World Politics Exam #1 Study Guide, Study notes of Political Science

Download World Politics Exam #1 Study Guide and more Study notes Political Science in PDF only on Docsity! Exam #1 Combined Outlines Political Science 1 Tyler Woods CHAPTER 1 |. What Is International Relations? e International relations is the study of the interactions among the various actors within and across international borders, including states, their leaders, government bureaucracies, for-profit and nonprofit organizations, and individuals, and how they participate in international politics. e tis the study of the behaviors of these actors as they participate individually and together in international political processes. While international activities have historically resulted from decisions taken by central governments and heads of state, increasingly, these activities involve different actors, some of whom you influence directly. Il. Thinking Theoretically e Theories provide a framework through which to understand everyday events in international relations and to answer the basic foundational questions, such as the question raised in the introduction to the chapter about whether international relations is becoming more or less violent. The most prominent perspectives are: o Realism: states exist in an anarchic international system. Each state bases its policies on an interpretation of national interest defined in terms of power. Thus, the structure of the international system is determined by the distribution of power among states. o Liberalism: human nature is basically good. States frequently cooperate and follow international norms and procedures that have been mutually agreed on. Much of international politics is about mutual gain rather than conflict. © Constructivism: the key structures in the state system are not material but instead are intersubjective and social. The interest of states and the principles of the international system are not fixed, but rather are malleable and ever-changing. e These differing theoretical perspectives highlight distinct aspects of international relations and lead to the development of competing theories. Competition between theories helps reveal their strengths and weaknesses and spurs subsequent refinements. Ill. Developing the Answers e Scholars employ a variety of methods to understand international relations: © History: history invites its students to acquire detailed knowledge of specific events and understand narratives of political change. But it can also be used to test generalizations and explain the relationships among various events. An example is Thucydides's use of history to understand the causes of the war between Athens and Sparta. However, the "lessons" of history are rarely clear or without controversy, as in the case of the Vietnam War. o Philosophy: much classical philosophy, such as that of Plato and Aristotle, focuses on the state and its leaders, as well as on methods of analysis. Philosophers after the classical era, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant, focused on the basic characteristics of people and society and how those characteristics might in turn influence the character of the international system. The study of philosophy has contributed to the development of international relations by calling attention to fundamental relationships: between the individual and society, between individuals in society, and between societies. © History and philosophy permit us to delve into the foundational questions: the nature of humanity and the broad characteristics of the state and international society. They allow us to speculate on the normative (or moral) elements in political life, highlighting issues of right and wrong in the study of international relations: 1. What should be the role of the state? 2. What ought to be the norms in international society? 3. How might international society be structured to achieve order? © The scientific method: Behavioralism proposes that individuals, both alone and in groups such as states, act in patterned and predictable ways. Behavioral scientists suggest plausible hypotheses regarding those patterned actions and test them with facts and data. Behavioralists stress that hypotheses must be "falsifiable"; that is, researchers should lay out explicitly what patterns of evidence are and are not consistent with particular hypotheses. Some behavioral scholars hope to predict future behavior. An example of the behavioral method is the Correlates of War project, which sought to understand why wars occur by collecting historical data about wars and looking for patterns. Some people have become motivated to participate actively in the political process as a group. In earlier periods, the idea of national identity was much weaker. e The Napoleonic Wars o Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as the military and political leader in France after the revolution and led successful campaigns to conquer much of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). e Peace at the core of the European system © Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 and the establishment of peace by the Congress of Vienna, the Concert of Europe (consisting of the five powers, Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia) ushered in a period of relative peace that lasted for decades, despite a rapidly changing world. o Atleast three factors explain the peace: 1. European elites were united in their fear of revolution from the masses; the absence of war made the overthrow of existing regimes less likely. 2. Two of the major issues confronting the core European states were internal: the unifications of Germany and Italy. Although both unifications were finally solidified through small local wars, a general war was averted because Germany and Italy were preoccupied with territorial unification. 