Intro to IS

Why has interest in rare ores like coltan and lithium increased since the 2010s?

• The use of oil has decreased

What are humans’ “essential needs”?

• They are context dependent and historically contingent

Why didn’t English manufacturers use water mills during the era of industrialization in the nineteenth century?

• Access to running water was made complex due to having to deal with the property rights of different types of land

• Steam engines could be set up close to workers in urban centers

How was the move from coal to oil socially beneficial?

• Oil extraction happened far away in the Middle East and didn’t bother the public, whereas coalmines were close to the people

What kind of an issue is climate change and how should it not be addressed?

• Developing countries do not want to pay for the carbon dioxide emissions of their colonizers

• Developing countries do not want to reach a compromise between sustainibility and economic growth, because they are so much backwards compared to their colonizers, ex: Guyana’s discovery of oil reserves in 2015

• It is easier for developing countries to make their economies sustainable, shift to renewable energy, compared to their colonizers

What warning did concerned scientists issue in 1992?

• Option 1: Spend resources on war and violence

• Option 2: Spend resources on sustainability

Who are the different actors in the process of addressing climate change? What roles do they play?

• States and state companies: Taxation, obligation and prohibition

• Consumers and NGOs: Creating social trends and movements to lobby states

What slows down the process of addressing climate change?

• Conflicting economic interests of different parts of the population

• Democracy, waiting for a collective decision to be made

What are the effects of climate change?

• Rising sea levels

• Extreme weather

• Disappearance of agricultural land

• Migration

What are some of the causes of climate change?

• Transportation Vehicles

• Cattle

• Industry

• Heating

What are some of the solutions to climate change?

• Renewable energy

• Meat Substitutes

• Less travellling with electric cars and planes

What are some of the international treaties on the neutrality or equal use of resources?

• The Antarctic Treaty (1959)

• The Outer Space Treaty (1966)

• United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982)

What is legal personhood and what some real life examples of it?

• Some natural resources have their own rights by law

• Rainforest Te Urewera in New Zealand (2014)

• Whanganui River in New Zealand (2017)

• Lake Erie in North America (2019)

• Magpie River in Canada (2021)

What are some of the problems of depending on oil from the Gulf region?

• Oil export boycott of 1973: shortages

• 1991 Gulf War: get Iraq out of Kuwait

• Peace settlement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023: China’s growing influence

• Fracking 2010: US extracts oil from US soil

What is a major limitation of specialization in a few goods for international trade?

• Pandemics or disease outbreaks may disrupt supply routes, therefore some degree of self-reliance is necessary to pre-empt crises

Who has the largest Coltan reserves and why is it difficult to extract it?

• Democratic Republic of Kongo, eastern part near Rwanda

• Conflict between Rwandan military and rebel forces

Where are the main reserves of lithium? What is lithium used for?

• Australia

• Chile

• Bolivia

• Batteries

Where are the main reserves of niobium? What is niobium used for?

• Nano-technology

• Brazil

What are the potential disadvantages of globalization according to Joseph Stiglitz?

• Private markets are imperfect most of the time because of a lack of transparency between buyers and sellers

• Increased unemployment due to capital market liberalization (deregulation). Foreign capital injection increases growth and incomes, increased growth and income increases taxes. Unstable growth can lead foreign investors to leave, domestic workers can’t leave=unemployment.

• Social Darwinist Approach and lack of a democratic global economy: Less benefits for people in developing countries while the rich benefit more. Poor countries can’t compete with industry subsidies in rich countries when trading goods.

• Weakened states: Global institutions’ decisions influence the decisions of nation-states

• Erosion of cultures

• Environmental degradation

• Reduced security 

What is the main problem with globalization according to Joseph E. Stiglitz?

• Unequal global trade agreements founded on conflicting interests

What are the benefits of globalization according to Joseph E. Stiglitz?

• Less knowledge inequality due to faster and easier exchange of information between developed and underdeveloped countries: Global political movements such as feminism

• Better living standards and public health: More sources of funds, access to medicine, and increased access to technologies to increase productivity

• Poor people become less poorer than before but still remain poor

• Reduced risk of global recessions and less unexpected turns in the global economy

• Increased potential of states to finance global public goods together: public health, environmental protection and peace.

What is Joseph E. Stiglitz’ main argument in his conclusion?

• Countries can’t choose whether to become a part of globalization or not, but the way each country makes use of globalization and adapts to it is a matter of choice, the extent to which they participate in globalisation is contingent. Gloabalization should take place slowly enough so that cultures and their environments aren’t destroyed, but improved and adapted to a global system.

