Globalisation of World Politics Revision

Globalization and global politics

- Globalisation: contentious issue in the study of world politics - Hyperglobalists: Demise of the sovereign state? - Sceptics: rejection of globalisation - Transformationist approach Evidencing globalisation: - Growing global commerce, finance and production: economic fortunes of nations,, communities and households are bound - No national economy can insulate itself entirely from the contagion effect of turmoil in global markets - Arab spring: spread of movements - Intensification of globalisation: global regulation on climate change and WMD - More transnational and global forms of rule-making and regulations - Awareness of the multiple ways in which the security and prosperity of communities in different regions of the world are bound together - Sceptics: symptom of growing international dependence Conceptualising globalisation: - Process characterised by: - Stretching of social, political and economic activities across political frontiers so that events, decisions and activities in on region come to have significance for individuals in distant regions of the world - Intensification of interconnectedness in almost every sphere of social existence - Accelerating pace of global interactions and processes as the evolution of worldwide systems of transport and communication increases the velocity with which ideas, news, goods, information, capital and technology move around the world - Growing extensity, intensity and velocity of global interactions - Concept of globalisation seeks to capture the dramatic shift that is under way in the organisation of human affairs - Structural change - Shrinking world - Deterritorialization - Power is organised and exercised above, across, and around the state - Denationalisation of power - Globalisation is a process that involves a great deal more than simply growing internationalisation or interdependence between states. Can be defined as a historical process involving a fundamental shift or transformation in the spatial scale of human social organisation that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across regions and continents Interpreting globalisation: - Sceptic interpretation: Conflates globalisation with economic trends. Overlooks non-economic trends. Patterns of contemporary globalisation: Economic, military, legal, ecological, cultural, social. - Globalisation: highly uneven. - Elites in the vanguard while the poor are excluded - Has also created conflicts/tensions - Unprecedented institutionalisation - Best described as a thick form of globalisation or globalism - Economic globalisation: at risk? Globalisation and global politics: Westphalia: established the legal basis of modern statehood, normative structure. Gave birth to the modern states system - Welded the idea of territoriality with the notion of legitimate sovereign rule - Sovereignty: rightful entitlement to exclusive, unqualified and supreme rule within a delimited territory - No legal or political authority over the state - Globalisation: challenge to the Westphalian ideal of sovereign statehood From (state-centric) geopolitics to (geocentric) global politics: - To talk about global politics is to recognise that politics itself is being globalised - Globalisation challenges the one-dimensionality of orthodox accounts of world politics that give primacy to geopolitics and the struggle for power between states - Global politics: focuses attention on global cooperation, directs attention to emergence of a fragile global polity: conducted through the international or transnational political processes - Global governance complex: emergence of private or nongovernmental agencies - Transnational civil society - Globalisation transforming but not burying the Westphalian ideal of sovereign statehood. Disaggregated state - Globalisation requires a conceptual shift in our thinking about world politics, from a state centric perspective to the perspective of geocentric or global poitics - Global politics is more accurately described as distorted global politics because it is afflicted by significant power asymmetries.

English School

- Theory and history, morality and power, agency and structure Beyond realism vs idealism: - Dissatisfied over the choice of either realism and idealism. - International society, Wight, Bull, Butterfield The interpretive mode of inquiry - Bull: Against the rigid application of scientific methods 1. The subject matter of IR: Not study interstate relations or interactions of units: IR was about establishing a body of general propositions about the global political system 2. The importance of historical understanding: Historical depth needed. Actors must be understood through their historical context 3. There is no escape from values: Important to be aware of one's values and or these to be subjected to critical scrutiny. Values will inform the selection of topics to be studied, and the writings and statements of academics will, in turn, have an impact on the political process 4. IR: fundamentally a normative enterprise: Values: fundamental to the subject of IR. How to construct a form of international society that was both orderly and just? - Real agents in international society: diplomats and leaders who think and act on behalf of the state and its institutions. International society: - Coming into being when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, forms a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions - Recognition: crucial to an identity relationship - Who is entitled to claim the identity of a rightful member of international society - You can be a member of a state system but not international system - What does it mean for a state to act? - Officials of the state act externally on its behalf - Diplomatic culture - Non state actors included in the international society Types of international society - Pluralist international society: institutional framework: geared towards the liberty of states and the maintenance of order among them - Status quo powers must be prepared to intervene forcefully to limit the growing power of a state that threatened the general balance - Solidarist international society: collective enforcement of international rules and the guardianship of human rights. - Shared values, institutions and held together by legal rules like pluralism - However, the content of the values and the character of the rules and institutions differ - Values: individuals entitled to basic rights - Enforcement of human rights principle risks undermining international order

