Seminar on International Relations Theory - Final Exam | POLS 192, Exams of Political Science

Download Seminar on International Relations Theory - Final Exam | POLS 192 and more Exams Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! POLITICS 192/801 SEMINAR ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY Spring, 2006 Instructor: David Skidmore Office: Meredith 213 Phone: (office) 271-3843 Office Hrs: W 12-3pm; R 12-2pm david.skidmore@drake.edu appointments preferred Mission of Politics Department The Department of Politics and International Relations seeks to induct students into the community of liberally educated individuals who are capable of understanding government and politics in terms of the theories, concepts, and tools of sophisticated political analysis which characterize the discipline of political science. The liberal arts dimension of our mission stems from our belief that all people are embedded in a political environment which acts upon them in ways they must understand if they are to function effectively as active participants in a democratic society. Our goal, therefore, is not to train professional political scientists, but rather to produce the liberally educated citizen who is fluent in the language of politics and political analysis and thereby has a foundation for both citizenship in a democratic society and successful training in a job, in a graduate school, or in a professional school. Such a person has the capacity to recognize and evaluate assumptions, implications, and causal relationships pertaining to government and politics and, by extension, to other realms of human experience. Course Description: World politics is messy, complex and often unpredictable. Certainly no one who regularly follows current international affairs can help but be impressed by the speed and diversity of events and the difficulty of digesting their meaning and significance. The job of international relations scholars is to make this messy world a little more comprehensible. They attempt to do so by searching beneath the headlines for those fundamental forces which drive the rise and decline of nations or determine the prevalence of cooperation or conflict in world politics. When scholars arrive at a set of generalizations about the forces that shape world politics they often say that they have formulated a "theory". It may be a theory about why wars occur. Or a theory about why economic cooperation among states characterizes some periods in history while conflict and competition seem to prevail during others. There are three important things to remember about theories: 1) they attempt to explain something, 2) they are designed to simplify our understanding of the world, and 3) we all have them. Theories simplify our understanding by abstracting away from the complexities of the real world. In other words, they leave out much of the detail of day to day events in an effort to locate the few essential factors that drive these events. We all have theories. When we speculate about why events occur, what their significance is, or what will happen next, we base our observations on some implicit theory which tells us which factors are most important in influencing events. The trouble is that most of us carry about theories that are often partial, inconsistent or contradictory. Moreover, we usually neglect to explicitly compare our theories with others or to test them against reality. This course is designed to help us learn to think theoretically. We will do this by examining various theoretical approaches to the study of world politics. Each approach provides us with a very different image of world politics and the forces that drive it. Our principal activities will be to pick apart and critique the assumptions and values that underlie each of these theories or images. Papers: Each student will write six 3-4 page papers for this class. These assignments require that you comment on the readings for a specific week according to the guidelines given below. Papers are due the day that we discuss the readings in class. Each paper should be prepared according to the follow format: Information at top of first page: your name, date, author(s) and title(s) of paper(s) discussed in paper, title of your paper Your paper should examine one or more of the assigned readings. The central purpose of the paper will be to offer a critical evaluation of the author’s thesis. You may focus on the author’s overall argument, or, more narrowly, on a specific argument or sub-theme within the larger work. In any case, it is important that you make very clear just which set of ideas your paper intends to engage. It is mandatory, however, that you do more than simply summarize the contents of an article. The bulk of your paper should comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the author's argument. There are a variety of ways to go about doing critical analysis. You may: (1) draw positive or negative comparisons between this article and others we have read, (2) suggest historical cases which either support or refute the author's thesis, (3) critique the assumptions underlying the thesis, (4) question the logic by which conclusions are drawn, (5) point