IR Theory

• IR theories to some extent describes different aspects of international politics

• But fundamentally, they are competing versions of what world politics is all about

• Meta-theoretical considerations

◦ exploratory and constitutive theories

◦ positivist and interpretive theories

• Main Theories

◦ Realism, liberalism, marxism, constructivism, post-structuralism, feminism, post-colonialism

Realism(s)

• Realism has held a dominant position in IR

• contemporary realists are commonly portrayed as relying on an older, classical tradition of thought, tracing its roots back to philosophers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau

◦ Politics is a continuous struggle for power

◦ International politics pose constant possibility of war

• This tradition informs the 'statesman what he must do to preserve the health and strength'

Philosophical Traditions

• Thucydides represented power politics as a law of human nature

• Machiavelli argued that one had to rule on the basis of what human nature is really like, rather than on an idealized version of how it ought to be

• Hobbes asserted that human beings have na insatiable lust for power, in a world of anarchy, life resembles the state of nature; a state of war of every man against every man

• Rousseau suggested that a social contract is necessary to overcome the anarchical system

Raison D'etat

• the group, rather than the individual is the fundamental unit of analysis - units have changed from polis to sovereign state, but the realist logics remain similar

• thus, the state is the main actor in international relations

• its ultimate goal is to ensure its own survival

• Outside its own borders, the state (or other equivalent unit) operates in a state of anarchy

• Given that states inhabit this perilous place, they must and do, pursue power

• viewed thus, ethics and ideas of universal morality can be actively hinder state leaders from making sure that the state will survive

• Instead realists advocate a pursuit of state self interests

• From this emerge realism 'three Ss' consistent across all variants of realist thought

◦ Statism - primacy of the state

◦ Survival - preservation

◦ Self-help - only reliant on themselves

• Self help may lead to a security dilemma as all react to others' quests for more power

Week 3 class 2

Security Dilemma

• When the security as one state may be perceived as a threat to another state in the system

• military preparations create an unresolvable uncertainty in the mind of another and if those preparations are for security or for offensive purposes.

◦ examples: Cold War, Arms race

Power

• Power is survival in these conditions

• Power will not be 'granted' - each state must independently try to gain power

• Power is relational: it is never exercised in a vacuum, but always in relation to another entity

• Power is relative to the capabilities of others

• A balance of power will check the power dominance of a (coalition of) hegemonic state(s) - and so should actively be sought

Balance of Power thesis

• Predicting state behavior in international conditions of anarchy

• States will seek to prevent a state from militarily dominating others, given its propensity to power maximize

• this leads to balancing - alliance formation

• Compare with power preponderance theory

◦ alternative theory

Classical Realism

• Hans J. Morgenthau

◦ Politics Among Nations (1948)

◦ Human beings are hard-wired to pursue power

◦ Therefore, the goal of every state is to maximize its power

◦ States seek their own self-interest, defined in terms of power (although this does not preclude a moral component)

◦ A balance of power is essential

Structural Realism (Neo-realism)

• Kenneth Walt, Theory of International Politics (1979)

◦ It is not human nature but the anarchical system itself that fosters fear and insecurity

◦ Anarchy promotes or provokes self-help, meaning that states will try to maximize their security and relative power positions

◦ In this sense the units of the international system are regarded as functionally similar sovereign states

◦ The distribution of power is the key variable when trying to understand matters of war and peace, alliance politics, etc.

◦ However, rank-ordering of states according to capabilities is important to understand the dynamics of the system

◦ Defensive realism refers to state' maximization of security. Here, a bipolar world is the most stable system

◦ Offensive realism refers to the states' maximization of power. It identifies a situation in which a global hegemon dominates the international system as the ideal (Mearshiemer)

Neoclassical Realism

• Structural realism is incomplete

• Better accounts of unit-level variables, such as how power is perceived and how leadership is exercised are necessary

• States differ both in interests and their ability to extract resources

• Domestic politics will affect what is possible to accomplish in the international arena

Is Globalization a challenge to or a confirmation of realism?