Empire and hegemony

Empires: - Traditional story in IR: anarchy replaced hierarchy - Reality: there have been numerous hierarchical systems, including empire - States never been equally sovereign in practice - Empire: considered to have been the most common model of governance in international history - Anarchy + hierarchy: not mutually exclusive, and we can also relate this to the concept of hegemony Watson's spectrum: - How systems are organised - Independent states, - Hegemony - Suzerainty - Dominion - Empire Why would a state become an empire: - Political: compete with other states - Economic: new markets, resources, economic competition, surplus capital - Ideological/cultural: spread of capitalism, democracy, religion Definitions of Empire: - Is empire and imperialism over? - Contested term Empire definition: - Territorial conquest and expansion, claims to sovereign control, centralised command, establishment of colonies Empire as an analytical tool: - Expose the politics of hierarchy; structures of domination and subordination - Emphasize agency and resistance of the colonized Hegemony: - Contested - American Hegemony: war on terror and the Iraq war Is the US an empire? - Imperial enthusiasts, critics, sceptics American hegemony will endure: - Global military dominance and power projection - Economic resilience - US population - Unrivalled structural power

Power

In general - Conested concept Power as Resource of Capability: - Attribute: something that states possess, and use it either as a resource or capability - Conventional approach: realist - Military power, economic power, size of territory and population, skill of population, geographical location - Distinctions between actual power and potential power Relational power: - Power as a relationship between actors, rather than solely as a property of actors - Limitation to seeing it only as a resource: having superior power does not mean influence or policy success - Having power =/= being powerful - Power over someone: persuasion, offer of rewards, threat of punishment (Holsti) Taxonomy of power: - Barnett and Duvall: power is the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstance and fate Forms of power: (Nye) - Hard: military power, economic power, carrots and sticks approach - Soft: Attraction and agenda setting, sources: culture, political values, foreign policy. Power to influence the behaviour of others to get the outcomes one wants Ranking of power: - States are formally equal in sovereign status, but hierarchy is ingrained in the international system - Great powers: most powerful, military capabilities (realist) - Great powers are powers recognised by others to have, and conceived by their own leaders and people to have, certain special rights and duties (Bull, English School) - Middle powers: States that are able to provide for their own defence but without great capacity for coercing others. Able to shape parts of the international system but not overlying structure - Size, population and involvement is small Is power shifting? - From West to East - Global South - Emerging powers as an analytical category - US-China power transition Emerging powers: - Shared history of colonialism or injustice - Rising hard power - Redistribution in the international order - International recognition and status - Revisionist powers challenge existing order