out contradictions in the argument, or (6) consider policy implications which follow from the argument but are not spelled out by the author. Obviously, you will not have the space to do all of these things (or even several of them). Therefore it is important to clearly decide just what you want to say and stick to one or two well-developed points. Peer Review Part of each class will be spent in small group discussion. In groups of three (or four), Paul Viotti and Mark Kauppi (eds.), International Relations Theory: Realism, Pluralism and Globalism, 3rd ed., 1999 (designated as IRT in reading schedule) Michael Brown, et. al. (eds.), Theories of War and Peace, 1998 (designated as TWP in reading schedule) Charles Kegley and Eugene Wittkopf (eds.), The Global Agenda, 6th ed., 2000 (designated as GA in reading schedule) Some reading assignments will also be posted on the web. READING SCHEDULE: 1/16: Martin Luther King Day. No class. 1/23: Introduction to course: What is a theory? IRT - Editor's commentary, 3-21 GA - Holsti, "Models of International Relations: Realist and Neoliberal Perspectives on Conflict and Cooperation," 107-118 IRT - Rosenau, "Thinking Theory Thoroughly," 29-37 PART I: REALISM 1/30: Classical Realist Roots IRT - Editor's commentary, 55-87 IRT - Thucydides, "The Melian Dialogue,"100-104 IRT - Machiavelli, "Princes and the Security of Their States," 105-107 IRT - Hobbes, "Of the Natural Condition of Mankind," 108-110 Recommended: IRT - Rousseau, "The State of War: Confederation as the Means to Peace in Europe," 111-126 IRT - Bull, "Does Order Exist in World Politics?," 127-129 2/6: Modern Realism I: Power, Anarchy, Balancing and Hegemony IRT - Waltz, "Explaining War," 130-144 GA - Nye, "The Changing Nature of World Power," 94-106 IRT - Gilpin, "War and Change in World Politics," 145-152 GA - Levy, "War and Its Causes," 47-56 TWP - Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War," 3-54 Recommended: GA - Holsti, "Power, Capability and Influence in International Politics," 13-25 2/13: Modern Realism II: Arms, Technology and War TWP - Van Evera, "Offense, Defense and the Causes of War," 55-72 GA - Betts, "The New Threat of Mass Destruction," 69-81 GA - Mueller, "The Obsolescence of Major War," 57-66 TWP - Kaysen, "Is War Obsolete?" 441-463 Recommended: IRT - Keohane, "Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond," 153-183 PART II: Liberalism 2/20: Liberalism I: Interdependence and Order IRT - Editor's commentary, 199-204, 210-224 IRT - Moravcshik, "Taking Preferences Seriously," 246-256 GA - Keohane and Nye, "Power and Interdependence in the Information Age," 26-36 Recommended readings: IRT - Krasner, "The Accomplishments of International Political Economy," GA - Gilpin, "Three Ideologies of Political Economy," 267-284 2/27: Liberalism III: International Institutions TWP - Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," 329-383 TWP - Keohane and Martin, "The Promise of Institutionalist Theory," 384-396 TWP - Kupchan and Kupchan, "The Promise of Collective Security," 397-406 Recommended reading: GA - Held, et. al., "Managing the Challenge of Globalization and Institutionalizing Cooperation Through Global Governance," 119-133 3/6: Liberalism III: The Democratic Peace IRT - Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics," 233-245 TWP - Owen, "How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace," 137-175 TWP - Layne, "Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace," 176-220 TWP - Mansfield and Snyder, "Democratization and the Danger of War," 221-256 Recommended Reading: GA - Russett, "How Democracy, Interdependence and International Organizations Create a System for Peace," 230-240 PART III: Contending Social Orders 3/13: Social Orders and International Politics Course Packet - Skidmore, "Rethinking Realist Interpretations of the Cold War and Beyond: Balance of Power or Competing Social Orders?" click here: http://www.drake.edu/artsci/PolSci/skidmore.html Course Packet - James Nolt, "Business Conflict and the Demise of Imperialism" click here: http://www.drake.edu/artsci/PolSci/nolt.html Recommended: IRT - Gills and Palen, "The Neostructural Agenda in International Relations," 377-382 3/20: Spring Break 3/27: Theories of Imperialism and Dependency IRT - Editor's commentary, 341-359 IRT - Hobson, "The Economic Taproots of Imperialism," 365-368 IRT - Wallerstein, "Patterns and Perspectives on the Capitalist World System," 369-376 Course Packet: Andre Gunder Frank, "The Development of Underdevelopment" William Robinson, "Social Theory and Globalization: The Rise of a New Transnational State" click here: http://www.drake.edu/artsci/PolSci/robinson.pdf Recommended reading: IRT: Murphy, "International Organization and Industrial Change," 383-396 Part IV: Norms, Culture, Ideas and Institutions 4/3: Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict TWP - Van Evera, "Hypotheses on Nationalism and War," 257-292 TWP - Lake and Rothchild, "Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict," 292-328 GA - Gurr, "Managing Conflict in Ethnically Divided Societies: A New Regime Emerges," 173-186 Recommended reading: GA - Falk, "The New Interventionism and the Third World," 187-196