• Challenge

◦ Different priorities

◦ peace

◦ diversification

◦ self-help principle

• Confirmation

◦ economic self-interest

◦ globalization as imperialism

Critiques of Realism

• Statism: flawed on empirical grounds (the state faces challenges) and normative grounds (the state cannot respond to collective global problems)

• Survival: question of whether there are limits to the actions a state can take in the name of necessity

• Self-help: not an inevitable consequence of anarchy, but rather a logic that states have selected. Other options are possible, such as collective security systems

Realism Key Concepts:

• Ontological

◦ Anarchy

◦ National interests/ national security

◦ security dilemma

• Strategic

◦ balance of power

◦ deterrence

‣ preventing an outcome (military conflict)

• alliances

‣ why some states based on fears or insecurities form alliances

Week 4 class 1

Realism

• explaining the behavior of states on the basis of distribution of power

• Power = military power

• All states, regardless of their other characteristics, will act the same way given the distribution of power

Liberalism(s)

• link to idealism

• flourishing in IR from late Cold War onwards

• Not only focused on conflict, but mainly on cooperation: explaining cooperative outcomes of international politics

• focus on preference formation: states act not only on the basis of their material power, but based on their broader interest, derived also from idea and ideology

• Core Concept: Peace

• Positive image of individuals

• Peaceful world is possible

• At least 3 brood types in (within IR)

◦ Commercial

◦ Republican

◦ Institutional

• Commercial Liberalism

◦ free trade, economic interdependence = peace

◦ More to gain from trade than from war and conquering

◦ Wealth produces peace

◦ Adam Smith

Mcdonald's thesis

• Globalization may be beneficial for peaceful coexistence

• Suggestion that economic well-being and particular values might be mutually supportive / convergence of values and lifestyle

Republican Liberalism

• Regime type matters: Republican government (domestic constitutional rule)

• Democratic constitutions lead to peaceful behavior internationally

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

• inventor of the term 'international'

• Argued for a new concept of international jurisprudence based on the equality of sovereigns

• task of a judge or legislator is to establish the greatest happiness among the family of nations

Immanuel Kant (1742 - 1804)

• Argued that a 'perpetual peace' could be achieved through:

◦ the transformation of individual consciousness

◦ Republican constitutionalism

◦ A federal contract among states to abolish war

• Claimed that liberal states are inherently pacifist in their international relations with other liberal states

• impressive statistical evidence suggests that:

◦ 'Democracies rarely fight each other'

‣ has been declared a causal law/empirical fact

Democratic Peace theory:

• liberal governments need popular support

• Checks and balances

• international commerce

• rule of law

• ideology/values

Democratization Agenda:

• The "winner" of the Cold War

◦ UN, Thatcher, Clinton, Bush

• Linked to the Washington Consensus (1990s)

◦ state involvement in the market causes underdevelopment

◦ need to open economies, privatize, deregulate

• Major push for Liberal democracies as part of stability and development agendas

• Past-Washington Consensus: Good Governance (democracy, regulation, services)

• But: problems with democratic peace theory

Democratizing States Most Unstable

• Mansfield and Snyder find that in the transition to democracy, states become more aggressive than full autocracies and democracies

• Impact of weak governmental institutions on war in the case of incomplete democratization

Why Unstable

• Are democratic states more stable

• Mohammed Ayoob:

◦ Democracy a final stage of state building, not at the expense of state building

• Creation of effective states capable of laying down the law is a prerequisite for harvesting the gains of democratization

Liberalism in Practice: Human Security

• Coined in an international context by the UNDP

• Popularized in the 1990s

• Anchored in the liberal notion of natural rights/rule of law

• Security = safety of individuals

• Widening/deepening security

Week 4 class 2

Democratic Peace Theory: Questions

• Is there a correlation between internal set-up of state and inclination towards peace?

