PSC 1003

Fall 2025

Hobbes

Classical Realist

People are equal in body and mind

Competition, Diffidence, and Glory

State of Nature=State of War

Humans are also driven by: Fear of Death, Desire for comfortable Living, and Hope for Attaining Peace

Leviathan

Thucydides

Melian and Athens conflict

Carr

Classical Realist

Critiques Utopian Idealism

• Idealists believed in peace through law and morality, but ignored power dynamics

• Realism as corrective: Carr argues that international politics is driven by power, not ideals.

• Three types of power: Military, economic, and ideological.

• Balance of power: Essential for stability; moral principles must be grounded in reality.

• Limits of realism: Carr warns against pure cynicism—morality still matters, but must be tempered by practical concerns

Bull

Countries aren’t Wild Animals

Hobbes isn’t just about Chaos

There is Order without a World govt

Hobbes Was more balanced than people think

Peace comes from shared norms, not power

Waltz

Neo-Realist (Defensive)

IP is structured by Anarchy

Structure Determines Outcome

States are the primary actors

Self-Help and the Security Dilemma

Balance of power is inevitable: Bipolar is the most stable because fewer actors means less uncertainty.

Mearsheimer

Neo-Realist (offensive realist)

Great powers possess offensive military capabilities

Primary goal of each state is survival

Balancing vs. Bandwagoning

The best way to ensure survival is to have more power

Systems encourages states to act more agressively

Global Hegemony is impossible

Krasner

Neo-Realism

State-power theory of trade

4 goals: aggregate national income, social stability, political power, economic growth

Overall pattern of trade depends on how economic power is distributed on states (unipolar, multipolar, or bipolar). Open trading systems is where the leading power can underwrite and enforce rules. There is a preference for openess by Hegemons.

Ex. Early 19th century Britain and post-wwII US coincide with greater trade openess

Jervis

Liberalism

Security Dillemma: situation in which one state’s defensive measures appear offensive to others

O-D Balance: When offense has the edge, striking first is easier and more rewarding; when defense prevails, fortifications and geography favor holding ground.

WW1: Officials thought striking first would be more beneficial

WW2: states shifted to favor defensive measures

Keohane

Liberalism

Regimes form because of anticipated functional benefits, to clarify rights & expectations, but property rights, uncertainty, and transaction costs can get in the way.

Regimes work by enforcement, spread of information, and reciprocity. Their role is to monitor behavior and faciliate exchanges. Defection, Free-riding, and information gaps can get in the way.

Wendt

Constructivist

Anarchy doesn’t dictate hostility. States dictate that thru socially constructed norms

Change is possible: we can build more cooperative international cultures

Focus on identity and discourse matters as much as material power

Finnemore

Constructivist

asks how states know what they want - why they pursue some goals and not others. Argues that interests are not pre-given or purely material but emerge from the international social structure of shared meanings and values

States interest shift as norms evolve.

Explains origins and transformation of states goals

Katzenstein

Constructivism

Explains role of IOs in shaping norms and socialization.

Norms, culture, and identity matter.

interests emerge through interactions rather than existing as fixed goals

IOs can socialize states into accpeting new security goals and methods by providing forums where norms are debated (UN), offer expert knowledge and technical assistance, reward compliance through prestiege and material benefits

Lipson

Democratic Peace Theory

Claims that constitutional democracies are unusually good at making and keeping bargains.

Democracies rarely fight other democracies because they can reliably negotialte and enforce settlements rather than resorting to war

Credible commitments, audience and reputational costs, institutionalized bargaining

Rosato

Democratic Peace Theory

States that the DPT is flawed

Democracies are not always peaceful

Kant

Democratic Peace Theory

Blueprint for lasting peace in preliminary (immediate steps) and Definitive (later steps)

Pre: No secret treaties, No acquisition of territory by force, abolition of standing armies, no national debts for external purposes, no interference in constitutions of other governments in other countries, no acts of hostility during peace negotiations

Def: Civil constitutions shall be republican (representative govts are less likely to inititate wars against their own citizens will), voluntary league of republics bound by common rules promotes collective security without risking tyranny, universal hospitality as a right of perm strangers.

