutions provide a platform for “transparency, access, representation, and communication” (Deudney and Ikenberry, 1999, p.186). Modelled after the Wilsonian structure, communication helps abridge effects of anarchy. According to Jervis (1985: 73-74), “extensive communication makes it easier for states to explain how and why they are behaving as they are, and to understand what others are doing”. When states communicate more, the probability of conflict greatly reduces. Hence, the end result of the liberal international system bears semblance to the Kantian’s version of world peace which, in theory, does not rule out the inevitability of perpetual peace but constantly pursues its possibility (Kant, 1991, 1970).

Victoria Fajemilehin, 2015 (e-ir.info)

Contemporary world order(according to Structural Liberals)

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ReferencesBrown, C., & Ainley, K. (2005). Understanding International Relations (3rd ed.). Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Centanni, E. (n.d.). What Is the Difference Between a State & a Government in International Politics? Retrieved February 09, 2016, from Synonym.com: http://classroom.synonym.com/difference-between-state-government-international-politics-6328.htmlDeudney, D., & Ikenberry , J. G. (1999, April). The Nature and Sources of Liberal International Order. Review of International Studies, 25(2), 179-196.Dunne, T., Kurki, M., & Smith, S. (2013). International Relations Theories (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.Fajemilehin, V. (2015, July 20). Neo-realism and Structural Liberalism: Can Anarchy Really Be Transcended? Retrieved February 09, 2016, from E-International Relations Students: http://www.e-ir.info/2015/07/20/neo-realism-and-structural-liberalism-can-anarchy-really-be-transcended/Freeden, M. (2015). Liberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.Herz, J. H. (2003 (1950)). The Security Dilemma in International Relations: Background and Present Problems. International Relations, 17(4), 411-416.Hussain, S. B. (2004). Encyclopedia of Capitalism (Vol. 2). Facts On File.Krauthammer, C. (1990, September 18). The Unipolar Moment. Retrieved February 09, 2016, from Foreign Affairs: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1991-02-01/unipolar-momentLapid, Y. (1989). The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-positivist Era. International Studies Quarterly, 33(3), 235–254.Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Norton.Mingst, K. A., & Arreguín-Toft, I. M. (2010). Essentials of International Relations (5th ed.). W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.Smith, R., El-Anis, I., & Farrands, C. (2010). International Political Economy in the 21st Century: Contemporary Issues and Analyses (1st ed.). Routledge.Smith, S. B. (2006). Introduction: What is Political Philosophy? Introduction to Political Philosophy. New Haven, Connecticut: Open Yale Courses.The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. (2008). Ludwig von Mises. Retrieved February 09, 2016, from Library of Economics and Liberty: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Mises.htmlWaltz, K. N. (2000). Structural Realism after the Cold War. International security, 25(1), 5-41.