Liberalism

Introduction - Also known as idealism - Self-restraint, moderation, compromise and peace - Argue that power politics: is the product of ideas: ideas can change. Therefore: world can be re-made to be hospitable to liberalism - Idea of progress - Four-dimensional definition: 1. All citizens are juridically equal and possess certain basic rights to education, free press, religious tolerance 2. Legislative assembly of the state possesses only the authority invested in it by the people, whose basic rights is not permitted to abuse 3. A key dimension of the liberty of the individual: right to property + productive forces 4. Most effective system of economic exchange is one that is largely market driven and not subordinate to bureaucratic regulation and control, either domestically or internationally - Contrast between liberal and conservative values - Liberal: individualism, tolerance, freedom, constitutionalism - Conservatism: higher value on order and authority and is willing to sacrifice the liberty of the individual for the stability of the community (realism) - Can be seen as a theory of government, but explicit connection between liberalism as a political and economic theory and liberalism as an international theory - Liberal thought on a global scale rests on the application of an analogy from the character of a political actor to its international conduct - Identity of a state: determines its outward orientation - Collective action, coordinating role of international organisations - War: recurring theme of global politics, but anarchy is not the cause - What causes it then? - Cobden: Interventions by governments domestically and internationally disturbing natural order - Woodrow Wilson: undemocratic nature of international politics, especially foreign policy and the balance of power - Hobson: The balance of power system - How can we remedy this? - Collective commerce or world government? - Liberal internationalism: Crisis of followership and leadership in international politics. - Ikenberry: liberal institutions could strengthen to the point where individual state power and capacity becomes a much less significant determinant of stability - Overall: liberalism aims to project values of order, liberty, justice and toleration into international relations - Peak: interwar period - Domestic and international institutions required to protect and nurture values - Cleavage: those who operate with an activist conception of liberalism (intervention and stronger institutions) and those who operate with a pragmatic conception (places priority on toleration and non-intervention) Core ideas in liberal thinking on international relations: - Kant and Bentham: perpetual peace, pacificism - Kant: to achieve perpetual peace: transformation of individual consciousness, republican constitutionalism, and a federal contract between states to abolish war - Permanent peace treaty - Doyle, picked up this idea: liberal states have created a separate peace - Two elements of Kant: restraint among liberal states and international imprudence in relations with non-liberal states - Democratic peace thesis: democracies hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other democracies - Pacific federation - Why it works? Democratic states: wealthier? Or relationships between democracies? - How should a democratic state act towards an undemocratic state? Bentham: - Power of la to solve the problems of war - Federal states were able to transform their identity from one based on conflicting interests to a more peaceful federation Cobden: - Free trade would create a more peaceful world order - Brings mutual gains to all the players, irrespective of their size of the nature of their economies - Disproved by WWI, interdependent economies of Britain and Germany Post WWI: peace is not a natural condition: must be constructed. - National authority: Woodrow Wilson. Peace could only be secured with the creation of an international organisation to regulate anarchy - General association of nations: 14 points, to have military power to deter aggression and when necessary to use a preponderance of power to enforce its will - Collective security: central to LoN - An arrangement where each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join in a collective response to aggression - In event of war, all states must cease normal relations with state, impose sanctions and if necessary commit armed forces to the disposal of the League Council should the use of force be required - Self- determination of all nations - Disaster: driven by self-interest - After: UN, power of VETO, superpowers - Mitrany: integration theorist: cooperation in one sector: cooperation in other sectors Nye and Keohane: - Non-state actors have to be taken into consideration - Greater interdependence - Waltz: critique of interdependence: lower than between the constituent parts in a national political system - Neo-liberals: neo-realists were correct, anarchic international structure, centrality of states and rationalist approach to social scientific enquiry - However, anarchy does not mean that durable patterns of cooperation are impossible - Creation of international regimes: matter as they facilitate cooperation - Neo-liberals: actors would enter into cooperative agreements if the gains were evenly shared - Neo-realists: state has to gain more than its rival (relative gains) The challenges confronting liberalism: - Ascendency of liberal ideas and institutions has been one of the most striking trends in world politics for the last two centuries - After Cold War: triumph for liberalism - However, present day: cooperation not as easy to achieve as claimed - NAME region, global financial crisis - Ikenberry: liberal internationalism - Liberal internationalism 1.0: interwar period and the failed attempt to replace the old balance of power order with the rule of low - Liberal internationalism 2.0: Post WW2: USA: embedding certain fundamental liberal principles into the rules and institutions of international society. However: America no longer a hegemon as before - Divisions in Western leadership - Unproportional gains between the West and the rest - Liberal internationalism 2.0 in crisis - Patterns of dominance and dependence

Globalisation of World Politics (Introduction)