Snyder

What caused ww1

defines the alliance security dillemma that was the same uncertainty and mistrust that produces arms races between rivals also operates inside alliacnes, forcing allies to choose between entrapment vs. abandonment

The alliance security dilemma is a lot more severe in a multipolar world. The risk of abandonment are lower in bipolar systems but the fear of entrapment are still high.

Van Evera

What Caused WW1

Cult of the Offensive - label for a pervasive set of military doctrines, elite beliefs, and public assumptions in pre-1914 Europe that overvalued offensive operations and undervalued defensive technology

Cult of the Offensive produced motivation for rapid mobilization, secrecy, and preemptive or preventive action

Ikenberry

Peace Settlements

Victorius states can best secure their gains by building institutjons that make their power predictable and their commitments credible, turning short-term military success into long-term order

Kennan

Cold war

Explains why the USSR behaves as it does

traces behavior to a combination of ideology (marxist-leninist world view) and historical circumstances (Russian insecurity and autocratic statecraft. Together, these form a foreign policy that is suspicious, expansionist in posture, and tolerant of rival systems

Core Causal Claims: ideological conviction that capitalism is doomed and must be resisted, and geopolitical insecurity that makes leaders view the outside world as hostile.

Containment: best long-term patient strategy to limit Soviet Expansion by using political, economic, and diplomatic means to strengthen non-Soviet states

article reframed the Soviet threat as a strategic problem solvable by steady, disciplined policy rather than by panic or permanent militarization, and it became a foundational text for U.S. Cold War strategy.

Schlesinger

Cold War

Argues that cold war grew from a mix of structural rivalry, ideological conflict, and mutual misperception after WWII, and that both American and Soviet Actions helped create the long confrontation rather than one side being solely to blame

The Cold War arose from a mix of structural opportunity, ideological clash, and reciprocal policy choices; understanding its origins requires looking at how both American and Soviet actions interacted to produce a long, entrenched rivalry.

NSC-68

Cold War

(April 1950) framed the postwar world as fundamentally altered by two global wars, revolutions, and the decline of old empires; it presented the Soviet Union as a hostile, expansionist power whose growing military capabilities (including nuclear potential) intensified the threat to U.S. security.

became a blueprint for Cold War policy: its recommendations helped justify the 1950s expansion of U.S. military spending, the hydrogen‑bomb program, and broader commitments to allies—shaping U.S. strategy for decades even as policymakers adapted its prescriptions to political and fiscal realities.

Bottom line: transformed containment from a diplomatic posture into a comprehensive national program—military, economic, and ideological—arguing that only a large, sustained U.S. effort could meet the perceived Soviet threat.

Stalin

Cold War

In his 1946 speech, focused on the Soviet Union's post-war recovery and the role of the Communist Party in guiding the nation. He stressed the importance of maintaining unity and vigilance against imperialist forces, particularly in the context of the post-war geopolitical landscape

Quick answer: 1946 election speech reasserts Marxist‑Leninist interpretations of recent wars, emphasizes Soviet security needs and postwar reconstruction, and signals a tougher, ideologically framed stance toward capitalist states.

• framed recent wars as systemic failures of capitalism and used that narrative to justify Soviet policies.

• He linked domestic reconstruction to external security, making strength and vigilance central themes.

The speech reinforced an ideological divide that helped harden early Cold War dynamics.

Waltz and Sagan

Nuclear Weapons

core claim is that nuclear weapons make states more cautious because the catastrophic costs of nuclear war create strong incentives for restraint and deterrence.

 emphasizing the dangers of nuclear proliferation. He argues that more nuclear states would increase the risk of accidents, miscalculations, and the potential for nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of unstable regimes. ___ believes that the spread of nuclear weapons would lead to greater instability, not peace. He highlights the importance of controlling the spread of nuclear technology to prevent catastrophic outcomes

Lenin

Imperialism

reframes colonialism and war as systemic outcomes of late capitalism—driven by monopolies, finance capital, and the export of capital—and links international rivalry to domestic class and political structures.

framework remains influential for analyzing how economic concentration, global finance, and unequal development shape geopolitics. Contemporary scholars use his categories to examine neocolonial patterns, corporate power, and how economic dependencies affect state behavior in the global system.

