Download World Politics Exam #1 Study Guide and more Study notes Political Science in PDF only on Docsity!
Exam #1 Combined Outlines
Political Science 1
Tyler Woods CHAPTER 1 I. What Is International Relations? ● International relations is the study of the interactions among the various actors within and across international borders, including states, their leaders, government bureaucracies, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and individuals, and how they participate in international politics. ● It is the study of the behaviors of these actors as they participate individually and together in international political processes. While international activities have historically resulted from decisions taken by central governments and heads of state, increasingly, these activities involve different actors, some of whom you influence directly. II. Thinking Theoretically ● Theories provide a framework through which to understand everyday events in international relations and to answer the basic foundational questions, such as the question raised in the introduction to the chapter about whether international relations is becoming more or less violent. The most prominent perspectives are: ○ Realism: states exist in an anarchic international system. Each state bases its policies on an interpretation of national interest defined in terms of power. Thus, the structure of the international system is determined by the distribution of power among states. ○ Liberalism: human nature is basically good. States frequently cooperate and follow international norms and procedures that have been mutually agreed on. Much of international politics is about mutual gain rather than conflict. ○ Constructivism: the key structures in the state system are not material but instead are intersubjective and social. The interest of states and the principles of the international system are not fixed, but rather are malleable and ever-changing. ● These differing theoretical perspectives highlight distinct aspects of international relations and lead to the development of competing theories. Competition
between theories helps reveal their strengths and weaknesses and spurs subsequent refinements. III. Developing the Answers ● Scholars employ a variety of methods to understand international relations: ○ History: history invites its students to acquire detailed knowledge of specific events and understand narratives of political change. But it can also be used to test generalizations and explain the relationships among various events. An example is Thucydides's use of history to understand the causes of the war between Athens and Sparta. However, the "lessons" of history are rarely clear or without controversy, as in the case of the Vietnam War. ○ Philosophy: much classical philosophy, such as that of Plato and Aristotle, focuses on the state and its leaders, as well as on methods of analysis. Philosophers after the classical era, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, focused on the basic characteristics of people and society and how those characteristics might in turn influence the character of the international system. The study of philosophy has contributed to the development of international relations by calling attention to fundamental relationships: between the individual and society, between individuals in society, and between societies. ○ History and philosophy permit us to delve into the foundational questions: the nature of humanity and the broad characteristics of the state and international society. They allow us to speculate on the normative (or moral) elements in political life, highlighting issues of right and wrong in the study of international relations:
- What should be the role of the state?
- What ought to be the norms in international society?
- How might international society be structured to achieve order? ○ The scientific method: Behavioralism proposes that individuals, both alone and in groups such as states, act in patterned and predictable ways. Behavioral scientists suggest plausible hypotheses regarding those patterned actions and test them with facts and data. Behavioralists stress that hypotheses must be "falsifiable"; that is, researchers should lay out explicitly what patterns of evidence are and are not consistent with particular hypotheses. Some behavioral scholars hope to predict future behavior. An example of the behavioral method is the Correlates of War project, which sought to understand why wars occur by collecting historical data about wars and looking for patterns. Some people have become
states. Furthermore, sovereignty rests with the regime, not with individual leaders. ● The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) devastated Europe. But the treaties that ended the conflict, the Treaties of Westphalia, had a profound impact on the practice of international relations in three ways:
- They embraced the notion of sovereignty: that the sovereign enjoyed exclusive rights within a given territory, and that these rights were recognized as legitimate by other states. They also established that states could determine their own domestic policies and religion in their own geographic spaces, and they advanced the right of noninterference in the affairs of other states.
- Leaders sought to establish their own permanent national militaries, rather than relying on temporary or less reliable forces such as mercenaries. The state thus became more powerful since it had to collect taxes to pay for these militaries, and leaders assumed absolute control over the troops, all of which increased centralized control.