• Do liberal states ally more easily and therefore not fight each other?

• What may be lost is "democracy" becomes linked to "security"?

• Who is imposing checks on whom? How much is government under public scrutiny?

Humanitarian intervention

• Mid 1990s a lot of new types of conflicts came to the attention of the international community

◦ up until then the goal was to avoid conflict between two big superpowers

• However, there had been tons of small interactions between countries

• Way for people to say there is a collective responsibility for international collective to work together to stop wars even if they are small

• Later became known as Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

◦ became 2.0 version of humanitarian intervention

Neo-Liberalism/Liberal Institutionalism

• Part of mainstream IR theory

• Emerged as critique of (neo-)realism

• But shares fundamental assumptions with neo-realism

◦ rational choice approach

◦ centrality of states

• National Interests:

◦ Power in economic terms - less geopolitics, less democratic peace

• Main dynamic in the system: Not conflict but cooperation

◦ pool sovereignty for everyone's gain

• Complex Interdependence

◦ Role of non-state actors

◦ High & low politics matter

◦ Multiple channels of interaction

◦ States can use other means than military force

• Creation of "regimes":

◦ implicit or explicit norms, rules, practices, procedures of engagement; formalized treaties, agreements, protocols

• And even "institutions" of global governance

◦ regimes and institutions can produce cooperation

◦ and help govern an anarchical and competitive international system

• States cooperate to achieve absolute gains

• The biggest obstacle to cooperation is cheating, not lack of mutual interest

• Effects:

◦ May take on life of their own and thereby influence future course of politics

◦ What purpose do regimes and ensuing institutions serve?

Neo-Neo Debate

• Refers to the near-synthesis and narrow debate between Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism over cooperation in international politics

◦ neorealists cautious about cooperation

◦ Neoliberals believe states can be persuaded not to cheat to make absolute gains

• They also study different worlds (?):

◦ Neorealists: high politics

◦ Neoliberals: low politics

Week 5 class 1

• Similarities between neorealism and neoliberalism

◦ rational actor outlook

◦ centrality of states

◦ anarchy (no overarching authority to enforce rules)

Introduction

• While one of the 'old' theories of international politics, Marxism is preoccupied with many of the problems evident in capitalism today:

◦ financial crisis

◦ sustainability of current patterns of production and consumption

◦ ethical concerns

◦ inequality

Marxism and World Politics

• Holistic analysis: the social world should be analyzed as a totality

• Historical Materialism: Processes of historical change are a reflection of the economic development of society- specifically of tensions between the means of production and relations of production

• Therefore, international events are structurally informed by global capitalism

The base-superstructure model

• Class conflict is a key determinant in historical developments: 'the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle

◦ bourgeoisie vs proletarians

• Analysts should no be detached and neutral, but have a moral obligation to try to make things better

• The concept of emancipation is key to any theorizing of the social

From imperialism to world-systems theory

• Lenin claimed that modern capitalism had led to a two-tier system, with a dominant core exploiting a less developed periphery

• This meant that there was no longer an automatic harmony of interests between all workers, as posited by Marx (exploited periphery workers could 'subsidize' workers in the core)

• World systems theory (Immanuel Wallerstein) adds the notion of a semi-periphery as a stabilizing factor in the political world system

•

Periphery

- Non democratic governments

semi-periphery

authoritarian gov.

core

democratic

gov.