• Gloabalisation is misunderstood by many, the hegemonic interpretation of it is problematic for society on the whole while only benefiting the few

What are the different ways in which states can finance global public goods according to Joseph E. Stiglitz?

• Revenue from the sale of Global Natural Resources, ex: Charge for polluting the ozone layer

• Revenue from Global Taxes, ex: “Tobin Tax” for international financial transactions and carbon tax for greenhouse gas emissions

What is the main issue with the global reserve system?

• Money in the reserves can’t enter the money supply

• People in developing countries put their money in reserves (ex: Treasury bills) instead of investing it in more profitable assets (ex: Stock market)

Why do countries need a reserve system?

• So that people can receive their money in cash when they want to withdraw their funds from their bank

What is the problem with relying on the US too much for money?

• US could become the largest debtor instead of the largest creditor

• If the US dollar weakens, the whole system can fall apart since the majority of debt in the world is denominated in dollars

What is Joseph E. Stiglitz’ solution to the global reserve system’s over-reliance on the US?

• New currency for the reserves of developing countries (can be exchanged for other currencies)

• Increase the global money supply

• Help developing countries spend more than they produce

What is Stiglitz’ solution for countries defaulting on their loans?

• Enforce the reorganization of the country’s economy and the creation of a payment plan by law instead of injecting external funds 

What was the turning point in the global economy after the East Asian financial crisis?

• Industralized countries began to rethink the way their bank regulation systems worked

• Overreliance on capital adequacy standards (the size of a bank’s reserves for withdrawals) and stingy lending practices created a shortage of credit

How should the IMF change according to Stiglitz?

• IMF should help countries only at times of crises, not for long-term development that lasts more than a couple years

• IMF should allow for the formation of competing monetary funds in specific regions, so that those funds can offer subsidies and increase transparency in countries’ economies

• IMF should create conditions for financial assisstance eligibility based on a country’s ability to repay instead of making decisions based on the political interests of IMF’s directors, it should be less restrictive when it comes to the type of assisstance it provides, considering different solutions offered by different people instead of enforcing its own from the get-go

• IMF should be surveilled, supervised and held accountable by independent agencies

• IMF should have its own feedback mechanism to improve its models and identify previous errors in its forecasts

• IMF should consider employment and poverty when making forecasts instead of simply taking into account economic growth and trade deficits

• IMF should make its forecasts and models public, openly declare who is benefitting from its financial assisstance how and why

• IMF should give workers a voice in its commitees, as well as additional representation for African executive directors even though they may not be given exclusive voting rights in the commitees

What is a major problem with the IMF?

• Finance and trade ministers who aren’t directly accountable to democratically elected politicians in their countries lead the commitees at IMF

• Rich countries with veto power determine which decisions are taken despite the fact that taxpayers in poor countries bear the burden of repaying the bailouts provided by rich countries

What are the six reforms to IMF proposed by Stiglitz?

• Basic governance

• Competition

• Transparency

• Accountability

• Perspectives

• Only Crisis Assistance

What are the three reforms necessary for the improvement of the global economic system according to Stiglitz?

• Revenues from Public Goods

• Bankruptcies instead of Bailouts

• Increased Money Supply instead of Larger Reserves

What are Stiglitz’ arguments against globalization?

• Countries that abided by the Washington Consensus (10 economic policies to stabilize and grow economies)

• Countries such as Chile, India and Korea achieved economic growth by applying some of the principles of globalization and ignoring others (ex: increasing exports but refusing to remove import barriers)

• Globalization wouldn’t benefit poor countries who don’t have much to trade

• Globalization left poor countries worse off despite the corruption involved in their economic institutions

Why was the IMF founded according to Joseph E. Stiglitz?

• To prevent local financial crises from global ones through international capital markets

What are externalities?

• Effects of an economic acvitiy between two parties on another, third entity

What are some potential negative effects of globalization on politics?

• Foreign investors can determine who has power

• Foreign investors prioritize short-term financial benefits over long-term social disadvantages

• International organizations perpetuate colonialism through economic means, by controlling the finances of developing countries

What was the effect of the 1994 trade acccord: Uruguay round?

• Made Sub-Saharan Africa worse off while benefiting the Norht

What advice does the Washington consensus give to developing countries?

• No government intervention

• Flexible exchange rates

• Open borders for the free flow of goods and capital

Why has the price of lithium increased over the years?

• Demand for electric cars has increased

What are the benefits of batteries using lithium?

