Boarders: reasons behind the different approach to militarisation in several boarders
USA/Canada vs South/North Korea
• Boarder agreements between countries
• Different political systems (democracy vs dictatorship) ‘Democratic Peace Theory’
• Economic interdependence/Trade = good relations = more and better trade or viceversa?
• Security dilemma: uncertainty of intentions of each other Threat Perception
• Alliances can suppress distrust between members -(USA and Canada are both members of
NATO - ally countries)
• Over national and international interests/organisations like the UN impede trade to keep the two
Koreas as separate countries
• China is geographically attached to North Korea = influence of the CCP in China
• Cultural/Ideological differences
Level of Analysis
• State as a unitary actor at international level
• Sub-stance or domestic actors (individual institutions)
What motivates the state/actors?
• Power and interests - fear or gain?
• Ideas: democracy, nationalism?
• Norms of behaviour- this is not given by nature, it is built by
• The ‘structure’ of the inter-state system itself? Realists would tend to see the state system as
given
Main concerns of International Relations
• War and Peace
• Trade and Commerce
• Justice and Human Rights
• Solving common problems
Theories
• Reproduction of reality (naive empiricism)
• Theory as a picture and not necessarily reality
• Rational actor approach
• Problem solving vs critical theory (Robert Cox)
• Pluralistic Approach= theories as lenses, different theories may better explain different issues
,Realism
• ‘State centric’ - IR as a system of sovereign states in they anarchic condition, and assuming
that that will naturally lead to conflict. Concerned with relative power, usually conceived as
material power
• Evolution of realism
• Classic realism
• Neo-realism
• Neo-classical realism - system level argument vs domestic level argument in terms of the state
Liberalism
• A response/dialogue with pessimism of realism (realism vs idealism/liberalism)
• Cooperation: effects pf anarchy can be mitigated via democracy, international law and
institutions like the EU or UN
• Still really state centred
• Constructivism
• Approach rather than theory
• Reality is socially constructed and not given
• Emphasis on identity and ideas - that anarchy realism talks about is what the state makes of it
• Differences of view over methodology and purpose
Critical theory
• ‘Problem-solving- theories are wrong in assuming rigidity, hostility, because history changes
,Lecture 2 - Where’s the discipline?
Outline
• Origins of the discipline
• Emergence of state system
• The great debates IR
• State of discipline today
Origins: war and peace before the state
- Ancient Greece: Thucydides’
• History of Peloponnesian War (themes that are critical for realist thinkers - not particularly
optimistic view of human nature)
• One of the essential claims was that the war was caused primarily by Sparta’s fear of the
growth of Athens and its power in the region
• Human nature and conflict between units is fundamental for realists
- Medieval period: very Europe centric and different political organisation
• Diffused power with centralised rules
- Renaissance/Early Modern: Machiavelli’s The Prince
• He put power before ethical
• Still not a modern state system
Emergence of the modern state system
- 16th - 18th century
- Beginnings of modern state
• Within a specific territory, the will of the ruler is the guidance (religious centre at the time)
- Scientific revolution
- Modern theory of the state: Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651)
• Written during the English War
• He wrote about the relationships between human beings and the types of authority vary the
relationships
• He claimed that there was a ‘state of nature’: “life is nasty, brutish and short”
• He described the state as a mortal God with unlimited authority (concept of sovereignty)
• International politics is a state nature between states - there was no supreme higher authority to
rule
• He described this international state of nature based upon jealousies caused by the
independency of the states
Inevitable war or perpetual peace?
- Solutions to escape Hobbes
• A world sovereign?
• International law: Grotius’ On the Law of War and Peace (1625)
• Democratic peace: Emanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) - if you have states that have
sufficient in common to maintain peace… based a lot on the set of relationships between
people
• The Balance of Power: natural equilibrium? Vs good principle that states should follow?
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
• The roots of realism-idealist debate: ‘the anarchy problematique’
, First World War: a birth of a discipline
- Particularly in the UK and the US
- New idealism about international politics embodied in the US president at the time - work on
many things and many areas while trying to impose the notion of ‘collective security’
The ‘1st Great Debate’: realism v idealism
- Overly idealistic response to causes of IWW
- EH Carr: The Twenty Years Crisis (1939): realist response
- Second World War and Cold War confirm realism to some extent (cant rely on institutions and
should rely on your own national state and pursue your national interest)
- Carr: dialectic between realism and idealism as institutions become more and more important
- Can we stop/mitigate war with the study of the international politics and relations?
The ‘2nd Great Debate’: what counts as science?
- 1950s American political science revolution: ‘behaviouralism’
- Influenced by:
• Behavioural psychology: behaviour as response to external stimulus
• Post WW1 school of logical positivism which was attempting to explores science much more
logically
• Success of natural sciences
- August Comte (1798-1857)
• Three phases of human understanding: the religious language of organisation, the
metaphysical way of understanding the universe through the creation of concept without
much empirical evidence, and finally the ‘positive’ which is closely related to scientific
• A branch of empiricists philosophy: a reaction against metaphysical claims
• Positivism has evolved over time because it is contested
Enduring elements of positivist approach
- ‘Unity of science’ where natural and social life are open to science
- Empiricism: facts derived from experience
- Emphasis on what is observable
- Casual explanation of constant conjunctions known as laws
- Quantifiable measurements of variables
- Value-free and objective approach which is crucial to positivism - to be objective as they
analyse the behaviour of human beings
- Induction over deduction (later shift to deduction)
Example: Why do wars happen?
