733A41
INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS THEORY
Per Jansson
Fall 2014
Course aims
On completion of the course, the student should
• be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of
important theoretical and methodological developments
within the discipline of International Relations, with special
focus on the impact of the end of the Cold War,
• display ability to critically analyze international practices
according to the various theoretical perspectives
introduced,
• adhere to academic criteria such as writing style,
reference and citation styles, and objectivity,
• critically analyse problems and to present coherent
analyses.
Examination
• This course is examined through active participation and
fulfillment of assignments in seminars, and by completion
of a course paper.
• Seminars are obligatory.
• You are expected to be well prepared and to have
completed assigned preparations for seminars.
• If you cannot attend a seminar you will be given a further
written assignment to be handed in on a fixed date.
Examination – course paper
The paper assignment consists in
• choosing a phenomenon in international relations (an event, a process, an
institution, etc.), contemporary or in history and analyzing it from at least three
alternative theoretical perspectives which have been suggested by the course.
• The paper should comprise no less than 2.000 and no more than 3.000 words.
Indicate the number of words on the last page of your paper!
• In preparing your paper you should take particular care to discuss the problem at
hand: Why is this phenomenon puzzling; what is there to know about this? It is
also important that your paper indicates different or alternative understandings,
made possible by modern theories of international relations.
• Relevant parts of the course literature must be utilized and referred to.
• All sources must be properly indicated (notes and references in the text,
bibliography at the end of the paper).
INTRODUCTION:
THE NATURE AND PURPOSE
OF THEORY
Theory
The aim of theory is to make sense of what happens in the
world. Inevitably, theories tell us what to look at and, by
inference, what can be safely ignored.
Yale H. Ferguson & Richard W. Mansbach
(Polities: Authorities, Identities, and Change (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 1996), 3.
International Relations
”What makes the world hang together?”
John G. Ruggie (Edward Teller)
Theory
• Tools for explanation
• Tools for understanding
• Traditions of thought
• Hypothesis-testing
• Conceptual analysis
• Critical analysis
• Normative analysis
• Meta-theory …
Meta-theoretical concerns
• Ontology (what is there to know?)
• Epistemology (how can we know what we know?)
• The agent-structure problem (what should be our focus
(both)
• The levels-of-analysis problem (how many?)
The multitude of perspectives
• International political theory
• International liberalism
• Political realism
• The international society tradition
• International political economy
• The post-positivist tradition
THE REALIST AND
LIBERAL TRADITIONS I
The three (?) debates
1. Idealism vs Realism – pre and post-WW I
2. Science vs Traditionalism – 1960s
3. The Interparadigm debate – 1970s and 1980s
4. Fourth debate – late-1980s and 1990s.
Present?
”The characteristic vice of the
utopian is naivety; of the realist,
sterility.”
E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’
Crisis 1919-1939
“The strong do what they have
the power to do and the weak
accept what they have to accept.”
Thucydides, the Melian Dialogue
during the war between
Sparta and Athens,
431 – 407 f.Kr.
”Machiavelli is the first important
political realist.”
1. History is a sequence of cause
and effect, whose course can be
analyzed and understood by
intellectual efforts, but not (as
the utopian believe) directed by
”imagination”.
2. Theory does not (as utopians
assume) create practice, but
practice theory.
3. Politics are not (as utopians
pretend) a function of ethics, but
ethics of politics.
”During the time men live without a
common power to keep them all in awe,
they are in that condition which is called
war; and such a war as if of every man
against every man … and the life of man
[is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.”
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
International anarchy
Anarchy is evenly distributed throughout the international system.
International anarchy
Anarchy is unevenly distributed in the international system;
there are ”islands” of order and cooperation.
International institutions
The ”normative texture” of international relations,
consisting of more or less coalesced bodies of converging
interests, coordinated action, shared values etc.
Hans J. Morgenthau
Hans Morgenthau's Principles of Political
Realism
1. Politics governed by objective laws based on human
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
nature
National interest defined in terms of power
No fixed or unchanging meaning of Interest
Inapplicability of abstract moral principles
Difference between moral aspiration of a nation and
universal moral laws
Autonomy of the “political”
THE REALIST AND
LIBERAL TRADITIONS II
Key assumptions of Structural
Realism
•
•
•
•
Most important actors in world politics are
territorially organized entities (city-states and
modern states).
