Lesson 3 Notes

Review

• 1492 vs 1648: Turning points in history.

  • 1492: European colonization of the Americas began.

  • 1648: End of Thirty Years' War, modern state system via Peace of Westphalia.

• Legacies of slavery and colonialism: Impacts on global power & social structures.

  • Shapes economic inequalities and racial tensions.

  • Influences political power structures.

• Maps of the world: Reflect power structures and changing understandings.

  • Not neutral; reflect creator's power dynamics and perspectives.

  • Illustrate evolving understandings of global space.

• Conversion and conquest: Shape cultural and political landscapes.

  • Spread religions and empires.

  • Influenced cultural identities and political boundaries.

• Non-Western IR: Examine IR from perspectives outside the Western tradition.

  • Aims to decolonize IR theory.

  • Incorporates non-Western experiences and viewpoints.

• Provincializing all thought: Recognize the limitations of any single perspective.

  • Acknowledge situated knowledge.

  • Encourages inclusive, nuanced understanding of global issues.

• Embedded thought in its context: Understand ideas in specific historical and social environments.

  • Analyze ideas within historical, social, and political contexts.

  • Essential for grasping full meaning and implications.

• Chinese approaches to IR: Example of non-western perspectives.

  • Unique historical experiences and cultural values.

  • Offers alternative perspectives on sovereignty, development, global governance.

Review + Why Hats?

• Why Hats?: Unclear context, needs clarification.

Racial Liberalism - Charles Mills

• Liberalism is globally triumphant: Dominant political ideology.

  • Emphasis on individual rights and freedoms.

• Emerged in 17th-18th centuries: Opposing absolutism and hierarchy.

  • Challenges absolute monarchies and rigid social hierarchies.

• Focus on individual rights and freedoms: Core tenets of liberalism.

  • Protects freedom of speech, religion, assembly.

  • Upholds due process and equal treatment under the law.

• Normative justifications of the existing order: Using a liberal framework.

  • Frames existing social and political order as best for protecting rights and promoting progress.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Racial contract and racial liberalism:

  • Social contract as justification, not literal.

  • From pre-social, pre-political humanity.

  • Social contract theory justifies political authority and social order.

• Grocery stores with arbitrary prices during inflation:

  • Example of social contract violation?

  • Questions about the implicit social contract between businesses and consumers.

• Two consequent innovations:

  • Removal of divine authority.

  • All rules socially constructed.

  • Rejects divine authority as basis for political legitimacy.

  • Recognizes human-made social rules.

• Human beings are naturally equal:

  • Stemming from the state of nature.

  • Basis for advocating equal rights and opportunities.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Locke and Kant - Moral equity is foundational:

  • Not Hobbes - equity is submission to secular authority (patriotism/nationalism).

• Social ontology is individualist:

  • Demands polity respect equal personhood and property.

• Equality is foundational:

  • Social ontology is classically individualist.

• Demands the creation of a polity:

  • Respecting individual personhood and property rights.

• Basic moral entitlements for the citizenry:

  • Juridically codified and enforced by an impartial state.

• Economic transactions:

  • Ideally non-exploitative.

  • Fairness as overarching contract norm.

• Moral equality of people in the state of nature:

  • Demands equality of treatment in the liberal polity created.

• The state is not alien or antagonistic to us:

  • Protector of our rights.

• The good polity is the just polity:

  • Founded on safeguarding our interests as individuals.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• The thought exercise as basis of Justice:

  • Versus the realities of inequity.

• Racial liberalism or white liberalism:

  • Dominant historical experience since modernity.

• Full personhood limited to white men:

  • Racism is not an anomaly.

  • Present in all forms of liberalism.

• Locke:

  • Invested in slavery, justified expropriation from indigenous communities.

• Helped write 1669 South Carolina Constitution:

  • Gave absolute power to slave owners.

• Kant's theorizing of sub humanism.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Black theorists challenge liberalism:

  • As practiced in the US, not abstract ideal version.

• No necessary contradiction:

  • Between liberal tradition in theory and black liberalism.

• Contradiction exists:

  • Between black liberalism and how liberalism is understood in the American context.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Western political philosophy:

  • Misleading narrative of the West.

• Inculcated in students.

• Central debates exclude:

  • Modern global history of racism versus antiracism.