Introduction - Theory: simplifying device that allows you to decide which facts matter and which do not - Debate: Idealism vs realism - Realism: has been the dominant way of explaining world politics in the last hundred years Realism and world politics: - Anarchy - Main actors are states, legally sovereign actors - Sovereignty: no actor above the state that can compel it to act in specific ways - Human nature: fixed, and selfish - World politics: struggle for power between states, all trying to maximise their national interest - Balance of power: state prevents one state domination - Bargaining and alliances, with diplomacy a key mechanism for balancing various national interests - Use of military, self help system. - Neorealism: importance of structure of the international political system in affecting the behaviour of all states - Multipolarity Liberalism and world politics: - Human beings: perfectible, democracy is necessary for that perfectability to develop, and that ideas matter - Belief in progress, reject notion that war is the natural condition of world politics - State, only actor? Multinational corporations, transnational actors and international organisations: central actors - State not a united actor but a set of bureaucracies, each with its own interests: therefore, no national interest - Possibility for cooperation - Stress the importance economic, environmental and technological issues - Order emerges from interactions between many layers of governing arrangements, comprising laws, agreed norms, international regimes, and institutional rules - Sovereignty, not as important in practice - Interdependence between states: a critically important feature of world politics Marxist theories and world politics: - Historical materialism - World politics occur in a world capitalist economy - Most important actors: not states, but classes, and behaviour of all other actors can be boiled down to class forces - States, multinational corporations and even international organisations: represent the dominant class interest in the world economic system - Agree that the world economy severely constrains the freedom of manoeuvre of state - World politics: setting in which class conflicts are played out - Order: economic rather than military terms - International economy: divided into core, semi-periphery and the periphery - Dominance of global capitalism - These determine the main political patterns in world politics - Economic autonomy > sovereignty Social constructivism: - We make and remake the social world and so there is much more of a role for human agency than other theories allow - World isn't fixed: possibility for human progress and for the betterment of people's lives - Even the self help system is something that we make and re-make: 'Anarchy is what states make of it' (Wendt) - World is open for change - The current structures, processes, identities and interests of world politics could be different from what they currently are Poststructuralism: - Lyotard: Postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives - Metanarratives: theories that assert it has clear foundations for making knowledge claims and involves a foundational epistemology - Epistemology: study of how we can claim to know something - To have a foundational epistemology: is to think that all truth claims can be judged true or false - Distrusting claims to have direct access to the truth - Rejects Marxism, Realism and Liberalism as they claim to have uncovered some fundamental truth about the world - Foucault: opposed to the notion that knowledge is immune from the workings of power. Power: produces knowledge. No truth existing outside of power Postcolonialism: - Can established theories explain world politics? - They help continue and justify the military and economic subordination of the global South by powerful Western interests. They are not neutral. - Global hierarchies of subordination and control, past and present, are made possible through the social construction of racial, gendered, and class differences - Race has been ignored Theories and globalisation: - Inter-paradigm: Marxism, liberalism and realism were in competition and that the truth about world politics lay in the debate between them, however, one cannot combine them as they are six views of different worlds - Each view claims that it is picking out the most important features of world politics and that it offers a better account than do the rival theories. - Each sees globalisation differently: - Realists: does not alter the division of the world into nation-states. While more interconnectedness might make regions more dependent on each other, the same cannot be said about the states-system. Powerful states retain sovereignty. Globalisation does not render obsolete the struggle for political power between those states. Doesn't undermine the importance of the threat of the use of force or the importance of the balance of power. Doesn't transcend to international political system. - Liberals: Globalisation is product of a long running transformation of world politics. Undermines the realist claim: states no longer central. Communication and technological revolution: interconnectedness between societies. States no longer sealed - Marxists: It is nothing new, only the latest stage in the development of international capitalism. Not a shift in world politics. Western led capitalism phenomenon: furthers the development of global capitalism. Deepens divide between core, semi-periphery, periphery. - Constructivists: External force acting on states, leaders claim they cannot challenge it. They counter that this underestimates the ability of leaders to challenge and shape globalisation, and instead allows them to duck responsibility by blaming the way the world is. We can mould globalisation: offers us very real chances to create social movements - Poststructuralists: globalisation does not exist out in the world. It is a discourse. Poststructuralists are sceptical of the grand claim made by other theories on the nature of globalisation, and argue that any claim about the meaning of globalisation makes sense only in the context of a specific discourse that in itself is a product of powe. Uncovering the workings of power behind the discourse of globalisation is to undetake detailed historical analysis of how the practices and statements about globalisation are true only within specific discourses. - Postcolonialism: Highlights the continuity and persistence of colonial forms of power in the globalised world. Western control in the south amplified by globalisation. Globalisation and its precursors: - Globalisation: defined as a process of increasing interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world increasingly have effects on peoples and societies far away. Political, economic, cultural and social events become more and more interconnected. - Political, economic, social: world is shrinking. Qualitative changes, not only quantitative. - New or old process? - Globalisation: resemblance to previous seven features of world politics - First: Theory of mdernisation: industrialisation brings into existence a whole new set of contacts between societies and changes the political, economic and social processes that characterised the pre-modernised world. Widens the responsibility of the state and weakens its control over outcomes. Modernisation: part of the globalisation process - Second: similarities with arguments of Rostow: argued that economic growth followed a pattern in all economies as they went through industrialisation. Clear pattern of economic development - Third: Influential liberal works on the nature of economic interdependence. Role of transnational actors. Anticipates the main theoretical themes of globalisation. - Fourth: Notable similarities between the picture of the world painted by globalisation and that portrayed in McLuhan's work on the global village. Seeing distant events happening in real time through electronic communication - Fifth: overlaps between main themes of globalisation and works by Burton and Bull on the development of the state system - Sixth: visonary work of those associated with the World Order Models Project - Finally: political aspects of globalisation and the longstanding ideas of liberal progress. (liberal peace theory) Globalisation: myth or reality? - Arguments in favour of globalisation comprising a new era of world politics: 1. Pace of economic transformation is so great that it has created a new world politics (state no longer closed, economy interdependent) 2. Communications have revolutionised the way we deal with the rest of the world 3. Global culture 4. World: more homogeneous 5. Time and space seem to be collapsing: Our old ideas of geographical space and of chronological time are undermined by the speed of modern communications and media 6. There is emerging a global polity, with transnational social and political movements and the beginnings of a transfer of allegiance from the state to the sub-state, transnational and international bodies 7. A cosmopolitan culture is emerging (Think globally and act locally) 8. Risk culture emerging (HIV/AIDS) Counter arguments: 1. Globalisation merely a buzzword to denote the latest phase of capitalism. In economics, not really a 'globalisation' 2. Very uneven in its effects. Sounds like a Western theory applicable to only a small part of human kind. Applies only the developed world. 3. Globalisation may be simply the latest stage of Western imperialism 4. Losers of globalisation: Allows more efficient exploitation 5. Not all globalisation forces are necessarily good ones 6. Worry about responsibility. 7. Seems to be a paradox: described as a triumph of Western values, but national economies have emerged

