International Relations Class Notes

01/15

International Relations

• Studies conflict and cooperation among states and peoples

• Relations range from war and violence to peace, trade, and diplomacy

• Global issues—war, inequality, environment, pandemics, nuclear weapons—cross borders and require cooperation

• Outcomes are unequal: globalization creates wealth for some and poverty for others, fueling nationalism and conflict

• Focuses on Puzzles—outcomes that seem surprising or demand explanation (war, inequality, lack of cooperation)

  • Theories are used to explain these puzzles by identifying key causal factors and how they fit together

  • Theories help us describe, predict, and prescribe outcomes, offering simplified, probabilistic explanations in a complex world

Interests, Interactions, & Institutions

• Interests: Actors (States, leaders, firms, groups) pursue goals like security, power, profit, or values

• Interactions: outcomes result from actors’ choices—especially bargaining and cooperation

• Institutions; rules and organizations (e.g. UN, WTO, domestic systems) shape and constrain behavior.

• Interests are what actors want from politics; they rank outcomes from most to least preferred

• In world politics, interests explaing why actors choose certain policies

• interestss are commonly grouped into three categories:

  • Power/security (survival ***

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• Many actors participate in world politics:

  • individuals, states, governments, firms, interest groups, and international organizations

  • The State is central in international relations

What is a State?

• War played a key role in state formation (“states make wars, wars make states”)

  • Stronger states absorbed weaker ones through conflict and competition

• States that could raise taxes and armies effectively survived

• Sovereignty emerged to limit interference in other states’ affairs

• Sovereignty is a key component of the state

• Sovereignty is the expectation that states have legal and political supremacy—or ultimate authority—within their territorial boundaries

• The four elements of sovereignty are:

  • Sovereign possess ultimate authority over people and terriroty of state

  • other states and religious bodies are excluded from exercising political authority over a sovereign state

  • Sovereignty is indivisible

  • All sovereign units are formally equal (e.g., all states have a seat in the UN general assembly

• Norm is well established today

• But…?

  • when great powers are involved this norm is violated a lot

• Sovereignty is violated all the time in practice

  • Venezuela

• but it remains a powerful organizing institution in international politics

Anarchy

• Months of spying led to a secret US raid to seize Maduro

• Overnight airstrikes hit Caracas, cutting power and defenses

• US special forces stormed his safe house and arrested him

• Maduro and his wife were flown to US custody

• Iran Currently

• Rawanda

• Aranchy: the lack of political authority

• The absence of a central authority in the international system (no central government)

• Under anarchy, states must rely on self-help to ensure their security

• Sovereignty and anarchy together shape international politics by encouraging competition, distrust, and power balancing