POLT IIP 9/28 Quiz

International Institutions

Rules that govern elements of world politics and the organizations that help implement those rules, reducing uncertainty

International Regime

Set of rules, norms, and decision making procedures around which actors expectations converge on an international issue

Collective Security

Approach to insure each state’s security through the collective action al all (or many) states, based on an established legal and institutional framework

Democratic Peace

Proposition that democracies are restrained in relations with each other - do not make war against each other

4 Liberal Basics

1. International Institutions

2. International Regime

3. Collective Security

4. Democratic Peace

Liberal Assumptions

• Anarchy

• Main actors are society-driven (states, IOs, NGOs)

• Main actors are rational

• Interests are malleable not fixed - actors’ preferences guide their international behavior

Liberal Predictions

• Absolute gains matter

• Long-term gains can trump short-term ones

• Rules, laws, and institutions can enable cooperation

Classical Liberals

Human nature seeks freedom, fairness, but needs social contract for cooperation

Neoliberal Institutionalists

Repeated interactions, facilitated by institutions, make it a self-interested behavior to cooperate

Political Institutions

Social contract, law, rights

• Liberal Internationalism

Economic Institutions

Free market, trade

• Liberal commercialism

International Institutions

Reduced uncertainty

• Neoliberal Institutionalism

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Two possible options: defect or cooperate. If both actors defect, they both lose equally. If one defects and the other cooperates, the one that cooperates receives a large loss (larger than if they both defect) and the one that defects gains/has no losses. If both actors cooperate, they both have very small losses. Best possible option is for both to cooperate but the actors do not know how the other will act, so they have to anticipate what the other will do and how to proceed from there.

• Goal: for two rational actors, who are unable to interact, to cooperate

• Other one-shot scenarios: nuclear proliferation, AI proliferation

  • Who’s willing to slow down, agree to mutual constraints?

Institutions Can Alter the Prisoner’s Dilemma

• In a one-shot game, rational choice of self-interested behavior leads to sub-optimal outcome

• in a repeated game, cooperation becomes self-interested behavior

• institutions enable “repeated games” and mitigate defections

Liberal Internationalism

Based on shared liberal identity, values, rights, and responsibilities

• Promote representative government abroad

• Pursue a separate, liberal peace among democracies

Liberal Commercialism

Based on goals of prosperity and stability

• Pursue absolute gains, even if asymmetric. Economic interdependence reduces the value of interstate war

• But economic openness depends on domestic coalitions, it isn’t automatic

Neoliberal Institutionalism

Based on the need for cooperation

• Create international organizations to govern international behavior. They foster cooperation by reducing uncertainty through transparency, reducing transaction costs, enabling enforcement

• Complex interdependence diminishes state control by enhancing influence of non state actors (corporations, societal actors)

• Growth of transnational issues requires actors - both state and non state - to be flexible and coordinate approaches with others beyond their borders

What Liberals Can Explain

• Why cooperation is common

• Why democracy and free market have expanded

• Why liberal hegemony (UK, US), have promoted these, even at high cost

What Liberalism Can’t Explain

• Why countries sometimes fail to work within international institutions

• Why democracy is often hard to maintain

• Why economic openness has periodically failed

Constructivist Basics

• No specified assumptions, do “default” reality

• reality is a social construction - humans give meanings to material conditions through their actions

  • International relations are social constructions

• Social constructions (ideas, norms, identity, knowledge, cultural practices, etc) are evident in collective social practices that constitute:

  • Interests

  • State behavior

  • The meaning of “institutions” like anarchy, sovereignty, justice, power

Norm Life Cycle

1. Norm emergence - norm entrepreneurs do what (mechanism), and why (motive)?

2. Norm cascade - collective actors (states, IOs, networks

3. Norm internalization - professions (public policy experts, lawyers, life scientists…)

Constructing the Norm Against Genocide

1. Act occurs: the systematic extermination policies of Nazi Germany

2. Definition of the act of “genocide” by Raphael Lemkin in 1944

3. International Awareness of Nazi atrocities spreads at end of war, 1945

4. Recognition of “genocide” by the Western Allies at Nuremberg, though not as a crime

5. Affirmation/Diffusion of the Norm: legal scholars, NGOs, media shape recognition of genocide as unacceptable practice

6. Institutionalization of the norm against genocide through Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948

Implications of IR Constructivism

• Ideas have strategic carriers

• States and others are socialized to their interests by international society as well as material conditions

• Change and evolution from past practices is possible: norms don’t always take hold as intended, they can even fail

Assessing the Constructivist Challenge

• Constructivism is innovative in re-examining key IR concepts (security, anarchy, etc) as dependent on ideas/values/discourse, not on material factors

• Identifying whose ideas and norms predominate in the international system tells much about who is powerful in the system

• Differing from Liberals, constructivists see institutions as collective knowledge of its participants - can reflect cooperative or conflictual habits