- They 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. ● The most important social theorist of the time was Scottish economist Adam Smith. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , Smith argued that the notion of a market that allows for the pursuit of self-interest would maximize individual and collective welfare. ○ With groups of individuals rationally pursuing their self-interests, economic efficiency of the system is enhanced, as well as the wealth of the state and the international system. This theory has had a profound effect on debates about states' economic policies, for example, by suggesting that the most straightforward path to raising national wealth was through removing restrictions on international trade. III. Europe in the Nineteenth Century ● The American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) ushered in the new century, which started with the Napoleonic Wars, followed by a period of relative peace in the international system, and a race to imperial and colonial expansion. ● The aftermath of revolution: core principles ○ Legitimacy: absolutist rule is subject to limits and imposed by humanity. ○ Nationalism: the masses identify with their common past, language, customs, and practices. Individuals who share such characteristics are
motivated to participate actively in the political process as a group. In earlier periods, the idea of national identity was much weaker. ● The Napoleonic Wars ○ Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as the military and political leader in France after the revolution and led successful campaigns to conquer much of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). ● Peace at the core of the European system ○ Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the establishment of peace by the Congress of Vienna, the Concert of Europe (consisting of the five powers, Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia) ushered in a period of relative peace that lasted for decades, despite a rapidly changing world. ○ At least three factors explain the peace:
- European elites were united in their fear of revolution from the masses; the absence of war made the overthrow of existing regimes less likely.
- Two of the major issues confronting the core European states were internal: the unifications of Germany and Italy. Although both unifications were finally solidified through small local wars, a general war was averted because Germany and Italy were preoccupied with territorial unification.
- The complex and crucial phenomenon of imperialism-colonialism, as European states played out their rivalries in distant places by strategizing to increase and consolidate their colonial possessions in Africa and Asia. ● Imperialism and colonialism in the European system ○ The wealth discovered in the New World led to competition among European powers who became empires and, upon conquest, claimed as sovereign territory the lands that indigenous peoples occupied. ○ By the close of the nineteenth century, almost the whole of the globe was "ruled" by European states through imperialism and colonialism. ○ Motivations for colonialism included economic gains, cultural and religious reasons, and political competition. ○ The major powers divided most of Africa during the 1885 Congress of Berlin. In Asia, only Japan and Siam (Thailand) were not under direct European or U.S. influence. ○ The struggle for economic prowess led to reckless exploitation of the colonial areas, particularly in Africa and Asia. ○ This process helped establish a common "European" identity based on their being Christian, "civilized," and white, which was in contrast with the "other" in the non-European territories that they ruled. ● Balance of power ○ The period of peace in Europe in the nineteenth century was managed and preserved for so long because of the concept of balance of power.
of preventing another world war, in part because the United States refused to join. ○ Fourth, a vision of the post-World War I liberal order, as spelled out in Wilson's Fourteen Points, was a vision that was stillborn from the start. The world economy was in collapse; thus, the economic liberalism called for in Wilson's Fourteen Points was never adopted and German fascism wreaked havoc on the plan for postwar peace. Realism replaced liberalism as the dominant international relations theory. ● World War II ○ The power of fascism (in the German, Italian, and Japanese versions) led to the uneasy alliance between the communist Soviet Union and the liberal United States, Britain, and France. When World War II broke out, this alliance (the Allies) fought against the Axis powers in unison. ○ At the end of the war, the Allies had succeeded. Both the German Reich and imperial Japan lay in ruins, while Italy was conquered and occupied. ○ The prosecution of war crimes committed by leaders in Germany and Japan led to the expansion of international humanitarian law through the Geneva Conventions of 1948 and 1949. ○ The use of an atomic bomb by the United States against Japan was decisive in ending the war, and marks the only occasions to date in which nuclear weapons were used in war. ○ The end of World War II resulted in a major redistribution of power toward two new "superpowers" and changed political borders in Europe and Asia. V. The Cold War ● Origins of the Cold War ○ The most important outcome of World War II was the emergence of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, as the primary actors in the international system and the decline of Western Europe as the epicenter of international politics. ○ The second outcome of the war was the recognition of fundamental incompatibilities between these two superpowers in both national interests and ideology. ■ Russia used its newfound power to solidify its sphere of influence in the buffer states of Eastern Europe. The Soviet state also embraced Marxist ideology, which holds that under capitalism, one class (the bourgeoisie) controls the means of production. The solution to the problem of class rule is revolution, wherein the exploited proletariat takes control by using the state to seize the