• Exclude struggles:

  • Abolitionist, anti-imperialist, anticolonialist, anti-Jim Crow, anti-apartheid.

• Missing figures:

  • Quobna Cugoano, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Mahatma Gandhi, Aimé Césaire, C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon, Steve Biko, Edward Said.

• Political history sanitized:

  • White racial domination and oppression downplayed.

• White supremacy whitewashed:

  • Originally planetary, transnational racial political structure.

• Moral equality racially restricted:

• 1919 Versailles peace conference:

  • Japan's racial equality clause defeated by Anglo-Saxon nations; US refused to accept.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Ideal vs. non-ideal theory:

  • Ideal theory contrasts with amoral realpolitik; asks what justice demands in a perfect society.

• Non-ideal theory:

  • Concerned with corrective measures, remedial justice.

• Focusing on ideal theory:

  • Exempts white philosophers from legacy of white supremacy.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• How are we not wise to this?

• We know whataboutism, but not this?

Racial Liberalism - Charles Mills

• No outside to race:

  • The oppressor in all of us.

• Deracializing Racial Liberalism:

  • Use a contract registering nonideal history of white oppression: domination contract.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Adopt domination contract:

  • Captures patterns of sociopolitical exclusion.

  • Better for normative questions of social justice.

• Revisionist contract:

  • Expresses the reality of group domination and social hierarchy.

• Sexual, racial, hetero-patriarchy contracts.

• In the US:

  • Abstraction from European/Euro-American modernity.

• Methodologically central:

  • Puts us on different theoretical terrain.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Recovering the past factually:

  • Modern states are racialized.

  • Race is integral to the modern nation-state.

• Universal inclusion wrong:

  • Predicated on colorless atomic individuals.

• How to think of levels of analysis?

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Implications for social justice:

  • Deracializing racial liberalism.

• Moral appeal of social contract:

  • Fairness, not merely against premodern hierarchies.

  • Against utilitarian abuses.

• Social contract prohibits exploitation:

  • Terms impose moral constraints.

• Marxist claim of exploitative liberal capitalism:

  • Threatening to liberal contract pretensions.

• Labor theory of value:

  • Subversive implications.

Racial Liberalism – Charles Mills

• Step 3:

  • Recognizing reality and centrality of racial exploitation.

  • White appropriation of black labor and red land.

  • Contours of the new nation's development and wealth.

Racial Liberalism - Charles Mills

• Whites reap advantages:

  • Unaware or deny advantages from racial inequality.

• Whiteness as property:

  • Underwrites entitlements and expectations.

• Opposition to reparations:

  • Unite whites in opposition.

Levels of Analysis

• Enduring question:

  • Can one person's voice have global impact?

Key Terminology

• Levels of analysis (LOAs):

  • System level: Global system, power distribution, economic system, global governance.

  • State level: Nation-states as actors, strategic and economic positions.

  • Group level: Actors within contexts (parties, NGOs, interest groups).

  • Individual level: Beliefs, fears, personalities.

  • Methods: Provides insights into research question.

Establishing the Four Levels of Analysis

• Analytical framework for productive thinking.

• Locates 'units of analysis'.

• IR focused on state framework.

• Analyzing Donald Trump?

Establishing the Four Levels of Analysis

• How academic debate happens?

• Who is excluded from speaking?

• How is leadership defined?

5.2 - KEY PEOPLE: Kenneth Waltz

• Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013):

  • Influential figure in IR.

• Man, the State, and War (1959):

  • Three images central to International Relations.

• 1: The individual:

  • Conditioned by human nature; predisposition to negative behavior.

• 2: The state:

  • Internal properties maximize power and survival.

• 3: The system:

  • Absence of world government.

• Analytical ambition:

  • Break down explanations for decision to go to war.

Waltz

• Academic bubbles.

Establishing The Four Levels of Analysis, cont.

• Kenneth Waltz (1959):

  • Three images central to IR.

• The individual:

  • Biology predisposes negative behaviors.

• The state:

  • Internal properties maximize power.

• The system:

  • Absence of world government.

• States are primary actors in IOs.

5.3 - KEY PEOPLE: Osama bin Laden and Julian Assange

• Osama bin Laden:

  • Led al-Qaeda, masterminded 9/11 attacks.

• Julian Assange:

  • Spearheaded WikiLeaks, undermined US-led War on Terror.

