IR theories readings

Beth A. Simmons. 2009. Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics

Why do countries that respect rights not ratify? Why do govs ratify when they have no intention of complying? Govs will ratify human rights treaties if they believe in the content (preferences) and they can comply at a low cost.

Suzanne Werner and Amy Yuen. 2005. "Making and Keeping Peace."

Why do some peace agreements last while others fail? When does peace last? We demonstrate that getting (and keeping) the terms right may be more important than any carrots and sticks incorporated into the document to enforce peace. In particular, we show that "unnatural" ceasefires that come about as a consequence of third-party pressure are significantly more likely to fail.

Valerie M. Hudson et al. 2008/09. "The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of State."

Women and peace thesis: women's physical security is strongly associated with measures of state security.

Erik Gartzke. 2007. "The Capitalist Peace."

liberal political economy explains the democratic peace (capitalism, not democracy, leads to peace)

Alexander Wendt, 1999. Social Theory of International Politics, chps. 4, 6

social constructivist. Ideas are constitutive of materialist conceptions of power and interests. Wendt accepts that states are primary actors that are somewhat constructed from within, and those states have interests. State identity determines its interests, which translates into its power.

Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War.

• Causes of war: honor, power, domestic sources • Melian Dialogue: Strong do what they can and weak do what they must. • Talks about balance of power, but dialogues show role for individual choice. -T not just a realist. It's actually ALL in their: domestic politics, ideas, liberalism, constructivism.

Waltz 1979 Chapter 5: "Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power"

"Among states, the state of nature is a state of war" (98). This chapter is about how anarchy means that war can break out at any time.

Jonathan Renshon. 2015.

"Losing Face and Sinking Costs: Experimental Evidence on the Judgment of Political and Military Leaders." Fear of losing status impedes decision making and increases the tendency to "throw good money after bad," but that power aids decision making by buffering high-power subjects against the worst effects of status loss.

Downs et al 1996 George Downs, David Rocke, and Peter Barsoom. 1996. "Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?"

A high rate of compliance is often the result of states formulating treaties that require them to do little more than they would do in the absence of a treaty.

Nina Tannenwald. 1999. "The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use."

A normative prohibition on nuclear use has developed in the global system, which, although not (yet) a fully robust norm, has stigmatized nuclear weapons as unacceptable weapons of mass destruction. Uses four case studies to demonstrate taboo was the major reason nukes not used after WWII

Joanne S. Gowa and Edward D. Mansfield. 1993. "Power Politics and International Trade."

Alliances affect bilateral trade flows and this relationship is stronger in bipolar, rather than multipolar, systems.

Lisa L. Martin. 2000. Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation

Are democracies advantaged in making international commitments? Martin argues that legislatures--and particularly the apparently problematic openness of their proceedings--actually serve foreign policy well by giving credibility to the international commitments that are made..

James D. Fearon. 1998. "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation."

Argues that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third (after enforcement and relative gains), distinct obstacle plays a crucial role. Almost regardless of the issue area, states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement. Furthermore, the bargaining and enforcement problems interact.

Ronald Rogowski. 1987. "Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade."

As trade becomes more or less difficult (due to transportation innovations, the presence/absence of an international hegemon) domestic political cleavages will emerge between the winners and losers, and we can predict which group will win.

Randall Stone. 2008. "The Scope of IMF Conditionality."

International organizations are governed by two parallel sets of rules: formal rules, which embody consensual procedures, and informal rules, which allow exceptional access for powerful countries.

Michael Doyle. 1983. "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part I."

Kantian liberalism provides a better explanation of the liberal peace than Realism. Liberal republics establish a peace through a dyadic mutual respect mechanism.

Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall. 2005. "Power in International Politics."

Make a taxonomy of power that incorporates multiple conceptions of power. Power has a social definition and involves the ability to determine own fate. Not just power over but power to be or do.

Gaubatz, Kurt Taylor. 1996. "Democratic States and Commitments in International Relations."

Military alliances between democratic states have endured longer than either alliances between nondemocracies or alliances between democracies and nondemocracies. The creation of links between external commitments and internal commitments and the development of shared preferences through interdependence enhances the ability of liberal democracies to forge effective international commitments.

