POLS 103 Midterm Study Guide: Introduction to International Relations

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts, theories, and thinkers from the POLS 103 Midterm Study Guide.

Anarchy

The condition of international politics where there is no sovereign authority or world government above states (it does not mean chaos).

Realism

An international relations tradition holding that because of anarchy, the world is dangerous and states must prioritize survival, self-help, and military power.

Liberalism

An international relations tradition arguing that despite anarchy, states can overcome conflict and achieve cooperation through institutions, rules, international law, trade, and democracy.

Constructivism

An international relations tradition asserting that the meaning of anarchy and power depends on social relationships, shared ideas, identities, and norms rather than material factors alone.

Feminist IR

A critical approach arguing that traditional international relations is gendered around masculine assumptions, urging an expansion of security to include individual experiences, violence, and inequality.

Melian Dialogue

A classic realist text from Thucydides where Athens tells Melos that 'the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,' illustrating that power and survival override morality and justice.

Democratic Peace

The proposition, associated with Immanuel Kant, that representative democracies or republics are unusually unlikely to go to war against one another because leaders are accountable to citizens who bear the costs of war.

State of Nature (Hobbes)

A hypothetical condition without a governing authority where fear, insecurity, and mutual distrust produce a dangerous state of conflict.

Leviathan

A powerful sovereign authority created to enforce order and protect citizens; absent at the international level.

Self-Help

The realist principle that in the absence of a global sovereign or Leviathan, states must ultimately rely on their own capabilities to protect themselves.

Structure of International Politics (Kenneth Waltz)

The conceptual distinction showing that while domestic politics is characterized by authority, administration, and law, international politics is an anarchic realm characterized by power, struggle, and accommodation.

Security Dilemma

A situation where one state's attempt to increase its own security makes other states feel less secure, leading them to respond in ways that make everyone less secure.

Balancing

A strategy in which a state aligns with other states to oppose and check a powerful or threatening country ('the enemy of my enemy can be my ally').

Bandwagoning

A strategy where a state aligns with or joins a dominant or threatening power rather than opposing it ('if you can't beat them, join them').

Bait and Bleed / Bloodletting

A realist strategy in which a state induces rival powers into prolonged conflict with each other so they become weaker, poorer, and exhausted while the instigating state stays strong.

Offensive Realism (John Mearsheimer)

A theory arguing that because the international system is anarchic and states cannot be certain of other states' intentions, great powers have strong incentives to maximize power and pursue regional hegemony to survive.

State of Nature (Locke)

A condition in which people possess natural rights (life, liberty, and property) that is not automatically a state of war, but requires limited government to reliably enforce those rights.

Non-Zero-Sum

An interaction or condition where outcomes allow for mutual gains across actors (such as through international trade and cooperation) rather than one party's gain necessitating another's loss.

International Society (Hedley Bull)

A condition in which states share common interests, values, rules, habits, and practices to maintain international order without needing a world government.

Order (Hedley Bull)

A pattern of activity that sustains the basic goals of social life, specifically protection against violence (life), keeping promises and agreements (truth), and stable possession (property).

Institutions (Hedley Bull)

Habits, repeated practices, and shared norms designed to accomplish common goals, rather than merely physical organizations or formal buildings.

International Law

Rules governing relationships between states and other international actors, derived from natural law, custom, and treaties.

"War Made the State" (Charles Tilly)

The thesis that modern sovereign territorial states developed primarily because geopolitical military competition forced rulers to extract resources, build administrations, and centralize power.

War Making (Charles Tilly)

One of Tilly's four state activities, defined as eliminating or neutralizing external rivals outside the state's territory.

State Making (Charles Tilly)

One of Tilly's four state activities, defined as eliminating or neutralizing internal rivals inside the state's territory.

Protection (Charles Tilly)

One of Tilly's four state activities, defined as eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of the state's clients and population.

Extraction (Charles Tilly)

One of Tilly's four state activities, defined as acquiring the resources, money, and taxes needed to carry out war making, state making, and protection.

Bureaucratic Sophistication (Hendrik Spruyt)

The administrative, organizational, and institutional capability that allowed sovereign territorial states to outcompete and outperform alternative political forms.

Sovereignty

Supreme authority over a territory, consisting of four dimensions: internal control, external control/independence, internal authority, and external recognition.

De Facto State

A political entity that maintains substantial internal control and authority but lacks full external recognition and legal authority (e.g., Taiwan).

Quasi / Failed State

A state that possesses international legal recognition (nominal statehood) but lacks effective internal control and governance (empirical statehood), such as Somalia.

Nominal vs. Empirical Statehood (Robert Jackson)

The distinction between juridical or legal international recognition (nominal) and actual, effective administrative control over territory (empirical).

Norm

A shared social expectation about what behavior is considered appropriate for actors within a given community or international system.

"Anarchy is what states make of it" (Alexander Wendt)

The constructivist argument that anarchy does not have a single fixed logic of conflict; its meaning and effects depend entirely on how states interact, develop identities, and understand one another.

Balance of Threat

The concept that states form coalitions and balance not simply against raw material power, but against perceived threats shaped by intentions, identities, and legitimacy.

Norm Life Cycle

The constructivist three-stage progression of norm development consisting of persuasion (emergence), cascade/imitation, and internalization.

Railway Switchman Analogy (Max Weber)

The concept that while material interests provide the energy moving actors forward, ideas act as the switches determining which tracks or directions those interests follow.

Regulatory Rules

Rules that prescribe or regulate behavior within an already established, existing system or practice.

Constitutive Rules

Rules that define, create, and construct the system itself, meaning that changes to these rules can alter the entire international system.

Global Governance

The establishment of international institutions with authority to manage specific transnational challenges across borders without creating a single centralized world government.

Critical Theory (Robert Cox)

A theoretical approach built on the insight that 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose,' interrogating who benefits from existing international arrangements and how those structures might be transformed.