• Lasting impact on IR:

  • From private persons without status.

Applying Levels of Analysis to COVID-19

• Awareness of different perspectives.

• System-level:

  • G John Ikenberry, initial nationalism, new types of cooperation.

Ikenberry

• The future of liberal democracy:

  • January 4th, 2020

Applying Levels of Analysis to COVID-19

• State-level:

  • Stephen M Walt, economic self-isolation undermines cooperation.

Walt

Applying Levels of Analysis to COVID-19

• Group-level:

  • Nicholas Burns, value of key societal groups.

Burns

Applying Levels of Analysis to COVID-19

• Individual-level:

  • Leadership analyses (Ardern, Trump, Johnson).

Jacinda

• State level:

  • New Zealand's self-interest in protecting its population.

• Group level:

  • Driven by Labour party to shore up electoral power.

• Individual level:

  • Ardern's actions to secure political power.

Boris

Queer Leadership

• RuPaul DRAG RACE

5.5 - KEY TERMS: Methods

• Valid research methodology:

  • Provides insights to answer research question.

• Levels of analysis component of methodology.

• Persuasion is key.

The Added Value of a Levels of Analysis Framework

• Global challenges require analysis across levels.

• Foreign policy behavior influenced by levels (within/outside state).

• Foreign policy issues?

The Added Value of a Levels of Analysis Framework

• Opponents to LOAs:

  • Patomaki (2002), arbitrary and based on assumptions.

  • Leftwich (2004), complex web of processes.

• Actors or the platform?

The Added Value of a Levels of Analysis Framework, cont.

• Green Politics example.

• Bitcoin.

Envisioning a Sustainable Future:

• Capstone Project.

The Added Value of a Levels of Analysis Framework, cont.

• LOAs structure thinking for theories of IR.

• Be aware of multiplicity of actors and processes.

• Methods make subjective choices objective.

Conclusion

• LOAs make IR issues more comprehensible.

• Decision about level develops focused piece.

• Moved from state/system to groups/individuals.

Traditional and Middle Ground Theories (hats)

• Enduring question:

  • Can IR theory be simplified to optimists and pessimists?

Positivism (polisci methods courses)

• Positivism:

  • Assumes objective reality.

  • Emphasizes observation and measurement.

  • Prioritizes theory testing.

  • Uses quantitative methods.

• Post-positivism:

  • Acknowledges subjectivity.

  • Emphasizes interpretation.

  • Allows qualitative exploration.

Positivism

• Research Methods.

Key Terminology

• Positivism (building block of realism and liberalism).

• Statism.

• Isolationism.

Making Sense of Theory

• Understanding assumptions builds base for IR.

• Solid base is key

• IR theory is a map.

• New theories emerge.

Deciding on a IR approach

• Theory application examples.

6.1 - KEY INSIGHTS: Theory families

• Commonality focus first.

We have to map theory because

• It is not a given.

Liberalism and Realism, cont.

• Realism:

  • Rooted in Thucydides, assumes self-interest, conflict unavoidable.

• Hobbes:

  • State of nature, war of all against all, social contract.

• Three S’s of realism:

  • Statism, survival, self-help.

• At odds with liberalism:

  • World of danger, self-interest is key.

Realism

• Three assumptions.

6.4 - KEY TERMS: Isolationism

• Realists confused with isolationists.

• Caution interactions.

• Assess power and security.

American Isolationism

Neorealism

• Interests: survival

• Human nature-Man flawed?

• Structutal Annarchy

6.3 - KEY INSIGHTS: Statism, survival and self-help

• Statism = international anarchy.

• Achieved statehood?

• What about best chances

Classic realist thinking

Liberalism

• Based on idealist.

• humans have peace

Liberalism is sometimes called

• Idealism.

Liberalism

• No violence?

• Racism history?

-Sum interactions

• Coorperation better
  Reason triumphs rhetoric

• There are progressive trajectory

• What is doom?

• The realists see terrrain, the liberals see cooperation

• must choose what you want to support

  • Democratization internationally?
    -Truism? interenet produced good? Build relationships

• Lead to relationship building?

Classical Liberal

• The English School can act, framed as idealists

• About intersubject

The Security of construction

Classic Thai, drug use, declared war, police follow act

Realism

• Driven by THREATNS