Constructivism

Introduction: - Social forces such as ideas, knowledge, norms and rules also influence states' identities and interests - Discuss neo-liberal and neo-realist debates and their norms, identity and culture. How these structure war an peace The rise of constructivism: - Idea that states are the central actors in world politics: fixated on their security and survival: There suffocate any possibility that ideas, norms or values might shape state behaviour - Pursue these in the context of anarchy - So: states are suspicious, misanthropic, and aggressive not because they are born that way but because the environment punished anything else - Primary obstacle to cooperation between states: lack of trust. Institutions perform trust enhancing functions, such as monitoring and publicising cheating - Gained popularity because: - Ideas and norms define interests. They help us understand the behaviour of state and non-state actors. - End of the cold war: neo-liberal institutionalists and neo-realists: couldn't explain this outcome, stuck to individualism (fixed interests) and materialism (structure that constrains behavious is defined by distribution of power) of states. - Constructivism explored the revolutionary impact of ideas to transform the organisation of world politics - Though: didn't explain what would come next, but explored the dissolution and creation of new regional and international orders - Role of identity and norms: must be incorporated to generate superior explanations Constructivism: - More of a social theory than a theory of international politics - Rational choice: social theory that offers a framework for understanding how actors operate with fixed preferences that they attempt to maximise under a set of constraints. Doesn't offer no claim about the actual patterns of world politics - Constructivists: different arguments regarding the rise of sovereignty and the impact of human rights norms on states. Scholars must delineate who are the principal actors, what are their interests and capacities, and what is the content of the normative structures - Human consciousness and its role in international life - Focus on idealism and holism - Idealism: demands that we take seriously the role of ideas in world politics. Social ideas. Mental maps shaped by collectively held ideas such as knowledge, symbols, language, and rules. Doesn't reject material reality but observes that the meaning and construction of that material reality is dependent on ideas and interpretation - Example: balance of power does not objectively exist out there. Debate between states on balance of power: construct its meaning - Holism: World irreducibly social and cannot be decomposed into the properties of already existing actors. The emphasis on holism can make it seem like actors are automatons, but holism allows for agency, recognising that agents have some autonomy and their interactions help to construct, reproduce and transform those structures. - Social construction of reality: Actors, for example, created by their environment. Political relations in the Middle East for example. Egyptian peace with Israel - Knowledge: symbols, rules, concepts and categories shapes how individuals construct and interpret their world. Existing categories help us to understand, define and make sense of the world - Constructed reality, appears to be an objective reality to us. Relates to social facts. - Brute facts exist independently of human agreement - Social facts: dependent on human agreement and are taken for granted. - Money, refugees, terrorism, human rights, sovereignty: social facts, depend on human agreement - Norms: two basic varieties: regulative and constitutive rules - Regulative: regulate already existing activities (rules for driving, trade regulation). - Constitutive: create the very possibility for these activities - Game of love or war: can vary over time: we should be concerned with origins and evolution - Logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness - Logic of consequences: attributes action to the anticipated costs and benefits, mindful that other actors are doing just the same - Logic of appropriateness: highlights how actors are rule-following, worrying about whether their actions are legitimate - Social constructs that now appear to us as natural are now part of our social vocabulary. Sovereignty did not always exist, product of historical forces and human interactions. Political and legal category of refugees: only a century old despite being an ancient phenomenon - To understand origins: attention to the interplay between existing ideas, institutions, political calculations, morally minded actors who were attempting to improve humanity - Anarchy is what states make of it (Wendt) - Examine how actors make their activities meaningful: Weber: 'we are cultural beings with the capacity and the will to take a deliberate attitude toward the world and to lend it significance' - Recover the meanings that actors give their practices and the objects that they construct - Culture informs the meanings that people give to their action - Constructivists have presumed that such meanings derive from a hardened culture - Inability to define particular activities and global politics level - Traditional theories: Power as the ability of one state to compel another state to do what it otherwise what it would not - Constructivists: Forces of power go beyond the material, can be also ideational. Produces identities, interests, and meanings that limit the ability of actors to control their fate