Andrew Moravcsik, 1997. "Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics,"

Moravscik stresses the primacy of societal actors (not states), behavior of states defined by preferences.

Robert Gilpin, 1981. War and Change in International Politics, chps. 1 and 2

Neorealist. War and any change in the system is caused by discrepancies between perceived (prestige) and actual power (military power). Systemic explanation of stability (not cooperation). Need a hegemon for stability. Has a prestige element.

Jonathan Mercer. 2010.

One liner: Because rationality depends on emotion, and because cognition and emotion are nearly indistinguishable in the brain, one can view emotion as constituting and strengthening beliefs such as trust, nationalism, justice or credibility. (emotional beliefs are not irrational/ rational decision-making depends on emotions/ that emotion and cognition meet in beliefs and that this rendezvous is necessary for rationality.

Goldstein et al 2007 Judith Goldstein, Doug Rivers, and Michael Tomz. 2007. "Institutions in International Relations: Understanding the Effects of the GATT and the WTO on World Trade."

The GATT/WTO substantially increased trade for countries with institutional standing, and that other embedded agreements had similarly positive effects.

Sebastian Rosato. 2003. "The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory."

The causal logics of the DPT are wrong: while there is certainly peace among democracies, it may not be caused by the democratic nature of those states.

Robert Powell. 1996. "Uncertainty, Shifting Power, and Appeasement."

The combination of a shifting distribution of power and uncertainty about the rising state's ambitions creates an inescapable trade-off: the earlier the declining state stands firm, the greater the chances are that it will fight a rising states whose demands are sufficiently limited that the declining state would have preferred satisfying them to fighting had it known the extent of the demands.

Frieden, Jeffry A. 1988. "Sectoral Conflict and Foreign Economic Policy, 1914-1940."

The foreign economic policy of the United States in the interwar period was the result of domestic political struggle between domestic economic actors with conflicting interests in the international economy, and thus different foreign economic policy preferences.

Deborah Jordan Brooks and Benjamin A. Valentino. 2011. "A War of One's Own: Understanding the Gender Gap in Support for War."

The gender gap is strongly dependent on the specific context of the war. In fact, we find that the gender gap reverses when the war has U.N. approval or if the stakes of the war are humanitarian.

Philip E. Tetlock,. 1998. "Social Psychology and World Politics."

The human factor (social psych) is indispensable and the micro and macro are inextricably intertwined in world politics.

Robert Axelrod, 1984.

The most successful strategy of the iterated prisoner's dilemma computer tournament is Tit-for-Tat (cooperate in the first round, then cooperate in period t if opponent cooperated in t-1, defect if opponent defected in t-1).

Ann Towns. 2009. "The Status of Women as a Standard of Civilization." European Journal of International Relations 15(4): 681-706

The political exclusion of women — not their inclusion — became expected behavior for 'advanced' societies in 19th century Europe. status of women is their status as a gendered group based on what is written down on paper.

Rose McDermott et. al. 2009. "Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) predicts behavioral aggression following provocation."

They do a hot sauce experiment to test whether the warrior gene (MAOA) actually leads to aggression and find that MAOA predicts behavioral aggression following provocation.

Mark L. Haas. 2007. "The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reactions to Shifts in Soviet Power, Policies, or Domestic Politics?"

This article examines the factors that led to the end of the Cold War from the perspective of the most important U.S. decision makers in both the Reagan and Bush presidencies. American leaders' beliefs that the Cold War was ending corresponded most closely with Soviet domestic-ideological and institutional changes.

Joseph M. Grieco and John Ikenberry. 2003. "The Economics of International Money and Finance."

This is a background piece that we also read in IPE that explains what an exchange rate, balance of payments are, etc.

Waltz 1979 Chapter 4: "Political Structures"

Three ways to think about structure • Ordering principle relation of parts (81-87) • Functional specification why the units do (87-92) • Distribution of capabilities across units how the units perform similar tasks (92-94)

David A. Lake and Robert Powell (eds.), 1999. Strategic Choice and International Relations

To explain changes in behavior, the strategic-choice approach, a new unit of analysis they provide, turns to changes in the environment rather than changes in preferences or beliefs.

