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Notes for international relations intro
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POL209Lecture 1 – Breakdown of course & course intro Summary
- No power points – notes from professors talking points
- Readings online – find them online on library website
- There will always be test outlines – may include hints for test
- Tutorial reading – create debates and participate for marks
- Read handouts in detail to do well on assignments
- Office hours for asking for help understanding material and even just to talk politics
Why study theories of international relations?
1. Big picture
- Theories and debates between theories help us understand how different things relate or
do not relate to each other
2. What is knowledge?
- They help us understand what facts are and how to spot facts
3. How studying international relations helps us?
- How the study of IR* relates to other fields w/I political science and other disciplines
outside of political science
4. What questions have merit?
- What questions should be answered and are important to answer vs. less important
Evolution of the study of IR* – contemporary/modern era
Historiography - the division of history into sections
3 Great debates
1. Realists’ vs Idealists (liberals)
- Rooted in aftermath of the first World war - One of the most destructive wars in human
history
- How do we avoid this war from happening again?
- Liberals believe way to avoid another great war was that laws and international
institutions can be used to avoid this from happening again
- Realists did not agree, and decided the international system is inherently conflict prone
and believed that we save ourselves through strength and creating stronger and bigger
armies and alliances and balancing power – thought liberals/idealists were naive for
believing in the law
- By the late 1930’s the world is headed to war again, collapse of league of nations. Many
people thought the realists were right all along and won the first great debate because
international law failed to prevent WW2
- In the end no one really won as both sides still exist and the debate was never resolved
2. Methodology - quantitative (behaviouralist) theorists vs. Traditionalist
, - Behaviouralists – use advanced statistical analysis to understand the world, give them a
number and look for relationships. Let the numbers do the talking “numbers don’t lie”-
objective.
- Traditionalists want a more traditional approach to the study. Believe there is more to the
study than just things you can quantify – ex. what number is justice or fairness? Cannot
give a number to these important things. Studying was as much an art as it is a science for
traditionalists
- Behaviouralists looked like they were going to win the debate in the 60’s because
everyone was doing stats. In the end however, they didn’t win, it turned out there were
many problems with statistical analysis and other subjective issues that count towards the
analysis that cannot be quantitative.
- Both approaches are still practiced and there is room for both approaches, more so in
Canada than in the USA – no winner
3. Methodological – positivists (realists, liberals, English School, mid-range)
vs. post-positivists (post-modernism, constructivism, discourse theory)
- Positivists begin with observations of the world and then we take them, study them, and
test them in specific concrete ways. Will experiment to test the world around them ex.
placebo vs real test – Scientific method – not always ethical
- Positivists use proxies to get close to the experimental method to remain ethical and study
real world situations – most similar systems research design variables may explain
differences or similarities. The most dissimilar methods take things that are very
different and use these to find the few similarities to explain similar rates they have.
- A post-positivist does not believe the real world exists independent of the observer – even
things that are supposedly basic facts are subjectively produced in the mind. There are no
simple facts and ideas have their own inherent power. Imagine Aristotle and Galileo lived
in the same time and look outside in the same village on the same day and see the sun
from the east (a sunrise) except they aren’t seeing the same thing, Aristotle sees the sun
as it circles the earth (the facts that he understands) and Galileo sees the earth circling the
sun (the facts he understands). Two people looking at the same thing at the same time and
not seeing the same thing, post-positivists would say this is true in all ways because they
are truths mediated by the human mind. They are seeing and understanding the world
according to their pre-conceived notions. A danger because if you argue that everything
you see is a product of the mind and there is no objective reality how can anything be true
if it is a product of an individual mind?
- In the end no one really wins this debate either
None of these debates were resolved, for some scholars this led them to believe these debates are
irrelevant and not worth debating anymore. However, some do not see it as a positive
development because they believe if we stop engaging with each other or debating, we lose
something by not challenging ourselves or problem solving. There is also an argument that
moving on from great debates have moved room for the study of other kinds of theories, it has
allowed the re-emergence of debates of midrange theories, and we can move forward with
examining and debating other theories. The field is no longer dominated by great theories but
also other midrange theories to answer smaller questions.
*IR = international relations
, Second lecture May 12th
The grand theories of IR – theories that try to explain everything about everything
Long ranging debate with these theories competing with each other
Realism
- Has many critics and many of the grand theories are efforts to respond to realism to a
degree at the least.
- Despite the critics it is still a significant perspective amongst scholars
- It also has a lot of influence among foreign affairs leaders
Hans. J. Morgenthau (1904-1980) – illustrate realism
- Most influential and famous realist
- He’s best known for his book “politics among nations” that went through many editions
through his lifetimes
- First scholar to bring together a bunch of strands of thought and try and bring them
together and understand them like a puzzle
- Not every realist will agree with every realist assumption, but most realists will agree
with most assumptions most of the time
Main assumptions of realism
1. The science of politics
- We can understand IR because it has objective and knowable laws, not random but rather
patters driven by phenomenon
- The ultimate source of these laws is human nature – we’re hard wired the way we are
- Pessimistic view of human nature from Thomas Hobbes, if you turn your back on
someone, they’ll kill you – don’t trust other human beings because they’re all naturally
bad
- Most realists are like Hobbes, pessimistic, believes they have to protect themselves from
other human beings or bad things are going to happen
- The science of politics is not identical to the science of physics – we can predict;
however, the laws of physics are eternal and unchanging, but the laws of politics are
changing because we react differently to different things over time
- Knowing humans are all bad means I can take action to protect myself and adapt to these
law-like human behaviours
- Wise leaders can take steps to protect our state in this dangerous world, I cannot change
the reality of it being a dangerous world (the law) but I can choose to protect myself
2. States as unitary-rational actors (national interest or raison d’état)
- Even though they are not always unitary and rational we can still predict their behaviour
as if they are
- It doesn’t matter how a state makes a decision at the end of the day there will be a
decision that will be an attempt to further a national interest.
- You will either be at war or not, or sign a treaty or not, how these decisions are made
doesn’t matter if they are made to maximize the political advantage
- States will sometimes make decisions on the basis on les than perfect rationality,
democracies are more susceptible to irrational decision making because political leaders
are more influenced by the countries people and the people can act irrationally
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