Snyder

Imperialism

shows that leaders and influential domestic coalitions often adopt security myths—simple stories that link conquest or control of territory to reduced vulnerability—which then shape policy even when material conditions do not support those claims.

The central claim is that domestic politics, not just external threats or systemic constraints, drives expansionary policies. identifies three recurrent myths (security through expansion, cumulative gains, and prestige/legitimacy)

reframes imperial overreach as a predictable product of domestic myths and coalition incentives, not merely external necessity—so preventing overextension requires institutional checks on the political forces that promote expansion

Pagden

Imperialism

traces how liberal political theory and imperial practice developed together, showing that many thinkers who advanced ideas of universal rights, international law, and perpetual peace also helped rationalize or manage imperial rule.

Liberalism did not simply oppose empire; it provided vocabularies and institutions that made empire legible and governable.

Liberal ideas can both enable domination and empower critique; the challenge is to disentangle universalist principles from the justificatory uses that sustained empire and to reclaim those principles for genuinely egalitarian international politics.

Wohlforth

American Hegemony

He concludes that unipolarity after 1991 has been more stable than many realist critics predicted, because the United States enjoyed unmatched military and economic preponderance and potential challengers faced strong disincentives to balance against it.

provides a careful, evidence‑based defense of the short‑to‑medium‑term stability of a unipolar world while leaving open the possibility of gradual change over longer horizons.

Monteiro

American Hegemony

argues that unipolarity is not inherently peaceful: a unipole’s choices (disengage, defend, or dominate) each create incentives for conflict among lesser powers, and the unipole’s presence can provoke instability rather than guarantee order.

Unipolarity lowers the chance of great‑power war but creates structural conditions for regional instability; the unipole’s choices shape where conflict will occur, and no single grand strategy guarantees peace.

Fukuyama

American Hegemony

claims that the collapse of fascism and communism leaves liberal democracy and market capitalism as the only viable, globally attractive ideological system.

liberal democracy appears to have won the great ideological contest, but practical, cultural, and political challenges mean history’s events and struggles continue.

Ikenberry

Rise of China

argues that China’s rise need not overturn the U.S‑led liberal order because that order is “open, institutional, and rule‑based” and therefore attractive and hard to replace; the West should strengthen and adapt its institutions to integrate China rather than try to block its rise.

Mearsheimer

Rise of China

applies his offensive‑realist framework to contemporary and future great‑power politics, arguing that the anarchic international system compels states to seek power and security, making conflict and rivalry enduring features of world politics.

 21st century will likely see continued competition as states pursue security and influence, and strategic restraint or institutionalism cannot fully remove those incentives.

Kissinger

Rise of China

warns that U.S.‑China relations are entering a critical transition that requires statesmanship, not reflexive rivalry. He argues that both powers must recognize the structural reality of China’s rise and the United States’ enduring global role, and then craft a relationship that prevents misperception and unintended escalation.

highlights Taiwan, miscalculated military encounters, and nationalist rhetoric as the most dangerous triggers. He stresses that ambiguous signals, rapid military buildups, or public posturing can create spirals of mistrust that turn manageable disputes into crises.

conflict is not inevitable but requires deliberate, sustained statesmanship to prevent. The alternative—allowing rivalry to be driven by fear, domestic politics, or short‑term tactics—risks turning a manageable competition into a dangerous confrontation.

Walzer

Intervention and Peacekeeping

argues that military intervention in another state can be morally justified only under strict conditions—most importantly just cause, right intention, last resort, proportionality, and reasonable prospects of success—and that these criteria limit when humanitarian or political interventions are permissible.

Practical takeaways

• Intervention is exceptional, not routine: it requires clear moral grounds and careful prudential calculation.

• Humanitarian rhetoric must be matched by credible planning to minimize harm and secure legitimate authority.

• Policymakers should weigh moral claims against likely consequences and institutionalize checks (multilateral review, transparent aims) to reduce misuse.

Bottom line: provides a principled framework that permits humanitarian intervention in extreme cases but places heavy moral and political constraints on when and how states may use force abroad.