3. The complex and crucial phenomenon of imperialism-colonialism, as European states played out their rivalries in distant places by strategizing to increase and consolidate their colonial possessions in Africa and Asia. e Imperialism and colonialism in the European system o The wealth discovered in the New World led to competition among European powers who became empires and, upon conquest, claimed as sovereign territory the lands that indigenous peoples occupied. o By the close of the nineteenth century, almost the whole of the globe was "ruled" by European states through imperialism and colonialism. © Motivations for colonialism included economic gains, cultural and religious reasons, and political competition. o The major powers divided most of Africa during the 1885 Congress of Berlin. In Asia, only Japan and Siam (Thailand) were not under direct European or U.S. influence. o The struggle for economic prowess led to reckless exploitation of the colonial areas, particularly in Africa and Asia. o This process helped establish a common "European" identity based on their being Christian, "civilized," and white, which was in contrast with the "other" in the non-European territories that they ruled. e Balance of power o The period of peace in Europe in the nineteenth century was managed and preserved for so long because of the concept of balance of power. o The balance of power emerged because the independent European states feared the emergence of any predominant state (hegemon) among them. Thus, they formed alliances to counteract any potentially more powerful faction. e The breakdown: solidification of alliances o Effective operation of the balance of power required that participating states be willing to ally together against any state whose power was increasing rapidly; in other words, alliances should shift as power balances shifted. o The balance-of-power system weakened during the waning years of the nineteenth century, when two camps emerged: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, and Italy) in 1882 and the Dual Alliance (France and Russia) in 1893. These camps were more rigid than the earlier alliances, which were fairly flexible. o In 1902, Britain broke from the "balancer" role by joining in a naval alliance with Japan to prevent a Russo-Japanese rapprochement in China. For the first time, a European state turned to an Asian one in order to thwart a European ally. o The final end of the balance-of-power system came with World War | (1914-18), which pitted Russia, France, and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary and Germany. IV. The Interwar Years and World War II e The end of World War | saw critical changes in international relations: o First, three European empires (Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman) were strained and finally broke up during the war. This led to the end of the conservative social order of Europe, and in its place emerged a proliferation of nationalisms that either became states or sought to become states. o Second, Germany emerged out of World War | an even more dissatisfied power than before. The Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, made Germany pay the cost of the war through reparations, limited the size of its military, and imposed restrictions on its sovereignty. This dissatisfaction provided the climate for the emergence of Adolf Hitler, who was dedicated to righting what he termed the wrongs imposed by the treaty. o Third, enforcement of the Versailles Treaty was given to the League of Nations. The League did not have the political power to carry out its task of preventing another world war, in part because the United States refused to join. o Fourth, a vision of the post-World War | liberal order, as spelled out in Wilson's Fourteen Points, was a vision that was stillborn from the start. The world economy was in collapse; thus, the economic liberalism called for in Wilson's Fourteen Points was never adopted and German fascism wreaked havoc on the plan for postwar peace. Realism replaced liberalism as the dominant international relations theory. e World War Il o The power of fascism (in the German, Italian, and Japanese versions) led to the uneasy alliance between the communist Soviet Union and the liberal United States, Britain, and France. When World War II broke out, this alliance (the Allies) fought against the Axis powers in unison. o At the end of the war, the Allies had succeeded. Both the German Reich and imperial Japan lay in ruins, while Italy was conquered and occupied. o The prosecution of war crimes committed by leaders in Germany and Japan led to the expansion of international humanitarian law through the Geneva Conventions of 1948 and 1949. o The use of an atomic bomb by the United States against Japan was decisive in ending the war, and marks the only occasions to date in which nuclear weapons were used in war. o The end of World War II resulted in a major redistribution of power toward two new "superpowers" and changed political borders in Europe and Asia. V. The Cold War e Origins of the Cold War o The most important outcome of World War Il was the emergence of two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, as the primary actors in the international system and the decline of Western Europe as the epicenter of international politics. o The second outcome of the war was the recognition of fundamental incompatibilities between these two superpowers in both national interests and ideology. m Russia used its newfound power to solidify its sphere of influence in the buffer states of Eastern Europe. The Soviet state also embraced Marxist ideology, which holds that under capitalism, one class (the bourgeoisie) controls the means of production. The solution to the problem of class rule is revolution, wherein the exploited proletariat takes control by using the state to seize the e The Cold War was also "fought" and moderated in words, at summits (meetings between leaders), and in treaties. o Some of these summits were successful, such as the 1967 Glassboro summit that began the loosening of tensions known as détente. Treaties, such as the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT !), placed self-imposed limitations on nuclear arms. VI. The Immediate Post-Cold War Era e The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the Cold War, but actually its end was gradual. As early as the mid-1980s, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev had set in motion two domestic processes, g/asnost (political openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring). e Gorbachev's domestic reforms also led to changes in the orientation of Soviet foreign policy. He suggested that members of the UN Security Council become "guarantors of regional security" and that the rivalry between the superpowers could end. e The first post-Cold War test of the new so-called