Edward D. Mansfield and Diana C. Mutz. 2009. "Support for Free Trade: Self-Interest, Sociotropic Politics, and Out-Group Anxiety."

Trade attitudes are guided less by material self-interest than by out-group anxiety and perceptions of how the U.S. economy as a whole is affected by trade.

Andrew Kydd. 2001. "Trust Building, Trust Breaking: The Dilemma of NATO Enlargement."

Trust and mistrust are at the core of the NATO enlargement dilemma-the goal of enlargement is to foster trust among the new allies, and the unwanted side effect is to lessen trust with Russia.

James D. Fearon, 1995. "Rationalist Explanations for War,"

Two mechanisms explain why rationally led states are sometimes unable to locate or agree a bargain prior to starting a war: (1) the combination of private information about resolve or capability and incentives to misrepresent these, and (2) states' inability, in specific circumstances, to commit to uphold a deal.

Rose McDermott. 1992. "Prospect Theory in International Relations: The Iranian Hostage Rescue Mission."

Uses prospect theory, a descriptive theory of decision making under risk, to examine the failed rescue mission of the American hostages in Iran in April 1980. The argument is that President Carter was in a domain of losses both internationally and domestically at the time of the crisis.

Weingast et al 1997 Weingast, Barry R, Judith Goldstein, and Michael A Bailey. 1997. "The Institutional Roots of American Trade Policy: Politics, Coalitions, and International Trade."

We argue that political institutions, by structuring conflict over trade policy, provide an explanation for the divergence between analyses that predict economic closure and the empirical reality of relatively free trade. They look specificically at the RTAA and argue that A). Two rule changes distinguished the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act from its predecessors: (1) it man dated reciprocal, not unilateral, tariff reductions, and (2) it authorized trade agreements on the basis of a simple majority vote instead of the supermajority mandated in the Constitution and B) The RTAA shifted American policy to a more liberal equilibrium.

Putnam, Robert D. 1988. "Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games."

When national leaders must win ratification (formal or informal) from their constituents for an international agreement, their negotiating behavior reflects the simultaneous imperatives of both a domestic political game and an international game (a two-level game).

Helen Kinsella. 2006. "Gendering Grotius: Sex and Sex Difference in the Laws of War."

Where does this idea that you need to separate women come from? Grotius reinforces binaries and they are reinforced down the line.

Stacy Goddard. 2006. "Uncommon Ground: Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy."

Whether or not territory appears indivisible depends on how actors legitimate their claims to territory during negotiations.

Alexander George. 1969. "The 'Operational Code': A Neglected Approach to the Study of Political Leaders and Decision-Making."

While George did not conceive of the operational code, he is a prominent scholar. He is trying to separate out motivations from cognitive processes. Knowledge of belief systems provides one of the most important inputs needed for behavioral analyses of political decision-making and leadership styles.

Hedley Bull, 1977. The Anarchical Society

Bull provides a historic account of world politics, in which he argues that international society (as conceived by Grotius) exists in the international system; moreover, it has existed in the international system since the early modern period of history, albeit precariously at times, and continues to exist today. the current system of states is anarchical in that there is no higher level of authority over states, each state having ultimate sovereignty over its citizens within its borders; and the system forms a society in that there are certain "common rules and institutions" (25) which provides order to the international arena.

Jessica Weeks. 2012. "Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict."

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that institutions in some kinds of dictatorships allow regime insiders to hold leaders accountable for their foreign policy decisions.

Ruggie 1983

Critique of Waltz 1979, basically says he fails to identify a dimension and determinant of change and ignores unit-level variation. Ruggie argues that Waltz's model is flawed because it fails to recognize both the dimension and the determinant of change in world politics. Ruggie notes that you should not ignore the differences between the states. If you focus on the principles that separate states (units) from one another, then it is a crucial source of structural variation. He particularly looks at the shift from the medieval to the modern system.

Mansfield et al. 2000 Edward D. Mansfield, Helen V. Milner, and B. Peter Rosendorff. 2000. "Free to Trade: Democracies, Autocracies, and International Trade."

Democratic pairs have had much more open trade relations than mixed pairs.

Edward D. Mansfield and Jon C. Pevehouse. 2006. "Democratization and International Organizations."