means of production. Thus, capitalism is replaced by socialism. Soviet client states in Eastern Europe adopted regimes and economic policies modeled on those of the Soviet Union. ■ The United States put the notion of containment of the Soviet Union into action in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, which aimed to limit the spread of Soviet influence around the world. After the Soviets blocked western transportation corridors to Berlin, containment became the fundamental doctrine of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. In addition, the U.S. economic system was based on capitalism, which provided opportunities to individuals to pursue what was economically rational with little or no government interference. ■ Differences between the two superpowers were exacerbated by mutual misperceptions and distrust. The Marshall Plan and the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) were taken as a campaign to deprive the Soviet Union of its influence in Germany. Likewise, the Berlin blockade was interpreted by the West as a hostile offensive action meant to spread Soviet influence over Germany and Western Europe. ○ The third outcome of World War II was the end of the colonial system, beginning with Britain's grant of independence to India in 1947. Indochina and the African states became independent in close succession in the 1950s and 1960s. ○ The fourth outcome was the realization that the differences between the two superpowers would be played out indirectly, on third-party stages, rather than through direct confrontation between the two protagonists. The superpowers vied for influence in newly independent states as a way to project power. The Cold War resulted in the globalization of conflict to all continents. As a reaction to confrontations between the United States and the Soviet Union, some countries in the so-called Third World began embracing new ideas. ● The Cold War as a series of confrontations ○ The Cold War (1945-89) can be characterized as 45 years of high-level tension and competition between the superpowers but with no direct military conflict. Nuclear weapons created a deterrence stalemate. ○ More often than not, the allies of each superpower became involved, so the confrontations comprised two blocs of states: the NATO countries in Western Europe along with the United States, and the members of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe.
● The Cold War was also "fought" and moderated in words, at summits (meetings between leaders), and in treaties. ○ Some of these summits were successful, such as the 1967 Glassboro summit that began the loosening of tensions known as détente. Treaties, such as the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), placed self-imposed limitations on nuclear arms. VI. The Immediate Post-Cold War Era ● The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the Cold War, but actually its end was gradual. As early as the mid-1980s, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had set in motion two domestic processes, glasnost (political openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). ● Gorbachev's domestic reforms also led to changes in the orientation of Soviet foreign policy. He suggested that members of the UN Security Council become "guarantors of regional security" and that the rivalry between the superpowers could end. ● The first post-Cold War test of the new so-called new world order came in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990, after which the United Nations agreed to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. ● During the 1990s, countries sought to find new identifies and interests. It was a decade marked by dual realities (which sometimes converged and diverged), the first being U.S. primacy in international affairs and the second being civil and ethnic strife. ○ Yugoslavia's violent disintegration played itself out over the entire decade despite Western attempts to resolve the conflict peacefully. ○ At the same time, the world witnessed ethnic tension and violence as genocide in Rwanda and Burundi went unchallenged by the international community. ○ U.S. primacy is still not able to prevent ethnic conflict, civil wars, and human rights abuses from occurring; there are limits to American power. VII. The New Millennium: The First Two Decades ● On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed deadly, and economically destructive, terrorist attacks against two important cities in the United States. These attacks set into motion a U.S.-led global war on terrorism.
