PWAD 250 Theories

PWAD 250 Theories and Logic and how they interact with eachother

Human nature realism

Morgenthau: States compete for power because the people who lead them have a desire for power and domination. The logic begins with human nature: leaders bring these impulses into foreign policy, making struggles for power a recurring feature of international politics. This is a first-image explanation because it locates the source of conflict in people. Waltz disagrees with its starting point: he argues that competition would recur even if leaders did not want to dominate, because states must survive in an anarchic international system.

Structural or defensive realism

Waltz: Anarchy pushes states to provide for their own survival, which repeatedly produces security competition and balances of power. Because no authority above states can guarantee protection, states watch others’ capabilities, build their own strength, form alliances, and sometimes copy successful rivals. One state’s defensive steps can alarm another, creating a security dilemma even when neither wants war. Waltz predicts recurring balances of power, difficulty cooperating because dependence creates vulnerability, and greater stability in bipolar than multipolar systems because there are fewer opportunities for miscalculation. This is a third-image theory: the system’s structure matters more than any particular leader’s personality. Your Waltz reading also emphasizes that nuclear deterrence made direct major war during the Cold War less likely.

Offensive realism

Mearsheimer: Great powers seek as much power as they can, ultimately aiming for regional hegemony. States want to survive, but anarchy, other states’ offensive capabilities, and uncertainty about their future intentions mean that a state cannot be sure how much power will be enough. Gaining a dominant position is therefore the safest strategy available. A regional hegemon will also try to prevent another great power from dominating its own region. Like Waltz, Mearsheimer expects self-help, competition, balancing, and difficult cooperation; unlike Waltz, he expects great powers to pursue power more aggressively. In the assigned reading, he uses this logic to argue that a sufficiently powerful China would seek dominance in Asia and face U.S. opposition.

Offense-defense theory

Glaser: Anarchy creates a security dilemma, but its intensity varies, so severe competition and war are not inevitable. The key questions are whether it is easier to attack or defend and whether states can distinguish weapons and behavior meant for defense from those meant for offense. When defense has the advantage and defensive intentions are easier to recognize, states can make themselves safer without frightening others as much. When offense has the advantage or intentions are hard to distinguish, spirals of fear become more likely. Glaser’s reading applies this less fatalistic realist view to China: its rise creates risks, particularly around Taiwan, but choices and circumstances affect whether rivalry leads to war. This directly challenges Mearsheimer’s stronger expectation of intense competition.

Liberal institutionalism

Oye and Keohane: Self-interested states can cooperate under anarchy when the conditions make cooperation worthwhile and sustainable. Oye argues that the payoffs, the prospect of repeated interaction (the “shadow of the future”), and the number of participants affect whether states can cooperate. Cooperation matters where states could benefit from acting together but have reasons to defect; institutions are less relevant in harmony, where cooperation already comes naturally, or deadlock, where states lack a shared interest. Keohane explains how regimes help: they provide information, establish rules, ease negotiation, monitor behavior, and make future consequences of cheating more significant. Both accept anarchy and state self-interest, but reject the idea that these conditions always prevent cooperation

Democratic peace theory

Owen- Liberal democracies are especially unlikely to fight wars against one another. The theory does not say democracies are peaceful toward every state. As your guide puts Owen’s argument, liberal ideology + democratic institutions = democratic peace: liberal citizens and leaders tend to see other liberal democracies as legitimate and less threatening, while domestic institutions give those views political influence and constrain decisions about war. Shared expectations also support trust and negotiation. The realist critique in your guide, associated with Rosato, questions whether democratic norms actually transfer to foreign policy and whether democratic leaders are as constrained as the theory suggests. Unlike institutionalism, this theory focuses particularly on regime type and relations between democracies.

Economic interdependence and trade expectations

Copeland: Economic ties can encourage either peace or conflict, depending especially on what states expect will happen to trade in the future. The peaceful logic is that war would sacrifice valuable trade, and groups that benefit from trade may oppose conflict. The dangerous logic is that dependence can create vulnerability: if leaders expect to lose access to crucial markets or resources, they may see conflict as preferable to waiting. Copeland’s reading argues that both the liberal emphasis on trade’s benefits and the realist emphasis on vulnerability capture part of the picture. So be careful with the simpler line in your key-term list, “more dependence means less war”: Copeland’s central argument is conditional. This theory connects directly to the realist concern that dependence can make a state less secure.

Ideas Constructivism and foreign policy

Goldstein and Keohane: The ideas decision-makers hold help explain which policies states choose. Material interests matter, but facts do not tell leaders on their own what their goals should be or which actions will achieve them. World views shape broad understandings, principled beliefs concern what is right or wrong, and causal beliefs concern what actions will produce particular results. Ideas can give leaders a road map under uncertainty, help them settle on a course of action, and keep influencing policy after becoming embedded in institutions. This approach agrees with rational accounts that leaders make choices, but argues that we need to know their beliefs to understand those choices.

Identities Constructivism

Wendt: anarchy does not, by itself, require states to treat one another as enemies or rely exclusively on self-help. States develop understandings of who they and others are through interaction; those identities shape what they see as threatening and what they want. Repeated hostile behavior can create a competitive, distrustful relationship, while different interactions can produce more cooperative expectations. Wendt therefore challenges Waltz’s and Mearsheimer’s assumption that anarchy necessarily leads to the kind of self-help competition they describe. The realist response in your guide is that this approach may give too little weight to material power and persistent uncertainty about other states.

Rational actor, organizational process, and bureaucratic politics

Allison and Welch: How we understand a state’s foreign policy depends partly on how we understand decisions within its government. Model I, the rational actor model, treats the government as a unified actor choosing a policy based on goals, costs, and benefits. Model II, organizational process, sees policy as shaped by the routines and limits of the organizations carrying it out. Model III, bureaucratic politics, sees policy as an outcome of bargaining among officials with different positions and influence. Welch agrees that governments are more complicated than a single rational actor, but argues that Models II and III have not become clear, well-supported general theories that replace Model I. Know the differences among all three, but that these models will not be one of the theories you are asked to compare in the essay.

Individual-level approaches

Neack and Post: A leader’s beliefs, personality, experiences, and habits of thinking can affect foreign policy. Leaders must interpret information and choose among possible actions, so differences in how they perceive threats, handle uncertainty, or weigh risks can produce different decisions. Neack explains how cognition and leadership orientation shape those judgments. Post’s Camp David reading illustrates how Sadat’s and Begin’s contrasting personalities affected negotiation and how understanding them helped Carter. These are first-image explanations. Your professor said to know the general idea rather than memorize every specific bias; unlike bureaucratic politics, the focus is on how a person thinks, rather than who has influence in a bargaining process.