Article: Beyond Great Sources

Structuralists

  • Framework of international system and distribution of power

  • Structural Factors and technological change change state behavior

Revolutionaires

  • leader defying the pressure of both domestic poltics and international circumstances, redfine both for the better and worse: Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler crown prince mohammad bin salman

    • MBS HAPPEN: change saudi arabia economy and society

    • MBA choose radical options

    • TOP-Revolutions= are transformative

    • defying the impersonal forces (poltical politcs) and tradtional foreign policu

Deciders

  • ayatollah ali ( cautious old man)

    • weighs the international pressure pushing Iran in the direction of the reformists and pragmatists the domestic pressure from the hard-liners

    • sometimes he side with hard-liners(supporting of militais in iran, syria, yemen) other times with pragmatists( accepting 2015 nuclear deal by us)

Individuals arnt everything: national intersts, dometic poltics, bureaucracies, and other forces shape foreign policy

Leaders can also “create, bend, exploit, override, succumb” to these factos

  • dominent personalities can effect and change policy

  • individuals can rise above institutions, norms, systemic forces, and domestic poltics —>leaving coutry weaker or stronger

The role of individuals

  • when taken into account poltics become less certain and contingent (things may or may not happen )

  • Leaders can make world more dangerous or less