○ In 2001, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which was providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. ○ Following the overthrow of the Taliban, the United States, convinced that Iraq maintained weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and supported terrorist organizations, attempted to build support in the United Nations for authorization to remove Saddam Hussein from power. When the United Nations failed to back the U.S. request, the United States built its own coalition, which overthrew the Iraqi government in 2003. Iraq remains torn by sectarian violence. And while most American troops left Afghanistan in 2014, the country remains mired in civil conflict. ○ In fall 2008, a financial crisis in the United States quickly spread to the European Union and eventually to the developing world, leading to the deepest worldwide recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the European Union many members that had adopted the common monetary unit struggled to repay or refinance government debt, which led to serious tensions in the union. ○ The "Arab Spring," which started in 2011, led to the overthrow of corrupt leaders across the Middle East and North Africa, and also led others to make concessions. However, it had uneven success in increasing democracy across the Middle East and North Africa. On the one hand, it demonstrated the power of the people to change government peacefully. On the other hand, it gave rise to the Islamic State, which a coalition of Western states led by the United States and Turkey are combating. ○ China's military spending and its dredging of sand onto coral reefs in the disputed waters of the Spartly Islands are both issues currently of concern. ○ Populist and nationalist reactions to economic and political globalization, which has led to increased interest in protectionism and isolationism, are currently on the rise in Europe and the United States. CHAPTER 3 I. Thinking Theoretically ● A theory is a collection of propositions that seek to explain phenomena by specifying the relationships among the concepts; the concept being explained is the dependent variable; the concepts that are thought to do the explaining are the explanatory variables.
argue that the norms associated with various types of identities can influence state behavior, and thus international politics, in important ways. III. Realism ● Realism focus most attention on the state and the international system. Realists view states as unitary actors that pursue their own national interests, defined in terms of power, when they act within the anarchic international system. ● States exist in an anarchic international system, which is characterized by the absence of an authoritative hierarchy such as a world government. Therefore, states must rely on themselves for security. This is achieved by increasing their power through the acquisition of the material resources that are necessary to harm or coerce other states. ● A state can increase power in two possible ways: (1) through war or (2) by balancing against powerful states. ● The roots of realism ○ Realism comes from a long historical and philosophical tradition. ○ Four of the essential assumptions of realism are found as far back in history as Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War , which was written in the 400s BCE.
- The state is the principal actor in war and in politics in general.
- The state is assumed to be a unitary actor: once a decision is made, the state speaks and acts with one voice.
- States are assumed to be rational actors, who make decisions by weighing the costs and benefits of various options against the goal to be achieved. Rational decisions are taken with the goal of advancing the national interest.
- A state needs to protect itself from enemies both foreign and domestic. A state augments its security by increasing its domestic capacities, building up its economic prowess, and forming alliances with other states. ○ Saint Augustine (354-430) added the assumption that humanity is flawed, egoistic, and selfish, although not predetermined to be this way. He blames war on this basic characteristic of humanity. ○ Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) argued that individuals in a state of nature have a right to preserve themselves including through the use of force. It follows, therefore, that states in an anarchic international system have the same right. Hobbes concluded that the best solution was a powerful prince, an international sovereign that can enforce rules.
