COMPARATIVE THEORIES - REALISM VS LIBERALISM

REALISM

Role of the State

• States are the primary actors

• Morgenthau ‘a struggle for power’

International Anarchy

• absence of a global sovereign authority

• Mearsheimer’s ‘Power Politics’

Security Dilemma - John Herz

• defensive actions percieved as threats

Inevitability of War

• Mearsheimer’s ‘Statism’

• states are power maximisers

• Anarchy leads to War

• Thucydides ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer waht they must’

CLASSICAL VS STRUCTURAL

Classical Realists: Realism according to inherent human nature

Structural Realists: Realism based on the anarchic world order

LIBERALISM

Morality and Optimism

• Kantian Peace and Kant’s Democratic Peace Thesis

Complex Interdependence

• Keohane and Nye: States need one another

• Cobden and Bright’s ‘Web of Interdependence’

Cooperation and Harmony

• Adam Smith - Mutual Gains

Role of Intl. Organisations

• Channels between states: interstate / trans-gov / transactional relations

Hedley Bull - Society of States

Society of States formed under a common set of rules

Requires

• balance of power

• International Law

• Diplomacy

• Great Powers

Bull - ‘order in world politics has value’

Cooperation serves mutual interests

Hugo Grotius’ common law amongst nations

Realist criticism: ‘institutions have minimal influence on state behaviour’

MARXIST THEORIES

World-Systems Theory

• Wallerstein

• Global system of capitalist exploitation in which the core capitalist countries exploit the peripheral countries

Dependency Theory

• Peripheral Countries are the result of colonialism

• Purposefully kept poor and dependent

Structural Development Theory

• Prebisch and Lewis - new era of capitalist imperialism

• core benefits

Huntington - ‘Clash of Civilisations’

States Central Actors

• But shaped by their civilisations

Conflict

• Conflict as a re sult of these civilisational differences

Governments should protect national identity etc