• Can be recharged thousands of times

• Battery lasts a long time

• Store lots of chemical energy in a small space

• Light

• Current lithium reserves can last decades

Why can’t we make electric cars with lead acid batteries?

• Battery too large and heavy

Which location has the highest amount of lithium reserves?

• Northern Atacama desert in Chile

What are some disadvantages of mining lithium from Chile’s reserves?

• Decreases water supply to indigenous communities

• Chile doesn’t profit as much from the reserves as foreign companies

• It is hard to fully recycle lithium

Who controls the market for lithium production and why?

• China controls the refining of the materials to produce more batteries than it consumes, and it consumes a lot

• Improved the quality of its batteries in 2015-16 to match South Korean and Japanese batteries

What is the difference between lithium batteries and hydrogen fuel cells?

• Hydrogen is more expensive

• Lithium battery prices have fallen by 90 %

What is the purpose of the Grand Renaissance Dam?

• Produce 6000 megawatts of electricity especially for more than 65 million Ethiopians in rural areas who don’t have access to it

How was the Grand Renaissance Dam funded?

• Donations from the public (organisations and institutions) and bonds

Why is the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia controversial?

• Decreases teh supply of water reaching Sudan and Egypt

Why is the Nile important for Egyptians?

• 90-95 percent of water usage is provided by the Nile

• Provides water for almost all irrigation (agricultural benefit)

• It doesn’t rain much in Egypt

Why is there no such as “peace” studies?

• Academia mostly focuses on conflicts: “Security Studies, Counter-Terrorism”

How does Maurits characterize our generation?

• the “security” generation, argues that our lives revolve around security

What is the Western perspective on conflicts?

• Conflicts take place between states

What does world news often focus on? Is it actually “world” news? What does it neglect?

• Focus: Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine

• Neglected: Wars in Congo, Sudan and Myanmar

What is Maurits’ writing advice?

• Be precise, every word counts and has to be explained

How does the added protocol to the Geneva Convention in 1977 define armed conflicts?

• Fight against alien occupation and racist regimes

What is the limitation of a “declaration”?

• A declaration is non-binding (ex: Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948)

Are states allowed to, maybe even obliged to, step in when their neighbouring states engage in conflict?

• Sovereignty: No

• Added Protocol to the Geneva Convention in 1977: Protect Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts

• Depends on the intensity of the violence

• Depends on how organized the insurgents are

What are domestic issues other states may be inclined to intervene in?

• Civil wars, insurgencies

What is the difference in approach when it comes to lawyers and social scientists?

• Lawyers: what is happening and what should be done practically to stop it (morality and standards of intervention)

• Social scientists: observing why and how are people what they are doing (processes and motivations)

Why did armed conflicts become more complicated after the 1990s?

• Fragile states that were unstable and conflict-ridden emerged, they couldn’t function as independent entities and they posed a threat to other states

What are different types of armed conflicts?

• Interstate: Between states

• Intrastate: Within states

• Internationalized intrastate: Foreign countries intervene in a civil war

• Extrastate: Colonialism

What happened during the Cold War?

• Increase in interstate conflicts

• Decrease in civil wars

What happened after the Cold War?

• Increase in the number of civil wars

• Decrease in the number of interstate wars

Why did the number of civil wars increase after internationalized civil wars where foreign countries intervened?

• State interests (claims to parts of territory, access to resources (rare earth materials))

• People’s interests (material and immaterial)

• People’s ideas (nationalism, ideologies, beliefs and religion)

Is religion just the source of conflicts?

• No, it can only be a justification

Is the war in Israel caused by religious differences?

• Not all Israelis are Jews, not all Palestinians are Muslim, it is mainly a war for land

What is the main criticism of Huntingon’s idea of the Clash of Civilizations?

• Huntington assumes that different civilizations have to clash

What are the regional consequences of international consequences?

• Refugees

• Draughts, absence of farming

• Collapse of health systems: pandemics

• Collapse of governments: Warlords take over

What is the global trend about peace since 1946?

• Peace initatives have increased since 1946

• More leaders are focused more on ending wars rather than winning one

What is terrorism?

• Terrorism is a means, not a goal 

• Becoming a terrorist isn’t a goal, it is a method

How can terrorism be countered?

• Arrest and lock-up

• De-radicalization

• Prevention

What is radicalization?

• 2001 definition: Has become a negative term expressing extreme views

• Anger and resentment (powerlessness)

• Ideology and Belief

• Personal needs (adventure, meaning and purpose)

What is societal security?

• Can I be who I want to be?

What is human security?

• R2P: Responsibility to protect, intervening in other countries’ conflicts (humanitarianism)

What is securitization?