Democratizing countries are likely to enter IOs because leaders have difficulty credibly committing to sustain liberal reforms and the consolidation of democracy.

BDM et al 1993 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, 1993. "An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,"

Democrats, as opposed to autocrats, try harder in wars and only initiate wars they expect to win because they have larger winning coalitions.

Helen V. Milner and Dustin H. Tingley. 2011. "Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The Sources of Preferences in American Foreign Economic Policy."

Different constituencies support aid and trade.

Katzenstein et al 1998 Peter Katzenstein, R. Keohane, and S. Krasner, 1998. "International Organization and the Study of World Politics." International Organization, 52:4, pp. 645-685.

Discuss the importance of paradigms in the development of IR.

Peter Gourevitch. 1978

Domestic policy and domestic institutions have always been deeply influenced by the international system (war and economic exchange). Purpose is for us to think differently about the linkage between international politics and domestic politics. People say domestic politics affect international politics but it is also the other way. "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics."

Helen Milner, 1997. Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and International Relations

Domestic politics matters more so than fears of other countries' relative gains or cheating. Cooperative agreements create winners and losers domestically. Domestic preferences matter. Three main domestic actors (legislature, executive, interest groups). Based on interests, these groups have different preferences over policy.

Layna Mosley. 2000. "Room to Move: International Financial Markets and National Welfare States."

Financial market participants are concerned with a few macroeconomic policy indicators, including inflation rates and government deficit/GDP ratios, but not with micropolicy indicators, such as the distribution of government spending across functional categories. In these areas, governments retain policymaking autonomy.

James Fearon. 1994. "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes."

Given incentives to misrepresent, how can states involved in a dispute rationally reach the conclusion that the opponent would prefer war to backing down? Relative audience costs matter: the side with a stronger domestic audience (e.g., a democracy) is always less likely to back down than the side less able to generate audience costs (a nondemocracy)

Dale C. Copeland. 2000. The Origins of Great Power War

He argues that great powers tend to stage preventative wars when they are in decline. The greater the decline, the more likely war is. This trend is most pronounced in bipolar systems because in multipolar systems, other powers would bandwagon against the declining state. This is essentially your declining vs. rising power story.

Waltz 1979 Chapter 2: "Laws and Theories"

He begins by talking about the philosophy of science differences between a law and a theory. He prefers the definition that "theories explain laws" (33). He stresses the importance of using induction at the level of hypotheses and laws at the level of theories and not to mix those up. Theories are a picture of a bounded part of reality. They don't explain everything and they cannot be proven true (36). He lists on p41-42 how best to test a theory.

Dustin H. Tingley and Stephanie W. Wang. 2010. "Belief Updating in Sequential Games of Two-Sided Incomplete Information: An Experimental Study of a Crisis Bargaining Model."

How do players update their beliefs in the crisis bargaining model? We find that players do update their beliefs in the predicted directions after observing some of the action choices. However, we highlight evidence of conservative updating relative to rational expectations.

Ole Waever, 1998. "The Sociology of a Not so International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations,"

IR has developed differently in different countries because of institutional history, relationship to neighboring disciplines, and scientific ideals .

Michael Tomz and Jessica Weeks. 2013. "Public Opinion and the Democratic Peace."

Individuals are substantially less supportive of military strikes against democracies than against otherwise identical autocracies.

Jana von Stein. 2005. "Do Treaties Constrain or Screen? Selection Bias and Treaty Compliance."

International legal commitment has little constraining power independent of the factors that lead states to sign.

Hans Morgenthau, 1948. Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf), Chapters 1 and 2

One liner: Founder of modern/ classical realism Summary: Morgenthau seeks to develop a comprehensive theory of international politics, which he terms political realism. In contrast to idealism (which assumes the "essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature and the ability of politics to live up to moral standards), realism assumes that the world is composed of opposing interests and conflict among them is inevitable. Realism is fundamentally concerned with power rather than morality or material interests. M. includes strong assumptions about human nature - humans are not naturally good and conflict is the natural outcome of the search for power, not of misunderstanding.

Theory of world politics / Robert O. Keohane (1986)

One liner: Reponse to Waltz' theory of neorealism. Proposes modified structural approach. States are the primary actor. Rationality is retained with the recognition of imperfect information. Power and influence are important state interests, but they aren't the only interests states may have. There are different types of power and you can use them for different things. Into soft power. Power is not fungible.

