International Relations and World Politics - Solved Exam 1 - Fall 2009 | PWAD 150, Exams of Introduction to Sociology

Download International Relations and World Politics - Solved Exam 1 - Fall 2009 | PWAD 150 and more Exams Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Sequence: 001 POLI 150-001 Exam 1, Fall 2009 October 5, 2009 Correct answers are in bold. I. Current Events (1 point each, 10 points total). Fill in the blank with the appropriate answer. 1. It recently was revealed that Iran (country) is building a second uranium enrichment complex, one that had not been previously disclosed to IAEA inspectors. 2. In recent weeks, the US has been involved in a trade dispute with China; the dispute centers on that country’s exports of tires to the United States. 3. The United States Secretary of State is Hillary Clinton. 4. In recent weeks, the U.S. government has condemned the new government of the central American nation of Honduras; the new government took office after the June 28 coup against President Manuel Zelaya. 5. According to US military officials, if the planned January 2010 elections in Iraq (country) are successful, the pace of US troop reductions there will increase further. 6. Which intergovernmental body, now charged with primary responsibility for overseeing the state of the global economy, recently met in Pittsburgh? G-20 (Group of 20) 7. In late September, soldiers in the capital city of the west African nation of Guinea violently attacked an opposition rally, killing approximately 160 people and injuring perhaps one thousand others. 8. Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary General of which international organization? United Nations 9. On September 21, world leaders met at the UN to discuss the issue of climate change/global warming. The US Senate is also considering legislation related to this issue. Both are largely in preparation for a new round of global talks on the subject, to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009. 10. Presidential elections in Afghanistan (country), held in August, have been the subject of numerous allegations of vote fraud. A run-off now seems increasingly likely; the UN-backed Electoral Complaint Commission is continuing its investigation. II. Multiple Choice: 45 questions, 2 points each (90 points total). 1. Which of the following statements about nuclear weapons is true? (a) The Soviet Union initially had more nuclear weapons than the United States. (b) There was never a real possibility that the United States or the Soviet Union would use their nuclear weapons. (c) The Soviet Union did not have enough nuclear weapons to attack the United States or its allies. (d) The United States and the Soviet Union each had enough nuclear weapons to prevent the other side from attacking directly. 2. Which of the following is NOT a method through which transnational advocacy networks aim to generate political and social change? (a) changes in social norms Sequence: 001 (b) political pressure on governments (c) violence (d) provision of information about state behavior. 3. Which of the following statements about bargaining and cooperation is correct? (a) bargaining problems often are resolved through international institutions, while cooperation problems rarely are addressed via international institutions. (b) cooperation involves parties working together to increase the total quantity of some good, while bargaining involves dividing a fixed quantity of the good. (c) most issues in international relations are either pure bargaining or pure cooperation, rather than a mixture of the two. (d) in order to cooperate on a given issue, governments must have identical interests. 4. Scholarly studies of the “diversionary theory of war” have found that (a) national leaders frequently initiate wars abroad in order to rally popular support at home. (b) losing or costly wars are damaging to leaders of democratic states, as they tend to be removed from office; but losing or costly wars have few, if any, consequences for leaders of authoritarian states. (c) diversionary war is rare because the costs of war tend to be very small. (d) “gambling for resurrection” is a strategy that is most likely to be used by leaders who are in a strong position at home – for instance, just after an election. 5. Alexander Wendt’s claim about anarchy is that (a) because international politics is characterized by anarchy, states are most concerned with security. (b) since international politics is characterized by anarchy, states must create institutions to overcome collective actions problems. (c) anarchy characterizes international politics, but it is states’ shared understandings of and beliefs about anarchy that determine the nature of international politics. (d) because international politics is characterized by power differentials, it is more helpful to think of global politics as hierarchic rather than anarchic. 6. How do democratic institutions help solve commitment problems? (a) citizens can better scrutinize government actions before a conflict occurs. (b) citizens can vote directly on whether their country should go to war. (c) elected leaders face greater audience costs if they back down from threats. (d) elected leaders pledge their allegiance to their country when they take the oath of office. 7. Strategic interactions are situations in which (a) an actor selects a strategy for the future, without regard for what other actors will do. (b) more than one actor is involved in a negotiation. (c) actors are unlikely to consider the future consequences of their choices. (d) each actor’s plan of action depends on what the other actors are expected to do. 8. Crisis bargaining is also known as (a) credible commitment. (b) iteration. (c) deterrence. (d) coercive diplomacy. 9. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been (a) more interstate wars, and more wars overall. (b) more intrastate wars, but fewer wars overall. (c) fewer intrastate wars, and fewer wars overall. (d) fewer interstate wars, but more wars overall. Sequence: 001 (b) The British public strongly opposed the Argentine attack, and British citizens supported Prime Minister Thatcher’s aggressive response. (c) The islands’ location made them strategically important to Britain’s navy. (d) Britain was enjoying an economic boom, so it could easily afford to engage in a war with a weaker nation. 25. Why don’t powerful countries ignore World Trade Organization rules that hurt their own economic interests? (a) The World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement panel can effectively and directly punish violations of the organization’s rules. (b) The World Trade Organization can pursue legal action against member states in their domestic courts. (c) Powerful countries would rather follow the rules than cause economic harm to developing countries. (d) Powerful countries generally benefit from the larger system of trading rules and do not want other countries to also violate the rules. 26. Realists believe that (a) international politics is a zero-sum game. (b) cooperation among states is relatively easy. (c) non-state actors (e.g. multinational corporations) are very important to world politics. (d) states’ interests and identities are formed through repeated interactions with other states. 