new world order came in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait in 1990, after which the United Nations agreed to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. e During the 1990s, countries sought to find new identifies and interests. It was a decade marked by dual realities (which sometimes converged and diverged), the first being U.S. primacy in international affairs and the second being civil and ethnic strife. © Yugoslavia's violent disintegration played itself out over the entire decade despite Western attempts to resolve the conflict peacefully. o Atthe same time, the world witnessed ethnic tension and violence as genocide in Rwanda and Burundi went unchallenged by the international community. o U.S. primacy is still not able to prevent ethnic conflict, civil wars, and human rights abuses from occurring; there are limits to American power. VII. The New Millennium: The First Two Decades e On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed deadly, and economically destructive, terrorist attacks against two important cities in the United States. These attacks set into motion a U.S.-led global war on terrorism. o In 2001, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which was providing safe haven to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. © Following the overthrow of the Taliban, the United States, convinced that lraq maintained weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and supported terrorist organizations, attempted to build support in the United Nations for authorization to remove Saddam Hussein from power. When the United Nations failed to back the U.S. request, the United States built its own coalition, which overthrew the Iraqi government in 2003. Iraq remains torn by sectarian violence. And while most American troops left Afghanistan in 2014, the country remains mired in civil conflict. o In fall 2008, a financial crisis in the United States quickly spread to the European Union and eventually to the developing world, leading to the deepest worldwide recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the European Union many members that had adopted the common monetary unit struggled to repay or refinance government debt, which led to serious tensions in the union. o The "Arab Spring," which started in 2011, led to the overthrow of corrupt leaders across the Middle East and North Africa, and also led others to make concessions. However, it had uneven success in increasing democracy across the Middle East and North Africa. On the one hand, it demonstrated the power of the people to change government peacefully. On the other hand, it gave rise to the Islamic State, which a coalition of Western states led by the United States and Turkey are combating. © China's military spending and its dredging of sand onto coral reefs in the disputed waters of the Spartly Islands are both issues currently of concern. © Populist and nationalist reactions to economic and political globalization, which has led to increased interest in protectionism and isolationism, are currently on the rise in Europe and the United States. CHAPTER 3 |. Thinking Theoretically e Atheory is a collection of propositions that seek to explain phenomena by specifying the relationships among the concepts; the concept being explained is the dependent variable; the concepts that are thought to do the explaining are the explanatory variables. e To evaluate the strength of a theory, we generate testable hypotheses: specific falsifiable statements positing a particular relationship between two or more variables. These statements can, in principle, be tested and falsified by real-world evidence. Good theories are generalizable, explaining events across space and time. As more and more data are collected, one must be tolerant of ambiguity, concerned about probabilities, and distrustful of absolutes, revising theories when necessary. In the social sciences, including the study of international politics, theories shed light on the object of study but rarely achieve the status of scientific laws. e International relations theories come in a variety of forms, and this chapter introduces four general theories: realism, liberalism, constructivism, and radicalism. These theoretical perspectives are united by some common themes. Il. Components of International Relations Theories e Each perspective focuses on different factors in international politics. Some are material, while others are conceptual. e Material factors: o State: many international relations theories treat the state as a unitary actor, which means that it acts as a single entity, speaking and acting with one voice. Some theories, however, look at characteristics of the state and its domestic politics in explaining international politics. o International institutions: set of rules meant to govern international behavior. Institutions may be formal or they may be in the form of a treaty. o Multinational corporations: these corporations span state borders, building up companies abroad or engaging in mergers or joint ventures in foreign countries. Some theories focus on the role of these corporations in creating economic connections between states. o Individuals: some theories focus on how individual state leaders and their personal characteristics influence their state's foreign policy choices. e Conceptual factors: o Identities: a sense of self, based on qualities and beliefs that define a person or group. Identities allow groups to identify similarities and differences between themselves and others, and thus they influence behavior. Some theories focus on how group identity is central to understanding interactions in the international system. o Norms: collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity. Norms provide expectations about the behavior of states, and many norms are codified into international treaties. Some theories of peace, while balance-of-power theorists argue that a bipolar system increases the likelihood of peace as it represents a basic balance of power between the two most powerful states. e Robert Gilpin adds the notion of dynamism to realism: history as a series of cycles: cycles of the birth, expansion, and demise of dominant powers. Hegemons tend to decline because of the increasing costs of controlling an empire and the threat of rising powers that challenge the hegemon. IV. Liberalism e