• When a present issue presented as urgent and existential, a matter of life and death 

• When factors other than security are neglected

• Existential Threat (physical or ideological)

• Immediacy

• Emergency Measures

What are the causes of migration?

• Forced

• Voluntary

Who is a migrant according to IOM?

• Someone who moves away from his/her place of residence temporarily or permanently, within a country or across international borders

Which organisations are involved in migration?

• International Organization of Migration (IOM)

• United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)

What is forced migration caused by according to IOM?

• Conflict or disaster

• What about political persecution?

What are the pull factors that cause people to migrate?

• Migrant workers

• Permanent as well as temporarily

• Is it always voluntary?

What are the two kinds of travel?

• Pilgrimage

• Tourism (leisure tourism in the 20th century) 

What is the ultimate form of involuntary migration?

• Slavery

• Officially abolished in the 19th century

What is indentured labour?

• Working for a specific time period without salary to pay for debt

What is modern slavery?

• Human trafficking

• Child Labour

• Domestic labour

What is remittance?

• A transfer from one person to another, often a migrant sending money to family in their home country. 

What is the solution to migration?

• Improve security in the country where the migrants are coming from

What is Xi Xinping’s approach to human rights?

• Relativist: People centered approach, community over individuality (German UN representative)

What is Mutua’s argument about human rights?

• Western, colonial discourse dominates our understanding of universality and violates sovereignty, the foundation/our abstract understanding of human rights leads to the UN declaration, and on top of that you have implementation, this whole structure is a framework

• He argues that we need to de-Westernize the Human Rights declaration and build a new system, framework that is compatible for every culture

• Guaranteeing the universality of human rights isn’t the same thing as guaranteeing the universal implementation of human rights

What did we discuss during the lecture about good governance?

• Since 1989, demonstrations and uprisings haven’t always been about local issues, they also represent conceptual, global themes. Or, the practices and symbols of local acts of resistance can become the symbols and practices of global acts of resistance. A revolution can be overhauling an entire system and also overhauling a regime within a system. Revolutions happen because of people’s interests, for instance because they want economic opportunities, or because of people’s ideas, such as communism, or because of people’s identities, such as nationalistic ideals of independence. However, revolutions are often caused by a combination of interests, ideas and identities. Early revolutions were caused by a need for democracy. Lincoln’s idea of democarcy for instance was a government owned and executed by the people for their own benefit. Democracy is also a contested issue however, Pope Leo XIII thought that democracy wasn’t compatible with religion in 1901. Bill Clinton thought that democracy was a pragmatic, necessary tool. Democracy was a siginificant point of debate because people hadn’t figured out the best form of governance yet in the early 20th century. There was a uniformity and structure to these forms of governance through the division of powers; judicial, executive and legislative. However, democracy wasn’t always stable either, power was always negotiated between different groups. Regardless of the debates surrounding it, it still became a global trend in the 1990s. The focus points of this trend were elections, which was a starting point for democracy, and the notion of civil society which was seen as the condition for democracy. However, trying to form civil society group failed in practice. It gained little traction and states opposed civil socities which were against them.

• “Good governance” was often viewed from the framework of development. It was a condition for monetary loans. This framework didn’t work out well though, because ensuring states’ good governance interfered with the concept of sovereignty. It also recognized autocratic regimes by failing to blame specific governments and instead focusing on their style of governance. There were also different definitons of “good governance” from different perspectives. The World Bank defined it as non-corruption, the political right defined it as the rule of law, while the political left defined it as the protection of minorities and the lower classes. Despite these different perspectives, everybody agreed that “good governance” was associated with the efficiency of the public sector and the rule of law. These points of consensus didn’t ensure democracy though. The rule of law was about fixed, stable ground rules whereas democracy is about the voice of the people which was constantly renegotiated. Another issue was measuring the successes and failures of “good governance”. It could be measured through economic development, but once again economic development could be achieved without democracy. Therefore for “good governance” democracy and development have to go hand in hand. Recently, identity has also become an essential part of democracy and development. Identity is difficult to tackle though. According to the Theory of Social Identity, (a theory is a way of looking, it isn’t a law, it may work or not work), people want to identify with groups, an identification which categorizes and separates people either based on comparisons, competition or hostility. Hence leading to “identity politics” becoming a global trend, which stated that culture and religion were parts of national identity and unity, intertwining identity with politics. However, the issue was that nations aren’t mono-cultural, mono-religious or mono-ethnic. This contradiction affected democracy because it concerned the freedom and rights of minority voices.