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Summary The Globalization of World Politics, ISBN: 9780198739852 Summary: book "The globalization of world politics
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Contemporary European Politics ( CEP ) Essay : Deliberative Democracy ( ISBN: 9780198739852 )
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Intro to International Relations Book Summaries IRO Year 1 Block 1
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INTRODUCTION: FROM INTERNATIONAL TO WORLD POLITICSFROM INTERNATIONAL POLITICS TO WORLD POLITICS
Nation-state
o = pol community in which state claims legitimacy on grounds that it represents nation
INGO: International non-governmental organization
MNC: Multinational corporation
NGO: Non-governmental organization
Interconnectedness
o = interweaving of human lives: events in region of world impact all /most other people
THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
International hierarchy
o = structure of auth in which states/other intern actors: ranked according to rel power
THEORIES OF WORLD POLITICS
Theory
o set of ideas that simplifies complexity world, gives suggestions: how to identify key
forces/ actors within it
REALISM
= theoretical approach that analyses all intern relations as relation of states engaged in
pursuit of power, cannot accommodate non-state actors within its analysis
Main actors: states (legally sovereign actors)
o sovereignty= there is no actor above the state that can compel it to act in specific ways
International politics
o struggle for power among states, with each trying to maximize its national interest
o self-help system: states must rely on their own military resources to achieve their ends
Balance of power
o = equilibrium between states
o for historical realists: product of diplomacy = contrived balance
, o for structural “ : system has tendency towards nat equilibrium = fortuitous balance
Diplomacy: key mechanism for balancing various national interests
Military force
o important tool for implementing states foreign policy
o material power
Neorealism
o since 1970s and 80s
stresses importance of structure of intern system in affecting behavior of all states
o = modification of realist approach by recognizing that economic resources are basis for
exercising influence; attempt to make realism ‘more scientific’ by borrowing models
from econ and behavioral social science to explain intern pol
Multipolarity: distribution of power among number (least 3) of major powers or ‘poles’
LIBERALIM
Main themes
o human beings can be improved
o democracy is necessary for liberal improvement
o ideas matter (not the material power)
States
o not unitary actor
o made up of individuals and their collective, societal preferences and interests
o comprised of set of bureaucracies, each with own interests no ‘national interest’
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
Constructivism
o = approach to intern politics that concerns itself with centrality of ideas and human
consciousness and stresses a holistic and idealist view of structures
o = approach to philosophy of soc science w implications for kinds of arguments that
can be made about world politics
o argues that we make and re-make the social world
o interested in how
- structure constructs actors’ identities and interests
- their interactions are organized/constrained by that structure
- their interaction serves to reproduce or transform that structure
o Alexander Wendt ‘anarchy is what states make of it’
new approach in IR
o developed in late 1980s
2
, o more influential since mid 1990s
o arose out of set of events in world pol: disintegration of Soviet empire (fall of Berlin
Wall in 1989) indicated human agency had much greater potential
MARXIST THEORIES
Marxism
o = view that most fundamental feature of society is the org of material forces
o material forces: incl natural resources, geography, military power and technology
o aka historical materialism
o sovereignty: not as important for Marxist theories
o concept of class conflict: central to Marxist ideas of pol and history
understand how world works: taking material forces/class conflict into account
leads to forms of technological determinism or analysis of distributions of milit power
for understanding state’s foreign policy and patterns of intern pol (for IR scholars)
World economy: constraints states’ freedom of manoeuvre
Key feature world/international economy
o Division of world into: core; semi-periphery; periphery
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
Poststructuralism
o influential theoretical development in last 30 years
o also referred to as postmodernism
o concerned w distrusting/exposing any account human life: claims to have direct
access to ‘the truth’
o Michael Foucault: important influence on poststr. power produces knowledge
POSTCOLONIALISM
Post colonialism
o important approach in cultural studies; mostly ignored in IR
neo-colonialism
o = inform processes keep former colonies under power/especially econ influence of
former colonial powers and advanced industrial countries
FEMINISM
Feminism
o = pol project to understand so as to change women’s inequality or oppression
o for some: to aim to move beyond gender
o for others: to work for more equal and inclusive social relations overall
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, META-THEORETICAL QUESTIONS
Explanatory theories
o one that sees world as something external to our theories of it
o = theories that see soc world something external to our theories of soc world
o task: report on world: exists independently of observer & his/her theoretical position
o assume causal relations among main variables
Constitutive theories
o one that thinks our theories help construct the world
o assumes concepts soc world help construct soc world, what we see as external world
o assume mutually constitutive rather than causal relations among main ‘variables’
epistemology = study of how we can claim to know something
THEORIES AND GLOBALIZATION
Globalization
o = historical process involving fundam shift in spatial scale of human soc org links
distant communities and expands reach of power relations across regions /continents
o catch-all phrase: usually: describe single world econ after collapse communism,
sometimes: define growing integration of intern capitalist system in post-war period
GLOBALIZATION: MYTH OR REALITY?
REALITY MYTH
pace of economic transformation is so glob is merely a buzzword to denote the
great, it has created a new world politics latest phase of capitalism
communications have revolutionized the glob is very uneven in its effects
way we deal with the rest of the world
there is now a global culture glob may be the latest stage of Western
imperialism
time and space seem to be collapsing There are considerable losers as the world
becomes more globalized
a global polity is emerging Not all globalized forces are necessarily
‘good’
a cosmopolitan culture is developing Main worry with global governance aspects
of glob, is about responsibility
a risk culture is emerging
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