Liberalism consists of a diverse set of theories that highlights the impact internal characteristics have on international politics. e The roots of liberalism o The origins of liberal theory are found in eighteenth-century Enlightenment optimism (which held that individuals are rational human beings, able to understand the universally applicable laws governing nature and society), nineteenth-century political and economic liberalism (which argued that democracy and free trade could improve the human condition), and twentieth-century Wilsonian idealism (which argued that war is preventable through collective action). e Neoliberal institutionalism © This theory argues that complex interdependence allows states to cooperate most of the time. o Using realist assumptions, neoliberal institutionalists show that continuous interaction between states (that seek to increase relative as well as absolute gains), and their focus on security as well as other issues on which they have common interests, reduce their incentive to exploit each other and leads to decline in the use of military force. o International organizations and treaties facilitate continuous interactions and reciprocity. e Other liberal theories o Other liberal theories do not treat the state as a unitary actor. Rather, they argue that state behavior at the international level is influenced by the domestic level. These theories assume that individuals and private groups are key actors and that state behavior, which is a configuration of state preferences not state power, reflects the interest of some subset of these key actors. When states' preferences are compatible, cooperation is likely, and when they are at odds, the probability of tension and conflict increases. o Other liberal theories build on the work of Immanuel Kant to argue that democracy, economic interdependence and international institutions contribute to peace. These theorists developed the democratic peace and commercial peace theories, and have also showcased the importance of international institutions. V. Constructivism e This theory explains international politics by focusing on the norms and identities of individuals and states. The identities of states and the norms that stem from these identities influence states’ behavior. When states have divergent identities, it can lead them to have interests and ideals that are opposed to one another. e Another aspect of constructivism's major theoretical proposition is that neither objects (such as states) nor concepts (such as anarchy) have any necessary, fixed, or objective meaning; rather, their meanings are constructed through social interaction. For example, constructivists believe that state behavior is shaped by elite beliefs, identities, and social norms. e Asa result, constructivists believe that identities, including state identity are socially constructed, and that state behavior is shaped by beliefs about itself and others as well as its own interests. These interests are the result of its socially constructed identities which itself is not fixed and changes overtime. e Constructivists see power in discursive terms: the power of ideas, culture, and language are as important as material sources of power. Change can thus occur not only through coercion, but also through diffusion of ideas or the internationalization of norms and socialization. e Until recently, constructivism remained mainly a powerful tool of criticism rather than a program capable of predicting outcomes. VI. The Radical Perspective e Radicalism assumes the primacy of economics for explaining virtually all other phenomena, including international politics. e Marxism o The writings of Karl Marx (1818-83), who developed a theory of the evolution of capitalism based on economic change and class conflict, are fundamental to all radical thought. o An important set of radical theory centers on the structure of the global system. That structure is the by-product of imperialism, or the expansion of certain economic forms into other areas of the world. o John A. Hobson theorized that expansion occurs because of overproduction of goods in developed countries, underconsumption by workers in developed states, and oversavings by the upper class in the developed world. This leads to imperialism in less-developed areas and rivalry for markets among developed countries. o Radical theorists emphasize that the domination and suppression that arise from uneven economic development are inherent in the capitalist system, enabling the dominant states to exploit the underdogs. e Dependency theory o This theory focuses on the consequences of imperial expansion within the states where it has occurred. © It attributes primary importance to the role of multinational corporations based in developed countries (dominant states) in establishing and maintaining dependency relationships in developing countries. o These dominant states and multinational corporations obtain cheap primary products from dependent states and use them to produce manufactured goods, which are more expensive than the primary products, that are sold to the dependent state. © Over time, this increases inequality and underdevelopment. Dependency theorists are pessimistic about the possibility of change. VII. Feminist Critiques of IR Theory e Feminist international relations (IR) theory shares many of constructivism's assumptions. e |t argues specifically that social discourse has been dominated by men and that the exclusion of women's voices affects the questions we ask and how we evaluate the answers. e According to some versions of feminist IR theory, the world would be more peaceful and just if women played a greater role in domestic and international affairs. This view is shared by realists and liberal feminists. e Radical feminists view the international system (as well as domestic politics) as patriarchal. Women will be in a subservient position until this changes. e Feminists advance novel critiques of longer-standing IR theories. J. Ann Tickner, for example, argues that classical realism is fundamentally masculine in its argument that human nature is fixed and that power is defined by physical control and domination. e Many see the solution as a broadening of the discourse about international politics beyond a male perspective, which would alter the criteria by which foreign and other policies are assessed.