POLI 150 Notes

Treaty of Westphalia

The treaty that created modern states and modern international relations. It established that the state had the primary loyalty of its people.

War Established Key Features of IR

1. States are the key political actors

2. States are sovereign and control affairs within their territories. 

3. There is no supra-state authority, meaning that the states interact in anarchy.

4. Europe would later export these features to much of the rest of the world.

Power

The ability of X to get Y to do something Y would ordinarily not do.

Absolute power

How much power a state has

Relative power

A state’s power relative to another’s

Positive Sum

An agreement that makes both parties better off than before

How do we know if a state is powerful?

1. Arable land

2. Labor force

3. Population

4. Technological development

5. Military forces

War

An event involving the organized use of military force by at least two parties that reaches a minimum threshold of severity…Amechanism for policy change. 

Crisis Bargaining

A bargaining interaction in which at least one actor threatens to use force if its demands are not met.

Coercive Diplomacy

The use of threats to advance specific demands in a bargaining interaction. 

Risk-return trade-off

In crisis bargaining, the trade-off between trying to get a better deal and trying to  avoid a war.

The Bargaining Model

The Bargaining Model is a framework in international relations that describes how states negotiate and settle disputes through a process of offers, threats, and concessions, often aiming to achieve a mutually acceptable outcome.

War as the result of Information Failure

• Since both sides try to get a better deal by overstating their military capabilities and willingness to fight. 

• One side may conclude that a deal cannot be reached

• And since that side may have an incentive to strike first to gain military advantage.

• We see a war begin.

What explains the absence of conflict between democratic states?

1. Coincidence

2. Endogeneity 

3. Cultural Explanations

4. Institutional Explanations

5. Institutions combined with survival

Tying Hands Strategy

• Place your forces in harm;s way

• If an aggressor escalates, they may harm your military forces. 

• And if they do, this puts your state at war. 

• Ex. Berlin Crises

• Alliances can be seen as a catalyst for war (WWI)

• Alliances did not escalate due to NATO during the Cold War.

Darfur Conflict

• Government of Sudan supports Janjaweed militia in Darfur region

• In four years, from 2003-2007, 200k-400k civilian fatalities.

• Many label this as a genocide.

• Current civil war is a conflict between remnants of Janjaweed.

• Jan 2025, US accuses Janjaweed remnants of genocide.

  • Both state and non-state actors can commit genocide.

Why do Civil Wars Persist?

• An obvious way to resolve these disputes is to share power based on each sides’ military strength.

• If each rebel group controls 20% of the territory, guarantee them 20% of the seats in the parliament.

• Same for each rebel group.The Paradoxical Danger of Peace

  
  
  

The Paradoxical Danger of Peace

• Peace is efficient, but it creates a commitment problem.

• A side that gains in power cannot credibly prevent itself from exploiting its opponent. 

• So any deal that is struck today may be unstable. 

Terrorism

A politically motivated attack by a non-state actor against non-combatant targets to influence a group larger than the immediate victims.

Shock and Randomness

• You don’t see fatalities from military strikes all that much, and you probably don’t think about them.

• Terrorists often mix with civilians, leading to attacks on terrorists inadvertently killing civilians.

Embedded Liberalism

Says that those who benefit from trade should compensate those who lose.

Hecksher-Ohlin Model

A theory in international trade that postulates countries export goods that utilize their abundant factors of production and import goods that utilize their scarce factors.

Stopler-Samuelson Extension

 Overtime, with no restrictions, prices of resources will equalize across states if there is perfect competition and technology is equal.

So if Trade is Beneficial?

• Remember the core assumptions – if they don’t hold, the predictions may be incorrect – things may not work out as perfectly as they do in theory. 

• Even if the theory is correct, dynamics can produce conflict between those with factors that are abundant and those with abundant factors.

• Abundant sectors benefit from free trade, whereas scarce factors may demand protection.

Capital Accounts

These are the financial accounts in a country's balance of payments that record all transactions involving the purchase and sale of assets, including investments and loans.

Bretton Woods System

• US dollar remains convertible into gold at $35 per ounce

• Fixed exchange rates decrease investor uncertainty – allow for financial capital to flow across borders.

• States maintain their currencies at plus or minus 1% of that fixed rate.

• States could buy and sell their own currencies.

End of the Bretton Woods System

• By the late 1960s, growing social spending and escalating Vietnam War create structural deficits in the US

• US does not have enough gold in Ft. Knox to redeem all dollars it issues

• States begin demanding that their dollars be redeemed into gold.

• US becomes effectively defaults: it cannot redeem all the dollars into gold

• Nixon closes gold window in 1971.

Case for Floating Exchange Rates

• Monetary policy autonomy

• Trade balance adjustments helped

Case for Fixed Exchange Rates

• Monetary discipline

• Speculation limited

• Uncertainty reduced

• Trade balance adjustment effects on inflation controlled.

International Causes of Poverty

• Europeans co-opt old empires, but change them based on their objectives of settler colonialism or extraction

• The concept of the state was also foreign – and new states lacked the apparatus needed to maintain them.

• Resource dependence and autocracy are endogenous to historic development and international relations

Development Theory

• Initial Stage - Societies are agrarian, economies will be based on barter and will be small

• But, over time – financial systems develop and industrialization takes place, so growth occurs rapidly

• After the industrialized period, service sector takes over, growth slows down. 

Neoliberal Model:

• Use the private sector for investment becasue gov’t intervention crowds out private investment.

• The goal is to expand the market’s power and weaken the state’s control.

• Think about this from the developing country perspective: asking you to weaken your own power, which is already tenuous.

• Criticism is that the power vacuum will be filled by multinational from the core

The Washington Consensus

1. Global south needs to adopt fiscal discipline and balance budgets.

2. Decreasing taxes, competitive exchange rates.

3. Trade liberalization

4. Privatization