Philpott

Intervention and Peacekeeping

defines sovereignty as the principle that a political community has supreme authority within a territory and is equal to other such communities in the international system. He treats sovereignty both as a legal‑institutional rule (states’ formal rights) and as a political ideal (popular legitimacy and self‑rule). emphasizes that sovereignty has a history: it was invented, transformed, and repeatedly reinterpreted to meet changing political needs.

Evans, Gareth and Sahnoun

Evans and Sahnoun argue that sovereignty implies a responsibility: when a state fails to protect its population from mass atrocity, the international community has a duty to act—preferably through prevention and peaceful means, but with coercive measures as a last resort.

 Evans and Sahnoun transformed humanitarian intervention debates by reframing sovereignty as conditional on protection duties and by prioritizing prevention and multilateral legitimacy. Their essay remains a foundational text for understanding how the international community justifies—and struggles to implement—collective action to stop mass atrocities.

Pape

Terrorism

analyzes the global pattern and logic of suicide terrorism and concludes that it is a strategic, coercive tactic designed to compel democracies to make territorial concessions rather than an expression of religious fanaticism or individual pathology. He builds his argument on a systematic dataset of suicide attacks and on case comparisons showing consistent strategic aims across ideologies and regions.

reframes suicide terrorism as a purposive, strategic tool aimed at coercing democracies over territory; this shifts policy attention from purely cultural or psychological explanations toward strategies that undercut the tactic’s political effectiveness.

Mueller

Terrorism

He contends that despite repeated warnings, the United States experienced no successful major al‑Qaeda strike on U.S. soil after 9/11, and many alleged threats have not materialized—suggesting that the perceived omnipresence and capability of terrorist networks are often overstated. frames terrorism as a serious but limited danger, not an existential, constantly imminent menace.

Hoffman

Terrorism

argues that terrorism has at times been a decisive driver of history—capable of triggering major political and institutional change—but its impact varies by context, tactic, and political environment, so terrorism is neither uniformly omnipotent nor uniformly marginal.

Terrorism can and has changed history, but only under specific conditions that convert violent acts into political catalysts. His work urges both scholars and practitioners to analyze the enabling contexts—state fragility, political crises, and institutional vulnerabilities—rather than assuming terrorism’s effects are predetermined.

Greico and Ikenberry

begin by grounding international political‑economic analysis in microeconomic building blocks: consumption indifference curves, production possibility frontiers, and market equilibrium. These tools explain how mutually beneficial trade arises and why countries specialize, forming the basis for later political analysis of trade policy.

Rogowski

argues that patterns of international trade shape domestic political cleavages: countries’ factor endowments determine who wins and loses from trade, which in turn structures party systems and coalition formation.

the pattern of a country’s comparative advantage determines which social groups benefit from trade. In labor‑abundant countries, trade favors labor and thus tends to produce coalitions supportive of free trade; in capital‑abundant countries, capital owners benefit and push for protection or policies that favor capital. These economic incentives translate into political coalitions that shape party systems and policy outcomes.

Key takeaways

• Trade creates winners and losers; those distributional effects drive coalition formation.

• Factor endowments are the primary structural variable linking international economics to domestic politics.

• Institutions and organizational capacity condition how economic interests become political forces, so analysts must combine economic theory with political institutional analysis to explain real‑world outcomes.

Eichengreen

Political Economy of Money

argues that international monetary regimes are most stable when a single dominant power provides key public goods—an anchor currency, liquidity, and adjustment leadership—but he qualifies classic hegemonic‑stability claims by showing that political will, institutional design, and the costs of leadership determine whether a hegemon actually sustains a stable system.

preserves the core insight of hegemonic stability theory—that leadership matters for monetary order—while insisting that leadership is a political choice shaped by costs, institutions, and domestic constraints, so scholars and policymakers should focus on how to share or institutionalize the public‑good burdens of a stable international monetary system.

Gourevitch

Political Economy of Money

variation in national policy responses to the 1930s Depression reflects domestic political structures and coalition politics: countries facing the same external shock adopted different remedies because political actors, interest groups, and institutional configurations shaped which alternatives were politically feasible and credible.

 reframes the 1930s policy shifts as politically produced outcomes: similar economic shocks can yield very different policy paths because domestic coalitions and institutional constraints shape both the timing and content of departures from orthodoxy.