- J David Dinger, 1963
- Collected data on historic wars to deduct cause and connections between wars
- Outcome variable was ‘war’
- Predictor variables:
• Alliances between states
• International organisations
• International trade
USA/Canada vs South/North Korea
• Boarder agreements between countries
• Different political systems (democracy vs dictatorship) ‘Democratic Peace Theory’
• Economic interdependence/Trade = good relations = more and better trade or viceversa?
• Security dilemma: uncertainty of intentions of each other Threat Perception
• Alliances can suppress distrust between members -(USA and Canada are both members of
NATO - ally countries)
• Over national and international interests/organisations like the UN impede trade to keep the two
Koreas as separate countries
• China is geographically attached to North Korea = influence of the CCP in China
• Cultural/Ideological differences
Level of Analysis
• State as a unitary actor at international level
• Sub-stance or domestic actors (individual institutions)
What motivates the state/actors?
• Power and interests - fear or gain?
• Ideas: democracy, nationalism?
• Norms of behaviour- this is not given by nature, it is built by
• The ‘structure’ of the inter-state system itself? Realists would tend to see the state system as
given
Main concerns of International Relations
• War and Peace
• Trade and Commerce
• Justice and Human Rights
• Solving common problems
Theories
• Reproduction of reality (naive empiricism)
• Theory as a picture and not necessarily reality
• Rational actor approach
• Problem solving vs critical theory (Robert Cox)
• Pluralistic Approach= theories as lenses, different theories may better explain different issues
,Realism
• ‘State centric’ - IR as a system of sovereign states in they anarchic condition, and assuming
that that will naturally lead to conflict. Concerned with relative power, usually conceived as
material power
• Evolution of realism
• Classic realism
• Neo-realism
• Neo-classical realism - system level argument vs domestic level argument in terms of the state
Liberalism
• A response/dialogue with pessimism of realism (realism vs idealism/liberalism)
• Cooperation: effects pf anarchy can be mitigated via democracy, international law and
institutions like the EU or UN
• Still really state centred
• Constructivism
• Approach rather than theory
• Reality is socially constructed and not given
• Emphasis on identity and ideas - that anarchy realism talks about is what the state makes of it
• Differences of view over methodology and purpose
Critical theory
• ‘Problem-solving- theories are wrong in assuming rigidity, hostility, because history changes
,Lecture 2 - Where’s the discipline?
Outline
• Origins of the discipline
• Emergence of state system
• The great debates IR
• State of discipline today
Origins: war and peace before the state
- Ancient Greece: Thucydides’
• History of Peloponnesian War (themes that are critical for realist thinkers - not particularly
optimistic view of human nature)
• One of the essential claims was that the war was caused primarily by Sparta’s fear of the
growth of Athens and its power in the region
• Human nature and conflict between units is fundamental for realists
- Medieval period: very Europe centric and different political organisation
• Diffused power with centralised rules
- Renaissance/Early Modern: Machiavelli’s The Prince
• He put power before ethical
• Still not a modern state system
Emergence of the modern state system
- 16th - 18th century
- Beginnings of modern state
• Within a specific territory, the will of the ruler is the guidance (religious centre at the time)
- Scientific revolution
- Modern theory of the state: Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651)
• Written during the English War
• He wrote about the relationships between human beings and the types of authority vary the
relationships
• He claimed that there was a ‘state of nature’: “life is nasty, brutish and short”
• He described the state as a mortal God with unlimited authority (concept of sovereignty)
• International politics is a state nature between states - there was no supreme higher authority to
rule
• He described this international state of nature based upon jealousies caused by the
independency of the states
Inevitable war or perpetual peace?
- Solutions to escape Hobbes
• A world sovereign?
• International law: Grotius’ On the Law of War and Peace (1625)
• Democratic peace: Emanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) - if you have states that have
sufficient in common to maintain peace… based a lot on the set of relationships between
people
• The Balance of Power: natural equilibrium? Vs good principle that states should follow?
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
• The roots of realism-idealist debate: ‘the anarchy problematique’
, First World War: a birth of a discipline
- Particularly in the UK and the US
- New idealism about international politics embodied in the US president at the time - work on
many things and many areas while trying to impose the notion of ‘collective security’
The ‘1st Great Debate’: realism v idealism
- Overly idealistic response to causes of IWW
- EH Carr: The Twenty Years Crisis (1939): realist response
- Second World War and Cold War confirm realism to some extent (cant rely on institutions and
should rely on your own national state and pursue your national interest)
- Carr: dialectic between realism and idealism as institutions become more and more important
- Can we stop/mitigate war with the study of the international politics and relations?
The ‘2nd Great Debate’: what counts as science?
- 1950s American political science revolution: ‘behaviouralism’
- Influenced by:
• Behavioural psychology: behaviour as response to external stimulus
• Post WW1 school of logical positivism which was attempting to explores science much more
logically
• Success of natural sciences
- August Comte (1798-1857)
• Three phases of human understanding: the religious language of organisation, the
metaphysical way of understanding the universe through the creation of concept without
much empirical evidence, and finally the ‘positive’ which is closely related to scientific
• A branch of empiricists philosophy: a reaction against metaphysical claims
• Positivism has evolved over time because it is contested
Enduring elements of positivist approach
- ‘Unity of science’ where natural and social life are open to science
- Empiricism: facts derived from experience
- Emphasis on what is observable
- Casual explanation of constant conjunctions known as laws
- Quantifiable measurements of variables
- Value-free and objective approach which is crucial to positivism - to be objective as they
analyse the behaviour of human beings
- Induction over deduction (later shift to deduction)
Example: Why do wars happen?
- J David Dinger, 1963
- Collected data on historic wars to deduct cause and connections between wars
- Outcome variable was ‘war’
- Predictor variables:
• Alliances between states
• International organisations
• International trade