○ In sum, the central tenet accepted by virtually all realists is that states exist in an anarchic international system, in which they prioritize self-preservation and seek power. ● Realism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ○ Hans Morgenthau (1904-80) argued that international politics is a struggle for military and economic power. ○ This constant struggle for power leads states to be concerned with relative rather than absolute gains. Relative gains refer to the amount one state gains relative to another, whereas absolute gains refer to how much one state gains for itself. States that gain more relative to another have a security advantage. ○ Concern for relative gains can lead to a security dilemma, in which an increase power in one state leads other states to respond by increasing their own power, which leads to a spiral that results in permanent tensions and power conflicts. ○ Realists seek to manage power through internal and external balancing. Internal balancing occurs when a state builds up its own military to protect against more powerful states. External balancing occurs when a state creates alliances with other states to offset the power of more powerful states. ○ Not all realists agree on policy. Defensive realists argue that all states should pursue policies of restraint. Offensive realists argue that under conditions of international anarchy, all states should seek opportunities to improve their relative positions and that states should strive for power. ● Neorealism ○ Realism is not a single unified theory but a family of related arguments. As delineated by Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics , realism gives precedence to the structure of the international system over individuals and states as an explanatory factor. ○ Neorealism advances two normative arguments and one theoretical argument. The first normative argument is that we need theory to understand international politics. The second normative argument is that neorealism explains international politics since the advent of the Westphalian state system. The theoretical argument is that the amount of peace and war in an anarchic international system depends critically on the distribution of power. ○ Neorealists posit that it is the structure of the system and the distribution of power within it that determines outcomes. The power distribution of the system can be one of three possible forms: unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar. Some neorealist argue that unipolarity increases the likelihood
○ Other liberal theories build on the work of Immanuel Kant to argue that democracy, economic interdependence and international institutions contribute to peace. These theorists developed the democratic peace and commercial peace theories, and have also showcased the importance of international institutions. V. Constructivism ● This theory explains international politics by focusing on the norms and identities of individuals and states. The identities of states and the norms that stem from these identities influence states' behavior. When states have divergent identities, it can lead them to have interests and ideals that are opposed to one another. ● Another aspect of constructivism's major theoretical proposition is that neither objects (such as states) nor concepts (such as anarchy) have any necessary, fixed, or objective meaning; rather, their meanings are constructed through social interaction. For example, constructivists believe that state behavior is shaped by elite beliefs, identities, and social norms. ● As a result, constructivists believe that identities, including state identity are socially constructed, and that state behavior is shaped by beliefs about itself and others as well as its own interests. These interests are the result of its socially constructed identities which itself is not fixed and changes overtime. ● Constructivists see power in discursive terms: the power of ideas, culture, and language are as important as material sources of power. Change can thus occur not only through coercion, but also through diffusion of ideas or the internationalization of norms and socialization. ● Until recently, constructivism remained mainly a powerful tool of criticism rather than a program capable of predicting outcomes. VI. The Radical Perspective ● Radicalism assumes the primacy of economics for explaining virtually all other phenomena, including international politics. ● Marxism ○ The writings of Karl Marx (1818-83), who developed a theory of the evolution of capitalism based on economic change and class conflict, are fundamental to all radical thought. ○ An important set of radical theory centers on the structure of the global system. That structure is the by-product of imperialism, or the expansion of certain economic forms into other areas of the world.
○ John A. Hobson theorized that expansion occurs because of overproduction of goods in developed countries, underconsumption by workers in developed states, and oversavings by the upper class in the developed world. This leads to imperialism in less-developed areas and rivalry for markets among developed countries. ○ Radical theorists emphasize that the domination and suppression that arise from uneven economic development are inherent in the capitalist system, enabling the dominant states to exploit the underdogs. ● Dependency theory ○ This theory focuses on the consequences of imperial expansion within the states where it has occurred. ○ It attributes primary importance to the role of multinational corporations based in developed countries (dominant states) in establishing and maintaining dependency relationships in developing countries. ○ These dominant states and multinational corporations obtain cheap primary products from dependent states and use them to produce manufactured goods, which are more expensive than the primary products, that are sold to the dependent state. ○ Over time, this increases inequality and underdevelopment. Dependency theorists are pessimistic about the possibility of change. VII. Feminist Critiques of IR Theory ● Feminist international relations (IR) theory shares many of constructivism's assumptions. ● It argues specifically that social discourse has been dominated by men and that the exclusion of women's voices affects the questions we ask and how we evaluate the answers. ● According to some versions of feminist IR theory, the world would be more peaceful and just if women played a greater role in domestic and international affairs. This view is shared by realists and liberal feminists. ● Radical feminists view the international system (as well as domestic politics) as patriarchal. Women will be in a subservient position until this changes. ● Feminists advance novel critiques of longer-standing IR theories. J. Ann Tickner, for example, argues that classical realism is fundamentally masculine in its argument that human nature is fixed and that power is defined by physical control and domination. ● Many see the solution as a broadening of the discourse about international politics beyond a male perspective, which would alter the criteria by which foreign and other policies are assessed.