Realism

Introduction: the timeless wisdom of realism - Realism: emerged victorious after the first Great Debate - Emerged after WWI, rejected idealism - Idealism: ignored power, overestimated common interests of nation-states, overly optimistic - WWII, confirmed realist thought - Competitive nature of politics among nations - Focus on interests rather than ideology - Realism: manual for maximizing the interests of the state - Ancient tradition of thought: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rosseau - Above theorists: reason of state. Raison d'état: fundamental principle of international conduct - Life of the state - Role of morals and ethics in international politics? - Realists: sceptical of the idea that universal moral principles exist, warn state leaders against sacrificing their own self-interests in order to adhere to some indeterminate notion of ethical conduct - Need for survival: distance from traditional notions of morality - Dual moral standard: one moral standard for people living within the state, another for external relations with other states - Existence of the state, creates the possibility for an ethical political community to exist domestically - Three core elements: survival, self help, statism - Writings of Machiavelli and Thucydides: the city state. State centric assumption of realism. Outside of the state: Anarchy: international politics: arena that has no overarching central authority above the individual collection of sovereign state - Domestic politics: hierarchy - First priority for state leaders: to ensure the survival of their state. Actions of some states: have resulted in other states losing their existence - States with more power stand a better chance of surviving than states with less power - Power: crucial to realism. Military terms. - Core national interest of all states must be survival - Self help: each state responsible for its well being and survival - Increasing military capabilities - However for small states: balance of power: survival of the state is threatened by a hegemonic state or coalition of stronger states, they should join forces, establish a formal alliance, and seek to preserve their own independence by checking the power of the opposing side - Seeks to ensure an equilibrium of power so that there is no domination. Cold War: Warsaw Pact and NATO - After Cold War: Realism unable to provide a persuasive account of new developments such as regional integration, humanitarian intervention, security community, and the growing importance of non-state actors - State, in decline: transnational corporations and regional institutions - Unable to explain the increasing incidence of intra-state- wars in the global south - Embodiment of laws of international politics that remains true across time (history) and space (geopolitics) One realism, or many? Classical realists: Thucydides, Machiavelli, Morgenthau Structural realism: Rousseau, Waltz Neoclassical realism: Zakaria - Not one realism, but many Classical realism: - Begins with Thucydides' representation of power politics as a law of human behaviour - Drive for power and will to dominate are held to be fundamental aspects of human nature - State is egoist due to human behaviour - Human nature explains power politics - Competition, fear, war - Biological drive - Thucydides: Sparta's national interest was survival, so was Athens goal Structural realism: - Ascribe security competition and inter-state conflict to the lack of an overarching authority over the states - Waltz: two different organising principles: anarchy, and hierarchy - Distribution of capabilites across the unit: fundamental importance to understanding crucial international outcomes - Relative distribution in the international system is the key independent variable in understanding important international outcomes such as war and peace, alliance, and balance of power - Number of great powers determines the overall structure of the international system - Cold war: bipolar system - Power: means to the end of security - Offensive vs defensive realism - Offensive: structure of the world compels state to maximise their relative power position, all states are continuously searching for opportunities to gain power at the expense of other states. Goal: global hegemon of the international system. Global hegemony: impossible Defensive: focus on security. Contemporary realist challenges to structural realism: - Some realists: sceptical that distribution of power can explain the behaviour of states - neoclassical realists: perceptions of state leaders, state society relationships, state identity - Domestic politics as an intervening variable between the distribution of power and foreign policy behaviour - How state leaders derive an understanding of the distribution of power - The assumption that all states have an interest in security: results in realism exhibiting a status quo - States possess different capacities to translate the various elements of national power into state power. The essential realism: Statism: - State is the main actor and sovereignty is its distinguished trait - In anarchy: states compete with other states for power and security - Zero sum: more for one actor: less for another - Non-interventions: does not apply in relations between great powers and their 'near abroad' - Power is: 1. Relational, one does not exercise power in a vacuum, but in relation to another entity 2. a relative concept: calculations of one's own power and power of others - However: why do states struggle for power? - Structural realists: focus from power to capabilities: capabilities can be ranked according to their strength in the following areas: population, territority, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability, competence - However, resource: not always leads to military victory - Focus on state power, not power of terrorist organisations for example Survival: - Main goal of state, survival - Structural realists: offensive vs defensive realists Self-help: - Security only realised through self-help: necessary principle of action - Security dilemma: when the military preparations of one state create an unresolvable uncertainty in the mind of another as to whether those preparations are for defensive purposes only or for offensive - One state's quest for security: another source of insecurity - Balances of power: result irrespective of the intentions of any particular state - Classical realists: balance of power must be constructed - Relative gains: cooperation is difficult to achieve in a self help system Conclusion: realism and the globalisation of world politics - Interdependence has made war less likely - State still continues to be dominant unit in world politics