Gramscianism

• Why had it had proved so difficult to promote revolution in western Europe

• The system appeared in part propped ip not only by coercion but by consent

• consent is created by the hegemony of the ruling class in society - meaning that the superstructure is more important than some Marxists believe

• Antonio Gramsci concluded that the hegemonic structure thus needed to be challenged through a counter-hegemonic struggle, where a new historic bloc is constructed

• Robert Cox - the anaylsis of 'world order'

‣ problem solving theory (assumes knowledge to be objective and timeless)

‣ Critical theory (acknowledges that 'theory is always for some one, and for some purpose' where facts and values are not distinct)

◦ Cox applies the notion of hegemony to theory, where it is a tool to create consent for the existing order

◦ However critical theory can also contribute to emancipation by demonstrating transformative processes

New Marxism

• Thinkers who have derived their ideas more directly from Marx and are primarily concerned with historical materialism

• Rosenberg: Trotskian thought (uneven and combined development): rather than a single path of economic and political development, this differs across areas and regions, where the international context is a crucial determinant

Alienation

• solidarity

Week 5 class 2

Constructivism

The rise of constructivism

• Key challenger to neorealism and the neoliberal institutionalism

• in the 1980s, scholars began to draw from sociological and critical theories to argue for the importance of norms, ideas, identity, and rules

• Failure of existing theories to explain end of the cold war create space for a new approach

• meteoric rise of constructivism began in the 1990s

The social construction of international politics

• constructivism is about human consciousness and the construction of reality

• ideas matter in world politics

• Our mental maps are shaped by collectively held ideas, such as knowledge, symbols, language, and rules

• This also influences states' identities and interests and consequently world politics

• The world is irreducibly social, but actors can construct, reproduce, and transform structures

Key tenets

• constructivism is a social theory, which is concerned with the interplay between structure and agency

• It distinguishes itself from rational choice theory which assume fixed preferences among global actors

• individuals and states are produced and created by their cultural environment

Regulative Rules

◦ regulate already existing activities

Constitutive Rules

◦ Create the very possibility for those activities (the rules sovereignty regulate state practices but also makes possible the very idea of a sovereign state)

Two logics

• The logic of consequences

◦ attributes action to anticipated costs and benefits

• The logic of appropriateness

◦ Highlights how actors are rule-following and worry about the legitimacy of their actions

• The two logics are not necessarily discrete or competing

Meaning and Power

• Constructivists also examine how actors make their activities meaningful

• Culture informs the meanings that people give to their practices and the objects they construct

• The fixing of meaning is an accomplishment that is the essence of politics - and thus power and power brokerage

• Power thus has an ideational component

Practices:

• Contrary to rational choice theorists, constructivists talk about actors' practices rather than behavior

Global Change

• Constructivists criticize neo-realists and neo-liberal institutionalists for failing to explain contemporary global transformations

Socialization:

• Socialization explains:

◦ how states change so that they come to identify with the identities, interests, and manners of the existing members of 'the club'

◦ How states, accordingly, change their behavior so that it is consistent with that of the group

• There are various pathways to socialization

Week 6 class 1

Constructivism and global change: Diffusion

• Diffusion asks how particular models, practices, norms, strategies, or beliefs spread within a population and between actors in the system

• Institutional isomorphism: observes that organizations that share the same environment will, over time, resemble each other

• Diffusion occurs via coercion, strategic competition, pressures to secure resources, mimicking of successful models, they symbolic standing of certain models, and professional associations and expert communities

Constructivism and global change: The 'life cycle of norms'

• Norms evolve through different stages:

◦ norm emergence is often pushed by norm entrepreneurs, who frame issues in whats that promote their ideas

◦ A norm cascade occurs as the norm diffuses, often because of pressure for conformity, desire for international legitimacy, or leaders' quests for enhanced self-esteem

◦ Norm internalization means that the norm is taken for granted and is no longer contested

Transnational Civil Society

• non-state, non-profit, non violent

• Epistemic Community

• Norm entrepreneurs

• Transnational - sub-national linkages

• Transnational civil society is "a set of interactions among an imagined community to shape collective life that are not confined to the territorial and institutional space of states"

The Power of TCS

• Mechanisms: both persuasion and coercion

• Teaching as a source of policy change

◦ generate information for agenda setting

The Land Mine Campaign

• context: post-cold war, civilian casualties, reporting development agencies on the ground

• Information and expertise: constructing and repeating figures and facts

• Issue-Networks: NGOs, Parliamentarians, UN SG, Princess Diana et al. = ICRC led ICBL

• Grafting: civilian discrimination, unnecessary suffering, chemical weapons taboo.