State behavior is rational (goal-directed,
preferences being transitive: if X is preferred to Y,
and Y is preferred to Z, then X is preferred to Z).
States seek security and calculate their interests
in terms of their power relative to others in the
international system.
The international system is characterized by
anarchy, that is, the absence of any effective
authority over states that can ensure their
compliance to agreements and norms.
Offensive vs. Defensive Realism
 Offensive realists argue that states should always be
looking for opportunities to gain more power, with the
ultimate prize being hegemony
 Defensive realists argue that unrelenting expansion is
imprudent – conquest is often costly and troublesome
 Defensive realists argue that states should seek an
‘appropriate amount of power’.
Major Realist Theories
(John Mearsheimer, The
Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001, p. 22)
Human
Nature
Realism
Defensive
Realism
Offensive
Realism
What causes
states to
compete for
power?
Lust for power
inherent in
states
Structure of
system
Structure of
system
How much
power do states
want?
All they can get.
States maximize
relative power,
with hegemony
as their ultimate
goal.
Not much more
than what they
have. States
concentrate on
maintaining the
balance of
power.
All they can get.
States maximize
relative power,
with hegemony
as their ultimate
goal.
Neo-classical realism
"In the neoclassical realist world leaders can be
constrained by both international and domestic politics.
International anarchy, moreover, is neither Hobbesian nor
benign but rather murky and difficult to read. ... "
(Gideon Rose, Review Article in World Politics, vol. 51
(1998), pp. 144-72)
Liberalism
• Power of reason: man is a rational being, with powers to
self-improvement.
• Public opinion: international affairs would be peaceful if
(the rational) opinions of the public can have impact.
• Harmony of interests: the basic condition of human life
is not a Hobbesian war of everybody against everybody,
but common interests of survival and improvment.
Neoliberalism and realism
Neoliberalism adopted key assumptions from
structural realism:
• that states are the dominant actors
• that domestic politics do not explain variations in
state behavior
Liberal institutionalism
• Accepting the broad structures of neo-realism, but
employing rational choice and game theory to
anticipate the behavior of states, liberal institutionalists
demonstrate that cooperation between states can be
enhanced even without the presence of a hegemonic
player which can enforce compliance with agreements.
• For them, anarchy is mitigated by regimes and
institutional cooperation which brings higher levels of
regularity and predictability to international relations.
(Burchill et al., p. 67)
Complex Interdependence
(Keohane & Nye)
• Multiple channels of communication
• Absence of hierarchy of issues
• Military force less relevant
International regimes …
• ”a set of mutual expectations, rules and regulations,
plans, oganizational energies and financial commitments,
which have been accepted by a group of states” (John
Gerard Ruggie)
• ”sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and
decision-making procedures around which actors’
expectations converge in a given area of international
relations. Principles are beliefs of fact, causation, and
rectitude. Norms are standards of behavior defined in
terms of rights and obligations. Rules are specific
prescriptions or proscriptions for action. Decision-making
procedures are prevailing practices for making and
implementing collective choice” (Stephen D. Krasner)
International regimes
Convergence of excpectations
High
High
Full-blown
regimes
Formality
Low
Tacit regimes
Low
Dead-letter
regimes
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL
International Society
• The distinguishing power of the school rests on the
significance it attaches to the idea that states, through
their actions, have generated a society with its own
unique institutions and rules
Hedley Bull and the Anarchical Society
International system –
International society
”A system of states (international system) is formed when
two or more states have sufficient contact between them,
and have sufficient impact on one another’s decisions, to
cause them to behave – at least in some measure – as
parts of a whole.” (Bull, 1977, p. 9-10)
“A society of states (or international society) exists when a
group of states, conscious of certain common interests and
common values, form 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.” (Bull, 1977, p. 13)
International Society
International System
World Society
Types of International Society
Pluralism
Solidarism
• Minimal conception of
• Maximal conception of
international society (thin)
• Consisting of (qualitatively
different) states
• States follow rules because of a
shared interest in maintaining
order
• Order producing institutions
include the balance of power,
diplomacy, and great power
cooperation
international society (thick)
• Basically consisting of individual
human beings
• An institutional arrangement for
producing order and justice
• Solidarism requires that states
commit to enforcing the rules and
they act as guardians of human
rights