Critical Theory

Marxism - In general: - Looks at the role of economics in international relations (like liberalism) - Looks at the influence of structure (capitalism economic structure drives competition) - Seeks to explain the world (explanatory theory) - Normative role - Role of inequality and exploitation between classes and social groups Materialism: - Economic production is the basis and foundation for everything else - Economic base: means of production - Changes in base: changes in superstructure - Materialist conception of history Revolution and emancipation: - Understand the dynamics of a capitalist society to overthrow it - Capitalist development is uneven and will produce crises Historical progression: - Primitive communism, feudalism, capitalism, communism Wallerstein: - Core, periphery, semi-periphery Hegemony: Gramsci: superstructure maintained by consent: Cultural values are dispersed to civil society, and accepted subordinate groups and naturalized Critical theories: Problem-solving theory: - Positivist theory - Takes the world as it is, a world out there that we can observe and measure - Explanation and prediction - Accepts parameters of the existing order without question - Reinforces hegemony Critical- theory: - Post-positivist theory - Does not accept the world as it is - Asks how the world came about, and what are the possibilities for change - We are part of the world that we study - Knowledge is not, and cannot be neutral - Framework for action and emancipation Post-structuralism: - Focus on language and discourse: linguistic structures that give the material world meaning - Language not a neutral transmitter, produces meaning - Issue of labelling - No objective meaning of how we constitute them in language - Knowledge and theories: located in a particular time and space. Knowledge and power are intimately related - Discourse forms and informs out take on things and events - Identity: relational and performative - Depend on discursive practices Post-colonialism: - Construction of colonial discourses that perpetuate hierarchies - Expose colonial discourses, deconstruct Eurocentrism in IR and bring in the marginalized voices from the developing world - Bottom up approach of studying IR - Subaltern studies - Can the subaltern speak? - Responds to a field that has had its own history of myopic imperial sight Feminism: - Rooted structures of patriarchy in all societies which cannot be overcome by legal remedies alone

Historical Context (Heywood)