• The burden of proofs on the states: military utility

Ottawa Treaty 1997

• Convention on the prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines ad on their Destruction

• 1997 the ICBL leader jody Williams wins the Nobel Peace Price

• 164 State Parties to the Treaty (2022)

Theoretical Implications

• Neo-realism:

◦ key states, not signatories

Week 7 class 1

• Neo-realism: key states not signatories

• Neo-liberalism: international institutions shape behavior

• Marxism: hegemonic bloc

• Constructivism: change identity and interest

The 'nuclear taboo' (Tannenwald)

• A taboo: a particularly forceful kind of normative prohibition that, according to the anthropological and sociological literature, deals with "the sociology of danger"

• Tannenwald argues that this applies to the use of nuclear weapons

Critical Theory

• although critical theory originates in Marxist thinking (oppression-> political actions -> emancipation) there is no coherent school of thought; many different strands

• Less focus on the economic base, more concern with superstructure (structure of oppression inherent in culture and society)

• Questions the working class as a transformative powers, as it seems

Robert Cox - the analysis of 'world order'

• Cox distinguishes between

◦ problem solving theory ( assumes knowledge to be objective and timeless)

◦ critical theory (acknowledges that 'theory is always for some one, and for some purpose where facts and values are not distinct)

Critical Security Studies

• a broad church

• a label originating at a conference at York University in Canada 1994

• Critical referring to a desire to move beyond the Cold War type study of security

• First book publication: Micheal C. Williams and Keith Krause 1997

• No fixed definition of critical security studies at a minimum:

◦ question the referent object of security

◦ consider security as more than just military security

◦ post-positivist approaches to security studies - beyond objective 'scientific' research

Securitization

• a framework for analyzing how an issue becomes and 'un-becomes- a security matter

• promoted by the Copenhagen school:

◦ ole Waever

◦ Security as Speech Acts, i.e. as a concrete action that is performed by virtue of its being said

◦ 'security' is thus a self-referential practice, because it is in this practice that the issue becomes as security issue - not necessarily because a reals existential threat exists but because the issue is presented as such a threat.

• 1998: security: as new framework for analysis

◦ a critique of realist analyses focused on material power, state actors, and national security

Speech acts can make a difference

• the language struggles of the "war on terror"

Securitization Theory: the basics

• Analyzes how a specific issue become securitized

◦ how it is removed from the realm of ordinary political processes to the security agenda

• Security is about survival

◦ "when an issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object"

• Referent Object:

◦ "Thinks that are seen to be existentially threaten3ed ad that have a legitimate claim to survival"

• For the Copenhagen School

◦ state, national sovereignty or ideology, national economies, collective identities, and species or habitats

• Securitizing actors: actors who declare a specific referent object as threatened. they can be state actors

Securitization spectrum: three levels

1. Non-politicized: outside the responsibility of the state and public debate

2. Politicized: part of public policy

3. Securitized:

Conditions for Securitization

• security is socially constructed, therefore it depends on a shared understanding on what constitutes a danger to security:

◦ a speaker with authority

◦ makes a claim/speaks the language of security

◦ to an audience, who accepts the authority of the speaker

◦ in a recognized context

De-securitization

• moving issues out of threat-defense sequence and into the ordinary public sphere

• Difficult, as bureaucracies tend to be slow

◦ Example: Apartheid, and the issue of race moving from the security to the political realm

Post-Structuralism

• studies the social world

◦ argues that our ontological assumptions matter greatly for how we view the world and for the more specific explanations of world politics we come up with

◦ further embrace post-positivist epistemology as they argue that we cannot understand world politics through casual cause-effect relationships

◦ in this view, the structures that constitute the political are constituted through human action and cannot be treated as independent variables

