Ch.3 Chapter Notes

Theory: The set of propositions that combine to explain phenomena by specifying the relationships among several concepts.

Dependent Variable: The concept whose variation is being explained

Explanatory Variables: Concepts that are thought to do the explaining

Hypotheses: Specific falsifiable statements that question the proposed relationship among 2 or more concepts

Theoretical Perspectives: Sets of theories united by common themes

These theories seek to explain war, peace, cooperation, oppression, economic development, creation of international law, efforts to protect human rights and the environment and many others.

Components of International Relations Theories

• Material Entities (Entities with a physical presence) such as states, international institutions, multinational corporations, and individuals.
• In order to be considered a state, an entity must have a defined territory, stable population, and effective government, and must be recognized by other states as having the capacity to enter into relations with them.
• International Institutions: Sets of rules meant to govern state or international behavior. Ex. United Nations.
• Multinational Corporations(MNC’s): Private enterprises which span state borders through the actual presence in, investments in or trade with other countries.
• Identity: Sense of self, based on certain qualifications and beliefs that serve to define a person or group
• Norms: Collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity. Examples shaking hands.

Realism

• Realism is a theory of international relations that emphasizes states’ interest in accumulating power to ensure security in an anarchic world, based on the notion that individuals are power seeking and that states act in pursuit of their own national interest defined in terms of power.
• National Interests: The protection of territory and sovereignty.
• Realists wish to increase their power.
• Realists see states as increasing their power by 1. war and conquest and 2. by balancing against powerful states by taking actions to offset their power and thus fend off potential attack.
• The main focus of Realists is security.

Roots of Realism

• Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War is a root of realism.
• Rational Actors: Actors that make decisions by weighing the costs and benefits of various options against the goal to be achieved.
• Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan argued that the only cure for perpetual war that was likely to result was the emergence of a single powerful leviathan.
• Leviathan: a sovereign individual/government that could oversee and enforce rules on the people.

Realism in the 20th and 21st Centuries

• After WWII, Morgenthau wrote foundational synthesis of realism in international politics struggle for power.

• Relative Gains: How much more one state gains over another.

• Absolute Gains: How much one state gains for itself.

• Cooperation is difficult to achieve when there are gains and states are concerned that one has more than the other.

• Security Dilemma: The situation in which each state tries to increase its own power to protect itself but this increased power is seen as a threat by other states, leading them to be more insecure and thus to seek their own power which, in turn, makes others more insecure.

• Security Dilemma results in permanent condition of tension and power conflicts among states.

• Realists suggest the idea of managing power through balancing.

• Internal Balancing: A state’s building up its own military resources and capabilities in order to be able to stand against more powerful states.

• External Balancing: Refers to allying with other states to offset the power of more powerful states.

• Containment: Goal of containment was to prevent Soviet power from extending into regions beyond its immediate existing sphere of influence (East Europe) thus balancing US power against Soviet power.

• Containment is an important alternative strategy to rollback.

• Defensive Realist:

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