Frieden

Political Economy of Money

argues that exchange‑rate choices are fundamentally political: governments set regimes and policies to manage distributional conflicts, electoral incentives, and international constraints rather than to follow purely economic logic. Exchange rates create clear winners and losers, so domestic coalitions, institutions, and international pressures determine whether a country pegs, floats, or controls capital flows.

Exchange‑rate politics ties macroeconomic outcomes to political power: who wins and who loses from a currency policy determines the regime that emerges. Understanding currency choices therefore requires combining economic models with analysis of domestic coalitions, institutions, and international constraints.

Adam Dean

Labor Unions and Trade Policy

 Dean critiques the dominant assumption in neoclassical economics that productivity gains automatically lead to wage increases. He argues this overlooks the power struggle between capital and labor.

 This piece reframes wage stagnation not as a market failure, but as a political outcome. It’s especially relevant when analyzing inequality, labor policy, or the effects of trade on workers.

 Dean explores when and why workers and employers might support the same trade policies. His answer: when profit-sharing institutions exist, employers can credibly commit to sharing gains from trade with workers.

 This article helps explain variation in labor’s stance on globalization. It’s a powerful lens for understanding coalition-building in trade politics and how institutional design affects policy preferences.

Together, these articles argue that institutions mediate the relationship between economic forces and political outcomes. Whether it’s wages or trade policy, Dean shows that labor’s fate depends on power, not just productivity.

Would you like help applying these ideas to a paper, discussion post, or case study? I can also help you build an outline or simplify these concepts for a presentation.

Milner

Labor Union and Trade Policy

link two global trends of the late twentieth century—the spread of democracy and widespread trade liberalization—and propose a causal connection: democratization changes the domestic political calculus of leaders, making protectionist bargains harder to sustain and thereby increasing the likelihood of tariff reductions. Their theory centers on how political institutions shape the ability of executives to construct and maintain coalitions that rely on trade barriers for support.

Dean

Labor Union and Trade Policy 

Chapter 1 argues that many democratic developing countries achieved trade liberalization by deliberately weakening or repressing labor—either violently or through legal and institutional constraints—so that unions could not block opening; supports this claim with mixed‑methods evidence (case studies and cross‑national data).

Kapur and Mchale

international migration—through remittances, diaspora networks, and returnees—has become a major, underappreciated engine of development: remittance flows (about $80 billion in the early 2000s) outstrip official aid, create new financial channels, and reshape politics and policy in sending countries.

Migration’s “new payoff” is that private flows and transnational ties now matter as much as traditional development instruments. For scholars and policymakers, the article reframes migration from a social issue to a central economic and political variable that must be integrated into development strategy.

Strange

Migration

argues that firms have become central actors in world politics: diplomacy now includes state–firm and firm–firm bargaining, and scholars must study how multinational corporations reshape state behavior, policy choices, and the structure of international relations.

Firms matter politically: understanding contemporary international politics requires treating MNCs as political actors, not just economic agents.

• Diplomacy is multi‑dimensional: effective foreign policy must account for state–firm dynamics and the incentives created by global markets.

• Policy choices reflect new constraints: capital mobility and corporate power reshape what states can credibly promise and deliver domestically and internationally.

Caves

Migration

argues that an MNE is a multi‑plant firm that controls production in more than one country and that its existence is best explained by the economics of organization: firms internalize activities when doing so is cheaper or more reliable than relying on arm’s‑length markets. MNEs arise to exploit firm‑specific advantages and to manage transaction costs associated with international exchange.

Borjas

Migration

argues that immigration raises overall economic welfare for the native population mainly through production complementarities and expanded markets, but the gains are uneven—some native workers (especially low‑skilled) can experience wage losses while others and consumers gain.

Williamson

Labor and Globalization

 shows that the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries shared similar globalization dynamics: both saw rising inequality in rich countries and falling inequality in poor countries, with global economic forces accounting for roughly one‑third to one‑half of the rise in inequality in OECD countries.