Post-structuralism: discourse

• Postsructuralism understands language not as a neutral transmitter, but as producing meaning

◦ things do not have an objective meaning independently of how we constitute them in language

◦ the prevalent discourse thus forms and informs our take on things and events, as it structures our thoughts

• The codes of words are never truly fixed, because the connections between words is never given once and for all

• Hierarchical dichotomies can make a description seem objective and factual, when it is in fact a structured set of values

• The concomitant aim therefore lies in problematizing dichotomies; showing how they work and thereby opening alternative pathways

Post-structuralism: Genealogy

• defined as the 'history of the present'

◦ what political practices have formed the present and which alternative understandings and discourses have been marginalized and often forgotten

• What constructions are dominate, and how do these constructions relate to past discourses

The Concept of Power

• Power comes about when discourses constitute particular subject positions as the 'natural' ones

• Thus, political 'actors' do not exist outside of discourse

• This relationship between power and discourse is crucial to post-structuralist analysis

• The philosopher most notably concerned with such theorizing was Michel Faucault in his conceptualization of the knowledge / power nexus

Deconstructing State Sovereignty

• State sovereignty can be conceptualized as a division of the world as an 'inside' the state (where the is order, trust, loyalty, and progress) and an 'outside' the state (where there is conflict, suspicion, self-help and anarchy)

• This dichotomy is inherently arbitrary and unstable and must be constantly reified

Identity and Foreign Policy

• Rather than an objective standpoint from which (state) identity emerges, this is constituted by foreign policy

• Foreign policies constitute the identity of the self through the construction of threats/dangers - the other(s)

• Identities are simultaneously a product of and the justification for the foreign policies

Self

• civilized, just

Others

• oppressed, cruel - driven by hatred,

Feminism in IR

• feminism is part of constitutive theory (the world is intrinsic to and affected by theories of it)

• There is no one single definition of feminism

• Feminism is concerned with the social construction of gender

• Feminism is fundamentally rooted in an analysis of the global subordination of women - which can occur economically ,politically, physically, and socially and is dedicated to this eliminated

• without feminism and feminist movements, womans experiences and roles would have remained in little importance

Womens international League of Peace and Freedom

• created in 1915: oldest formal women's international peace organization

• Endeavouring to end WWI and all wars

• Ensured that the league of nations addressed the participation and status of women in international politics: legal, social, and economic status of women

• The women, peace and security (WPS) agenda is the concerted result of the effort of feminist organizations

Feminist In IR theory

• Concerned with exposing both positivist and post-positivist theories of IR as partial, biased, and limited

Gender and Power

• power rests in special, political, and economic hierarchies

• Different understandings of gender link the concept to power in different way

◦ as an emiriacal variable - biological differences

◦ social construct - social practices, identities, and institutions

◦ as an effect of discourses of power

• Gender becomes and analytical category

Liberal Feminist IR Theory

• advocate that the rights and representation conventionally granted to men be extended to women

• Regard gender inequality as a major barrier to human development, which leads to greater incidences of war and violence

• they suggest that a more comprehensive approach be taken

Critical Feminist IR Theory

• highlight the broader social, economic, and political relationships that structure relational power

• draw from marxist theories to prioritize the role of the economy

• They identify gender and class oppressions as interdependent and intertwined

• Critical feminist theories are wary of gender essentialism

Post-strucutral Feminist Theory

• illuminates the constitutive role of language in creating gendered knowledge and experiences

• draws specifically from Judith Butler

• She argued that sex is constructed by gender rather than the other way around

• Premised on the concept of gender performativity: gender is not what we are, but rather what we do

Postcolonial Feminist IR Theory

• postcolonial feminism seeks to situate historical knowledge a of colonialism and post colonialism as intersecting with economic, social, and political oppression and change

• Argues that the feminism of the global north is rooted in and dependent on discourses of rights and equality of pre-eminent concern to Western Europe

• Resist the image of 'Third World Women" as in need of paternal (western) 'relations of protectio