Kenneth Waltz, 1959. Man, the State, and War

One liner: Three images: Human image, 2) states, 3) international anarchy • The first level explained international politics as being driven primarily by actions of individuals, or outcomes of psychological forces. • The second level explained international politics as being driven by the domestic regimes of states • The third level focused on the role of systemic factors, or the effect that international anarchy was exerting on state behavior. "Anarchy" in this context is meant not as a condition of chaos or disorder, but one in which there is no sovereign body that governs nation-states.

John H. Herz. 1950 "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma." World Politics (January)

One liner: Whether man is good or bad, the security dilemma will still be there. There are two ways to react: realism and idealism. A huge problem with realism is that there are so many unknowns - you never known anyone's intentions. Interdependence, integration, will make everyone more peaceful.

Hafner-Burton, Emilie M. 2005. "Trading Human Rights: How Preferential Trade Agreements Influence Government Repression."

PTAs improve members' human rights through coercion. When they supply hard standards that tie material benefits of integration to compliance with human rights principles, PTAs are more effective than softer human rights agreements (HRAs) in changing repressive behaviors.

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph Nye. 1989.

Power is influence, not military strength, and a big part of it will come from asymmetries in interdependence. Interdependence refers to situations where states or actors are determined by external events in a reciprocal relationship with other states or actors, jointly limiting their autonomy.

Kenneth Schultz. 1999. "Do Democratic Institutions Constrain or Inform? Contrasting Two Institutional Perspectives on Democracy and War."

Presents an empirical test of the democratic peace by looking at the institutional constraints approach (democratic states have a harder time convincing their targets that they are serious because they have so many constraints) versus the informational properties of the institution approach (democratic states make more credible threats) and finds support for information.

Joshua D. Kertzer and Brian C. Rathbun. 2015. "Fair is Fair: Social Preferences and Reciprocity in International Politics."

Prosocials, or people who care about gain not only for themselves but for others, make fairer offers in positions of strength than proselfs. For pro-socials, fair is fair, regardless of the distribution of power.

Jennifer Mitzen. 2005. "Reading Habermas in Anarchy: Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres."

Public talk can mitigate the security dilemma and enable interstate communicative action.

Robert O. Keohane, 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy

Rational self-interested actors in situations of interdependence will value International Regimes as a way of increasing their ability to make mutually beneficial agreements

Thomas Risse. 2000. "Let's Argue! Communicative Action in World Politics."

Rationalism and constructivism are divided between logic of consequences (self-interested) and logic of appropriateness (rule-bound), but maybe there is a middle ground - logic of arguing.

Waltz 1979 Chapter 3: "Reductionist and Systemic Theories"

Reductionist theory is a theory about the behavior of the parts. Systemic theories are about the behavior of the whole. The problem with reductionist theories is that you cannot always derive outcomes from attributes. These kind of theories simply cannot explain the continuity of world politics. Structure: 1) designates a compensating device that produces a uniformity of outcomes despite a variety of inputs, and 2) designates a set of constraining conditions (62).

Lars-Erik Cederman. 2001. "Back to Kant: Reinterpreting the Democratic Peace as a Macrohistorical Learning Process."

Reinterprets the democratic peace as a dynamic and dialectical learning process—the Kantian effect is not time invariant!

Laura Sjoberg et al. 2016. Reply to Reiter

Reiter (2015) sets up a false dichotomy between positivist and nonpositivist work.

Brian Schmidt, 2002. "On the History and Historiography of International Relations,"

Schmidt argues that IR does have a distinct identity, but much of it has been reported incorrectly by others. In this chapter, the author challenges the way that people think and describe the histories of IR.

Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2001. "Treating International Institutions as Social Environments."

Socialization theory is a neglected source of explanations for cooperation in international relations. This article focuses on two basic microprocesses in socialization theory—persuasion and social influence—and develops propositions about the social conditions under which one might expect to observe cooperation in institutions.

Dan Reiter. 2015. "The Positivist Study of Gender and International Relations."

Survey of positive scholarship on gender in IR since 2000 (when it arose).