27. The spiral model of war suggests that (a) threats of force generate a self-fulfilling cycle of fear and hostility. (b) threats are the only way to contain aggression and hostility. (c) threats may fail to deter an attack, because they often are not believed. (d) the security dilemma played little role in the occurrence of the First World War. 28. Empirically, the most common issue over which a state is likely to go to war is (a) A territorial dispute, involving two states claiming the same geographic area. (b) Trade tensions, in which one state resents another states high tariffs on its exports. (c) Conflict over the type of political system in place in a given country. (d) Concerns over one state’s adherence to an international arms reduction agreement. 29. Which of the following is NOT one of the three “C’s” necessary for successful deterrence? (a) Commitment (b) Credibility (c) Capability (d) Consensus 30. If a researcher wanted to examine the effect of democratic government on the probability of interstate war, the best strategy would be to (a) examine all cases of wars won by democracies. (b) examine all international crises that involve democracies. (c) examine all international crises, whether they involve democratic governments, autocratic governments, or a combination of the two. (d) examine all interstate wars initiated by autocracies. 31. Which of the following is true about soft power? (a) Realists find soft power to be as important as hard power. (b) Liberals dismiss soft power, because it is tied too closely to the notion of relative gains. (c) It usually is associated with intangible resources, such as culture and ideology. (d) It is measured using a combination of gross domestic product and estimates of conventional military forces. Sequence: 001 32. According to neoliberal institutionalists (like Robert Keohane and Kenneth Oye), all of the following can increase the likelihood of cooperation, EXCEPT (a) lengthening the shadow of the future. (b) increasing the number of players involved. (c) monitoring states’ behavior via an international regime. (d) repeating interactions between players. 33. In the context of the Cold War, “détente” refers to (a) the late 1960s and the l970s, an era of peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the United States. (b) U.S. efforts to aggressively contain the spread of Soviet-backed communist regimes. (c) Soviet willingness to intervene in the domestic politics of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Greece. (d) Ronald Reagan’s decision to take a conciliatory stance toward the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s. 34. Which of the following accurately describes the “bargaining range” as it relates to international conflict? (a) the possible outcomes that states can agree to without going to war over a dispute. (b) the number of demands a state makes in a crisis. (c) a state’s ideal point in a given crisis. (d) the amount of territory a state claim in a dispute. 35. What is John Mearsheimer’s view of international institutions? (a) Institutions have no independent effect on state behavior, because institutions merely reflect the will of powerful states. (b) Institutions have an independent effect on state behavior, because institutions provide a mechanism for overcoming collective action problems. (c) The adoption and use of a common currency by many European Union member states demonstrates the importance of international institutions. (d) Institutions have an independent effect on states, because powerful states follow institutional rules in order to take advantage of reciprocity. 36. Robert Jervis (“The Era of Leading Power Peace”) describes the existence of a “security community” in the contemporary era. How would a realist explain the security community? (a) norms of non- violence and shared identities among states. (b) democratic political systems and economic interdependence. (c) the continuing threat of Communist influence. (d) U.S. economic and military hegemony, as well as the pacifying effect of nuclear weapons. 37. Because of anarchy in the international system, one state’s efforts to make itself more secure often make other states feel less secure. This problem is known as (a) balance of threat. (b) the security dilemma. (c) balance of power. (d) failure of deterrence. 38. How is extended deterrence different from general deterrence? (a) extended deterrence lasts for a long time, usually more than two years. (b) extended deterrence applies to a large amount of territory. (c) extended deterrence applies to a state’s allies, rather than to the state itself. (d) extended deterrence is possible only when a state possesses second-strike nuclear capabilities. 39. Robert Art argues that military power tends to be very fungible. This means that military power Sequence: 001 (a) is effective only in very specific, security-related contexts. (b) is useful today but might not be useful tomorrow. (c) can be used to achieve military as well as non-military goals. (d) Greatly reduces the domestic political costs of conflicts. 40. According to Robert Jervis (“Offense, Defense, and the Security Dilemma”), the security dilemma is most severe when: (a) Defense has the advantage, and states can distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons. (b) Offense has the advantage, and states can distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons. (c) Defense has the advantage, and states cannot distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons. (d) Offense has the advantage, and states cannot distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons. 41. The first attempt at creating a formal collective security system was the (a) United Nations. (b) League of Nations. (c) European Union. (d) North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 42. According to Samuel Huntington, the primary cause of future interstate conflicts will be (a) economics. (b) regime change. (c) territory. (d) culture and religion. 43. Each of the following phenomena render war more likely, all else equal, except: (a) incomplete information about an adversary’s resolve. (b) difficulty in committing to respect a given bargaining settlement in the future. (c)the perceived indivisibility of a given territory or issue. (d) high domestic political costs associated with fighting a war. 44. Phil Williams (“Transnational Organized Crime and the State”) argues that (a) transnational criminal networks use home state sovereignty as a way to hide from host state prosecution. (b) the existence of transnational criminal networks proves that sovereignty is not a useful concept. since states are unable to control border flows of illicit trade. (c) states should impose more restrictions on trade in order to prevent international criminal networks from undermining their sovereignty. (d) in order to deal with transnational crime in a way that does not undermine state sovereignty, states should create an international court with the capacity to arrest and prosecute the leaders of transnational criminal gangs. 45. Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth argue that (a) international institutions provide benefits to powerful states, including the U.S. (b)the Bush administration’s frequent unilateralism was an ideal foreign policy strategy. (c) transnational advocacy networks frequently play an important role in world politics. (d) international institutions help weaker states, but they do not provide value to powerful countries such as the U.S.