Preview: - Politics and history are linked - Politics is the history of the present while history is the politics of the past - Understanding of history: helps us make sense of the present, provides insight into present circumstances Making of the Modern World: From ancient to modern - Mesopotamia: portrayed as the cradle of civilisation - Three major civilisations arose from there: Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian - Other major civilisation: Ancient Egypt along the Nile and China under Ch'in. Indus River Valley: Ancient India - Classical antiquity: Ancient Greece and Rome - Dark Ages, most prominent: Mongols Rise of the West: - Age of discovery/exploration: Portuguese, Spanish, British, French and Dutch ships: set out to discover the New World - Establishment of sovereign states with strong central governments: Peace of Westphalia, which brought an end to the Thirty Years War - Break down of feudalism and the growth of capitalist society. Stimulated the growth of industrialisation. - Fostered by the Renaissance: shaped European intellectual life (Politics, philosophy, art and science) - Enlightenment: faith in reason, debate and critical enquiry. Society should be organised on rational lines. Age of imperialism: - Scramble for colonies - Migration flows from poor parts of Europe to the Americas and some parts of Asia: technological advances and improved communications - WWI brought the golden age of free trade to an end The 'Short' Twentieth Century: 1914 - Origins of World War I - Total war, first modern war (in industrial terms) - Precipitated by assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - The German Problem: Europe's instability stemmed from a structural imbalance which had resulted from the emergence of a dominant power in central Europe. German expansionism. Fischer: Weltpolitik - Eastern Question: Structural instabilities of the Balkan region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Resulted from a power vacuum which occurred through the territorial and political decline of the Ottoman Empire - Imperialism and nationalism. Colonial expansion. Militarism and chauvinism. Approaches to history: Realist view: Believe that history tends to have an enduring character. Similarities between historical eras are always more substantial than the differences. Power politics, conflict and likelihood of war: inescapable facts of history. History does not move forward, repeats itself. Why? Human nature does not change. History is shaped by self-interested political units of one kind or another. Anarchy is enduring fact of history. Liberal view: belief in progress. Higher and higher levels of advancement. From dark to the light. Perpetual peace. Utopian dimension. Worldwide victory of liberal democracy: 'end of history' Critical views: Marxism: primary driving forces in history are material or economic factors. History moves forwards from one 'mode of production' to the next. Cox: states can influence the course of history. Class based theories rejected by poststructuralists, social constructivists and feminists - Genealogy: exposing hidden meanings and representations in history that serve the interests of domination and exclude marginalized groups and peoples Road to World War II - The WWI peace settlements: WWII: replay of WWI. Treaty of Versailles marking the beginning of the road to war. 1919-1939: twenty year truce. ToV: Incompatible objectives: create liberal world order by breaking up European empires and setting up independent nation states. Make Germany pay for the war and to benefit territorially and economically from its defeat. Faith in utopianism. - The global economic crisis: Highlighted the level of interconnectedness of the global economy and the structural instability of its financial systems - Significance of Nazi Germany: Social darwinism, chauvinism - Japanese expansionism in Asia End of Empires: - Post WWII, decolonisation 1. Imperial overreach 2. Decisive shift against European colonialism 3. Resistance to colonialism worldwide Rise and fall of the Cold War: - First phase: fought in Europe, division of Europe - Onwards: Cold War became global - How did it start? Common geopolitical interests - Buffer zone - Brinkmanship and Mutually Assured Destruction 1. Structural weaknesses of Soviet Style communism 2. Impact of Gorbachev's reform process 3. US policy and the Second Cold War 4. Economic and cultural globalisation Gorbachev: glasnost, perestroika The World Since 1990: A 'new world order'? - Bush, end of Cold War, emergence of a 'new world order' 9/11 and the 'war on terror' - Post-Cold War era - Beginning of a period of unprecedented global strife and instability - Huntington: 21st century conflict: not primarily be ideological or economic but rather cultural, conflict between nations and groups from different civilisations 1. Inheritance from colonialism 2. Conflict between Israel and Palestinians 3. The curse of oil 4. The rise of political Islam Shifting balances within the global economy: - Emergence of BRICS, global financial crisis

Security

The concept of security: - Contested concept - Disagreement over the main referent of security and what should be included as a security issue - During Cold War: focus on national security and the military capabilites required to deal with current threats - Security: political, economic, societal, environmental Realism and Security: - National security: military defence of the state against external threats - Military agenda: increase military capabilities, establish national military strategy - State-centric focus: secure state sovereignty and territory - Neo-realists: argue that national security is largely the result of the structure of the international system: anarchy, self-help, survival - Main focus of security studies: phenomenon of war. Study of the threat, use and control of military force (Walt) - Non-military issues into security studies Liberalism and security: - Economic interdependence: greater cooperation, reduces military conflict and makes the world more secure - DPT: peaceful relations between democracies: leads to greater security - Neoliberal institutionalism: greater emphasis on international institutions and argues that they play a crucial role in enhancing security Constructivism and security: - Fundamental structures of international politics are social rather than strictly material - Security and threats to security: socially constructed - Changes in the nature of social interaction between states can bring a fundamental shift towards greater international security - Anarchy is what states make of it Security communities: - States can transcend the security dilemma by constructing a security community - Foster trust, reverse the condition of fear - Internalise the non-use of force norm, resolve disputes without war - Shared identity and we-feeling among members - Shared habits of multilateral and institutionalised cooperation Feminism and Security - How militarism/security is patriarchal Securitization - Copenhagen School of security studies - Socially constructed: self-referential practice: it is in this practice that the issues becomes a security issue, only perceived as so because it is presented as such a threat - Framework for how a specific issue becomes securitized and desecuritized - Non-politicized, politicised, securitized - Process of securitization: speech act, securitizing actor, audience - Dangers: problems in securitization Human Security: - Expansion of human security: food security, UN, health security, economic, community, etc. - UN Human Development Report - Two conceptions: freedom from want vs freedom from fear - Critiques: overburdens security studies