Krugman

Labor and Globalization

 central claim is that employment opportunities created by labor‑intensive exports raise incomes and welfare in poor countries even when wages and working conditions are far from ideal. He rejects the simple moral condemnation of “sweatshops” by stressing comparative advantage and opportunity costs: for many workers the alternative to factory work is informal, precarious, or subsistence activity that yields lower income and fewer prospects for skill accumulation.

Silver

Labor and Globalization

reframes labor conflict as a moving, systemic phenomenon tied to the geography of capital: to explain strikes and worker power today, scholars must analyze long‑run, transnational patterns of production and capital mobility.

Barton

WTO

argue that the global trade regime—first under the GATT and later the WTO—cannot be understood solely as a legal or economic system. It is fundamentally a political institution, shaped by the distribution of power among states, the interests of domestic groups, and the need for credible commitments in an anarchic international environment.

Gallagher

WTO

explains why many developing countries resisted the WTO’s Doha Round negotiations. He argues that resistance stemmed from distributional concerns, institutional asymmetries, and skepticism about promised gains. Developing countries feared that liberalization under Doha would disproportionately benefit advanced economies while constraining their own policy space for development.

reframes the Doha Round stalemate as a product of structural inequities in the global trade regime: developing countries resisted because the proposed bargains threatened their development strategies and offered few compensating benefits.

Colgan and Keohane

Compensating Trade Losers and Populism

contend that the post‑1945 liberal international order—built on free trade, multilateral institutions, and U.S. leadership—is under severe strain because it has become “rigged” in favor of elites and multinational corporations, leaving ordinary citizens disillusioned. Unless reforms make the order more inclusive and equitable, they warn, it will lose legitimacy and collapse.

warning is stark: the liberal order will not endure unless it is reformed to be fairer and more inclusive. The challenge is not just defending globalization but redesigning it so that ordinary people see themselves as beneficiaries rather than victims.

Rodrik

Compensating Trade Losers and Populism

contends that by the mid‑2010s it had become too late to rely on compensation policies to offset the harms of globalization. The political backlash against free trade in advanced economies was not simply about economics—it reflected decades of neglect, weak redistribution, and eroded trust. Once globalization’s losers have mobilized politically, compensation alone cannot restore legitimacy.

once globalization’s losers have mobilized politically, it is too late to rely on compensation alone. Trade policy must be rethought to prioritize fairness and legitimacy from the start, or risk continued backlash against globalization.

Pevehouse

argues that international organizations (IOs), especially regional ones, play a significant role in encouraging democratization by shaping domestic political incentives and providing external support. His study finds a strong correlation between IO membership and democratic transitions from 1950–1992, offering a theoretical and empirical foundation for understanding democracy promotion “from the outside-in.”

Farrell and Newman

argue that the Liberal International Information Order (LIIO)—built on openness and private-sector governance—contains “self-undermining feedback effects” that destabilize its own foundations. In other words, the very institutions and norms designed to sustain liberalism have created vulnerabilities that illiberal actors exploit, eroding trust and consensus within liberal democracies

Carnegie

shows that secrecy is not just about hiding information—it is a strategic choice that reshapes international and domestic politics. Her review provides a roadmap for future research on how secrecy influences global governance and foreign policy outcomes.

Berkotwitz and Goodman

argue that covert action is a controversial but enduring tool of U.S. foreign policy, justified by strategic logic yet fraught with democratic and ethical dilemmas. Their article explores why covert action persists, how it is rationalized, and the challenges it poses for oversight and legitimacy.

Yarhi-Milo

explores how states use secret reassurance—private signals and commitments—to reduce tensions and avoid conflict, even when public audiences are excluded. The article develops a theoretical framework for understanding why leaders sometimes choose secrecy in reassurance strategies, and how these practices shape international security outcomes.

Lieber

 challenges the conventional wisdom that nuclear weapons fundamentally transformed international politics by making major war between great powers obsolete. Instead, they argue that nuclear weapons have not eliminated traditional power politics, and states continue to compete for military advantages, credibility, and influence.

Stephen Van Evera

focuses on the role of offense-defense balance and perceptions of military advantage in shaping the likelihood of war. He argues that when states believe offense has the advantage, wars are more likely, while when defense dominates, peace is more stable.