GG Exam 1

Strategic interdependence

Situations where the outcome depends on the joint behavior of multiple actors who make decisions by anticipating the actions of others.

States

Political entities governed by a collection of political officials within legally defined territorial borders, possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

Non-state actors

Politically significant entities that do not represent a particular state

• multinational corporations (MNCs), transnational activists, labor unions, and terrorist organizations.

National interest

Broad political, economic, and social goals that motivate the foreign policies pursued by states

Anarchy

The absence of a supranational authority or world government that can dictate state behavior or enforce agreements between countries.

Sovereignty

A state's right to rule within its territory without external intervention, a status that must be recognized by other states in the international system.

Self-enforcing agreements

Because of anarchy, international agreements must be structured so that actors have strong incentives to cooperate and no incentive to unilaterally break their commitments.

Actors

(or agents) are purposive, goal-oriented individuals or groups.

Structures

the overarching properties, rules, and arrangements that connect actors and constrain or constitute their behavior

Interests and capabilities

Interests define what actors want, while capabilities refer to the military, political, and economic resources a state can draw upon in bargaining situations to achieve those goals.

Material and ideational aspects of structure:

• Material components refer to physical characteristics, like the distribution of military power.

• Ideational components are collectively held ideas, such as norms or subjective understandings of identity.

Constraining vs. constituting types of structure:

• Constraining structures put limits on the options available to actors (e.g., military capabilities limiting the use of force).

• Constituting structures create meaning and shape the identities and fundamental interests of actors.

Prisoner’s dilemma

A scenario illustrating the challenges of cooperation, where interdependent actors face a dominant incentive to defect and free-ride, leading to a worse outcome for everyone than if they had cooperated

Theory

A simplifying abstraction, much like a map, that specifies relationships between concepts to explain phenomena and generalize across classes of events.

Independent variable

The cause or explanatory factor in a relationship.

Dependent variable

The effect or outcome being explained.

Causal theory

Explains how and why some outcome comes into existence by specifying the relationship between independent and dependent variables

Causal mechanisms

The intermediate processes that connect a cause to its effect, answering exactly how or why the relationship occurs

Constitutive theory

Identifies the components that make up a concept or variable

• inseparable from the whole (e.g., how shared language constitutes ethnic identity), rather than looking at temporal cause and effect.

Democratic peace theory

A causal theory claiming that pairs of democratic states are much less likely to go to war against each other compared to other regime pairings.

Collective identity

The membership rules, shared beliefs, and political goals that include or exclude individuals from a group, binding them together.

Normative theory

Theories that use ethical principles and values to prescribe what the world should be like, rather than explaining what it empirically is.

Treaties

Formal instruments of international law that specify expectations and obligations that states voluntarily ratify.

Externalities

The costs or benefits that accrue to parties who are not directly involved in an interaction, such as pollution or trade war spillovers.

Distributional claims or stakes

The reality that cooperative policies create distinct "winners" and "losers," rearranging the distribution of welfare both domestically and internationally

Transaction costs

The costs involved in making exchanges or coordinating policies, such as calculating varying exchange rates or dealing with different measurement systems

Public goods

Goods that are non-excludable (no one can be prevented from enjoying them) and non-rivalrous (one's use doesn't diminish it for others), like national defense.

Collective action & the Free-rider problem

• Because actors can enjoy public goods without paying for them, they have an incentive to "free-ride," meaning collective action often fails and public goods are underprovided.

• Coordination problems: Situations where actors deeply want to coordinate on the same standard or policy, but disagree on which one to choose because of the unequal costs of adjustment

Enforcement & Noncompliance

Enforcement is the punishment for failing to abide by obligations (noncompliance)

Hegemonic stability theory

The theory that global public goods, like enforcement and stability, are only reliably provided when a single dominant great power (hegemon) is willing and capable of enforcing the rules.

Diffuse enforcement

Instead of a central police force, enforcement occurs when individual states take it upon themselves to retaliate against rule-breakers (e.g., in trade disputes)

Nondiscrimination and reciprocity

Nondiscrimination means a country must treat the same products from all trading partners equally.

Reciprocity means if one country lowers trade barriers, its partners must do the same

Principal-agent relationship & Delegation

A framework where states (principals) cede or delegate autonomy to an international organization (agent) to carry out a specific task

Agent drift and shirking

 Problems in delegation where an agent either fails to do what it was contracted to do (shirking) or shifts its mandate toward new tasks the principal didn't intend (drift)

Legalization

The process of structuring interactions through law, which exists on a continuum from informal norms to soft law to formal treaties

Customary international law

Unstated but widely understood behaviors that are so routine they attain the status of international law

Soft law

Agreements that are relatively formal but lack strict binding obligations or specific enforcement mechanisms

Obligation, Precision, and Delegation

The three dimensions of international law.

• Obligation is the scale of binding expectations.

• Precision is the clarity of the rules.

• Delegation is the degree of authority granted to third parties, like courts, to interpret the law

“Shallow” vs. “deep” cooperation

Shallow cooperation refers to agreements that ask states to do what they were already doing.

Deep cooperation requires states to make substantial, meaningful changes to their behavior

Legitimacy

The belief that a rule or law is fair and ought to be obeyed, which generates a pull for compliance even without forceful enforcement

Procedural fairness

Rules that treat all actors the same, regardless of their identity or power

Legal consistency

When legal principles are applied evenly across different cases over time

Logic of consequences vs. logic of appropriateness

• Consequences refers to actors making decisions based on calculations of material costs and benefits

• Appropriateness refers to actors behaving according to what is expected of them as members of a social community

Taboo

A highly specific norm that constitutes a powerful prohibition against a behavior (like using nuclear weapons), making it practically unthinkable

Norm entrepreneurs

Individuals or organizations that actively disseminate information and advocate for the adoption of new norms

Epistemic communities

Transnational networks of scientists, activists, and policymakers who share knowledge and raise awareness around a specific policy issue

Human rights & Physical integrity rights

Human rights are fundamental values regarding how all people should be treated.

Physical integrity rights are the most foundational of these, guaranteeing freedom from arbitrary violence, torture, and death

Naming and shaming

A tactic used by NGOs to publicize a state's human rights violations to generate international and domestic social pressure

Climate change/global warming

The gradual increase in the Earth’s average net temperature driven primarily by human activities

Greenhouse gases & Carbon sinks

Greenhouse gases are carbon emissions produced by fossil fuels that trap heat.

Carbon sinks are natural reservoirs (like forests and oceans) that absorb these emissions, and their destruction accelerates climate change

Temperature change “signal-to-noise” ratio

 A metric determining vulnerability.

The "signal" is the local average temperature change, and the "noise" is natural year-to-year fluctuation.
Regions with a high ratio (low noise) are adapted to very stable climates and are highly vulnerable to warming

Common pool resources & the tragedy of the commons

Resources that are non-excludable but rivalrous (one person's use diminishes it for others). Without regulation, self-interest leads to the tragedy of the commons, where the shared resource is overused and completely destroyed

Carbon caps & cap and trade

Carbon caps are limits set on a country's total emissions.

Cap and trade (Emissions Trading Schemes) is a market system where countries that reduce emissions below their cap can sell their excess "pollution rights" to countries struggling to meet their targets